Professional Documents
Culture Documents
Modern Warfare
Modern Warfare
91-5016
MODERN WARFARE
A French View of Counterinsurgency
Roger Trinquier
91-5016
A Portrait of the "Centurion"
by BERNARD B. FALL
Alexandria, Virginia
October,1963
ONE
PREPARATION FOR
WAR
/. The Need To Adapt Our Military
Apparatus to Modern Warfare
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him for the role he will have to play and to enable him to
fulfill it effectively on our side.
For the inhabitant to elude the threats of the enemy, to
cease to be an isolated target that no police force can pro-
tect, we must have him participate in his own defense. To
this end, we have him enter into a structured organization
encompassing the entire population. No one shall be able
to avoid this service, and each person at any moment will
be subject to the orders of his civil or military superiors to
participate in protective measures.
Control of the masses through a tight organization,
often through several parallel organizations, is the master
weapon of modern warfare. This is what permits the en-
emy to uncover quickly any hostile element within a sub-
jugated population. Only when we have created a similar
organization will we be able to discover, and as quickly
eliminate, those individuals the enemy tries to introduce
among us.
The creation of such an organization may run into se-
rious difficulties, but they are not insurmountable if we
firmly desire to succeed. There will be no lack of good will;
danger will create it. The experience of the battle of Al-
giers provides us with a sound basis for this assumption.
First, we designate an energetic and intelligent man in
each city who will, with one or more reliable assistants,
build the projected organization with a minimum of help
from the authorities.
The principle is very simple. The designated leader di-
vides the city into districts, at the head of each of which he
places a chief and two or three assistants. These, in turn,
divide the district into sub-districts and designate a chief
and several assistants for each of them. Finally, each build-
ing or group of houses receives a chief and two or three
assistants who will be in direct contact with the populace.
Careful investigation is necessary before designating
PREPARATION FOR WAR * 32
THE POLITICAL
AND MILITARY
CONDUCT
OF THE WAR
I. THE POLITICAL ASPECT
the military operations and who will not have always un-
derstood the underlying reasons for them.
BUT BUT
1. Experiences great difficulty in 1. Chooses own terrain, is well
moving about guerrilla coun- adapted to it, can move
try; usually has imperfect quickly, and quite often dis-
knowledge of the terrain. appears into it
2. Has practically no support 2. Has the support of the popu-
from the population, even if lation (either spontaneous or
it is not hostile. through terror), to which it
is closely tied.
3. Has great difficulty in getting 3. Gets information on all our
information on the move- movements from the popu-
ments and intentions of the lace and sometimes (through
guerrilla. agents infiltrated into our
midst) on our intentions as
well.
I
I %
\ City or Town •
^~'**Sector 5 \
, •"' \ \
of the nation, refused to use the new arms, but the King of
France, responsible for the destiny of the country, adopted
them and armed his infantry with the bow. Charles VII,
in fact, from that time on obliged every parish to maintain
an archer, the first step toward our present national army.
Knights, having become an archaic and useless luxury,
disappeared from the field of battle. For them, a page of
history has been turned for all time.
No nation deprives its army of material resources or
moral support. It allows it its own system of justice, swift
and severe, to pass judgment in the context of warfare on
those soldiers found guilty of offenses or crimes; doctors
to care for the wounded on the field of battle; chaplains to
ensure spiritual peace to the dying, and the power of life
and death over opponents within the framework of the
rules of war. Usually, the army lives isolated from the
people for the duration of conflict.
ITie nation does not ask the army to define problems,
but to win the war it is engaged in and to ensure the popu-
lation's protection and security against any threatening
danger.
If, like the knights of old, our army refused to employ
all the weapons of modern warfare, it could no longer fulfill
its mission. We would no longer be defended. Our national
independence, the civilization we hold dear, our very free-
dom would probably perish.
91-5016-CGSC-1000-1 Nov 91