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PaperclipPerfector  3mo ago (text post)   27424 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of July 28, 2025

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Japan and Germany were centralized states. The centralization that made it coherent to talk about Japan or Germany surrendering was what allowed Japan to quash the holdouts, and that lack of coherence is what makes it difficult to imagine a Hamas instrument of surrender.

Has there ever been an insurgency quelled by immiserating the population? Successful counterinsurgency campaigns I can think of usually revolve around convincing the citizens that they are better off the supporting the state than the insurgents. A little hard to do that when the citizens blame the state for starving them.

Has there ever been an insurgency quelled by immiserating the population?

Some of Rome's "counterinsurgency campaigns" against rebellions come to mind — most immediately the Bar Kokhba revolt:

…the last and most devastating of three major Jewish rebellions against the Roman Empire. The revolt took place in the province of Judaea, where rebels led by Simon bar Kokhba succeeded in establishing an independent Jewish state that lasted several years. The revolt was ultimately crushed by the Romans, resulting in the near-depopulation of Judea through mass killings, widespread enslavement, and the displacement of much of the Jewish population.

…

The revolt's consequences were disastrous. Ancient and contemporary sources estimate that hundreds of thousands were killed, while many others were enslaved or exiled. The region of Judea was largely depopulated, and the spiritual center of Jewish life shifted to Galilee and the expanding diaspora. Messianic hopes became more abstract, and rabbinic Judaism adopted a cautious, non-revolutionary stance. The divide between Judaism and early Christianity also deepened. The Romans imposed harsh religious prohibitions, including bans on circumcision and Sabbath observance, expelled Jews from the vicinity of Jerusalem, restricted their entry to one annual visit, and repopulated the city with foreigners.

The famous ending of the Third Servile War comes to mind as well.

And then, of course, there's the sort of things the Assyrians did, like with Ashurnasirpal II.

Martin Van Creveld argued that there's basically two ways to successfully pursue counterinsurgency:

In an attempt to find lessons from the few cases of successful counterinsurgency, of which he lists two clear cases: the British efforts during The Troubles of Northern Ireland and the 1982 Hama massacre carried out by the Syrian government to suppress the Muslim Brotherhood, he asserts that the "core of the difficulty is neither military nor political, but moral" and outlines two distinct methods.[34]

The first method relies on superb intelligence, provided by those who know the natural and artificial environment of the conflict as well as the insurgents. Once such superior intelligence is gained, the counterinsurgents must be trained to a point of high professionalism and discipline such that they will exercise discrimination and restraint. Through such discrimination and restraint, the counterinsurgents do not alienate members of the populace besides those already fighting them, while delaying the time when the counterinsurgents become disgusted by their own actions and demoralized.

…

If the prerequisites for the first method – excellent intelligence, superbly trained and disciplined soldiers and police, and an iron will to avoid being provoked into lashing out – are lacking, van Creveld posits that counterinsurgents who still want to win must use the second method exemplified by the Hama massacre. In 1982, the regime of Syrian president Hafez al-Assad was on the point of being overwhelmed by the countrywide insurgency of the Muslim Brotherhood. Al-Assad sent a Syrian Army division under his brother Rifaat to the city of Hama, known to be the center of the resistance.[citation needed]

Following a counterattack by the Brotherhood, Rifaat used his heavy artillery to demolish the city, killing between 10-25,000 people, including many women and children. Asked by reporters what had happened, Hafez al-Assad exaggerated the damage and deaths, promoted the commanders who carried out the attacks, and razed Hama's well-known great mosque, replacing it with a parking lot. With the Muslim Brotherhood scattered, the population was so cowed that it would be years before opposition groups dared to disobey the regime again and, van Creveld argues, the massacre most likely saved the regime and prevented a bloody civil war.[citation needed]

In short, you can be slow, disciplined, and restrained; or you can be swift, ruthless, and utterly brutal; and the problem is that too many try to do something somewhere in between.

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