Not really. Civil disobedience is the only historically effective way to defeat a modern state.
With open warfare, the historical playbook for putting down this sort of thing is clear. Roll in the tanks, and infantry from Mongolia or whatever. Sometimes the revolt get put down immediately, sometimes you end up with guerrilla warfare.
History is more than a century long, but a modern state by military standards has been a thing since around the time of the civil war when rifles replaced muskets and industrialization became a thing. That's the point where unlike in the Napoleonic era, you can't win decisive victory on the battlefield, things depend on political will, manpower and economic function.
Using your example of the British Empire, India didn't win independence through combat, civil disobedience made it politically untenable for the British to continue. That had far-ranging effects on what was left of the colonies.
One of the arguments core to an advocate of the 2nd amendment with respect to this issue is that a citizen militia, equipped with small arms, would be capable of deterring a government from taking some action. It's an increasingly absurd position.
I think you have an absurd understanding of history if you believe all of this decolonisation happened nonviolently. Almost every independence movement relied on the threat of violence. You are using the civil war itself as the starting point, a brutally violent regime change. Ireland gained its independence from Britain in no insignificant way thanks to violent means. Most African nations gained their independence through violence. And even India was not just freed through a barefoot bespectacled man walking around singing kumbaya. Simplifying it to mere acts of civil disobedience is grossly misrepresenting how complex the situation was.
> Civil disobedience is the only historically effective way to defeat a modern state
No. Ordinary civil disobedience will do utterly nothing. You need a certain amount of violence - just look at France, only after the riots were utterly massive the government caved. The alternative is a massive general strike, which has fallen out of favor in modern times as many jobs are easily replaceable and people are afraid of getting fired.
There will be nothing like guerilla warfare in Hong Kong though. Literally no one has any military experience there, and nobody owns a weapon either. It's just not Singapore.
Meanwhile, the Chinese PLA certainly doesn't suffer from any manpower shortages to contain the situation when they eventually want to.
> There will be nothing like guerilla warfare in Hong Kong though. Literally no one has any military experience there, and nobody owns a weapon either.
You don't need guns. Making car bombs and IEDs requires only determination and some practice. PLA as any modern army is poorly equiped to combat urban guerilla. Such a dense maze like Hong-Kong had never been experienced by any army.
Loss of face for China would be collosal if any sort of prolonged and effective resistance happend after intervention.
The people in HK have no training in any form of warfare, guerilla or not. They're just not mentally nor physically equipped to conduct any sort of warfare, especially against a superior power like China.
I doubt China ultimately cares about loss of face.
The way our country (USA) solidifies its dominance in a country like Iraq or the nations of Latin America is mass assassinations of intelligentsia blamed on unknown terrorists or death squads.
China's style in Xinjiang is more bottom up and comprehensive with internment camps and mass surveillance.
You could say our style reflects our individualistic understanding of society while China's style represents a more Marxist collectivist view.
I think the other 26 amendments + constitution probably have more to do individually, and absolutely do as a collective, with the freedoms of our society. I don't know if you've seen an obese person with a peashooter go up against an apache helicopter, for instance, but I don't think the state has had to worry about who can deploy more force in over a century.
You're being dismissive. We're leaving Afghanistan because some skinny guys in robes with little more than AK's successfully stood up to the most powerful military that ever marched, for going on 18 years now.
These are all examples of a foreign power fighting a war, not an internal conflict which is mediated by internal violence. Winning a war by not losing is a completely orthogonal endeavor to getting what you want internally. How’d it work out for Syria?
You mean the first amendment right? The US military machine would decimate any civilians wielding weapons if they were so inclined. They wouldn't even have to use troops, they could do so with drones.
Why has the US military machine failed to wipe out a few thousand foreign insurgents (generally less well equipped than American civilians) using drones then? Why did many of my peers, troops, die?
I have severe doubts that the US could contain a civil uprising scenario, especially given international pressures. About 42% of Americans *live in a household with guns according to Gallup, with approximately 30% owning them. If even 10% of those people decided to revolt, that would be approximately 9 million people.
I'd wager that's vastly more than the insurgent military forces we've lost to in the past few conflicts we've had.
To add context here, I responded to someone who said the current Hong Kong situation illustrates the importance of the second amendment. Which I think truly was a myopic, insipid comment. As far as your contention that they haven't wiped out a few thousand foreign insurgents, are you referring to Iraq or Afghanistan? Afghanistan is an interesting case, I truly don't understand what the current goal is.
I would add that the US monitors its civilians with multiple agencies, including Homeland Security and the NSA, and I would think it'd be easier to do on the domestic side than have to contend with foreign governments and the distances involved in operating overseas.
