On the strategic analysis of modern insurgency; With a case study on the Chimurenga war in Rhodesia

Modern insurgency is typically characterized as an especially political form of warfare, in which political rather than military action is the key to victory. The result has been that the military aspects of insurgency warfare have not received adequate analytical attention. This thesis aims to contribute to a better understanding of insurgency warfare by proposing and demonstrating a new analytical model that dissects the strategic prosecution of warfare into component objectives.;The application of the model to this case reveals that the military aspects of the conflict were indeed more decisive than most accounts recognize. The war was not won and lost solely on the political plane, but also on the military plane. In spite of the dominance of the Rhodesian counterinsurgency forces at the tactical level, in the end they were losing militarily at the operational and strategic levels, and therefore their failure was more than political.;These findings suggest that the proposed model offers a useful analytical framework for conceptualizing insurgency conflicts and integrating the political and military aspects into a unified model.;The thesis is structured in two major parts. The first of these examines the nature of insurgency and the development of theories on how to wage insurgency warfare or to counteract it. A model for analyzing wars of this genre is then proposed. The second part demonstrates the proposed model by applying it to the case of the Chimurenga War (Rhodesian Bush War) that took place in Zimbabwe (Southern Rhodesia) from 1965-1980.