Pacifistic National Security

This topic may conflict with the particular meaning of the word "security" used in the board title, but I think the users here have the best mindsets for the problem. Ok, so say we have a completely modernized nation with vast resources, an effective intelligence apparatus, and a small landmass. Further, this nation has a paramilitary organization only distinguished from an actual military in its refusal to employ physical violence. Like a usual military, this organization is regimented so as to run semi-smoothly and is fully trained and equipped to conduct various kinds of operations in various environments. It maintains a corps of engineers for building fortifications and such and can set significant amounts of manpower on arbitrary tasks (pic related). For the sake of discussion, let's say that capturing enemy soldiers and destroying enemy equipment are considered fair game. How effectively could such a nation prevent itself from being conquered by an armed force? What would be the most effective methods to employ? Consider various angles, including the physical angle (e.g. armored bulldozer walls) and the psychological angle (e.g. loudspeakers blaring peace propaganda, etc. to demoralize the enemy). Let's keep this discussion practical rather than political. While there should probably be some discussion of political methods of maintaining security, I think you know the kind of politics I'm prohibiting. I hope the mods will assist me in enforcing this rule.

>>7522 >How effectively could such a nation prevent itself from being conquered by an armed force? The only way I can see the country would defend them self would be to cut off supply to weapons or certain knowledge from reaching their 'enemy' Most effective method would be in some way disabling them from getting what they would need to conquer the pacifistic country

From a practical standpoint, your description sounds like a police state with a self defense force, instead of a "Military" in theory, this is more a defensive state rather than an offensive state. In a situation where the military is more of an armed civil servant position, this is a reasonable description, but would most likely be accomplished via conscription (so as to populate a defense force an otherwise rather pacifistic nation). The idea draws its basis in the idea that good citizens are patriotic and want to defend their communities (i.e. citizen-soldier conscripts who put the nation before the self and work regular jobs in uniform). It is possible with a sufficient income source that a majority of military jobs at the introduction level could be filled by government employees. The benefits would be that a heightened level pf physical fitness (for military preparation) would reduce healthcare costs for the nation, and hybrid political systems have even been described as in Heinleins starship troopers, where joining the military was a right, but the only way to become a citizen and get the power to vote (you could still live your life as a non-citizen, but political decisions had to be made by people who were either formal civil servants or soldiers Heinlein describes this as the military, but he explains civil servants, doctors, and teachers etc. were included in his view of the military, as in the entire government is run by the military ). >Further, this nation has a paramilitary organization only distinguished from an actual military in its refusal to employ physical violence. Violence is part of force application >STOP OR YOU WILL BE TOLD TO STOP AGAIN! has no effect. Use of force depends on a task direction with consequence. The type of force deployment does not need to be exactly lethal (though the threat has clear implications). Use of force is determined by the society that uses it. >How effectively could such a nation prevent itself from being conquered by an armed force? As previously mentioned, a wide readiness to employ lethal force via national service means people are willing to defend themselves, but they would also be cognizant of the implications (if everyone serves, society would understand use of force for what it is and why levels of force exist, instead of falling to armchair speculation of ethics of force as many nations now do). >What would be the most effective methods to employ? USDoD has an extensive non-lethal program for weapons employment and development. IIRC Sweden still issues public service announcements in the event of war or invasion. The full scale mobilization of a citizen military is twofold- In times of war, you have an absolute defense and a unified front (citizens = country = military), Conscription or drafting pulls a representative portion of the population and forces them to coexist and work together in a way that most of society would conventionally not have (self segregation). The other part is that in peacetime, the military infrastructure doubles as civilian infrastructure (Interstate roadways are usually a product of such development). Troops building and working to support their military pays back into them. In practice the military is essentially a functional socialist system (of course it does not itself produce income, so it needs to get income from other sources, in smaller countries energy production could help bridge the cost-benefit gap). Infrastructure would be built to last through war, and built to sustain life, which would mean better quality of living then reduced cost monopolized structures built for quantity not quality. >and the psychological angle Napoleon once said >A soldier will fight long and hard for a bit of colored ribbon. The idea that the fight revolves around his own country means that there would be no doubt that the citizen is fighting "the good fight" and being defensive, the stigma of an "invasion force" would also be absent, which means that the force would see itself as truly defensive.

