how do you win against insurgencies?do you try and treat the population well?do you go full exterminators?do you need a balance between the two?does your approach need to be very different for different people (egyptians, russians, chinese, Brazilians, Americans)?
>>534445741Become the insurgency.
Installing local dictators/warlords/strongmen that culturally make sense for the population. If the insurgency can find any western/imperialist/invader influence they will exploit it with zeal and turn the populace against you. If your installed government has any deficiencies in the least a competent rebellion will have you losing support fast.For example, Cuba. Fidel and his men didn't storm Havana right away they went to the mountains in the South East and gave the poor basic services. They would show up to a house or a hamlet introduce every man in the squad and then ask them if they need anything. They gave their rebellion credibility by doing nothing more than handing out fishing rods and pills for diarrhea. There's a story of when Che set up his clinic in the jungle and was diagnosing a long line of people from the nearby villages. An old lady of about 80 sat down in front of him and when he asked her what ailed her she said "nothing""Oh?…Then…what brings you to my clinic?""Well the men, they said I should come see The Doctor, so I came to see what a Doctor looks like"This woman had spent 80 years without ever seeing a doctor. Any government that cannot provide basic needs of its populace is fucked if a motivated organization decides to take root.
>Soviet Union tried decimating the population>NATO tried hearts and mindsAfghanistan is a collection of God given chokepoints. Your best bet is to let the tribes collect their road tolls as long as they pay you a share or somehow block those valley gates with forts
>>534445743>They would show up to a house or a hamlet introduce every man in the squadintroducing every man in the squad accomplished hearts and minds by demonstrating that they werent faceless goons here to shake them down for protection money. >ask them if they need anything. Anything includes skilled trades and services. You can buy a lot of good will and enhance your reputation by helping to litigate or facilitate a last will dispute or help fix someones generator.>handing out fishing rods and pills for diarrhea. They didnt always have a lot of food or water on hand to give but to give dirt poor people the ability to feed themselves or keep from dehydrating was usually more than enough to help
>how do you win against insurgencies?First you gather basic information about the situation. “Insurgencies” include a lot of different situations, from separatist factions in your country to stay-behind forces in the country you invaded. Different situations require different approaches.The main thing is to define your strategic goal and orient all of your actions accordingly. If you want to neutralize a militant extremist group in your own territory made up of your own citizens that’s different than trying to install a friendly regime in the country you recently invaded. All military action is carried out for a political goal, if the actions do not further the ultimate goal, they are harmful. K:D ratio, battles won, territory controlled, none of this matters if the strategic goal isn’t foremost in your mind.>do you try and treat the population well?Generally speaking, yes. Some people here seem to treat “hearts and minds” as something conjured up by limp-wristed academics and the military equivalent of HR ladies, but anyone who isn’t completely retarded understands that taking into account the needs and wants of the population in the operating area is relevant to achieve the strategic goal, whatever that is.>do you go full exterminators?Unless your strategic goal is exterminating the population, there is no upside to exterminating the population. The edgelord approach is a great way to waste resources, lead more people into joining and supporting insurgents, losing domestic support (if you’re fighting abroad) and losing international support (which, all else being equal, is better to have).>do you need a balance between the two?You need to decrease insurgent capabilities while increasing your own legitimacy and control in the area of operations. You do that by applying military force with consideration for civil affairs, and carrying out civil operations with military support.
>>534445741Depends a lot on the local population, Trump is the least popular president in history and Americans are still not going to be ok with someone invading and installing a puppet government.
>if you cant beat them, let them rule in you stead as long as they pay you tributePrevious empires werent ideologues like the USSR and NATO, they just wanted gold and prestige
>>534445748Rome and China managed the best of both worlds though, managing to convert the conquered lands into nationals while extracting tribute. It's why everyone looks up to the former and is leery of the latter reestablishing itself.
>>534445748The USSR and NATO aren't ideological either, they just pretend to be when it's useful for messaging.Look at all the western countries that are fine with the Palestinian genocide while Iran shooting protestors is the worst thing ever. Most governments are owned by corporate donors these days and they are trying to spread capitalism so those corporations have access to larger markets, the ideology isn't any deeper than maximizing profits.
>>534445741You need to make insurgency hard, both mentally and physically. Of course, when your insurgents live in fucking mud huts, see death as a favourable condition and enjoy recreational getaways to mountside spiderholes, it's pretty hard for a Westerner to wrap their mind around how to actually make resistance hard. On top of that, you need public support for your efforts back home. Smearing Achmed over the pavement while he's planting an IED is easy enough to justify and entirely useless, but when you decide to do something useful, like lace all the nice caves and mountain redoubts with toxic dust, and the first footage of some 16 year old kid coughing up his own lungs next to a cannister with US ARMY printed on it gets picked up by Reuters, you're thoroughly fucked.
depends on the population. low iq people only understand violence.
