Counter Insurgency Warfare

Abstract

The laws of war—this is a problem that anyone directing a war must study and solve. The laws of revolutionary war—this is a problem that anyone directing a revolutionary war must study and solve. The laws of China’s revolutionary war—this is a problem that anyone directing a revolutionary war in China must study and solve. —Mao Tse-tung, Strategic Problems of China’s Revolutionary War (December, 1936) No chess player has ever found, nor is any likely to find, a sure way of winning from the first move. The game contains too many variables even for one of today’s nerveless electronic computers to plot out a guaranteed checkmate. War is not a chess game but a vast social phenomenon with an infinitely greater and ever-expanding number of variables, some of which elude analysis. Who can deny the importance of luck in war, for instance, and who can assess luck in advance? When Mussolini precipitated a war in the Balkans, forcing Hitler to waste the best part of the spring of 1941 in a secondary theater and to delay the prepared German attack on Soviet Russia, he may well have saved Moscow. It can be argued that this event involved no element of luck, but rather a flagrant error on the part of the Axis: Mussolini should have consulted his partner. Yet since Stalin had played no part in Mussolini’s decision, what conclusion can be reached except that Stalin was extremely lucky