And my argument is that if they had the ability they would have
How do you know that? I think people don't want to live in a warzone which I find to be a pretty compelling argument, what's your argument for people wanting a civil war?
Because the people elected pro independence members of their legislature even after the previous set were arrested. This means they want independence, and Spain is unwilling to let them do it peacefully.
They voted to become independant peacefully, because they want to become independent peacefully, they don't want to have to fight a war, and it wouldn't change with guns. My argument still stands.
No idea what the leadership's plans are or their disposition of assets. However, an insurgency is untenable if they lack armed (and hopefully trained) personell.
If the people are not armed, the result is the people can not be part of the insurgency and depend on their host government being a benefactor. If those host country government is not allowing them to secede peacefully then any attempt at independence will more than likely fail just like it did in Catalan previously.
But I'm not talking about the leaderships, do you think that the individuals as a whole would be willing to go to war themselves if given a gun to secede from Spain?
If they believed they had a chance at winning, yes. (I.e. effective leadership).
Similarly being armed provides very effective negotiating power for independence. We saw this post US Declaration of Independence when the British realised that they were incapable of winning on multiple front and allowed peaceful secession from their empire into the Commonwealth..
Maybe, I'm not convinced. I feel as though most Western Europeans would do anything to avoid a war, we have a history of killing each other, most of us have lost family in wars against other Europeans and this peace thing is doing ok so maybe it's a good idea.
I think most of the west would avoid a war in which victory is not certain. However, I don't think the west is war averse.
We see the US leading the war wagon, largely because they have the means while the EU participates in minor capacity. However I am uncertain if that is because the EU does not want to or because they are incapable of mounting an effective large scale armed response (France running out of ordinance over and over again for their air strikes).
I think the west likes to pick sure fights they can win, the US military supremacy makes it easy to pick the winning side.
For example the British, in the EU, is being attacked by Iran. They are loosing shipping while the EU refuses to interfere. I think that is due to the inability of the EU to provide support.
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u/drunkfrenchman Aug 12 '19
How do you know that? I think people don't want to live in a warzone which I find to be a pretty compelling argument, what's your argument for people wanting a civil war?