Insurgency
[4] Due to this asymmetry, insurgents avoid large-scale direct battles, opting instead to blend in with the civilian population (often in rural areas) where they gradually expand territorial control and military forces.
[5] Insurgency sets itself apart from terrorism by aiming for political control rather than resorting to indiscriminate violence,[7] however, it may incorporate terrorist tactics.
Multipolarity extends the definition of insurgency to situations where there is no recognized authority, as in the Somali Civil War, especially the period from 1998 to 2006, where it broke into quasi-autonomous smaller states, fighting among one another in changing alliances.
James Fearon and David Laitin define insurgency as "a technology of military conflict characterized by small, lightly armed bands practicing guerrilla warfare from rural base areas.
"[12] According to Matthew Adam Kocher, Thomas Pepinsky and Stathis Kalyvas, a central objective in insurgencies is to achieve control over civilians.
[4] To exercise control armed groups apply a variety of practices, including different types of violence, dispute resolution, taxation, regulation of movement, access to aid and services, and social strictures.
[16] Wood suggests that "participants in the 1964 Freedom Summer campaign in the US South ran high risks of bodily harm in challenging the long-standing practices of racial exclusion in Mississippi."
For example, the supply of safety as a material good can be provided by the insurgents, which abolishes the exploitation of the government and thus forms one of the main incentives.
The revolutionary power can help manifest a social-political network that in return provides access to political opportunities to diverse candidates, who share a collective identity and cultural homogeneity.
[citation needed] In consecutive coups in 1977 and 1999 in Pakistan, the initial actions focused internally on the government rather than on seeking broad support.
Metz suggests that contemporary insurgencies have far more complex and shifting participation than traditional wars, where discrete belligerents seek a clear strategic victory.
Reporting to the Secretary-General in 2002, the Working Group stated the following: Without attempting a comprehensive definition of terrorism, it would be useful to delineate some broad characteristics of the phenomenon.
It is meant to inflict dramatic and deadly injury on civilians and to create an atmosphere of fear, generally for a political or ideological (whether secular or religious) purpose.
While the term "subversion" is less commonly used by current U.S. spokesmen, that may be due to the hyperbolic way it was used in the past, in a specifically anticommunist context.
U.S. Secretary of State Dean Rusk did in April 1962, when he declared that urgent action was required before the "enemy's subversive politico-military teams find fertile spawning grounds for their fish eggs.
"[25] In a Western context, Rosenau cites a British Secret Intelligence Service definition as "a generalized intention to (emphasis added) "overthrow or undermine parliamentary democracy by political, industrial or violent means."
Rosenau mentions a more recent definition that suggests subversion includes measures short of violence, which still serve the purposes of insurgents.
Addressing Huntington's thesis,[26] Fukuyama stressed that the US and its allies need to focus on specific radical groups rather than clash with global Islam.
[29] Insurgent groups often struggle to maintain coherency and authority due to their decentralized nature, and thus rely heavily upon ethnic, religious, or ideological bounds to avoid splintering.
He gives a visual overview[34] of the actors in his model of conflicts, which he represents as a box containing an "ecosystem" defined by geographic, ethnic, economic, social, cultural, and religious characteristics.
[35] The counterinsurgency strategy can be described as efforts to end the insurgency by a campaign developed in balance along three "pillars": security, political, and economical.
The model depicts four key elements or players: All of these interact, and the different elements have to assess their best options in a set of actions: In Thomas Barnett's paradigm,[42] the world is divided into a "connected core" of nations enjoying a high level of communications among their organizations and individuals, and those nations that are disconnected internally and externally.
In a reasonably peaceful situation, he describes a "system administrator" force, often multinational, which does what some call "nation-building", but, most importantly, connects the nation to the core and empowers the natives to communicate—that communication can be likened to swarm coordination.
Leviathan may use extensive swarming at the tactical level, but its dispatch is a strategic decision that may be made unilaterally, or by an established group of the core such as NATO or ASEAN.
Other than brief "Leviathan" takedowns, security building appears to need to be regional, with logistical and other technical support from more developed countries and alliances (e.g., ASEAN, NATO).
The French general, Joseph Gallieni, observed, while a colonial administrator in 1898, A country is not conquered and pacified when a military operation has decimated its inhabitants and made all heads bow in terror; the ferments of revolt will germinate in the mass and the rancours accumulated by the brutal action of force will make them grow again[43] Both Kilcullen and Eizenstat define a more abstract goal than does Cordesman.
Further research on governance, rule of law, attitudes, dynamics and agency between allies are needed to better understand asymmetric conflicts and to have better informed decisions made at the tactical, strategic and public policy levels.
In the Philippine–American War, U.S. forces successfully quelled the Filipino insurgents by 1902, albeit with tactics considered unacceptable by the majority of modern populations.
