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Old 07-20-2005, 17:18   #1
NousDefionsDoc
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Insurgency-Civil War

What is the difference between an insurgency and a civil war?
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Old 07-20-2005, 18:02   #2
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Without reading up on it...

I would say the difference is...

For one, a civil war denotes a conflict, an insurgency denotes a group of fighters.

Usually, a civil war involves local people overthrowing government run by local people for control of their own country. It will often involve military units who identify themselves as such and fight in the open.

For example: our own Civil War, (correct me if I'm wrong) the "revolucion" that Castro led against his own Cuba. Another example being our liberation of Afghanistan, which was the US (and others) helping one side of the civil war there.

Like a civil war, an insurgency involves local people overthrowing local government, but usually the government in question is local government run or "installed" by a foreign power. While the government will have military units who identify themselves as such, the insurgents are made of local civilians or foriegn fighters who use org. structures and tactics designed to avoid pitched battles, or controlling territory to focus on attrition and wearing the enemy down.

To add to this, an insurgency can cooperate with a friendly conventional military force to achieve strategic goals. Insurgents can fight as part of a Civil War in this role.

Examples of insurgency or insurgents: The American Revolution (while not necessarily as unconventional as most insurgencies, I think it counts), The French Resistance, The VC in Vietnam, and of course our current situation in Iraq.

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Old 07-20-2005, 18:10   #3
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Ok, I'll bite,

I think that the difference is the level of the conflict. An insurgency is the ground roots of the conflict (i.e. “gorillas in the mountains”) I civil war is when a nation has become divide and has decided that war is the answer to the conflict. In this stage, war is in the open.
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Old 07-20-2005, 20:10   #4
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from Webster's New World Collegiate Dictionary...

Civil War-war between geographic sections or political factions of the same nation

Insurgency-a rising in revolt; uprising; insurrection...

since they brought up insurrection,

Insurrection-a rising up against established authority; rebellion; revolt...

yeah, i know...looking it up is cheating...
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Old 07-20-2005, 20:23   #5
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Yeah, but what is the difference?

It is a matter of symmetry and scale?
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Old 07-20-2005, 20:52   #6
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i would argue that a civil war entails a pulling apart of dissimilar groups within national boundaries, whereas an insurgency could be charaterized as an erosion of a national grouping from within...

one could assume (with all the dangers that entails) that you pose a leading question regarding symmetry; that a civil war may tend toward symmetry (or perhaps better defined factions), toward conventional warfare, both on the battlefield and within the diplomatic arena, whereas an insurgency may lend itself toward unconventional warfare (or asymmetrical warfare, to use the current expression) both as a means of prosecuting the military and the political aspects of the conflict...

as to scale, one could be led by your question, that civil wars may be fought on a scale, once again both militarily and politically, much larger than an insurgency...as i state above, civil wars seek to create separate political entities from within national boundaries, where an insurgency seeks to create a new order within those boundaries...
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Old 07-20-2005, 21:00   #7
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Quote:
Originally Posted by lksteve
as i state above, civil wars seek to create separate political entities from within national boundaries, where an insurgency seeks to create a new order within those boundaries...
I would think that the cause of Civil War is the seperate political entities, while the effect, or goal, of it is the same as an insurgency: To unify the country under one rule.

Thoughts?
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Old 07-20-2005, 21:08   #8
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Quote:
Originally Posted by aricbcool
I would think that the cause of Civil War is the seperate political entities, while the effect, or goal, of it is the same as an insurgency: To unify the country under one rule.

Thoughts?
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the American Civil war fought to create two governments, as it was determined that the differences between North and South were too great to overcome (at least one could argue that point as the Southern motivation)...the civil wars in the Balkans were essentially to gain autonomy for one region or another...the Spanish Civil War, by contrast, was fought to establish a new form of government, replacing the old with the new...the English Civil War was fought for several reasons, among them was to dispel the notion of the divine rights of kings, and to protect Protestantism within England...the initial aim was not the replacement of the monarchy, but a moderation of the perceived abuses of the Crown...
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Old 07-20-2005, 21:34   #9
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Quote:
Originally Posted by lksteve
the American Civil war fought to create two governments, as it was determined that the differences between North and South were too great to overcome (at least one could argue that point as the Southern motivation)...the civil wars in the Balkans were essentially to gain autonomy for one region or another...the Spanish Civil War, by contrast, was fought to establish a new form of government, replacing the old with the new...the English Civil War was fought for several reasons, among them was to dispel the notion of the divine rights of kings, and to protect Protestantism within England...the initial aim was not the replacement of the monarchy, but a moderation of the perceived abuses of the Crown...
I forgot about the Civil War from the South's Point of view (unfortunately all too easy these days)...

But your examples of the Spanish Civil War and the English Civil War both seek to create a single government don't they? (Whether moderate monarchy or brand new...)

I still stand by my definition of an insurgency as a group of fighters and a Civil War as a type of conflict, Webster's be damned.

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Old 07-20-2005, 21:34   #10
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Quote:
Originally Posted by NousDefionsDoc
What is the difference between an insurgency and a civil war?
is there a difference...is an insurgency a subset of civil war, perhaps a phase leading toward civil war...?

do conflicts have to share common attributes to be considered insurgencies, civil wars, insurretions...?

are all civil wars the same...? do they vary, based on a point in time, a unique dynamic, population diversity...?
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Old 07-20-2005, 21:46   #11
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Quote:
Originally Posted by aricbcool
But your examples of the Spanish Civil War and the English Civil War both seek to create a single government don't they?
do you expect a straight-forward, clear-cut answer? i don't...
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Old 07-20-2005, 22:03   #12
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Quote:
Originally Posted by lksteve
do you expect a straight-forward, clear-cut answer? i don't...
Not at all...

