Old and New Insurgency Forms

While the study of insurgency extends well over 100 years and has its origins in the guerrilla and small wars of the 19th century and beyond, almost no cross modal analysis - that is, dedicated insurgency form typology identification - has been conducted. Until the end of the Cold War, the study of insurgency focused primarily on separatist and Marxist derived forms with an emphasis on counterinsurgency practice aimed at those forms rather than on identifying what differences and interrelationships existed. The reason for this is that the decades-long Cold War struggle subsumed many diverse national struggles and tensions into a larger paradigm of conflict - a free, democratic, and capitalist West versus a totalitarian, communist, and centrally planned East.