Chapter 3

Cold Warfare and Political Warfare

by Hugh M. Lewis

Cold warfare occupies the low intensity end of the warfare spectrum. Cold warfare relies exclusively on the threat of force in the prediction and control of people. It is essentially nonviolent, as opposed to all other primary types of warfare, which rely primarily on the utilization of destructive force in the control of peoples' subsequent behavior patterns. The principle environment of cold warfare is the human mind, human intelligence, emotions, values and morale. The objective human targets. The communication between minds is the fabric of cold warfare. Cold warfare represents one mind, or the collective mind of a group, trying to predict and control the minds and actions of another group. Cold warfare is universal, a derivative of universal human nature. It is involved in all inter-human relationships. It is fundamental in human conflict and subordinate and complementary to all other forms of warfare. Cold warfare is the oldest and subtlest form of aggression. It represents the epitome of subtlety, of accomplishing peacefully what can't be accomplished with violent force. It is the epitome of the indirect approach. A grand strategy of cold warfare is in essence a grand strategy of behavior modification.

Cold warfare occurs between governments of different societies, in attempts to amputate and isolate, to confuse and disunite without open conflict. It occurs between governments and the societies of enemy governments, to disaffect the people from their leadership, to destroy the prerequisite social cohesion needed for leadership. It occurs between neutral governments and peoples, to unit them against the enemy or to disaffect the people from their leaders, or to disaffect them from the enemy. It occurs between a government and its people, to increase morale, social cohesion, subdue subversion and to bring economic support and vice versa to improve leadership, to change government policy and to improve social conditions. There are three distinct types of cold warfare, diplomacy, psychological warfare and economic warfare. All are intermixed and blur in results--occurring in all other forms of warfare--yet each has distinct characteristics.

Diplomacy is the manipulation of the risks imposed by the threat of force between opponents. The relationship of mutual understanding implicit in the reciprocal threat of force represents a balance of predetermined peace called mutual deterrence. Deterrence seeks to maintain the balance of peace by defining limits or boundaries, by putting one's back against the wall and drawing the line, thus relinquishing the initiative to the opponent. In this sense deterrence is defensive. It is the threat well defined, simplifying the alternatives and therefore the risks involved. The problem of deterrence is making the threat of guaranteed reaction credible to the opponent, by keeping the risks for the opponent greater than his chances for success. If deterrence fails the balance of peace is upset. Deterrence may only be implied, mutually unquestioned boundary rights or legal rights, not requiring explicit verbal definition. Deterrence fails once the initiative is taken. The taking of the initiative to upset the balance or to restore a previous condition of balance is called compellence. Compellence may involve no more than the use of verbal threats or it may result in general war. Compellence is basically offensive. It is much riskier than deterrence in that the alternatives of subsequent action are more complicated. Various techniques of compellence occur in cold warfare, such as salami tactics--the taking of only a little at a time, imposing on the opponent in an unnoticeable but unacceptable way, little by little until the balance is surprisingly upset. Salami tactics represents the gradual erosion of the credibility of deterrence. Trojan horse tactics, disguising compellence to make it seem desirable, erodes the credibility of deterrence from within. The baited hook technique is tricking the opponent into an unfavorable line of action, into a position in which the balance may be easily upset. There are many such tactics in diplomatic compellence. Diplomacy represents the heart of cold warfare in its most basic form, communication between two or more potential adversaries.

Psychological warfare represents the conflict between minds, when opponents attempt to alter each others behavior by altering the psychological influences. Psychological warfare has a wide area of application and just as with all types of cold warfare it is prevalent throughout the warfare spectrum. In its pure form as cold warfare there are two distinct types, the war of intelligence and strategy waged between governments and the leadership of the opposing groups, and the war of influencing societies or constituent groups of people involved in conflict.

