Have modern weapons made revolutions impossible?

What has come to be called the Oregon Standoff that occurred in Harney County, Oregon, two weeks ago triggered our last two editorials stating that (1) the action was significantly different from the 2014 Standoff at the Bundy Ranch in Nevada, and (2) the Oregon Standoff appears to be, not the beginning of a revolution, but a classic example of a revolt. The main difference between the two is that revolts always fail.

This leads to the question of whether or not a true revolution is even possible in the modern world and, if so, what it would look like.

Prior to the use of aircraft, tanks, and poison gas in World War II, the weapons of revolutionaries were pretty much the same as those of governments. The rifles, knives, and cannon balls possessed by the Continental Army in the American Revolution, for example, were equal to those wielded by the soldiers of King George and the Hessian mercenaries.

Victory depended, not on the nature of the weapons, but on how many of them could be brought into battle, and that was primarily a question of manpower.

Weapon equality was eliminated by technology that began to appear in World War II and which has continued at an accelerating pace through the present day. No longer can rebels meet the minions of their hated masters on equal footing. Governments now possess weapons of such destructive force and which are technically so far above the skills of common citizens, that revolutions can no longer be successful based on a test of military power.

Nuclear weapons immediately come to mind, but even at a much lower scale of intensity, there are such things as remote-controlled drones armed with missiles that can obliterate any vehicle or building on the planet.

Even more to the point are those weapons designed specifically for subduing the population without destroying physical infrastructure. There are chemical weapons, sound weapons, laser weapons, and even microwave weapons that can be directed by a few technicians in an armored vehicle or even from great distances. These weapons create the sensation of being on fire and, if the intensity is turned up high enough, they can cook the flesh of one or a thousand people at the same time. How long could the ‘heavily armed’ boys in Oregon stand against that?

This is why I say that revolutions, in the classical sense of replacing a hated regime through physical confrontation, is impossible in the modern world. Does that mean, however, that we are doomed to become subjects of a global tyranny that, in the name of disarmament, controls all weapons of mass destruction? Or is it possible for another kind of revolution to succeed?

Next week, I will respond to that question.

G. Edward Griffin
2016 January 22