I think one of the big problems would be anti-air. There are some options on land and sea, but it seems difficult to deal with a bombing run when you can't shoot the planes down. I guess everyone could live in bunkers... >effective intelligence apparatus There's always the option of doing SAD/PAG stuff to foster an anti-war sentiment in the populace of the attacking nation, but that would probably be too slow to matter if there were already soldiers at the border.

>>7525 >I think one of the big problems would be anti-air. There are some options on land and sea, but it seems difficult to deal with a bombing run when you can't shoot the planes down. I guess everyone could live in bunkers... A best option would be defensive weapons like C-RAM or IRON DOME (like israel uses) though you would still have to worry about the enemy using long range weapons like ballistic missiles. Compounded with OPs hypothetical "small country" you would also have to worry about the threat of cyberwarfare via industry/infrastructure sabotage (no power, internet, or media to get information out) and then the worry of jamming. You could still use old-school trench phones (voice powered) to communicate within communities, but top down direction would be difficult. At best, you would have smaller mostly autonomous communities that simply worked together rather than a government directed system (where severing communication means the entire country falls). Assuming manpower was also disproportionate, you would also have to turn the entire defense into constant guerilla warfare. The outcome would be very similar to the battle of grozny: Facing artillery bombardment, psychological warfare operations (and hidden threats i.e. enemy embedding plainclothes special forces) and a force with air superiority, you would effectively end up loosing to a total war scenario or fighting a long drawn out guerilla conflict until the enemy looses interest. The only way a pacifist system would help is if you used widespread less lethal weapons against the enemy to try to immobilize and demoralize them instead of presenting a lethal threat, the outcome would probably still not be success. On the other hand, a strong defense with bunkers, infrastructure designed to resist attacks, a hardened national cyber posture, air defense, and a moral superiority on the international scale (nobody said you cant get allies) could potentially put a stop to the conflict.

>>7526 Adding to this, the reason countries fail to win wars in Afghanistan is that many regions are essentially autonomous tribes, which means that even if the central government falls, each regions continues to live its life mostly normal. In a first world country, this could be interpreted to view local legislature to be more important than reliance on a national government. Vietnam also demonstrated that even a superior fighting force cannot entirely defeat a technologically inferior fighting force that relies on sheer will and social cohesiveness (compare that to the divided United States where troops had little support at home, and moral was so low troops would shoot themselves to go home).

This is an easy problem to solve with nuclear weapons. Consider that North Korea does not need to be directly engaged in any violent conflict to be relatively unmolested in the international community. It can be argued that a combination of sociopolitical positioning and the threat of igniting nuclear annihilation is sufficient to maintain a :effectively: "pacifist" state. In a more egoist bent, make the "state" disappear entirely, and invite unsuspecting external nations into your territory, with the sole intent of pitting them against each other then use the salvaged proceeds from their war time remains and some creative reverse engineering to power the economy of your new borderless society. One might act as a sort of state devouring predator with a group of like minded persons, thereby forming a new kind of meta state that thrives on consuming the existing states. Eventually, this metastate might grow to such proportions that it is no longer recognizable as a state, but is instead a loose collection of people under a common external description but with distinct individual behaviors that coalesce toward a common goal due to having common motivations. IE a union of egoists built from the corpses of modern societies.

>>7529 To expand further into futuristic scenarios that are actually pretty practicable for a person with a large budget, within this decade... One might consider cloning oneself, and devising a way to raise the clones with extreme consistency. Each time, training the clones and providing them with various ins to becoming more and more integral parts of the socio-political structure of a given society. Eventually, all important socio-political roles become filled with these nearly identical clones and thus, the state becomes a hegemonic puppet of the clone collective will. Each clone acting in accordance with it's lived experiences and upbringing, believing itself to be individual and in control, but at the large scale contributing to a coalescence of collective control and parasitic consumption of an existing state. No violence necessary, just a little biotechnology, well applied over a long period of time, and plenty of compound interest to ensure abundant support for the clones and their needs. Even more accessible than the above would be to use bigamy to maximize your number of offspring, and train your hordes of children into ideal sociopolitical manipulators to take over a nation with a common family heritage. If your family structure is appropriately designed and reinforced, you may be able to produce such a high degree of associative decision making among the members of the family, that they act effectively as a unified force.

