2005-05-01
50 years from now
In 50 years from now, when the whole world is liberal democracies, what sort of militaries will we require? There is going to be a lot of soul-searching, as we probably don't need any. But the free world has been caught off-guard before, by Hitler. There will be a general reluctance to disarm totally. The greatest threat that I can see is from a military coup. When a tyrant comes to power, the ideology he brings with him is unpredictable and thus a threat. We need to be able to guard against this eventuality.
What I propose is that in the eventuality of a coup, the remainder of the free world automatically goes into action against the tyrant. There should be checks and balances in the system such that no country is immune to liberation. You can further assume that a percentage, most likely the vast majority, of both the citizens and the military, want to have their democracy reestablished. But they have no ability to beat the security forces under the control of the tyrant. They need outside help. How should the remainder of the free world's security forces be structured in order to provide the outside help?
I believe that this is the future of warfare. The free world will be able to establish air superiority, by weight of numbers. After establishing air supremacy, special forces go in and liberate one enemy base at a time. The enemy base will be given the option of defecting, going home or being annihilated. Note that in that link, the special forces were able to take the base with no loss of allied life. I don't expect that to happen every time, but do expect that this process will be repeatable. The liberated defecting bases, operating under allied air cover, will be able to reassert control over the rest of the country. So instead of needing large, expensive standing armies, we instead just need air supremacy and special forces
That's the theory. In 50 years from now, we will never know for sure whether this is possible or not. We need to try it out to see if it is possible or not. And the opportunity will probably never arise. So we will never know whether we can stand down our armies or not. We will be in desperate need of the experimental data that will prove it one way or the other. That is why NOW is the time to test that theory. Instead of using a 500,000-man army to conquer Iran (which we know will work), we should instead try repeating what was done at Al Asad airbase. I propose that the liberation of Iran should be done by Australian SAS operating under American, British or French air cover, coming in from aircraft carriers. The beauty of a war of liberation is that there is no need to occupy territory, as the people are free to do whatever they want - we're not trying to ram some ideology like communism down their throat. All we need to do is take out the heavy equipment in the hands of regime-supporters.
It needs to be tried. And the Middle East, Africa and Asia have provided us with an abundance of opportunity to test this theory. Another win/win situation.
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What I propose is that in the eventuality of a coup, the remainder of the free world automatically goes into action against the tyrant. There should be checks and balances in the system such that no country is immune to liberation. You can further assume that a percentage, most likely the vast majority, of both the citizens and the military, want to have their democracy reestablished. But they have no ability to beat the security forces under the control of the tyrant. They need outside help. How should the remainder of the free world's security forces be structured in order to provide the outside help?
I believe that this is the future of warfare. The free world will be able to establish air superiority, by weight of numbers. After establishing air supremacy, special forces go in and liberate one enemy base at a time. The enemy base will be given the option of defecting, going home or being annihilated. Note that in that link, the special forces were able to take the base with no loss of allied life. I don't expect that to happen every time, but do expect that this process will be repeatable. The liberated defecting bases, operating under allied air cover, will be able to reassert control over the rest of the country. So instead of needing large, expensive standing armies, we instead just need air supremacy and special forces
That's the theory. In 50 years from now, we will never know for sure whether this is possible or not. We need to try it out to see if it is possible or not. And the opportunity will probably never arise. So we will never know whether we can stand down our armies or not. We will be in desperate need of the experimental data that will prove it one way or the other. That is why NOW is the time to test that theory. Instead of using a 500,000-man army to conquer Iran (which we know will work), we should instead try repeating what was done at Al Asad airbase. I propose that the liberation of Iran should be done by Australian SAS operating under American, British or French air cover, coming in from aircraft carriers. The beauty of a war of liberation is that there is no need to occupy territory, as the people are free to do whatever they want - we're not trying to ram some ideology like communism down their throat. All we need to do is take out the heavy equipment in the hands of regime-supporters.
It needs to be tried. And the Middle East, Africa and Asia have provided us with an abundance of opportunity to test this theory. Another win/win situation.
# posted by Paul Edwards @ 14:30 
