172 Strategic Analysis/Apr-Jun 2003 Conceptualisations of Guerrilla Warfare S. Kalyanaraman Abstract Guerrilla warfare is not a new phenomenon and history is witness to its repeated occurrence. In the modern era, it acquired prominence during the Napoleonic Wars which led to an examination of its role by leading nineteenth-century thinkers including Clausewitz, Jomini, Marx and Engels. Over the course of the subsequent century, the concept and practice of guerrilla warfare was integrated within social, economic and political programmes that aimed to overthrow established authority and transform society through an armed struggle. The link that was forged in the mid-nineteenth century by Italian and Polish revolutionaries like Carlo Bianco and Mazzini achieved fruition in the writings and practice of Mao tse-Tung in the twentieth century. This paper traces such conceptualisations of guerrilla warfare. ! Definition The term ‘Guerrilla Warfare’ entered the modern lexicon during the Napoleonic Wars. 1 It is a form of warfare, meaning a technique or method used to pursue an objective, as opposed to a type of war like Total War or Limited War. In Samuel Huntington’s comprehensive definition: Guerrilla warfare is a form of warfare by which the strategically weaker side assumes the tactical offensive in selected forms, times, and places. Guerrilla warfare is the weapon of the weak. It is never chosen in preference to regular warfare; it is employed only when and where the possibilities of regular warfare have been foreclosed. 2 It is thus generally employed: by small bands of irregulars fighting a superior invading army or to weaken the latter’s hold over conquered territory; by a weaker side, or as a supplementary means in a conventional war; and in the preliminary stages of a revolutionary war that aims at overthrowing the existing political authority. Guerrilla strategy is determined by the rebels’ weakness in relation to the superior military forces that they confront. Since weakness precludes a direct trial of strength in open battle, guerrillas necessarily aim at denying military victory to their Strategic Analysis, Vol. 27, No. 2, Apr-Jun 2003 © The Institute for Defence Studies and Analyses Revised paper received on May 8, 2003