Counterinsurgency doctrine holds that defeating an insurgency depends on winning the support of the civilian population rather than simply controlling territory or destroying the insurgent force. In the words of the French officer David Galula, the aim of the war is to gain the support of the population rather than territorial dominance. Galula formulated his systematic principles from his own experience fighting in the Algerian War in the 1950s and 1960s; the British officer Robert Thompson published Defeating Communist Insurgency in 1966, setting out five core principles drawn from the Malayan Emergency. The oil spot approach, concentrating forces to secure and expand a zone rather than sweeping through hostile territory, originated with the French colonial officer Hubert Lyautey and was applied in Vietnam through the Strategic Hamlet Program. The United States military later formalized its own doctrine in the Counterinsurgency Field Manual associated with General David Petraeus in the early 2000s.
Facts
Core ClaimProtect and win over the civilian population instead of only hunting the insurgent fighters, since an insurgency that loses its base of popular support and supply cannot sustain itself. 1 Origin Year1966 marks Robert Thompson's Defeating Communist Insurgency, the clearest single formalization date the source gives; the doctrine's principles were developed piecemeal from the 1950s decolonization wars onward and are not the invention of one year or one theorist. Cross-Tradition Connections
Associated With
Vietnam War, Wars The Strategic Hamlet Program applied the oil-spot counterinsurgency approach in Vietnam.
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