The British in Malaysiais often cited as the classic example of a victorious campaign against insurgents by a Western democracy.
Based on information in the thread and rudimentary cross-referencing (closer scrutiny might modify the results) the counter-insurgencies in Tibet, Xinjiang, and Chechnya were successful but at a high cost in civilian casualties and Human Rights abuses. The ending of the Irish insurgency with the Good Friday Accords seems to qualify more as a negotiated agreement to end hostilities between the parties more so than a defeat of the insurgents. Enactment of the Agreement even involved public input according to Wikipedia.org indicating that significant infrastructure was already in place:
Whether or not the Irish insurgency was doomed to eventual failure or success is debatable but what does seem clear is that the success of the counter-insurgency was due, in large part, to the the willingness of both sides to engage in a political process with the shared goal of an end to hostilities. The availabilty of modern weapons and communications notwithstanding, the insurgency seemed to be brought to its logical conclusion due to the will of a well-educated people. Mass communication may have also played its role by putting public pressure on both sides to end the violence.
I think someone up there mentioned it. Its a cost benefit analysis. A foreign power can say “fuck this” and get up and leave. For this reason, local insurgencies have a much higher success rate, the guy obviously has no option but to win. Hence, why Sri Lanka and earlier Nigeria, won against their insurgencies.
Ireland is a special case, for a lot of the last 400 years, England/Great Britain/United Kingdom could not afford an Ireland which was hostile or even neutral to them.
On the other hand, Malaysia isn’t a British colony any more, either. So they won the battle but lost the war, in essence; “declared victory and went home”. And naturally there’s not going to be any resurgence of an anti-British insurgency when they aren’t there any more.
To be fair, the British were dismantling their Empire at the time anyway; There’s not much of the British Empire left these days full stop.
The same thing happened in Kenya with the Mau Mau insurgency, FWIW- the British put it down, then said “enjoy your country” and left. Also, after the British left Malaya the Communists tried again; the resulting war lasted from the late 1960s until 1989(!), albeit at a fairly low intensity.
Greek Civil War, 1946-49
Hungary, 1956
Czechoslovakia, 1968
Angola, 1975-2002 (maybe, and certainly pyhrric)
Grenada, 1983
Haiti, 1994 (stretching the definition)
Colombia has achieved successes against the guerillas in its countryside with US military help. Peru defeated the Shining Path, although I don’t know whether it had outside help.
It is handy when they are much smaller, much weaker, pacifistic and very close. Traveling across the globe to take over countries is not so practical. It is far more expensive and requires a lot of soldiers.
The Brittish tried it in America. How did that work out?
Just a clarification: the British fought ethnic Chinese communists in the Malayan Emergency and eventually left Malaysia to Malayans.
That’s because we don’t seem to employ the old methods anymore…
You know…invade and conquer. If there is any resistance…kill and kill and kill indiscriminately. Every man, woman, child and baby you see. Burn and raze everything to the ground. Kill every animal/livestock/ that moves and poison what doesn’t. Destroy all the fields and salt the earth. If they still resist…repeat. Eventually they will give up or all be dead.
Ahhh…the old ways…
The UK has had an Ireland neutral towards it for pretty much all of the existance of the Republic of Ireland. If you mean it couldn’t afford to have a “neutral” Northern Ireland, surely it would pretty hard for Westminister to leave the Protestant majority ambivalent about continued Union.
From Irish history I read a little too long ago, was it the case that when the Irish weren’t being invaded and crushed militarily, they were being kept on side culturally and politically to keep insurgencies at a minimum. When the Irish War of Independence was being fought, the British establishment in the country was being sidelined. IIRC so much so that there wouldn’t have been much outside of what became NI that would have been governable if the Army had managed to quell all armed rebellion.
The British put down rebellions in India variously, and the USSR was a bit short with Hungary and Checkoslovakia, to name but a few.
I think there’s a distinction to be drawn here between invasion/insurgency and nationhood/independence. A lot of the cited British cases involved areas that became countries during the process.
