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I am just watching a documentary about the suez crisis, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UkeDOHb0scc and I feel like it demonstrates nicely that in the modern age you can't beat popular resistance with force. Its so strange that well armed and trained armies have been forced to withdraw against the pressure of angry mobs or simply guys with rusty rifles.

I ve not read any military history, but is there some explanation for this? You get the impression that older powers could hold territory and lands much easier than they could in the 20th century. There haven't been many successful annexations of territory held by people of different nationality that I can think of in the 20th century.

I imagine that because the old powers, ie European Colonialism, used tactics such as genocide that are unpalatable today. Short Answer.

So in other words, people know what the response would be, say what the Roman Empire would do, but this is unpalatable or unacceptable to modern governments?

exactly,,,,think of it

Roman empire goes in,,,,,people start a revolt,,,,,legions move in and slaughter everyone fighting,then every tenth person supporting them.

In the modern world,,the entire world would turn on any government for doing anything even remotely similar.

The best way to insure that you take a territory and have no one that can claim that you took what was theirs is to annihilate all that live there. It has happened in the past many times and it is a very effective tactic. Not very humanitarian, but neither is taking by brute force that which is not yours. Guerrilla warfare works if the fighters are able to put up some kind of a resistance. Look at what happened in Afghanistan in the '80's with Russia. The USA supplied the rebels via the CIA and the Soviets were in an unwinnable fight.

It's not impossible to defeat just difficult and costly.

 Totalwar1402 wrote:
You get the impression that older powers could hold territory and lands much easier than they could in the 20th century.

They could and its a lot more complex than simply killing half the rebellious population. In the days of yore there was no real nationalist feeling, one king was much the same as another, so as long as your way of life stayed much the same or was improved people didn't really care who ruled them. In the colonial era there tended to be such a technological disparity that large scale rebellions could be easily crushed by comparatively tiny garrisons. In addition to this occupying powers tend to co-opt rather than replace existing power structures, even local religions..

Basically colonial powers were so succesful because they had a huge technological advantage and they usually didn't change all that much on the ground.

Today the technoloigcal gap is much narrower, western militaries (as thats basically what we are talking about here) have to be extremely restrained and, perhaps most importantly, long distance communications are widespread and easily acquired. Guerilla warfare is not impossible to beat, it just can't be beaten with military might. Even countires who are willing to treat resitsing populations harshly (Germany in WW2 and the USSR in Afghanistan for example) found it extremly difficult to stamp out rebellions by force.

All that really works today is diplomacy backed up by the selective use of force in the short term and long term standard of living improvements in the 'occupied' territory.

feeder wrote:
I imagine that because the old powers, ie European Colonialism, used tactics such as genocide that are unpalatable today. Short Answer.

/thread

Guerrilla warfare only works if the enemy you're fighting cares about at least appearing to be decent human beings (whether out of morality or simply international pressure). It doesn't work as well if you're fighting an enemy that is willing to just genocide the whole area and replace you with their own settlers.

A guerilla warfare campaign can be won by the kinetic forces by several methods, some military some political. It is a popular myth that a guerilla campaign cannot be overturned, and this myth is proliferated by those who believe in the concepts of revolution. Revolutionary warfare, as a model developed for the socialist revolutionary movement is essentially controlled political escalation, starting with small protests growing when reacted to poorly or incompetently. However incompetence is not guaranteed

Genocide.
More common than currently imagined. Ask how the Native Americans resistance is doing.
Genocide need not be literal, a cause can bleed out. The NVA were about to call off their campaign after the Tet offensive in 1968, Giap thought he had lost too many casualties, but will in the US collapsed visibly and the campaign was continued.
Nevertheless the point remains that it is possible to overwhelm resistance through a sheer bodycount, though this is not always reliable against a religiously motivated opponent.

Cultural Starvation
By removing a cultural identity so that it has insufficient relevance for the populace to consider fighting for it. This is more difficult but more reliable, it most effective as a preventative method as its almost impossible to achieve once an active guerilla movement has taken root.

Hearts and Minds/Disillusionment.
This can work, even in jungle warfare. At the same time the battle against guerilla forces was being lost in Vietnam and Cambodia it was being won in Indonesia and Malaysia. Though the latter campaign featured some advanced and well coordinated military techniques which were sadly not echoed elsewhere.
Another method is not so much to win over the enemy but to discredit opposition leadership in the minds of those who are risking thier lives to serve their cause. An opposition that can be corrupted visibly might lose its own powerbase if people are not willing to risk their lives for them anymore. this last factor stopped more than one revolutionary movement in South and Central America. Revolution might sound like a good idea, but once you know that one politician is much like another causes tend to fizzle quickly.

