Classic French COIN: Roger Trinquier

Roger Trinquier was an French army officer that ran counterinsurgency campaigns in Indochina and Algeria. His short book Modern Warfare: A French View of Counterinsurgency had early influence on the field of COIN, and is available online at the US Army’s Command & General Staff College library.

Highly influenced by Mao’s views on revolutionary warfare, Trinquier argues that the age of conventional warfare has passed, and proposes a new definition of modern warfare:

We still persist in studying a type of warfare that no longer exists and that we shall never fight again [...] Warfare is now an interlocking system of actions-political, economic, psychological, military-that aims at the overthrow of the established authority in a country and its replacement by another regime. [...] In seeking a solution, it is essential to realize that in modern warfare we are not up against just a few armed bands spread across a given territory, but rather against an armed clandestine organization whose essential role is to impose its will upon the population. Victory will be obtained only through the complete destruction of that organization.

Trinquier’s more controversial views are on terrorism. He stesses over and over again that terrorism is a “weapon of warfare” and defines the terrorist as a soldier, “like the aviator or the infantryman.”

The terrorist should not be considered an ordinary criminal. Actually, he fights within the framework of his organization, without personal interest, for a cause he considers noble and for a respectable ideal, the same as the soldiers in the armies confronting him. On the command of his superiors, he kills without hatred individuals unknown to him, with the same indifference as the soldier on the battlefield. His victims are often women and children, almost always defenseless individuals taken by surprise. But during a period of history when the bombing of open cities is permitted, and when two Japanese cities were razed to hasten the end of the war in the Pacific, one cannot with good cause reproach him.

Influenced by the lack of effectiveness of the under-manned Algiers police force, Trinquier thinks the army is the group to handle terrorists on the loose. Trinquier categorizes terrorists as non-criminal, but refuses them the protections of a regular soldier upon capture. He imposes another set of rules, specifically for terrorists, allowing torture to extract information, but only about the prisoner’s position in the organization. Once the captured terrorist reveals the names and locations of his cell-members and superior contacts in the organization, “the terrorist can take his place among soldiers” and is considered a regular POW. Trinquier thinks it useless and unjust to charge a terrorist for an attack carried out, likening such a procedure to holding regular soldiers accountable for deaths caused by the weapons they use. In the 60’s this was a truism, but not so much today, where we see much tighter restrictions on “collateral damage.”

By Trinquier’s logic, terrorism is an act of war, and since modern war is not declared as in the past, terrorists strive to maintain the “fiction of peace” in order to circumvent peacetime legal frameworks to carry out attacks. Trinquier recommends declaring a state of war as soon as possible to combat terrorist groups and allow the governement to indict those that abet terrorists as traitors to the state. Under the threat of terrorism, we are in a constant state of war. This is hard for the public to understand and accept, particularly since the popular experience of war is WWI and WWII. They cannot comprehend that there is no such thing as absolute peace, just lower intensity conflict. We are no different than our tribal ancestors that fought for survival on the plains of Africa. I am rambling now… some kind of Clausewitzian fervor… anyways…

The topics Trinquier discusses in Modern Warfare are evident in the current public debate over Gitmo and whether to treat terrorist acts as crimes or acts of warfare. Does Trinquier’s argument still hold water after 50 years? Has the international system changed enough to countermand his reasoning?

There is a lot in this post, feel free to tear apart any section you like.