How Do Insurgencies End? | Small Wars Journal: How Do Insurgencies End?
Assessing the Existing International Security Literature
Russell Croy
Abstract
Many nations struggle with protracted wars and insurgencies, yet some of them end relatively quickly while others continue for decades – how does the literature explain the variation? The ability to understand how and why insurgencies end can provide better insight for counterinsurgent stakeholders and for more accurate applied foreign policy prescriptions. This paper seeks to explore the issue by examining current theories in relation to two distinct examples: The Second Chechen War and the Darul Islam movement in West Java, Indonesia post-WWII. This paper finds that while scholars have contributed heavily to today’s understanding of insurgencies and influenced experts in the field of international security, they do not provide a strong, generalizable theory on how insurgencies actually end. Moreover, this paper argues for the importance of reframing the discussion from how insurgencies are “defeated”, to how they “end” to avoid approaching the topic from a traditional, military-centric perspective that may perhaps overlook other political, economic, and social components that could also be responsible for insurgencies ending.