>>7522 If the attacker has guns and can shoot them at the general direction of the enemy your ((military))'s pacifist bullsoykaf will end fairly quickly. They don't even have to use tactics if they know your ((military)) won't be able to resist them. They can just march up to your capital and massacare your ((leaders)) while your ((military)) shouts peaceful slogans.

>>7522 Can you define what you mean by pacifist ? Your post title says Pacifistic National Security and your post says its refusal to employ physical violence. But what does that mean to you ? Wikipedia defines it as Pacifism covers a spectrum of views, including the belief that international disputes can and should be peacefully resolved, calls for the abolition of the institutions of the military and war, opposition to any organization of society through governmental force (anarchist or libertarian pacifism), rejection of the use of physical violence to obtain political, economic or social goals, the obliteration of force, and opposition to violence under any circumstance, even defence of self and others. Historians of pacifism Peter Brock and Thomas Paul Socknat define pacifism "in the sense generally accepted in English-speaking areas" as "an unconditional rejection of all forms of warfare".[4] Philosopher Jenny Teichman defines the main form of pacifism as "anti-warism", the rejection of all forms of warfare.[5] Teichman's beliefs have been summarized by Brian Orend as "... A pacifist rejects war and believes there are no moral grounds which can justify resorting to war. War, for the pacifist, is always wrong." In a sense the philosophy is based on the idea that the ends do not justify the means Does your definition exclude psychological violence and other forms of violence ? What do you mean by refusal ? Refusal to take action regardless of circumstance ? Refusal to even contemplate the idea of a solution that make through action or in action constitute violence. Refusal to take actions that are part of nonviolence that make be interpreted as violence of advocating violence ? E.g. Would this corp of engineers refuse to make pit traps with spikes ? Would this corp of engineers refuse to make automated turret and missile firing technology that autofired and wasn't triggered by any human action of violence ? Would this corp of engineers refuse to make biological agents like chlorine gas or other neurotoxins or populate certain areas with tar pits and deadly poisonous spiders and snakes ? Would this corp of engineers sabotage supply lines with explosives as long as they were sure that no people were injured ? Would this corp of engineers raze their crops or set their nuclear power plants to overload and trigger nuclear reactions and radiation leaks ? On definition of violence is behavior involving physical force intended to hurt, damage, or kill ,someone or something. So what if there is no physical force ? What if attack is just a drug or mind virus that makes the opposing force believe their own country is in danger or their own loved ones are in danger or believe they should commit suicide or their orders are incorrect and they should mutiny / desert ? Is that still violence ? What if the intention to hurt people isn't there and the engineers only intended to terraform what was once tractable terrain into an inhospitable landscape, any results of such a landscape where not their concern or intention ? Is that still violence ? The cold war demonstrated the power of mutually assured destruction in minimizing actual physical violence in place of the threat of annihilation, there are other such motivators cultural, scientific , economic and person that have the same effect to varying extents. A song that comes to mine is Judy Small's Silo (video , https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hRC_y7gx-tQ and lyrics http://mysongbook.de/msb/songs/s/silo.html ) Especially So we sit here each day, my buddy and I And try not to think of the millions who'll die But they live in my dreams and screams fill my ears Till I wake in a sweat and their eyes disappear And where do I go for the blessed relief Of sleep without nightmares, of days without grief The pills that I take and the whisky and beer Give me somewhere to hide from the dreams and the fear and And I dare not confess to my girl or my friends The doubts in my mind or the fear that descends When I think what my country is asking of me Do the others have doubts, do they see what I see What if we said No when the final call came And if all our silos decided the same If no buttons were pressed and no missiles flew Would we be heroes or traitors to you E.g. If the nation you speak of has means of generating nightmares and grief and doubts and fears, whether by media broadcasts or physiological stimulus that isn't physiological violence or warfare or simply by passive resistance that involves being conquered by the invading force (like Te Whiti-o-Rongomai see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pacifism under non violence resistance heading) , but results in both the invading nation's military and government having either an internal loss of confidence / conscience or an external one (caused by pressure from other nations due to geopolitics, e.g. why are we still taking over country X, it has been 3 years, and our own schools and hospitals are underfunded and crowded or country Z in marshaling troops near our borders at home) then they can utilize that to protect their nation without resorting to war or violence.

