At The Blue Voice, I posted about a new article from military analyst Jeffrey Record, currently of the Air War College: External Assistance: Enabler of Insurgent Success Parameters (US Army War College) Autumn 2006. In that post, I discussed some of his analysis of American history. I was glad to see he didn't try in this article to draw specfic lessons for the Iraq War or the Afghanistan War. Instead, he lets the historical analysis stand on its own rather than be instantly drawn into political/ideological/strategic disputes and polemics going on right now.
Here is a good example of why that approach is helpful. Focusing on the French counterinsurgency war of the 1950s in Algeria, the one dramatically recalled in the film The Battle of Algiers, he writes:
The Algerian War (1954-1962), the subject of much recent professional military interest, offers additional, if more complicated, evidence of the vitality of external assistance. At great cost, the insurgent Front de Liberation Nationale (FLN) won politically but lost militarily, and it lost militarily because of ruthless French counterinsurgency methods and French success in shutting off external material assistance. The French army had learned much from its defeat in Indochina, where it was never in a position to isolate the Viet Minh from Chinese Communist assistance, and in Algeria it faced a smaller and much less politically formidable enemy than the Viet Minh. The peak strength of the FLN’s military arm, the Armee de Liberation Nationale (ALN), never exceeded 40,000, including regulars, auxiliaries, and irregulars, and it is testimony to the FLN’s limited political appeal within Algeria that five times that number of Algerians fought on the French side. The FLN, which was governed by a fractious collective leadership, lacked not only a charismatic, Ho Chi Minh-like, single authoritative leader, but also any political program for the impoverished rural masses of the country. Unlike the Vietnamese Communists, who promised land as well as national liberation to the peasantry, the FLN promised national but no social liberation.
Even had the FLN enjoyed a larger popular support, which its heavy reliance on urban terrorism worked against,it confronted a massive French military presence and a skilled and barbarously effective counterinsurgent strategy. French forces in Algeria peaked in 1960 at 500,000, by which time there were only a few thousand ALN fighters still operating in the country (the bulk of the ALN was ensconced on the other side of the Tunisian border). French forces always maintained at least a 10:1 numerical advantage over insurgents inside Algeria. Moreover, they made widespread use of torture, collective punishments, and forcible population relocations to extract intelligence, terrorize potential FLN supporters, and isolate vulnerable communities from FLN penetration. In 1957, in the face of an FLN terrorist campaign launched in Algiers, the French government transferred civil authority in Algiers to the military, which proceeded to crush the FLN in Algiers. In what became known as the Battle of Algiers, elite parachute units under the command of General Jacques Massu brutally broke an FLN-sponsored general strike (by threatening to destroy shops on the spot unless shop owners opened them) and then savagely rooted out the FLN infrastructure through mass arrests and torture.
But what really killed any chance of an FLN military win was the French success in physically isolating the insurgency from external material assistance. During the first two years of the insurgency, the FLN suffered an acute shortage of weapons; it armed itself largely with what weapons it could capture from government security and police forces. This situation changed dramatically when France granted independence to neighboring Morocco and Tunisia in March 1956. From then on, those two countries became conduits of external Arab military assistance. Tunisia also became a sanctuary for ALN forces; indeed, as the war got worse for the FLN inside Algeria, Tunisia became the FLN’s main operating base. It encamped on the Tunisian side of the Algerian border, armed and trained its forces there, and then launched raids into Algeria. (my emphasis)
He goes on to describe how France successfully cut off the FLN from external assistance and how that affected the balance of military forces.
Although Record doesn't call special attention to it in his article, the issue of external assistance and safe havens is one of the most-disputed issues in discussions of counterinsurgency warfare. The US Army, famously committed as it is to preparing for conventional war of the type that would have been involved with the Soviet Red Army attacking western Europe through the Fulda Gap, is inclined to emphasize the role of external assistance and bases to explain difficulties in combatting insurgents.
We also have been hearing from the Cheney-Bush administration lately that Iran is meddling in the Iraqi insurrection/civil war. While no one seems to doubt that Iran is providing support of various kinds to the Iraqi Shi'a, some of the particular claims that have been made stretch credibility to the Iraqi-WMD point.
One implications of Record's analysis of the French counterinsurgency in Algeria is that the that France's brutal repression and torture was not the decisive factor in their victory, which in any case was effectively reversed when France granted Algeria its independence several years later.
I'm not ready to say yet that I agree with the general analysis that Record makes here. But one of his strengths is to take a hard look at the actual situations, and he is careful to not draw facile conclusions. His article is a real caution about any kind of notion that virtually any guerilla movement can succeed. Because, in fact, most of them don't. But that also makes the ones like Lebanese Hizbullah that have proven their effectiveness almost by definition exceptions to the rule.
Record also makes these important observations:
Victorious insurgencies are exceptional because the strong usually beat the weak. But all power is relative, and if an insurgency has access to external assistance, such assistance can alter the insurgent-government power ratio even to the point where the insurgency becomes the stronger side. ...
Much of the key theoretical literature on the phenomenon of weak victories over the strong discounts or altogether ignores the importance of external assistance. Andrew Mack argues that the best explanation of insurgent success is possession of superior political will and therefore greater readiness to sacrifice; the insurgents win because they wage a total war against an enemy that fights but a limited war. Ivan Arreguin-Toft contends that superior strategy—e.g., protracted irregular warfare against a conventional foe—best explains insurgent victories. Gil Merom believes that chances of insurgent success hinge greatly on government regime type; insurgencies fare much better against democraciesthan against dictatorships because the former lack the stomach for brutal repression.
These explanations share a common assumption: the key to offsetting the stronger side’s material superiority lies in the weaker side’s possession of superiority in such intangibles as political will and strategy. The United States was defeated in Indochina because the Vietnamese Communists displayed a far greater willingness to fight and die and pursued a strategy that simultaneously limited their exposure to US military strengths (firepower, air mobility) and exploited American political vulnerabilities (the electorate’s aversion to indecisive, protracted wars for limited objectives).
However, even the most committed and cunning insurgency cannot hope to win without material resources. A rebellion must have arms. (my emphasis)
This argument also has a very important implication. The rightwingers are already preparing a stab-in-the-back excuse for the loss of the Iraq War, basically like the one that has become the stock assumption of today's miliaristic and authoritarian Republican Party. This argument is based on the idea that Will - always a favorite virtue for authoritarians - is decisive in such wars. Record's article reminds us that actual military prowess plays a role, too. Every war involves some kind of calculation of cost and benefits. We could have the Will to lose 50,000 soldiers in Iraq. But what does that get us if we do?
He concludes:
The strong correlation between external assistance and insurgent success does not diminish the insurgent requirement for superiority in such intangibles as will, strategy, organization, morale, and discipline. External assistance can favorably, even decisively, alter the material power ratio between an insurgency and an enemy government or foreign occupier. For either the insurgent side or the counterinsurgent side, material strength unguided by sound strategy and unsupported by sufficient willingness to fight and die is a recipe for almost certain defeat. But most insurgencies seek foreign help for good reason.
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