Planetary defenses [FT]

> On 29 Sep 98, at 20:38, Los wrote:

> David wrote:
No
> > guerilla war in history has ever won without outside (other nations)

This isn't entirely true. The Eritrian Peoples Liberation Front (EPLF) was
supported (and alternately opposed) by Sudan, the Arab states (principally
Saudi and Syria) and the Soviet Union. It's one constant supporter was
Somalia. That is not to say that they did not manage to take advantage of a
totally incompetent Ethiopian military and largely equip themselves from that
source. Even so, the EPLF and TPLF both suffered serious defeats that
marginalised them at times. The EPLF also notably allied with the TPLF (Tigray
Peoples etc etc) at times, or at least mounted anti government offensives in
unison, although in different areas. Lastly, the final collapse of the
Ethiopian regime came when the USSR stopped it's backing (which had amounted
to about 10 billion dollars worth), and it was the TPLF that finally toppled
it, while the Eritrians were bogged down with besieging army bases in Eritrea.
The end of the need for Eritrea's fight for independence came when the new
TPLF backed government did not renew customary Ethiopian claims to Eritrea.

Boiling all this down gives the following. If the USSR had kept
supporting, and the Ethiopian military/government hadn't been so
incompetent, the EPLF would still be fighting a 30 year old war with little to
show but the suffering by starvation of it's own people.

This supports the idea that a colony is unlikely to be able to continue a
guerilla action against an invading power with the chance of being
particularly successful unless they have backing from an outside source, or
the invading power massively reduces it's commitment or is incompetent.

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