A side from a trip by camel, the most uncomfortable ride of my life to date was a voyage in a jeep through western Vietnam, in the neighborhood of Moc Hoa, with an anti-guerrilla detachment. It was a short journey through rice paddies and patches of Woodland; it was uncomfortable because the dirt road for several quarter-mile stretches Was scarred by countless large and small holes, 10 to 12 inches deep. They had been dug the night before by various of the villagers now Watching our convoy innocently from the doorways of their huts. They had worked all night because a band of Viet Cong—Communist guerrillas—had stood over them with Weapons to insure performance.
Such harassment by night does no enormous damage, the secondary roads of Vietnam being what they are. But it gives the guerrillas a chance to talk propaganda to villagers, to gather information about government forces, to supplement their food supply, and to impose a slight handicap on the government forces who depend (as guerrillas do not) on roads and wheeled vehicles.
A young Vietnamese lieutenant driving the Jeep pointed to a cluster of ragged farmers standing near their thatched hovels. “This is good rice land,” he said. “These people would be rich, if they had two years of peace. But they have known only war for eight years, and they are very poor.” What he failed to add was that since 1954 the war in Vietnam has been made by about 12,000 guerrillas. That was enough, and still is enough, to keep a well-trained, well-equipped Vietnamese army of 150,000 constantly off balance, even though it has the help of 70,000 civil guards and even larger numbers of home guards.
Vietnam has been the most critical area of guerrilla fighting for quite some months. But there has been guerrilla war in a score of countries over fairly recent years. And it is quite likely that we face a prolonged period of spasmodic guerrilla activity in Asia, Africa, and Latin America, along with non-nuclear “limited wars”—even if we manage to avoid the indescribable horrors of all-out, global war. It is important, therefore, to know a good deal about the characteristics of guerrilla warfare and the requirements it makes of anti-guerrilla forces. These requirements apply to the Navy as well as the ground forces. The Marine Corps shares with the Army’s Special Forces the guerrilla-fighting role. Also, sea power, especially amphibious forces and carrier-based air support, are often vital in anti-guerrilla operations. Guerrilla wars are not fought on blue water, but they concern the naval service all the same.
Literally, in Spanish, guerrilla merely means “little war.” But as currently used, in Spanish and English, the term refers to a kind of warfare, not to the scale on which it is fought. Guerrilla warfare is by no means new. The American Indians were adept at it long before the first white men came to North America. And General Edward Braddock’s defeat at the hands of the French and Indians in the Battle of the Wilderness in July of 1755 was only one of many early examples showing that even with superior numbers one cannot fight guerrillas with conventional tactics.
In recent years guerrilla fighting has been gaining in importance, and probably in the next 25 years it will play a still larger role. This is not just an accident of current history. It is because two massive forces are at work in much of the world today. One is the ideological split of the Communist and democratic blocs. The other is the fact that discontent and social revolution are widespread, especially in Africa, Asia, and Latin America. Guerrilla war is the natural by-product of agrarian discontent and social revolt—particularly when the agents of a revolutionary ideology are at work to capitalize on that discontent.
One sobering fact must be faced at the outset. Guerrilla warfare doesn’t come naturally to Americans in the mid-20th century. It is a poor man’s war; the United States is the best armed of nations. It is almost entirely an amateur’s warfare; the United States, reversing a century and a half of its tradition, is heavily committed to the conduct of war by professionals—as much so, perhaps, as was the Germany of Wilhelm II. To Americans, guerrilla war is a contemptible sort of shirt-tail war, and they want none of it. But we shall ignore it at our great peril, for it is being spawned, on a rising scale, by social forces much larger than we can control. In fact our national interest may well be in fostering and supporting guerrilla wars, in some cases. It may even be in fighting such wars ourselves, in very special instances. More commonly, it will be in arch-guerrilla operations. But in any event, we have to understand the nature of guerrilla war.
