Insurgency vs. Civil War

[SteveMetz]

This seems to have been pretty well covered, but insurgency is a strategy that is sometimes used in civil wars. A civil war is simply an armed conflict where the antagonists are exclusively or primarily citizens of the same state.

[Bob's World]

This seems to have been pretty well covered, but insurgency is a strategy that is sometimes used in civil wars. A civil war is simply an armed conflict where the antagonists are exclusively or primarily citizens of the same state.

But if this is the official answer, I think it is worthy of a deeper look.

If insurgency is merely a strategy employed by a civil war opponent to the state it really doesn't offer much to the counterinsurgent in terms of helping him understand and resolve the threat. Simply defeat the civil war opponent and the insurgency will go away.

But that's not how it works. Every time that tact is taken (and that is often), the insurgency simply flares back up. Perhaps with a new name, new leadership, new ideology, often even a different segment of the society; but always to counter the same failed system of governance that gave rise to the last flare up.

I think we do better when we look at insurgency as a set of conditions that may well manifest in several forms: a miserable populace that does not dare act out; a populace that does act out - either choosing non-violent (subversion) or violent (insurgency) means. The key to effective COIN is to address the conditions and not merely set out to defeat those who dare to respond to the conditions.

[marct]

This seems to have been pretty well covered, but insurgency is a strategy that is sometimes used in civil wars. A civil war is simply an armed conflict where the antagonists are exclusively or primarily citizens of the same state.

But if this is the official answer, I think it is worthy of a deeper look.

If insurgency is merely a strategy employed by a civil war opponent to the state it really doesn't offer much to the counterinsurgent in terms of helping him understand and resolve the threat. Simply defeat the civil war opponent and the insurgency will go away.

Hmmm, well "insurgency", at least in the sense of a popular uprising, might be a tactic employed in a civil war but, on the whole, I have to agree with Bob that it certainly can't be limited to that.

I think we do better when we look at insurgency as a set of conditions that may well manifest in several forms: a miserable populace that does not dare act out; a populace that does act out - either choosing non-violent (subversion) or violent (insurgency) means. The key to effective COIN is to address the conditions and not merely set out to defeat those who dare to respond to the conditions.

Agreed about manifesting in several forms, but I'm not sure I agree with you on the implied crisp distinction between insurgency and subversion. For example, I would argue that Ghandi was an insurgent rather than a "subversive".

[ryanmleigh]

Based on a lot of the recent discussion is there a need to distinguish between the political and military aspects of conflict. Could it be as simple as saying that civil war is primarily a military conflict with political action secondary while an insurgency is primarily a political conflict with military action secondary?

Probably far to simplistic, but still trying to wrap my head around the differences.

[Bob's World]

Just applying Kitson's distinction. Same root cause, Subversion as it grows, Insurgency once the violence exceeeds a certain level (just to show I don't have to come up with my own approach for everything, and to throw Wilf a well-earned bone). But it is these causal conditions of insurgency at the roots of this whole mess that must be the main effort focus of good (effective) COIN. Too often we slave away at defeating the symptoms as they manifest and largely ignore the root causes.

This gets to the crux of my work; and why I see Karzai's efforts with reconciliation as the key to success in Afghanistan, regardless of what General we put in charge of the military coalition efforts. The coalition's military efforts have to be a supporting effort to a supporting effort (Afghan military efforts) for there to be true success. But that is not how we're approaching this.

By focusing on what Karzai is doing at the GIROA level we get at the actual heart of the insurgency. If he is unwilling to go all in on addressing the causal factors, then that is the metric we are looking for in terms of beginning our down-sizing of military effort. We can't just be the goon squad that keeps him in power.

[marct]

Based on a lot of the recent discussion is there a need to distinguish between the political and military aspects of conflict. Could it be as simple as saying that civil war is primarily a military conflict with political action secondary while an insurgency is primarily a political conflict with military action secondary?

