It's a matter of definition
Ryan--
All civil wars are insurgencies if by insurgency we mean an effort to overturn a govt and replace it with another by armed means. Not all insurgenies are civil wars. If the govt is some external power or a clearly defined different group. Thus, the ANC insurgency against the RSA was not a civil war because both Afrikaners and Africans defined themselves as different peoples. Of course, the outcome was to redefine all S Africans as one people. And, I left off the Anglo S. Africans. so, perhaps, it was a civi war after all.:confused:
Cheers
JohnT
While I have a minor quible with Rex
over Somalia - kinda like his quible with me over RSA (and I can see his point in both cases), the real issue as Wilf succinctly put it and JMM reiterated in his lawerese ;), why do you want to differentiate? what is your purpose? If it is purely academic, then you might need an operational definition which can pretty much be what you want it to be (so long as it doesn't do too much violence to the general understanding of the term a la Webster),:eek:
Cheers
JohnT
Personal Interest Explained
Since there seems to be some issue with why I am looking for a distinction between insurgency and civil war, please allow me to illuminate.
1. I find the lack of coherent difference between the use of terms problematic when assessing conflict.
2. Academic literature seems to intermix the terms, some write very clearly about insurgency separate and distinct from civil wars. Others ignorantly or intentionally intermix terms in both research and literature which can then be used by practitioners of war while not understanding the logic behind the data.
3. I am currently writing a monograph on the distinctions and thought it might be possible to reach a larger audience in order to create discourse as to the meaning of the words insurgency and civil wars.
If the concensus is that there is no difference, fine so be it. I accept that. However, I would still be interested in the discussion which revolves around the use of the words in both strategy and policy.
I hope this helps to clarify why I think there might some utility in identifying any difference. Whether it is political or military. I still find it instructive to debate the meaning of the words.:cool:
Gotta agree (and disagree) with Wilf
Quote:
Originally Posted by
William F. Owen
OK. I'd really like to see you put some flesh on the bones here.
From a practitioners point of view, calling it a Civil War or an insurgency is actually completely superfluous, unless it's blindingly obvious, which it is. Warfare is pretty much warfare. War is War.
If a distinction does not help you deal with a problem more effectively, it probably lends more confusion than help. IW, 4GW, Asymmetric Warfare, etc spring to mind. New names that don't help me solve the problems they describe.
To say that the historic (and recent) distinctions for using the term insurgency or civil war to describe a conflict are a bit loose is generous. I haven't seen a clear distinction and have never seen much rhyme nor reason to how these things have been sorted.
Now, where I disagree with Wilf is that conflict between a state and its own populace is the same as conflict between two states. I understand where he's coming from, and we agree to disagree on this matter. My position is that when a state employs its military against its own populace in COIN that it may suppress the conflict for a time, but makes the underlying insurgency worse, and merely pushing the problem down the road a bit.
That said, if a serious distinction was made between a civil war and an insurgency that divides it into problems with two distinctly different solutions, then there is some value. I don't think agonizing over strategic-operational-tactical levels of conflict applies or his helpful though, so I wouldn't go down that path. If it is insurgency at a tactical level it is insurgency at all levels. Same for Civil War.
So one distinction that I have been playing with lately is that insurgency is revolutionary, an informal or illegally formed movement within a state to either change the current organic government; separatist, break some piece off from a state to form a new state; or Resistance, to overthrow some occupying/colonial force and its puppets. In all these cases I do not believe the COIN force is best served by treating the conflict as "warfare", but rather as a civil emergency that requires addressing the causal concerns rooted in the perceptions of their Legitimacy, the Injustice and Disrespect perceived by the populace, and ensuring that the populace has trusted legal means available to them to address these concerns. There will be fighting, after all, by definition the insurgent is acting outside the law and opens himself to full fury of the state, but resolution will come from addressing the root causes.
A Civil War distinction makes sense if rebel segment of the state has acted within the con struts of the law to separate themselves legally, form a new state, and are then fighting to secure that end. This is what happened in the American Civil War. A new nation was formed legally, that legality was challenged by the Union, and the two state waged a war to settle the matter. Perfectly logical to treat such an event as warfare. However, once one of those states is defeated in war, it may then devolve into an insurgency based on some mix of the categories above.
So based on this definition, there was no civil war in Iraq (unless the Kurds decide to make a full break as a state), and there is no civil war in Afghanistan. Both are insurgencies and are best resolved by addressing them as a whole as civil emergencies which require a main effort of addressing the failures of governance as perceived by their respective populaces; and a supporting effort of justly applying the rule of law to those who bring violence to the state and the populace to achieve their ends.
Sounds like a good AWC answer.
Quote:
Originally Posted by
SteveMetz
This seems to have been pretty well covered, but insurgency is a strategy that is sometimes used in civil wars. A civil war is simply an armed conflict where the antagonists are exclusively or primarily citizens of the same state.