When directed against the leadership, whether the political government of the nation or the military command, it is a conflict of intelligence and counter intelligence, of learning all there is to know about the enemy and of keeping the enemy from learning about one's own secrets. It is an attempt at reducing and identifying to specifics the potential risks imposed in the balance of force, of complicating the apparent risks imposed on the enemy and finally to outguess the opponent's strategy with a better strategy that will insure security. This function of intelligence requires realistic assessment of the situation, knowing one's own and the enemies' potential strengths and weaknesses and of devising ways of attaining objectives. It requires continuous reevaluation and reassessment of the factors involved in a continuously changing and fluid situation. This is a war of strategy and counter strategy, of espionage and counter espionage, of reconnaissance and internal security, of satellite surveillance and spy planes, of camouflage and deception, of systems analysis and game theory.

When employed against society or the people who are being lead, psychological warfare becomes a war of subversion, of undermining or enforcing the grip on the minds of the people. It seeks to disunite and disenchant enemy forces and increase the morale and unity of one's own forces and people. The primary form is propaganda. Propaganda plays on the minds and ignorance of the people of a society to influence their attitudes and stimulate favorable responses. Mass media is an important vehicle of propaganda, with it a whole society of may be easily influenced. The media of propaganda is diverse. It may be the verbal dissemination of rumors or lies, by written leaflets or messages passed hand to hand, speeches and advertisements, campaigns utilizing social involvement, books , newspapers, magazines, televisions or radio. Some forms of media are slow to disseminate and take a longer time to affect the population, but can be of a relatively longer lasting and deeper influence. Other forms of media are quickly disseminated, are widespread and have only short-lived and immediately superficial effects. Some media aims only at particular subgroups within the society.

The fundamental power of propaganda is the ignorance of the target subjects. Propaganda deals with the dissemination of the truth, of its import, its distortion and its falsification. Propaganda that relies on dissemination and interpretation of documented or well supported truth is white propaganda. White propaganda is usually the most effective type in terms of long range results. In open societies the source of this propaganda is usually clearly identified, seeking to connect in the minds of its target group the origin with the truth. Closed societies often rely on the ignorance of its subjects to insure effective control which entails suppression of the truth. In these societies the white propagandists are often forces underground and the source of the truth is hidden, or identified with some out group effort. Some propagandists rely on the distortion of the truth, relying on the ignorance and gullibility of the target group. Originators of this gray propaganda often seek to distort the knowledge of their own identity or whereabouts or their cause. Once truth is distorted it becomes hard to control, the extent of distortion process. It is in the short term interests of some propagandists and usually against their long term advantage to deliberately falsify the truth in order to influence and mislead the peoples' behavior. This propaganda seeks to increase the ignorance and confuse the people. It is known as black propaganda. The truth usually proves hard to suppress and impossible to negate completely, so that the efforts of black propagandists often backfire and instead of misleading and fooling the people, accomplish the opposite of better informing them and inspiring them to learn the truth. The sources of black propaganda are more often than not hidden and often are falsified as to identity or cause.

The development of electronics in communications has given rise to a new form of psychological warfare known as electronic warfare. Electronics has enabled a quantum increase in the range and speed of communications. The use of radio frequencies to jam and to monitor enemies transmissions, of listening devices and electronic sensing devices, of computers, of improved radios, satellites and night vision devices, of guidance systems and electronically controlled and detonated weapons, has increased exponentially the scope of this type of warfare. Psychological warfare has given rise to the use of psychology and to improve morale and fighting capabilities, the use of behavior modification, brainwashing, hypnosis and sensory deprivation in the interrogation of prisoners.

Economic warfare represents the third type of cold warfare. All types of warfare may be considered as being in part a matter of economics. It may be summed up as the business of living and the business and cost of warring. It goes on day to day in the competition for survival, in business competition, etc. The arms industry is a very lucrative and fundamental international business. The effects of selling weapons and the required facilities for the employment of weapons is a parasitical protagonist for the evolution of militarism and a principal hindrance to the forward progress of peace. Economic warfare seeks to alter the behavior patterns of the target constituents by altering their material basis for survival. The power behind economic warfare rests on the fact the human valuation most often requires a material means of expression in society. The cost of any strategy for war must always be accounted for. This is the general field of logistics, providing the means for the tactical application of destructive force and the attainment of the strategic objective. This is one recognizable realm of the strategic application of economic warfare.

