Insurgency vs. Civil War

[Shir Panjshir]

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.

I think it is actually very important to label an insurgency as such. I think the main reason why the 2007 Surge was successful is because we approached it on a COIN level.

I am constantly amazed that people call Syria a "Civil War" ? How can they be so ignorant to the fact that this is a foreign invasion on a sovereign state?

I also think by labeling an insurgency as such also helps to combat it. Much like how we call ISIL Daesh. We do need to take the high ground and demoralize and label them as illegitimate of the people who reside in those territories that the insurgents inhabit.
http://ianbach2007.blogspot.com/2015...rebels-in.html

[Bob's World]

I would concede that the simplistic statement "war is war" is accurate, but only if those who cling to that belief were willing to concede that not all political violence is war, and then have a rational discussion as to what that means.

I think the facts of history show that the nature of political violence within a single system of governance (CvC's social trinity is a simple workable model) is fundamentally distinct in nature from political violence between two or more systems.

These systems are like a single cell organism. Revolutionary insurgency is within a single system, and probably better thought of as civil emergency than as some form of war. War requires a warfare solution, but civil emergencies require a very different perspective and family of approaches.

Civil war occurs when one of these single cell systems of governance effectively divides and becomes two systems. Now what was once revolution and civil emergency is now civil war and war. The nature of the conflict changes.

Typical factors, such as size of the conflict, tactics employed, or degree of violence are largely moot. The critical factor is if a division has occurred. Iraq and Syria both retain revolutions, but both are equally in a state of civil war with the emergent Sunni state that is under ISIL governance.

A key fact not in current conversations is that a defeat of that ISIL governance solves little - but it will convert civil war back into powerful, fragmented, revolutionary civil emergency.