And this has what to do with Wilf's paper?
Again you respond to a post out of context. Do yourself a favour and go (carefully) read Wilf's paper.That comes back to the critical question of why the insurgents - not necessarily the leaders, but the people doing the fighting - are taking up arms against the state.
Do you understand the concept of Military Support to the Civil Power?If they have a reasonable grievance that can be reasonably addressed, it may not be necessary to use force to quell the insurgency. Of course that will not always the case, but since it's usually easier to address the grievance than to keep on quelling recurring insurgency, it's always worth asking from the outset what the causes of the insurgency are, and whether its possible to address those causes without killing people and blowing stuff up.
Looking at the Economist Intelligence Unit's Democracy Index 2010 of the 168 countries covered there are 26 full democracies and 53 flawed democracies. So really there can be little or no reason in these 79 countries for any insurgency. Minorities do not have the right to place demands on the majority under threat of resorting to illegal action or armed insurrection. Wilf's article does not advocate shooting civilians willy nilly (so go read it).
The Philippines is a flawed democracy (by EIU's definition) so it is difficult to see what can justify an armed insurrection in that country.People where I live fought a small war against their government because their government wanted to drive them off their land, and when they tried to peacefully contest the plan the government sent armed men to kill them. Over 10 years of fighting led to a stalemate, and the Government finally decided to stop trying to drive the people off their land, at which point the insurgency ceased. It would have been a lot less trouble if they'd tried that from the start.
Maybe but in the context of Wilf's paper how does this fit in?We cannot assume that "the authority of the state" is always legitimate, or that it's always something we want to ally ourselves with. Often it's neither. From an American perspective, way too often we've joined fights on the side of governments any one of us would rebel against, if we had the misfortune to be their subjects.
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