When economic warfare is applied against one's own society it can be in the form of taxation to acquire the material means of expression of force, or it may be employed by a society against its leadership as in strikes and boycotts. It may be applied against an enemies peoples in the form of economic sanctions, or by the setting up of tariffs to limit the enemies business market, or by setting up blockades to refuse export or import of important materials. It may be against neutrals in the form of military or economic aid to draw support, or the refusing of such aid to limit enemy support. Economic warfare has its range of application in other forms of warfare and deals with the manipulations of man's material rather than moral assets. Economic warfare has limits to its effective range of application. The profit of economic warfare may very easily suffer from diminishing returns once an optimum level of effectiveness is over past. Cutting of aid to neutrals or denying aid to enemies may backfire in the long term advantages by forcing the targets to become independent or to seek new and improved source of material requirements. There are always the hidden unaccountable factors, the opportunity costs of unused advantages and the open ended unforeseen advantages of the final balance sheer.

Political warfare represents the lowest frequency category of hot warfare. The criteria of political warfare which distinguishes it from cold warfare is that violence is a primary factor used to attain political control. Violent crime as opposed to nonviolent crime is a dorm of minimal political warfare. It may be argued that campaigning for election to gain political control is a form of political warfare, but elections are a proper and peaceful means of attaining political legitimacy. In this respect it is essentially a form of cold warfare. Political warfare is a war of political right, or the use of violence and warfare to establish the legitimacy or illegitimacy of political control. It includes all forms of intra-social violence, violence between incumbent political authorities and elements of its society. This is the type of warfare in which violence has no political boundaries. They are wars of internal disorder for political control and the assertion of rights.

Political warfare has been recently over popularized, a popularity that has given rise to the notion that it is uniquely modern. It is the oldest and most universal type of open warfare in history. The modern popularity of political warfare has given rise to a mystique about it--a mystique not lessened by the wide variety of terms used in its description, such as subversive warfare, insurgency, low intensity conflict, partisan warfare or revolutionary warfare. Each of these terms may describe a part of political warfare or may include it as a part of a larger range of aggression, but each alone is inadequate. Subversive warfare does not directly identify political warfare--being too general. The whole range of cold warfare is essentially subversive. Subversive denotes cover or hidden aggression as opposed to overt or open aggression, yet the essential factor of political warfare is open, well publicized violence, even if it means minimal violence. Insurgency implies an insurgence of force from outlying regions, de-emphasizing the fact that political warfare is generated from within the social structure and includes incumbency. Low intensity conflict is a relative term and is also too general in that it can include other types of warfare such as cold war or limited war of reprisals and small scale retaliations. Partisan warfare denotes partisanship to a cause, which could include the cause of the insurgent forces or the cause of the incumbent forces.

It over-emphasizes guerrilla warfare which is only one type of political warfare. Revolutionary warfare is associated with revolutions to the exclusion of civil war or crime, and is descriptive of the form of guerrilla warfare associated with the communist doctrine or insurgency. Revolutionary warfare has been confused as being the main theme of communist grand strategy, which has as its final objective world wide communist domination, instead of being realistically interpreted as a means of attaining the communist political objective, one of a whole set of communist strategies and tactics. Revolutionary warfare symbolizes people of a society seeking self determination. The communists have dominated the literary interpretation of this form of warfare. They have written the counterfeit bibles of revolutionary war, but the term is inadequate in that it does not describe other forms of political warfare.

Distinctions between types of warfare are subtle and should not be looked at too closely. Nonviolent crimes, hunger strikes or peace demonstrations are forms of cold warfare which are closely related to political warfare such as rioting and violent demonstrations. Cold war is essential to political warfare, just as political warfare becomes essential to limited general warfare. The primary distinction between political warfare and higher frequency forms of war is that while political warfare involves primarily intra-social violence, bringing political legitimacy into question, general warfare is supra-national form of violence, in which political sovereignty and legitimacy is implicitly recognized and not directly brought into question as the crux of the conflict. Civil wars often take on the semblance of general warfare and are often very total in effect, but even so in civil wars political legitimacy is still the crux of the conflict.

