Taber R. War of the Flea. The Classic Study of Guerrilla Warfare

Potomac Books, 2002. — 256 p.When War of the Flea: The Classic Study of Guerrilla Warfare by Robert Taber first appeared in the late 1960s, revolutionary warfare waged by guerrilla forces representing the poor and deprived sectors of society was very much in vogue in radical political circles around the world. From the jungles of Indochina to the open spaces of Palestine, left-wing intellectuals believed that at last the poor had found a way to bring the rich and powerful to their knees and usher in a new egalitarian political era. The main inspiration and impetus was provided by the thinking of Mao Tsetung, who had conceptualized and successfully carried out a protracted popular war based on well-organized, mass, popular support and guerrilla warfare, largely in rural areas. Mao's success was emulated successfully by the Viet Minh against the French in the late 1940s and early 1950s. Little more than a decade later the Viet Cong, also following a Maoist blueprint, were poised to reap the fruits of victory against the South Vietnamese and Americans. Together with past revolutionary victories in Cyprus and Palestine and more recent ones in Algeria and Cuba, these events solidified the confidence and momentum associated with the strategy of protracted popular war that many came to believe would usher in a new progressive era. Robert Taber was clearly swept up by these events and the romanticism surrounding them. While some of his predictions about the future may have been exaggerated and unsustainable, Taber's descriptive analysis of the nature of protracted popular war and what accounted for its victories was on the mark and endures to this day. This is the principal value of his work in the early 21st Century.“The guerrilla fights the war of the flea, and his military enemy suffers the dog’s disadvantages: too much to defend; too small, ubiquitous, and agile an enemy to come to grips with.” With these words, Robert Taber began a revolution in conventional military thought that has dramatically impacted the way armed conflicts have been fought since the book’s initial publication in 1965. Whether ideological, nationalistic, or religious, all guerrilla insurgencies use similar tactics to advance their cause. War of the Flea's timeless analysis of the guerrilla fighter’s means and methods provides a fundamental resource for any reader seeking to understand this distinct form of warfare and the challenge it continues to present to today’s armed forces in the Philippines, Colombia, and elsewhere.Table of ContentsThe wind of revolution. Popular will as the key to strategy. The confrontation of the haves and the have-nots. Fallacies of counterinsurgency. Guerrilla war as an extension of politics. Cracks in the armor of the modern state.The war of the flea. Political and military objectives. Creating "the climate of collapse." Organization of insurgent forces. Guevara on guerrilla war: the base.Inception and evolution of an insurgency. Transition to civil war. Alternative solutions. The Cuban example.Protracted war. Popular forces versus regular armies. The guerrilla as missionary. Mao Tsetung on the war of the flea. The lessons of China.Colonial war and the French experience. Strategy and tactics of Vo Nguyen Giap. How the Vietminh won in Indochina.The political character of the Second Indochina War. The American role. Expansion of the war. The outlook.Wars of national liberation and their cost. The Irish "troubles" and the role of the Black and Tans. Terrorism in Israel. Rebellion in North Africa. General Grivas on guerrilla war in Cyprus. The political uses of terrorism. Errors of British strategy.Failures in the war of the flea. Magsaysay and the Huks in the Philippines. The price of British victory in Malaya. Why the Communists lost in Greece.Sun Tzu on The Art of War. Principles of guerrilla strategy and tactics. Terrain as a determining factor. Guerrilla war in urban areas. The character of the guerrilla.Guerrilla movements in the Third World. The revolutionary base. Outlook for the United States.Proposals for a new American foreign policy in Latin America.