The importance of state sponsorship in “guerilla evolution” should not be ignored. In Hezbollah’s case Iran and Syria are the main patrons. Depending on your perspective such aid could be considered trivial ( no battalions of Revolutionary Guards) or large ( training, intelligence, rockets). If the aid provided is a catalyst in changing the operational parameters of Hezbollah, then in my view, the effect is significant even if it isn’t buying Teheran or Damascus tactical control. Either a strategic balance is being altered or it isn’t – in geopolitics there is no such thing as just being a little bit pregnant.
Evolution requires a change in the environment. Shaping the battlespace is a strategic move and Iran and Hezbollah have done that.
ADDENDUM:
I have to recommend this post by Kingdaddy at Arms and Influence.
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Sun Bin:
August 8th, 2006 at 4:22 am
minor note:
his last name is Vo,
first name Nguyen-Giap
eg Ho, Chi-minh.
mark:
August 8th, 2006 at 4:54 am
Hi Sun,
True.
As a rule, incorrect but commonly used transliterations of historically significant foreign names into English are usually maintained until the modern( or more accurate) transliteration becomes familiar.
If, for example, on H-Diplo, a listserv heavy with Vietnam War and SEA/ Asia specialists, I used “General Vo” instead of “Giap” they would think that rather odd. If I saw “Vo” I’m not sure I would immediately realize it was “Giap” either.
Eventually, it does change – Americans use “Mao Zedong” and not the old Wade-Giles version of his name but Mao’s nemesis is still ” Chiang” and not “Jiang”.
Linguistic consistency is not always a strong point of the historical profession :o)
Sun Bin:
August 8th, 2006 at 7:37 am
yeah..very minor tidbit.
it just sounds strange to asians, as if hearing Mao was referred to as “Dong”, or Deng as “ping”
….. or KJI as “Il”(eww) 🙂
i agree with your comment about (lack of) historic example. in fact, even though Mao’s China eventually evolved, there were a lot of hipcups, 30 years that is, until Mao died.
IMO the fact that Hezbollah (and to a lesser extent Hamas) transformed was because of the democracy which allowed them to participate and hence forced a learning process and transformationevoltution. evolution
takes place because of needs (mao’s army had to grow crops themselves) and opportunity (Hamas, which is not really guerilla but more of a true terrorist entity), not because it is part of guerilla establishment
But I think the concept of “people’s war” is the most relavant to guerilla/4GW.
OTOH, a few examples Col Lang noted was merely more professional skill-sets acquired, which could be a capability transferrable to the ‘transformation’, but not neccessarily showing the trend of transformation/evolution.