The underlying factor of the use of violence to affect political change gives rise to an essential symptom of the disease of militarism. This is the concept of terrorism. Terrorism has its primitive embryonic stages of development in the political warfare spectrum. Terrorism has its crudest and most primitive forms in its early stages of development, which in part, accounts for the fact that political wars are often the most fervent and bloody wars in history. Political warfare and its resultant terrorism rip and deteriorate the moral fabric of society, leading eventually to more complex forms of warfare and growth of a permanent condition of militarism.

In writing about revolutionary warfare, the Chinese communists recognize three distinct phases by which revolutionary warfare develops. The first stage is the period in which the revolutionaries being only a small group, seek to organize and influence the general populace in an effort against the incumbent government. This is the period in which ideals and objectives are spawned, hatred against the incumbent forces is fomented and the rudimentary structure of the revolutionary organization is developed. The second stage is the period of subversive and open violence during which the revolutionary organization becomes a guerrilla force seeking to deprive the incumbent forces of any decisive victory, while at the same time disrupting the normal functioning and safety of the society. The final phase is the one in which the guerrilla forces have grown in strength and the incumbent forces have weakened to the point in which the revolutionary organization can decisively defeat the incumbent forces in full fledged conventional style combat to assume political sovereignty.

This description of revolutionary war as occurring in three distinct phases describes well the distinct types of political warfare, underground terrorism, guerrilla warfare and civil war. History has not necessarily borne out the concept of a recognizable sequential pattern of progressive development of political warfare. Political warfare may occur spontaneously in the form of any of the three phases, and it may disappear just as quickly as it occurs. It can start in a very developed state of civil war and regress, skipping the intermediate stage of guerrilla warfare, becoming a form of underground warfare. A guerrilla organization may suffer such setbacks as to be forced underground, or it may develop into a conventionalized force fighting a civil war. An underground organization of one man may precipitate a civil war of significant proportions. In the contextual framework of the progressive development of political warfare it is difficult to classify such ambiguities as a coup involving the assassination of a dictator and the succession to power of his assassin. The development between stages of conflict may be subtle and unidentifiable, often only relative to the point of view of the observer. The three distinct types of political warfare must only be interpreted as distinct forms of war in the broadest sense possible. A revolutionary war is essentially a war aimed at ousting an incumbent government. It represents more the objective than the type of warfare. An underground organization which thrives only on crime and does not seek expansion is not revolutionary in character. It may even resist attempts at change in government. A civil war may just be aimed at the recognition of rights or secession and not a complete overthrow of the incumbent government.

Underground terrorism consists of violence which occurs at such low and sporadic levels that it is uncontrollable by the incumbent forces. The asymmetry in the balance of forces between underground organizations and the incumbent government is so overwhelmingly in favor of the incumbent forces that the underground violent actions are usually illegitimate by anyone but their own standards. This lack of organized popular support and of the underground's self-proclaimed justice and legitimacy, due to its relatively diminutive size in proportion to the whole host society, forces the underground organization to assume the cloak of deception, a front symbolizing sewer rats to which the night time, the city, the hideout, the disguises and the clandestine secrecy are vital. The task of controlling underground terrorism falls mainly to the responsibility of the domestic police forces. Certain tactics and types of terrorism are particularly amenable to underground warfare, including a heavy reliance on cold war techniques, assassination of key officials of critical governmental representatives, sabotage of important facilities, industries and lines of communication.

Underground organizations consist of extremist groups preaching revolution, the philosophy of the bomb, the theory of the dagger, and the use of terror to accomplish its publicized aims. The weapons of the terrorists are the traditional knife, pistol, bomb, and poison. The tactics are prison escapes, hostages, blackmail, bank robbery for funding, skyjacking, indiscriminate terror bombing, assassination and directional small scale violence. If they are too large they become ineffective. They usually do not seek to fight an open battle. Terrorism that is relatively indiscriminant and of far reaching idealist goals usually is the most ineffective. Terrorist groups are most successful if their objectives are limited, discriminating and short range, or if their aim is secession or nationalization, with popular support or if they are supported by outside groups. Terrorists have usually been ineffective in totalitarianism systems. They are more effective in lenient democracies.

