The Eaton Solution was a United States counter-insurgency plan that was drafted by OSS Colonel Adam Eaton during the Great War as a "universal solution to the ongoing issue of insurgency” in anticipation of massive colonial gain in victory or popular uprising in defeat on the post-war era.
Overview[]
Adam Eaton arduously studied insurgency from the War on Treason to the Great War itself, in which he believed that at a certain point insurgent movements would become immunized to fear. Counter-insurgent forces relied on spreading fear and terror throughout the local population, making them give up fighters out of fear. However, when faced with a fanatical and fatalistic enemy, the fear factor was not an issue. Eaton later write this assessment in his paper, The Case for Extraordinary Counterinsurgency Measures in the Face of Social Breakdown in American-held Territories:
- “The cornered rat is the most dangerous rat. For the cornered rat knows that the termination of its individual life and hope for future prosperity is not an issue. It is a dead rat and it has come to accept this fact. Instead, its hope lies in that weapon that in any other situation would be in the hand of the counterinsurgent: fear. It will sacrifice its life in the hope that the counterinsurgent will lose its will to fight on.”
First Incarnation[]
Radically, the first incarnation of the Eaton Solution called for the cutting back of American military operations in occupied territory. Instead the American military was to defend only three key areas: the major cities, the major roads and a few major farms. The insurgents were allowed to take the rural areas and villages. Afterwards, the American military would intentionally target food production sites, such as farms and fisheries, with chemical and biological weaponry. Faced with disease and starvation, those in insurgent-held areas had a choice: scout out for resources, or give up. Those who attempt to steal from the Americans would almost always be faced with heavy weaponry, and supply depots intentionally meant to bait insurgents were to be set up. In the cities, vital areas were to be off limits to anybody but American military and government personnel. The civilians were to be made dependent on American rations, so possession of non-authorized foodstuffs was to be seized. Anybody caught in violation of these statutes would be shot immediately.
The Eaton Solution was first implemented in American-occupied Japan which had been in open rebellion to its puppet-government established by the Americans. Unfortunately, the first incarnation of the Eaton Solution failed miserably. The Japanese black market was too big to be squashed and the plan called for too much observation and taxed the U.S. military. Feeding millions upon millions of Japanese civilians through the military would prove to be impossible. More troops were needed to pacify recently annexed Mexico, so the continued implementation of the first Eaton Solution was no longer an option in Japan.
Second Incarnation[]
Although Adam Eaton was disgraced and nearly stripped of his rank, he proposed a radical new solution based on his first ideas about urban control. Based on the siege tactics of old, the central point of this new solution was inverting the rural-urban dynamic: the Americans were to focus their efforts on farming villages and leave the cities to insurgent and criminal control.
Blockades were to be set up around major urban centers and anybody exiting without explicit permission from the Americans was to be shot on the spot. Occasionally, American troops would fire into the cities indiscriminately, an example of the folly of continued resistance. The gargantuan task of feeding the people would go to the insurgent government. Theoretically, this would eventually create an insurgency against the insurgent government, one that would be willing to live peacefully under American rule.
This second Eaton Solution worked only marginally well, with only the cities of Fukuoka and Nagoya collapsing under Eaton Solution theory, but when combined with traditional counter-insurgency, controlled population reductions and decades of patience, Japan was eventually pacified.
However, the second Eaton Solution failed in its implementation on India as the neighboring, independent Republic of India, backed by Germany, supplied military shipped arms and advisers to anti-American guerrillas. This resulted in the U.S. abandoning the American Raj in 2112.