An insurgency’s victory can rest on preventing defeat, not winning battles
Evidence
“We can move out of one square to let you come in, in order that we may afterwards take two or three from one,” Paine wrote about the Americans. “You cannot be so insensible as not to see that we have two to one the advantage of you, because we conquer by a drawn game, and you lose by it.” Simply by avoiding “a total defeat,” Paine reasoned, the Americans could secure their independence because he “never could see any real disservice it would be to Britain.” As he viewed it, England was a nation of shopkeepers and merchants—a phrase used by Adam Smith in the 1776 edition of The Wealth of Nations—and, as Paine noted in this essay, “If an English merchant receives an order and is paid for it, it signifies nothing who governs the country.” Eventually those merchants and their representatives in Parliament would opt for peace and compel the king to agree, he implied. — Edward J. Larson, Declaring Independence, 352
Categorization
- DEFINE: Documents the historical origin of the phrase ‘a nation of shopkeepers’ from Adam Smith’s 1776 Wealth of Nations.
- SHARE: Worth sending to anyone who studies insurgency theory or asymmetric warfare.
- XREF: connects to: Howe’s excessive caution at Bunker Hill cost him the decisive victory in 1776 — Edward J. Larson, Declaring Independence, 236; A militarily victorious counterinsurgency can still lose due to non-battlefield factors; French tactical victories could not win a prolonged elusive insurgency (+4 more)
Broader Connections
- French tactical victories could not win a prolonged elusive insurgency
#exemplifies(0.92) - A militarily victorious counterinsurgency can still lose due to non-battlefield factors
#corroborates(0.90) - Guerrilla warfare made French suppression of the insurgency fail
#exemplifies(0.90) - Coerced peasant soldiers can still win successive military victories
#exemplifies(0.85) — Khaled Fahmy, All the Pasha_s Men_ Mehmed Ali, his…, 1360 - Weak insurgents can win by attacking native police rather than the army
#expands(0.80) — Horne, Alistair, A Savage War of Peace- Algeria 1954-1962, 49 - Antibase movements can win concessions even when they lose the main fight
#corroborates(0.80) — David Vine, Base Nation_ How U.S. Military Bases…, 939