I just got the impression from your previous posts that the end result of a (successful) Civil War had to be two seperate political entities.

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Old 07-21-2005, 04:29   #13
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Quote:
Originally Posted by NousDefionsDoc
What is the difference between an insurgency and a civil war?
Insurgencies are protracted by insurgent strategy. Modern civil wars are protracted by treaties.

What do they have in common? Both may be fought with support from outside powers/factions.

Last edited by pulque; 07-21-2005 at 04:40.
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Old 07-21-2005, 09:58   #14
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I'm going to disagree with aric that the main point of a civil war is to create 2 seperate political entities because if you look some of the more recent examples of civil war in particular the war/ethinic cleansing in Somalia there is no attempt to seperate the state into several political spheres.
My belief is that an insurgency is a movement that because of either the opinion of the people or the power of the actual state must stay underground where as in a civil war the opposition group is powerful and influential enough to be open about who is in control and to fight a convential.
So I'll say that an insurgency can lead to a civil war but it does not fall under a category of civil war.
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Old 07-21-2005, 10:34   #15
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The differences are a function of how you choose to define the terms, which can have somewhat elastic meanings. But fundamentally they differ because they have to do with two separate things.

An "insurgency" refers to the nature or form of the conflict. Though some doctrinal publications muddy the waters by defining insurgency by an end - the overthrow of a government - fundamentally, the end does not matter. Whether a group seeks to overthrow an established government, break away from the central government, force the government to make accomodations, make a profit, or just kill people isn't really relevant. An insurgency is defined by the means employed - primarily guerrilla but also perhaps involving political agitation, terrorism and/or some conventional military operations - and its scale - somewhere on the middle of the spectrum between full-blown conventional warfare and gang or terrorist violence.

A "civil war" refers to the purpose of the conflict. A "civil war" is contrasted with a war between or among separate states. It is simply a war within a state. The tactics/methods are not the issue - as Axl Rose once asked, "what's so civil about war anyway?"

Civil wars fall into various categories, but each is defined by the end sought, not the methods chosen to achieve them (though, of course, the essence of strategy is adapting the means employed to the ends sought). The most recognizable category is the revolutionary, the attempt to overthrow and replace the existing government - the Spanish Civil War is a classic example. The other major category is a separatist war, an attempt by a region to break away from the central government, of which the U.S. Civil War is the classic example. A third category might be sectarian, a war within a state among ethnic or religious factions, but this category is somewhat ephemeral, as the goals are often unclear and sometimes these do have revolutionary or separatist overtones. The English Civil War is generally classified as of the sectarian variety.

There is of course overlap among these categories. Was the American Revolution a civil war among British loyalists and those who would establish their own form of government, or a separatist war between breakaway colonies and their mother country?

The scale is also a factor in defining civil wars versus domestic violence. A war gets called a civil war when it reaches a level of violence that makes the overthrow of the regime or the breakaway of a region conceivable. This is a bit of a logical fallacy - begging the question - since it boils down to "we call it a civil war when it is big enough to be called a civil war." This is where means and ends get muddied and questions are asked such as whether an insurgency is now a full-scale civil war. And some authors trying to define "civil war" do fall into this, basically seeing a civil war as categorized by full-scale conventional warfare, as opposed to "just" insurgent violence or an even lower level of violence.

This is where the "is the situation in Iraq becoming a civil war" question muddies the categories and begs the question. The insurgency doesn't become a civil war merely by becoming more violent or deadly. It does by reaching a point where there are clear sides with definable and achievable ends (I admit "achievable" does involve question-begging, but I think we recognize that it is a factor - anarchists may have definable ends, but are never likely to be seen as a side in a civil war because they are too small and radical to ever conceive of actually accomplishing those ends or getting a sufficient number of their countrymen to join the cause).

In Iraq, for example, it is hard to conceive of the predominantly Sunni insurgents ever leading a successful revolutionary civil war. They are simply outnumbered by Shi'ite Arabs, Kurds and non-insurgent Sunnis to ever achieve that end. The Ba'athists may be nostalgic for the power they once had, and that nostalgia may fuel their ardor, but the relative power positions have changed too radically - the Ba'athist Sunni-dominated Iraqi security forces have been destroyed and the Shi'ites and Kurds have enough power that they won't go back to the status quo ante 2003.

And though the Sunnis are a relatively distinct subgroup in Iraq. there appears to be no viable separatist sentiment. The Sunni insurgents are not seeking to break the so-called Sunni Triangle away from the central government.

The non-Ba'athist insurgents, the Islamist terrorists of Al-Qa'ida in Iraq and similar groups, might arguably have a revolutionary goal, the establishment of an Islamic regime, but like the anarchists this is not an especially achievable goal, since not only would it require cowing the more secular elements in Iraqi society, but also the entire Shi'ite majority, since AQ's brand of Islamism is extremely hostile to Shi'ism.

Rather, their goals seem to be like those of anarchists, simply to foment violence for violence's sake in the hope that outsiders like the US will just give up and abandon the country to anarchy. The Ba'athists still hold out some hope that the Iraqi people will look for a Ba'athist Napoleon to save them from this anarchy, while it is hard to see the Islamists as having any real objective other than perpetuating the anarchy - they are a death cult that kills for the sake of killing. But while they certainly can perpetuate the violence, the ends do not seem achievable. The Shi'ites and their allies are far more likely to exterminate the Ba'athists (and as many innocent Sunni Arabs as get caught in the line of fire) than simply give the Ba'athists the keys to Saddam's mansions and prisons back.
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