Adapting to Win - Noriyuki Katagiri

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and norms of self-rule, none fully explains the outcome. Instead, insurgent victory rests most closely with the proliferation of the idea and practice of sequencing among successful groups. Thus, my discussion of the spread of the sequencing method centers on the ability and willingness of insurgent groups to “learn lessons” in the middle of war and afterward. In the third chapter, I explain exactly how sequencing theory works. I show three major components of the theory and how they combine to make sequences and subsequently categorize extrasystemic war into six sequencing models. The first four models (conventional, primitive, degenerative, and premature models) are popular among many insurgents but are likely to fail, while the last two (Maoist and progressive) models are successful but rare.

      The fourth to ninth chapters examine the six models of sequencing theory. In each chapter, I test the three most relevant theories of asymmetric war against sequencing theory. In the fourth chapter, I explore the Dahomean War of 1890 to 1894 to show that insurgent groups generally fail when they use the conventional model. The central proposition of this chapter is that, as seen in the abortive Dahomean effort to challenge the French army, war against a stronger foreign power is impossible to win if insurgents fight like an army. This case study clearly shows that the Fon fielded a conventional army that was two times larger than that of the French, and this manpower advantage allowed them to survive a couple of years, but they failed to go beyond the conventional phase and win the war. In the fifth chapter, I examine the Malayan Emergency of 1948 to 1960 during which members of the Malayan Communist Party confronted British forces in a war for independence, only to be defeated. The main cause of this outcome was not the level of resolve or power or strategic choices but the fact that the insurgent group failed to build strong support bases and move out of guerrilla insurgency. This case shows that a guerrilla war campaign can be lengthy, but contrary to the conventional wisdom, a long guerrilla campaign does not instantly make states the loser. In fact, this case study underscores the dilemma of insurgent groups stuck in an attritional guerrilla war and unable to do anything to move beyond that phase.

      In the sixth chapter, I explore the Iraq War of 2003 to 2011. Iraq illustrates precisely why the two-phase degenerative model does not work well for insurgents. In the first phase, Saddam’s ground forces and Ba’ath Party fought the U.S.-led coalition forces in the desert of Iraq in conventional warfare before their incomplete destruction drove the war into a new phase. The second phase was guerrilla combat in which the coalition forces initially suffered from their failure to adapt to the changing environment. Yet U.S. forces reorganized around the population-centric COIN operations that marginalized the insurgents starting in 2007. While these factors played an important contextual role in the war, I show that it was the shift from conventional to guerrilla war that proved critical for the insurgents’ performance. The coalition left Iraq in a shambles but in a state of affairs that allowed their departure—however temporary that may be. Of course, there are reasons to be concerned that the war may turn for the worse, as the current Iraqi prime minister, Nuri al-Maliki, may not be able to hold various sectarian interests together. The insurgents have also claimed victory on their own terms as they “succeeded” in achieving their mission in terms of expelling the coalition forces (although the departure was carried out on the coalition’s timetable). But because the insurgents split along internal and tribal lines, because either they or Ba’athists no longer control much popular support or the government, and because they have yet to field an army capable of seriously challenging the Iraqi government, prospects for their resurrection to the degree that it might seriously impair the coalition’s political capital in the future have dramatically shrunk.

      In the seventh chapter, I discuss the Anglo-Somali War of 1900 to 1920 to explore why the premature model does not work. The Somalis fought through the transition of guerrilla war into conventional war without making visible efforts to build a state. The so-called Dervish initially fought well to survive four British expeditions by adopting an elusive guerrilla strategy. But the situation turned sour in the second phase when they found themselves exposed in open desert to British firepower and airpower. Without building institutions that would have consolidated support bases and increased their military capability, the Dervish fell quickly once Britain became serious in Somalia. This case study is useful in showing that, again, what appears to be a very long (twenty years) guerrilla military campaign overseas can actually be understood as a simple two-phase conflict in which the state side emerged victorious in the end.

      The eighth and ninth chapters provide a set of contrasting portraits in which insurgents adopted models that worked. In the eighth chapter, the Portuguese Guinean War of 1963 to 1974 provides evidence for the Maoist model since the war lasted long enough for us to examine the case in three phases, and because the Guinean side was least expected to generate the outcome it did. I discuss how a guerrilla force called the African Party for the Independence of Guinea and Cape Verde (PAIGC) managed to overcome its military disadvantage to defeat colonial Portuguese forces over three phases. The first phase was a period characterized by Guinean success in building institutions, especially the party itself, which allowed it to push the war into a guerrilla war phase, where the PAIGC gained strong popular support. The PAIGC’s success in “winning hearts and minds” brought the war to the final phase of conventional war where its modernized army forced Lisbon to withdraw from the territory. I argue that while each of these phases—state building, guerrilla war, and conventional war—had an important influence on the war, it was the very evolution of insurgency across the three phases that shaped the outcome.

      In the ninth chapter, I study the progressive model using the Indochina War, during which Vietminh forces fought French troops between 1946 and 1954. I deal with this war as a case study of the progressive model because it provides ample evidence that the Vietminh experience was a clear departure from the Maoist model and because, as above, the war lasted long enough for us to see the effect of changes across three phases. The Vietminh won the war because they took three steps in the right order; they began as a guerrilla movement, did everything they could to gain popular support, and built the Indochinese Communist Party (ICP) during the state-building phase, before acquiring a modern military force to defeat the French at Dien Bien Phu. This case study is important because sequencing theory shows that even though the war lasted only eight years, it passed through three different phases of important strategic changes that became a key factor for the Vietminh victory.

      I conclude the book by outlining a set of implications for the broader strategic visions of the United States. Here I draw a set of security policy implications for the United States, using the war in Afghanistan/Pakistan as a strategic context. Although the war is more complicated than simply extrasystemic, it has a strong commonality with extrasystemic wars in that they are fought between state and insurgents and both conventional and guerrilla strategies have been used. The Afghanistan and Pakistan theater has been improving for the U.S.-led International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) since the 2011 death of Osama bin Laden, although it remains complex and fluid. At this time the war has manifested itself in a primitive pattern, with the US/ISAF coalition using a mix of regular and irregular forces to fight the Taliban starting in late 2001 in mostly guerrilla-counterguerrilla interactions. Afghan President Hamid Karzai’s regime remains corrupt, fragmented, and weak, whereas neither al-Qaeda nor the Taliban nor the Haqqani network is able to produce an effective and centralized counterweight to govern the territory. The primitive model draws a theoretical implication for an eventual victory for the coalition after a series of complicated negotiations over the status of the insurgents and Afghan governance.

      I show, however, that it is a challenge to analyze this war along with other cases of

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