Terrorism occurs in democratic or ineffective authoritarian governments. It increases with increased friction and coercion until counter terrorism from above eradicates it. Terrorism is the product of terrorist and counter terrorist efforts, of checks and pressure release valves. Terrorism has consisted predominantly of youths, populist and nationals with confused ideology and a need to speak out against the anonymity of the state. Such groups attract their criminal elements. Yet terrorists have very little in common. It is usually initiated as an expression of dissatisfaction of the young. Terrorist groups are usually associated with left wing radicals, of the anarchist, communist and socialist orders. These have been the most prolific advertisers of their causes, but right wing terrorist organizations have been just as active, as well as other terrorist groups not directly affiliated to politics such as worker industrial terrorists, Mafia, or those of nationalist organization causes. The extremism is the resort to violence as a last resort after sensing the incapacity to influence change peacefully. Extremism is as varied as are subgroups in a society. Terrorist success has usually been self defeating in the long run. There is a tendency for the terrorist organization to become institutionalized, to solidify into a group whose means of violence have become its end.

At no time do underground forces seek direct confrontation with government forces, relying almost totally on surprise and stealth. The threat of death or harm to persons to influence people into acts of extortion or blackmail, random terrorism such as terror bombing and indiscriminant shooting often backfires. It relies on the threat of death to force a group of people into submission, underestimating the peoples often overly reactive response, being liable to unite and crystallize active reaction to the underground movement, being recognizes as a common social enemy rather than the vanguard of the peoples cause. To be successful an underground organization must maintain at least a natural relationship with the host society, in which the society is impassively apathetic to the cause, if not actively or passively in support of it. Random terrorism often undermines this peaceful and mutually symbiotic relationship.

Also included in this type of warfare are the attempts of the incumbent government forces to subdue underground organizations. These efforts fall mainly to the responsibility of police and detective organizations. First these organizations rely on the deterrent vale of the laws, the threat of punishment for breaking the law, which can consist of fines, confinement or even death penalty. The deterrence has already failed for the underground organization but the law seeks to keep the outbreak of violence to a minimal level, deterring passive citizens from becoming active collaborators. It must maintain the credibility of the deterrence by swiftly and justly punishing persons caught breaking the law, publicizing the outcomes. If the credibility of the law cannot be maintained, if punishment is slow or not forthcoming or if it is unjust in measure to the crime, underground warfare can erupt quite swiftly in rioting, panic, looting, gang warfare, vigilantism and oxbow justice, eventuating in social revolution.

Police forces, being quite small in relation to the population must cover a wide area. To accomplish this task it must maintain an adequate alarm system or trip wire network which, when a crime occurs, activates the alarm , bringing rapid response from an overwhelming amount of force. The police seek to enlist the active support of the citizens, with the use of rewards or a general appeal to morality and an assurance of police protection. Internal security maintains passive resistance to crime to enhance deterrence by the maintenance of warning signs, of alarm systems, locks and private fences, safeguards against crime and the increased use of lighting to deprive the criminal the cover of darkness. Then the police seek to maintain an integrated network of alarm systems of key security areas. Finally they maintain patrols, one or two man teams on foot, walking the beat, or in squad cars or helicopters with an integrated communication system, such as walkie-talkies, whistles and radios. Once the alarm system has been tripped an adequate reserve force must be maintained to allow quick reaction to the signal. Such reaction forces may be the rapid concentration of members on patrol or the rapid issuance of a centralized force such as on call patrol members or specialized teams such as the S.W.A.T. teams. Thirdly, police organizations attempt to infiltrate the underground organization with undercover agents or with the setting of baited traps, by active questioning of suspects and granted pardon or protection to members of the organization who defect and turn against their group. Once crime gets so out of hand as to be uncontrollable by local police systems, other police forces or larger more militarized forces may be called in to suppress the violence, with stricter laws such as martial law.

