>What are a couple of rednecks with assault rifles (which arguably they shouldn't be able to purchase anyway) going to do against semi-autonomy kill droids being flown from a bunker in the desert?
The common refrain goes “about as well as the Taliban,” who currently negotiating an American withdrawal after 18 years of serious U.S. military attention.
So you mean that living standards drop back by 100 (or 1000) years?
But seriously - asymmetric warfare works best against scrupulous adversaries who claim the moral high ground and stop short of "salt the earth" warfare. China doesn't, the CCP won't mind starving out an entire city or state to get them to stop resisting, just like the Soviets didn't.
The conduct of the alloed troops in Afghanistan can’t really be called scrupulous. One of the examples in the below link has troops mutilating corpses and collecting severed fingers.
And on the flip side, the Russian troops there were badly equipped and half starved at times too - Boys In Zinc by Svetlana Alexievich is a depressing series of accounts from there.
The common refrain goes “about as well as the Taliban,” who currently negotiating an American withdrawal after 18 years of serious U.S. military attention.