It might, possibly, be easier to concentrate on the concept of civil war as a conflict to determine who will rule, while and insurgency would be closer to how they will rule.

Just applying Kitson's distinction. Same root cause, Subversion as it grows, Insurgency once the violence exceeeds a certain level (just to show I don't have to come up with my own approach for everything, and to throw Wilf a well-earned bone). But it is these causal conditions of insurgency at the roots of this whole mess that must be the main effort focus of good (effective) COIN. Too often we slave away at defeating the symptoms as they manifest and largely ignore the root causes.

Agreed (sort of ). As I said earlier, I can think of "insurgencies" that were basically non-violent. I came up with another one as I was dealing with my "microsoft moment" (you know "Install these updates now or we will destroy your computer...."): the Catholic Church.

This gets to the crux of my work; and why I see Karzai's efforts with reconciliation as the key to success in Afghanistan, regardless of what General we put in charge of the military coalition efforts. The coalition's military efforts have to be a supporting effort to a supporting effort (Afghan military efforts) for there to be true success. But that is not how we're approaching this.

By focusing on what Karzai is doing at the GIROA level we get at the actual heart of the insurgency. If he is unwilling to go all in on addressing the causal factors, then that is the metric we are looking for in terms of beginning our down-sizing of military effort. We can't just be the goon squad that keeps him in power.

Totally agree in the specifics of Afghanistan, Bob. I would argue, in fact, that a number of ISAF efforts have been counter-productive to resolving that conflict.

[jmm99]

Let me take just one very narrow topic - how have insurgencies and civil wars been treated under domestic law and international law over the last 200 years ?

To answer that, I'd have to put together a list of armed conflicts (which is the key I Law term) that may be called a lot of different names - insurgencies, civil wars, insurrections, rebellions, resistence to occupiers, national liberation wars, etc.

In short, I look at a bunch of "Small Wars" in Callwell's jargon (or "Shadow Wars" in Asprey's jargon) and end up with some "operational definitions" as brother Fishel terms them - definitions not carved in stone but set up for working purposes.

Then I'd look at how each of those armed conflicts was treated legally, domestically (at least two views there - e.g., the War of Southern Rebellion vs the War of Northern Aggression) and internationally (many possible views).

That would be quite a study - one I don't plan on starting and finishing this month.

And - it would be largely immaterial to all except a small group of Laws of War folks.

Regards

Mike

[MikeF]

Here's what I was taught- the independent variable is the guerrila's capacity to conduct violence.

So,

An insurgency can be labeled a civil war once the guerrila builds the same capacity to conduct violence (military mass) that the host nation possesses.

Applied loosely, this does not have to mean the the guerrila possesses the same amount of tanks as the host nation. That's why one could justify Iraq moved into a civil war between late 2005 and early 2006.

[SteveMetz]

But if this is the official answer, I think it is worthy of a deeper look.

If insurgency is merely a strategy employed by a civil war opponent to the state it really doesn't offer much to the counterinsurgent in terms of helping him understand and resolve the threat. Simply defeat the civil war opponent and the insurgency will go away.

But that's not how it works. Every time that tact is taken (and that is often), the insurgency simply flares back up. Perhaps with a new name, new leadership, new ideology, often even a different segment of the society; but always to counter the same failed system of governance that gave rise to the last flare up.

I think we do better when we look at insurgency as a set of conditions that may well manifest in several forms: a miserable populace that does not dare act out; a populace that does act out - either choosing non-violent (subversion) or violent (insurgency) means. The key to effective COIN is to address the conditions and not merely set out to defeat those who dare to respond to the conditions.

I would never purport to give an official answer. But the key distinction is between defeating an opponent and altering whatever conditions are that gave rise to the conflict in the first place. It doesn't matter whether a war is civil or international, or whether one of the antagonists uses a strategy of insurgency or not, simply defeating the enemy does not assure that the conflict will later re-emerge, but at least opens that possibility. E.g. World War I which did not alter the conditions that gave rise to it, while World War II did.

