Insurgencies and History

My own opinion on the troop surge has been made in previous posts. But to summarize on behalf of the lazy and uninspired (I am their Patron Saint, by the way), I question Bush's decision to send more troops to Iraq because regardless of the military wisdom of such a move, he is sending them into battle lacking almost any political support whatsoever. The policy is not supported by our allies (such as they are), the Maliki government, most Iraqis, our enemies in the region, Congress (including members of the President's own party), the media, and perhaps most importantly, the American people. In my opinion, a complete dearth of political support likely dooms even the most well-thought out military strategy.

But Donald Stoker, a professor of strategy and policy for the U.S. Naval War College’s Monterey Program writes in Foreign Policy magazine that there may be more cause for optimism. Stoker takes a historical look at the performance of insurgencies and finds that they are generally prone to failure:

Myths about invincible guerrillas and insurgents are a direct result of America’s collective misunderstanding of its defeat in South Vietnam. This loss is generally credited to the brilliance and military virtues of the pajama-clad Vietcong. The Vietnamese may have been tough and persistent, but they were not brilliant. Rather, they were lucky—they faced an opponent with leaders unwilling to learn from their failures: the United States. When the Vietcong went toe-to-toe with U.S. forces in the 1968 Tet Offensive, they were decimated. When South Vietnam finally fell in 1975, it did so not to the Vietcong, but to regular units of the invading North Vietnamese Army. The Vietcong insurgency contributed greatly to the erosion of the American public’s will to fight, but so did the way that President Lyndon Johnson and the American military waged the war. It was North Vietnam’s will and American failure, not skillful use of an insurgency, that were the keys to Hanoi’s victory. Similar misunderstandings persist over the Soviet Union’s defeat in Afghanistan, the other supposed example of guerrilla invincibility. But it was not the mujahidin’s strength that forced the Soviets to leave; it was the Soviet Union’s own economic and political weakness at home. In fact, the regime the Soviets established in Afghanistan was so formidable that it managed to survive for three years after the Red Army left. Of course, history is not without genuine insurgent successes. Fidel Castro’s victory in Cuba is probably the best known, and there was the IRA’s partial triumph in 1922, as well as Algeria’s defeat of the French between 1954 and 1962. But the list of failed insurgencies is longer: Malayan Communists, Greek Communists, Filipino Huks, Nicaraguan Contras, Communists in El Salvador, Che Guevara in Bolivia, the Boers in South Africa (twice), Savimbi in Angola, and Sindero Luminoso in Peru, to name just a few. If the current U.S. administration maintains its will, establishes security in Baghdad, and succeeds in building a functioning government and army, there is no reason that the Iraqi insurgency cannot be similarly destroyed, or at least reduced to the level of terrorist thugs. Insurgencies generally fail if all they are able to do is fight an irregular war. Successful practitioners of the guerrilla art from Nathanael Greene in the American Revolution to Mao Zedong in the Chinese Civil War have insisted upon having a regular army for which their guerrilla forces served mainly as an adjunct. Insurgencies also have inherent weaknesses and disadvantages vis-à-vis an established state. They lack governmental authority, established training areas, and secure supply lines. The danger is that insurgents can create these things, if given the time to do so. And, once they have them, they are well on their way to establishing themselves as a functioning and powerful alternative to the government. If they reach this point, they can very well succeed.

Stoker's thesis and case studies are interesting and important reminders about the inherent flaws of insurgencies. In Iraq, the absence of a coherent and meaningful alternative political agenda should be a significant barrier to success for the insurgents in a long-term war of attrition. However, the American people and key influencers do not have the stomach to engage in such an ugly, drawn-out affair. As a consequence, the ledger becomes more balanced in favor of the insurgents. They are emboldened to believe that with enough time, they will prevail. Their mantra parallels that of the Vietnamese, who once remarked, "In a little while the Americans will be gone, but we will still be here." Time, as it turns out is a crucial ingredient. And with so many missteps to-date, there is precious little of it remaining, as Stoker admits:

That’s welcome news, because one thing is certain: time is running out. Combating an insurgency typically requires 8 to 11 years. But the administration has done such a poor job of managing U.S. public opinion, to say nothing of the war itself, that it has exhausted many of its reservoirs of support. One tragedy of the Iraq war may be that the administration’s new strategy came too late to avert a rare, decisive insurgent victory.