Counterinsurgency Warfare Research Articles

The Challe Plan: Vain Yet Indispensable Victory

On April 23, 1960, General Maurice Challe left Algiers and his position as Commander in Chief there, having achieved a rapid military victory over the rebellion within Algeria. As an airman at the head of an essentially ground force engaged since 1954 in counter-insurgency warfare, he had within 16 months gained the military success everyone deemed indispensable. It proved a vain victory though over an enemy already made irrelevant by rapid developments on the national and international political stage. The enemy, Front de Libération Nationale (FLN), was a two-tiered organization. In accordance with revolutionary doctrine, the military branch, the Armée de Libération Nationale (ALN), supported the political arm, the Organisation Politico-Administrative (OPA), and in this case all operated both inside Algeria and in exile. The strength of the FLN over the course of the conflict had shifted externally to Algeria, particularly under Houari Boumedienne's leadership in Tunis. The major portion of the ALN its Tunisian sanctuary had gradually renounced the costly support of its internal units and chosen to wait in exile for further developments. The freshly formed Gouvernement Provisoire de la Republique Algerienne (GPRA), also in Tunis, had managed to obtain international recognition, and with this development the war within Algeria lost its decisive character. From an operational perspective though, the Challe Plan belongs to the list of military successes. Four years into a fight of limited tactical and strategic accomplishments, Challe, through his imagination and energy, was able to achieve victory within his short assignment with the resources at hand. Just how he accomplished this feat, as we shall see, is a fascinating example of a successful ‘small war’.

Relearning Counterinsurgency Warfare

Thirty years after the signing of the January 1973 Paris peace agreement ending the Vietnam War, the United States finds itself leading a broad coalition of military forces engaged in peacemaking, nation-building, and now counterinsurgency warfare in Iraq. A turning point appeared in mid-October 2003 when US Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld's memo on the future of Iraqi operations surfaced. His musings about whether US forces were ready for protracted guerrilla warfare sparked widespread debate about US planning for counterinsurgency operations. Little attention has been paid to the theory and practice of counterinsurgency warfare in mainstream strategic studies journals. Discussions of the so-called revolution in military affairs (RMA) and RMA-associated technologies for battlefield surveillance and precision targeting dominated defense planning discourse in the 1990s. Nation-building and peacekeeping discussions rarely addressed counterinsurgency warfare, perhaps because nation-building operations during the 1990s did not confront a determined, violent insurgency. Meanwhile, with knowledge about counterinsurgency warfare waning among policymakers, resurgent terrorism scholarship and counterterrorism policy initiatives avoided the issue of a strategic terrorist campaign to destabilize nation-building. More recently, vague historical references and misplaced analogies to Vietnam have muddled discussions of the Iraqi counterinsurgency effort. Lessons and insights from past low-intensity wars deserve revisiting. They provide perspective as well as context for what may be a defining period for the American war on terrorism. What lessons from past counterinsurgencies can inform current efforts? What theoretical and operational issues are available to aid Coalition activities? This exploration of why counterinsurgencies fail avoids the American experience in Vietnam, a subject that continues to evoke images and arguments that could possibly overshadow the central purpose--that is, discussing the lessons of previous counterinsurgencies and their applicability to US strategy in Iraq. Avoiding the US experience in Vietnam also shifts attention to historical cases that may be more applicable to Iraq than was the US war in Southeast Asia. Revisiting Modern War Those seeking historical insights into counterinsurgency warfare will find Roger Trinquier's classic Modern Warfare: A French View of Counterinsurgency disturbingly current. First published in 1961 and one of the best-selling post-World War II books in France, Trinquier influenced a generation of counterinsurgency scholarship. He succeeded in describing the true face of what current observers also label war. Nearly 40 years later, for example, Mark Bowden subtitled his bestseller Black Hawk Down, the story of a US Special Forces operation in Somalia gone awry, A Story of Modern War. (1) Despite important differences between Somalia and the colonial independence conflicts Trinquier participated in, ongoing operations in Afghanistan and Iraq reflect many of the nonlinear, unconventional elements of what Trinquier labeled modern war to distinguish between armored battles between nation-states and counterinsurgencies pitting nation-builders against organizations using terrorist tactics. Trinquier was introduced to counterinsurgency warfare in Indochina before being assigned to Algeria in 1957 as a Lieutenant Colonel with the French 10th Parachute Division. Decades of service conditioned his views. Algeria inspired his writings on modern war, including a penetrating testimony to the central tenet of counterinsurgency: winning the allegiance of the indigenous population. A systematic approach is needed. Counterinsurgencies require an interlocking system of actions--political, economic, psychological, military--that aims at the [insurgents' intended] overthrow of the established authority in a country and its replacement by another regime. …

