Regimes and Revolt: Authoritarian Ways of Counterinsurgency

Editor’s Note: This article is adapted from the author’s article in the Journal of Strategic Studies, “‘The People are Revolting’: An Anatomy of Authoritarian Counterinsurgency.”

Scores of dead civilians, smoldering wastelands where villages used to be, a cowering people, and a regime thriving on tyranny and fear — these are the images evoked by the mention of “authoritarian counterinsurgency.” Most recently, in Syria, Bashar al-Assad’s brutal and uncompromising campaign against his own people provides an unnerving illustration of its execution. Russia’s bloody entry into this war, on the side of Assad, has only sharpened the juxtaposition of authoritarian counterinsurgency and the approach attempted, however ineffectively, by Western, democratic states. Whereas democracies strive to win hearts and minds, authoritarian states “waste them in the shithouse,” as Vladimir Putin put it in 1999. Whereas democracies are constrained by law, authoritarian states act with impunity. And whereas democracies contend with a critical media and electorate, authoritarian regimes own both and control the narrative.

Regime-based comparisons such as these often betray frustration with recent Western counterinsurgency campaigns. Be it the Russians in Chechnya or the Chinese in Xinjiang, we face the uncomfortable possibility that authoritarian counterinsurgency is simply more effective. In some circles, such suspicions lead perversely to envy, based on the tantalizing promise of a better, if inconveniently repressive approach. After all, what adversary could withstand the full force of the American war machine, were it let loose? Legitimacy, reform, hearts and minds — this is also where Western counterinsurgency has faltered, so what better solution than to push these concerns aside?

Not only is this a perverse conclusion, but it is based on a troubled and confused comparison. Rather than be divided into democratic and authoritarian absolutes, most regimes fall somewhere in the middle. Between 2004 and 2014,  “about 70% of authoritarian states held legislative elections and 80% held elections for the chief executive,” giving rise to the term “democratic authoritarianism” or “anocracy.” Better coding might help, but presumably, if regime type truly matters, analysis must anyway go further and consider different types of authoritarianism: bureaucratic, monarchical, military, and one-party systems. Such nuance is rarely found, even within the attendant literature.

Read the Remainder at War on the Rocks

Taking a Spoon to a Gunfight

David Maxwell

April 2, 2014 · in Commentary

 

Taking a Spoon to a Gunfight: The West Dealing with Russian Unconventional and Political Warfare in Former Soviet States

As the Russians now try to reach a diplomatic solution in order to consolidate their gains in Crimea – as evidenced by Putin’s call to Obama and SECSTATE’s meeting with the Russian foreign minister – it is useful to try to understand how Russia has used all of its elements of national power to achieve its objectives.

While the United States has spent the last decade-plus trying to learn to “eat soup with a knife,” the Russians have been reaching back to some tried and true methods from the Cold War.  Some in the U.S. national security community want to continue to focus on expeditionary counterinsurgency warfare and armed nation building while others long for large-scale maneuver warfare along the lines of the Fulda Gap.  However, while we debate these two forms of warfare and the proper balance between them, the Russians are practicing something different: unconventional warfare in support of political warfare to achieve its strategic objectives.

A friend asked me recently if the Russians were conducting unconventional warfare in Ukraine and in particular in Crimea.  Even a superficial analysis shows that they are using much of the standard definition of unconventional warfare:

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 forces in a denied area.

Read the Remainder at War on the Rocks HERE.