Guerrilla Warfare a Form of Politics
By way of definition, guerrilla war is not just jungle war, or mountain war. It can be in any terrain, from rain forest to desert, from mangrove swamp to snow-covered mountain country. It can be on any scale, but commonly is on a very small scale, involving hundreds or a few thousands of participants. It is not usually international. It is not waged according to the Geneva convention, but is played by ear; rules are contrived as they are needed. It more often involves political ideas and social problems than rival nationalisms. It may be waged alone, or on the fringes of a larger, conventional war. Normally, it is not waged by two or more national governments in opposition, but characteristically it involves a disaffected element in opposition to the regular forces of a national government. The most basic characteristic of guerrilla war, however, is its political nature. It must not be confused with banditry, which it sometimes resembles superficially. It is warfare for political objectives, commonly revolutionary objectives. All war, of course, is political effort by means of armed force, but guerrilla war is more intensely political.
The distinction between conventional and guerrilla war is best seen in their short-run purposes. Conventional war is chiefly the attempt to undermine the morale of an enemy force, to win over the civil population, and to bring about the political collapse of the enemy regime.
Modern guerrilla warfare is best understood through the history of recent guerrilla campaigns and the writings of the ablest guerrilla leaders. A full list would be quite long. In the last half century, some of the outstanding campaigns would include those of General Francisco (Pancho) Villa and other Mexican guerrillas, the classic operations of Lawrence of Arabia in World War I, Mao Tse-tung's long struggle in China from 1928 to 1949, Marshal Tito’s Partisan campaigns against the Nazis, Ramon Magsaysay’s brilliant war against the Hukbalahaps in the wake of World War II, the U. S.-directed campaign against the Greek Communists, the long and costly suppression of Communist guerrillas in Malaya by the British, Ho Chih-minh’s war against the French in Indochina, the 7-year revolt of the Algerian nationalists, and the conquest of Cuba in 1957-58 by Fidel Castro and his field commander, Ernesto (Che) Guevara. There is something to be learned from each of these. We should now notice the main characteristics of guerrilla war over the decades.
With some exceptions, guerrilla forces have represented the poor and oppressed, at least initially. Tito’s Partisans were primarily anti- German, but they also were mainly poor Peasants from the hills, not the elite of the Serbs and Croats. Castro’s political support initially came from the middle class as well as the landless rural proletariat, but the backbone of his movement was agrarian. In time, After gaining power, he was to double-cross many of his backers; yet the fact is that he continued to hold the support of a great mass of Cubans whose only common characteristic was extreme poverty. The Mexican guerrilla leaders varied widely, but in the case of Villa and some others, they were acting for a landless, impoverished rural population against a wealthy, land-owning elite. The typical guerrilla leader has a little of Robin Hood in him —sometimes, however, a very little.
The genuine guerrilla leader never forgets his political aim, or aims. Tito was seeking not only to help destroy German military power, but to create a socialist society on the ruins of a ravished country. (He also remembered this aim after the war, when the Russians tried to take over Yugoslavia and make it a colony of the Soviet Union.) As Mao Tse-tung wrote in this connection:
“Without a political goal, guerrilla warfare must fail, as it must if its political objectives do not coincide with the aspirations of the people and their sympathy, co-operation, and assistance cannot be gained. The essence of guerrilla warfare is thus revolutionary in character.”*
In this connection it should be noted that the Maquis of the French resistance movement were not revolutionary in their aims, nor did they represent the poor or the peasantry in particular. Neither were the Arabs who fought with Lawrence against the Turks. Their tactics were those of guerrilla war, and much can be learned from them, but these were not typical guerrilla operations. The one was a harassing movement against a foreign occupation force. The other was a skillful employment of Arab nationalist sentiment by British enterprise to help defeat the Turks, and so the Germans. Both were incidental to major wars.
Guerrilla Fighters Strongly Motivated
It follows from the preceding that, in general, guerrilla fighters are dedicated men (and women, at times). Not all are, to be sure. Some join up because they are hungry, some because they are in trouble with the law, and some are shanghaied. But in the main, guerrilla fighters are strongly motivated. They hate the established regime or the ruling elite. They live under a deep sense of social injustice. If this were not so, they would rarely be effective, for the life of a guerrilla fighter is one of danger, hardship, and austerity. It is common practice for anti-guerrilla leaders and established political leaders to refer to their guerrilla targets as “bandits”; and at times the methods of the guerrillas give some color of truth to the term. But no government is likely to succeed in stamping out a guerrilla movement if it really thinks of them as bandits, for that does not take account of their motives. The authentic guerrilla, it is better to think of as a politician who happens to use bullets instead of ballots.