When a conflict does re-emerge, even if one of the antagonists used insurgency earlier they may not later. South Vietnam did not fall to an insurgency. In other words, a given conflict can have insurgency phases and non-insurgency phases.

Simply because something is a "civil war" does not, in itself, imply whether the goal should be the limited one of defeating existing enemies or altering the conditions which gave rise to the conflict. A civil war simply involves antagonists from the same nation.

[M-A Lagrange]

ryanmleigh
Based on a lot of the recent discussion is there a need to distinguish between the political and military aspects of conflict. Could it be as simple as saying that civil war is primarily a military conflict with political action secondary while an insurgency is primarily a political conflict with military action secondary?

Probably far to simplistic, but still trying to wrap my head around the differences.

Some definitions from Wikipedia that have the advantage to be the ones from ICRC and great scholar:
Civil war:
James Fearon, a scholar of civil wars at Stanford University, defines a civil war as "a violent conflict within a country fought by organized groups that aim to take power at the center or in a region, or to change government policies".Ann Hironaka further specifies that one side of a civil war is the state. The intensity at which a civil disturbance becomes a civil war is contested by academics. Some political scientists define a civil war as having more than 1000 casualties, while others further specify that at least 100 must come from each side. The Correlates of War, a dataset widely used by scholars of conflict, classifies civil wars as having over 1000 war-related casualties per year of conflict. This rate is a small fraction of the millions killed in the Second Sudanese Civil War and Cambodian Civil War, for example, but excludes several highly publicized conflicts, such as The Troubles of Northern Ireland and the struggle of the African National Congress in Apartheid-era South Africa.
Based on the 1000 casualties per year criterion, there were 213 civil wars from 1816 to 1997, 104 of which occurred from 1944 to 1997. If one uses the less-stringent 1000 casualties total criterion, there were over 90 civil wars between 1945 and 2007, with 20 ongoing civil wars as of 2007.
Further definitions
The Geneva Conventions do not specifically define the term "civil war". They do, however, describe the criteria for acts qualifying as "armed conflict not of an international character", which includes civil wars. Among the conditions listed are four requirements:
• The party in revolt must be in possession of a part of the national territory.
• The insurgent civil authority must exercise de facto authority over the population within the determinate portion of the national territory.
• The insurgents must have some amount of recognition as a belligerent.
• The legal Government is "obliged to have recourse to the regular military forces against insurgents organized as military."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Civil_war

Insurgency:
The United States Department of Defense (DOD) defines it as "An organized movement aimed at the overthrow of a constituted government through use of subversion and armed conflict." The new United States counterinsurgency Field Manual, proposes a structure that includes both insurgency and counterinsurgency [COIN]. (italics in original)
Insurgency and its tactics are as old as warfare itself. Joint doctrine defines an insurgency as an organized movement aimed at the overthrow of a constituted government through the use of subversion and armed conflict. These definitions are a good starting point, but they do not properly highlight a key paradox: though insurgency and COIN are two sides of a phenomenon that has been called revolutionary war or internal war, they are distinctly different types of operations. In addition, insurgency and COIN are included within a broad category of conflict known as irregular warfare.
The French expert on Indochina and Vietnam, Bernard Fall, entitled one of his major books Street without joy: insurgency in Indochina, 1946-63. Fall himself, however, wrote later on that "revolutionary warfare" might be a more accurate term. Insurgency has been used for years in professional military literature. Under the British, the situation in Malaya (now Malaysia) was often called the "Malayan insurgency"., or "the Troubles" in Northern Ireland. Insurgencies have existed in many countries and regions, including the Philippines, Afghanistan, Chechnya, Kashmir, Yemen, Djibouti, Colombia, Sri Lanka, and Democratic Republic of the Congo, the American colonies of Great Britain, and the Confederate States of America.[16] Each had different specifics but share the property of an attempt to disrupt the central government by means considered illegal by that government. North points out, however, that insurgents today need not be part of a highly organized movement:
"Some are networked with only loose objectives and mission-type orders to enhance their survival. Most are divided and factionalized by area, composition, or goals. Strike one against the current definition of insurgency. It is not relevant to the enemies we face today. Many of these enemies do not currently seek the overthrow of a constituted government...weak government control is useful and perhaps essential for many of these “enemies of the state” to survive and operate."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Insurgency

I would more or less in accordance with Wilf. Insurgency is qualifying a way to conduct war not a good term to describe a “war”.