>>7529 This sounds almost like whoring your country out, but would probably turn you into a battlefield quickly as foreign interests would try to sway specific demographics. The system "Works" in NK because of the dictatorship (no non-pro NK views are tolerated) and the survival of NK is assured as long as they can back themselves up as a threat with nukes. The same thing actually happened with china, and the world tried to get them to stop, but they just said "no" and kept on developing nukes, and the world had to deal with it. >>7531 The problem with guns is it leaves you only 2 options >kill >do not kill that puts troops in a tough situation with when to use force. While using pepper spray and tear gas and LRAD, you can effectively not have to worry about people dying, and the use of force can easily be justified, since you wont actually kill anybody, so you can just fight everyone in self defense (like police).

>>7533 Thank you for your characteristically thoughtful response. >Can you define what you mean by pacifist ? I hadn't really thought about it in this amount of depth. I suppose it is true that it can be difficult to see where "violence" ends and "nonviolence" begins. I would contend that a vague notion can spur discussion in ways that a strict definition can't. Instead of offering such a strict definition, I will respond to your examples with "yes," "no," or "maybe," with the last option signifying that I'd like posters to consider both cases. Hopefully this will give us a better profile to work with. >Refusal to take action regardless of circumstance ? I'm not quite sure what you mean by this, but if you mean complete passivity, then no. >Refusal to even contemplate the idea of a solution that make through action or in action constitute violence. I have trouble understanding how one could commit violence through inaction, but I may just have a stunted imagination. I think the answer to this one is yes, though, with regard to the "through action" part. Some nonzero chance of a deadly accident occurring would probably be accepted, but only if it were legitimately an accident. >Refusal to take actions that are part of nonviolence that make be interpreted as violence of advocating violence ? Outside interpretation would only be relevant in terms of PR. An option would not be prohibited just because some existent scheme (not the one held by the nation) would consider it violence. >pit traps with spikes Prohibited >automated turret and missile firing technology Prohibited, unless these are programmed to destroy enemy weapons, equipment, etc. without harming the soldiers >biological agents like chlorine gas or other neurotoxins Irritants are potentially acceptable. Agents that reliably cause death or permanent disability are prohibited. >tar pits Acceptable, so long as they are designed in such a manner that a caught individual is unlikely to drown ( or suffocate; viscous liquids are difficult to talk about) >deadly poisonous spiders and snakes Prohibited >sabotage supply lines with explosives Definitely acceptable >raze their crops Acceptable >trigger nuclear reactions and radiation leaks Potentially acceptable, given that they give the enemy plenty of warning and have good reason to believe that the enemy leadership would not be so stupid or callous as to send troops into a known irradiated zone >drug or mind virus Potentially acceptable, so long as permanent effects (like long-term delusions and not having a head, per your suicide example) are considered highly unlikely >intention to hurt people isn't there Like they're a bunch of wacky artists who are doing it for the fun of it? I guess that's not violence for our purposes, but let's say that these engineers are not like that to begin with.

