War of the flea : the classic study of guerrilla warfare

217 Pages·27.358 MB·English

by  Robert Taber

THE CLASSIC STUDY OF
WARFARE
GUERRILLA
Boston
Subtle
Library
MA
Boston,
02116
WAR
OF
THE FLEA
ALSO BY ROBERT TABER
M-26: Biography of a Revolution
WAR
OF
THE CLASSIC STUDY OF
WARFARE
GUERRILLA
ROBERT TABER
With a Foreword by Bard E. O’Neill
POTOMAC BOOKS, INC.
Washington, D.C.
Copyright © 2002 by Potomac Books, Inc.
Published in the United States by Potomac Books, Inc. (formerly Brassey's,
Inc.). All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any
manner whatsoever without written permission from the publisher, except in
the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Taber, Robert.
War of the flea the classic study of guerrilla warfare / Robert Taber
: — ;
with a foreword by Brad E. O'Neill. 1st [Brassey's] ed.
cm.
p.
New
Originally published: York L. Stuart, 1965.
:
Includes index.
ISBN 978-1-57488-555-2 (alk. paper)
1. Guerrilla warfare. I. Title.
U240 .T1523 2002
8—
355.02 dc21 2002074447
' 1
Printed in the United States of America on acid-free paper that meets the
American National Standards Institute Z39-48 Standard.
Potomac Books, Inc.
22841 Quicksilver Drive
Dulles, Virginia 20166
First Edition
9876543
10
In Memory Of An
Old Fashioned American
GEORGE THURSTON
A.
Digitized by the Internet Archive
2016 with funding from
in
Kahle/Austin Foundation
https://archive.org/details/waroffleaclassicOOtabe
FOREWORD
When The War of the Flea first appeared in the late 1960s, revolu-
tionary warfare waged by guerrilla forces representing the poor
and deprived sectors of society was very much in vogue in radi-
cal political circles around the world. From the jungles of Indo-
china to the open spaces of Palestine, left-wing intellectuals
believed that at last the poor had found a way to bring the rich
and powerful to their knees and usher in a new egalitarian polit-
ical era. The main inspiration and impetus was provided by the
thinking of Mao Tse-tung, who had conceptualized and success-
fully carried out a protracted popular war based on well-orga-
nized, mass, popular support and guerrilla warfare, largely in
rural areas.
Mao's success was emulated successfully by the Viet Minh
against the French in the late 1940s and early 1950s. Little more
than a decade later the Viet Cong, also following a Maoist blue-
print, were poised to reap the fruits of victory against the South
Vietnamese and Americans. Together with past revolutionary
victories in Cyprus and Palestine and more recent ones in Alge-
ria and Cuba, these events solidified the confidence and momen-
tum associated with the strategy of protracted popular war that
many came to believe would usher in a new progressive era.
Robert Taber was clearly swept up by these events and the
romanticism surrounding them. While some of his predictions
about the future may have been exaggerated and unsustainable,
Taber's descriptive analysis of the nature of protracted popular
war and what accounted for its victories was on the mark and
endures to this day. This is the principal value of his work in the
early 21st Century.
Not surprisingly, many things have changed since Taber's
book first appeared. Two of these are particularly noteworthy.
vii
FOREWORD
viii
First, and most important, our analytical concepts have broad-
ened and become far more precise. Second, the process of glob-
alization has significantly transformed the social, economic, and
political makeup of the global environment. Both must be con-
sidered if we are to place Taber's book in a context that makes it
useful and relevant, if not compelling.
As far as analytical concepts are concerned, scholars and prac-
titioners have disentangled and defined terms like insurgency,
revolutionary warfare, guerrilla warfare, and terrorism, which
in earlier and less discriminating times were often used inter-
— —
changeably. Insurgency or internal war is now viewed as a
general overarching concept that refers to a conflict between a
government and an out group or opponent in which the latter
uses both political resources and violence to change, reformu-
late, or uphold the legitimacy of one or more of four key aspects
of politics. Those aspects are (1) the integrity of the borders and
composition of the nation state, (2) the political system, (3) the
authorities in power, and (4) the policies that determine who
gets what in the society. The question is which ones are relevant
in a particular case. The answers will vary greatly. Some insur-
gents, like the Tamil Tigers in Sri Lanka and the Polisario in
Western Sahara, seek to separate from an existing nation state to
create their own. Others, like the Revolutionary Armed Forces
of Colombia (FARC) or the Armed Islamic Group in Algeria,
focus on replacing the political system and authorities with ones
more to their liking. In what may seem counterintuitive, other
insurgents, like the Ulster Defense Association in Northern Ire-
land, fight to sustain or preserve the four aspects of politics, es-
pecially the political system.
The ultimate goals or end states desired by insurgents also
vary significantly and may include creating new independent
countries, egalitarian social-political orders, theocracies based
on religious laws, pluralist democracies, or a more equitable dis-
tribution of wealth within an existing system. Alternatively, they
may, as suggested, include keeping things the way they are. The
last one alone makes it clear that not all insurgencies are "revo-
lutionary." And, among those that are, there may be very differ-
ent ultimate goals. Clearly, this wider conceptualization of