International and non international wars can be done through irregular warfare or regular warfare.
The use of irregular warfare tactics is not sufficient to describe a movement as acivil war or an insurgency.

Insurgency as others did point it can be against a national government from nationals. Or against a foreign government by nationals. While a civilwar is only 2 or more nationals parties against each others.

[Bob's World]

Steve;

Actually S. Vietnam DID fall to insurgency. We tend to put way too much emphasis on the fact that a bunch of Westerners broke off a chunk of Vietnam in the middle of the insurgency and created this tremendous sanctuary for the insurgency called "North Vietnam." The creation of that state in mid-stream in no way changed the overall nature and goal of the larger insurgency. Ho followed the Maoist model with which prescribes advancing to decisive conventional operations as the final stage of the insurgency, which they surged up to several times, ultimately prevailing. We confused ourselves into thinking we had a state on state war with a supporting local insurgency and thereby got off track on our approach to the problem. We confuse ourselves often in these things by taking too seriously what governments think and perceive. Insurgency is all about what the populace thinks and perceives.

In other places we have confused ourselves by declaring "victory" because one insurgent group has been militarily defeated, while the underlying perceptions of poor governance with the populace have been largely untreated and continue to fester along re-emerging in violence a few years down the road (often with new groups, new ideologies and new leaders). Algeria and the Philippines spring to mind as a couple of recent classic examples of this. The insurgency is the perception among the populace, and is rooted in the government itself, not any one particular group that rises up to challenge that government.

Bob

[SteveMetz]

I have a bit of trouble defining a combined arms force of over 200K as an insurgent one. I think you fall into the trap of defining insurgency as anything Mao described. The Maoist approach was to use insurgency to prepare for conventional war.

I'll stick to my point that insurgency is a strategy, and a given protagonist may shift in and out of it. I think we befuddle ourselves when we try and define insurgency by its political objectives. We just can't transcend our obsession with the Cold War security environment.

[Bob's World]

I have a bit of trouble defining a combined arms force of over 200K as an insurgent one. I think you fall into the trap of defining insurgency as anything Mao described. The Maoist approach was to use insurgency to prepare for conventional war.

I'll stick to my point that insurgency is a strategy, and a given protagonist may shift in and out of it. I think we befuddle ourselves when we try and define insurgency by its political objectives. We just can't transcend our obsession with the Cold War security environment.

Agree with your last sentence completely, but will hold firm that insurgency is a state of populace perception about governance rather than a strategy employed by a civil war movement. surging to that large decisive conventional force was always the goal of the Vietnamese insurgency, just as it was always the goal of Mao himself in China. That is probably, in fact, the key distinction of Maoist insurgency, the goal of achieving decisive effects through large scale conventional military operations. Most probably think it is the communist ideology he employed.

Most insurgencies take many forms, and the form does not define them. It is in their formation that one fines the insights that enable effective COIN.

[Dayuhan]

James Fearon, a scholar of civil wars at Stanford University, defines a civil war as "a violent conflict within a country fought by organized groups that aim to take power at the center or in a region, or to change government policies".Ann Hironaka further specifies that one side of a civil war is the state.

If one side of a civil war must be the state, that would exclude a case like Somalia, where there is no state. Seems an unnecessary qualification to me.

The intensity at which a civil disturbance becomes a civil war is contested by academics. Some political scientists define a civil war as having more than 1000 casualties, while others further specify that at least 100 must come from each side. The Correlates of War, a dataset widely used by scholars of conflict, classifies civil wars as having over 1000 war-related casualties per year of conflict.

