Guerilla Warfare, Counter-Insurgency, etc.

Last update: 21 Apr 2025 21:17
First version:

There is a strong overlap with peasant revolts, but urban guerilla warfare is certainly possible, and increasingly common...

It would be interesting to know exactly how the romanticization of guerillas among the inhabitants of rich, peaceful countries developed.

Thomas X. Hammes, "Countering Evolved Insurgent Networks", Military Review July-August 2006: 18--26 ["Insurgency is a competition between human networks. We must understand that salient fact before can we develop and execute a plan to defeat the insurgents."]
Edward Luttwak, "Dead End: Counterinsurgency warfare as military malpractice", Harper's (February 2007
Brian Reed, "A Social Network Approach to Understanding an Insurgency", Parameters (Summer 2007): 19--30 [An odd mixture of some explanation of the basics of social network analysis, modern doctrine on counter-insurgency, and highly debatable statements about the Global War on Terrorism, which border on propaganda for a specific ideological position. PDF]

Ivan Arreguin-Toft, How the Weak Win Wars: A Theory of Asymmetric Conflict [I remember finding a very interesting-sounding critique of this book, one the grounds that the situations described were better thought of as sensibly concluding that some wars were not worth fighting in the first place, but cannot now find it again.]
Clifford Bob, The Marketing of Rebellion: Insurgents, Media, and International Acticvism ["How do a few Third World political movements become global causes celebres, while most remain isolated? This book rejects dominant views that needy groups readily gain help from selfless nongovernmental organizations (NGOs). Instead, they face a Darwinian struggle for scarce resources where support goes to the savviest, not the neediest. Examining Mexico's Zapatista rebels and Nigeria's Ogoni ethnic group, the book draws critical conclusions about social movements, NGOs, and 'global civil society'."]
Vo Nguyen Giap, The Military Art of People's War
Jason Lyall and Isaiah Wilson III, "Rage Against the Machines: Mechanization and the Determinants of Victory in Counterinsurgency Warfare" [PDF preprint. Their thesis is that mechanization, as such, makes modern powers increasingly unable to deal with insurgencies successfully. (One might, though on a quick scan they don't, connect this in turn to the "cost disease" afflicting many human-service industries in advanced economies, that technological progress makes labor increasingly expensive, by raising productivity in most sectors of the economy, but does not raise productivity in those industries.) It's an interesting idea, but the obvious confounding factors are the spread of modern forms of political organization based on nationalism and mass literacy, along with the spread of small arms; and this is an old diagnosis, going back to at least Raymond Aron in the early 1960s. ("Is it coincidence, comrades", that several flags now incorporate the Kalashnikov?) I'm curious to see how they argue against this. Found via some blog or other, but cannot now reconstruct which.]
T. David Mason, Caught in the Crossfire: Revolutions, Repression, and the Rational Peasant
Nagl, Learning to Eat Soup with a Knife
Douglas A. Ollivant and Eric D. Chewning, "Producing Victory: Rethinking Conventional Forces in COIN Operations", Military Review July-August 2006: 50--59
Edward E. Rice, Wars of the Third Kind: Conflict in Underdeveloped Countries
D. Michael Shafer, Deadly Paradigms: The Failure of U.S. Counterinsurgency Policy
Abdulkader H. Sinno, Organizations at War in Afghanistan and Beyond [author's book description]
Paul T. Stanton, "Unit Immersion in Mosul: Establishing Stability in Transition", Military Review July-August 2006: 60--70 ["Tactical units living and working with the population provide the flexibility to gather and disseminate information, influence host-nation political development, and neutralize threat activity."]
David Tucker, Revolution and Resistance Moral Revolution, Military Might, and the End of Empire
Jeremy M. Weinstein, Inside Rebellion: The Politics of Insurgent Violence