Let's talk about guerrilla warfare.
When did it start?
When and where did it consolidate into a coherent doctrine?
How is it related to other military developments like conscription, and to political developments like nationalism and democracy?
What doctrine has proven to be effective in quelling it? Has there even been one?
>>574095
>The Fabian strategy is a military strategy where pitched battles and frontal assaults are avoided in favor of wearing down an opponent through a war of attrition and indirection. While avoiding decisive battles, the side employing this strategy harasses its enemy through skirmishes to cause attrition, disrupt supply and affect morale. Employment of this strategy implies that the side adopting this strategy believes time is on its side, but it may also be adopted when no feasible alternative strategy can be devised.
>>574106
This. While raiding and shit has doubtless existed since forever, Fabius was the first arguably to devise and implement the specific gears and goals of the tactic into a strategy.
>>574095
>When did it start?
Probably in prehistory.
>When and where did it consolidate into a coherent doctrine?
I would argue it still hasn't. You have a variance of different doctrines, which share some commonalities, but I can't think of a single fact, belief, or doctrine that is both necessary and sufficient to define a "guerilla war"?
>How is it related to other military developments like conscription, and to political developments like nationalism and democracy?
Less than you might think. At a rough commonality, a guerilla war generally tends to try to outlast the larger, stronger, conventional force, and raise the costs of its operation higher than the conventional polity is ready to bear. While technological and social changes have altered the cost calculations, that there are operational costs and limits have always remained and almost always will remain.
>What doctrine has proven to be effective in quelling it? Has there even been one?
More bodies, better policing tends to work the best, at least in modern contexts.
>>574106
Is a fabian strategy really guerilla war though? I mean, the namesake still sent out regular forces to oppose Hannibal, and while he didn't commit to decisive battles, he did essentially adopt a very Grecian style of operations, of move and fort and restrict enemy movements, as opposed to modern guerrilla warfare which ignores the enemy's movements altogether, attempting to strike at civilian infrastructure behind the army's back.
>>574114
Surely Pericles had Fabius beat by about 200 years. There's little practical difference between the Athenians holing up behind the Long Walls and Fabius's shadowing of Hannibal, except that Fabius's fortifications moved around a larger area.
>>574095
>When did it start?
Peninsular Wars. Don't listen to those faggots and their antiquity obsession, guerilla as a systematic type of warfare is a modern thing.
>>574146
You can simultaneously argue that the Gureillas of the Peninsular wars weren't a "real" guerilla war since they attacked French regular forces in an attempt to drive them out of Spain, and point to things like Hebrew attacks on Roman settlers literally millenia before as demonstration that the concepts of modern insurgency existed way, way before.
What possible definition could you give of guerilla warfare that would lead to the conclusion that it started in the 19th century?
>>574164
Viriato. Or the Celtiberian wars in general.
Still Spain.
>>574146
I would have said the American revolution was a guerrilla war, especially in the south with Francis Marion fighting in the swamps with irregulars.