A numerical cutoff offers precision, and some absurd possibilities as well. If the cutoff is 1000/year, that means a conflict could easily be a civil war one year, an insurgency the next, then a civil war again... which makes the distinction less than useful.

I have a bit of trouble defining a combined arms force of over 200K as an insurgent one. I think you fall into the trap of defining insurgency as anything Mao described. The Maoist approach was to use insurgency to prepare for conventional war.

I'll stick to my point that insurgency is a strategy, and a given protagonist may shift in and out of it. I think we befuddle ourselves when we try and define insurgency by its political objectives. We just can't transcend our obsession with the Cold War security environment.

By that standard it seems that irregular warfare by internal forces opposed to the state is insurgency, while regular warfare by internal forces opposed to the state is civil war. That of course requires some fixed line defining irregular vs regular warfare.

Is irregular warfare the strategy, or insurgency... or are they the same thing?

Is the difference between civil war and insurgency purely quantitative, a civil war simply being a large insurgency? Or is there a qualitative difference as well?

Given current circumstances, a more relevant question might be how much foreign participation is required for a conflict to be inter-state, rather than civil war or insurgency. Are both civil war and insurgency by definition purely internal?

At a certain level the distinctions become semantic, and certainly there's going to be some overlap. At the same time, though, it's useful to have some consensus on what these terms mean.

[ryanmleigh]

I'll stick to my point that insurgency is a strategy, and a given protagonist may shift in and out of it. I think we befuddle ourselves when we try and define insurgency by its political objectives. We just can't transcend our obsession with the Cold War security environment.

Sir- Is insurgency really a strategy, or is it more just a tactic in the conduct of war? Maybe an operational approach in the broader context? Probably just confusing myself.

For me it seems like an insurgency would be the way, while terrorism, subversion, guerrilla warfare would be the means to conduct achieve political objectives.

If there is no political objective other than the overthrow of a government, would it not then be a civil war? Maybe I am just misguided.

[Entropy]

Steve;

Actually S. Vietnam DID fall to insurgency. We tend to put way too much emphasis on the fact that a bunch of Westerners broke off a chunk of Vietnam in the middle of the insurgency and created this tremendous sanctuary for the insurgency called "North Vietnam."

So why was the communist north created? If it wasn't because of poor governance by the south, then how could it be considered an insurgency, especially since the Vietminh were around before the partition and the creation of the RVN? Or, why can't the opposite case be made - that North Vietnam successfully fought off an insurgency from the south?

Similarly, what about the Koreas? Do we consider North Korea to be "insurgents" against the South? Or Germany before reunification? That doesn't make much sense. For all practical purposes, North Vietnam and South Vietnam were distinct states and one of those states conquered the other through conventional means. That the North also fostered an insurgency in the South (which ultimately failed) doesn't, it seems to me, make the entire conflict an insurgency.

[Steve Blair]

This also doesn't really take into account the social and cultural differences between the north and south (and even some ethnic differences). No, I'd say Vietnam actually runs closer to the civil war side of things.

[marct]

Staying away from Vietnam, how would you folks classify the Thirty Years War (outside of exceedingly messy)?

[jmm99]

at the very end of WWII in 1945 by what they (Ho, Giap, etc.) called the August Revolution. To them, they created the Democratic Republic of Vietnam (the entire country - not just North Vietnam). They claimed governmental legitimacy from the August 25, 1945 abdication of Bao Dai in favor of Ho's government.

The Viet Minh had to deal with four foreign military occupiers during the 1945-1946 period: Japanese, Chinese, British and French. The Viet Minh and the French reached tentative agreements in 1946, which accepted French military forces in both the South and the North (replacing the other occupiers), but also recognized Ho's government. The French-VM accord blew up in the later half of 1946 and the First Indochina War ensued.