>>534445741>how do you win against insurgencies?Russia has the only realistic approach of genocide, the same approach used through the ages, but they were hampered by their own incompetence
>>534445746>K:D ratio, battles won, territory controlled, none of this matters if the strategic goal isn’t foremost in your mind. Which is why McNamara's automotive industry-style approach was doomed to fail from the very beginning. Demanding KPIs, from an area which doesn't operate with the types of quantitative metrics familiar to somebody with a business background, invariably led to misleading info. They were winning up until they lost, because they were looking at the wrong numbers. The US was also hamstrung by their own idiotic self-imposed restrictions, and the South Vietnamese government's retardation.
>>534445741Learn from Stalin.Collectivisation.Confiscate all food and agricultural tools.Provide rations only to loyalists.
Afghanistan failed because it got sidelined by Iraq, meaning it got the scraps. It was also harmed by the adoption of the same tactics from Iraq, despite having completely different socio-economic-cultural conditions. The US government went for a one-size-fits-nobody policy regarding all operational theaters, and that was a really fucking bad thing. It also quite visibly transitioned from a nation-building experiment to the same neocolonial extractivist policy seen in Iraq. To note that this extractivism would be completely alien to a 17th century mercantilist. Instead of exploiting the conquered lands, the various economic actors involved in the venture exploited the US taxpayer, by (re)directing the allocated funds into money-laundering schemes disguised as infrastructure expansion projects.
>>534445744>Soviet Union tried decimating the populationThat's not entirely accurate. The Soviet Union also tried hearts and minds by building shit and propping up the local communist government. The problem was they had to deal with America sending infinite mujahideen with Stingers from Pakistan
>>534445741Imo, you need to get the locals to like you much more than they like the insurgents.To do this you need to effectively increase their living standard without them feeling like you're infringing on their culture, beliefs or way of life. You must not impose your own culture and values upon them, or they will start to hate you.I think that was one of the key mistakes in Afghanistan - you can't force modern sensibilities on a medieval society, at best you can give them a nudge in the right direction, preferably in a way they won't notice
>>534445741Gas them or make deals with local leaders and you better honor your agreements or they will join the insurgents like in Afghanistan.>>534445749It has to do with rose-tinted selective info and nostalgia concerning Rome. The nicer aspects were religious freedom as long as you did not do what Christian insurgents did which was desecrate shrines and groves. The lousy aspects were rampant corruption, bureaucracy, and globalism as well as breeding with Afro-Asiatic slaves which paved the way for Christian takeover and religious intolerance that led to Christian infighting that broke up Rome.Rome was punished for turning against Jupiter.
>>534445741Cum in their women until their future is you. Daily reminder 90% of Colombian Y chromosomes are Spanish in origin
Eventually the "local" insurgency will start killing an extorting their own people, so you just have to be reliable and likable enough to overcome (justified)xenophobia. No one liked IS once they started going around and terrorizing other muslims and posting it on the internet.Improving their quality of life is also important, but >>534445758Gotta play to your audience. Tribal mountain dwelling goat-fuckers aren't going to like ANYONE outside of their immediate social group, and its going to be impossible to elevate that kind of person to modernity.
>>534445741It's a lot less complicated than it seems. Deny them funding and safe haven.What's complicated is that when the revenue streams and the safe haven involve nominal allies (Saudi Arabia, Pakistan, etc) you are fucked and you'll be bogged down in counter-insurgency until you can tard-wrangle your supposed allies into stopping the fuck-fuck games and picking a side.>>534445758The cultural aspect is overrated, the failure in Afghanistan was that the state was too fucking corrupt to stand on its own. When the Taliban advanced in 2021 even the ANA troops that wanted to fight couldn't because they ran out of food and ammo and had no resupply after the first engagement. The politicians pocketed the cash.The people of Afghanistan didn't rise up against American culture, it's just that Kabul can't control whatever the fuck is going on in the mountains, and the tribes that have regional control generally do not give a fuck about what is going on in Kabul - and they barely see Afghanistan as a country. They have tribal identity, not a national identity. They didn't have to get exposed to American culture, the Taliban showed up in 2021 and said "let's make a deal" and they said "sure". These are the same people who saw US troops in 2001 and thought "oh shit the Soviets are back".People forget that the culture in Afghanistan wasn't all about the "austere religious scholars" just a few decades ago.