Fire in the Sky: The Destruction of the Orange Free State, 1899-1902

Owen Coetzer. Fire in the Sky: The Destruction of the Orange Free State, 1899-1902. Weltevreden Park, South Africa: Covos-Day Books, 2000. xvi + 338 pp. Photographs. Map. Appendixes. Bibliography. Index. R120.00. Paper. Fransjohan Pretorius. The Great Escape of the Boer Pimpernel, Christiaan de Wet: The Making of a Legend. Translated and adapted by Stephen Hofstatter, assisted by Wilhelm Snyman. Pietermaritzburg: University of Natal Press, 2001. xvi + 240 pp. Photographs. Illustrations. Maps. Bibliography. Index. $29.95. Cloth. These two works are examples of the Janus face of war in turn-of-the-century South Africa, reflecting the pity (Coetzer) and glory (Pretorius) of the Second Anglo-Boer War of 1899-1902. With the centenary of that war, there has been a revived interest in the conflict, expressed in a spate of academic conferences reevaluating previous interpretations, in battle reenactments, in the restoration of monuments and battlefields, and in the recognition of the many bit players in that war whose contributions have hitherto been ignored or marginalized. As Anna-Karin Evaldsson and Andre Wessels of the University of the Free State have pointed out (The Anglo-Boer War Centennial: A Critical Evaluation, Journal for Contemporary History [Bloemfontein] 27, no. 3 [December 2002]: 124-44), all the participating groups in that war have been accorded full recognition except for those Afrikaners from the two republics South African Republic [Transvaal] and the Orange Free State) who bolted from the cause by surrendering early in the war hands-uppers) and those who joined forces with the British (the joiners). In the same article, the authors estimate, incidentally, that the centenary generated in the neighborhood of two hundred books and one hundred academic essays. Owen Coetzer, a seasoned South African journalist, has attempted to deal with the sad, and long-remembered, part of the war in the Orange Free State. The and population resettlement policies of the British military forces can be considered components of counterinsurgency warfare against a tactically skilled and tenacious enemy. Although the British were roundly condemned in many circles for what Sir Henry Campbell-Bannerman, a prominent Liberal and future prime minister, called (in his speech of June 14, 1901, to the National Reform Union in London) of barbarism, it was not the first time these methods had been applied. Indeed, Coetzer points out that President William McKinley, in his message to Congress in 1898, excoriated the Spanish general Weyland for his forced relocation and policies in Cuba as an antidote to guerrilla warfare. The same charge could be applied to the U. S. Army in its campaign against the Navajos, as depicted in Lynn R. Bailey's The Long Walk: A History of the Navajo War, 1846-68 (Westernlore Press, 1988). Indeed, Bailey uses the terms scorched earth (165) and concentration camp (226) in his narrative. Visitors to the Canyon de Chelly National Monument in the Arizona portion of the tristate Navajo reservation are tactfully reminded by their Navajo guides of that lamentable part of history, a history that has striking parallels with the Afrikaners' experiences in the Orange Free State and the Transvaal. What is so unusual about Coetzer's book, which revisits old topics in a fresh manner, is the way in which he quotes at considerable length from official British command papers (presented to Parliament) and then proffers comments and observations drawn from less well-known sources to corroborate or refute the claims in these published documents. Many of the sources he utilizes are testimonials by Afrikaners who lived in the various relocation centers (commonly termed concentration camps but without the pejorative meaning that the term subsequently acquired in the German Third Reich). He has availed himself of the original Afrikaans sources, many of which are located in the Museum of the Boer Republics in Bloemfontein, translated them, and placed them within the context of the more readily available official published British sources. …

Socioeconomic and Political Roots of National Revolts in Central America

Since the mid-1970s, tens of thousands of persons in three out of the five Central American countries have revolted against their governments or fought to repress such rebellions. These conflicts have cost more than a quarter of a million lives and created more than two million internal and external refugees. In 1979 a bloody insurrection toppled Nicaragua's Somoza regime. El Salvador's crippling civil war has escalated and reescalated but remains stalemated. In Guatemala since 1980, brutal counterinsurgency warfare, pro-regime terror, and political reform have failed to eliminate a resurgent guerrilla rebellion. Yet while these countries have rent themselves with political violence, their neighbors Honduras and Costa Rica have in general remained politically peaceful.

