Why the US military isn’t ready for a civil war

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He doesn’t have any difficulty picturing a contemporary U.S. equivalent to civil wars elsewhere. “It would not be like the first Civil War, with armies maneuvering on the battlefield,” he said. “I think it would very much be a free-for-all, neighbor on neighbor, based on beliefs and skin colors and religion. And it would be horrific.”

For the U.S. government, an outbreak of widespread political violence inside the country’s borders would necessarily become a military operation. U.S. militias are significant enough that the FBI or the Department of Homeland Security would simply be insufficient to deal with them. Only the U.S. military could be capable of dealing with insurgent forces.

And from a tactical point of view, any engagement between U.S. forces and a militia (or any insurgent force of any kind for that matter) would be entirely one-sided. Despite the preparations of right-wing militias, and despite the sheer number of weapons available in the United States, the U.S. Marines are still the U.S. Marines. No militia or organized group of militias could compete with them in battle.

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For half the country, the military engagement against insurrectionists or terrorists will be necessary to preserve democracy and the rule of law.

For the other half, it will be the desecration of individual liberty. The beginning of any action, of any sort, by a U.S. military force against U.S. citizens would create an automatic sense of illegitimacy. The already incipient legitimacy crisis would be exacerbated.

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For decades, the U.S. military has been defined by its ineffectiveness against insurgencies in foreign countries. Why would it do any better at home?

The central problem is that it is impossible to build legitimacy as an occupier; the process of holding, even with the best of intentions, is humiliating and disruptive.

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The tactical considerations of battles between the U.S. military and any domestic militia forces would be completely irrelevant. No one with any tactical expertise can imagine anything other than a one-sided engagement. Professional military forces are professional.

By the same token, no one with any political expertise in counterinsurgency could imagine that any of those victories would matter.

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Every time the Marines demolished another outpost of domestic resistance, it would only exacerbate the underlying crises. “You will occasionally hear people say, ‘I’m not worried about an insurrection because the Army’s got all the tanks and the Air Force has bombers,’” Bolger said. “Look, if that’s what you’re reduced to, just going in and killing people, you’re not solving the insurrection. In fact, you’re spreading it. You’re guaranteeing more of it.” You cannot punish people out of hating you. The military is an instrument of punishment. Its very function makes it useless.

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