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Things Fall Apart: the endgame dynamics of internal wars
A long paper on the different rates at which states win or lose against insurgencies, and vice versa. Horton is an Army COL who teaches at West Point. McCormick heads the department of Defense Analysis at the Naval Postgraduate School and Harrison is with the Center on Terrorism and Irregular Warfare there.

While the last part of the paper is mathematical, the first part is of broader interest. An excerpt:

There have been almost 300 internal wars initiated since 1945. At this writing 250 of these have come and gone. The human and material costs of these conflicts have been incalculable, much greater than the combined costs of the inter-state wars fought over the same period. Despite the cost and frequency of internal wars, however, we still do not have a close understanding of how they are resolved. What research has been conducted on this subject has focused almost exclusively on the subject of negotiated outcomes.

Very little attention, by contrast, has addressed the complementary question of how organized internal conflicts end in the absence of a meaningful negotiated settlement, which is to say, how they are concluded on the battlefield. More than 80% of these wars, it turns out, were resolved by force. This stands in contrast to inter-state conflicts since 1945 which, according to one recent estimate, have had a better than 50% chance of ending in a negotiated compromise....

States and insurgent organizations decline and approach their respective breakpoints in very different ways.

States generally pass a tipping point and enter their end games and begin to decay at an accelerating rate.

Between the time the conflict enters this phase and the time the state disintegrates, the conflict “speeds up.”
While the measure of victory and defeat for the two sides in an insurgent conflict, we suggest, is the same, the empirical record reveals that states and insurgent organizations decline and approach their respective breakpoints in very different ways. States generally pass a tipping point and enter their end games and begin to decay at an accelerating rate. This is often an indicator that the final period of the struggle has begun. Between the time the conflict enters this phase and the time the state disintegrates, the conflict “speeds up.”

The result, as illustrated in Figure 1A, is a parabolic trajectory of decay that approaches and crosses the state’s breakpoint at a fairly high angle of attack. The end, in such cases, is typically decisive, sudden and often violent. Examples include the defeat and downfall of the Nationalist government in China (1949), the collapse of the Batista regime in Cuba (1959), the collapse of the Lon Nol regime in Cambodia (1975), the end of the Somoza government in Nicaragua (1979), the collapse of the Mengistu regime in Ethiopia (1991), and the downfall of the Siad Barre regime in Somalia (1991). Even when, in retrospect, it may be easy to see that the conflict was drawing to a rapid end, many witnesses to the event at the time did not see the point of collapse coming until it was upon them.

Insurgencies, by contrast, tend to decline historically at a decelerating rate.

Between the time the conflict enters its end game and the insurgency collapses, the conflict typically “slows down.”
Insurgencies, by contrast, tend to decline historically at a decelerating rate. While their rate of decline may initially be fairly steep, between the time the conflict enters its end game and the insurgency collapses, the conflict typically “slows down.”

The result, as illustrated in Figure 1B, is an asymptotic trajectory of decline that crosses the insurgents breakpoint at a low angle of attack. The size and associated operational tempo of the insurgency continues to deteriorate at a declining rate until the group finally reaches the point that it can no longer pose an organized military challenge.

Because most insurgencies fail, examples of these endgames are quite numerous, ranging from such well known cases as the Hukbalahop in the Philippines (1954), the so-called Mau Mau insurgency in British Kenya (1956), the Malaya National Liberation Army (1960), the Tupamaros in Uruguay (1972), the Polasario Front in Morocco (1989), and the Shining Path in Peru (1993), to such obscure cases as the North Kalimantan Liberation Army in Brunei (1962), and the Eritrean Islamic Jihad Movement in Ethiopia (2003). The end, in such cases, is almost always indecisive, in the sense that there is seldom a climactic engagement that marks the terminal point of the insurgency. The insurgency that comes in like a lion, as the saying goes, may go out like a lamb. Indeed, by the time the end comes, many observers will have assumed it has already come and gone.

The different way in which states and insurgencies fall apart is due to the basic information asymmetry that characterizes insurgent-counterinsurgent conflicts ....
Posted by: lotp 2007-11-01
http://www.rantburg.com/poparticle.php?ID=204858