Relevance of Guerrilla warfare in 21st Centaury

Abstract

Guerrilla warfare is not a new phenomenon and history is witness to its repeated occurrence. In the modern era, it acquired prominence during the Napoleonic Wars which led to an examination of its role by leading nineteenth-century thinkers including Clausewitz, Jomini, Marx and Engels. Over the course of the subsequent century, the concept and practice of guerrilla warfare was integrated within social, economic and political programmers that aimed to overthrow established authority and transform society through an armed struggle. The link that was forged in the mid-nineteenth century by Italian and Polish revolutionaries like Carlo Bianco and Mazzini achieved fruition in the writings and practice of Mao tse-Tung in the twentieth century. This paper traces such conceptualizations of guerrilla warfare.
Keywords: Guerrilla warfare, phenomenon and history, Napoleonic Wars which, revolutionary war, armament.
Introduction: It is thus generally employed: by small bands of irregulars fighting a superior invading army or to weaken the latter’s hold over conquered territory; by a weaker side, or as a supplementary means in a conventional war; and in the preliminary stages of a revolutionary war that aims at overthrowing the existing political authority. Guerrilla strategy is determined by the rebels’ weakness in relation to the superior military forces that they confront. Since weakness precludes a direct trial of strength in open battle, guerrillas necessarily aim at denying military victory to their opponents. The guerrilla strategy of denial does not aim at control over territory. Instead, hit-and-run operations and ambushes are carried out to loosen state control over territory and population. Consequently, the armament needs of guerrillas are limited to light weapons. Guerrilla warfare is thus relatively cheap to wage, though it is rather expensive to counter. The guerrilla’s goal is to impose costs on the adversary in terms of loss of soldiers, supplies, infrastructure, peace of mind, and most importantly, time. In other words, guerrilla war is designed “to destroy not the capacity but the will” of the adversary.
An Adjunct to Conventional War: Guerrilla warfare emerged as a major phenomenon in the study of war in the aftermath of the Spanish-Portuguese guerrilla operations against French occupation forces in the first decade of the nineteenth century. Since in the overall analysis these rebel operations were seen as a comparatively minor component of the Napoleonic Wars, post-war analysts tended to view guerrilla warfare as merely an adjunct to conventional war or as part of a national uprising against a foreign invasion. Clausewitz, for example, thought of guerrilla warfare as an auxiliary to regular military forces in the context of resisting an invading army. Irregulars, in his view, should not be employed against any sizeable enemy force. Their aim is not to “pulverize the core but to nibble at the shell and around the edges.” They should be used outside the theatre of war, in order to deny the invader these areas. Clausewitz pictured partisans as “nebulous and elusive,” whose resistance “should never materialize as a concrete body.” Otherwise, an adequate regular force would be able to easily crush them. Jomini too located guerrilla warfare within the matrix of national uprisings against an invading army. In his view, the difficulties of an invading force were particularly great when the popular uprising is “supported by a nucleus of disciplined troops.” Without the support of a disciplined and regular army, popular uprisings would always be eventually suppressed.