Insurgencies depend on striking at the weakest points of an apposing force in order to weaken their enemy by seemingly endless small strikes rather than a few decisive military blows(Ibid). A crucial part of the insurgency strategy is to work with local populations. As Mao Tse-Tung famously described in his work on guerrilla warfare, “the people are the sea that the revolutionary swims in“5. Acknowledging and alleviating the threat of insurgency, is crucial for our understanding of the relationships between war, security, and development. Due to the nature of local population dependency implicit in insurgencies, a logical and effective method of removing insurgents is to remove their support base. This is done by repairing the source of complaints and negative feelings held by the local population towards an intervening force. By doing this, a security force can, in a metaphoric sense similar to Mao’s words, remove the water so the revolutionary can no longer swim freely. It is from this background in trying to tackle security and insurgency that our discussion about the role of development plays a vital part.
III. A NORMATIVE VIEWPOINT ON COUNTERINSURGENCY
IN CONTEMPORARY CONFLICT
VVClearly military securitization can only go so far to addressing the root of dissatisfaction within effected populations. This is why it is extremely difficult to have proper security without political and economic development. This is an emerging mindset, and need for a new counterinsurgency strategy is also reflected in the literature. Galula depicted this in his work when he advocated for a counter-insurgency strategy that is composed of eighty percent political and only twenty percent military intervention6. In addition, revisionists such as David Killcullen outline a more detailed model for counterinsurgency. Learning from the war in Iraq, Killcullen structures the optimal counterinsurgency strategy on three basic pillars that enable for control of a conflict zone: (1) security (2) political effectiveness and legitimacy, and finally (3) economic development [2]. This model is pictured below. It
8885. Mao: 1961; 91
8886. Galula: 1964; 88
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