N. Korean leader Kim Jong-un inspects special forces unit

The importance of nK SOF to the Regime might be illustrated here.  Excerpt:

The visit occurred Friday, with the North's official news wire service stressing there was "profound meaning" in Kim checking of the unit, although it did not elaborate on details.

So does that mean the next provocation will be conducted by nK SOF?

But this excerpt from Adrian Buzo's book, Guerrilla Dynasty, helps to explain the reason for the emphasis on SOF and the reason for the "profound meaning" of the visit (and also explains a lot about nK culture):

In the course of this struggle against factional opponents, for the first time Kim began to emphasize nationalism as a means of rallying the population to the enormous sacrifices needed for post-war recovery.  This was a nationalism that first took shape in the environment of the anti-Japanese guerrilla movement and developed into a creed through the destruction of both the non-Communist nationalist forces and much of the leftist intellectual tradition of the domestic Communists.  Kim’s nationalism did not draw inspiration from Korean history, nor did it dwell on past cultural achievements, for the serious study of history and traditional culture soon effectively ceased in the DPRK [Democratic People’s Republic of Korea].  Rather, DPRK nationalism drew inspiration from the Spartan outlook of the former Manchurian guerrillas.  It was a harsh nationalism that dwelt on past wrongs and promises of retribution for “national traitors” and their foreign backers.  DPRK nationalism stressed the “purity” of all things Korean against the “contamination” of foreign ideas, and inculcated in the population a sense of fear and animosity toward the outside world.  Above all, DPRK nationalism stressed that the guerrilla ethos was not only the supreme, but also the only legitimate basis on which to reconstitute a reunified Korea. (emphasis added)

V/R

Dave

2013/03/23 10:00 KST

N. Korean leader Kim Jong-un inspects special forces unit

http://english.yonhapnews.co.kr/northkorea/2013/03/23/17/0401000000AEN20130323000900315F.HTML

SEOUL, March 23 (Yonhap) -- North Korean leader Kim Jong-un inspected a special forces unit and was briefed on its mission and training status, state media reported Saturday.

   The Korean Central News Agency (KCNA) monitored in Seoul said Kim, who holds the rank of Marshal in the Korean People's Army, toured the headquarters element of Unit 1973.

  

The visit occurred Friday, with the North's official news wire service stressing there was "profound meaning" in Kim checking of the unit, although it did not elaborate on details.

   It said the commanding officer briefed Kim, with the leader emphasizing that all service personnel be fully prepared to defend the country and remain faithful to the goal of national unification.

   "Kim Il-sung and Kim Jong-il attached importance to this unit and it is the unit he regards as the most important and the Party trusts," the KCNA quoting the leader said. Kim Il-sung is the founder of North Korea and the incumbent leader's grandfather, while Kim Jong-il is his son, who died in late 2011 and left power to Kim Jong-un.

   The North Korean leader has been making regular trips to military units and overseeing drills as well as giving instructions on preparedness of troops as the communist country has ratcheted up tensions on the Korean Peninsula after it detonated its third nuclear device on Feb. 12.

(Continued at the link below)

http://english.yonhapnews.co.kr/northkorea/2013/03/23/17/0401000000AEN20130323000900315F.HTML

World War II in the Philippines: The lasting effect on the Filipino people

I received the comment below from a friend and Historian that I very much think is worth sharing.  This confirms  the historical importance of conducting unconventional warfare in support of major combat operations in Asia.  Also for all the students out there, there is a thesis or dissertation to be written.

The Army’s official history of the recapture of the Philippines (after Leyte, which was dealt with in an earlier volume), Robert Ross Smith, Triumph in the Philippines (Washington: Office of the Chief of Military History, 1963), shows just how important the Filipino resistance was in aiding the US reconquest of Luzon and the southern Philippines.  The Philippine resistance was certainly more important overall, and more effective, than most European resistance movements and almost all Asian ones except China.  There have been lots of memoirs about this, mostly from Americans who didn’t surrender in 1942 and stayed behind to lead guerrilla organizations, but there has never been a really detailed, comprehensive American study of the entire Filipino resistance movement.  Too bad.  The story deserves to be told. 

