Synopsis:
Guerrilla warfare defines the vital center of so-called ‘war amongst the people,’ and is capable of engaging both revolutionary war as well as interstate industrial war. Contrary to Westphalian modes of warfare, war amongst the people may operate within a gray zone of conflict – which makes victory, or defeat, less concrete. Likewise, the gray zone effect may influence trinitarian warfare by making conflict timetables unusable.
Excerpts:
“The goals of the operations change. The clearly defined goals of the industrial wars are replaced by uncertain, malleable goals that are often tailored to deal with societies below the level of the state.
“A very important difference between the two paradigms is that military force is not a final instrument of statecraft, employed to settle vital political disagreements, but rather an instrument to create the conditions necessary to reach a strategic result.
“But Lind’s theory sets a difficult hurdle to clear: generational change takes place when a dialectical qualitative change occurs. However, these happen only very rarely, when the synergistic effects of less significant qualitative and quantitative changes reach a tipping point.
“According to Mao’s theory of multiphased guerilla war, thorough indoctrination and mobilization of the people must precede the first combat operations. In the initial, guerilla phase of the war, the enemy (the government) has overwhelming superiority. The nonstate belligerent hides among the people.
“Castro accepted Mao’s twin conditions of victory (obtaining broad popular support and eventually turning the guerrilla bands into regular formations). But he did not consider indoctrination and political mobilization of the people and winning their support an essential precondition of beginning military operations.
*All excerpts have been taken from Winning Wars Amongst the People: Case Studies in Asymmetric Conflict, University of Nebraska Press.
