Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!rutgers!att!cbnews!military From: schloss@marlin.nosc.mil (Tom Schlosser) Newsgroups: sci.military Subject: Re: Low tech warfare Message-ID: <12574@cbnews.ATT.COM> Date: 23 Dec 89 06:05:32 GMT References: <12457@cbnews.ATT.COM> <12509@cbnews.ATT.COM> <12540@cbnews.ATT.COM> Sender: military@cbnews.ATT.COM Organization: Naval Ocean Systems Center, San Diego Lines: 51 Approved: military@att.att.com From: schloss@marlin.nosc.mil (Tom Schlosser) Great apologies to all concerned for not being clearer on my posting. Latrine duty for me this week! from Perry: (the bombing of Hanoi) >really wasn't worth it. i.e. in cost-benefit terms the NVA won the propaganda >war by jumping all over downed B-52s and their economy was so primitive that >bombing it didn't have much effect. Is that really true? They must have had some centralized government and industrial installations. Even medieval civilizations had that. Perhaps the real problem was to get them, you had to get civilians too, and that was politically infeasible. from Bill: I am greatly indebted to Bill for his thrashing of the 'Rolling Thunder' campaign. However, I was speaking more of the later campaigns (Linebacker and Linebacker II was it?). The book 'Summons of the Trumpet' (I forget the author) seemed to think these were effective. >However if they made the *effort* and were seen to be making the effort to >reform things (and land ownership is just one aspect of this) ... Whether they do or not may be immaterial when no matter how they slice it, 75% of the population will end up impoverished. Juan next door may have gotten some land in the reform, but if you're still starving, do you really care whether or not Juan got some land? Maybe if you got a gun and shot a few mayors, you'd get some land, too. My point is that IMHO, such a country is *always* on the verge, or in the middle of an insurgency. If that is true then the goal of counter-insurgency is not so much to utterly defeat them as to reduce the amount of damage they can do to the infrastructure of the country, so the country can try to develop economically and get out of the insurgency cycle. Militarily (ignoring reform and the like for the time being), whether or not this can be done by applying force to their arms suppliers, or by blockades is the question I present to you. To avoid the political flame-war that might result from this question, let's make it: Are there historical examples of this? Got to go clean latrines now. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Fortunately, I keep my feathers numbered for just such an occasion. -- Foghorn Leghorn after being flamed. Tom Schlosser schloss@nosc.mil