Excerpt:

The guerrilla movement had the strategic effect of tying down in the islands scores of Japanese infantry divisions that otherwise would have been used to invade other territory. How the Filipino resistance movement helped win World War II for the Allies has not been fully measured, but doubtless it was crucial to the Allied cause. It may have been decisive to ultimate victory. 

How decisive it was for the Filipino mind has not been fully measured either, for the guerrilla fighter became a permanent fixture on the Philippine scene. World War II came to an end, but the guerrilla war in the Philippines has raged to the present, although the fighters may now be fighting for or against certain causes the nature of which might confuse many Filipinos. 

The fact remains that the resistance against the Japanese during World War II united the Filipino people as no other factor would. It was the common cause that homogenized the nation as José Rizal could only dream of when he organized the Liga Filipina in 1892. No other cause brought the fragmented archipelago together as the resentment against the interloper did. Mountain dweller and city-bred, society scion and slum bum, Muslim and Christian, from Batanes to Sulu, they presented a united Filipino front, although they may have operated separately and independently of each other. 

This was the legacy of the holocaust. It created a new sense of Filipinohood.

V/R
Dave 

World War II in the Philippines

(from the Free Press Century Book)

World War II in the Philippines:
The lasting effect on the Filipino people

http://philippinesfreepress.wordpress.com/2000/04/09/world-war-ii-in-the-philippines/

By Alfonso J. Aluit

FOR a people without experience of war, World War II came as the crucible for Filipinos, the ultimate test for the individual and the nation, a test of the effectiveness of the institutions of government and religion, a test of faith in truth, justice, and freedom, in fact a test of all the beliefs Filipinos subscribed to.

The Japanese invasion in December 1941 had no precedent in the memory of most Filipinos of that period. The American invasion in 1898 had been a reality only to disparate groups in the country. The Philippine-American War was not of a national character, having been limited to certain areas in Luzon and the Visayas, and was but endemic in nature in Mindanao.

But World War II, which lasted from December 1941 until the last Japanese commander came down from the hills in August 1945, was a national experience the reality of which was felt by every Filipino of every age in every inhabited region of the archipelago.

How did World War II affect the Filipinos, and how have the effects of war influenced Philippine life and civilization in thereafter?

The occupation of the Philippines by Japanese forces in World War II led to at least two conditions that would have a permanent effect on the Filipino people.

First, the occupation of the national territory by unfriendly alien troops ignited the resistance movement, bringing home to the people the obligation to defend their territory, and their acceptance of the need to sacrifice life and fortune to defend both territory and sovereignty.

Second, the shortage of staples and commodities basic to a decent life in turn led to the degradation of the populace and the consequent deterioration of moral and ethical values, providing the foundation for a culture of corruption.

To elaborate on the first condition, the occupation of their native earth by the interloper was a sore spot on the Filipino psyche. The Japanese did not seem to know this when they first stepped ashore, on December 10, 1941, simultaneously in Vigan, Ilocos Sur, and Atimonan, Tayabas. They would find out soon enough, obviously, to their everlasting woe, how sore a spot it was.

What may not have been anticipated either by the American allies, was the ferocity and intensity of the Filipino response to the invasion. All through the war years, from the realization of defeat as superior forces overran the country, to the final battle for liberation, the Filipinos waged a guerrilla war against the interloper with the incapacity to come to a truce.

The guerrilla movement took root in every region, in every province of the Philippines, uniting people over differences of language, religion, culture, custom, and tradition. It was truly national in form and substance.

