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Notes -
They need a large army to repress the domestic population in case shit hits the fan. "Political power grows out of a barrel of a gun" at the end of the day.
No, they don’t, using the army for internal police has historically failed. It didn’t work for Britain in NI, it didn’t save the Soviet Union, and honestly the colonels are the ones who you need to worry about when SHTF, because that’s prime time for military coups(if the US is even intact still; state governments have militaries, resources, and territorial control beyond the dreams of the feds).
What you need to oppress heartlanders is a much, much, much larger FBI. That’s currently not in the cards.
It could have worked for Britain in NI if Britain had been willing to kill large numbers of people, but - probably out of a mix of knowing that the PR hit would be gruesome (for example, the US has many influential Irish who would have been upset) and maybe also some genuine morality - it wasn't.
In the late 1980s/early 1990s, the Soviet Union didn't seriously try to hold itself together through military force. For the most part and in most places, its military units just stood aside and did nothing while the system slowly unraveled. There was little political will to try to use force to preserve the regime. If there had been, I am not sure if the attempt would have succeeded, but there wasn't anyway so we never got to find out.
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But in that case, how much of the failure to recruit the "traditional warrior caste" OP talks about is a benefit, rather than a problem? As a commenter at Jim's blog recently put it:
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