The Riot, Strategy Brain, and Counter-Insurrrectionary Deterrence

Applying my strategic-theory ninja skills to MAGA’s war on America itself.

G#*$$! FU**!% DA@@!$>!!

Trump has already ordered the deployment of 500 700 Marines based at Twenty Nine Palms in addition to the 2,000 federalized national guard troops.

And before I could finish writing this post, he put another 2,000 national guard troops on alert for deployment. None of this is unexpected—I predicted it, in fact—but it’s happening very quickly. And I’m tragically confident that still more troops will follow. This is the scenario I said I was most worried about only a few days ago:

if the token 2,000 troops are meant to be a beachhead or a tripwire, then a tyrannical crackdown is inevitable because more forces will soon be on the way. That’s precisely the scenario most likely to break toward civil war—the kind of intra-state conflict that opens LA as a front in a fascist-antifascist conflict.

At this point it’s useful to work through what the Trump administration thinks it’s doing, how to think about riots in the context of what’s happening, and, consequently, where all this is likely headed. I never thought I’d have to do this, but I’m going to apply some strategic theory to the fascist-America context.

A Fascist Counter-Insurrection Imagined

What does the government think it’s actually doing? MAGA wants to pretend that it’s fighting an insurrection in big metropolitan cities, wish-casting for it; they might even believe it. Stephen Miller has stated that the US is fighting an insurrection in LA. Yesterday morning, Trump called the protestors insurrectionists, and his order to deploy troops declared LA (without naming LA) to be in a “state of rebellion against the government.”

But there is no insurrection, yet. There is no rebellion, yet. There aren’t even reports of violence that weren’t initiated by police kettling, pepper-spraying, and firing rubber bullets. The federal government itself is openly acting as an agent provocateur.

MAGA’s white nationalist bloc has within its ranks accelerationists who are happy to have everything burn. The Curtis Yarvin-minded politicos need a militarized crisis to replace democracy with monarchy. The Bannon-esque strategists—who would like to get America out of the having-elections business—also need a crisis.

As Adam Tooze said in his newsletter, “The Trump Administration wants escalation on all fronts.” Not since Hitler, or perhaps Netanyahu, have I heard of such an aggressive preference. The logic underlying this preference constitutes MAGA’s most likely theory of victory, and for that reason we need to try and suss it out.

The Strategic Logic of Counter-Insurrection

The Trump administration is using Los Angeles as a demonstration case. Deploying troops to quell what they erroneously claim is an open rebellion requires a show-of-force logic. In strategic bargaining theory, shows of force are nothing more than a signal on behalf of the goal of either deterrence (preventing a proscribed action from happening) or compellence (inducing the target of the signal to take an action you specify).

The administration’s twin goals here are 1) coercive pacification—to compel LA communities to stand down and let themselves be ravaged by sometimes illegal ICE raids—and deterrence of LA-like resistance in other cities across America.

Statements from the administration about their thinking, including from JD Vance below, indicate this is precisely the reasoning behind escalation on all fronts. Flood-the-zone logic is show-of-force logic. Like shock and awe.

Coercion—specifically counter-insurrectionary deterrence—has to be MAGA’s theory of victory because they don’t have the capacity for a strategy based on brute force (contra coercion, which is based on manipulating fear). Hegseth just testified that the Pentagon is willing and able to send troops to any city that resists ICE raids. No doubt what’s happening in Los Angeles will happen elsewhere. But it can’t happen everywhere. Even if the US military forsook the entire world in favor of only attacking and occupying US territory, there isn’t enough manpower to send in troops in any meaningful way.

To illustrate the capacity problem, take LA. In my previous post, I mentioned briefly what strategy nerds call a “force-to-space ratio” problem. A higher force-to-space ratio benefits the occupying force; a lower force-to-space ratio presents real problems for the occupying force. For what it’s worth, the combat rule of thumb is one division (10k-15k troops) per 30 kilometers of territory.

Los Angeles county is massive; a force capable of meaningfully occupying it would have to number in the hundreds of thousands.

Trump’s 2k national guard troops aren’t enough to do more than maybe stand outside a few federal buildings in Los Angeles, which, so far, is literally how the deployed troops are being used.

And LA is just one city! MAGA has picked a fight that it cannot win except by spreading fear.

It’s also worth saying that shows of force are rarely helpful. Signals often amount to cheap talk; they are performative. When the political cause being served by the show of force is unpopular or lacks mass buy-in, the show of force becomes counterproductive.

In the end, I think LA will teach the opposite lesson of what the Trump administration assumes. MAGA has acted too quickly here. The administration has declared rebellion and insurrection where there was none, on behalf of a project that is stunningly unpopular and does real harm to citizens. The balance of moral force is objectively not on their side, and so as they escalate force in response to a threat they have inflated, they’re likely to galvanize more resistance and open revolt.

The trouble with this ongoing escalation spiral—which is likely only to get worse—is that there are some within MAGA who want civil war, who have no problem reallocating the entire US national security state to pacification and ethnic cleansing in America. Like the rebels in Ghorman, they’re giving the Empire what it wants.

DO NOT SPLIT

I hate nonconsensual violence. Like the peace intellectuals of yore, I believe that the ends you seek must be reflected in the means you use to seek them. So if you are motivated by love, and if your goals are fundamentally democratic and egalitarian, that must be evident in how you interact with the world. As I explained some time ago:

to pursue goals with means that represent the logical opposite of the ends you seek is bad strategy. Violence, even when it immediately works, creates new and larger problems every time. If what you seek is a social order predicated on the perpetuation of violence toward certain categories of people, then violence is a very smart means to wield. But if what you seek is peace and/or some form of equality, violence is at best a crude, costly instrument.

I believe all this. And yet, new research shows that riot-based violence can lead to productive policy change.

The key here is self-defense.

Just because violence is inadvisable strategy does not mean it is unnecessary. Self-defense—of the person and of the community—is a right that no human being can be denied. As the New Republic did a good job explaining, the LA protests right now are a collective act of community self-defense. If people at the pointy end of state repression decide violence is necessary for lack of alternatives—because they’re being occupied and attacked by the state—then they’re not going to be scolded out of it.

And so we need to keep in our head two things at once.

On the one hand, the national security state treats any violence not wielded by the state as “extremism.” And the modern national security state has much more hurting power than anything workers can muster. You should fight where you have a reasonable prospect of winning, and violence is an unfavorable terrain for those who advocate for worker power, antiracism, or peace.

On the other hand, fuck ICE, fuck 12, fuck Trump. I don’t like violence and I hope you don’t like it either. But if you think of yourself as opposed to fascism, then do not split. That was key to Hong Kong’s pro-democracy movement—diversity of tactics becomes essential. The movement was non-violent, but the guidance to all within the movement was that if violence did occur, do not waste your breath splitting the movement and condemning it. It’s not your job to issue a press release moralizing about everything that happens in the world. Maintain mass unity.

If I’m translating “Do Not Split” to the US context, I’d say it’s something like this: Don’t use whatever voice you have to suppress the right of community self-defense. We have the same goals here if we believe in democracy, and if you’re not the target of teargas and kettling, you’re not in a position to judge. But also, we’re obviously in a moment where you have to ask yourself whose side are you on. If you’re on the side of democracy or peace, then you can’t be on the side of state violence.

So whatever you think of violence—and I think it’s bad strategy—do not split. If you have an anti-fascist bone in your body, do not split.