The Long Small War: Indigenous Forces for Counterinsurgency
Abstract
The United States and its partners are prosecuting a protracted war against insurgents and terrorists who are animated by an ideology stemming from a radical fundamentalist interpretation of Islam. As of early 2006, the American national security bureaucracy began to use the appellation the "long war" in place of the Global War on Terrorism. At least one document describes this long war as one that shifts emphasis from large-scale conventional military operations to small-scale counterinsurgency operations. The long war may last for decades. In distilled form, the corpus of current national strategic and military documents calls for American forces to leverage allies to help defeat insurgent and terrorist enemies in this perennial effort. The use of indigenous forces to prosecute counterinsurgency can provide a significant increase in the quantity of troops on the ground and yield an exponential improvement in actionable intelligence about the insurgency and its infrastructure. The U.S. military has had some successful experiences in counterinsurgency. For the purpose of this article, certain aspects of the Philippine and Vietnam wars provide some useful examples of how to employ indigenous forces, both regular and irregular, to effectively counter insurgents. The French Army likewise experienced some successful and partially successful episodes where it effectively leveraged indigenous forces to help in the prosecution of counterguerrilla warfare. Although the French Army failed to achieve victory in its wars in Indochina and Algeria, it did capture lessons from both concerning the effective use of indigenous forces. This article culls some of the germane counterinsurgency lessons from the American and French experiences with the employment of indigenous forces in the Philippines, Vietnam, and Algeria. It concludes with some ideas for integrating regular and irregular indigenous forces with both conventional and unconventional American forces and agencies.
Document Details
- Document Type
- Technical Report
- Publication Date
- Jan 01, 2006
- Accession Number
- ADA596938
Entities
People
- Robert M. Cassidy
Organizations
- United States Army War College