Robert Taber - War Of The Flea The Classic Study Of Guerrilla Warfare

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THE CLASSIC STUDY OF GUERRILLA WARFARE

WAR OF THE FLEA

ALSO BY ROBERT TABER

M-26: Biography of a Revolution

ROBERT TABER

Copyright 2002 by Brassey's, Inc.

Published in the United States by Brassey's, Inc. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission from the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Taber, Robert.

War of the flea : the classic study of guerrilla warfare / Robert Taber ; with a foreword by Brad E. O'Neill. 1st [Brassey's] ed. p. cm.

Originally published: New York : L. Stuart, 1965.

Includes index.

ISBN 1-57488-555-3 (alk. paper)

1. Guerrilla warfare. I. Title.

U240.T1523 2002

355.02'18dc21 2002074447

Printed in the United States of America on acid-free paper that meets the American National Standards Institute Z39-48 Standard.

Brassey's, Inc.

22841 Quicksilver Drive Dulles, Virginia 20166

First Edition

10 987654321

In Memory Of An Old Fashioned American GEORGE A. THURSTON

When The War of the Flea first appeared in the late 1960s, revolutionary warfare waged by guerrilla forces representing the poor and deprived sectors of society was very much in vogue in radical political circles around the world. From the jungles of Indochina to the open spaces of Palestine, leftwing intellectuals believed that at last the poor had found a way to bring the rich and powerful to their knees and usher in a new egalitarian political era. The main inspiration and impetus was provided by the thinking of Mao Tse-tung, who had conceptualized and successfully carried out a protracted popular war based on well-organized, mass, popular support and guerrilla warfare, largely in rural areas.

Mao's success was emulated successfully by the Viet Minh against the French in the late 1940s and early 1950s. Little more than a decade later the Viet Cong, also following a Maoist blueprint, were poised to reap the fruits of victory against the South Vietnamese and Americans. Together with past revolutionary victories in Cyprus and Palestine and more recent ones in Algeria and Cuba, these events solidified the confidence and momentum associated with the strategy of protracted popular war that many came to believe would usher in a new progressive era.

Robert Taber was clearly swept up by these events and the romanticism surrounding them. While some of his predictions about the future may have been exaggerated and unsustainable, Taber's descriptive analysis of the nature of protracted popular war and what accounted for its victories was on the mark and endures to this day. This is the principal value of his work in the early 21 st Century.

Not surprisingly, many things have changed since Taber's book first appeared. Two of these are particularly noteworthy. First, and most important, our analytical concepts have broadened and become far more precise. Second, the process of globalization has significantly transformed the social, economic, and political makeup of the global environment. Both must be considered if we are to place Taber's book in a context that makes it useful and relevant, if not compelling.

As far as analytical concepts are concerned, scholars and practitioners have disentangled and defined terms like insurgency, revolutionary warfare, guerrilla warfare, and terrorism, which in earlier and less discriminating times were often used interchangeably. Insurgency-or internal war-is now viewed as a general overarching concept that refers to a conflict between a government and an out group or opponent in which the latter uses both political resources and violence to change, reformulate, or uphold the legitimacy of one or more of four key aspects of politics. Those aspects are (1) the integrity of the borders and composition of the nation state, (2) the political system, (3) the authorities in power, and (4) the policies that determine who gets what in the society. The question is which ones are relevant in a particular case. The answers will vary greatly. Some insurgents, like the Tamil Tigers in Sri Lanka and the Polisario in Western Sahara, seek to separate from an existing nation state to create their own. Others, like the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) or the Armed Islamic Group in Algeria, focus on replacing the political system and authorities with ones more to their liking. In what may seem counterintuitive, other insurgents, like the Ulster Defense Association in Northern Ireland, fight to sustain or preserve the four aspects of politics, especially the political system.