It is a simple fact, but one that is most often overlooked, that insurgencies generally fail. Most fail before they ever become full blown insurgencies or soon thereafter. Consider the American case of the Symbionese Liberation Army which we saw as a police problem and defeated as such. Or consider as well the case of Che Guevara in Bolivia. I happened to arrive in country the day Che ambushed his first Bolivian Army patrol. It was evident, even before anyone knew it was Che, that this insurgency was going to fail, as indeed, it did in a matter of months. ( I should add that the short time span is anomalous for any insrgency that gets through the early organizational phase - witness Malaya.) In the 43 cases of insurgency between 1945 and 1980 that Max Manwaring and I studied, the majority (23) were victories for the COIN side. In Latin America, according to Timothy Wickham-Crowley (who is sympathetic to the insurgents) nearly all insurgencies were defeated. Indeed, the only successful insurgencies in the region were Cuba, Nicaragua, and Bolivia in 1952. (The Contra insurgency had an ambiguous outcome but the Sandinistas were overthrown when forced into free elections.) What Max and I demonstrateed in the quantitative study ("Insurgency & counterinsurgency: Toward a New Analytical Approach" in Small Wars & Insurgencies Winter 1992) and subsequent books including our recent Uncomfortable Wars Revisited (U. of Oklahoma Press, 2006) is that the approach advocated by the new COIN manual is likely to be successful. Neither we, nor the COIN manual eschew targeted violence. Indeed, we argue very strongly that an organized insurgent enemy must be destroyed by violent means whether by military, police, or paramilitary power (most likely a combination). But we insist on legitimacy and what Kilcullen calls a population centric strategy. So, I would conclude that successful COIN is best conducted before the insurgency gets effectively organized with a strong population centric strategy to make sure that what was killed stays dead. (Otherwise, we will see the Phoenix rising from the ashes again and again as it did in Guatemala for 3 generations of insurgents.) If COIN begins after the insurgency is organized, then the COIN operators need to be prepared for a long war.
Cheers
JohnT
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