A Note on ‘Successful’ Insurgencies
July 31st, 2010
The victorious NVA -- bankrolled by Moscow.
Our attention was drawn recently to Wikipedia’s list of 28 successful and 38 unsuccessful guerrilla campaigns. Bellum readers could undoubtedly pick apart the list in short order, but that might take too long. For now, consider that an awful lot of what makes insurgencies ’successful’ turns on two related points that draw little mention.
First, from 1945 to 1991, Moscow would pick up nearly 100% of the costs of such wars. Hanoi, for example, would likely have gone bust running its war in the South on their own. The same likely holds true for the MPLA in Angola, although oil money helped at the end.