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Urban Guerrilla Warfare
Guerrilla insurgencies continue to rage across the globe, fueled by ethnic and religious conflict and the easy availability of weapons. At the same time, urban population centers in both industrialized and developing nations attract ever-increasing numbers of people, outstripping rural growth rates worldwide. As a consequence of this population shift from the countryside to the cities, guerrilla conflict in urban areas, similar to the violent response to U.S. occupation in Iraq, will become more frequent. Urban Guerrilla Warfare traces the diverse origins of urban conflicts and identifies similarities and differences in the methods of counterinsurgent forces. In this wide-ranging and richly detailed comparative analysis, Anthony James Joes examines eight key examples of urban guerrilla conflict spanning half a century and four Warsaw in 1944, Budapest in 1956, Algiers in 1957, Montevideo and São Paulo in the 1960s, Saigon in 1968, Northern Ireland from 1970 to 1998, and Grozny from 1994 to 1996. Joes demonstrates that urban insurgents violate certain fundamental principles of guerrilla warfare as set forth by renowned military strategists such as Carl von Clausewitz and Mao Tse-tung. Urban guerrillas operate in finite areas, leaving themselves vulnerable to encirclement and ultimate defeat. They also tend to abandon the goal of establishing a secure base or a cross-border sanctuary, making precarious combat even riskier. Typically, urban guerrillas do not solely target soldiers and police; they often attack civilians in an effort to frighten and disorient the local population and discredit the regime. Thus urban guerrilla warfare becomes difficult to distinguish from simple terrorism. Joes argues persuasively against committing U.S. troops in urban counterinsurgencies, but also offers cogent recommendations for the successful conduct of such operations where they must be undertaken.
232 pages, Hardcover
First published April 20, 2007
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Displaying 1 - 7 of 7 reviews
April 19, 2022
This book was a little on the dry and mundane side for me. It's a history book about guerrilla wars or battles of Warsaw 1944, Budapest 1956, Algiers 1957, São Paulo 1965-1971 and Montevideo 1963-1973, Saigon 1968, Northern Ireland 1970-1998, and Grozny 1994-1996. This book does not entail tactics, statistics, or anything of that nature. In my opinion it was a decent read on the information presented. Thanks!
October 7, 2016
If you're the type of person who thinks that the U.S. would have won the Vietnam War if it hadn't been "stabbed in the back" by liberal journalists, this book is probably right up your alley.
Instead of presenting a plethora of urban guerrilla experiences, the author cherry-picks examples with no rationale as to why any given case study is included or excluded. Contrast this to the excellent book "Networks of Rebellion" by Paul Staniland, which rigorously compares several insurgencies across the same region to attempt to better parse out what was structural from what was subjective and strategic (e.g. Vietnam, Indonesia and the Philippines). Staniland's book presents a more robust theoretical framework, and without the anti-communist axe to grind that Anthony James Joes brings.
Sometimes Joes goes to extreme lengths to attempt to salvage the obviously bankrupt US policy in Vietnam, such as when he attempts to cast doubt on public opinion polls to show that American antiwar voters were actually miscounted and were actually *in favor* of the war. This is first rate silliness. Other chapters exhibit equal bias which gets in the way of serious analysis, especially in the chapter on Algeria.
I'm not going to give this book one star, because the author does make a compelling argument that urban guerrilla warfare is a largely ineffective strategy, mainly by citing other writers (to my knowledge, this book contains no original research). The introduction and conclusion are the strongest sections. It's too bad the case studies section - which should have been digging into his thesis - is mainly composed of mental gymnastics and intellectual prestidigitation.
Instead of presenting a plethora of urban guerrilla experiences, the author cherry-picks examples with no rationale as to why any given case study is included or excluded. Contrast this to the excellent book "Networks of Rebellion" by Paul Staniland, which rigorously compares several insurgencies across the same region to attempt to better parse out what was structural from what was subjective and strategic (e.g. Vietnam, Indonesia and the Philippines). Staniland's book presents a more robust theoretical framework, and without the anti-communist axe to grind that Anthony James Joes brings.
Sometimes Joes goes to extreme lengths to attempt to salvage the obviously bankrupt US policy in Vietnam, such as when he attempts to cast doubt on public opinion polls to show that American antiwar voters were actually miscounted and were actually *in favor* of the war. This is first rate silliness. Other chapters exhibit equal bias which gets in the way of serious analysis, especially in the chapter on Algeria.
I'm not going to give this book one star, because the author does make a compelling argument that urban guerrilla warfare is a largely ineffective strategy, mainly by citing other writers (to my knowledge, this book contains no original research). The introduction and conclusion are the strongest sections. It's too bad the case studies section - which should have been digging into his thesis - is mainly composed of mental gymnastics and intellectual prestidigitation.
March 19, 2019
„Urban Guerrilla Warfare” by Anthony James Joes provides a number of examples for urban guerrilla action and describes them briefly within their context but does not go into much detail concerning urban tactics or emerging developments.
