To throw another monkey wrench into the gears, I don't think Insurgency should be classified as "war" at all.

It's kind of like a tomatoe. All your life you think its a vegetable, becuase everyone has always told you it was a vegetable, you've always treated it like a vegetable, you always mix it with other vegetables; and then one day some horticulturist comes along and tells you its really a fruit.

I won't take that any farther, but I think we gain clearer insights as how to approach insurgency and the relative roles of the Host nation government, its military and that of any outside governments and their militaries that intervene to assist by looking at insurgency not as war, but as a civil emergency. Not to apply the rules of war, but to apply the rules of military support to civil authorities. Not to supplant the civil leadership, but to supplement the same, holding them to task.

We've been treating insurgency like war for too long. Its violent like war, it has an "enemy" like war, it will kill you and drain your national blood, treasure, and influence like war. But it isn't war. If I eat tomatoes all my life and refuse to recognize they are a fruit it really doesn't matter much. But if I mischaracterize a major event like an insurgency, I could inadvertantly harm, or even destroy my nation.

Ohh yeah. And Wilf asked a few posts back about "non-violent insurgencies." Here is where I largely agree with Kitson. He saw this as a spectrum along a scale of violence. The causal factors being the same, but what begins as "subversion" at some point becomes "insurgency", not because the events somehow changed in nature, but merely becuase it had become more violent. So, Kitson would call non-violent insurgency "subversion." Same event, just different stages. Sometimes the subversives win without having to employ violence, as with Ghandi or King. Or sometimes an insurgency is suppressed back down into a subversive phase for a number of years before it goes "insurgent" again, as in Mindanao. You solve it when you address the root causes, and level of violence is only one of many metrics to measure success with, and certainly not the decisive measure.