Such was also the case with the French Resistance during World War II and the National Liberation Front during the Vietnam War. In both the preceding cases, the insurgents and rebel fighters were working in conjunction with or in a manner complementary to regular forces. Though the Ottomans often had advantages in manpower of more than 100 to 1, the Arabs' ability to materialize out of the desert, strike, and disappear again often left the Turks reeling and paralyzed, creating an opportunity for regular British forces to sweep in and finish the Turkish forces off. Lawrence and the Arab Revolt during World War I as another example of the power of the rebel/insurgent. Hart also points to the experiences of T. The Philippine–American War, the Shining Path in Peru, and the Malayan Emergency have been the sites of failed insurgencies. Ĭounterinsurgency efforts may be successful, especially when the insurgents are unpopular. Napoleon's army had no means of effectively combating the rebels, and in the end, their strength and morale were so sapped that when Wellington was finally able to challenge French forces in the field, the French had almost no choice but to abandon the situation. However, once dispersed and decentralized, the irregular nature of the rebel campaigns proved a decisive counter to French superiority on the battlefield. Whenever Spanish forces managed to constitute themselves into a regular fighting force, the superior French forces beat them every time. He showed as a prime example the French occupation of Spain during the Napoleonic wars. First, as pointed out in the Insurgency addendum to the second version of his book Strategy: The Indirect Approach, a popular insurgency has an inherent advantage over any occupying force. Liddell Hart attributed the failure of counterinsurgencies to various causes. Strikingly, Santa Cruz recognized that insurgencies are usually due to real grievances: "A state rarely rises up without the fault of its governors." Consequently, he advocated clemency towards the population and good governance, to seek the people's "heart and love". In his Reflexiones Militares, published between 17, he discussed how to spot early signs of an incipient insurgency, prevent insurgencies, and counter them, if they could not be warded off. The third Marques of Santa Cruz de Marcenado (1684–1732) is probably the earliest author who dealt systematically in his writings with counterinsurgency. Counterinsurgency theorists Santa Cruz de Marcenado He defines this distinction as "Maoist" and "post-Maoist" insurgency. In The Insurgent Archipelago, John Mackinlay puts forward the concept of an evolution of the insurgency from the Maoist paradigm of the golden age of insurgency to the global insurgency of the start of the 21st century. When the gaps are wide, they create a sea of discontent, creating the environment in which the insurgent can operate. Insurgents take advantage of social issues known as gaps. To understand counterinsurgency, one must understand insurgency to comprehend the dynamics of revolutionary warfare.Counter-insurgency focuses on bridging these gaps. Counter-insurgency operations include many different facets: military, paramilitary, political, economic, psychological, and civic actions taken to defeat insurgency. –Aphorism based on the writing of Mao Zedong Ĭounterinsurgency is normally conducted as a combination of conventional military operations and other means, such as demoralization in the form of propaganda, psy-ops, and assassinations. The guerrilla must swim in the people as the fish swims in the sea. Alternatively, it may be waged in an attempt to intimidate or eliminate civilian populations suspected of loyalty to the insurgency through indiscriminate violence. Counterinsurgency may involve attempting to win the hearts and minds of populations supporting the insurgency. ĭuring insurgency and counterinsurgency, the distinction between civilians and combatants is often blurred. Within the military sciences, counterinsurgency is one of the main operational approaches of irregular warfare. However, modern thinking on counterinsurgency was developed during decolonization. Insurgency and counterinsurgency campaigns have been waged since ancient history. The Oxford English Dictionary defines counterinsurgency as any "military or political action taken against the activities of guerrillas or revolutionaries" and can be considered war by a state against a non-state adversary. Counterinsurgency ( COIN, NATO spelling Counter-insurgency ) is "the totality of actions aimed at defeating irregular forces".
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