I'm not sure about the Gallup poll you're referring to, but the Pew Research poll I stumbled upon has 30% of Americans owning a firearm with an additional 11 to 12% living in a household with someone who owns a firearm. I don't really agree that means 42% of Americans own firearms. In fact, the ratio of households that own a gun has been going down for decades (You can see this here: https://www.cbsnews.com/news/despite-mass-shootings-number-o...). The issue is there are fewer and fewer people owning guns, but those people own far more guns than they did previously. Which is where the extremism and mass shootings come in (along with our current social and political structure). Here's a quotation from the article I linked above:
>They found that those who own guns own an average of 4.8 firearms. But they also found that half of all guns — 130 million guns — are owned by 14 percent of gun owners or 7.6 million people. That's 3 percent of the U.S. population.
The international pressure angle is interesting and not something I've really thought a lot about. Incidentally, the current administration doesn't seem to care what international governments think.
I do agree that comparing the US culture of gun ownership + the second amendment (which, although may have been written as though to apply to all people regardless of national identity... doesn't) to the situation going on in Hong Kong is incredibly shortsighted and demonstrates a lack of understanding in cultural differences.
My point on the "few thousand insurgents" is more specifically referring to Afghanistan, but I think both apply similarly: that the US has been unable to contain and combat relatively small insurgency movements via direct action, be that boots on the ground or through mechanized warfare. I think if a similar insurgency happened here in America, if say a percent or even less than a percent of Americans engaged in sympathetic action, that it would be nigh impossible to contain given our military's past performance against similar combatants, not even taking into account the nuances of fighting one's own citizenship and the likelihood of disobedience among the state.
Arguments that a scenario could be contained at local, civic levels are valid, but a full-scale conflict between citizens and military would be catastrophic not only for the population but for the administration as well (who wants to blow up all the infrastructure they've built?). The state has a vested interest in not provoking this scenario, which is why I imply the second amendment is important and alive in the US even today although the tides have changed.
In regards to HK, a previous comment above mentioned they have a much more comprehensive "bottom-up" structure of monitoring and enforcing compliance with their citizens. Even if they had a theoretical second amendment, they can still initiate a massive crackdown and have the infrastructure to contain and control their citizenship. Which is frankly terrifying, of course, but the solution isn't necessarily just "give the citizens guns", nor would this ever work on a cultural level.
China does actually have the resources and is in a position to contain civic revolt in nearly all cases, from my point of view. This is vastly different to America, and can't really be easily compared.
> To add context here, I responded to someone who said the current Hong Kong situation illustrates the importance of the second amendment. Which I think truly was a myopic, insipid comment.
The protestors themselves may disagree with that. There’s plenty of photos of protestors holding signs that make exactly that comment. Their oppressor in this case also actually has a history of massacring unarmed civilians.
Regarding the might of the US or Chinese military, I can’t think of an example of a military winning against an insurgency.
> You mean the first amendment right? The US military machine would decimate any civilians wielding weapons if they were so inclined. They wouldn't even have to use troops, they could do so with drones.
If this was the truth why is the US military still engaged in Afghanistan? Is it possible that war is more nuanced if you don't carpet bomb locations off the map?
Not really, say Texas wanted to declare independence. How long would a Texan militia last against the US military? Modern empires can't be resisted period. It's just a question of whether you want to destroy yourself to keep them from ruling you. In that case they still can't be resisted but at least you deny them their victory. You either belong to one empire or another. The only way for Hong Kong to resist would have been if they never unified with China and joined as a territory of the US or Europe or something when Britain was done with them.
Americans and the US like to perpetuate the freedom myth, but it's mostly bullshit used to destroy countries in the name of liberating them to benefit the US financially or strategically. The reality is much more stark.
Consider if you will how well we fared in Korea, Vietnam, and in the Middle East against farmers and normal folks. As a Texan myself, I'd like to point out that a large percentage of the United States military happens to originate from or was stationed in our great state. I happen to think we would fare quite well in your hypothetical scenario..
With Korea, the US basically conquered half of it and made it kind of territory or vassal. Vietnam would be the only victory for the belligerent. The Middle East with US intervention is pretty much destroyed, where Iraq is more or less a vassal state and Afghanistan is still out of control but more or less destroyed, and Syria is burning. In foreign cases the invading army will eventually leave the country if you can make victory for them too difficult politically or militarily, not so if the army is domestic.
I'm not a student of military history but these all seem disparate examples that don't support the point that you're trying to make. Are you trying to say something about the nature of the US Military's (in)ability to hold territory or making a point about foreign occupations?