Thank you all for improving my imaginings. Now I’m thinking it was about the time that England got a navy.
Squash.
Had the Irish been a more evolved capitalist venture (and while we’re wishing, a little less RCC), which is to say, a more populist one, they would have en masse with a well-armed militia honorably stood down as England’s bff with a better deal and a lot less cost.
As it was, the peasants didn’t give a shit and certainly were not armed.
Poor Ireland. So far from God, so close to England.
I would say yes, it is possible, but not by any means the rest of the civilized world would find acceptable in this day and age. The occupying nation would become pariah, outcast amongst nations.
Sound somewhat familiar? :dubious:
The Sri Lankan government defeated the Tamil insurgency earlier this year.
Yes, which makes it hard to define success. If the insurgency is “crushed” but the cause wins, is that a victory for the occupier? And declaring victory and going home means that we can’t point to a resurgent insurgency years later and say “See! it didn’t work after all!”
The Second Boer War is when modern war met bad press.
The British lost the First Boer War and by the time the second one rolled around they were losing it too.
Basically to win the British rounded up the civilian population and put them in camps and then broke their will. Of course by putting the civlians in a camp, this gave them the opportunity to mop up everything else. There were no civilans outside the camps (in theory at least) so everyone else was fair game.
This caused massive amounts of bad press and had the Boers been able to hold out the war may have ended a bit different. Certainly the British would’ve gotten the Gold they wanted but the Boer Republics may have been able to maintain their independence.
Then the Congo Free State, was run so severe that public opinion made the King of Belgium (who ran the Congo Free State as his own personal colony) agree to give the colony over to the nation of Belgium
So you can see as communication became more and more rapid and accessable to all, public opinion started putting pressure on people on how to fight a war.
After WWII the UN and the UN Charter put certain “rules” in place, such as making the forced relocation of people (regardless of if they were on the winning or losing side of a war) unacceptable.
The superabundence of military small arms, post WW2, has a major influence. Especially the RPG.
That’s pretty much how America won independence from Britain. George Washington never won a major victory before Yorktown; his talent was in avoiding major defeats. He got away from every battle with his army, if defeated, still substantially intact, ready to fight another day. He kept that up until the Brits lost the political will to keep on fighting – even though they had the resources to do so, if they really wanted.
Someone disregarded those rules after the fall of Rhodesia…Jimmy Carter was happy to look the other way when peoples’ farms were seized by his friend Mugabe (only to fall fallow as soon as they were taken over and turn the “breadbasket of Africa” into a hellhole of starvation and chaos.)
Afghanistan is a very unique case, because of the mountains.
Some examples of insurgencies that were utterly crushed include: Arab Revolt in Palestine 1936-1939, Chechen anti-Soviet insurgency during WW2 (resolved by all Chechens being deported to Central Asia), Ukrainian nationalist insurgency in Western Ukraine 1945-1948, similar low key post-war insurgency in Lithuania, “Malayan Emergency” in the 50s, Viet Cong in South Vietnam after 1968 (that’s why North Vietnam switched to full scale invasions, 1972 invasion and 1975 invasion), “Black September” Palestinian revolt against Jordanian government, “Shining Path” war in Peru, civil wars in Salvador and Guatemala (not Nicaragua - Sandinistas won) and Shia revolt against Saddam in 1991.
Somewhere there would also be French Resistance against the Nazis and the First Intifada (after suppression of which Palestine lived as peaceful vassal of Israel for 10 years). Coming up next, most likely, is the Iraqi Sunni insurgency, at least when the Iraqi Shias get their act together with Iranian help.
Moral of the story is, “Be bloody, bold, and resolute”. Stronger power always wins if they are willing to stop “winning the hearts and minds” and start doing what it takes. Sometimes the insurgency falls apart from fear without even really starting, e.g. German suppression of French Resistance discouraged it from growing beyond very low key activity.