ABSTRACT
Guerrilla warfare has become the most common form of military conflict since World War II, mostly because the threat of mutual nuclear annihilation makes a conventional warfare between major powers counterproductive. The most important question posed by guerrilla insurgency is how a small band of poorly armed revolutionaries can defeat a large, well-equipped, modern army. An insurgency movement in America might have one important advantage that is not available to Third World guerrilla movements: the accessibility of a large number of indefensible and strategically important targets. Counterinsurgency attempts to engage the guerrilla movement during the initial political stage, before it can build a popular support base and accumulate the political capital needed to initiate unconventional military operations. Political counterinsurgency is faced with the task of developing new political responses to the chronic social, political and economic problems that form the context of revolution.
