dChan - Q Origins Project Archive

Summary of Counterinsurgency Warfare: Theory and Practice

https://www.beyondintractability.org/bksum/galula-counterinsurgency

Counterinsurgency "in the Cold"

As long as an insurgency's activities remain "on the whole legal and nonviolent," (p 43) the insurgency is referred to as "cold". When this is the case, the essential problem for the counterinsurgency is that the "actual danger will always appear to the nation as out of proportion to the demands made by an adequate response" (p 4.) That is, the response necessary to eliminate the insurgency is likely to be seen as excessive by the general population.

This leaves the counterinsurgents with four options (which are not mutually exclusive):

1- They can act directly on the insurgent leaders,

2- they can act indirectly on the conditions that are propitious to an insurgency,

3- they can infiltrate the insurgent movement,

4- or they can reinforce their own "Political Machine".

Some may argue we are "in the Hot" - but IMHO that is what is coming next IF we fail to keep it "Cold"