Philosophy of the Urban Guerrilla – Part III: What Can Be Done? Problems of Revolutionary Strategy. Sub-Section 3. “One Great Battle or a Long Campaign?”
*Strategy of the Urban Guerrilla, Chapter IV pg-68-72
In urban warfare, unless all of a town has taken up arms, small military endeavours should not be undertaken to seize posts, arsenals or other large objectives. It is better to draw out the revolutionary spirit of the people with small and repeated military actions until they willingly enter into battle, or rather until there are no neutral parties in the revolutionary war.
Battles as in Stalingrad or “El Alamein” are typical of powerful national armies or coalitions of national armies. A revolutionary who acts as commander-in-chief of an insurgent town will never enter into a large battle such as the uprising of Warsaw against Hitlers troops, just to become the military objective of the heavy artillery of the enemy. Such strategy, typical of bureaucratic generals, will always lead to the defeat of the insurgents.
Homeric battles such as that of the Commune of Paris in 1871 should not place within the city. Actions should consist of numerous small conflicts both in and out of the city which slowly corrode the enemy, stripping him of his ability to unite his forces. Entering into a large urban battle, confronting the Yanqui power combined with its sepoyan followers, is more like a surrender than a genuine revolutionary strategy. In 1965 the Vietnamese NLF had blockaded more than fifty cities, disconnecting them from their rural source of supplies. However, this did not entirely liberate the cities since it contributed to the North American bombing of them and led to conventional warfare.
A revolutionary commander should not be subject to the myths of the classic strategy, in which all else is secondary to the conquest of space. In the case of the revolutionary, the fundamental strategic objective is not space. The positive force is the will of the people. Consequently, it is not necessary to hold a position upon which the enemy can exert its power in three dimensions (air, land and sea) or a fourth dimension (atomic weapons, including nuclear warheads). When the enemy realises that, because of the cost, the atomic bomb cannot be used to kill an ant, when its heavy artillery and its great concentration of troops fail to produce results, the revolutionary soldiers will liberate the cities. Meanwhile, guerrilla warfare is necessary, even taking many troops from the cities to the countryside in order to revolutionise them.
“A revolutionary commander should not be subject to the myths of the classic strategy, in which all else is secondary to the conquest of space. In the case of the revolutionary, the fundamental strategic objective is not space. The positive force is the will of the people.“
The strategic error of Colonel Caamaño in the rebellion of Santo Domingo in 1965 was based on the following factors. During the first and second day of his coup d’état he should have rushed to defeat the internal enemy. However, after three days the North American Marines landed and changed the allegiance of powers in a way unfavourable to Caamaño. He should have sent a part of his troops quickly to the interior of the country. In this many the Americans would not have been able to surround them in the small perimeter of the city. If the followers of Caamaño had controlled the interior of the country, the Yanquis would have had to negotiate with them or else embark on a prolonged revolutionary war such as in Vietnam. The US was not morally and politically prepared for such a war, lacking the support of the Latin American masses, who were solidly behind Caamaño, not to mention lack of support from its own citizens.
A revolutionary command that does not fall into strategic mistakes must conduct itself as in Madrid (1936) or Petrograd (1917), provided that the people in the streets and the military establishment is in a state of disorder. To give up the taking of a city when no military resistance is found would be absurd and against the basic rules of strategy. Once the city is taken over, it must be defended against enemy attack by moving parts of its population to the countryside. A different strategy is required by the people in the event of foreign intervention. If the invader should attempt the capture of a city, that action must be repelled not by defending one firm, strong position, but rather by going into light guerrilla formations and inflicting persistent casualties to the invaders through evening attacks or by daylight ambushes wherever the terrain allows. But it is most important to preserve the morale of the people. When confronting an enemy equipped with superior arms and forces, revolutionary warfare must not concentrate the defense of one position.
With the fall of the Paris Commune, the victorious enemy appropriated 400, 000 rifles and approximately 1,500 pieces of artillery. Had that material been well distributed in the interior as well as in Paris, the Commune could have destroyed the forces of Versailles. That is how the Paris Commune failed in its strategy and in its politics of coordination of the peasant forces and other provincial communes. The alliance of workers and peasants is fundamental to the revolution. The peasants must accept the aid of the urban labourer to assure him the land; to attempt to gain it on his own is to remain in the condition of a pariah. The urban labourer needs the peasant to upset communications, to sabotage and harass the enemy. The peasant must be part of a territorial organisation, regional or provincial paramilitary group and unit of self-defense, working during the day and fighting at night. The secret of revolutionary victory lies in the unity of country and city under the same strategic direction in the revolutionary war. This war must not be fought only in the countryside nor must it be fought only in the city. Each must complement the other. Victory will not result from urban strategies as in Warsaw, nor will it be a product of classic peasant fighting dispersed and disconnected between regions. On the contrary, both countryside and city must be unified under the same military command and one commander-in-chief.
