Insurgency vs. Civil War

[Rex Brynen]

ll civil wars are insurgencies if by insurgency we mean an effort to overturn a govt and replace it with another by armed means.

I would largely agree (although I would probably count RSA as a civil war), in general civil wars are a subset of insurgencies. A few defining features:

1) Severity. We don't consider the Red Army Faction versus West Germany a civil war. (I'm sometimes tempted to define civil war as an insurgency that reaches the point that the government thinks "holy crap, we could lose this!")

2) Internal actors (although they may have external patrons). Violence wholly directed at an occupying power would not be a civil war.

3) Insurgency targets an established authority. In those rare cases where there is no authority--Somalia at certain times--you could have the unusual case of a civil war that isn't an insurgency.

Wilf raises an essential social science point, though. Categories are abstractions, and it's only worth defining and using them if by so doing we gain some greater analytical insight.

[William F. Owen]

Wilf raises an essential social science point, though.

Oh Crap! Now I'm doing social science. I need to hold a gun.... now!!

[M-A Lagrange]

Rex Brynen
I would largely agree (although I would probably count RSA as a civil war), in general civil wars are a subset of insurgencies. A few defining features:

1) Severity. We don't consider the Red Army Faction versus West Germany a civil war. (I'm sometimes tempted to define civil war as an insurgency that reaches the point that the government thinks "holy crap, we could lose this!")

2) Internal actors (although they may have external patrons). Violence wholly directed at an occupying power would not be a civil war.

3) Insurgency targets an established authority. In those rare cases where there is no authority--Somalia at certain times--you could have the unusual case of a civil war that isn't an insurgency.

Rex, what would be DRC?
A war conducted by local actors in the name of external powers who are not happy that the pupet they pupet in place, after overpassing an established authority, is no more listening to them?
Just to add some fun, you can even add the fact that you have at least 2 external powers who are fighting indirectly to take control over strategic natural resources in a cold war like manner... (But that's just if you wanna go in details).

By the way, Liberia was no insurgency. It was a civil war but the rebel (Taylor) invaded the country without national support and insurgent network.
But 1) his troops were mainly liberian and 2) his obective was to reconquere power in the name of a liberia ethnic group (the Kongo).

[ryanmleigh]

Rex-
Did you truly mean to say that civil war is a subset of insurgency, or did you mean that insurgency is a subset of civil war? Your example 1 would lead me to believe that there is scale of intrastate conflict, with civil war residing somewhere at the top and insurgency falling somehwere below that.

The current literature would also support some concept of scale. According to COW (Correlates of War) University of Michigan, political violence must incur at least 1,000 deaths to be considered a civil war. There is also a necessity for a minimum number of casualties incurred by the incumbent forces in order to achieve civil war status.

Much of the discussion so far has been terrific, to some degree I think it highlights some of the confusion surrounding the concepts of civil war and insurgency. I believe that is why it is important to identify the differences between them. It goes further than just categorizing conflict. Understanding the conflict should have an impact on how we address it.

[William F. Owen]

Much of the discussion so far has been terrific, to some degree I think it highlights some of the confusion surrounding the concepts of civil war and insurgency. I believe that is why it is important to identify the differences between them. It goes further than just categorizes conflict. Understanding the conflict should have an impact on how we address it.

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.

[ryanmleigh]

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 agree wholeheartedly with your statement. At the tactical level, where the rubber meets the road, all war is war. However, I would argue that at the operational and strategic level there is difference in how we approach different types of conflict. That is why I think there is utility is identfying the differences.

[William F. Owen]

However, I would argue that at the operational and strategic level there is difference in how we approach different types of conflict. That is why I think there is utility is identfying the differences.

OK, well apart from the fact I do not think there is an "operational level of War" what is that utility? Why does it matter as concerns strategy or policy?

