Guerre revolutionnaire (Fr. revolutionary war). During the 1960s a group of French officers developed a comprehensive doctrine for fighting insurgency, and employed it in the Algerian independence war. It originated in French defeat in Indochina, where many officers became convinced of the strength of a unified politico-military command and the vital importance of the civilian population. It was linked to a belief in a worldwide subversive threat, directed, not on an east-west axis, but, as Gen Allard put it, in ‘a vast enveloping curve passing through China, the Far East, South-East Asia, the Middle East and North Africa in order to encircle Europe’. Supporters of the theory were nerved not merely by bitter experience of defeat, but also by disillusionment with the social and political realities of contemporary France.
Guerre revolutionnaire, as described by its theorists such as Charles Lacheroy and Roger Trinquier, embodied the destruction of armed opposition, the construction of an environment in which insurgents could not operate, and the use of psychological warfare at all levels. The French sought to isolate nationalist guerrillas in Algeria by sealing off the borders with Tunisia and Morocco, and providing a chequerboard of garrisons, backed up by a general reserve to carry out anti-guerrilla sweeps. Tens of thousands of civilians were moved from vulnerable areas into villages that could be more easily defended: Special Administrative Sections (Sections Administratives Speciales, or SAS) of civil affairs officers, NCOs, and civilians were responsible for their administration and political mobilization. A variety of local forces were recruited, some containing former insurgents. Both the military and civil affairs campaigns embodied psychological warfare, and psychological-warfare sections were made branches of the general staff at regional and formation level in 1957.
Ultimately the doctrine proved a failure. Although the army effectively won the armed struggle, it was unable to convince the population of metropolitan France of the need for a continuing commitment to Algeria. There was tension between the activities of the SAS and those of fighting units, and some military successes were bought at too great a cost in relations with the population. The psychological warfare bureaux became involved in a variety of discreditable activities and were disbanded in 1960, while elements in the army became increasingly politicized and were moved, in 1958 and 1961, to take direct military action against the government.
Yet the theory had much merit. In common with successful counter-insurgency doctrines it recognized both the centrality of the population and the need to fight a unified politico-military campaign. Officers attracted to it were often influenced by long-term currents in French military thought, such as the ideas put forward by Lyautey on the social role of the officer. Their wholehearted, and often selfless, commitment to a lost cause, linked with profound regret at being forced to abandon their Algerian supporters, led many to imprisonment or exile: it was to take the French army years to recover.
Bibliography
- Paret, Peter, French Revolutionary Warfare from Indochina to Algeria (London, 1964).
- Trinquier, Roger, Modern Warfare: A French View of Counterinsurgency (New York, 1964)
— Richard Holmes
