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Suicidal Armies: Why Do Rebels Fight Like an Army and Keep Losing?

2013; Routledge; Volume: 32; Issue: 4 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1080/01495933.2013.821856

1521-0448

Nori Katagiri,

European and Russian Geopolitical Military Strategies

Abstract Why do rebel groups often fight like an army despite the fact that they keep losing most of the time? I examine seven possible answers and find that insurgent forces are likely to use conventional war strategy and be “suicidal” when they receive material aid from outsiders to build up armed forces and fight on terrain that supports large movements, without knowing that such a strategy does not always work, while strong states make interventions to impose their own method of fighting. This finding has important implications for the analysis of asymmetric war, counterinsurgency, and international security. Acknowledgments For comments on earlier drafts of this article, the author thanks Kanji Akagi, Daina Chiba, Scott Sigmund Gartner, Avery Goldstein, Ryan Grauer, Tim Junio, Manus Midlarsky, Zack Zwald, and participants at my presentations at Air War College, Keio University, Japan's National Defense Academy, and the annual meeting of the American Political Science Association. Views presented in the article do not necessarily reflect the official view of the United States Government, Department of Defense, or the Air War College. Notes 1. See, for instance, T. V. Paul, Asymmetric Conflicts: War Initiation by Weaker Powers (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994); Andrew Mack, “Why Big Nations Lose Small Wars: The Politics of Asymmetric Conflict,” World Politics, vol. 27, no. 2 (1975): 175–200; Ivan Arreguin-Toft, How the Weak Win Wars: A Theory of Asymmetric Conflict (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005); Jason Lyall and Isaiah Wilson, “Rage against the Machines: Explaining Outcomes in Counterinsurgency Wars,” International Organization, vol. 63 (Winter 2009): 67–106; Gil Merom, How Democracies Lose Small Wars: State, Society, and the Failures of France in Algeria, Israel in Lebanon, and the United States in Vietnam (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003); and Jeffrey Record, Beating Goliath: Why Insurgencies Win (Washington, DC: Potomac Books, 2007). 2. Dan Reiter and Curtis Meek, “Determinants of Military Strategy, 1903–1994: A Quantitative Empirical Test,” International Studies Quarterly, vol. 43, no. 2 (June 1999): 363–387. 3. Todd Sechser and Elizabeth Saunders, “The Army You Have: The Determinants of Military Mechanization, 1979–2001,” International Studies Quarterly, vol. 54, no. 2 (June 2010): 481–511. 4. Robert Harkavy and Stephanie Neuman, Warfare and the Third World (New York: Palgrave, 2001). 5. Hilde Ralvo, Nils Gleditsch, and Han Dorussen, “Colonial War and the Democratic Peace,” Journal of Conflict Resolution, vol. 47, no. 4 (August 2003): 520–548. 6. In this article, I treat nonstate actors, rebel actors, and insurgents interchangeably. For a reference, Jason Lyall defines insurgency as “a violent, often protracted, struggle by nonstate actors to obtain political objectives such as independence, greater autonomy, or subversion of the existing political authority.” Jason Lyall, “Do Democracies Make Inferior Counterinsurgents? Reassessing Democracy's Impact on War Outcomes and Duration,” International Organization, vol. 64, no. 1 (2010): 175. 7. Meredith Reid Sarkees, “The Correlates of War Data on War: An Update to 1997,” Conflict Management and Peace Science, vol. 18, no. 1 (2000): 123–144. Small war is defined by Charles Caldwell as “campaigns other than those where both sides consist of regular troops,” such as “operations of regular armies against … irregular forces.” Hybrid war is a combination of traditional war mixed with terrorism and insurgency. Charles Caldwell, Small Wars: Their Principles and Practice (London: Harrison and Sons, 1896); Erin Simpson, “Thinking about Modern Conflict: Hybrid Wars, Strategy, and War Aims” (paper presented at the Annual Meeting of the Midwest Political Science Association, 2005). 