Guerrilla warfare represents the intermediate range of conflict between underground terrorists and civil war. The critical point at which an underground organization becomes a guerrilla unit and at which the guerrilla war becomes a civil war is often indistinguishable, the transition being so subtle as to be impossible to recognize. Guerrilla warfare is transitional, rarely becoming so protracted as to become static and recognizable on a map in a permanent pattern, always enlarging into civil war proportions or being forced into an underground position. As an intermediate phase, guerrilla warfare has several distinctions. The first factor is while that an underground organization relies on neutral relationship with its society, a guerrilla organization, to be successful must receive at best active popular support and at least a passive form of moral support from its public relations. The region in which this relationship of active support is attained forms the base of operations for the guerrilla force, a guerrilla base of operations. A cooperative indigenous population is one of the conditions of modern guerrilla warfare. Such a base of operations gains a relative symmetry of force over the local police organization and offers a secure area from which the guerrilla organization can maintain a adequate source of supply and seek to extend its area of influence and grow in strength. Asymmetry between the guerrilla forces and the incumbent government forces still exists but it is not so great that the guerrilla forces cannot maintain security in its base of operations, by openly defeating local police forces and keeping external government forces at bay, by seeking tactical victory in small battles, but rarely decisively defeating the incumbent forces. The second distinguishing factor is that of the transition itself, while an underground organization may not seek expansion, maintaining the relative security of small numbers, and a civil war may from start to finish resemble general unlimited war between two military forces, a guerrilla force will eventually seek to expand and must do so in order to be successful or it will often suffer set backs in which it must go underground…any static unchanged state or position will only be temporary. A guerrilla base serves as a necessary springboard for expansion and growth into civil war and offers a relatively secure area in which a guerrilla organization can be forced underground. A whole guerrilla army may be able to go underground during disadvantageous times, assuming peaceful pre-occupations, springing back into warfare in advantageous situations. The asymmetry of forces between the incumbents and the insurgents while still evident, is not so overwhelming as to not allow the insurgents occasionally to defeat incumbent forces in an open show of arms.

The structural organization of a guerrilla army, its size and strength, the extent of the guerrilla base and the tactics used depend on the type of terrain in which the war is being conducted. In remote areas, of sparse population and little infra-structural development, such as mountains or dense forests, areas where the mobility by foot exceeds that of the vehicle, where aircraft are relatively ineffective, guerrilla armies can hide and build up its guerrilla base to immense proportions and operate in columns of hundreds or thousands of men, train its uniformed soldiers and often seek to engage the enemy in positional defensive battles. Cities, densely populated and well developed regions, are the least conducive to guerrilla warfare. These are regions in which the superior firepower of the government forces may be quickly maximized by the effective utilization of lines of communication. Guerrilla armies are usually forced to assume the characteristics of an underground organization, to operate in small clandestine groups of less than a hundred men, always staying mobile and hidden. They seek to ambush small enemy units such as truck convoys or small installations, capturing weapons and ammunition, spreading their cause, recruiting other guerrillas. Battles flare up and die out quickly. guerrillas after attaining initial success from surprise, desist from further battle and flee from the reaction of stronger government forces. A guerrilla army cannot afford to leave anything behind to chance, planning in detail attacks and routes for escape and travel. A guerrilla army must always be on its guard, nor can it afford to waste anything, often relying on crude homemade weapons and equipment or on re-supply from captured enemy resources. The asymmetry of forces in guerrilla warfare is made up for by surprise and stealth, and superior foot mobility over road bond government forces by being lightly equipped and by staying in more rugged regions.

Guerrilla warfare has been the focus of much recent popular attention. It has been the major subject matter of the books written by communist revolutionaries. The communists have written the bible of guerrilla warfare or at least its new testament. This has lead to a popular misconception of guerrilla warfare as being the controversial new ground strategy of world communist domination. Guerrilla warfare is probably the oldest type of armed open warfare known to man. Its origins may be traced back to the tactics of prehistoric tribes that were essentially nomadic and relied heavily on hunting techniques of ensnarement, ambush and stalking. The name guerrilla comes from the guerrilla warfare of the 1700's and 1800's which so effectively contributed to Napoleon's defeat in the conquest of Spain. Nothing very new has been written of guerrilla warfare, no matter how revolutionary communist theory purports it to be.

