Counterinsurgency

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A wall of the Strategic Hamlet program in the Vietnam War, which was based on the theories of Sir Robert Thompson

Under counterinsurgency (or English counterinsurgency - COIN ) comprises various tactics and strategies to combat armed uprisings .

The fight against insurgents by the regular military is a separate branch of military theory. Counterinsurgency is one of the more extensive areas of asymmetrical warfare . Many armies have special forces that specialize in this type of combat. Because the measures are usually aimed at averting a danger from parts of the own population or that of an occupied territory, the tasks of the police, domestic intelligence services and the military are often mixed up . Some counterinsurgency concepts rely on methods that violate human rights, such as the French doctrine . In some cases, such measures also resulted in so-called dirty wars against all types of resistance or purely political opponents of the respective government.

History of Counterinsurgency Theory

Charles William Gwynn and Imperial Policing

Charles William Gwynn published his work Imperial Policing in 1934 , which had an official character, in which he examined various uprisings against British colonial rule from 1919.

  1. The primacy of civil over military measures.
  2. The use of minimal force.
  3. The need for decisive and coordinated action in order not to lose control of the political situation.
  4. The need to coordinate political and military action.

The concept of using air forces to save personnel against primitively armed insurgents was also a result of the First World War , in which Great Britain suffered more losses with a good 870,000 dead than in any war before or after. Rebellions in the colonies should be put down as quickly and effectively as possible, as Gwynn recognized that the (independence) propaganda of insurgents was usually more effective than their own.

Basil Liddell Hart

Another pioneer in counterinsurgency strategy was Basil Liddell Hart , who in the second edition of his book Strategy: The Indirect Approach (1954?) Gives a popular insurgency movement a strategic advantage over foreign invaders.

French doctrine

One of the first counterinsurgency strategists was David Galula , who in the 1960s processed his experiences in the Algerian war in various works . For Roger Trinquier , too , the Algerian war was an essential source of experience for his book La guerre moderne , which had a decisive influence on the “French doctrine”.

Robert Grainger Ker Thompson

Also important to counterinsurgency theory was Robert Grainger Ker Thompson . He was an advisor to the South Vietnamese and American governments in the Vietnam War and published the book Defeating Communist Insurgency in 1966 .

FM 3-24 Counterinsurgency

U.S. Marines on Patrol (February 2010)

In 2006, American Generals David H. Petraeus and James F. Amos published a counterinsurgency manual entitled FM 3-24 Counterinsurgency , which was successfully used in the occupation of Iraq from early 2007 . Nonetheless, the US counterinsurgency in Iraq cannot be said to have been successful, as an uprising began as a result of the American troop withdrawal, which culminated with the rise of the so-called Islamic State .

practice

Counterinsurgency is and was a central element in the following wars and conflicts (not completely):

Joseph McCarty, ca.1930

Controversy

There are numerous examples that in politically unstable countries, military dictatorships or authoritarian-led states, the existence of a relatively small radical or armed resistance group serves as a pretext for those in power to use counterinsurgency measures against all, including the peaceful opposition. Different techniques of asymmetrical warfare can be used here. One of the best-known examples of such an abusive use of a counterinsurgency strategy is the time of the Argentine military dictatorship , during which around 30,000 people disappeared without a trace , mostly left and liberal opposition members. The term dirty war has established itself as a term for such an approach .

There are also examples in which oligarchs or plutocratic power elites misused the state organs they controlled in order to initiate or support an insurrection themselves through covert operations under false flags , in order to obtain a pretext for violent intervention against any political opponent.

