Insurgency vs. Civil War

[Bob's World]

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.