On the Use of Guerrillas in Defense of Stateless Territory

Abstract

Rothbard (1999) argues that morality and utility require a guerrilla defense of libertarian societies, an assessment shared by many libertarian thinkers. This paper reviews the literature on guerrilla warfare to consider whether guerrilla forces alone, wielding small arms and light weapons, could successfully defend anarcho-capitalist territory. Despite the romance that surrounds them, the expert consensus is that guerrilla wars are fought only out of necessity by relatively weak powers. They are protracted wars of attrition fought on one’s own territory and as such are highly destructive of the defending homelands. If the enemy does not distinguish between military and civilian targets, as is likely to be the case in a war with anarchist citizen-soldiers, defeat is almost assured. Guerrillas are most effective as complements to regular forces rather than as substitutes, and a strictly guerrilla defense should be employed only as a last resort in the event of a collapse of the regular army or an inability to raise an army.