The United States' overthrow of a left-leaning government in Guatemala in 1954 is an example. Aspects of tactics and territory also distinguish insurgency from civil war. Galula contrasts insurgency from rebellion by its protracted nature. Sometimes the term ‘revolution’ is used loosely to refer to any kind of paradigmatic shift, as in ‘the Industrial Revolution,’ ‘the Reagan revolution,’ or ‘the behaviorist revolution’ in social sciences. Paradoxically, the asymmetry of the armed conflict structure can be an advantage for the irregulars, since the organizational structure of standing armies is rather inflexible. Guerrilla warfare has a very long history; one finds instances of it recorded in the Bible. And the relationship between insurgents and governments is often quite complicated. Organizationally and logistically superior armed forces are frequently unable to win the Small War against irregular forces. Regular army soldiers put behind enemy lines for that purpose. Initially, guerrilla marketing was a way for smaller companies to compensate for a lack of big budget by developing innovative ideas. This framework never accurately captured the complex and varied reality of the two-thirds of the world's countries that were put into this box, but it did focus attention on the potential for radical change on the periphery of the global system. Sustainable counterinsurgency warfare can gain the loyalty of the enemy’s population, in contrast to conventional military operations which focus on the physical destruction of armed forces. Why was guerrilla warfare effective against the British? In defining war, this article explores the origin and historical development of armed aggression from the earliest human societies to the present. Guerrilla warfare has been both underestimated and overestimated Insurgencies have been getting more successful since 1956, but still lose most of … And even during the height of the Cold War, at least one major guerrilla struggle (in Algeria) raged totally outside the schemata of that global ideological contest. Drug lords are using their vast funds to support guerrilla movements, and may actually purchase or launch their own. The key to this litany of failures is that urban battles violate the most elementary rule of guerrilla warfare: the necessity to operate over an extensive area of rough terrain. While revolution is an ‘explosive upheaval,’ an insurgency is “a protracted struggle conducted methodically, step by step, in order to attain specific intermediate objectives leading finally to the overthrow of the existing order” (Galula, 1964: p. 2). A government that does its best to help its people is much less susceptible to challenges from guerrilla forces, which are oftentimes seen as the people’s army. Effective civil-military counterinsurgency-doctrines tend to invest four parts in economic development and one part in military concerns. As Galula says: “[Civil War] soon resembles an ordinary international war except that the opponents are fellow citizens” (Galula, 1964: p. 3). However, when the conflict reaches the dimensions of a civil war, chances are that powerful opposition elites, and perhaps even international third parties, have engaged themselves in the conflict, making the prospects less favorable for the dictator. The twentieth century has been the bloodiest in history, and this piece examines the relationships between violence, society, and the exercise of power that help explain this. 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