Semi-Private Production of National Defense By David Henderson

I was planning to post yet one more item on the Obama Council of Economic Advisers’ report on monopsony. I will do so later. Now to a new issue.

The main issue that has kept me from becoming an anarchist is my fear that an anarchist society would not provide enough defense against a powerful foreign government. By the way, that is also the main issue that anarchist economist David Friedman identified in his book The Machinery of Freedom as the problem area for anarchists.

But a news story in the New York Times yesterday has shifted my priors a little. Voluntary private defense seems to me to be somewhat more viable than I had thought.

The article, “Spooked by Russia, Tiny Estonia Trains a Nation of Insurgents,” New York Times, October 31, tells how volunteers in the Estonian Defense League train to be ready to fight a guerrilla war against an invading Russian government.

Here’s a key paragraph:

The competitions, held nearly every weekend, are called war games, but are not intended as fun. The Estonian Defense League, which organizes the events, requires its 25,400 volunteers to turn out occasionally for weekend training sessions that have taken on a serious hue since Russia’s incursions in Ukraine two years ago raised fears of a similar thrust by Moscow into the Baltic States.

Note the word “volunteers.” In context, this seems to mean that they are not paid. Is 25,400 a small number? Not relative to Estonia’s population, which is 1.3 million. That’s 2 percent of the population, and probably well over 3 percent of the population aged 18 to 60. It’s also over 4 times the size of the 6,000-person Estonian army.

The reason I title this “semi-private,” though, is that the Estonian government does seem to play a role. Here’s one of the parts that implies a role for Estonia’s government:

Since the Ukraine war, Estonia has stepped up training for members of the Estonian Defense League, teaching them how to become insurgents, right down to the making of improvised explosive devices, or I.E.D.s, the weapons that plagued the American military in Iraq and Afghanistan. Another response to tensions with Russia is the expansion of a program encouraging Estonians to keep firearms in their homes.

The word “Estonia” in the first sentence probably means the Estonian government. Unfortunately, the Times article does not clearly indicate how large a role. Elsewhere it’s clear that the government plays a role:

Since the Ukraine war, Estonia has stepped up training for members of the Estonian Defense League, teaching them how to become insurgents, right down to the making of improvised explosive devices, or I.E.D.s, the weapons that plagued the American military in Iraq and Afghanistan. Another response to tensions with Russia is the expansion of a program encouraging Estonians to keep firearms in their homes.

Encouraging how? The government finances it? Allows it? Inquiring potential anarchists’ minds want to know.

Some other interesting excerpts:

Of the top four nations in the world for private gun ownership — the United States, Yemen, Switzerland and Finland — the No. 3 and 4 spots belong to small nations with a minutemen-style civilian call-up as a defense strategy or with a history of partisan war. “The best deterrent is not only armed soldiers, but armed citizens, too,” Brig. Gen. Meelis Kiili, the commander of the Estonian Defense League, said in an interview in Tallinn, the capital.

And:

Mr. Vokk served with the army in Afghanistan, where, he said, he gained an appreciation for the effectiveness of I.E.D.s. “They scared us,” he said. “And a Russian is just a human being as well. He would be scared.”

Remember that to win a war against an invader, all you have to do is make the cost too high.

HT@Instapundit.

UPDATE: David Friedman just posted on this. He seems to think it’s as important a piece of evidence as I do.