But if this is the official answer, I think it is worthy of a deeper look.
If insurgency is merely a strategy employed by a civil war opponent to the state it really doesn't offer much to the counterinsurgent in terms of helping him understand and resolve the threat. Simply defeat the civil war opponent and the insurgency will go away.
But that's not how it works. Every time that tact is taken (and that is often), the insurgency simply flares back up. Perhaps with a new name, new leadership, new ideology, often even a different segment of the society; but always to counter the same failed system of governance that gave rise to the last flare up.
I think we do better when we look at insurgency as a set of conditions that may well manifest in several forms: a miserable populace that does not dare act out; a populace that does act out - either choosing non-violent (subversion) or violent (insurgency) means. The key to effective COIN is to address the conditions and not merely set out to defeat those who dare to respond to the conditions.
All sorts of different (valid) ways to look at this
Let me take just one very narrow topic - how have insurgencies and civil wars been treated under domestic law and international law over the last 200 years ?
To answer that, I'd have to put together a list of armed conflicts (which is the key I Law term) that may be called a lot of different names - insurgencies, civil wars, insurrections, rebellions, resistence to occupiers, national liberation wars, etc.
In short, I look at a bunch of "Small Wars" in Callwell's jargon (or "Shadow Wars" in Asprey's jargon) and end up with some "operational definitions" as brother Fishel terms them - definitions not carved in stone but set up for working purposes.
Then I'd look at how each of those armed conflicts was treated legally, domestically (at least two views there - e.g., the War of Southern Rebellion vs the War of Northern Aggression) and internationally (many possible views).
That would be quite a study - one I don't plan on starting and finishing this month. :)
And - it would be largely immaterial to all except a small group of Laws of War folks.
Regards
Mike
Mike, you've probably nailed the majority position
Quote:
Originally Posted by
MikeF
Here's what I was taught- the independent variable is the guerrila's capacity to conduct violence.
So,
An insurgency can be labeled a civil war once the guerrila builds the same capacity to conduct violence (military mass) that the host nation possesses.
Applied loosely, this does not have to mean the the guerrila possesses the same amount of tanks as the host nation. That's why one could justify Iraq moved into a civil war between late 2005 and early 2006.
I don't like it though, don't see the difference as being one of scale or capacity, but rather one of nature. How is the nature of insurgency unique from that of civil war?
I see civil war as being much more like any other state on state war, except that in this case one state decided to form into two states and then wage state on state war. So for me civil war is war. It only denotes that both sides were a single state before it started and are fighting over the split.
Insurgency need never split the state. As I (frequently, Ken reminds me :)) state, I see insurgency as a unique set of causal conditions rooted in certain fundamental failures on the part of the government as perceived by their populace. As Marc indicates, this can then manifest itself in several forms, some non-violent, some violent, some legal, some illegal. The causal roots are the same for this family of insurgency-based conflict. Regardless of how it manifests, addressing the causal roots must be the focus/main effort of the COIN effort. If it goes violent you have "classic insurgency"; if it goes illegal, but non-violent, you have "classic subversion; if it stays legal but stays non-violent you have politics. You may get each sequentially, or at the same time, or in a crazy mix over years and years. So long as the causal roots remain unaddressed it is the gift that keeps giving.
Rex, not projecting, just searching for a usable distinction
Quote:
Originally Posted by
Rex Brynen
Perhaps you're projecting too much from the US case? Most civil wars (English, Russian, Lebanese, Liberian, etc) aren't primarily about political separation, they're about control.
I Recognize that "civil war" is a term used to describe all kinds of conflicts; most of which I would argue really weren't civil wars at all but rather were more insurgencies. But with no firm definitions to work with, why argue? So not projecting the US verson, but merely seeing it as distinct from insurgency, so perhaps a workable model for a definition of Civil War that is also distinct from insurgency.
Size is not a good distinction, and as the Maoist model suggests an insurgency can grow until it becomes very conventional in nature, so type of warfare being waged is not a good distinction either. I think you have to look at the causal roots to find viable distinctions; and this is also where you shape viable COAs for dealing with a conflict as well.
The historically sloppy use of the term "civil war" by historians really clouds development of a workable definition that makes it distinct from insurgency in a meaningful, helpful way.
let's look at the definitions
Quote:
ryanmleigh
Based on a lot of the recent discussion is there a need to distinguish between the political and military aspects of conflict. Could it be as simple as saying that civil war is primarily a military conflict with political action secondary while an insurgency is primarily a political conflict with military action secondary?
Probably far to simplistic, but still trying to wrap my head around the differences.