[ryanmleigh]

The most immediate example I can think of is the disposition and composition of the ANSF in Afghanistan. If we say that we are conducting a COIN strategy in Afghanistan then should force levels not be heavily weighted for the police instead of the army. Yet both the current levels and the espoused end state levels represent a large disparity of army to police, somewhere around 240,000 to 180,000. If we are conducting COIN should those numbers not be reversed? That is just one quick example of why it might matter.

Interesting also to hear to don't believe in the operational level of war. Another discussion I wouldn't mind getting involved in.

[jmm99]

in trying to differentiate between insurgencies and civil wars ?

E.g., military-side (and at what level); or political-side (including legal as a subset of political) ?

And then there could be an "armed social science" definition, as to which I am sure Wilf can lead the charge.

Back to Wilf's first post here - why is it important to you to differentiate ?

Regards

Mike

PS: As regards military vs police ratios, I (from the political-side - police as part of a functioning criminal justice system) can't see where calling a problem an insurgency or civil war would make any difference in deciding on military-police ratios. The ratios and functions of military and police depend on the tangible context - not what you call that context. That context may or may not allow police and judges to operate. As Wilf will say, JMM, I don't want to be baby-sitting your cops and judges - and that posits that I have competent cops and judges (not a given in Astan).

[John T. Fishel]

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),

Cheers

JohnT

[Bob's World]

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.

[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.

[Bob's World]

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.

[marct]

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.

Hmmm, well "insurgency", at least in the sense of a popular uprising, might be a tactic employed in a civil war but, on the whole, I have to agree with Bob that it certainly can't be limited to that.

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.

Agreed about manifesting in several forms, but I'm not sure I agree with you on the implied crisp distinction between insurgency and subversion. For example, I would argue that Ghandi was an insurgent rather than a "subversive".

[SteveMetz]

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.

I would never purport to give an official answer. But the key distinction is between defeating an opponent and altering whatever conditions are that gave rise to the conflict in the first place. It doesn't matter whether a war is civil or international, or whether one of the antagonists uses a strategy of insurgency or not, simply defeating the enemy does not assure that the conflict will later re-emerge, but at least opens that possibility. E.g. World War I which did not alter the conditions that gave rise to it, while World War II did.

When a conflict does re-emerge, even if one of the antagonists used insurgency earlier they may not later. South Vietnam did not fall to an insurgency. In other words, a given conflict can have insurgency phases and non-insurgency phases.

Simply because something is a "civil war" does not, in itself, imply whether the goal should be the limited one of defeating existing enemies or altering the conditions which gave rise to the conflict. A civil war simply involves antagonists from the same nation.

[ryanmleigh]

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.

Bob- Would you say that these root conditions are the same for either civil war or insurgency? Or are there different conditions that lead to different forms of warfare. I imagine that the initial conditions (personnel, equipment, funding) would have an impact on the way the conflict progresses.

Therefore I would also think that there may be different root causes of conflict which make it look, smell, or be an insurgency vice a civil war. Examining the root causes then would be one way to differentiate between the two forms of conflict. Wouldn't you agree?

[Rex Brynen]

The current literature would also support some concept of scale. According to COW (Correlates of War) University of Michigan, political violence must incur at least 1,000 deaths to be considered a civil war. There is also a necessity for a minimum number of casualties incurred by the incumbent forces in order to achieve civil war status.

I've never understood why CoW uses an absolute threshold, and not a relative one. 100 dead in Tuvalu would be a civil war. 100 dead in DR Congo is a bad morning.

Yes, I mean to say civil war is a subset of insurgency. Insurgency is simply violence against established authority. Civil wars are always large insurgencies (hence the "war").

But, to reiterate what several have now said--it all depends on why you're slotting things in conceptual boxes.

[Entropy]

Yes, I mean to say civil war is a subset of insurgency. Insurgency is simply violence against established authority. Civil wars are always large insurgencies (hence the "war").

Not sure I agree with that. How do you define "established authority?" Who, for example, was the established authority in the Russian civil war? What about cases where the insurgency gains the upper hand and becomes "established" but elements of the old regime remain and continue to fight? At what point to they change from being the "established authority" to the insurgent?