Joes deliberately sampled seven examples of guerrillas fighting conventional forces in an urban setting from the 20th century. The selection of examples covering 50 years and several different continents was specifically designed to eliminate regional, cultural or technological peculiarities and thus make it easier to identify general characteristics by comparison. Also Joes clearly understood the importance of the political objectives of guerrillas for their operational design and included this in his descriptions. This in turn presented the challenge to provide the geographical, political, operational and tactical context for each new example in a volume of just 200 pages.
The author met the challenge by presenting a number of very condensed and brief examples, which necessarily only scratch the surface of many important topics, professional readers would be interested in. Be it the actual tactical feasibility of Marighella’s urban guerrilla concept, British intelligence operations in Northern Ireland or Chechen tactics against mechanized columns, many interesting concepts are briefly mentioned but not elaborated on. Therefore the professional reader may well be disappointed by the volume as it does not go into the details of urban warfare as such. On the other hand the comparison of the different examples does show, how the general situation and political objectives lead to different tactics. For example although the guerrilla efforts in Saigon as well as Algiers were militarily failures but both actions could be turned into political successes. The former by focusing completely on the initial successes while ignoring the results, the latter by driving the counterinsurgent into the adoption of cruel measures as to alienate the public.
While the general summary of the different actions is good and well researched, the analysis and discussion is much too briefly and thus general observations deriving from it are hardly justifiable from this work alone. The professional reader will thus often wish for more details, whereas the average reader will find it a good overview of examples with ample source material in the notes to get more information. The same concept should have been used for a much more extended volume than this including detailed analysis from the political framework and objectives down into the very tactics and techniques employed.
In summary this is a well-researched but too brief and shallow treatise of the subject and therefore a good introduction to the average reader but a disappointment to professionals looking for insights into urban guerrilla tactics.
Joes deliberately sampled seven examples of guerrillas fighting conventional forces in an urban setting from the 20th century. The selection of examples covering 50 years and several different continents was specifically designed to eliminate regional, cultural or technological peculiarities and thus make it easier to identify general characteristics by comparison. Also Joes clearly understood the importance of the political objectives of guerrillas for their operational design and included this in his descriptions. This in turn presented the challenge to provide the geographical, political, operational and tactical context for each new example in a volume of just 200 pages.
The author met the challenge by presenting a number of very condensed and brief examples, which necessarily only scratch the surface of many important topics, professional readers would be interested in. Be it the actual tactical feasibility of Marighella’s urban guerrilla concept, British intelligence operations in Northern Ireland or Chechen tactics against mechanized columns, many interesting concepts are briefly mentioned but not elaborated on. Therefore the professional reader may well be disappointed by the volume as it does not go into the details of urban warfare as such. On the other hand the comparison of the different examples does show, how the general situation and political objectives lead to different tactics. For example although the guerrilla efforts in Saigon as well as Algiers were militarily failures but both actions could be turned into political successes. The former by focusing completely on the initial successes while ignoring the results, the latter by driving the counterinsurgent into the adoption of cruel measures as to alienate the public.
While the general summary of the different actions is good and well researched, the analysis and discussion is much too briefly and thus general observations deriving from it are hardly justifiable from this work alone. The professional reader will thus often wish for more details, whereas the average reader will find it a good overview of examples with ample source material in the notes to get more information. The same concept should have been used for a much more extended volume than this including detailed analysis from the political framework and objectives down into the very tactics and techniques employed.
In summary this is a well-researched but too brief and shallow treatise of the subject and therefore a good introduction to the average reader but a disappointment to professionals looking for insights into urban guerrilla tactics.
December 3, 2022
While very readable for a university press book, this tome feels rather on the short side. The chapters on the various urban combat zones feel short and don't go into much detail. You feel like each chapter could easily have been twice as long and still have left a lot out. In the book's conclusion, the author mentions Kashmir, Bosnia, and Fallujah but hadn't mentioned them earlier. A chapter on each may have helped the book. I will say, I agree with the conclusions the author reached. I just think they could have laid the foundation better.
February 14, 2025
This book was painful and difficult to get through. The title of the book to me was deceiving. You would think by the title of the book it would be about urban guerrilla warfare. The book hardly touched on just that. I would not recommend reading this book. The best way to describe this book would be like watching a major league baseball game. Two minutes of excitement packed into three hours.
October 24, 2022
Pretty concise with eight great examples…a solid read.
February 24, 2011
Nicely done - the author analyzes several examples of urban guerrilla movements from the 20th century, spread among countries on four continents. His prognosis is gloomy for would-be urban insurgents - his view, supported by his analysis, is that anyone intending to carry out a city-based guerrilla war is starting with two strikes against them and is unlikely to succeed unless the government against whom they are rebelling really blows it when it comes to counterinsurgency.
On the other hand, modern technology has made it most difficult for insurgencies to hide and operate in wilderness areas that would until this generation have been safe havens, so disappearing into the crowds in cities may be the only option available. We shall see in the coming decades.
On the other hand, modern technology has made it most difficult for insurgencies to hide and operate in wilderness areas that would until this generation have been safe havens, so disappearing into the crowds in cities may be the only option available. We shall see in the coming decades.
Displaying 1 - 7 of 7 reviews