Non-Violent Insurgency: How Smart Rebels Win small wars

[davidbfpo]

Wilf,

Rarely in my knowledge has the use of violence not been preceded by a non-violent phase, notably a public statement of the campaigns aims and so this thread addresses Small Wars in its widest application. I have recently read a book on the Baader-Meinhof gang / Red Army Faction and cite that as an example.

IIRC Frank Kitson's books also covered the pre-violent phase and that the military should stay away then.

So, SPJ it maybe Wilf and no harm is being done here. We are here to discuss and learn - within limits we know well.

Another time for a response to Bob's World.

[William F. Owen]

IIRC Frank Kitson's books also covered the pre-violent phase and that the military should stay away then.

So, SPJ it maybe Wilf and no harm is being done here. We are here to discuss and learn - within limits we know well.

I concur. Politics is the only cause of war. Most politics is non-violent.
So what? We know that. Thucydides and CvC observed that a very long time ago. Soldiers set forth policy using violence. They do not create policy, and they do not seek to apply non-violent means. Ethics is politics, and distinct from personal morality.

Harm is being done IF soldiers are confusing War with Warfare, and the fact that military force is merely instrumental. If people cannot understand that then they are set on a path to their own destruction and confusion, in woolly worded pseudo science. - Something I have witnessed all too often here on SWJ. I point this out in a commitment to the spirit of learning and discussion.

As an analogy, IMO, senior UK police officers are uniquely ill-equipped and unqualified to comment on what drugs should be legal and illegal. If they comment, while in uniform, they are bluffing above their pay grade, and are possibly doing massive harm to the moral of the officers under his command. They're job is to seek to convict those selling drugs, regardless of what drugs are legal or not. Are there some silly laws? Very much.

[Bob's World]

Harm is done as well when soldiers confuse a civil emergency with war; simply because an overwhelmed civil government called for their assistance, there is an identifiable opponent conducting acts of violence, and because their doctrine says "COIN is war."

military mission + violent enemy + doctrine = war. Simple.

The problem being that a study of the history of insurgency suggests that it is not.

It is not really a military mission, it is a civil mission that the military supports, like sending soldiers to a flood or hurricane disaster site.

There it no violent "enemy," it is a small segment of a nation's own populace, supported by a much broader base of the populace than what actually takes up arms, and related by blood and friendship to an even broader base of the populace. This is like dealing with a violent spouse as opposed to dealing with a violent neighbor; the acts may look similar but the consequences are far different.

Sometimes, just sometimes, doctrine is wrong.

But all of that aside, this thread is to assess the relative merits of populaces who take up non-violent approaches to address the condition of insurgency, and how that might be more effective than those who take up violent approaches. Both are in situations where they are forced to act out illegally, violent or non-violent; or it is not insurgency, it would be as Wilf says, just politics if they can simply act legally and peacefully to affect some change of government, large or small.

But to Wilf's credit he has pointed out one excellent reason for choosing non-violent approaches to act out illegally against one's own government to affect political changes based upon perceived conditions of insurgency by the populace:

The state won't be able to so easily call it "war," to brand the organized segment of the populace as "the enemy" or "terrorists" and in turn will not be able to sick the military on them without immediately losing the battle for which side is perceived as "right" or "wrong" in the court of world opinion.

[Bob's World]

Actually those of us who actually are in Special Forces, and work continually with varying aspects of Insurgency, counterinsurgency, unconventional warfare and Counterterrorism understand that this statement is both incorrect and infeasible:

"With some sense of irony, US Special Forces once had a de-facto mission to create violent insurgencies among populations who were not dissatisfied with their Government. - and they still should if that serves US policy. "

We understand that an outsider cannot create conditions of insurgency, only the government of that populace can. You can go in a put a spin on the facts, but a populace in conditions of "good governance" is largely immune to UW efforts to organize and incite insurgency. The populace may be the fuel of insurgency, and SF guys conducting UW may be able to organize the fuel for fire and provide a spark; but if the fuel is well dampened by a healthy government-populace relationship, it will never ignite into insurgency.

No the SF mission was, and still is, to understand this dynamic, and to conduct FID in countries where the US has a relationship with the government, but where we assess the government does not have a healthy relationship with its populace. To help prevent conditions from sliding into violent insurgency if they are still at peace, or to help restore conditions of peace if violent insurgency has already erupted. Similarly to conduct UW in countries where the US does not have a relationship with a government and knows they will never be granted one, but has interests that demand such a relationship. When, and only when, conditions of insurgency exist, and usually only if organized resistance organizations already exist, it is an option to employ SF to conduct UW. That is the mission. The focus is typically on violent insurgency, but SF guys being unconventional thinkers in general, may well pick up on the fact that they can employ the same skills and tactics to incite non-violent insurgency as well. To do so creates far less risk of negative blow-back in the court of world opinion and, as history shows, is far more likely to produce the desired result.