Another characteristic of guerrilla war is the fact that such irregular troops live off the land for the most part. They may get some arms and supplies from the outside, as Ho Chih-minh did from China in his war against the French, and as the Pathet Lao did from the Russian airlift in early 1961. There may be a trickle of arms, or money, or pamphlets, as there is today from North Vietnam by obscure trails through mountains and jungle into the rice delta of the Mekong, back of Saigon. The Algerian nationalists probably have been getting a quite large share of their arms and supplies from the outside, through Egypt and Tunisia. But characteristically, a guerrilla force must find 90 to 99 per cent of its food in the countryside, and it must turn up a very large percentage of its weapons by capturing them from the opposing government forces—or, as the Chinese Communists did, by setting up their own primitive backyard arsenals. As Mao said so succinctly in discussing supply problems:
“It is necessary to have field glasses, compasses, and military maps. An accomplished guerrilla unit will acquire these things.” That does not mean it will order them by parcel post from Sears Roebuck.
Respecting arms and equipment, guerrilla warfare is characterized by light arms, meager equipment. Typically—depending on terrain and other factors—the light machine gun or small, portable mortar is the heaviest weapon of any use to a guerrilla force. Nothing that must be moved in a wheeled vehicle is of value to typical guerrilla fighters, who travel mostly on foot and not usually on highways. In guerrilla wars of some dimensions and duration, a guerrilla force may set up bases in fairly inaccessible places. But bases do not figure heavily in their way of waging war. A guerrilla force conducts war on exterior lines, without a rear area. Indeed, it occupies the rear area of the opposing force, in many cases.
"He Who Fights and Runs Away”
Running away from a battle is not cowardice, for guerrillas. It is the essence of wisdom. The intelligent guerrilla commander always avoids battle, save in rare cases when by a miracle he happens momentarily to have superior numbers and fire power. As Mao has written concerning tactics:
“Avoid the solid, attack the hollow; attack; withdraw; deliver a lightning blow; seek a lightning decision. When guerrillas engage a stronger enemy they withdraw when he advances, harass him when he stops; strike him when he is weary; pursue him when he withdraws.”
The well-led guerrilla force devotes much effort to cutting the enemy’s supply lines, destroying his supplies when they cannot be stolen, and forcing the enemy to beef up the security forces to cover his lines of supply. Thus it capitalizes on the great weakness of a conventional force—its utter dependence on logistical support. The best example, perhaps, is Lawrence’s campaign against the Turks. With maximum mobility, he struck at many points on the Turkish line, forcing them into an uneconomic disposition of their limited forces. Mobility, therefore, is a prime requisite of the guerrilla force. Mao wrote: “When the situation is serious the guerrillas must move with the fluidity of water and the ease of the blowing wind.” That is why no self-respecting guerrilla leader would accept a “mobile” 155-mm. howitzer, even if it were offered him as a gift. Among conventional forces, wheels are almost a synonym for mobility. Among guerrillas, wheels are definitely a symbol of immobility.
Terror and intimidation are major tools of guerrilla warfare. In Vietnam, it has been the standard procedure of the Viet Cong to assassinate the village chief or town mayor. It may also assassinate his replacement. The third, looking back over his shoulder, is pretty sure to be “co-operative.” Typical guerrilla wars are fought in farm country, studded with small villages and hamlets—or on the fringes of such country. It is extremely difficult for conventional forces to protect the people in many villages and hamlets, where most people in underdeveloped countries live. The people are therefore at the mercy of the highly mobile, night-travelling guerrilla bands. They have no real choice but to co-operate as demanded. In Malaya, great numbers of farmers from isolated farmsteads and villages were gathered into sizeable villages or towns, so they could be protected by garrison troops. The Vietnamese government has tried in much the same way to build a series of “agro-villes,” but with less success, in part due to the coercive means by which the labor was recruited for construction of the fortified villages.
It follows, then, that these lightly armed, highly mobile guerrilla forces operate on a quite small scale. They typically maneuver in bands of ten or a dozen, or up to 20. Most of their operations are by night. As they become bolder, in lightly garrisoned districts, they may form up in larger bands, in company strength. When the long arm of the government doesn’t reach far enough, such a band may move into a village and stay some days, giving its members a chance to carry on agitation and propaganda, or to help the villagers with their work, or to get well acquainted and perhaps pick up a good deal of intelligence as to the enemy’s dispositions and movements.