Endurance over time.
While sometimes it is not possible to win against a guerilla force, it is possible to outlast it. Key to this is eliminating military presence and replacing it with police force, this transforms rebellion into mere crime. It helps to also provide resources for leaders of guerilla movements to encourage negotiation, and its cheaper in the long run. Good examples of this strategy is Northern Ireland and Basque Country.

feeder wrote:
I imagine that because the old powers, ie European Colonialism, used tactics such as genocide that are unpalatable today. Short Answer.

Sort of, the concept of Total War where civilian infrastructure was a legitimate target is the proper answer.

Covert resistance only works if you can hide behind and among civilians.

Also, European Colonial powers weren't committing genocide outside of rare cases. Abuse and extortion sure, but not really genocide. Disease tended to take care of the natives just fine.

Native Americans weren't getting shuttered into Gulags and massacred. Disease wiped out the vast majority, some died on reservations from starvation due to restrictive anti-hunting laws and deliberate withholding of food. People tend to forget that disease caused most deaths among Native Americans, deaths that would have happened even if the settlers had done nothing hostile.

 purplefood wrote:
It's not impossible to defeat just difficult and costly.

This is the short answer.

I've not read any military history, but is there some explanation for this? You get the impression that older powers could hold territory and lands much easier than they could in the 20th century. There haven't been many successful annexations of territory held by people of different nationality that I can think of in the 20th century.

Oh it's a constant in history. We tend not to focus on them because they tend to be regional conflicts, fairly minor in the grand scheme of history. Afghanistan is a good example. They've been a thorn for many empire's, including Alexander the Great. Part of why it may seem different now, is because of the nature of the modern state. 1000 years ago, you had regional lords/powers who would maintain varying degrees of autonomy and manage themselves usually paying up to whoever was in charge. The people were greatly disconnected from politics and affairs of state. That's changed now. Power is centralized, people are more politically involved/empowered.

Insurgency and guerilla fighting are ineffective in winning a war. They are effective at winning politics. Take the war in Veitnam. The Veitcong weren't really that effective, but they killed Americans often enough that the home front got more and more agitated. The Tet Offensive, ostensibly a massive failure for the North that left them crippled and on the brink of defeat, managed to be brutal enough and kill enough Americans in a short time frame, that the American public just bowed out. WWII was a war of resources. Veitnam was a war of wills.

2000 years ago, if the Emperor told you to march off into the horizon and stab some guy, you dropped what you were doing marched into the horizon and got your stabbing arm ready. Today, you ask "why?" the Emperor gives an answer, and maybe you're okay with it, but if the conflict drags on for 10 years, you're stabbing arms starts getting tired and you and your family start asking if you can come home.*

*It also helped that the nature of not starving to death, kind of forced governments to suspend their wars so they could feed themselves before starting up again. You couldn't wage a constant unending armed conflict like WWI or WWII in ancient greece. China has the 3 most deadly wars in history almost solely because of mass starvation. Between the fall of the Han dynasty and the rise of the Jin 40,000,000 people died and most of them because they starved (this is 80% of China's population dead in a century).

Considered from an intellectual viewpoint, guerilla warfare depends on the support, or at least the acquiescence, of a sufficient proportion of the local population.

This means that to defeat the guerillas, you must change the minds of the population so they withdraw their support. This clearly is a social/political task, not a military one.

 Kilkrazy wrote:
Considered from an intellectual viewpoint, guerilla warfare depends on the support, or at least the acquiescence, of a sufficient proportion of the local population.

This means that to defeat the guerillas, you must change the minds of the population so they withdraw their support. This clearly is a social/political task, not a military one.

I would agree with this. To use the American revolution as an example, it's not so much the proportion of local resistance, but how effective that resistance is.

As everybody knows, as a rough guide, the percentages were 1/3 rebel, 1/3 loyal and 1/3 undecided.

Now, you would think that the rebels, being in the minority (of sorts) would struggle. But in Boston, their zeal and organisation were something to behold. Lexington and Bunker Hill being the examples.

However, in the New York area, where British support was high, and the loyalists were the majority, you have the situation of Washington's forces being attacked by militia loyal to Britain, when Washington launched his New York campaign.