The guerrilla movement had the strategic effect of tying down in the islands scores of Japanese infantry divisions that otherwise would have been used to invade other territory. How the Filipino resistance movement helped win World War II for the Allies has not been fully measured, but doubtless it was crucial to the Allied cause. It may have been decisive to ultimate victory.

How decisive it was for the Filipino mind has not been fully measured either, for the guerrilla fighter became a permanent fixture on the Philippine scene. World War II came to an end, but the guerrilla war in the Philippines has raged to the present, although the fighters may now be fighting for or against certain causes the nature of which might confuse many Filipinos.

The fact remains that the resistance against the Japanese during World War II united the Filipino people as no other factor would. It was the common cause that homogenized the nation as José Rizal could only dream of when he organized the Liga Filipina in 1892. No other cause brought the fragmented archipelago together as the resentment against the interloper did. Mountain dweller and city-bred, society scion and slum bum, Muslim and Christian, from Batanes to Sulu, they presented a united Filipino front, although they may have operated separately and independently of each other.

This was the legacy of the holocaust. It created a new sense of Filipinohood.

As to the second condition cited earlier, by its brutality and rapacity, by the bankruptcy of its values as an occupation force, by the subhuman conduct of its occupying troops, the Japanese in the Philippines during World War II subjected the indigenous people to a moral degradation from which they hardly ever recovered.

Barging into the scene with but poorly rationalized objectives which they failed to explain to the people, without the moral imperatives of the Spanish who vowed to bring Christ to the heathens alongside their armed forces, or the social philosophies of the Americans who purported to bring hygiene to the unwashed, the Japanese identified themselves to the subject peoples as no more than brigands out to rape and pillage, and therefore, clearly and unmistakably, as the enemy.

So malevolent was the Japanese presence in these islands in World War II that the Filipinos devised an incredibly large repertoire of vengeful acts against this presence, ranging from expressions of ridicule and contempt by word or gesture to the unremitting guerrilla warfare that would forever scar the land.

(Continued at the link below)

http://philippinesfreepress.wordpress.com/2000/04/09/world-war-ii-in-the-philippines/

Invisible Armies: An Epic History of Guerrilla Warfare from Ancient Times to the Present (Book review from Gian Gentile)

Gian is not happy with Max's book but does like some parts, e.g.:

At times Mr. Boot brings out some worthwhile observations and criticisms. For example at the end of the book there is a section titled “Implications: Twelve Articles, or the Lessons of Five Thousand Years” in which Mr. Boot offers his suggestions for timeless lessons on guerrilla warfare drawn from history. 

One of his observations is that Petraeus’ Surge in Iraq in 2007 did not “bring about a lasting political settlement.” Or in other words, the Surge ultimately failed because it did not accomplish political objectives 

In this sense Mr. Boot is spot on. Yet after making this crucially important observation he spends much time making the argument that Petraeus is one of the greatest generals in the history of guerrilla warfare. 

If the military means applied by Petraeus during the Surge failed to achieve political ends, how can he be considered a great general?

V/R

Dave

Invisible Armies: An Epic History of Guerrilla Warfare from Ancient Times to the Present

by Max Boot

Reviewed by Gian P. Gentile | Released: January 15, 2013

Publisher: Liveright (784 pages)

http://www.nyjournalofbooks.com/review/invisible-armies-epic-history-guerrilla-warfare-ancient-times-present

“Historical accuracy and truth, . . . take a second place in Invisible Armies to the book’s highly politicized point of view . . .”

In an interview shortly after the publication of his book Invisible Armies: An Epic History of Guerrilla Warfare from Ancient Times to the Present, Max Boot claimed that he did not make a “particular point” in the book, but aimed “simply to tell a story that has never been well told before.”

After reading Invisible Armies, however, it is hard to take Mr. Boot’s remarks in this interview seriously.

The story of guerrilla warfare actually has been told quite “well” before. Historian Robert Asprey’s still useful and relevant multivolume work War in the Shadows tells the story well and effectively with a level of embedded primary, archival research that Mr. Boot’s new book does not come close to.