One constant aim of the wise guerrilla leader is to demoralize the opposing forces, rather than defeat them, or to induce government troops to desert and switch their loyalties—preferably bringing their weapons with them (among guerrillas, a rifle may be worth more than a man to carry it, for men are more easily come by). The guerrilla leader cannot Promise an easier life, or better weapons, and certainly not better pay. He has to induce desertion among the enemy either by political or ideological appeal, which is slow work, or else by the sort of terrorism created by night attacks on small detachments. “Selective assassination” serves a like purpose among able-bodied men in exposed settlements.
Guerrillas’ Goal to Win Friends
The most important continuing aim of the guerrilla is to win over the civil population— whether by kindness or terrorism, by rosy promises of pie in the sky or by burning down dwellings. No guerrilla leader ever put it more aptly than Mao Tse-tung:
“All actions are subject to command; do not steal from the people; be neither selfish nor unjust.”
It cannot be said that Mao’s Eighth Route Army never violated those rules. But it can be said that Mao’s final victory over the Chinese Nationalists was due in great part to the good conduct of his troops in their relations with the local populations. Spelling out his rules a bit, Mao said:
“Replace the door when you leave the house; roll up the bedding in which you have slept; be courteous; be honest in your transactions; return what you borrow; replace what you break; do not bathe in the presence of women; do not without authority search the pocketbooks of those you arrest.”
It would be downright naive to suppose that the run-of-mill guerrilla fighter observes this code steadily. Many come nearer the definition of bandits or terrorists, even in dealing with rank-and-file villagers. But the most successful guerrilla campaigns have been based on the principle of buttering up the civil population—even if they are to be victimized later, as in Cuba and China and some other places where guerrilla wars have been successful.
Lawrence, in The Seven Pillars of Wisdom, put particular stress on two things that are relevant here. He urged his Arab irregulars to destroy material, rather than kill Turks, thus to encourage surrenders and desertions. And he constantly emphasized the need to gain the good will and support of the civil population. In a sense, Lawrence’s operations were a British project. But he saw them as a rebellion by the Arabs against Turkish rule. And he contended that successful rebellions can be effected if 2 per cent of the population was actively serving in a striking force, provided the remainder was “passively sympathetic.” The Castro-Guevara team made skillful use of this principle in the Sierra Maestra. In just two years, 1957-58, they built up a force of two dozen followers until it toppled the tough, well-armed Batista regime. Possibly neither of them ever read How To Win Friends And Influence People, but their ultimate success was due far more to their powers of persuasion than to any professional military competence.
The public relations side of guerrilla war is the side most easily overlooked, for we all tend to think of war as a rather straightforward process of defeating an opposing armed force and destroying its power to resist. That is what war between nations usually is—a “continuation of politics by means of force.” But guerrilla war is different.
Consider, for example, how we would have fought World War II had that conflict been a guerrilla war. America was not greatly concerned with winning the hearts of the Germans from 1941 to 1945—certainly not while devastating Hamburg. Nor were the B-29 raids on Tokyo the highway to Japanese affections. If, however, in altogether different conditions, our primary aim had been to induce the German people and soldiery to overthrow Hitler and to get the Japanese peasants to topple the warlords’ regime, our strategy and tactics would have been far different and much more akin to those of a guerrilla force.
Sometimes the aim of a guerrilla war is not victory at all, when victory is manifestly unattainable, but merely harassment, or making the opposing regime’s task more costly and frustrating. The Maquis in wartime France were such a force. Their aim was to make life miserable for the German occupying forces and to keep alive the spirit of resistance among the French people until liberation came.
Guerrillas Have a Way of Winning
The record shows that guerrilla movements often win out. Mao Tse-tung, Ho Chih-minh, and Fidel Castro are obvious examples of guerrilla triumphs in widely divergent conditions, but always with numerical inferiority. Since the United States is likely to be interested in defeating guerrilla forces, more than in aiding them, the most instructive case histories are those in which strong guerrilla movements were suppressed with marked success. Three such achievements stand out in recent history —in Greece, Malaya, and the Philippines. In all three instances, the guerrilla forces were Communist or pro-Communist. In all cases, it was possible (and necessary) to isolate the theater of operations. This not only cut off the means of support from the outside for the guerrillas, but denied them a protected sanctuary to which they might withdraw for rest, replenishment, or re-grouping. In all three cases, too, the government forces had to accumulate overwhelming superiority of numbers, as well as greater fire power.
