Posted on 01/18/2013 6:23:35 PM PST by MinorityRepublican
For a student of military history, the most astonishing fact about the current international scene is that there isn't a single conflict in which two uniformed militaries are pitted against each other. The last one was a brief clash in 2008 between Russia and Georgia. In our day, the specter of conventional conflict, which has dominated the imagination of the West since the days of the Greek hoplites, has almost been lifted.
But the world is hardly at peace. Algeria fights hostage-takers at a gas plant. France fights Islamist extremists in Mali. Israel fights Hamas. The U.S. and its allies fight the Taliban in Afghanistan. Syria's Bashar al-Assad fights rebels seeking to overthrow him. Colombia fights and negotiates with the FARC. Mexico fights drug gangs. And various African countries fight the Lord's Resistance Army.
These are wars without front lines, without neatly defined starting and end points. They are messy, bloody affairs, in which attackers, typically without uniforms, engage in hit-and-run raids and often target civilians. They are, in short, guerrilla wars, and they are deadly. In Syria alone, more than 60,000 people have died since 2011, according to the United Nations. In Mexico, nearly 50,000 have died in drug violence since 2006. Hundreds of thousands more have perished in Africa's civil wars. The past decade has also seen unprecedented terrorist attacks, ranging from 9/11 to suicide bombings in Iraq. To understand today's world, you have to understand guerrillas and the terrorist movements that are their close cousins.
(Excerpt) Read more at online.wsj.com ...
It's probably best we don't have a new civil war in the US. It would get very ugly very quickly.
Nice government you have here. Be a shame if anything happened to it...
/johnny
How do you know when a guerrilla war is over? It’s not like you can get them to agree to surrender on the deck of the Missouri.
They take the embassy in Hanoi.
/johnny
Do what the Israelis did and kill every guerrila leader and his replacement. Then ultimately the insurgency will run out of steam, due to attrition.
Guerrilla wars can turn into conventional wars as the last two year of the Vietnam War did. The NVA took Saigon with light armored forces.
And still the threat of sudden conventional war still exists. Iraq taking Kuwait, the American-led coalition liberating Kuwait, The overthrow of Hussien’s Iraq regime, the Iran-Iraq War, and the Falklands War were all conventional conflicts of the last 30 years.
Boot’s mostly correct but he sort-of perpetuates the myth of the Colonial “Guerrilla War” against the British. Yes, there was some irregular-style fighting, but the main colonial effort comprised a uniformed, drilled Continental Army fighting in the European style, not guerrillas hiding behind trees. And actually the British with their Indian allies probably did just as much irregular-style fighting as the Colonists did.
CWII will probably be like that--there won't be set-piece battles such as Gettysburg or Cold Harbor, fought between uniformed armies, that characterized CWI. It will be more like the civil wars in Libya and Syria.
“Yes, there was some irregular-style fighting, but the main colonial effort comprised a uniformed, drilled Continental Army fighting in the European style, not guerrillas hiding behind trees. And actually the British with their Indian allies probably did just as much irregular-style fighting as the Colonists did.”
I think that depended on the region; Francis Marion in the south and the Green Mountain boys in the north were the only war going on in some parts of those theaters. In my area (NJ/NY/PA) there were conventional battles (with mixed success); against the guerrillas the British had no chance at all. Even their irregulars and Indians were beaten by the irregulars fighting for independence.
“They take the embassy in Hanoi.”
Dude,,,, you’re one of those “outside the box thinkers”, ain’t ya?
Although it was alive and well in the '60's, '70's, and '80's and is still widely believed, especially in academia, the myth of the "invincible guerrilla" has been debunked on more than one occasion . See the following books:
Guerillas did not take the embassy in Hanoi(?!?!?!). Nor did they take the embassy in Saigon.
North Vietnamese regular army, with MASSIVE materiel support from USSR and PRC took the embassy in Saigon ... when the demonicRats in the US Congress abandoned and betrayed South Viet Nam.
/johnny
Do what the Israelis did and kill every guerrila leader and his replacement. Then ultimately the insurgency will run out of steam, due to attrition.
____________________
Nice theory, but I would say it is a work in progress. For generations now.
Mao said that the people are the sea, and the guerrilla is the fish who swims in the sea. Using that analogy you cannot get every fish one by one. But you can boil the sea and make fish soup.
This phase of Western civilization is too humane, or soft, or decadent to do that math at this time, and our existence is not yet threatened. When it becomes a matter of survival for either us or them - whoever the ‘us’ or the ‘them’ is at that time - we shall see.
NV regulars couldn't have taken Saigon without the guerilla warfare that happened. In the jungles, in France, in the media, and in Congress.
/johnny
Agreed. I would add the Irish and Yugoslav models as possibilities. Spain as a worst case scenario.
Yet some guerrilla wars smolder on and on, such as the one in Burma, where the grand children of the guerrilla fighters who staged an uprising in the 1940's were continuing the war in the 1990's--and their great-grand children may still be at it today.
A red unit did attack the US embassy in Saigon in 1968, at the start of the Communist's "Winter-Spring Offensive." Although they got onto the embassy's grounds, they didn't penetrate the building, and they were killed to a man.
The majority of the fighting was conventional (either European linear field warfare, or European-style sieges like Boston and Yorktown) and the British would not have been defeated were it not for the large, conventional Continental Army fighting in lines wearing uniforms in open fields (even though they didn’t have success in most of the individual battles.)
The militia was mostly useless (as was also true in 1812), despite attempts to glorify them by those violently opposed to a standing, real army. They were of use in certain isolated circumstances when properly used, like Cowpens, and the militia vs. Loyalist militia battle of Kings Mountain.
The most effective irregular warfare ambush of the war was a Loyalist/Indian ambush of American militia at Oriskany.
The “myth” though is embodied in the Bill Cosby routine about smart Americans shooting from behind rocks and trees against the stupid British in bright uniforms standing in neat lines.
The Viet Cong were for all practical purposes annihilated in Tet, and the following Phoenix Program (CIA assassinations) and the Chieu Hoi program through 1972.
South Vietnam was actually defeated 1972-1975 by the NVA in conventional combat. The North Vietnamese themselves helped dismantle the Viet Cong because they wanted Northerners in charge.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.