Page 204 - Conflitti Militari e Popolazioni Civili - Tomo II

706 XXXIV Congresso della CommIssIone InternazIonale dI storIa mIlItare • CIHm

in a largely overlooked but brilliant study of French Army officers in the early 1960s, noted
that the construct of Maoist revolution created by the French Officers was highly simplistic.
It led these officers to spend much more time on constructing their own doctrine and methods
to counter it instead of gaining a deeper appreciation and more sophisticated explanation of
what Maoist revolutionary wars were really about.
23
French Officers essentially reduced Maoist revolutionary war down to a set of simplified
steps that would occur during the process of internal revolution or insurgency. The first step
would see initial non violent actions by “agitators” to arouse the interest of the people to their
cause. Next would be the organization of groups of people in different localities into alternate
structures of government which the insurgents would rely on as a base of operations for later
stages of the revolution. Third step in the process was the forming of army military bands
which start to attack through ambushes and small raids government forces. The fourth step
involved would see increased military activities by the insurgents to the point that in certain
areas of the country government forces would have to completely withdraw. This step would
lead to the creation of secure base areas within the state from which the insurgents could or-
ganize for larger military activities. The last and final step of the process would be a general
offensive by insurgent forces against the government and its armed forces which would lead
ultimately to the gaining of complete political power by the insurgents. In this reduced and
over-simplified form was how French Revolutionary War officers viewed a Maoist based
insurgency. Whether or not this was a realistic, complete, and accurate depiction to what
actually occurred in Mao’s war against China was beside the point. A simple template that
explained Maoist revolutionary war was needed in order to construct a counter revolutionary
war method and doctrine to confront it. 24
The Counter-revolutionary method that these French army officers came up with, unlike
their simplification of Maoist war, was actually quite in-depth and sophisticated. It sought to
counter Maoist war by turning the process leading to communist revolution in countries on
its head; it was at its most basic level a symmetrical response to countering insurgencies.
Like the airpower theorists before, the French officers central focus was on people. Since the
ultimate goal for Maoist revolutionary wars was complete domination of the people to over-
throw the government, the French officer’s goal in countering it was to de-couple the people
from the revolutionary insurgency.
25
23 Paret, French Revolutionary Warfare, 7-8, 15-17-19; Michael Fitzsimmons, “Hard Hearts and Open Minds?
Governance, Identity and the Intellectual Foundations of Counterinsurgency Strategy,” The Journal of Stra-
tegic Studies, vol 31, no. 3, (June 2008), 339-342;
24 Examples of this caricature of Maoist revolutionary war are: Sir Robert Thompson, Defeating Commu-
nist Insurgency: The Lessons of Malaya and Vietnam (New York: Praeger, 1966), 28-49; David Galula,
Counterinsurgency Warfare: Theory and Practice (New York: Praeger, 1964), 43-57; for a critique of the
oversimplification of Maoist war see Anthony James Joes, Resisting Rebellion: The History and Politics of
Counterinsurgency (Lexington: University of Kentucky Press, 2004), 191-208
25 The standard historical texts most often cited in contemporary secondary literature are: Galula, Counterin-
surgency Warfare: Theory and Practice; Thompson, Defeating Communist Insurgency; Roger Trinquier,
Modern Warfare: A French View of Counterinsurgency (New York: Praeger, 1964); a popular and fictional
rendering of the French Revolutionary War School albeit still an accurate one is Jean Larteguy, The Centu-
rions (??? 1961); and Robert Taber, The War if the Flea: A Study of Guerilla Warfare, Theory and Practice
(New York: Lyle Stuart, 1965).