The position of Ho-Giap was that that war was the Resistence War - seeing France as a foreign invader with the restored Bao Dai as France's puppet. When that war ended in VM success, the Hanoi government was willing to allow a partition so that it could secure its base areas in the North. It had no intention of limiting itself to the North and its constitutions made clear that the DRV encompssed all of Vietnam.

Diem surprisingly survived and to some extent thrived in 1955-1959, with the US replacing France as South Vietnam's patron. Having completed their build-up of their Northern base areas, the Hanoi government re-instituted the Resistence War (using more of a neo-colonialist theme, and setting up the NLF as its front in the south).

The NLF guerrillas and cadres in the South (augmented by PAVN regulars) were therefore, in the Ho-Giap view, a typical resistence force looking forward to the day when it could achieve final juncture with the North's conventional forces. In short, Hanoi was waging unconventional warfare in the South against a quasi-foreign invader army.

Giap tried to effect a closing juncture in 1965, 1968, 1972 and 1975 (with final success). By that time, ARVN had committed half of its strength to baby sitting its pacification effort in rural areas (which saw some success before the final deluge).

So, what was Indochina-Vietnam in the South - an insurgency, civil war, resistence war, unconventional war with a conventional ending or something else ? Did and does it make a difference in what it's called ?

Regards

Mike

[Bob's World]

So why was the communist north created? If it wasn't because of poor governance by the south, then how could it be considered an insurgency, especially since the Vietminh were around before the partition and the creation of the RVN? Or, why can't the opposite case be made - that North Vietnam successfully fought off an insurgency from the south?

Similarly, what about the Koreas? Do we consider North Korea to be "insurgents" against the South? Or Germany before reunification? That doesn't make much sense. For all practical purposes, North Vietnam and South Vietnam were distinct states and one of those states conquered the other through conventional means. That the North also fostered an insurgency in the South (which ultimately failed) doesn't, it seems to me, make the entire conflict an insurgency.

Ike's assessment, in '56 I believe, was that if an open election was conducted that Ho would have taken some 80% of the popular vote nation-wide. Now, if we had still been proponents of Self-Determination in '56 we would have said "excellent, the people know what they want and by helping them achieve it we will have an ally and have stayed true to our ideals." But of course, the Dulles boys and Ike were well on the path of a new strategy rooted in control of nations on the fringes of Communist China and Russia to help contain that threat. So instead of allowing a pure execution of democratic principles to allow a self-determination of governance that would have made the whole of Vietnam a communist state (perceived reasonably as a "loss" for our team).

Lansdale was already hard at work on the ground in the south working to make Diem into a Magsaysay (which he never was); and we began a concerted effort to slow-roll the election and prop up our illegitimate puppet in order to sustain the false division of "North" and "South" states; knowing that an election would have merged the nation as one under a communist Ho.

Faced with the loss of "Hope" in the blocked access to legal means of changing governance, along with the "Injustice” and "Disrespect" of the same, and the externally provided "Illegitimate" governance of Diem; the insurgency that had been waged against the French picked up steam once again; this time with Ho having the legal sanctuary of a State in North Vietnam to help support and sustain his pursuit of classic Maoist insurgency.


Point being, the machinations of governments do not determine if a movement is an insurgency or not. It is the roots within the populace that determine the nature of it.

Our national pride, coupled with the fear of the expansion of communist ideology, led us to make decisions counter to our national ethos, and embroiled us in an otherwise wholly avoidable conflict. We should learn from this experience. The best COIN is done well in advance of a situation going kinetic, and because we did not appreciate that fact we adopted policies that were largely responsible for what followed.


Korea was a very different situation altogether. I doubt very much that the leadership of the North was the governance desired by the populace of the South; and I doubt very much that the Governance of the North and their Chinese backers would have been willing to sit down with the Governance of the South and their American backers and agree to some nation-wide process of self-determination and everyone agreeing to live by the same. So it began with two states already formed. I would tend to put this then into my civil war category with traditional warfare then being a valid technique for resolving the conflict.

Just my take.