8. For one of the pioneer works on asymmetric war, see Paul, Asymmetric Conflicts. 9. Herbert Wulf, “Dependent Militarism in the Periphery and Possible Alternative Concepts,” in Stephanie Neuman and Robert Harkavy, eds., Arms Transfers in the Modern World (New York, 1979); Mao Zedong, On Guerrilla Warfare (Mineola, NY: Dover Publications, 2005). For other approaches, see Allan Stam, Win, Lose, or Draw: Domestic Politics and the Crucible of War (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1996). 10. Theo Farrell, “Transnational Norms and Military Development: Constructing Ireland's Professional Army,” European Journal of International Relations, vol. 7, no. 1 (2001); William McNeill, The Pursuit of Power: Technology, Armed Force, and Society since A.D. 1000 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1982); and Geoffrey Parker, The Military Revolution: Military Innovation and the Rise of the West, 1500–1800, 2nd ed. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996). 11. Rupert Smith, The Utility of Force: The Art of War in the Modern World (London: Knopf, 2007), 16. 12. Reiter and Meek, “Determinants of Military Strategy,” use three strategies: maneuver, attrition, and punishment. Maneuver and attrition strategies fall under the category of conventional war, as opposed to punishment strategy, which is congruent with guerrilla war. Allan Stam, Win, Lose, or Draw; and Scott Bennett and Allan Stam, “The Duration of Interstate Wars, 1816–1985,” American Political Science Review, vol. 90 (1996): 239–257. 13. Samuel Huntington, “Guerrilla Warfare in Theory and Practice,” in Franklin Mark Osanka, ed., Modern Guerrilla Warfare: Fighting Communist Guerrilla Movements, 1941–1961 (New York: The Free Press of Glencoe, 1962), xvi. 14. Lawrence Keeley, War Before Civilization (New York: Oxford University Press, 1997), 59–69. 15. The literature on guerrilla war is large. See, for instance, Robert Taber, War of the Flea: The Classic Study of Guerrilla Warfare (Washington, DC: Brassey’s, 2002); Andrew Krepinevich, The Army and Vietnam (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1981); David Galula, Counterinsurgency Warfare: Theory and Practice (Greenwood Publishing Group, 2006); and David Kilcullen, The Accidental Guerrilla: Fighting Small Wars in the Midst of a Big One (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009). 16. Arreguin-Toft, How the Weak Win Wars. 17. Lyall and Wilson, “Rage Against the Machines.” 18. Walter Laqueur, Guerrilla Warfare: A Historical and Cultural Analysis (New Brunswick, NJ.: Transaction Publishers, 1997). 19. Alexander Wendt and Michael Barnett, “Dependent State Formation and Third World Militarization,” Review of International Studies, vol. 19 (1993): 321–347. 20. John Meyer et al., “World Society and the Nation-State,” American Journal of Sociology, vol. 103 (1997): 164. 21. Arreguin-Toft, How the Weak Win Wars, Lyall and Wilson, “Rage Against the Machines”; Merom, How Democracies Lose Small Wars; and Jonathan Caverley, “Myth of Military Myopia: Democracy, Small Wars, and Vietnam,” International Security, vol.34, no. 3 (Winter 2010). 22. See, for instance, Idean Salehyan, Rebels without Borders: Transnational Insurgencies in World Politics (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2009); and Michael Horowitz, “Non-State Actors and the Diffusion of Innovation: The Case of Suicide Terrorism,” International Organization, vol. 64, no. 1 (Winter 2010). 23. Keeley, War Before Civilization, 79. 24. Morris Janowitz, The Military in the Political Development of New Nations: An Essay in Comparative Analysis (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1964), 27. 25. Michael Adas, Machines as a Measure of Men: Science, Technology, and Ideologies of Western Dominance (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1989), 160. 26. Stathis Kalyvas and Laia Balcells, “International System and Technologies of Rebellion: How the End of the Cold War Shaped Internal Conflict,” American Political Science Review, vol. 104, no. 3 (August 2010): 415. 27. Sechser and Saunders, “The Army You Have,” 483. 