See also

literature

  • John Arquilla : Insurgents, raiders, and bandits. How masters of irregular warfare have shaped our world , Ivan R. Dee, Chicago 2011, ISBN 978-1-56663-832-6 .
  • Ian W. Beckett / John Pimlott (Eds.): Counterinsurgency. Lessons from History , Barnsley / South Yorkshire 2011 (reprint of the first edition from 1985 with a new foreword), ISBN 978-1-84884-396-7 .
  • Jeremy Black: Insurgency and counterinsurgency. A global history . Rowman & Littlefield, Lanham, MD et al. a. 2016, ISBN 978-1-4422-5631-6 , ISBN 978-1-4422-5632-3 , ISBN 978-1-4422-5633-0
  • Michael McClintock: Instruments of statecraft. US guerrilla warfare, counterinsurgency, and counter-terrorism, 1940–1990 , New York (Pantheon Books) 1992, ISBN 0-394-55945-2 .
  • Peter Lieb : Guerre Révolutionnaire: The French theory of counterinsurgency in Algeria 1954–1962 , in: Tanja Bührer / Christian Stachelbeck / Dierk Walter (eds.): Imperial wars from 1500 to today. Structures, actors, learning processes , Paderborn etc. a. 2011, ISBN 978-3-506-77337-1 , pp. 383-400.
  • Andrew James Birtle: US Army counterinsurgency and contingency operations doctrine, 1942–1976 , Washington, DC (Center of Military History, United States Army) 2006, ISBN 978-0-16-072960-7 .
  • Andrew James Birtle: US Army counterinsurgency and contingency operations doctrine, 1860–1941 , Washington, DC (Center of Military History, United States Army) 1998.
  • Marcel Bohnert : COIN at the base: To implement the concept in a combat company of the Kunduz Task Force . In: Robin Schroeder & Stefan Hansen (eds.): Stabilization missions as a national task. Nomos, Baden-Baden 2015, ISBN 978-3-8329-3351-7 .
  • Richard Duncan Downie: Learning from Conflict: The US Military in Vietnam, El Salvador, and the Drug War. Praeger, Westport, CT 1998, ISBN 0-275-96010-2 .
  • Stefan Goertz: The armed forces of democratic states in the small wars of the 21st century. Analysis of the doctrinal and organizational structure suitability of the US armed forces for the counterinsurgency tasks of small wars. wvb Wiss. Verlag, Berlin 2012 (also dissertation from the University of the Federal Armed Forces Munich 2011), ISBN 978-3-86573-660-4 .
  • Todd Greentree: Crossroads of intervention. Insurgency and counterinsurgency lessons from Central America. Naval Institute Press, Annapolis, MD 2008, ISBN 978-1-59114-343-7 .
  • William J. Pomeroy: Guerrilla and counter-guerrilla warfare. Liberation and suppression in the present period. Boarding school Publ., New York, NY 1964.
  • Michael D. Gambone: Small wars. Low-intensity threats and the American response since Vietnam. University of Tennessee Press, Knoxville, TN 2012, ISBN 978-1-57233-914-9 .
  • Beatrice Heuser : rebels, partisans, guerrillas. Asymmetric wars from ancient times to today. Schöningh, Paderborn u. a. 2013, ISBN 978-3-506-77605-1 .
  • Beatrice Heuser (Ed.): Small wars and insurgencies in theory and practice, 1500-1850. London / New York 2016, ISBN 978-1-138-94167-0 .
  • Austin Long: The soul of armies. Counterinsurgency doctrine and military culture in the US and UK. Cornell University Press, Ithaca 2016, ISBN 978-0-8014-5379-3 . ISBN 978-1-5017-0319-5 .
  • Nicholas Warndorf: Unconventional Warfare in the Ottoman Empire - The Armenian Revolt and the Turkish Counterinsurgency. Manzara Verlag, Offenbach am Main 2017, ISBN 978-3-939795-75-9 .
  • Edward J. Erickson: Ottomans and Armenians: A Study in Counterinsurgency. Palgrave Macmillan, New York, ISBN 978-1-349-47260-4 .
  • Edward J Erickson: A Global History of Relocation in Counterinsurgency Warfare. Bloomsbury Academic, London 2019, ISBN 978-1-350-06258-0 .

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ FM 3-24 Counterinsurgency. (PDF; 13.2 MB) December 2010, accessed on October 25, 2010 .
  2. ↑ Sabine Siebold, rtr: Before the withdrawal comes the fight. In: Frankfurter Rundschau . October 24, 2010. Retrieved October 25, 2010 .