>>7522 I guess the purpose of this thread is to start an interesting discussion and to compete with creative ideas. That's why I'm afraid that my post will be a huge disappointment to you, since it's neither interesting nor creative. But I think that it's quite hard to suggest anything creative and realistic at the same time and I want to comment from the realistic point of view. So my answer is... Such nation would not stand a chance against any serious enemy. These ideas, like building a bulldozer wall against armed infantry or sabotaging railways to stop trains with military equipment passing, all fall apart when you realize that it would take just a single man to overcome your bulldozer wall or a single train to pass a fixed railway to make all your previous hard work meaningless. The problem with all these peaceful "defensive" actions is that they are just obstacles that can never stop the enemy, only slow him down. And they definitely don't give you many options to push the enemy back. And a defensive plan that doesn't give you any option on how to push the enemy back is an useless plan to be honest. If you refuse to kill, you basically have no way to force your enemy to give up the progress he already gained. Basically all the options are just obstacles, they are just puzzles for your enemy to solve... with maybe just one exception... and that is the Scorched-Earth Tactic, which was successfully deployed in the past (against Napoleon is Russia for example)... but I'm afraid that not even that will work against any real serious enemy in the 21st century. And I'm not saying this because I'm ideologically opposed to pacifism... I'm not. Maybe I'm wrong and there is a way to do it. It just seems like something that is way beyond my imagination capabilities.

>>7549 No, I definitely understand. This is the intuitive answer. I just can't help but think that if you took all of the brilliant minds who are currently occupied with improving conventional military defenses and set them on the task, they'd be able to come up with some feasible ideas. They would essentially have to break new ground, so it seems impossible, just like flying machines once seemed impossible. The question is whether this problem is more like inventing a flying machine or more like inventing a perpetual motion machine, and I think that we can't really answer that until someone with the necessary brains and background gives solving it an honest try. To rephrase, I think military security experts have never seriously "given peace a chance," as the old slogan puts it, even as development on the political stage have demonstrated that pacifism need not necessarily be utterly ineffective, as the popular image would suggest. I would like to note that slowing the enemy down could be sufficient, depending on exactly how much you can slow them. We're assuming standard human psychology for our purposes, so motivation is not assumed to be limitless. If the process of invading is sufficiently troublesome in comparison to the perceived benefits of having the nation under the attackers' control, then the defenders win. I suppose it's true, though, that when no one is dying, invasion might just become another annoying job that people still do, like working at Walmart. Thank you for the picture. Did you draw it yourself?

>>7522 >>7536 If you have a sufficiently high reproductive rate, guns are useless. Kill all you want. We will just make more. If we use the same tactics as bacteria, we can multiply exponentially to carrying capacity, and rapidly evolve resistance to your resistance. By genetically engineering a population of rapidly reproducing, sporenating, parasitic beings, nonnuclear violence can be rendered obsolete. With enough time, a strain of such beings could develop extremophile traits that render even the nuclear option moot. All of mankind's war machines, and fury, all the lives lost, pale in comparison to the unyielding march of time and directed evolution. 4.5 billion years and counting, and greater than 90% extinction rate thus far. Your guns are no better than loud sticks.

>>7561 You know, this wasn't at all what I was considering when I posted this topic, but pacifist bio-horror dystopia is an excellent concept. C'mon, /lit/, the path is prepared for you. Rise up and become a legend . . . ary New York Times bestselling author.

>>7562 I do apologize if this appears as derailment... I only meant to consider the practical possibilities given modern technological means or those very readily within grasp. There are a great many "pacifist" ways of applying science to overcome humans. If budgets were properly allocated, and those in power were sufficiently informed and unafraid of the results, war could be made not only obsolete but downright trite. Even barring scientific applications, a sufficiently large population of regular humans, focused and trained to breed as rapidly as possible, could conceivably bury an opposing force in mountains of corpses. In fact, given appropriate food and water access, such a population of humans could simply outbreed the industrial capacity of the attacking force. Making any engagement meaningless. The more you fire the more they breed, the more they breed, the fewer bullets you have, until your logistics fail and you are left drowning in blood and corpses with no ammo to shoot your way out with. Such a state would simply need to imbue it's first few generations with no value for any life at all, then direct their suicidal impulses into pursuit of more breeding, and after successful fertilization, to the organic anti-war machine.

>>7569 >the organic anti-war machine I like how you think, Lain.