But the more fantastic remark by Mr. Boot, that his book does not make a “particular point” is pure moonshine. In fact the book does just that: It makes one big whopping point for current American politics and more importantly foreign policy: that guerrilla warfare has been around for thousands of years, as his tome quite aptly chronicles, and since it has been around for thousands of years—here comes the political point he is making—the United States should accept the fact that it must commit itself to fighting numerous guerrilla wars in the future.

Never mind whether or not American strategy and security interests in the world demand fighting such wars. Instead for Mr. Boot simply because they have been fought in the past, America should keep fighting them in the future. For those American experts and policy wonks like Anne-Marie Slaughter who have been stridently advocating for American military intervention in places like Syria with a “responsibility to protect” local populations, Mr. Boot’s book will read like a policy prescription gussied up with the dash of history.

A nakedly didactic tutorial by the many Counterinsurgency (Coin) experts who have popped up over the years since David Petraeus supposedly made Coin work during the Surge in Iraq, is that the United States “may not want Counterinsurgency, but Counterinsurgency wants it.” Or in other words the United States has no strategic choice at all in these matters except to face the facts, accept the wisdom of the experts and plan on fighting Coin wars well into the future.

Mr. Boot’s Invisible Armies fully supports this tutorial by offering up a history of guerrilla warfare from the ancient Romans and Greeks up to the present American wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. There is in the book an impressive sweep of history.

And it is definitely a ripping read to be sure. Mr. Boot if nothing else is an exceptionally strong writer with a gift for engaging storytelling. And in this respectInvisible Armies does not disappoint.

(Continued at the link below)

http://www.nyjournalofbooks.com/review/invisible-armies-epic-history-guerrilla-warfare-ancient-times-present

The Guerrilla Myth by Max Boot

I would say that most of our adversaries and the adversaries of our friends, partners, and allies are waging various forms of unconventional warfare (though Max makes a good point in terms of regularity this type of warfare is neither irregular nor unconventional – what we term as conventional warfare is really the "not regularly conducted warfare".   But our description of unconventional warfare doctrine (activities to enable a resistance or insurgency to coerce, disrupt, or overthrow a government or occupying power through and with an underground, auxiliary, and guerrilla force in a denied area) really describes in various forms what many adversaries are doing around the world and Max does a good job of explaining why they do so.  However, we need to not only be able to conduct unconventional warfare when and where necessary but perhaps more importantly be able to conduct counter-unconventional warfare in support of our friends , partners, and allies when it makes strategic sense for US interests.  And we should realize that in places where uniformed armies may square off (e.g., on the Korean Peninsula) we are still likely to see this type of warfare occur during and after (especially after) the period of what we call conventional warfare.  Some interesting excerpts:

Calling guerrilla warfare "irregular" or "unconventional" has it backward: It is the norm of armed conflict.
…
Their experience suggests that few people have ever chosen guerrilla warfare voluntarily; it is the tactic of last resort for those too weak to create regular armies. Likewise, terrorism is the tactic of last resort for those too weak to create guerrilla forces.
…
In reality, though guerrillas have often been able to fight for years and inflict great losses on their enemies, they have seldom achieved their objectives. Terrorists have been even less successful.
…
A spectacular vindication of this approach occurred during the Vietnam War, when the U.S. was defeated not because it had lost on the battlefield but because public opinion had turned against the war. The same thing almost happened in Iraq in 2007, and it may yet happen in Afghanistan.   (This is why we should study Dau Tranh strategy)

Hearts and Minds:

The best-known term for this strategy is "winning hearts and minds"—a phrase popularized by the British Gen. Gerald Templer, who saved Malaya from a communist insurgency in the 1950s. But the term is misleading, since it suggests that a counter-insurgency campaign is trying to win a popularity contest. In reality, the populace will embrace the government only if it is less dangerous to do so than to support the insurgency. That is why successful population-centric policies aim to control the people with a 24/7 deployment of security forces, not to win their love and gratitude by handing out soccer balls, medical supplies and other goodies.