A system description of counter insurgency warfare

This article discusses the difficulties of analysing very complex problems by purely verbal or mathematical methods, and suggests that a compromise may lie in a formally rigorous approach of diagrammatic system description. The importance of Counter Insurgency Warfare is briefly reviewed, and the rigorous approach is applied to produce a diagrammatic model of the influences at work between Government and Insurgents. The feedback structures of the model are analysed to detect the asymmetric mechanisms of victory for both sides, and policy implications for the Government are analysed.

Coercive Force and Military Strategy: Deterrence Logic and the Cost-Benefit Model of Counterinsurgency Warfare

F ROM the standpoint of military strategy, the American involvement in Vietnam presents the interested analyst with several complex and perplexing military issues. One such issue is the American counterinsurgency strategy of 1965-68. While various tracts have been written on American military policies in Southeast Asia, the 1965-68 strategy goes beyond the traditional military concepts of seizing and holding, disarming and confining, penetrating and obstructing. Schelling notes that in addition to such factors, there is another way military force can be employed that has received less attention in Western military strategy.' According to Schelling:

Coercive Force and Military Strategy: Deterrence Logic and the Cost-Benefit Model of Counterinsurgency Warfare

Coercive Force and Military Strategy: Deterrence Logic and the Cost-Benefit Model of Counterinsurgency Warfare

Breaking the Will of the Enemy During the Vietnam War: The Operationalizatin of the Cost-Benefit Model of Counterinsurgency Warfare

In the period following Diem's assassination, US policy-makers faced a rapidly deteriorating situation in South Vietnam. Events had demonstrated that the GVN was unable to achieve either political stability or military success. In the face of impending disaster, the US Administration opted for the cost-benefit or suppressive model of counterinsurgency warfare. Based on a set of principles that would later be explicated in Leites & Wolf's controversial study, Rebellion and Authority, this model proposed to defeat insurgent movements by modifying the behavior of the populace supporting the movement through various adversive and coercive techniques and measures of control. Basic to this model is the assumption that the populace, both individually and collectively, behave as rational actors. In other words, they 'calculate costs and benefits to the extent that they can be related to different courses of action, and make choices accordingly'. Given this assumption, the model argues that if force and coercion are applied in large enough doses the will of both the populace and insurgents will be broken and the war won. Costs will outweigh the benefits, resulting in the decline of the insurgency. In effect, this model constitutes a pure coercion approach towards defeating the insurgents. In Vietnam, operationalization of this model began early in 1965 and culminated in the shock of the 1968 Tet offensive. Specific goals to be achieved included: (1) destroying supply sources located in the DRV, as well as those enroute to the South via the Ho Chi Minh trail network; (2) breaking Hanoi's will by punishing North Vietnam to such an extent that the benefits sought would be incommensurate with the costs inflicted; and (3) applying force and coercion in the South against those backing the NLF to the degree that the insurgents would be denied peasant volunteers and draftees, foodstuffs donated to or confiscated by the NLF, intelligence and information supplied by the rural populace, and the day-to-day support offered by the populace. This study examines the strategy and its application in Vietnam and explains why, at both the theoretical/conceptual level and the operational level, it failed to achieve the goals specified. Source material relevant to the study that is utilized includes: official government and military documents and studies; the Rand materials concerned with counterinsurgency and the Rand Interviews in Vietnam project and reports based on these interviews; memoirs, books, articles, and speeches of those involved; and the vast body of literature concerned with US involvement in Vietnam.

Un Fact-Finding and Human Rights Complaints*

N September 1963, President Kennedy sent two American officials to have 'a fresh look' at the situation in South Vietnam. Mr Joseph Mendenhall was an experienced diplomat who had previously served as political counsellor in the United States Embassy in Saigon. MajorGeneral Victor Krulak was the Pentagon's top-ranking expert in counterinsurgency warfare. The two men spent an exhausting four days in South Vietnam and then returned to Washington with such diametrically opposed assessments that President Kennedy was moved to ask, 'You two did visit the same country, didn't you? ' 1 The difficulty about facts is that there are so many of them. Facts, or alleged facts, pour into the United Nations headquarters in a continuous flood-speeches of delegates; conversations, formal and informal, between representatives of governments and UN officials; written communications from other international bodies, governments, would-be governments, non-governmental organisations (some formally recognised, some not), and individuals; reports from UN agencies and officials in the field; information in books, monographs, journals, newspapers, or otherwise in the public domain. The difficulty for the United Nations is not how to accumulate information but how to avoid being suffocated by it; and, secondly, how to distinguish between objective facts and slanted information provided for partisan purposes. Nor is the UN short of standing fact-finding machinery. The General Assembly has expressly conferred fact-finding responsibilities on the Interim Committee (the so-called Little Assembly) and the Peace Observation Commission, and has established both a Panel for Inquiry and Conciliation and a Register of Experts for fact-finding. The principal UN organs, including the International Court of Justice, may create ad hoc bodies for enquiry or fact-finding as needed. In addition, many UN members are parties to the Hague Conventions of 1899 and 1907 for the peaceful settlement of disputes, or to bilateral, regional, or general treaties providing for international enquiry. UN fact-finding may be classified in various ways; by the type of body set up to establish the facts, by the kind of situation to be investi-

