Book Review - The Insurgent's Dilemma
A Struggle to Prevail
by David H Ucko
Hurst & Collins, 2022, 464 pp.
ISBN 9781787385658
Reviewed by: Travis Peet
The overwhelming narrative to emerge from the 20-year ‘War on Terror’ is the impotence of the counterinsurgent. The vision of desperate Afghans fleeing Kabul in 2021 seemed to confirm the inability of governments to translate great military power into victory, and the perception of the success of insurgents was further reinforced by never-ending cycles of violence in the Middle East. According to David Ucko, however, the image of the invincible and triumphant insurgent is in fact a fallacy. While governments often struggle to deal with the root cause of an insurgency, equally insurgents struggle to seize control in the face of the power of the state. In order to challenge the status quo of a state, they lose the qualities that make them hard to target and they instead become easily suppressed by overwhelming military power. This is the insurgent’s dilemma, one that Ucko contends that some insurgent groups are coming to terms with and, critically, starting to solve.
In this book, Ucko proposes that the key characteristics that allowed insurgencies to seize power in the past have now dissipated. The successful insurgencies of the Cold War were able to grow power within a rural population, gain support from external nations and develop a pathway to victory. Since the turn of the century, however, populations are far more urbanised, insurgencies are not related to overthrowing colonial masters, and the spectre of terrorism makes it harder for insurgents to gain support. Additionally, third-party nations are far less likely to overtly support violent overthrow of governments. These factors all make it far more difficult for insurgencies to succeed. Insurgents were successful in Afghanistan as the situation did not match wider trends of insurgencies failing; in Afghanistan the population was largely rural and not used to being controlled by a central government, and Pakistan provided a sanctuary that allowed the Taliban to avoid defeat. For the majority of other insurgencies, the insurgent’s dilemma is forcing insurgents to move away from a traditional armed struggle and instead embrace indirect approaches. Ucko has defined these emerging approaches as localised, infiltration and ideational strategies.
In his chapter on localised insurgency, Ucko uses broad examples to illustrate how groups are able to gain unofficial power status by controlling a small area rather than the whole nation. While some may not categorise the gangs of Rio de Janeiro as insurgents, Ucko’s analysis of how they have achieved power in the slums of Rio shows how their approach could be exported. His other example, Boko Haram in northern Nigeria, is a more traditional insurgent group, and he shows how the localised insurgency strategy can also apply in a rural context despite the trend of urbanisation. Ucko offers a response that potentially may not survive political realities. He suggests that, instead of combating informal power arrangements directly, a government could seek to formalise them—effectively ceding power in return for assurances that there will be alignment to the core principles of the nation-state. Such an approach may be easier to describe than to institute.
Infiltration insurgency is a strategy that de-emphasises violent action and works within the democratic system. In this way, practicality issues and legal protections prevent suppression of the insurgency. Violence is not removed, however; it is retained as a key enabler of the insurgent movement. Once power is secured, the democratic system is reduced by the insurgents from inside the system. Using examples ranging from Bolivia to Greece, Ucko describes how legitimate political parties have seized power while being supported by their armed wings. The tension within Ucko’s proposed response is that democratic nations may have to limit democracy in order to save it. As Ucko identifies, countering the infiltration strategy is an ethical and strategic minefield. The key is being able to link the violent acts of paramilitaries to the ‘legitimate’ component of the insurgency, thus exposing their true intentions.
While generating an ideological narrative is central to any insurgency movement, technology (primarily the internet) that enables rapid exchanges of information has increased the narrative’s efficacy. Ucko describes how insurgencies are exploiting this technology in his chapter on the ideation strategy. Starting his analysis with widely recognised insurgent groups such as ISIS, Ucko then extends the ideation strategy to the far-right movement in America. It is in America that he spends the majority of the chapter as he unpacks what led to the events of 6 January 2021, when rioters stormed the Capitol building. Ucko identifies that the first key step in countering the ideation strategy is to understand the connections within a network and how they are influencing each other, and that any government response needs to ensure that it does not inadvertently fuel the movement further. As with both the localised and infiltration strategies, it is clear from Ucko’ s work that countering an ideational insurgency is not a simple task.
The strategies that Ucko describes, along with many of the counter-strategies, are indirect approaches to seizing power. Although Ucko has titled his book The Insurgent’s Dilemma, it could as easily have been titled Insurgents and the Grey Zone. As many military professionals will be aware, the grey zone has been described as the area between peace and war. It is within the grey zone that states, particularly revisionist nations, seek to achieve their strategic goals without crossing the threshold into conflict. The three insurgent strategies described by Ucko have many parallels to activities that states are sponsoring or conducting within the grey zone. The localised approach has close similarities to the ‘salami slicing’ strategies of the Chinese in the South China Sea, slowly taking territory and shifting the status quo. The infiltration approach easily compares to Russian efforts in the Donbass region of Ukraine to install pro-Russian leaders. Meanwhile, many of the examples of ideational insurgency, such as far-right online groups, have allegedly been sponsored by state actors to influence elections or to similarly disrupt democratic nations. Although Ucko has focused on insurgency, the lessons and examples contained within his work have broader utility as both state and non-state actors are utilising similar means to achieve their goals.
In The Insurgent’s Dilemma, Ucko has taken a very broad perspective as to what constitutes an insurgency. This is particularly the case when he describes ideational insurgency. In this chapter, he largely describes the potential of this strategy, rather than providing actual examples of its success. While this approach may be considered a weakness by some readers, it is important to remember the purpose of Ucko’s work: to identify ways that insurgent groups may adapt to solve the insurgent’s dilemma and the relevant counter-strategies that governments may apply. Ucko’s examples may not always be traditional insurgents, but their methods could easily be adapted.
With the focus of recent strategic guidance on great power competition, and the risk of great power conflict, it is easy to dismiss The Insurgent’s Dilemma as a work focused on the past. However, as Ucko outlines, increased great power competition is likely to breed further insurgencies as nations seek to avoid direct conflict. Along with the similarities in strategies being employed by both insurgents and revisionist governments, Ucko’s work helps build understanding about the form that Indo-Pacific insurgencies may take in the future. As Ucko demonstrates, victory for insurgents is not inevitable, but neither is victory for the counterinsurgent. It is critical to understand the potential adaptations in strategy so that suitable counter-strategies can be enacted.