Rather than hearts and minds we need to think in terms of perception of legitimacy and credible capability to coerce:

c.  The insurgent, the counter-insurgent, and the peace keeper/enforcer have only two fundamental tools to work with to accomplish their goals:

                        (1)  The enhancement of popular perceptions of legitimacy.

                        (2)  The credible capability to coerce

            d.  Success or failure is determined by each sides understanding, application, and the mixture of these tools (which is determined by the political leadership NOT the military leadership)

            e.  Remember that no armed political disturbances begin without significant lead times.

V/R
Dave 

• THE SATURDAY ESSAY
• Updated January 18, 2013, 9:59 p.m. ET

The Guerrilla Myth

Unconventional wars are our most pressing national security concern. They're also the most ancient form of war in the world. Max Boot on the lessons of insurgency we seem unable to learn.

By MAX BOOT

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424127887323596204578243702404190338.html?mod=googlenews_wsj

Author Max Boot discusses his new book, "Invisible Armies: An Epic History of Guerrilla Warfare from Ancient Times to the Present," with WSJ weekend Review editor Gary Rosen.

For a student of military history, the most astonishing fact about the current international scene is that there isn't a single conflict in which two uniformed militaries are pitted against each other. The last one was a brief clash in 2008 between Russia and Georgia. In our day, the specter of conventional conflict, which has dominated the imagination of the West since the days of the Greek hoplites, has almost been lifted.

But the world is hardly at peace. Algeria fights hostage-takers at a gas plant. France fights Islamist extremists in Mali. Israel fights Hamas. The U.S. and its allies fight the Taliban in Afghanistan. Syria's Bashar al-Assad fights rebels seeking to overthrow him. Colombia fights and negotiates with the FARC. Mexico fights drug gangs. And various African countries fight the Lord's Resistance Army.

These are wars without front lines, without neatly defined starting and end points. They are messy, bloody affairs, in which attackers, typically without uniforms, engage in hit-and-run raids and often target civilians. They are, in short, guerrilla wars, and they are deadly. In Syria alone, more than 60,000 people have died since 2011, according to the United Nations. In Mexico, nearly 50,000 have died in drug violence since 2006. Hundreds of thousands more have perished in Africa's civil wars. The past decade has also seen unprecedented terrorist attacks, ranging from 9/11 to suicide bombings in Iraq. To understand today's world, you have to understand guerrillas and the terrorist movements that are their close cousins.

Unfortunately, our ignorance of guerrilla war runs deep, even as we find ourselves increasingly entangled in such conflicts. Contrary to popular lore, guerrilla warfare wasn't invented by Che Guevara or Mao Zedong, and terrorism long predates the 1972 Munich Olympics. Nor is insurgency, as some have suggested, a distinctively "Oriental" form of warfare, difficult for Westerners to grasp.

Examining guerrilla warfare's long history not only brings to light many compelling, half-forgotten characters; it lays to rest numerous myths and allows us to come to grips with the most pressing national security issue of our time. What follows are lessons that we need to learn—but haven't—from the history of guerrilla war.

1. Guerrilla warfare is not new. Tribal war, pitting one guerrilla force against another, is as old as humankind. A new form of warfare, pitting guerrillas against "conventional" forces, is of only slightly more recent vintage—it arose in Mesopotamia 5,000 years ago. Calling guerrilla warfare "irregular" or "unconventional" has it backward: It is the norm of armed conflict.

Many of the world's current boundaries and forms of government were determined by battles between standing armies and insurgencies. Think of the United Kingdom, which was "united" by the success of the English in defeating centuries-old Scottish and Irish guerrilla movements. The retreat of the British Empire was partly the result of successful armed resistance, by groups ranging from the Irish Republican Army in the 1920s to the Zionists in the 1940s. Earlier still, the war waged by American colonists, some of them fighting as guerrillas, created the U.S., which reached its present borders, in turn, by waging centuries of unremitting warfare against Native American insurgents.

