Insurgency. British Major General X.X. Xxxxxxxx was the first to conceptualize insurgency as a distinct form of warfare. According to him, insurgency comprises “rebellions and guerrilla warfare in all parts of the world where organized armies are struggling against opponents who will not meet them in the open field” (Callwell 1906, 21). His definition isolates guerrilla tactics as a critical feature of this form of warfare. In this dissertation — as in much of modern political science literature — the term insurgency denotes a sustained armed struggle between an incumbent (state) and an insurgent (non-state) actor, in which the latter resorts to violence in an attempt to achieve an overtly political aim such as secession, government takeover, or change in government policy.1 Insurgencies are distinguishable from conventional civil wars inasmuch as the non-state actor pursues its goal by way of guerrilla tactics — “a strategy of armed resistance that [. . . ] uses small, mobile groups to inflict punishment on the 1In the remainder of the text, I also refer to incumbent actors as governments. incumbent through hit-and-run strikes while avoiding direct battle when possible” (Xxxxx and Xxxxxx 2009, 70). The outcome of the incumbent’s COIN effort refers to how favorable the final allocation of the disputed good is to the counterinsurgent.2 Many scholars have noted that insurgencies are often characterized by a marked power asymmetry between incumbents and insurgents (Xxxxxxx 2006; Xxxxxx 2006; Xxxxxxx 2005; Merom 2003; Xxxx, Xxxxxxxx, Xxxx and Xxxxxx 2006). Given the lop- sided nature of the contest, how can a rebel movement ever hope to achieve its aims? While innumerable theorists have expounded on how this is to be done, few works have been as influential as Xxx Xxx-xxxx’x On Guerrilla Warfare. Xxx’s doctrine of revolutionary war envisions three distinct phases. In the first phase, the nascent movement is at its weakest, and hence its highest priority is to survive in the face of a superior incumbent foe. Accordingly, insurgent effort is largely clandestine and confined to building up the movement’s organizational, economic, and political capac- ities, with only sporadic guerrilla action against the state. The second phase begins once the rebel group gathers sufficient strength to be able to challenge the incum- bent’s authority in remote pockets of the countryside as well as sustain its competing claim to sovereignty. A key insurgent objective here is to undermine th...
