EUCOM Battle Knowledge Centers

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 continents: 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.

Historically, the Chechens' tight clan and religious structures made them especially resistant to assimilation by Russia. In 1944 they were one of the largest ethnic groups to be deported en masse by Stalin. Their history should have warned any Moscow strategist that, if forced to, many would fight a savage war to the end to defend themselves. And in the end the Chechen fighters achieved the almost impossible when they defeated the Russian army and forced it to withdraw.

In this fully illustrated book an expert on the conflicts traces the progress of the wars in Chechnya, from the initial Russian advance through to urban battles such as Grozny, and the prolonged guerrilla warfare in the mountainous regions. He assesses how the wars have torn apart the fabric of Chechen society and their impact on Russia itself. Featuring specially drawn full-color mapping and drawing upon a wide range of sources, this succinct account explains the origins, history and consequences of Russia's wars in Chechnya, shedding new light on the history - and prospects - of the troubled region.

From sieges to street fighting and peacekeeping to coups de main, cities have always been key terrain in warfare. Although strategists have warned against urban operations for millennia because they are so costly, difficult, and fraught with risk, armies and generals have nevertheless been forced to attack and defend cities, and victory has required that they do it well. In this masterful study of urban warfare, DiMarco explains what it takes to seize and hold a city literally block by block and provides lessons for today's tacticians that they neglect at their own peril.

In this major new work of history and analysis, Lieven sets Russia’s humiliation at the hands of a tiny group of badly organized guerrillas in a plausible framework for the first time. He offers both a riveting eyewitness account of the war itself and a sophisticated and multifaceted explanation for the Russian defeat. Highlighting the numerous ways in which Russian society and culture differ today from the simplistic stereotypes still current in much of Western analysis, he explores the reasons for the current weakness of Russian nationalism both within the country and among the Russian diaspora.