ok, I've got a little time before the police turn up, you want to be schooled, here we go
the Recent History of Guerrilla Warfare 101
China: Civil War 1927-49
The civil war between the Communists and the Nationalists took quite some time as you can see, it was interrupted in part by the Japanese invasion of China (1937-45) but took up where it left off afterwards. This was a very real civil war fought between 2 regular armies, both only marginally supported by outside agencies, the Soviets were reluctant to kick-start the cold war by helping out fellow communists too much, and the Americans were equally reluctant to further commit to world communist/capitalist war so soon after WW2 ended.
The Nationalist Chinese forces had the advantage in regular troops of 2 or 3 to 1 over the Communists, but the communists equalled that in guerrilla numbers. however, even as late as 1947 it was looking like Chiang Kai-shek's Nationalists would win, Stalin himself admitted he was wrong (quite a rare thing) about thinking Mao's forces would win and urged him to seek a peace deal with Chiang, equally the USA gave only about $3,000Million in aid to Nationalist China in the post war period, believing that they were on the verge of a win, only willing to give more aid when a peace was won or negotiated (see Russia's oddly similar view)
After all this the communist forces kicked it into top gear and within 2 years steamrollered down the country and drove the last elements of the Nationalist power structure into Taiwan, Russia laughed and the West groaned, china never really trusted either of them after that for either providing aid to the enemy or not aiding them enough
Conclusion
This was not a guerrilla war, it was a conventional civil war, fought along conventional (if at time highly tactically on the Communists side and somewhat poorly on the Nationalists) lines, the guerrilla forces supported the Communists and aided the army in just about every way possible, as well as being a base of recruits for the full time regular army, there were not the only force available for the 20+ years of war and they certainly were not the most important element at the final stage of the war when the Communists pulled off a surprise (to outside observers at least) win
from this conflict arose Mao's doctrine of guerrilla warfare, to summarise: the discontent of a people in it's government can be, with propaganda, turned into dissent, this can be, with careful control and maximum propaganda exploitation, be turned into active subversion and terrorism. in turn this is then transformed into persistent insurrection and then guerrilla war. when the time is right this is then transformed into a full-blown conventional war
it is a brief summary and one not strictly followed by Mao, but it can be effective if each and every one of the steps is fully fulfilled and moved onto at the right time and if the opposition is as limp and locked into a downward spiral as, in the Chinese Civil War, the Nationalists were. An effective halt to the success of this strategy can be achieved at any stage, the longer it is left to ferment the more chance the so called 'guerrilla war' has to succeed
I say 'so called' as you'll note only one of the stages in the plan involve direct guerrilla warfare, what starts in political dissent ends in uniformed troops marching on the capital, guys hiding in bushed and blowing up checkpoints and bridges is merely the middle part, the name 'guerrilla war' is very misleading, the above history lesson is there to show how small a part insurgents and guerrillas played in direct actions of the war, but what an important feature there were in this civil war, mainly because only one side used them.
Guerrilla Warfare lessons to be learnt
1: Mao Tse-tsung (literally) wrote the book on guerrilla warfare as it provided his 'edge' in the war and while it did win the war for him, it couldn't have done it without his conventional army and large scale open battles (some lasting for weeks or months with hundreds of thousands of regular soldiers on each side)
2: The Communist army was better than the Nationalist army in most respects, the main ones being that the meritocratic (at least for that time in history) structure of the troops and commanders and the greater moral they had played a key part in not only the battles they fought, but also in the big operational events such at The Long March and the number of deserters that the Nationalist army suffered (which often immediately swelled the Communist ranks)
3: China had a relatively self contained civil war, not an 'open' and intensive guerrilla war involving supporting allies and modern, highly trained and equipped armies, it could be said that the Chinese Civil War was fought in a style closer to WW1 than WW2 giving the guerrilla forces very little direct influence in the direct fighting
Europe: Resisting German Invasion 1939+
For the sake of simplicity, only France and Great Britain will be briefly examined
France: La Resistance
Going by Mao's stages of warfare, the Resistance in Occupied France got to the insurrection stage by D-Day and then graduated to full guerrilla warfare in support of the Allies and then (arguably) to conventional warfare with the arrival of the Free French forces. At all of these stages they were assisted by the American OSS and British SOE in supplies, training and moral support. they would have been very hard pressed to do anything more than daub slogans on walls without all this outside assistance before the full allied invasion, also the internal political infighting in the Resistance, though no where near as bad as Yugoslavian Resistance, was still a problem with their overall cohesion
Britain: Home Guard Auxiliary Battalions
These were formed in 1940 to provide a secret guerrillas army to resist at all cost the planned German invasion. (the put off and finally cancelled Operation SEALION) If anything they were formed on reverse lines to Mao's guerrilla warfare strategy, it was believed (in secret, though very realistically) that after the Germans invaded the British Mainland, the conventional army would be defeated in short order and the country would come under full German occupation, at this stage the guerrilla warfare would begin with the remnants of the British Army and the Auxiliary forces untill these were depleted by German anti-partisan operations (as later demonstrated in Russia) to an extent where only brief acts of insurrection and acts of terrorist subversion would remain, until finally the population would be under full 'Vichy' type control with only isolated acts of dissent and unrest with the resistance fully quashed a few years later.
