Guerrilla Wars

IB SL History
Learning Intention Success Criteria

To find out about guerrilla To understand the

warfare. principles of guerrilla
warfare.
To understand the doctrine
of Revolutionary/People’s
War.
To evaluate its
effectiveness.
‘Guerrilla’ not ‘gorilla’!

Guerrilla comes from the Spanish word for war, guerra. It means ‘little war’ and
was used to describe the fighting of the Spanish and Portuguese against
Napoleon’s occupying French army.

This fighting consisted of ‘hit and run’ engagements, rather than positional,
conventional warfare and ‘guerrilla warfare’ has been used to refer to warfare
using such tactics since.
 (continued)

'Hit and run' allows the weak to take on the strong, as it gives
them advantages that conventional positional warfare ('stand
and fight') does not. Guerrilla Warfare often forms part of a
longer-term strategy called 'Revolutionary', or 'People's',
War.‘Low intensity’ and ‘unconventional’ are other
descriptions sometimes used.
Revolutionary/Peoples’ War

Mao: 'the strategy is to pit one against ten; the

tactics are to pit ten men against one.'

Mao: ‘guerrillas are fish that swim in the sea.’

What does this
photo of a Vietnam
War guerrilla tell us
about guerrilla
warfare?
What does this picture of
victorious Communist
forces at the end of the
Vietnam (‘American’) War
tell us about the reasons
for the Communist
victory?
The importance of progression

One a picture of the classic guerrilla, taken in the Mekong Delta in

Vietnam in 1962. The other is the Communist takeover of Saigon in
1975. They illustrate the progression of Mao’s strategy:

Stage 1: Hit and run - enemy deploys more forces to defend likely
targets.
(continued)

Stage 2: Strategic stalemate - enemy at peak effort, defending all the places it
can, usually major population centres. Guerrillas use safe areas to train and arm
larger units (e.g. China 1937-45).

Stage 3: Strategic counter-offensive – guerrilla warfare turns into protracted

warfare, stand and fight (e.g. China 1945-49).
A BIG but...

Cases like Cuba and Vietnam - where wars were, or at least began as, guerrilla
wars - can blind us to the fact that most are, according to Max Boot, unsuccessful:

'Indeed, there have been more losing guerrilla movements than successful ones.
Just as business startups don’t typically become Apple or Microsoft, so most
insurgent groups don’t become the Viet Cong or the Chinese Red Army.'
(continued)

'Insurgencies have been getting more successful since 1945, but they still lose most of the time.
According to a database that I have compiled, out of 443 insurgencies since 1775, insurgents
succeeded in 25.2% of the concluded wars while incumbents prevailed in 63.8%. The rest were
draws.

Since 1945, the win rate for insurgents has indeed gone up, to 39.6%. But counter-insurgency
campaigns still won 51.1% of post-1945 wars.'

http://nation.time.com/2013/01/14/giving-guerrillas-the-boot/ Accessed 26/11/18

TASK:

Read the article about Max Boot and his ideas below and explain on your
docs the key features of guerrilla warfare.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/SB100014241278873235962045782437024
04190338