Adapting to Win. Noriyuki Katagiri
compose the theory. I also show that sequencing strategies are likely to emerge when insurgent leaders put together a set of these phases in order to evolve during the war, creating a host of sequential patterns distinct from other strategies designed to fight stronger enemies. Indeed, a number of factors encourage insurgent leaders to choose a sequencing strategy over others, including external support, internal popular support, leadership attributes, and internal weaknesses of the states they fight. At the center of insurgent leaders’ decision to adopt sequencing strategies is the general acceptance of these strategies as a means of overthrowing powerful rivals. At the same time, however, there are different requirements for each of the six sequencing strategies. In this section, I clarify a set of different requirements for those phases to constitute a sequence.
Guerrilla War
The first of the three phases of sequencing theory is guerrilla warfare, where we see both sides engage in hit-and-run operations for a sustained period. In this phase states and insurgents exchange low-intensity violence while mobilizing the population as human buffers and sources of supplies and striving to build informal networks as support bases. Guerrilla war is, according to Samuel Huntington, “a form of warfare by which the strategically weaker side assumes the tactical offensive in selected forms, times, and places.”1 The core of guerrilla warfare rests with the competition for popular support because it is the population that provides the sine qua non of guerrilla war—food, lodging, sanctuary, intelligence, recruitment sources, and legitimacy. Thus Chalmers Johnson states that “guerrilla warfare is civilian warfare …, conflict between a professional army … and an irregular force, less well trained, less well equipped, but actively supported by the population of the area occupied by the army.”2 Of course, in practice the distinction between combatants and the population is difficult to draw because the former effectively integrates the latter in combat, and one can hardly distinguish the innocent from civilian-clothed militias. Thus the separation between guerrillas and the population is analytical. Needless to say, the primacy of popular support has been widely acknowledged in the literature.3 For Mao, “weapons are an important factor in war, but not the decisive factor; it is people, not things, that are decisive. The contest of strength is not only a contest of military and economic power, but also a contest of human power and morale.”4 David Galula notes that “military action is secondary to the political one, its primary purpose being to afford the political power enough freedom to work safely with the population.”5 In “colonial struggles against imperial powers,” writes Huntington, the war “begins with the mobilization of new groups into politics and the creation of new political institutions.”6 In short, the key to success in the phase of guerrilla warfare is popular support. The side that seizes popular support and builds strong bases is likely to dominate the guerrilla war phase.
There are many factors that shape a successful guerrilla insurgency, but one of the key factors is external support. State support is critical for insurgents to be successful because outside resources increase their internal sustainability.7 Insurgents also benefit from other groups that might coalesce to generate a united front. Some groups ally with weak states in the neighborhood. Otherwise unable to challenge enemies on their own, insurgents exploit these states that are too weak to prevent their access, states that seek to foster instability in their rivals, and large refugee diasporas that allow the groups to establish bases. States that host them tend to intervene in negotiations between governments and these groups and block progress toward peace when they pursue their own agendas and because these sanctuaries complicate intelligence gathering, COIN operations, and peacemaking.8 External aid comes in both wartime and peacetime, but it is critical for insurgents to receive aid during wartime when material shortages are prevalent.
Yet state sponsorship may not always be helpful. Having a sponsor that provides safe haven actually increases the risk of being eliminated by the target because sponsors may be tempted to provide information to the target to avoid potential costs from military operations within their territory.9 External support can backfire, furthermore, under moral hazards when an expectation of such support encourages groups to fight recklessly in the hope of getting it. Material aid gives them the expectation that a war will be easier to win, so they may become unnecessarily aggressive in the assumption of false insurance.10 Finally, getting such support is not easy. Winning outside support is highly competitive and uncertain. Even when provided, such support is not a philanthropic gesture but an exchange based on the relative power of each party to the transaction, and its effect is more ambiguous than is often acknowledged. Competition for foreign intervention occurs in a context of economic, political, and organizational inequality that systematically advantages some challengers over others.11 External support is not always the decisive factor in extrasystemic war.
Conventional War
In guerrilla warfare, it is the population that plays a central role while the army provides a supportive function. In conventional war, it is the opposite. The army takes the main role in crushing enemy capacity in decisive engagement and gaining control of the population, territory, or vital industrial and communications centers while protecting the population behind the front lines. But conventional war does not serve states and insurgents equally. Military history makes it clear that it is states, rather than insurgents, that enjoy the benefit of using regular armies in war because they have the inherent advantage in resources and organization.12 Western powers taxed their citizens and monopolized the production and dissemination of advanced weapons. In contrast, nonstate insurgents did not have any other means but to pick up arms after battle, use aid from allies, and secretly purchase weapons from foreign agents. Naturally, the quality and quantity of weapons imports and advisers did not match those of states.
Conventional war has evolved to become what it is today. Risking over-simplification, we know from history that by the fourteenth century, not just European powers but also colonized peoples in non-European territory had developed armies of heavy cavalry and infantry, but Europe led the way to add the power of the siege cannon in the mid-fifteenth century. Later in that century came the creation of standing armies that dramatically increased the size of force structure along with the expansion of government expenditures on military affairs.13 The evolution of land and sea transport after 1815 had a strong association with the development of the steam engine, which affected the balance of power between European powers and their colonial subjects. The railway in Europe then eliminated prolonged marches and allowed huge armies to be moved quickly.14 Growth in military technology and European imperial motives worked hand in hand to produce an overwhelming firepower advantage that brought down a host of political entities in Africa, South and Southeast Asia, Latin America, and Middle East in the following centuries. At the center of this European expansionism was the conventional military power that drew on the dramatic innovation of weapons.15 Weapons evolved through stages of gunpowder, cannons, crossbows, and atomic weapons, which reflected the notion that development in military technologies changes the nature of military organizations and modern war.16 Until World War I armies consisted mostly of infantry and were organized around the principle of “foraging,” in which the bulk of their supplies was obtained from local populations. Foraging involved the use of monetary payments, forced requisition, and simple looting to acquire provisions from populations near the conflict zone.17 The end of World War I saw the replacement of manpower with motorized vehicles like tanks, which increased the mobility and survivability of military forces on industrial-age battlefields.
State Building
Military power is a determinant of victory, but it is not the only one. As Lenin’s party-state concept attests, we must add state-building efforts to the equation. Both sides engage in building government structures and seek to monopolize the means of violence over a given territory. Central to the process of building a state is the control of institutions and the growth of organizational capacity to govern the territory. Generally understood as a set of formal and informal rules that constrain and reward human behavior,18 institutions here are a generic group of formal organizations such as political parties and civil service, police, financial, legal, and educational systems that facilitate government functions. Institutions are quite visible in major centers of activity, such as the capital. Yet the process of state building is more than just the establishment of institutions.