It is hard to think of any country in the world that has avoided the ravages of guerrilla warfare—just as it hard to think of any organized military force that hasn't spent a considerable portion of its energy fighting guerrillas.

(Continued at the link below)

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424127887323596204578243702404190338.html?mod=googlenews_wsj

American Revolution Reinvents Guerrilla Warfare

From Max's description of the American Revolution I can see Mao's on protracted warfare and and Ho and Giap's Dau Tranh.  I can see them studying George Washington and Thomas Paine's writings and the Declaration of Independence. 

And of course there are some eery parallels to this excerpt:

BOOT: Well, there is a division in the British ranks, as there often is. Many of the leading British generals thought that they should try to win over the hearts and minds of the Americans - a famous phrase which was first used by General Sir Henry Clinton, who is one of the British commanders in North America. But his desire to win over the hearts and minds of the Americans was undermined by many of his harsher subordinates. 

So the British did not have a consistent policy of conciliation, nor did they have a consistent policy of harshness. Instead, they were confused and there was this strategic muddle that, as much as anything, led to their defeat.

I also think his commentary on technology is useful.

 I would be very skeptical of the idea that there are technological fixes to such deep-rooted problems. 

... 

So drones can be an effective tactic in a very limited way. But they are not the end-all and be-all.

V/R

Dave

American Revolution Reinvents Guerrilla Warfare

January 15, 2013 2:47 AM

http://www.npr.org/2013/01/15/169388719/guerrilla-warfare-turningpoint-america-revolution

In the new book Invisible Armies, author Max Boot traces the role of guerrilla warfare through history, starting in the Roman Empire all the way up to Afghanistan. He tells Steve Inskeep the American Revolution was the turning point in guerrilla warfare.

STEVE INSKEEP, HOST:

(Reading) Listen my children and you shall hear of the midnight ride of Paul Revere.

That's the start of a poem that tells a story almost every American kid learns in some form. In 1775, a Boston silversmith rode to warn Americans colonists that British troops were on the way. Barely trained American militiamen shot the elite British force to pieces.

So, let's think about this for a moment. The British were the world's policeman - smart and technologically advanced - while the Americans were the insurgents.

The historian Max boot cannot help but notice the irony.

MAX BOOT: Today, we're used to having Americans soldiers be the forces of the government. And, of course, in our revolution, we were the insurgents and the British were the role of the counterinsurgency. And, in fact, many of the strategies which the American rebels used against the British are similar in many ways to the strategies now being used against us around the world.

INSKEEP: Now, the American revolutionaries eventually did form a regular army. But guerrilla tactics played a huge role in securing their independence. Max Boot sees modern lessons in that story, as told in "Invisible Armies," his new history of guerrilla warfare.

What were the strategies that the American rebels used when they were rebels?

BOOT: Well, it first of all, comes down to not coming out into the open where you could be annihilated by the superior firepower of the enemy. The British got a taste of how the Americans would fight on the very first day of the Revolution, with the shot heard around the world, the Battle of Lexington and Concorde, where the British regulars marched through the Massachusetts countryside.

And the Americans did not mass in front of them but instead chose to slither on their bellies - these Yankees scoundrels, as the British called them - and fired from behind trees and stone walls. And not come out until the kind of open gentleman's fight that the British expected, and instead, took a devastating toll on the British regiment.