The Ubiquity of the Administrative Role in Counterinsurgency

One of the most disquieting commentaries on South Vietnamand on American involvement in South Vietnam-is William A. Nighswonger's Rural Pacification in Vietnam.' This analysis by an articulate and sympathetic participant-observer of legitimate government revolutionary counterinsurgency warfare lists a series of programs which failed. Yet it is not the failures that are overly disturbing. Nor is it the specific inadequacies of projects in his Quang Nam Province case study or of nationwide projects that lead to a generally pessimistic evaluation of the fortunes for revolutionary development in South Vietnam. Specific inadequacies can be found to a degree in any project analogous to those pursued in the Vietnamese setting; comparisons with Malaya and the Philippines, while admittedly overexaggerated, are analogous enough to prove the point.2 But such inadequacies are problems of detail, whether of great detail or small. Problems of this sort should be susceptible to solution if they are accompanied by an expanded commitment of resources, both human and material, and by minimal administrative adaptations permitting increased flexibility and coordination of effort, and by some requisite minimal amount of luck. And luck in counterinsurgency, typically, is opportunity seized upon in an expeditious and opportunistic manner. What is disquieting about Nighswonger's list of social, economic, political, military and administrative project failures is that there was nothing intrinsic in the concepts underlying their initiation which automatically precluded their success. Certainly most of them had and continue to have enormous potential for attaining counterinsurgency objectives. It is even possible that almost any one of the failures could be taken off the shelf, given a small amount of procedural dusting, and tried again successfully under more auspicious circumstances. This latter thesis rests upon the assumption that the concepts and types of projects applied thus far in revolutionary development in South Vietnam actually have been relatively adequate to the task. (This point is made most advisedly.) It assumes further that circumstances have remained inauspicious for success because the government and administration of South

Wars of National Liberation: The Methodology of Christian Ethics

Given the name and nature of the professional society for which those papers on which I offer comment were written, and given the nature of the designated political problem, one would expect these methodological applications to develop at least the following points; (1) a theological determination of Christian responsibility for political involvement in general and for the use of national power in international politics in particular; (2) criteria for testing the justifiability of political and military intervention in “wars of national liberation” and (3) criteria for deciding the moral problems of means peculiar to counter-insurgency warfare. Our analysis of the papers will be ordered in terms of these three points. Inasmuch as the first point is the fundamental one for a Christian political ethic, it will be used to delineate the typology.

Counter-Insurgency Warfare

Counter-Insurgency Warfare

Counterinsurgency Warfare: Theory and Practice, by Robert R. Bowie and David Galula

Foreword Introduction Revolutionary War: Nature and Characteristics The Prerequisites for a Successful Insurgency The Insurgency Doctrine Counterinsurgency in the Cold Revolutionary War Counterinsurgency in the Hot Revolutionary War From Strategy to Tactics The Operations Concluding Remarks

Counter-Insurgency Warfare: Theory and Practice and Modern Warfare: A French View of Counter-Insurgency

Counter-Insurgency Warfare: Theory and Practice and Modern Warfare: A French View of Counter-Insurgency

Counter-Insurgency Warfare: Theory and Practice.David GalulaThe Military in the Political Development of New Nations: An Essay in Comparative Analysis.Morris Janowitz

Previous articleNext article No AccessBook ReviewsCounter-Insurgency Warfare: Theory and Practice. David Galula The Military in the Political Development of New Nations: An Essay in Comparative Analysis. Morris Janowitz Walter Darnell JacobsWalter Darnell Jacobs Search for more articles by this author PDFPDF PLUS Add to favoritesDownload CitationTrack CitationsPermissionsReprints Share onFacebookTwitterLinkedInRedditEmail SectionsMoreDetailsFiguresReferencesCited by The Journal of Politics Volume 26, Number 4Nov., 1964 Sponsored by the Southern Political Science Association Article DOIhttps://doi.org/10.2307/2128251 Views: 6Total views on this site PDF download Crossref reports no articles citing this article.