Some definitions from Wikipedia that have the advantage to be the ones from ICRC and great scholar:
Civil war:
James Fearon, a scholar of civil wars at Stanford University, defines a civil war as "a violent conflict within a country fought by organized groups that aim to take power at the center or in a region, or to change government policies".Ann Hironaka further specifies that one side of a civil war is the state. The intensity at which a civil disturbance becomes a civil war is contested by academics. Some political scientists define a civil war as having more than 1000 casualties, while others further specify that at least 100 must come from each side. The Correlates of War, a dataset widely used by scholars of conflict, classifies civil wars as having over 1000 war-related casualties per year of conflict. This rate is a small fraction of the millions killed in the Second Sudanese Civil War and Cambodian Civil War, for example, but excludes several highly publicized conflicts, such as The Troubles of Northern Ireland and the struggle of the African National Congress in Apartheid-era South Africa.
Based on the 1000 casualties per year criterion, there were 213 civil wars from 1816 to 1997, 104 of which occurred from 1944 to 1997. If one uses the less-stringent 1000 casualties total criterion, there were over 90 civil wars between 1945 and 2007, with 20 ongoing civil wars as of 2007.
Further definitions
The Geneva Conventions do not specifically define the term "civil war". They do, however, describe the criteria for acts qualifying as "armed conflict not of an international character", which includes civil wars. Among the conditions listed are four requirements:
• The party in revolt must be in possession of a part of the national territory.
• The insurgent civil authority must exercise de facto authority over the population within the determinate portion of the national territory.
• The insurgents must have some amount of recognition as a belligerent.
• The legal Government is "obliged to have recourse to the regular military forces against insurgents organized as military."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Civil_war
Insurgency:
The United States Department of Defense (DOD) defines it as "An organized movement aimed at the overthrow of a constituted government through use of subversion and armed conflict." The new United States counterinsurgency Field Manual, proposes a structure that includes both insurgency and counterinsurgency [COIN]. (italics in original)
Insurgency and its tactics are as old as warfare itself. Joint doctrine defines an insurgency as an organized movement aimed at the overthrow of a constituted government through the use of subversion and armed conflict. These definitions are a good starting point, but they do not properly highlight a key paradox: though insurgency and COIN are two sides of a phenomenon that has been called revolutionary war or internal war, they are distinctly different types of operations. In addition, insurgency and COIN are included within a broad category of conflict known as irregular warfare.
The French expert on Indochina and Vietnam, Bernard Fall, entitled one of his major books Street without joy: insurgency in Indochina, 1946-63. Fall himself, however, wrote later on that "revolutionary warfare" might be a more accurate term. Insurgency has been used for years in professional military literature. Under the British, the situation in Malaya (now Malaysia) was often called the "Malayan insurgency"., or "the Troubles" in Northern Ireland. Insurgencies have existed in many countries and regions, including the Philippines, Afghanistan, Chechnya, Kashmir, Yemen, Djibouti, Colombia, Sri Lanka, and Democratic Republic of the Congo, the American colonies of Great Britain, and the Confederate States of America.[16] Each had different specifics but share the property of an attempt to disrupt the central government by means considered illegal by that government. North points out, however, that insurgents today need not be part of a highly organized movement:
"Some are networked with only loose objectives and mission-type orders to enhance their survival. Most are divided and factionalized by area, composition, or goals. Strike one against the current definition of insurgency. It is not relevant to the enemies we face today. Many of these enemies do not currently seek the overthrow of a constituted government...weak government control is useful and perhaps essential for many of these “enemies of the state” to survive and operate."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Insurgency
I would more or less in accordance with Wilf. Insurgency is qualifying a way to conduct war not a good term to describe a “war”.
International and non international wars can be done through irregular warfare or regular warfare.
The use of irregular warfare tactics is not sufficient to describe a movement as acivil war or an insurgency.
Insurgency as others did point it can be against a national government from nationals. Or against a foreign government by nationals. While a civilwar is only 2 or more nationals parties against each others.
One of us has fallen into a trap.
Quote:
Originally Posted by
SteveMetz
I have a bit of trouble defining a combined arms force of over 200K as an insurgent one. I think you fall into the trap of defining insurgency as anything Mao described. The Maoist approach was to use insurgency to prepare for conventional war.
I'll stick to my point that insurgency is a strategy, and a given protagonist may shift in and out of it. I think we befuddle ourselves when we try and define insurgency by its political objectives. We just can't transcend our obsession with the Cold War security environment.
Agree with your last sentence completely, but will hold firm that insurgency is a state of populace perception about governance rather than a strategy employed by a civil war movement. surging to that large decisive conventional force was always the goal of the Vietnamese insurgency, just as it was always the goal of Mao himself in China. That is probably, in fact, the key distinction of Maoist insurgency, the goal of achieving decisive effects through large scale conventional military operations. Most probably think it is the communist ideology he employed.
Most insurgencies take many forms, and the form does not define them. It is in their formation that one fines the insights that enable effective COIN.