Later on in the campaign, despite numerous British victories, British tactics (especially with regard to freeing slaves in the South) proved unpopular, so you have an effective resistance in the south.

But in saying that, militia/guerrillas didn't win the revolution for the Americans, you needed a professional army to do that, but they were highly effective at attacking as a police force for patrolling areas and nullifying potential Tory resistance.

Likewise with Vietnam. The Vietcong alone couldn't win the win. It needed resistance from the NVA to do that.

Popular resistance isn't always impossible to defeat. It's just that we don't talk about the failed resistance efforts, even the ones that reached open hostilities - who ever talks about the Malayan Emergency any more? Does anyone even know that there are still Maoist rebels running around in India, pretty much just ignored by the rest of the country?

feeder wrote:
I imagine that because the old powers, ie European Colonialism, used tactics such as genocide that are unpalatable today. Short Answer.

There's a lot more to it than that. Thing is, while people might still be impoverished, that impoverished life is a mile different to what it was in the 19th century. 150 years ago any kind of armed rebellion was under really tight logistical constraints - subsistence farmers can only spend so long running around in the backwoods before they have to go home and build up another year's food supply. And on top of that the equipment available these days changes things massively. Modern transport means protesters and revolutionaries can move miles across the country, and modern communication means you can co-ordinate on a level that was previously only available to the government forces. And perhaps most importantly modern weapons are effective and freely available - in the 19th century you needed resources and a lot of training to threaten a trained and disciplined company of riflemen, but these days an AK-47 and some IEDs will make you a reasonably effective soldier.

And on top of that there is politics - as Palindrome says its a tough sell to convince the locals that they need to fight and die so that the person in charge of them is a local who will otherwise be indistinguishable from the colonial power.


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 Kilkrazy wrote:
Considered from an intellectual viewpoint, guerilla warfare depends on the support, or at least the acquiescence, of a sufficient proportion of the local population.

This means that to defeat the guerillas, you must change the minds of the population so they withdraw their support. This clearly is a social/political task, not a military one.

You can remove support militarily. In the Malay emergency the powers simply took the whole populations of villages that were believed to support the resistance and moved them to other places.

But whether that's a good idea, or even a practical one, is up for debate. I do agree that the primary means of defeating revolution is getting them to give up on resistance before your lot gives up on fighting them. Which generally means finding a way to convince the general population that the best way forward for them is as part of your system of government.

feeder wrote:
I imagine that because the old powers, ie European Colonialism, used tactics such as genocide that are unpalatable today. Short Answer.

This tactics are called 'Coercions'. Colonial powers weren't hesitate to use military crackdown against any protesters and before American popular uprisings in 1960s. mobs SHOULD be suppressed with line infantrymen and it is advised to air firing squads in action so to scare protesters.

The fall of colonialism was not without the aid of other superior polity though.
Yet popular warfare is NOT really invincible. having 'legitimacy' control over large portions of population ,International supports (and sometimes. Macchiavellism) helps (As in Egypt where Egyptian armed forces 'successfully' suppressed Muslim Brotherhood and can legitimately declared them Heretic (which it is the worst form of rebellion and in Islam context, very evil beyond terrorism we known today) yet the victory over these angry peasansts will be short without any reforms to appease them. (As in Thailand where Abhisidh factions lost elections in 2011. largely due to the bloody crackdown in 2010)

 sebster wrote:
Popular resistance isn't always impossible to defeat. It's just that we don't talk about the failed resistance efforts, even the ones that reached open hostilities - who ever talks about the Malayan Emergency any more? Does anyone even know that there are still Maoist rebels running around in India, pretty much just ignored by the rest of the country?


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 Kilkrazy wrote:
Considered from an intellectual viewpoint, guerilla warfare depends on the support, or at least the acquiescence, of a sufficient proportion of the local population.

This means that to defeat the guerillas, you must change the minds of the population so they withdraw their support. This clearly is a social/political task, not a military one.

You can remove support militarily. In the Malay emergency the powers simply took the whole populations of villages that were believed to support the resistance and moved them to other places.

But whether that's a good idea, or even a practical one, is up for debate. I do agree that the primary means of defeating revolution is getting them to give up on resistance before your lot gives up on fighting them. Which generally means finding a way to convince the general population that the best way forward for them is as part of your system of government.

I was going to mention the Malayan Emergency, however I think the concentration camps is the kind of strategy that would be difficult to pull off in the modern world due to political reasons.

