And now for something completely different.




What can Star Wars teach us about war? Political bloggers can't help but look at the original trilogy through the lens of real-world counter insurgency tactics, leading them to wonder if the Rebel Alliance was fighting the wrong battles.




The conversation started with an email from the Center for a New American Security's Abu Muqawama's brother:

Why
didn't the Rebel Alliance pursue a strategy of insurgency in their
rebellion against the Galactic Empire? I would argue that they pursued a
strategy of conventional war against the Empire and forwent every
aspect of insurgent strategy and tactics. They finally came around a bit
in the end by co-opting the Ewoks onto their side. Why hadn't they
pursued that strategy on a larger scale? Instead, they simply staged two
conventional assualts on the Empire's center of gravity: the Death Star. Although both attempts were successful, I think they got lucky.

Democracy Arsenal's Patrick Barry isn't convinced:

[G]iven
the intergalactic nature of the war between the Empire and the Rebel
Alliance, [is] a classic insurgency is even possible? If one of the
insurgent's biggest advantages is his knowledge of the local
environment, and the tacit support of the inhabitants of that
environment, then isn't that advantage pretty much negated in the vacuum
of space? I imagine that the space-based nature of war in the Star Wars
universe constrained the Alliance's strategic options, perhaps
significantly. I suspect that the rebels were pursuing the best set of
tactics available to them - waging asymmetric war against the Empire's
vulnerable conventional military assets.

Think Progress' Matthew Yglesias, meanwhile, takes the argument one step further:

To
say that the Rebel Alliance "simply staged two conventional assaults
on the Empire's center of gravity: the Death Star" is, I think, to
misconstrue the situation. What's going on is that nobody on either side
of the war seriously disputes the notion that "fear will keep the local
systems in line. Fear of this battlestation."...Once it's clear that
the Empire can destroy planets wholesale, the rebels are in agreement
with Tarkin and the Emperor that sufficient firepower, deployed without
conscience, can, in fact, win the war. Thus, the rebels only hope for
staving off defeat is a bold attack on the Death Star itself. As Exum's
correspondent notes, "they got lucky" in terms of destroying the Death
Star so it made perfect sense for the Emperor to simply respond by
trying to build a new one. Here, again, both sides agree that a fully
operational Death Star can end the war, so again the rebels need to
mount a somewhat desperate attack. And they win!

But the lesson
here isn't that the rebels are being irrationally conventional; the
lesson is that there are limits to the logic of counterinsurgency
doctrine. Overwhelming force and brutality really can be applied to good
effect if you're really willing to unleash it in an evil way.