Insurgency vs. Civil War

[ryanmleigh]

My viewpoint is old school I remember when the Soviet Union said they were going to export Revolution (Insurgency) around the world. In traditional Marxist form they infiltrated foreign agitators to exploit political,economic and social(class) contradictions to start revolutions. They would be happy with a large force revolution or a Coup De' ta (spelling) small force didn't matter much to them. But the key factor was a foreign power(dosen't have to be a state) exporting insurgency(revolution).

Slapout,
Understanding where your coming from is helpful. Do you think it still applies to the insurgencies that we are seeing today. Out of the numerous long term insurgencies since the fall of the Soviet Union, there are only a handful that are directly linked to Marxist-Communist ideology (Nepal and Peru being two off the top of my head). Does your paradigm change if we are talking about an conflict with something other than communist ideology. For instance: religious, nationalist movement, anti-colonial, anti-modernity, anti-state nationalism? (GAM, JKLF, LTTE, PKK, ETA, Hamas, IRA, JKHM just to name a few off the top of my head). [For more reading on these please check out Terror, Insurgency, and the State by Heiberg, O'Leary, and Tirman]Would any of these other causes of conflict change your understanding?