(Wilf, I am all about waging war when war is the mission, and when one does so to do so to the nth degree; but to confuse a mission for war that is not and to wage it regardless, is a tragedy of the highest order.)

[Bob's World]

http://wesfiles.wesleyan.edu/home/ec...h/web/data.zip

This is the raw data compiled for their research, and while one can argue with their conclusions based on one's general understanding of history and insurgency; once one works through the excel spreadsheet one can see the detail of analysis behind this work.

One also sees that success or failure, violent or non-violent; invariably where insurgency erupts the governing authority being challenged lacks any true standing of legitimacy in the eyes of a large segment of the populace being governed.

Well worth taking 5-10 minutes and scrolling through.

[William F. Owen]

One also sees that success or failure, violent or non-violent; invariably where insurgency erupts the governing authority being challenged lacks any true standing of legitimacy in the eyes of a large segment of the populace being governed.

Well when the President tells you who is legitimate and who isn't you'll have the personal opinion that matters.

If the USG says they are legitimate, - as in the Saudi Arabian Royal Family, or the Hashemite throne, then that is the policy, and your job is to kill those trying to get rid of their King, appointed to rule over them by God!

[Joske]

so how about turning this discussion around, now we are saying why a movement should choose a non-violent path over a violent one.
So what about saying how a governement could make a violent movement turn into a non-violent one.

Off course a first possibility is to force them to become non-violent by using enough force to compell them abandon violence, but violence alone might not be the most effective way to do this in some cases.

A second option might be to make use of less force, and make use of other options than the military one.
So a first step by the government side is determine which of the enemies political goals can be negotiated about and which cant, and also determining what grievances excist that cause the movement to be popular in the first place.
(in afghanistan something that cant be negotiated about might be the implementation of sharia law, but certain other demands, demands that are more important to the rank and file taliban can be adressed, im thinking about things like poverty or corruption here)

A second step might be then to encourage/create non-violent protest and adopting a policy to negotiate only with the non-violent movements and not with the violent ones, and important thing here might be to grant the non-violent movement some consessions to show that a non-violent aproach actually works. What can also be considered is actually creating protests instead of waiting for them to actually happen, a bit like agent provocateurs but then in reverse.

Another important issue is the use of force in this strategy, force might be used to isolate and demoralize a violent movement and combined with an amnesty program, maybe using converted militants to denounce violence and dicredit the violent movement and praise the non-violent one.

Off course during the creation of the actual non-violent movement the government should be carefull about separating the more moderate and acceptable ideas (which should be encouraged) and the more radical and unacceptable ideas (which should be discouraged and marginalized as much as possible).

Important to note is that the now non-violent militants are not working for the government in an attempt to gain better governance but they are still working more or less against the government and thus could potentially count on more support and they could avoid getting the label of "traitor".
Off course it is still important to prevent the non-violent movement from leaning too much towards the violent one so a bit of covert guiding by the government might be usefull.

Also important is the fact that such an aproach should be adapted to the culture, political structure, social and economical situation..etc off a certain country/area.

[Bob's World]

My president can tell me who is "official" in the eyes of our government, but the "legitimacy" I speak of, the one that is essential in assessing insurgent situations only comes from one source: the governed populace in question.

Outsiders forget, ignore, or simply do not grasp this fact to their peril. (In a parallel, but separate track, the same situation is IMO a large part of Israel's challenge. Western powers facilitated their return to Palestine and granted them "legitimacy" as a state; when in fact all we could really do is recognize their officialness. It is the strong sense that they have no legitimate right to be there that far more than religious differences, fuels the persistence of that conflict. Once they accept that Israel stands on its own two feet and they can't make them budge, I believe the violence will begin to subside. Perceptions are so deadly. I am amazed at how many believe that the US is an agent of Israel. We don't appreciate how important perceptions are, and how to best target negative perceptions and promote positive ones through action and word)

As to a soldier's duty, it is to accomplish the missions he is assigned. "How" belongs to the executor, and if the mission is UW, then certainly non-violent tactics as well as traditional violent tactics, should be on the table.

[William F. Owen]

Harm is done as well when soldiers confuse a civil emergency with war; simply because an overwhelmed civil government called for their assistance, there is an identifiable opponent conducting acts of violence, and because their doctrine says "COIN is war."

War is War. COIN (as talked about today) is a pseudo-science constructed by people embarrassed by their connection with instrumental political violence.

Bob's World
Are you saying,

a.) US Military Officers should study non-violent protest?
b.) Non-violent protest should be re-sourced as an instrument of US Military Power?