Adapting to Win. Noriyuki Katagiri
of destruction in the first phase falls on the people who are forced to pay for war. Thus local support declines and guerrilla operations decrease. Even if the war moves to the second phase, insurgents suffer from the drainage of popular support, followed by the reduction of military capability. Finally, the second phase is unlikely to go well because the population draws negative impressions from the process. Collapse of conventional strategy in the first phase sends them a signal that the war is not going well. They learn that an initial military effort has failed despite their effort and sacrifice, so now they are less likely to support guerrilla causes. States welcome this change of popular sentiment, which enhances their resolve to win and, naturally, their chances to dominate this phase. Therefore, the degenerative model does not work.
Premature Model
The premature model is made of a sequence of actions that expand the primitive model into the conventional model. It reflects a form of strategic evolution in the direction opposite to the degenerative model. In this model, both sides start a guerrilla war, but insurgents realize that the war is not decisive enough, so they crawl out of the jungle and mountains and use their remaining resources to organize and arm soldiers. By the time they reach the second phase, however, any army they organize is likely to be overwhelmed because the preceding guerrilla activities had drained insurgents’ resources and resolve, boosted public frustration, and diminished popular support. The state side responds to the shift because it knows that, having the advantage in resources, training, and organization on the battlefield, doing so will increase their chance of victory. The war will remain irregular, however, if the state sees no value in deploying regular armies and is able to destroy the insurgents at that point. In short, the model characterizes the insurgent prematurity in the level of preparation for conventional war.
The premature model takes place when the transition occurs “prematurely.” That is, insurgent groups end up fighting like this when they do not have resources or willingness to build a state even if they do have capability and willingness to fight both like an army and guerrilla forces in different time periods. Alternately, the premature model may occur when the state side succeeds in sabotaging insurgents’ early efforts to carry out a counterrevolution, stopping their evolution short of becoming a mature political organization. Because of these potential dangers associated with the model, the insurgent groups need to be flexible and resourceful enough to fight in both conventional and unconventional manners. They also need to initially act in the belief that the guerrilla strategy suits the particular terrain they fight on and is militarily more effective than the other options, only to realize later that switching to a conventional war strategy makes more sense and only if the state side reciprocates in creating such a transition.
There are two extrasystemic cases where insurgents fought along this model, but none has been successful. By the time a war reaches its second phase, most insurgents normally have used up their resources to build a powerful army after protracted guerrilla combat, while the state side keeps its material advantage. There are few resources left in the insurgents’ governing organizations to collect taxes and sustain the activities. Another reason is that the two component phases of the premature model are not compatible with each other when they are put into this sequence. The initial phase depicts the execution of low-intensity combat for a sustained period of time when the population gets involved in cross fire and makes sacrifices in the food and shelter. Even if insurgents survive the first phase, the war takes heavy tolls on them and destroys resources needed for the second phase. Thus insurgent bases become precipitously underresourced and weakened along with the reduction of operational ability and popular support.
Maoist Model
Unlike the previous four models, the Maoist model proceeds in three phases. In the first phase of state building, insurgents retreat into a safe area and build a united front. This phase entails efforts on both sides of war to “build the state” by establishing and strengthening political parties and puppet regimes, bureaucracy, education, and constitutional systems and unify the movement across these institutions. Successful countermeasures by the state side, such as securing the occupied areas and boosting puppet regimes, may make the insurgents too weakened at this stage to proceed to the next. In other words, insurgents attempt to build the institutions in order to establish a state entity with sovereign recognition in mind. In extrasystemic war, the base area functions as an important foundation for mobilization, empowerment, and deployment. In Guinea-Bissau, for instance, rebels built up the African Party for the Independence of Guinea and Cape Verde as well as various political systems as the organizing body to lead the insurgency against the Portuguese.
The institutions give insurgent groups adequate resources to engage in low-intensity conflict. These resources also allow them to move their battles from rural areas to towns, give access to the urban population, gain publicity, and enhance political appeal. Johnson writes, “The establishment of rural revolutionary base areas and the encirclement of the cities from the countryside is of outstanding and universal practical importance for the present revolutionary struggles of all the oppressed nations and peoples.”37 This phase has an important function of reinforcing the state-building effort. Success in building a state structure in turn allows insurgents to make a transition to the third phase of conventional war where they have gained a great deal of manpower and firepower. Military modernization allows them to carry out counteroffensive campaigns involving both mobile and positional forms of combat. Battle areas expand in size. As such, this sequence of actions has a semblance to people’s war, in which insurgents “promote the mobilization and organization of peasants in lands subject to imperialist interference, leading to guerrilla warfare and finally to regular warfare against the forces of imperialism and their local allies.”38 It starts with the institutions playing a key role, followed by guerrilla war and conventional war to complete a sequence.
A rare sequence, the Maoist model works through the mechanism of mutual reinforcement between phases. The first phase of state building is sustained by the second phase of guerrilla war in that the institutions allow insurgents to wage guerrilla resistance. We see the consolidation of political power in insurgency, as institutions provide resources to help the population so as to elicit their support. In turn, popular support strengthens back the institutions as the institutions become embedded in the society through public discourse. This mutual reinforcement mechanism works between the second and third phases, too, in that insurgents are more likely to win conventional war if they gain advantage in military power over states. In turn, armed forces supplement the insurgency by offering firepower and protecting the vulnerable. This socialization allows the armed forces to become the principal instrument of destruction. As Mao said, “Without a people’s army, the people have nothing.”39
Specifically, the Maoist model generally occurs when both states and insurgent groups have access to adequate resources and willingness to fight in all three phases. There must be sufficient realization on the part of both state and insurgent leaders that they must focus their resources on building a state in the first phase of nation building. The political effort must correspond with insurgents’ efforts to fight the war on the military front, starting with guerrilla war. Geographic conditions should support guerrilla movements, but simultaneously there must be geographic conditions that support armies to transform heavy weapons, organize, and fight in conventional manner in the final phase. To make it even more difficult, the insurgent leaders at least must have the recognition that they have to proceed in sequence and must put their war efforts into proper sequence.
Progressive Model
The progressive model proceeds in three phases. The first phase of guerrilla war sees both sides fighting primarily in search for popular support. Achievement of adequate support propels them into a second phase, where they strive to consolidate their political party, build bureaucracies, generate resources, distribute wealth across the society, and appeal for foreign recognition. The combination of guerrilla war and state building is the cornerstone of many independence movements in the postwar era. The two phases alone, however, are not sufficient for insurgencies to win; they must be reinforced by military power. Thus at this stage, they will gain control of arms, which will be a key determinant of battles as well as a key consolidator of the political process. By way of using foreign aid and material resources, insurgents become better armed, trained, and organized, while popular consensus emerges across