Gangs, pseudo-militaries, and other modern mercenaries
Subtitle: new dynamics in uncomfortable wars
By: Max G. Manwaring ; foreword by Edwin G. Corr ; afterword by John T. Fishel.
Series: International and security affairs series -- v. 6
Publisher: University of Oklahoma Press
Published: 2010
Place of publication: Norman
Language: eng
Number of pages: 238
ISBN-13: 9780806141466
Subjects: Gangs -- Latin America; Gangs -- Europe, Western; Asymmetric warfare -- Latin America; Asymmetric warfare -- Europe, Western; Mercenary troops -- Latin America; Mercenary troops -- Europe, Western; Counterinsurgency; Political stability; Sovereignty
Description: As the first decade of the twenty-first century has made brutally clear, the very definitions of war and the enemy have changed almost beyond recognition. Threats to security are now as likely to come from armed propagandists, popular militias, or mercenary organizations as they are from conventional armies backed by nation-states. In this timely book, national security expert Max G. Manwaring explores a little-understood actor on the stage of irregular warfare?the gang. Since the end of the Cold War, some one hundred insurgencies or irregular wars have erupted throughout the world. Gangs have figured prominently in more than half of those conflicts, yet these and other nonstate actors have received little focused attention from scholars or analysts. This book fills that void. Employing a case study approach, and believing that shadows from the past often portend the future, Manwaring begins with a careful consideration of the writings of V. I. Lenin. He then scrutinizes the Piqueteros in Argentina, gangs in Colombia, private armies in Mexico, Hugo Chavez?s use of popular militias in Venezuela, and the looming threat of Al Qaeda in Western Europe. As conventional warfare is increasingly eclipsed by these irregular and ?uncomfortable? wars, Manwaring boldly diagnoses the problem and recommends solutions that policymakers should heed.
Notes: Includes bibliographical references and index.
Table of contents: title: Where Lenin leads : beginning lessons for the wars in our midst; title: The Argentine piqueteros : "rent-a-mobs" or agents for radical political change?; title: From the barrel of a gun and deep pockets : the gang role in coercing political change in Colombia; title: Hugo Chavez's use of popular militias and other instruments of power : achieving a populist antidemocratic and antisystem agenda; title: Defensive jihad in Western Europe : al Qaeda's elevation of nonstate irregular asymmetric warfare onto the global arena; title: The neighbors down the road and across the river : the Mexican Zetas and other private armies that do nasty things and "go bump in the night"; title: Some final thoughts : toward a new paradigm for irregular wars among the people.