(Continued at the link below)

http://www.npr.org/2013/01/15/169388719/guerrilla-warfare-turningpoint-america-revolution

The DC Interview: 10 questions with Max Boot on his history of guerrilla warfare

We are hosting Max on February 12th at Georgetown to discuss his new book.
V/R
Dave

TheDC Interview: 10 questions with Max Boot on his history of guerrilla warfare

Posted By Jamie Weinstein On 3:45 AM 01/15/2013 @ 3:45 AM In DC Exclusives - Original Reporting,Politics,Uncategorized,US | No Comments

http://dailycaller.com/2013/01/15/thedc-interview-10-questions-with-max-boot-on-his-history-of-guerrilla-warfare/?print=1

The author of a new “epic history of guerrilla warfare” says Haiti’s independence struggle might hold the distinction as the most brutal guerrilla war of all time.

“There have been many brutal campaigns, but it is hard to top Haiti’s struggle for independence from France from 1791 to 1804,” Max Boot, whose “Invisible Armies: An Epic History of Guerrilla Warfare from Ancient Times to the Present” just hit book stores, told The Daily Caller.

“It began with a slave revolt. French colonists later testified to a litany of horrors allegedly committed by slaves seeking liberation. … In trying to put down the revolt, French troops were just as inhumane and vicious. … By some estimates the Haitian War of Independence claimed the lives of 200,000 blacks and mulattos, 25,000 white colonists, 50,000 French soldiers, and 15,000 British soldiers.”

“As one scholar notes,” he added, “‘Six times as many Haitians as Americans died during their respective wars for independence,’ even though the population of Haiti was one-fourth that of the North American colonies.”

Boot, a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations, has followed America’s current campaign against guerrillas in Afghanistan closely. He said keeping just 6,000 or fewer troops in Afghanistan, as reports say President Barack Obama may be considering, would likely lead to mission failure.

“[L]eaving just 6,000 troops in Afghanistan would make it extremely difficult to pursue an effective counter-terrorist mission or to train Afghan security forces,” he said.

“Afghanistan is a big country. To target terrorists effectively you need to deploy strike forces to locations far removed from Kabul. Each of those bases, in turn, needs to be supplied and protected. Each needs to have medevac and air support on call. That requires a substantial number of troops.”

See TheDC’s comprehensive interview with Boot about his new book, what lessons he learned by studying the history of guerrilla warfare, what would constitute success in Afghanistan and much more:

Why did you decide to write this book?

Guerrilla warfare and terrorism have been front and center for the U.S. armed forces and the country as a whole ever since 9/11. During the past decade I made numerous trips to Afghanistan and Iraq to analyze developments there and provide advice for our military commanders. Along the way, even as I became immersed in the details of those conflicts, I also became curious about where those wars fit into the long continuum of history. Were they unusual or the norm? What had changed in guerrilla warfare since ancient times? What strategies were most successful for countering guerrillas and terrorists? In search of answers I looked for a good history of guerrilla warfare. Finding that none existed, I decided to write it myself, starting in 2006. I am relieved and delighted that “Invisible Armies” is finally appearing — and it is as timely as ever.

Going into the research for the book, what was your impression of the history of guerilla warfare? Has that impression changed?

It is not easy now, more than six years later, to remember exactly what I thought when I started the process of research and writing. I certainly had a general awareness of the power and limitations of guerrillas — after all, I had written a previous book about America’s history of small wars, and I had been closely following the wars being waged in Iraq and Afghanistan. But I had little understanding of how ancient and ubiquitous guerrilla warfare is. It is the oldest form of warfare and long predates conventional warfare. It has been prevalent in all countries at all times throughout history. But it has changed shape over the centuries, with the rising importance of the two P’s — politics and propaganda. I certainly was not aware, at least not to the extent that I am today, of those developments. I also learned a vast amount I didn’t know about specific guerrilla wars — including our own revolution, which, I decided, was resolved not on a North American battlefield, but in the halls of Parliament in London. That is an interpretation that challenges the prevailing wisdom — one of many surprising conclusions I reached in the course of my research.

(Continued at the link below)

http://dailycaller.com/2013/01/15/thedc-interview-10-questions-with-max-boot-on-his-history-of-guerrilla-warfare/?print=1