Respecting numbers, the Malayan experience is the clearest. Confronting an estimated population of 10,000 pro-Communist guerrillas, mainly Chinese, the British employed no less than 70,000 Commonwealth troops, 175,000 police, and a volunteer home guard of 250,000. It took nine years and cost $1,200,000,000. But by the time Malaya came to independence in 1957, the Communist guerrillas were beaten down to a few hundreds. The ratio thus was seven to one in strictly military forces, 25 to one counting police, and 50 to one, counting home guards. The ratio of fire-power superiority was great beyond mathematical calculation.
In Greece, the Communist guerrillas made their bid for power after World War II in conditions almost ideal for their purpose. The country was impoverished by war and demoralized. It was surrounded on the land side by Communist countries. There, guerrillas were armed, trained, and supplied. And they could flee into those areas for sanctuary if hard pressed. The terrain favored the lightly armed guerrillas. Ultimate success in destroying the Communist forces was achieved only after a U. S. military mission had reorganized, rearmed, and retrained the Greek National Army for anti-guerrilla warfare. And even so, success eluded the Greek national forces until Yugoslavia made its famous switch from allegiance to Moscow and closed its frontier to the Greek Communists. Substantial isolation of the theater, if not absolutely required, was immensely helpful.
The clearest case of all was the suppression of the Huks in the Philippines. Against a Filipino army of only 60,000, the Hukbala- haps were a major threat, with a strength of 8,000 men. Ramon Magsaysay, perhaps the ablest Filipino leader in the history of the islands, was chosen to carry out the operation. He used the army and constabulary skillfully. He understood guerrillas and recognized that their strength lay in the fact that they had some valid grievances. He promised government land and other assistance to Huks who deserted, and he made good on his promises. He was quick to investigate complaints of local graft or corruption in villages of the disaffected areas, and quick to remedy matters. But the fundamental reason for success was isolation of the area of popular unrest and guerrilla activity. The Huks got no supplies, no arms, from Communist sources.
Sea Power Can Be Decisive
It is worth considerable emphasis that all of these successful campaigns against strong, serious Communist guerrilla movements were isolated, mainly by blue water. Greece is an island-studded peninsula, and the surrounding Mediterranean was controlled by western, anti-Communist forces. The Philippines are an island archipelago, and the western Pacific is controlled by the U. S. Seventh Fleet. Malaya is a peninsula linked with the Asian mainland only by the Kra Isthmus—long, only 30 miles wide in places, and little developed as to communications. For strategic purposes, Malaya is an island—in an ocean the Communists do not control.
Unfortunately, the United States cannot arrange for all anti-guerrilla operations of interest to it to be conducted on islands and narrow peninsulas. But we ought to keep in mind the extraordinary value of sea power in the conduct of anti-guerrilla operations. Only thus can we make the fullest use of it when possible, and only thus can we evaluate the difficulties of a guerrilla warfare problem when sea power cannot be utilized fully.
It is appropriate now to summarize briefly the requirements for effective arch-guerrilla Warfare, and the guiding principles on which anti-guerrilla operations should be conducted. Obviously anti-guerrilla forces cannot duplicate all the qualities of guerrilla units, nor should they. Customarily, they are government forces. They can draw on greater resources, and should make the most of these. They have a different purpose from that of guerrilla bands. But they must observe many of the same principles if they are to gain their objectives.
First, anti-guerrilla forces should have a great numerical superiority, as well as the superior fire power that goes with it. To have less than eight or ten men for one guerrilla is to court failure.
Second, such forces must have the utmost mobility; but this does not necessarily mean a great many wheeled vehicles. It means the ability to move quickly in whatever terrain is involved. That could mean jeeps, bicycles, camels, horses, collapsible boats, or snow- shoes. To achieve mobility, forces should be trained to depend only on light arms, and to operate for extended periods without supplies save what can be found in the countryside.
