RISING LIGHT!
Greetings,
Defenders of the Realm!
The following pages are presented here for your benefit. The intention of these pages is to aid you in training and equipping both yourselves and you units.
Remember that
the AFIM is a defensive force – we do not, under any circumstances, act
proactively. In the coming Harsh Times, that will become necessary, but that
time is not yet here.
Forward,
Into Dawn
Or
Back
*~*~*~*~*~*~*
Why do armies exist? Why were
they originally formed? What drives Humanity to war, violence and destruction?
These questions have plagued mankind for thousands of generations, and there
are no easy answers.
For millennia,
warfare among Humankind was either personal or tribal in nature (AFIM doctrine
refers to this period as “1st Generation Warfare”): either one
person had enough of a problem with another to do intentional, lethal violence
to them, or one group needed/wanted something another group had…or, they just
didn’t like them.
Approximately
7,000 years ago, however, things started to change. Humankind began to
congregate in cities, and those cities quickly grew in population until tribal
bonds were diffused, and the groups too large to be called a “tribe” in the old
sense. Eventually, “division of labor” resulted in excess population that could
be kept continually under arms. This marked the inauguration of “2nd
Generation Warfare” – that of what we think of as “city-states”, such as were
found in Classical Greece and Mesopotamia.
A “noble” or
“warrior” class developed which remained constantly training to engage in
formalized combats against opponents. Such groups would occasionally draft
additional citizen levies (which would eventually be called “militias”) to fill
up the ranks in time of war; these levies were lower ranking or poor members of
the society, and were usually a largely untrained mass. This is likely the era
that saw the first attempts at uniforms; most likely, these were a particular type
of armor, or a certain pattern painted on a shield. Sometimes, city-state
armies could be quite large; 20,000 men was not an unreasonable figure during
the latter part of the period.
Most
second-generation states were either ground under by more powerful states, or
were unified under a charismatic leader. This is what happened after the rise
of Philip of Macedon, and the ascension of his son, Alexander.
Alexander was a
true genius. It is from him that modern Western military thought defines 3rd
Generation Warfare, that state of military affairs wherein the resources of
vast area’s (in comparison to those of a second generation state) are harnessed
in a comprehensive manner for waging war on a strategic scale. This third
generation encompasses the whole timeframe from Alexander all the way to the 2nd
Gulf War/’Operation Iraqi Freedom’. It sees the first true integration of
multiple theaters, beginning with land and sea-surface and eventually
encompassing a three-dimensional battlespace, and integrating an all-arms
concept for the first time (for instance, including a special corps of men
whose only job was recovering the wounded – the very first ‘medics’).
Permeating the
history of warfare are campaigns that are commonly referred to as “guerrilla
warfare”. AFIM doctrine identifies this as 4th Generation Warfare –
wherein Non-Governmental Organizations (NGO’s) and various 1st
Generation-type groups (whatever their designation for propaganda purposes)
engage in military and sometimes terroristic actions against 3rd
Generation armed forces, both regular and paramilitary.
The goal of 4th
Generation operations is to disrupt and/or otherwise effect change in the
national policy of the target nation. In classical guerrilla warfare, the goal
is most often to effect a sea change in the internal government/society of the
guerrilla’s own country. In largely terroristic campaigns, the goal is to
influence and/or disrupt national policy of one group by another, smaller and
oppressed-feeling (justified or not), group. The attacks of September 11, 2001
C.E., and March 11, 2004 C.E. form an interesting counterpoint to one another.
In the attacks of
September 11, airliners were flown into high-rise office towers in New York
City and into the military nerve center of the United States, the Pentagon,
outside Washington, D.C., killing over 3,000 persons of several nationalities.
The response was immediate and dramatic: following a round of international
maneuvering, US forces smashed their way into the failed state of Afghanistan –
believed by many to be harboring the perpetrators of the crimes – and destroyed
both the established government (the so-called ‘Taliban’) and the terrorist
network they had been harboring.
In the attacks in
Madrid, Spain on March 11, 2004 C.E., ten powerful backpack-carried bombs were
detonated on crowded trains, killing nearly 200 and wounding over 1,400. In
this case, the results were equally dramatic and immediate – but in a
completely different fashion: the Spanish government – a long-time supporter of
United States military actions - fell in the elections scheduled for shortly
after the blasts to a government diametrically opposed to the former
government’s policies, a government that immediately withdrew Spanish forces
from combat operations in support of the United States...Exactly as the
terrorists had been demanding.
The message was
clear: inflicting relatively minor (in a national sense) civilian casualties on
Spain will force Spain to bend to your will.
Why are these two
actions (along with thousands of others) “terrorist” and not “guerrilla”
actions? Because they were carried out in the distant home-territory of the
Target political entity by nationals foreign to the target country.
*~*~*~*~*~*~*
So. Where does
this leave us, considering Lemuria’s worldview that civilization is heading for
collapse? What we face in the near-term are essentially peacekeeping-type
operations. The likely environment that the AFIM will deploy into will require
reestablishing order locally, suppressing bandit gangs, and allowing Civil
Affairs Teams to handle the ‘Hearts and Minds’ phase of operations to establish
Imperial control over regions in turmoil.
This is a
difficult and dangerous task – one that we are more than up to.
The
Captain-General
September 9, 2004
C.E.
In The Fourth
Year of the Realm