28. Kenneth Waltz writes that “[c]ontending states imitate the military innovations contrived by the country of the greatest capability and ingenuity. And so the weapons of major contenders, and even their strategies, begin to look the same all over the world.” Kenneth Waltz, Theory of International Politics (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1979), 127; Robert O’Connell, Of Arms and Men: A History of War, Weapons, and Aggression (New York: Oxford University Press, 1989). 29. Adria Lawrence, “Triggering Nationalist Violence: Competition and Conflict in Uprisings against Colonial Rule,” International Security, vol. 35, no. 2 (Fall 2010): 95; Ted Robert Gurr, Why Men Rebel (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1971); and Roger Petersen, Understanding Ethnic Violence: Fear, Hatred, and Resentment in Twentieth-Century Eastern Europe (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002). 30. Walter Laqueur, Guerrilla Warfare: A Historical and Critical Study (New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction Publishers, 1998); Fearon and Laitin, “Ethnicity, Insurgency, and Civil War” American Political Science Review, vol. 97, no. 1 (February 2003): 83, 85; Paul Collier et al., “The Collier-Hoeffler Model of Civil War Onset and the Case Study Project Research Design,” in Paul Collier and Nicholas Sambanis, eds., Understanding Civil War, Vol. 2: Europe, Central Asia, and Other Regions (Washington, DC: World Bank, 2005), 1–45; and David Galula, Counterinsurgency Warfare: Theory and Practice (New York: Praeger, 2006), 37–38. 31. Harold Winters, Battling the Elements (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press), p. 101; Martin van Creveld, Technology and War: From 2000 B.C. to the Present (New York: Free Press, 1991); and Colin Gray, “Inescapable Geography,” in Colin Gray and Geoffrey Sloan, eds., Geopolitics: Geography and Strategy (London: Frank Cass, 1999), 161–177. 32. James Fearon and David Laitin, “Weak States, Rough Terrain, and Large-Scale Ethnic Violence Since 1945,” (unpublished manuscript, 1999), 19. 33. Stam, Win, Lose, or Draw. 34. Mao, On Guerrilla Warfare. 35. Seth Jones, In the Graveyard of Empires: America's War in Afghanistan (New York: W. W. Norton, 2009). 36. Timothy Crawford and Alan Kuperman, eds., Gambling on Humanitarian Intervention: Moral Hazard, Rebellion, and Civil War (London: Routledge, 2006), especially Crawford's chapter. 37. See, for instance, Paul Collier and Anke Hoeffler, “Greed and Grievance in Civil War” (Oxford: Center for the Study of African Economics, 2002); James Fearon and David Laitin, “Ethnicity, Insurgency, and Civil War” Alan Krueger, What Makes a Terrorist? Economics and the Roots of Terrorism (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2007). 38. Jeffrey Record, Beating Goliath: Why Insurgencies Win (Washington, DC: Potomac Books, 2007). 39. Wendt and Barnett, “Dependent State Formation and Third World Militarization,” 325; Stephanie Neuman, “International Stratification and Third World Military Industries,” International Organization, vol. 38 (1984); Michael Barnett and Alexander Wendt, “Systemic Sources of Dependent Militarization,” in Brian Job, ed., The Insecurity Dilemma: National Security of Third World States (Boulder, CO: Lynne Rienner, 1992), 167–197. 40. David Ralston, Importing the European Army: The Introduction of European Military Techniques and Institutions into the Extra-European World, 1600–1814 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1990). 41. Adas, Machines as a Measure of Men, 366–371. 42. Dan Reiter, “Military Strategy and the Outbreak of International Conflict: Quantitative Empirical Tests, 1903–1992,” Journal of Conflict Resolution, vol. 43, no. 3 (1999): 366–387. See also Theo Farrell, “Transnational Norms and Military Development: Constructing Ireland's Professional Army,” European Journal of International Relations, vol. 7, no. 1 (2001): 63–102. 