h strategies have been adopted and some have worked. Absolute repression was used by the Germans in response to guerrilla attacks during the Second World War. Saddam Hussein's use of chemical weapons against the Kurds and his campaign against the Marsh Arabs in Southern Iraq are contemporary examples of the use of attrition. In Uruguay the Tupamaros' campaign was crushed by a vicious right-wing backlash, which not only destroyed the insurgency but in the process led to the replacement of a vibrant civil democratic government by a military dictatorship. None of the attritional "solutions" is appropriate in a liberal democracy; furthermore it is considered that a "gloves off" approach to any insurgency has a strictly limited role to play in any modern counterinsurgency campaign.
It should also be noted that the record of success for the attrition theory in counterinsurgency operations is generally a poor one. Undue emphasis on military action clouds the key political realities, which can result in a military-dominated campaign plan that misses the real focus of an insurgency. An inability to match the insurgent's concept with an appropriate government one--likened by Thompson to trying to play chess while the enemy is actually playing poker--is conceptually flawed and will not achieve success. Having deployed conventionally-trained troops and large amounts of firepower, the attritionalist commander generally feels compelled to use them. The head of the US Mission to South Vietnam, General Harkins, claimed in September 1962 that what was required to defeat the Viet Cong within three years were "Three Ms"--men, money, and materiel. The result of this approach, normally to the delight of an insurgent, is an escalating and indiscriminate use of military firepower. The wider consequences of this approach, seen both in South Vietnam and elsewhere, will often be an upward spiral of civilian alienation.
It would be wrong to deduce that any application of attrition is necessarily counterproductive: in the Malayan Campaign (1948 to 1960) the British were often able to achieve a force ratio of 20:1, and used their military superiority in numbers and firepower as a means to drive Chin Peng's communists into remote parts of the country, where they were then hunted down remorselessly. More important, the close political control which was exercised over military power throughout that campaign led directly to the successful and surgical application of attrition to military advantage.
It is necessary to appreciate that although, at times, military forces combined with a policy of attrition of insurgents may have a crucial role to play in restoring and maintaining government control, military force is not an end in itself, but always a means to achieve a wider political purpose. This implies that the military commander will have a far from free hand. Indeed, in a well-designed counterinsurgency strategy, a military commander is unlikely to direct the overall campaign. Acceptance of this fact has far-reaching implications for the doctrinal approach to a given situation and for the part that military forces will be given (and should seek) to play in any counterinsurgency campaign.
The Maneuver Theory
Insurgency can be seen as an ancient form of maneuver warfare. In Vietnam, for example, it was being practiced against foreign invaders 2000 years before Ho Chi Minh and Giap turned their attention to the Japanese, the French, and then the Americans. The insurgent uses politico-military skills to turn the government's apparent strengths against itself. This can involve a relatively low level of military activity, such as in the Malayan campaign, or one which is virtually indistinguishable from conventional war, as the French discovered at Dien Bien Phu. It would therefore be an error to conclude that military operations in an insurgency are "low intensity," and the phrase is no longer in general military use.
The British army doctrinal publication Operations explains that "some elements of conventional warfighting wisdom may become irrelevant" in