Third, such troops should be trained to earn and hold the sympathy and support of the local population, to treat the people with courtesy and to be helpful to them. They should fraternize constantly and cordially. Leaders should be indoctrinated in the principle that guerrilla war is politics in action, and anti-guerrilla war must be also. (Obviously, anti-guerrilla forces do not need support of local populations as badly as do guerrilla forces, since they have the backing and logistic support of the government. But they do need the good will of the people, all the same.)
Fourth, it follows from the preceding that the government conducting an anti-guerrilla campaign must offer, and offer sincerely, a better social policy or program than that offered by the guerrillas. We have to out-promise as well as out-fight guerrillas, to win these little wars at an acceptable cost. The ill-starred invasion of Cuba early in 1961 was an example of how miserably a guerrilla-type operation can fail if it lacks grass-roots support and offers no social program to the people. It was led by, and took its tone from, middle-class Cubans. Its apparent purpose was to undo a social revolution and restore the status quo ante. That is an unworkable goal, in a country that was ripe for some levelling movement, a country in which basic economic and social reforms were long overdue. As noted above, guerrilla war is typically revolutionary. And if there is discontent to nurture revolution, the anti-guerrilla campaign must have answers to the people’s discontents—as Magsaysay understood so well.
To have a fair chance of success, anti-guerrilla forces must protect the civil population, even in small villages. The average farmer is not disposed to be a hero. He is going to play the guerrilla’s game if he is not protected from the guerrilla’s exactions and retribution. This is where much of the government’s armed manpower must go—into small garrison detachments in villages.
Sixth, anti-guerrilla forces should be thoroughly democratic. Officers must maintain discipline and command respect, of course, as in any armed force. But they should live without any luxury or ostentation, with substantially the same food and quarters as enlisted ranks. Within some limits, all should live close to the level of the civil population round about. That is one more way to achieve the needed rapport with the people.
Seventh, although they may have some cruel fighting to do against enemy forces that ignore the rules of war, anti-guerrilla forces as a rule ought to be charitable to their enemies. Their basic aim is not to kill guerrilla fighters but to win them back, induce them to desert. This is most commonly done by cutting off their supply of food and arms.
Anti-guerrilla troops can expect a rough time, with minimal comforts. This is especially true in jungle war when they are opposing an unseen enemy whose tactics are stealth and terror. Consequently, they are more subject than most soldiers to demoralization. It follows that they need to be as dedicated as the guerrillas they combat. Mercenaries do not make good anti-guerrilla fighters, just as they do not make good guerrillas.
Finally it must be said with emphasis that any campaign against guerrilla forces must be one conducted at all echelons for clearly stated, affirmative goals. If they are just fighting to suppress something, to destroy a band of their fellow-citizens who believe they have a valid cause or complaint, the campaign starts with a fatal handicap. It is not enough to be simply anti-Nazi, or anti-Communist, or anti-reform. The guerrilla wars of the decades ahead will be fought almost entirely in various countries of three continents that are in chronic turmoil and rapid social change. They will be waged among peoples who are ripe for social revolution in some form—who in fact deserve some kind of social reform or economic betterment, because of the injustices under which they have lived. The government that hopes to combat a strongly political guerrilla movement must have good answers, positive answers, to the political and economic challenges offered by the guerrilla leaders. The greatest defect of the Cuban fiasco was precisely in this area of social purpose. In the conditions of social ferment that presently exist through vast sections of Asia, Africa, and Latin America, it is useless to try to win the people of these countries by following a negative or status quo policy.
From what has been said, it seems clear that it will not be easy for the United States to develop a high order of expertise in the realm of guerrilla war, or anti-guerrilla war, or to be effective in training the guerrilla forces of friendly countries. The military tactics of guerrilla war, we surely can master. But the political and psychological tactics, which are even more important, do not come naturally to us. Yet it has to be done. Fortunately, we start with some very important assets, supplementary to the political side of anti-guerrilla war. We have helicopters for vertical envelopment, amphibious sea power for troop landings in any coastal terrain, and the carrier- based air power to give close air support to our own or friendly troops, as well as the sea power to insure good logistic support of such forces overseas. Most important of all, we have sea power on a scale and of a quality to insure sea command, which in many cases confers the means of isolating the theater of guerrilla warfare.
* Most of my quotations will be from Mao Tse- tung, as the most articulate writer among the great guerrilla captains.