Guerrilla warfare is not confined to the political warfare spectrum, but has often occurred in international general warfare, guerrilla forces consolidating and operating behind enemy front to upset the lines of communications vital to the enemy forces, forcing the diversion of much needed men and equipment from the front to rear areas for purposes of guard and control. When fast moving armored columns of conventional armies penetrate or roll back an enemy front, in the wake are often left well equipped pockets of resistance and a vacuum of leadership over uncontrollable refugees and hostile domestic citizens which turns into a potential guerrilla war. The invading armies are forced to establish a military government extraneous to the logistic requirements of the main forces. This government often fails to satisfy the needs of the local indigenous people, preconditions to the outbreak of political warfare. In attempting to control this outbreak the military governments often enforce harsh punitive and retaliatory measures which often backfires instead of contributing to the control of the population, consolidating the people against the government, bringing many would be neutrals over to the side of active resistance. Guerrilla bases often are organized behind relatively secure sanctuary of international borders in enemy or neutral nations. The guerrilla bases being relatively secure from attack allow the guerrillas to build up their forces and to infiltrate across the border to fight with a relative degrees of freedom and symmetry of forces. Outside aid from allies to the guerrilla organization to help it achieve parity is another condition of modern guerrilla warfare. The efficacy of guerrilla type raids on the enemies' rear lines of communications has given rise to nations actively supplying foreign guerrilla movements and to organize elitist groups who are injected behind the enemies frontlines to conduct guerrilla type raids on the vulnerable rear areas.

The recent focus of attention on guerrilla warfare has also brought increased attention to counterinsurgency warfare, which is the type of war the incumbent forces wage against the insurgent guerrilla forces. Conventional armed forces often meet with extreme difficulty in defending a region from guerrilla activity. They are more heavily equipped, making them less foot mobile. They are road bond, often making them easy prey for ambush. Extraneous forces face extreme difficulty in dealing with indigenous guerrillas, suffering from many cultural and language differences from the natives, which the indigenous guerrillas do not suffer. Conventional forces must wear distinctive uniforms which the irregular guerrilla forces do not often do. Guerrilla forces can easily blend into the native background. The organizational structure of the incumbent forces are often too inflexible to meet the needs of counterinsurgency warfare, making them untimely, over patterned and ungainfully responsive. The key of effective guerrilla organization is its very flexibility, the lack of any distinct pattern of action or behavior and extreme adjustment to the situation. Incumbent forces from the outset are cast into a defensive role, constrained to defending vital lines of communication and thus relinquishing the option for initiative and fore planning. Guerrilla organizations rely on surprise, and initiative in offensive attacks for its effectiveness. Government forces in order to wage effective counterinsurgency warfare must often maintain force rations as high as 20 to 1.

Several recognizable patterns are followed in counterinsurgency warfare, without which it is ineffective in stemming the guerrilla tide. Attempts are made to localize guerrilla organization, to entrap its personnel and confine their mobility. Such efforts include the construction of defensive barricades, walls and fence-lines, or of minefields or barriers which intersect and divide a region. These barriers must be impassable to the guerrilla, and when crossed set up a signal as to the immediate location of the guerrillas. Once the guerrilla forces are localized government forces respond in overwhelming numbers with an effort to surround and capture the guerrillas. Often a cordon or sweep through the area is made, pushing the guerrillas back to the barricaded force through which the guerrillas cannot escape. In such a position the government forces superiority of firepower may be brought to bear to effectively destroy the guerrillas. Armored cars, horse cavalry, bicycles, helicopters have played a very important role in such reactionary forces. The incumbent forces also seek to keep the guerrillas forces off balance by bringing the war offensively to the guerrillas on their own terms. This effort is made by highly mobile columns which attempt with ambush and night assaults to catch the guerrillas off guard and to wear them down. For such columns to become effective often requires an organizational restructuring and the creation of new elite forces. To become effective these forces must meet the guerrillas on their own terms, often taking on a resemblance of organization and tactics to the guerrillas--learning to live and think like the guerrillas, becoming a guerrilla army itself. These forces can become more effective than the guerrilla forces in their own type of warfare, being capable of outdoing them in ambushes and baiting them into traps. The third most effective means of counterinsurgency warfare is by isolating and amputating the guerrilla forces from their guerrilla base. The government forces attack the guerrilla lines of communication, destroying their supplies at the source. Government forces attempt to infiltrate and expose the guerrillas underground organization and to disaffect the public from the guerrillas cause and to win them over to effective cooperation. Finally the forces eliminate the source of the problem by effective compromise and social reforms addressed by the causes of the guerrilla forces. Often the incumbent forces fail to in this final ingredient for effective counterinsurgency war, often utilizing the same tactics of terrorism as do the guerrilla. Reprisals against civilians and noncombatants held responsible for actions by guerrillas backfire by augmenting and solidifying the support of the guerrillas. Many would be neutral citizens, once their homes are destroyed and their families lost to the incumbent government have no recourse but to affiliate with the guerrillas cause.

