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Civilian Loyalties and Guerrilla Conflict
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 18 July 2011
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It is not surprising that Western statesmen and students of politics everywhere have recently begun to give major attention to what are variously termed guerrilla warfare, irregular warfare, paramilitary operations, la guerre révolutionnaire, insurrectional warfare, resistance movements, and other, allegedly military, doctrines. Of course, irregular armed struggles are not a unique feature of mid-twentieth-century politics; however, they have occurred with great frequency in our time and, more important, they have resulted in baffling victories over vastly better armed, better trained, and more numerous forces. President Kennedy, in response to the apparent superiority in military doctrine possessed by Communist forces in Asia, has ordered the rapid expansion of United States “guerrilla and counter-guerrilla forces.” On a more prosaic level, the publication in a national Sunday-morning newspaper of excerpts from a celebrated pamphlet on guerrilla warfare by Mao Tse-tung suggests that “guerrilla warfare,” along with “massive retaliation,” has entered the popular Cold War vocabulary.
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References
1 Stanford, Neal, “U.S. Prepares for Guerrilla Wars,” Foreign Policy Bulletin, XL (June 1, 1961), p. 139.Google Scholar
2 “Mao's Primer on Guerrilla War,” New York Times Magazine, June 4, 1961.
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4 Ibid.
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12 “The French Army and La Guerre Révolutionnaire,” Journal of the Royal United Service Institution, CIV (February 1959), p. 59. For a thorough presentation of all aspects of the doctrine, see Déon, Michel, L'Armée d'Algérie et la Pacification, Paris, Libraire Plon, 1959.Google Scholar One important French military source on this subject is Ximenès, (pseud.), “La guerre révolutionnaire et ses données fondamentales,” Revue Militaire d'Informatian, No. 281 (February–March 1957), pp. 7–20.Google Scholar
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18 Russell W. Volckmann implies the possibility of forced loyalty from the population when he writes: “No resistance movement can flourish for long without mass civilian support. This support may be voluntary, induced, or imposed, but it is absolutely essential to the maintenance of large guerrilla forces for a prolonged period of time in a country overrun by the enemy.” (We Remained: Three Years Behind the Enemy Lines in the Philippines, New York, 1954, p. 125.) Colonel Volckmann commanded the United States Armed Forces in the Philippines, Norm Luzon—a guerrilla corps operating during the period of the Japanese occupation. His own experience indicates that broad-based civilian support was voluntary; only Filipino agents for the Japanese and collaborators were objects of guerrilla attack.
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22 Fall, , op.cit., p. 297.Google Scholar The Morice Line was, of course, penetrated on occasion. See photographs of FLN operations against the Line in New Statesman, June 6, 1959, pp. 782–83. Nevertheless, the most effective French maneuver was “to cut off the nationalist fighters from their roots by preventing them from getting food and shelter from the peasant population” (New York Times, December 13, 1959, p. 2).
23 There are obviously types of mass risings against governments other than guerrilla movements. Gwynn distinguishes at least three main classes of “disorders” in the experiences of British colonial troops: “1. Revolutionary movements organized and designed to upset established government. 2. Rioting or other forms of lawlessness arising from local or widespread grievances. 3. Communal disturbances of a racial, religious or political character not directed against Government, but which Government must suppress.” It is only the first that may imply “guerrilla warfare, carried on by armed bands acting possibly under the instructions of a centralised organisation, but with little cohesion.” (Maj. Gen. SirGwynn, Charles W., Imperial Policing, London, Macmillan, 1934, pp. 10–11.)Google Scholar The Boxer Rebellion in China and the Mau Mau rebellion in Kenya, for example, should be considered as “communal disturbances” and not as guerrilla movements.
24 It is common in large-scale guerrilla movements to distinguish mobile forces, full-time partisans restricted to a given area, and militia (organized civilians who leave their regular occupations for military activity only in emergencies). Chinese Communist usage designates these forces as cheng-shih-tui (regulars), yu-chi-tui (guerrillas), and min-ping (militia). Wingate's doctrine does not envisage armed forces other than regulars, but still stresses the need to have the loyalty of the population on the side of the raiders. See Sykes, , op.cit., pp. 324ff.Google Scholar
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29 May 1938. Tse-tung, Mao, op.cit., 11, pp. 119–56.Google Scholar
30 May–June 1938. Ibid., 11, pp. 157–243.
31 November 1938. Ibid., 11, pp. 267–81.
32 “Mao's Primer on Guerrilla War,” loc.cit., p. 13.
33 “The 18th Group Army: Training, Medical Care and Supply,” U.S. Office of War Information, General Intelligence Division, OPINTEL Report No. 324 (December 15, 1944), p. 1.Google Scholar
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36 The maximum population of the various districts under the direct control of the Soviet central government in 1934 was estimated by Mao Tse-tung for Edgar Snow in 1936 as follows:
Kiangsi Soviet 3,000,000
Hupeh-Anhui-Honan 2,000,000
Hunan-Kiangsi-Hupeh 1,000,000
Kiangsi-Hunan 1,000,000
Chekiang-Fukien 1,000,000
Hunan-Hupeh 1,000,000
Total 9,000,000
Snow recalled that “Mao laughed when I quoted him the figure of ‘80,000,000’ people living under the Chinese Soviets, and said that when they had that big an area the revolution would be practically won.” (Red Star over China, Modern Library edn., 1938, p. 73.) By April 24, 1945, at the Seventh Chinese Communist Party Congress, Mao Tse-tung could announce that “China's liberated areas under the leadership of the Chinese Communist Party have now a population of 95,500,000.” (“On Coalition Government,” Selected Works of Mao Tse-tung, London, Lawrence and Wishart, 1956, IV, p. 259.)
37 See, e.g., Benda, Harry J., “Revolution and Nationalism in the Non-Western World,” in Hunsberger, Warren S., ed., New Era in the Non-Western World, Ithaca, N.Y., 1957, p. 20.Google Scholar
38 See Scaff, Alvin H., The Philippine Answer to Communism, Stanford, Calif., 1955Google Scholar; and Starner, Frances L., Magsaysay and the Philippine Peasantry, Berkeley, Calif., 1961.Google Scholar
39 Elsbree, Willard H., Japan's Role in Southeast Asian Nationalist Movements, Cambridge, Mass., 1953, p. 148.Google Scholar
40 To call Os Sertões (translated as Rebellion in the Backlands by Samuel Putnam) a classic history of guerrilla warfare slights the moral, humanitarian, and scientific significance of this work, considered to be Brazil's greatest literary classic. It is at the same time, however, a major study of military history and of guerrilla conflict. See Cunha, Euclides da, Rebellion in the Backlands, University of Chicago, Phoenix edn., 1944 and 1957.Google Scholar
41 Antonio Conselheiro's rebellion bears a striking similarity, on a lesser scale, to the Taiping Rebellion of mid-nineteenth-century China.
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