43. As Robert Jervis writes, “the pressures to apply the lessons learned from one salient situation to others that resemble it are so powerful that even those who are aware of the pitfalls of this practice may succumb.” Robert Jervis, Perception and Misperception in International Politics (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1976), 221. Also see Yuen Foong Khong, Analogies at War: Korea, Munich, Dien Bien Phu, and the Vietnam Decisions of 1965 (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1992); Dan Reiter, Crucible of Beliefs: Learning, Alliances, and World Wars (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1996); Ernest May, “Lessons” of the Past: The Use and Misuse of History in American Foreign Policy (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1973). 44. Barry Posen, “Nationalism, the Mass Army, and Military Power,” International Security, vol. 18, no. 2 (1993); Ralston, Importing the European Army. 45. Meredith Sarkees et al., “Inter-State, Intra-State, and Extra-State Wars: A Comprehensive Look at Their Distribution over Time, 1816–1997,” International Studies Quarterly, vol. 47; and Kristian Skrede Gleditsch, “A Revised List of Wars Between and Within Independent States, 1816–2002,” International Interactions, vol. 30 (2004): 231–262. 46. Dupuy and Dupuy, The Encyclopedia of Military History (New York: Harper and Row, 1993); Byron Farwell, The Encyclopedia of Nineteenth-Century Land Warfare (New York: W. W. Norton, 2001); Klause J. Gantzel et al., Warfare Since the Second World War (Piscataway, NJ: Transaction Publishers, 2000); Lyall, “Do Democracies Make Inferior Counterinsurgents?; Arreguin-Toft, How The Weak Win Wars; and David Gompert and John Gordon, War by Other Means: Building Complete and Balanced Capabilities for Counterinsurgency (Santa Monica, CA: RAND, 2008). 47. CIA World Factbook, available at https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/fields/2125.html (accessed on October 19, 2011); Atar Singh Jadoan, Military Geography of Southeast Asia (New Delhi: Anmol Publications, 2001). 48. William Martel, Victory in War: Foundations of Modern Strategy, 2nd ed. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2011). 49. Dominic Johnson and Dominic Tierney, Failing to Win: Perceptions of Victory and Defeat in International Politics (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2006). 50. John Mueller, The Remnants of War (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2004), 87. 51. Scott Ashworth et al., “Design, Inference, and the Strategic Logic of Suicide Terrorism,” American Political Science Review, vol. 102, no. 2 (2008); Lyall, “Do Democracies Make Inferior Counterinsurgents?,” 269–273. 52. Erica Chenoweth and Maria Stephan, Why Civil Resistance Works: The Strategic Logic of Nonviolent Conflict (New York: Columbia University Press, 2011). 53. Fearon and Laitin, Weak States, Rough Terrain, and Large-Scale Ethnic Violence Since 1945, 20. 54. Lawrence, “Triggering Nationalist Violence,” 94–95. 55. Lyall and Wilson, “Rage against the Machines”; and Kalyvas and Balcells, “International System and Technologies of Rebellion,” 426. 56. Reiter and Curtis Meek, “Determinants of Military Strategy,” 382. 57. Wendt and Barnett, “Dependent State Formation and Third World Militarization,” 325. 58. Thirty-one wars were colonial and 55 were wars of decolonization. Of the 31 colonial wars, 19 were conventional, or 58%. Of the 55 wars of decolonization, 27 were unconventional, or 49%. Nineteen and 27 cases make 46, or 53%. 59. Keeley, War Before Civilization, 116. 60. Lyall, “Do Democracies Make Inferior Counterinsurgents?” 61. Reiter and Curtis Meek, “Determinants of Military Strategy,” 383. 62. Jervis, Perception and Misperception in International Politics, 217–220. 63. Daniel Byman, Understanding Proto-Insurgencies (Santa Monica, CA: RAND, 2007). 64. Dominic Johnson and Joshua Madin, “Population Models and Counterinsurgency Strategies,” in Raphael Sagarin and Terence Taylor, eds., Natural Security: A Darwinian Approach to a Dangerous World (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2008), 159–185. 65. David Edelstein, “Foreign Militaries, Sustainable Institutions, and Postwar Statebuilding,” in Roland Paris and Timothy Sisk, eds., The Dilemmas of Statebuilding: Confronting the Contradictions of Postwar Peace Operations (London: Routledge, 2009), 81–103. 66. David Edelstein, Occupational Hazards: Success and Failure in Military Occupation (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2008), 159.