Guerrilla warfare whatever its strategic advantages and short range success, has several side effects which in the long run often prove fatal or disadvantageous to social cohesion. A protracted guerrilla war inures the native population to the hardships of this type of warfare and provides the basis and cause of continued conflict. Guerrilla warfare undermines the political discipline and social cohesiveness required of a peaceful society. Weapons and tactics often become widely dispersed and disseminated throughout a region and as with all forms of militarism, once deployed, it is difficult to eradicate. In a protracted guerrilla conflict the social fabric is slowly corroded until it is destroyed. This makes for difficulties for the newly established government. Old social and political contracts are destroyed and replaced by new alliances, creating new animosities and reasons for vengeance which replace the old.

At what point does a political war, beginning as a clandestine underground conflict, progressing into wide scale guerrilla war, become a civil war? Some guerrilla wars are often indistinguishable from civil wars, in which the insurgent forces seek to obtain victory in open positional battles. But it is at the crucial point in which the guerrilla forces are capable of openly challenging the incumbent government forces in the field of battle, that a small guerrilla war transforms into a civil war. In a guerrilla war there is no front, only a rear. In a civil war there is a front. The original asymmetry of forces between the incumbent forces and the insurgents transforms into a relatively symmetrical balance of forces by which the guerrilla forces may present a credible threat to the existence of the incumbent government. In this perspective that civil war is a positional war with a front, civil warfare is indistinguishable from general international warfare. The distinction is that with civil war the issues of political legitimacy is still the central crux of the war, while with general war the political issues and legitimacy may be unrecognized, but is nevertheless implicitly understood in the terms of war. Indeed in civil war the political issue becomes all important, superseding all other issues. More so than in any other type of political warfare. More than any other type of political warfare it disrupts the mundane normal functioning of the host society and forces the civilian population to take sides. A guerrilla war does not have to evolve into civil war once it becomes positional, if it is a guerrilla war against a foreign military government, or part of the major efforts of general war, the political legitimacy of the insurgent forces is already established or unquestioned. Nor does a civil war necessarily evolve from a guerrilla war, but can result spontaneously from deep political, military, social and cultural splits or differences which cannot be mended by peaceful arbitration and which can instantaneously resemble an all out total war. The distinguishing characteristic of civil warfare is that it involves often the most deep seated emotions and most fervent radicalism and worst bloodletting in its execution. It splits families, brothers kill each other. It involves whole nation, not just their vanguard and in this sense is often more total in its destruction than international war. Civil war is so brutal and so internally disruptive because it often occurs between people who are culturally very similar--between brothers--who are prone to act alike and to fight along the same subconsciously held terms. It involves a very deep seated ideological emotionality as the primary motivational influence.

Political warfare in its execution often results in a void of unity, order and leadership. Often this void may be filled by intrinsically worse political organization and leadership than which caused the warfare in the first place, with the new society coming out from war behind rather than ahead, being more disadvantaged than before. Then the stage for future political warfare is set.

"Arms and Influence" by Thomas C. Schelling, 1966. Yale Univ. Press

"Guerrilla Warfare: Analysis and Projections" by N.I. Klonis 1972. Robert Spell & Sons

Military Dimensions