Why democracies don't lose insurgencies

[Bob's World]

Clausewtiz did not base his understanding of war purely on his experiences of fighting against Napoleonic armies. Clausewitz observations on the nature of war is applicable to any form of armed conflict.



Well that's exactly what Clausewitz says, except he wrote On WAR, and you are drifting off into National Policy and Strategy, of which WAR is a subset of skills and capabilities.

Warfare is a tool, and a pretty dam good one, when applied to right problem.

Good points, but said another way, one might ask: "Is all violence "warfare"? or "If a state opts to respond to violence by waging warfare against the perpetrators of that violence does that make it warfare"?

Or, as WILF suggests, perhaps is it really a much larger issue that touches National Policy and Strategy?

I believe that many see this the way WILF does and I recognize that it is the majority position, so by a purely democratic or mathmatic analysis, it must be right.

I challenge that status quo thinking though, believing that an insurgency is most often better "neutralized" through addressing root causes than "defeated" by waging war against one's own populace as if it were a foreign state.

When a foreign country intervenes in such an internal conflict to protect interests they have there, they tend to want to keep the current government in place so work to not only do so, but also to help put down the rebellion. Right or Wrong is not the metric, preserving access to the national interest is.

When a foreign country intervenes in such an internal conflict to create interests they desire there, they tend to want to dispose of the government in place, so work to do so and to also lend aid to the rebellion in its efforts. Right or Wrong is not the metric here either, gaining access to the national interest is.

These actions of National Policy and Strategy revolving around these popular revolts make up the family of operations we call "Insurgency" and "Counterinsurgency" and "Foreign Internal Defense" and "Unconventional Warfare." But is it warfare in the true Clauswitzian sense? Perhaps. My point is that it is worth considering through both lights to have the best perspective. The concept of "Irregular Warfare" is based on the perspective that all of these activites are indeed war. But consider the source, IW came from the military, so naturally they see it that way.

Another way is to look at all of these violent internal struggles as all part of man's natural reaction to dealing with problems that can't be resolved peacefully, the appliation of violence. But that does not make it necessarily "war."