Bureau of Sabotage
Modern War: Counter-Insurgency as Malpractice
Locals who are not sympathetic to begin with, who cannot be recruited to the cause, are compelled to collaborate just the same by the fear of violence against themselves or their families, readily reinforced by the demonstrative killing of those who insist in refusing to help the resistance: neutrality is not an allowed option. By contrast, the capacity of American armed forces to inflict collective punishments does not extend much beyond curfews and other such restrictions, inconvenient to be sure and perhaps sufficient to impose real hardship, but obviously insufficient to out-terrorize insurgents. Needless to say, this is not a political limitation that Americans would ever want their armed forces to overcome, but it does leave the insurgents in control of the population — the real “terrain” of any insurgency.