Protester shot in chest by live police round during Hong Kong protests

We can't defeat the insurgents in Afghanistan... and that's just the size of Texas. The rocky mountains cover more area than AF; our borders are more porous (the Canadian border is the longest in the world); and our citizens have the most firearms in the world - total or per person (far more than AF or IQ). The US military cant stop insurgents from moving across the border with Pakistan, but they would be able to stop them on a border 4x longer? They can't stop drugs from south america (at the mexican border, or through the gulf of mexico), but they would if it were money or weapons?

I've posted this here before: The US military has an urban warfare document that states the number of troops required to secure N population. It's based on their experience and the experience of others in past wars in holding urban terrain. If you add up all of the military, police, national guard, fbi, etc... you aren't even close to the number the US military says are required to secure the US. Even if they hired millions of people to do so, they would still leave large swaths of the US unsecured (like the rocky mountains) where insurgents could operate.

I don't know why when this is brought up people imagine citizens would stand face to face with the US military. Like they would be so dumb as to stick their face in front of a gun and ask they be shot.

The US military says they can't secure the US from an insurgency. If you think otherwise, I would seriously like to hear what you base that on.

That's true. USSR had a similar document that was only declassified after the fall.

Even if Union's military was to use multimegaton nukes on rebelling cities, and red army kept 100% loyalty, the military would've still lost due to logistical exhaustion.

Armed forces rely on much more reliable supply train to function effectively than any kind of insurgent force. Armor and air force is useless unless fueled, oiled, armed and well maintained.

> The US military has an urban warfare document that states the number of troops required to secure N population

Are you expecting the whole US to join this insurgency/rebellion/civil war? Most of the gun owners today already support Trump - a man who idolizes authoritarianism.

Instead of a scenario where the entirety of the U.S. police force quells a rebellion made up of 100% of the gun owning populace, it would be more likely that the dictator gets the gun owning populace on his/her side (not far from today's situation!) as reward for supporting the authoritarianism policies under the guise of democracy.

The 'whole US'? No, of course not. If an entire city was against the dictator, then they could do what al-Assad did in Syria: gas the entire city. The problem with an insurgency is that most of the population is either for you or at least pretends to be... so it's impossible to find those working against you.. and that support could be active (by fighting themselves) or passive by refusing to report insurgent activity, for example.

IIRC, the minimum force is 1 soldier per 50 citizens. That's enough for the military to be so prevalent in an area that it would be impossible for insurgents to operate. For the US that would be 6 million soldiers (+ soldiers for the unpopulated areas). Those numbers usually don't include civilian police forces, but even if you did include them, the US military would be millions of people short.

But yes, the insurgency needs support from the people. Not a majority, but a network and general support must exist in order for it to survive.

> We can't defeat the insurgents in Afghanistan

With supply lines halfway across the globe, and a military most of whose personnel don't speak the language, don't know the country, don't know the culture, etc. And, in most of time we've notionally been trying, only a fairly small deployment compared to our total military force.

Just as a note India has 1:10 in Kashmir and still isn't making too much headway in the ideas battle.

No reason an insurgency couldn't coexist with a dictatorship. I just don't believe this kind of embedded insurgency could reach levels of organization great enough to overthrow the dictatorship.

Certainly an insurgent in a dictatorship has not won back his liberty. Therefore an armed populace, in my mind, does not prevent a dictatorship.

But in the case of a civil war the supply lines themselves are under threat at all times. It's even worse than that, because military action itself will likely harm their own supply lines, because it's the populace that creates those supplies. If you're fighting against the populace, then you're not getting supplies from them.