2
Guerrilla operations are […] the muck, the quicksand
in which a technologically superior military machine
bogs down in time consuming futility
Mao Zedong
1
Introduction
Britain and the US have for decades been close allies in a number of military campaigns
with a vast impact in the course of history during this past century. However, none could
really be described as a counter-insurgency campaign, except for the one currently taking
place in Iraq.
2
True there are significant differences in the situation in the British sector,
in the largely Shiia southern provinces of Iraq, and in the area for which the US forces are
directly responsible, that includes the so-called Sunni Triangle. Some might even go so
far as to say that the British forces are dealing with peace-keeping or at the most peace-
enforcement, while the American troops are the ones who are facing a fully fledge
guerrilla war. There are indeed significant differences, but to what degree are they simply
the result of local circumstances? Should we not also consider the differences in
capabilities and the differences in traditional doctrinal approach of the two forces? It
seems obvious that all of these are factors that should be taken into account. Moreover,
whatever the differences, this is certainly as close as the American and British armed
forces have been to fighting a prolonged counter-insurgency side-by-side. This makes it
even more pertinent to compare the performance of the two main intervening forces in
Iraq, not despite but precisely because of their differences.
In terms of definitions, in this paper we will use the terms insurgency as well as
guerrilla and small wars as synonymous. Small war is, in fact, the literal translation into
English of the original Spanish expression guerrilla; one of its best definitions is by
Charles Callwell, the late nineteenth century military doctrinaire that emphasis that: ‘the
expression “small war” has in reality no particular connection with the scale on which
1
Mao Tse-Tung, cit. in E.L. Katzenbach, «Time Space and Will: The Political-Military Views of…», in
The Guerrilla and How to Fight Him, T. N. Greene (ed.), (New York : Praeger, 1962), p.17.
2
One possible exception would be the international interventions in China in the beginning of the century,
but those took place before the emergence of anything like modern doctrine, which will be essentially what
we will be comparing.
Convention