In your wording "faring quite well" logically would involve between two and five decades of unending guerilla warfare. Doesn't sound like a great way to live if you're not a gun nut
> Consider if you will how well we fared in Korea, Vietnam, and in the Middle East against farmers and normal folks.
We crushed them (and the regular DPRK army) utterly and completely in Vietnam and Korea, but then forces that weren't “farmers and normal folk” (or even the DPRK military) got on the field (Chinese Army as we showed signs that we would roll the DPRK up completely and potentially—the concern on their side went—keep going into Communist China in Korea, the NVA in Vietnam.)
Korea and Vietnam were decades ago, the United States annihilated Iraq. Surprised you didn't mention Afghanistan. Modern technology would make any potential secession in the United States almost impossible. You are also applying American culture to Hong Kong. If Hong Kong residents violently opposed the Chinese government with weapons, they would be systematically destroyed. The Chinese government has done that before and has shown no compunction in destroying people based on what's happening with the Uyghurs.
Discussion of practicality aside, thinking "$bad_thing can't happen here because of $blank" is base exceptionalism that only results in creating a blind spot for yourself.
A population armed with guns can no more stand up to a modern police force or army than one without firearms. People in Iraq and Yemen were heavily armed.
Which does illustrate the importance of the idea of the second amendment, but also it's failure in implementation:
The second amendment does not exist to arm the citizenry against the police/army, it exists to provide a militia of citizens so that government will not (because the citizenry will be both capable and, being politically empowered, will not stand for the alternative) resort to permanent professional police and armies for security.
But it turns out the citizenry, armed or not, like the government applying violence, and don't want to be bothered to be on the pointy end, so even with the second amendment we have abandoned reliance on the citizen militia in favor of professional security services, along with a weird civic cult of worship of those services.
I hope you're being sarcastic.
Partly because the idea of civilians using guns bought at the supermarket to oppose the Chinese army is hilarious; partly because the idea that you need guns to get freedom, is general, even more laughable. Sorry.
I feel sorry for you. You don't truly understand how you have the freedom for instance..To speak your mind here on HN.
Very few governments will just give away freedom and power. It needs to be take back by force.
If the HK citizens had access to weapons this entire time, the Chinese government would think twice before invading. Unfortunately, it's too late for that.
This is why the second amendment is so important in the US.
The last time some of the US states tried to secede from the rest of the union and gain their "freedom" (they were of course heavily armed) they were attacked and crushed in a war that lasted 4 years and caused almost a million deaths. So in that case the weapons didn't work. Or did they?
Sometimes armed rebellion has good outcomes, sometimes (probably more often) it has horribly tragic ones. Prolonged political pressure and alliances, non-violent protest, can give equally good results without the risk of creating bloodsheds like the US secession war or the current Syrian civil war (that as horrendous as it is, has yet to claim as many victims as the US secession war).
> This is a very privileged and perhaps even ignorant view to take.
I'll spare myself the obvious retort. Not everyone has the privilege of starting an armed revolution and succeed, or simply survive. Not everyone who does is guaranteed to be in the right (for example the US states that tried to secede). And the outcome can be complete destruction for yourself, for your city and your region, and hundreds of thousands of deaths and millions displaced and homeless- many of whom couldn't care less about your "revolution".
Do I condemn armed resistance? No. Of course not, sometimes it is inevitable. But the idea that you should distribute firearms to people just in case somebody one day decides he's fed up and wants to start shooting other people for freedom, or for white supremacy, or- why not- for a religious caliphate- that is ridiculous.
How do you defend yourself against the Chinese army with just handguns and rifles? You can post the answer here, or better yet, sell it to Taiwan confidentially for billions of dollars.
The Vietnamese had room to maneuver and hide and had the support of the locals. In addition you overestimate how little the Chinese government gives a shit about the average citizen. In such an engagement there will be no "hearts and minds" war. If they decide to go the military route they will flood HK and massacre anybody who gives off the slightest whiff of sedition.
Personally I think they'll just continue arresting and making people disappear to the mainland so there is nothing damaging on the news.
I'm glad that you asked. We had a long history with our big "brother" China. But I don't think this is relevant because at the end of the day, Hong Kong and Taiwan are still Chinese.
In all fairness the Vietnamese had among the most battle-trained armies of the time, with massive manpower, enough of weaponry and extreme determination. Plus a difficult terrain. Equipment-wise they had infantry weapons, artillery, air force, aerial defense...
With open warfare, the historical playbook for putting down this sort of thing is clear. Roll in the tanks, and infantry from Mongolia or whatever. Sometimes the revolt get put down immediately, sometimes you end up with guerrilla warfare.