Annotations From Counter-Insurgency Warfare

Warfare Studies
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COUNTER- INSURGENCY WARFARE
Theory and Practice
1 Revolutionary War: Nature and Characteristics
What Is a Revolutionary War?
A revolutionary war is primarily an internal conflict, although external influences seldom fail to bear upon it. Although in many cases, the in- surgents have been easily identifiable national groups—Indonesians, Viet- namese, Tunisians, Algerians, Congolese, Angolans today—this does not alter the strategically important fact that they were challenging a local rul- ing power controlling the existing administration, police, and armed forces. In this respect, colonial revolutionary wars have not differed from the purely indigenous ones, such as those in Cuba and South Vietnam.
The conflict results from the action of the insurgent aiming to seize power—or at splitting off from the existing country, as the Kurds are at- tempting to do now—and from the reaction of the counterinsurgent aiming to keep his power. At this point, significant di erences begin to emerge be- tween the two camps. Whereas in conventional war, either side can initiate the conflict, only one—the insurgent—can initiate a revolutionary war, for counterinsurgency is only an effect of insurgency. Furthermore, counterin- surgency cannot be defined except by reference to its cause.
Paraphrasing Clausewitz, we might say that “Insurgency is the pursuit of the policy of a party, inside a country, by every means.” It is not like an ordinary war—a “continuation of the policy by other means”—because an insurgency can start long before the insurgent resorts to the use of force.
Revolution, Plot, Insurgency
Revolution, plot (or coup d’ˆetat ), and insurgency are the three ways to take power by force. It will be useful to our analysis to try to distinguish among them.
A revolution usually is an explosive upheaval—sudden, brief, sponta-
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neous, unplanned (France, 1789: China, 1911; Russia, 1917; Hungary, 1956). It is an accident, which can be explained afterward but not predicted other than to note the existence of a revolutionary situation. How and exactly when the explosion will occur cannot be forecast. A revolutionary situation exists today in Iran. Who can tell what will happen, whether there will be an explosion, and if so, how and when it will erupt?
In a revolution, masses move and then leaders appear. Sun Yat-sen was in England when the Manchu dynasty was overthrown, Lenin in Switzerland when the Romanovs fell.
A plot is the clandestine action of an insurgent group directed at the overthrow of the top leadership in its country. Because of its clandestine nature, a plot cannot and does not involve the masses. Although prepara- tions for the plot may be long, the action itself is brief and sudden. A plot is always a gamble (the plot against Hitler in 1944; the plots in Iraq against King Faisal and Nuri al-Said in 1958, and against Kassem in 1963).
On the other hand, an insurgency is a protracted struggle conducted methodically, step by step, in order to attain specific intermediate objec- tives lea...