Conclusion
The French Resistance was very well supplied by the allies, the British Auxiliary forces were not counting on any supplies or assistance from anywhere, for instance they were issued with 2 weeks of rations as none were expected to survive much longer than that within occupied Britain. A successful guerrilla movement must have graduated from and work within a base of popular support and have access to supplies and coordinated leadership, not be the remnants of a fallen regime isolated from the rest of the world.
The French Resistance succeeded because of it's outside and internal support and critically the transition to guerrilla and then conventional warfare was very much managed by the Allied command leading to the eventual French lead liberation of Paris. The British resistance effort was destined to fall into a downward spiral in the direct opposite of Mao's guerrilla warfare plan mainly due to the total lack of the assistance the French Resistance had.
These are both examples of a home based force resisting a foreign invasion force using limited guerrilla tactics, again, this is not 'real' guerrilla warfare, but resistance with a guerrilla element.
Malayan Emergency: Counter Insurgency Operations 1950-59
This is one of the classic studies for counter insurgency warfare with two foreign powers fighting over a single country, with on one side the Communist Chinese Insurgents/Terrorists making a series of cross border raids with the intention of further destabilising the government and triggering a popular uprising, and on the other side Mad Mike Calvert's SAS, take a guess who won that one...
The communist forces failed to triggering the full scale guerrilla war stage of their plan due to the harsh counter insurgency operations of the SAS Malayan Scouts (full of veterans of the SOE, Force 136, Ferret Force, WW2 SAS etc) in limiting their movement and ability to build bases and establish themselves in Malaya, also the SAS ran a large number of 'hearts and minds' operations (they coined that phrase) to win over the Malayan people away from the communists, Mao said the people were the water that the guerrilla moves through, the SAS were moving the water away and then poisoning it while aggressively (both secretly and illegally) taking the war to the Communists in deep cross border raids
Malaya eventually came to a peaceful resolve of it's communist/Chinese political minority after the foreign insurgents/terrorists were defeated and became a fully independent nation, well, as independent as you can be in the '60s
Conclusion
This 'emergency' is important as it was, in part, used as a blueprint for the later French Indo-China and USA Vietnam conflict, also as it was another total failure for the 'guerrilla warfare' operational pattern. (Vietnam went off on it's own tangent and the tactics that won this conflict weren't followed for a whole host of reasons) It is also one of the first post WW2 real 'guerrilla wars' with both sides of the fight supplied and assisted by foreign powers and conventional armed forces only used by the occupying government, in this case mainly for internal policing and defence of fixed sites such as fortified villages, key towns, roads and supply dumps etc, with the main anti-communist fighting was conducted by the foreign paramilitary SAS based forces.
Summary
The term 'Guerrilla Warfare' is a misleading and deceptive one, it is often used to name a whole host of operational stages of a conflict and is very politically loaded. most so called guerrilla wars can be slotted into the above examples, the end results coming from the way the 'war' was conducted on both sides, as well as local operational conditions etc
1: Civil War - This is often in relative isolation to foreign support, with one or both sides having guerrilla or para-military forces in operation, the decisive phase of this conflict comes when conventional forces clash in all out war and one side is the overall military winner, usually then symbolically marching on the capital.
Examples would be the Balkans/Yugoslavia, to a limited extent India/Pakistan and a number of African/South American states (though these fall into cat 3 mostly)
2: Wars of Resistance - this type of warfare stands of falls on the help the local resistance forces can gain from outside of their country, they will be a mix of trained former army fighters, trained paramilitary/guerrilla fighters, and, if possible, foreign specialists and trainers. without outside help and against a superior occupying force the guerrilla war will naturally fall apart rather than 'naturally' progress
Examples - Kuwait, Anti-Russian Afghanistan, post-Regime Iraq
3: Counter Insurgency - This is the critical stage in the evolution of a revolution, the first acts of overt armed resistance/insurrection, as such it has to be quickly limited and extinguished before it has the chance to progress to a full revolutionary war
The classic African 'Brushfire Wars' and the South Asian anti-communist 'Domino Effect' conflicts and a number of Cuban/Communist inspired South American conflicts
Some conflicts that have a guerrilla element fall into not one but a number of the above, for instance Beirut, post-Russian Afghanistan, Israel/Palestine etc, these are more complex but still follow a set of rules based on the above examples
So, in conclusion, there is no such thing as a [i[generic[/i] guerrilla war, there are, as i have briefly shown, at least 3 clear types all with very different advantages and disadvantages for all sides involved. In all cases it is by no means a clear cut case of an easy win or loss by one side of the other, again using Mao's stages of revolution as a framework, the process of guerrilla war can be pushed back as well as forward, it can't be fully defeated until it's taken back down to the 'discontent' level which can be addressed with political and social policies alone, equally it can't be a win for the 'guerrilla forces until full scale war and (usually) the capital is captured or the opposition have been captured/killed/driven out.
Now, i hope I've made clear a little "historical truth" here and that the lessons have all been well learned, it's just a matter of putting into operation effectively operations to either forma and operate a guerrilla force or to defeat one, in the end it's down to the political and military skill of both sides to fight over the people or the nation involved, it is by no means a forgone conclusion that all resistance/insurgency/guerrilla forces automatically win
now, any questions at the back?
_________________ ollie.
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now your tears are worth it
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