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PaperclipPerfector  15d ago (text post)   36537 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of January 27, 2025

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Guerilla warfare is a defensive strategy against symmetrically asymmetrically matched opponents. Once the tide starts turning the guerillas have no reason to play by this defensive strategy. At that point they move above ground, take over institutions, and the final phase of the battle will resemble one of a traditional war or a coup.

Guerilla warfare is a defensive strategy against symmetrically matched opponents.

Surely you mean "asymmetrically"?

That said, I agree. I was more quibbling with this part of an above comment.

That last one is the most important. No "guerrilla" or "terrorist" insurgency has ever won a civil war against a domestic enemy.

If we take "no guerrilla or terrorist insurgency has ever won a civil war" as "no group has won a civil war while still being guerrillas" rather than "no group starting out as guerrillas has won a civil war", the number of eligible groups you could apply this to changes.

If one interprets it as the former, then it's nearly vacuous because you do actually need to strike the enemy flag at the end. Even the Taliban did mount a conventional campaign as the USA was pulling out.

Even then, I'm still not sure it's true, at least without a definition of "domestic" that splits hairs so finely that it fails to cover the US case (the IRA never went conventional and managed to force the British crown to make substantial concessions; I don't think there's a good definition of "colony" that covers Northern Ireland vs. Britain but not the various states of the USA).

No disagreement here.

Surely you mean "asymmetrically"?

Yep, corrected.

the number of eligible groups you could apply this to changes.

Agreed.

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