The Boer War arguably is another example of a successful anti-guerilla campaign, which was achieved partly by locking up the population in concentration camps.

India is a big country on the other side of the world. Perhaps their guerillas are below the westerner world's level of visibility. There are also Maoist rebels in Nepal. We haven't heard much about Sendero Luminoso in Peru since their leader was captured. The IRA is still active at a low level in Northern Ireland.

At some level, such groups can rumble on as organised crime that causes local trouble even though their political objectives may be unobtainable.

 Kilkrazy wrote:
I was going to mention the Malayan Emergency, however I think the concentration camps is the kind of strategy that would be difficult to pull off in the modern world due to political reasons.

The Boer War arguably is another example of a successful anti-guerilla campaign, which was achieved partly by locking up the population in concentration camps.

I don't know if the camps would even work as well today. The way people think about this stuff has changed so much, and not just the population back home but the local population. Or maybe not, I don't know, I've never studied that stuff in detail.

India is a big country on the other side of the world. Perhaps their guerillas are below the westerner world's level of visibility. There are also Maoist rebels in Nepal. We haven't heard much about Sendero Luminoso in Peru since their leader was captured. The IRA is still active at a low level in Northern Ireland.

To be fair, the Indians barely give a gak about the Maoists The point I was making was just that the world has a long history of failed revolutionaries, and it is only because we only pay attention to the successful ones that people might get the impression that they aren't ever defeated.

At some level, such groups can rumble on as organised crime that causes local trouble even though their political objectives may be unobtainable.

That seems to be how most of these groups end up after they've failed. FARC, IRA and all that start out using criminal activity to fund their cause, and end up with a political cause offering a thin veneer over a criminal network.

Western countries have unparalleled abilities of destruction at there figure tips these days, if we/they elected to destroy a city to dissuade an enemy from attacking they we/they could, but having that kind of power and knowing when not to use it shows incredible restraint both politically and culturally, if say the yanks and my fellow pommy's had decided to just destroy every village and city in Afghanistan rather than try to set up a stable government (that is going to fall apart the second we turn our backs) then the war would have been over very quickly, this however would have had massive ramifications the world over however and the Muslim world may have considered it an attack on them personally, so spending a few billion and sadly alot of lives is the lesser of the 2 evils it seems.

Guerrilla wars can be won by Gov't forces, and have been. In fact, you will have a much harder time finding cases where the guerrillas actually 'won' instead of just holding out indefinitely. To actually win, as in become the government, they generally had to transition from guerrillas to much more conventional forces at some point and/or have entered the legitimate political realm and 'won' via the vote. A 'win' for either side in not easy, but is generally easier for the gov't forces due to the resources available.

These wars are NEVER pretty. Guatemala and El Salvador are examples of 'wins' for government forces. Colombia has really defeated the FARC and ELN as insurgents, though the FARC as a narco group still maintains some operational capability. Sindero Luminoso and Tupac Amaru lost their fight.

Dang you Jake. I was enjoying s good read on other perceptions on this and you had to go ahead in inject reality. Since you open that can of worms..

1 Will of the people of the Military forces deployed to combat the Insurgents
2 Will of the POTUS to stay the course
3 Total removal of complacency
4 Ever evolving tech and intell


To name a few

Honestly, even the Viet Cong lost their war, and the North had to commit the NVA, which was a real army, not 'guerrillas' though they did use some guerrilla tactics and were able to salvage a bit of the remaining VC intel sources not swept up. They won by rolling tanks into Saigon.

Does this like like guerrilla forces?

NVA though took the Viet Cong tactics/subterfuge/preparations to a whole new level when they committed. Though when the tanks rolled into Saigon the South Vietnamese military was literally just on paper.


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I actually researched a bit more First time NVA forces went force on force first time was Ia Drang Valley. Did not go very well for them at all.

The NVA fought as a regular army for the most part. They had regimental and higher level attacks all the time, coordinated with divisional assets and so on. Did they fit their tactics to the terrain and work to mitigate the strengths of who they were fighting? Of course they did. But they were in no way an insurgent or real guerrilla force. Their leaders did have a decent grasp of guerrilla type tactics, but that is not what won the war for them.

But regardless... The fact remains, guerrillas/insurgents are not impossible to defeat.




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A couple interesting takes on fighting insurgents in Vietnam, look up the USMC's CAP program, and for an Army take, read 'Once a Warrior King' by Donovan (fantastic book!).

COIN wasn't invented by Petraeus....