Huk Rebellion

War Since 1945 As far as we know, war has been a part of human history and civilization since prehistoric times, so for one to simply assume that a world without war is inevitable is indeed incorrect. War is part of the greatness of human history as well as the dark side of human behavior -- associated often with terror, cruelty and mayhem. Yet over the centuries as humans have developed in so many ways, warfare is a constant part of the ability for states to settle their differences.

Traditional military planning focused on the ideas of "might is right," yet after 1945 and the beginnings of the Cold War, this was only partially true. History Professor Jeremy Black, for instance, believes that military doctrine and traditional foreign policy are inadequate to explain war post-World War II. Of course, the 20th century was filled with warfare -- the bloodiest century ever.

Nevertheless, after World War II, after the dawn of the Atomic Age, and certainly the paradigm of the Cold War as a "war" but not a war, has changed the way we need to think about the process in order to understand modern conflict. Certainly, the amount of technological chance in the 20th century allowed warfare to kill or maim at an unprecedented level.

In fact, once the Atom Bomb was dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, war changed forever -- we now had the means to destroy the entire planet and all of human civilization (Black, 2004, pp. 85-6).

Black points to major changes that contribute to this new model: an increase in guerrilla warfare and terrorism (Vietnam, Afghanistan, the Middle East, etc.), a decrease in counting on traditional forms of warfare like airpower, and the robust growth of machinery from capitalism and industrialization -- machines must be built, designed, used and new ways of killing must be developed. This then genders a psychological change in military planning.

The very cycles that perpetuate the business of war similarly affect the logic that there must always be an identifiable threat, real or imagined, else, there is no longer a need for the military-industrial complex (Black, pp. 32-34; 72-78). A primary example of these thematic changes is the Hukbalahap Rebellion (Huk) which occurred in the Philippines between 1946 and 1954. The Huks, or anti-Japanese soldiers, revolted against the Philippine government.

Instead of a grand political stance, the Huk Rebellion was based on a socio-economic issue and a peasant centered conflict against large landowners and American backed government forces.

The themes that came out of this conflict follow a difference in warfare after World War II: the combatants were not always militarily trained, but guerilla warrior from peasant populations; large scale uses of military equipment like tanks and air strikes were largely ineffective in jungle conditions; the idea that any resistance must mean communist threat or insurgency (Cold War mentality); and conflicts were long, drawn out, and the combatants not readily apparent (e.g. peasant populations) (Moyer, 2009, pp. 89-101).

We thus have a rather bipolar paradigm of modern conflict, changing after the Fall of the Soviet Union, but paramount from 1945-1989. On one had we have a massive development of new technology and arms, primarily focused on a two-sided ideological argument. On the other, a series of insurgencies.