Widening the Spectrum of Insurgency
Widening the Spectrum of Insurgency
by Stephen Phillips
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Warfare blogs, Department of Defense forums, and defense industry conferences have debated terms surrounding the current global conflict. This clash has a myriad descriptive names such as “The Global War on Terrorism,” “The Long War,” and “Overseas Contingency Operation.” Similarly, defense pundits have wrestled with the terms, asymmetric warfare, irregular warfare, and terrorism. Another definition that must be reviewed is “insurgency.”
Two salient questions are the catalyst for this discussion. First, should criminal enterprises that want to remove rather than replace government control and seek a passive rather than a complicit populous fit into the definition of insurgency? Second, can a non-violent overthrow of a government, a “velvet revolution,” be called an insurgency?
Download the full article: Widening the Spectrum of Insurgency
Stephen Phillips is a member of the Senior Professional Staff in the National Security Analysis Department at the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory. He is also a Naval Reservist serving as a faculty member at the National Defense Intelligence College. The views herein are those of the author and not necessarily those of the organizations with which he is affiliated.
