Mao or less

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OK, I've officially had it with the "netwar" crowd. An interesting observation--successful guerrillas and terrorists operate in loosely-networked organizations, instead of hierarchical chains of command--has turned into a distorted view of revolutionary warfare. "Netwar" is an overstatement, a description of a trend that is not entirely new, nor is it exactly the strategy of many revolutionary groups described as "net warriors." If the United States is going to get smarter about counterinsurgency and counterterrorism, it shouldn't posit a brand new kind of warfare that may not exist.

Take, for example, the article, "Structural Vulnerabilities of Networked Insurgencies: Adapting to the New Adversary," by Martin J. Muckian, in the latest Parameters. Here's a quote from the introduction that shows exactly how far astray "netwar" thinking can lead:

The insurgent of today, however, is not the Maoist of yesterday. His organization and methods are strikingly different from his twentieth century predecessors. The modern insurgent aims to defeat his opponent by psychological warfare and terrorism instead of military action. He draws his support from criminal networks as opposed to popular mobilization. He fights a netwar not a People’s War.

That statement might be useful, if (1) in earlier decades, revolutionaries didn't try to win through psychological warfare and terrorism, or (2) these earlier revolutionaries tried following strategies other than the three-stage approach that the Chinese Communist Party pursued. Of course, both assumptions are faulty.

Revolutionaries have been trying to win through something less than an all-out military offensive for as long as there have been revolutionaries. The Sicarii in ancient Rome, the Sandinistas in Nicaragua, the Jacobins and Girondists in the French Revolution, the FLN in Algeria, the Anarchists throughout 19th century Europe, the Bolsheviks and Mensheviks in Russia, the Nazis before 1933--these are certainly revolutionaries who were not following the Maoist programme. In fact, as you can read here, many 20th century revolutionaries sharpened a less famous, but in many cases quite successful, Leninist revolutionary strategy as distinct as the Maoist people's war.

Where Muckian really goes off the deep end is in his claim that there is some fundamental difference between Maoist and "modern" revolutionary organizations. Maoist insurgencies are, Muckian claims, hierarchical affairs, under unified command and control. In contrast, "modern" insurgencies are a whirligig of alliances among small, independent revolutionary organizations, as we see today in Iraq.

Here's the obvious flaw in Muckian's argument: China is not Iraq. We're not really comparing different revolutionary strategies, when we look at the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) versus the motley Iraqi insurgent groups. We're comparing different revolutions. In one country, the revolutionaries constituted one group; in a second country, the revolutionaries are fractured into many groups. That's a difference in national circumstances, not revolutionary doctrine.

It's not even fair to say that the Chinese Civil War was a battle between two unified adversaries. The Kuomingtang (KMT) and the CCP were both, at one point, revolutionary organizations. Early in its history, the KMT switched between electoral and violent paths to power, and failed at both. Even after the KMT tried to re-organize, following Soviet advice, along more hierarchical, Leninist lines, the KMT was still riven by factionalism.  Throw in the endemic "warlordism" of pre-Revolution China, and you have anything but a unified resistance to Western imperialism, or later, Japanese military invasion.

Many other revolutionaries that followed their version of "people's war" didn't follow the strict Maoist line. Castro, for example, put military operations ahead of political organization, in the hopes that "psychological warfare and terrorism" might inspire respect and support for the revolutionaries during the first phase of his foco strategy. In the Philippines, the Hukbalahap guerrillas, whom Muckian cites as an example of classic Maoist strategy, started as several different factions. Even after Luis Taruc nominally unified the entire Huk organization, some cleavages and rivalries among guerrilla commanders and groups still remained. In El Salvador, the FMLN started and ended its history as Maoist insurgents as no less than five distinct guerrilla factions.

Without having to pummel you with more examples of "Maoists" who were not completely unified, following the CCP's three-stage revolutionary strategy, I'm sure you get the point. Even Muckian's idea that there is some new, 21st-century connection between organized crime and revolutionary groups falls apart, once you take even a quick look at a few 20th-century insurgencies. (Has Muckian never heard about the FARC's connections to Colombian drug trafficking? Or the way Afghan opium exports helped the mujahideen?)

Sure, many revolutionaries have improved their ability to operate in more loose organizations, share technical information with other revolutionaries, and siphon money and intelligence through criminal connections. The evolutionary process of measure and countermeasure in revolutionary conflict has, in large part, selected for groups that have mastered these skills. That's not to say, however, that we've entered a brand new age of revolutionary "netwar."

In the 1960s, when "people's wars" were occurring on nearly every continent, anxious observers often made guerrillas into revolutionary supermen, incapable of being defeated. They had somehow mastered some new political and military voodoo, against which the United States and its allies seemed relatively powerless.

In hindsight, these concerns were unjustified--as was the image of the Guevaran Übermensch. Most of these insurgencies failed. Others that were more Leninist than Maoist (the Sandinistas, the Islamists in Iran, etc.) succeeded. Learning how to beat the Maoist strategy was important, but so too was a deep understanding of the peculiarities of a country in which the guerrillas claimed to be waging a "people's war."

The fact that the Iraqi insurgency is a bewildering collection of small groups that frequently collaborate with one another is not a sign of a scary new age of "netwar." Instead, it is a tragically botched opportunity, a situation in which the government under siege and its great power patron should have been able to capitalize, during the first years of the occupation, on the small size and relative unpopularity of the insurgents.

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