Why democracies don't lose insurgencies

[Gian P Gentile]

why do you confine yourself to the post world war II period? Is there something special about that period that interests you or do you see it as more relevant to the present day than other previous periods? Perhaps instead of taking 15 or so cases from that period you should expand your historical horizon and move farther back into time.

[Cavguy]

why do you confine yourself to the post world war II period? Is there something special about that period that interests you or do you see it as more relevant to the present day than other previous periods? Perhaps instead of taking 15 or so cases from that periods you should expand your historical horizon and move farther back into time.

Sir,

I just have problems with the inclusion of "democracies" prior to 1945 because (a) there are so few, and (b) even fewer experienced insurgency outside of a colonial context. Anti-colonial insurgencies posess a different dynamic. Secondly, it would require coding a completely new dataset than the very robust post-1945 RAND one I have now, which may be beyond my current capabilities. If I pursue my PhD route I probably will re-do and expand the dataset. Kinda hard to do all that research while holding my day job and soon to be in CGSC. The Correlates of War dataset doesn't have sufficient rigor for intra-state war to be useful. There is another finnish dataset but I found multiple errors in coding that would be painful to fix.

Now if you can convince the army to give me two years off after S3/XO time to get a PhD that isn't tied to teaching at West Point, I'm game. Because I was YG 97 and exited my BCT as a MAJ they wouldn't give me advanced civil schooling because I was too senior, hence night classes for me.


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I am hard pressed to think of many democracies that experienced indigenous insurgency outside of the USA and UK prior to 1945 (Brits all over - won every one, and the US vs. Native Americans, again, victory.) I am open to any examples of indigenous insurgent victory against democracy (loosely defined) that cross your mind. And no, I don't count our revolution because I don't think the UK meets the PolSci definition of a democracy until the early 1800's.

I am interested if you can think of any exceptions to my thesis prior to 1945, it would help.
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My alternate topic (potential for MMAS, if I do SAMS) is evaluating whether the historical approach/basis for FM 3-24 (very heavy Philippines, Algeria, Vietnam (x2), and Malaya) and approach to COIN by external counter insurgents holds true across other similar cases, especially those where insurgent possesses external sanctuary. Greece 1945-1950 is the best example, where it was heavily lethal in nature and won when Yugoslavia cut of support for the communist insurgents, as I understand.

Thoughts?