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Abstract
The current attention towards wars against non-state actors—counterinsurgency (COIN) campaigns (e.g. Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria)—triggered an immense debate relating to the best approach on the conduct of COIN on the operational and tactical levels, with the current predilection for a population-centric operational approach epitomized by the U.S. Army/Marine Corps Field Manual (FM) 3-24 Counterinsurgency. This approach is designed for interventionist states’ militaries by focusing on two epitomic COIN campaigns, namely, Malaya and, to a lesser degree, Algeria.
First, such narrow focus on colonial campaigns is insufficient for making generalizable inferences. It ignores the bulk of the military history of successful COIN campaigns conducted by indigenous actors—denominated as ‘first-party actors’—without any (significant) direct intervention by other states. These campaigns include Peru, Turkey and Sri Lanka, and contain valuable lessons for both first-party actors as well as their expeditionary counterparts. This thesis seeks to broaden the scope of campaigns from which to draw generalizable lessons.
Second, the prevalent field manual offers a detailed blueprint on how to conduct COIN anywhere in the world. This is problematic for two reasons. On the one hand, such thinking ignores the hierarchical, but nonetheless reciprocal, relationship between the levels of war, namely, (military) strategic, operational and tactical levels, by overemphasizing the operational approach which in turn would limit both strategic and political choices. On the other hand, such claim to universality contradicts the ever-changing character of war, thus, decontextualizing and ‘destrategizing’ the complex phenomenon and reducing it to a mere tactical interaction between insurgents and counterinsurgents in their struggle for legitimacy in eyes of the key population. Against this background, this thesis shifts the focus from the operational level to military strategic, studying it not in isolation from the other levels, but in conjunction with them.
To reach the above aims, this thesis focuses on three case studies: Peru, Turkey and Sri Lanka by using both primary (original language) sources and secondary literature. The main findings posit that unlike their expeditionary counterparts, first-party actors use predominantly enemy-centric military strategies. The success of these strategies, however, is always directly related to what the political purpose is and what resources are available.