This is the Cato Daily Podcast for Tuesday, November 6, 2007.

I'm Caleb Brown.

What are insurgents and what is needed to defeat them?

Cato foreign policy analyst Malu innocent argues that fighting

insurgencies is tricky.

It should only be undertaken when vital national interests are at stake.

The insurgency in Iraq, she argues, doesn't qualify.

An insurgent is essentially a guerrilla fighter

who possesses technologically inferior weaponry when confronted with conventional military forces.

But getting out of the gate, I must distinguish between the two types of insurgencies.

There are national insurgencies and there are

liberation insurgencies. A national insurgency is designed to weaken

government control and legitimacy with the objective of reallocating power within the country, breaking away from the country, or forming an autonomous area.

Some examples include the wars in Chechnya, wars in the former Yugoslavia, and the Greek Civil Wars of the 1950s.

A liberation insurgency on the other hand is when indigenous groups seek to expel over throw

an occupying power.

So examples would include the French experience in Algeria, both the French

and American experiences in Vietnam, and the current war in Iraq. But it's important to mention

that when any country is experiencing a large amount of

civil disorder and unrest, there could be many different things going all at once.

There can be an insurgency, ethereal conflict, a civil war, criminal violence, vengeance sinking,

so it can get quite complicated.

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