The Rhodesian War
The Rhodesian War: A Military History, Paul L. Moorcraft and Peter McLaughlin, 1982; reprint, 2008.
I had heard of the Rhodesian War, but I knew very little about it. I thought it was time to address my ignorance. After a short search, I selected The Rhodesian War: A Military History, by Paul Moorcraft and Peter McLaughlin. It seemed to be a good fit because I really wanted to learn about the military aspects of the war. It turned out to be an excellent introduction to the Rhodesian conflict.
The Rhodesian War really started when Rhodesia left the British Commonwealth after a Unilateral Declaration of Independence (UDI) I late 1865. Like many African colonial possessions, Rhodesia’s majority black population was ruled by a small white minority. British policy was to allow its African colonies independence with majority rule. In Rhodesia, majority rule would mean a loss of power for the Rhodesian whites, so Rhodesian leaders issued the UDI and exited the Commonwealth.
This was a clear signal to Rhodesia’s black population that representative government was not in the cards and a low-level insurgency began. At first, the number of insurgents (and incidents) was small and the Rhodesian government treated the insurgency as a criminal matter to be handled by the police. As the insurgency continued (and eventually expanded) this proved insufficient and the Rhodesian military was committed to the struggle.
Rhodesia received assistance from South Africa (another apartheid government) while a variety of insurgent groups received support (tacit or overt) from Mozambique, Zambia, Botswana, and Angola. To strike at insurgents in these ostensibly safe areas, Rhodesia escalated the war by conducting cross-border raids. The war continued until late 1979, but a political settlement was reached in early 1980 which allowed Rhodesia’s black population full representation in Rhodesia.
Much like the U. S. effort in Vietnam, “The armed forces of Rhodesia won virtually every battle and skirmish they ever fought against the guerrilla armies, yet they lost the war.”[1] Wedded to the strategic goal of maintaining minority white rule until the end of the war, the Rhodesian government had little chance of winning over most black Rhodesians. Rhodesian “strategic ineptitude”[2] doomed the war from the start, despite repeated tactical successes. As the military theorist, Bill Lind, is fond of pointing out, a higher level of war trumps a lower level of war. Strategic failure is a sure-fire way to lose a war — no matter how superior one may be at the tactical or operational levels.
The Rhodesians seemed to focus on the tactical military aspects of the war rather than addressing the political causes which motivated the insurgents. This led to a situation in which victory actually receded with each tactical victory.
“Rhodesians might point proudly to their consistent tactical successes and the ever-mounting body counts, but they failed to realize that the guerrillas were waging a successful protracted war. It was futile to conjecture that in a straight fight the Rhodesians could annihilate the entire guerrilla armies, and to rail against the refusal of guerrillas to stand and fight like men, when so little was done to undermine the massive popular support they had built up through a skilful manipulation of the poverty and the disadvantaged existence of the bulk of Africans, and through the use of selective brutality.”[3]
Although the insurgents had difficulty competing on the battlefield with Rhodesian forces, they were virtually unopposed on the ideological battlefield which determined ultimate success or failure.
“While the Rhodesians became increasingly confused in their war aims, the guerrillas had a clear vision of their purpose. Their goal was to break the back of white supremacy and establish a state based on black majority rule. This gave the guerrilla armies and their leadership remarkable stamina, and their cause the strength to weather many political crises and recurrent military defeat in the field.”[4]
As the war went on, the number of guerrillas increased. This trend should have alarmed Rhodesian leaders and called the effectiveness of their strategy into question. Instead of a fundamental reconsideration of their approach, the answer seems to have been to conscript more men to increase the size of the army and police forces and to escalate the war by ever more brazen raids into neighboring states. By the late 1970s, it was clear that escalation had failed and the only option was to negotiate the most favorable political solution possible under the circumstances.
As the title implies, the book’s focus is on the war’s military aspects. There was a good discussion of how politics influenced military action, but given how important the political dimension was to the war’s outcome and the number of players involved, devoting a little more space to this would have been helpful (or perhaps I needed to slow down and really digest this information before continuing). The Rhodesian War: A Military History is not just an excellent introduction to a little-known conflict, it is also a valuable example of a modern insurgency as well as why the counterinsurgent forces failed.
[1] Paul L. Moorcraft and Peter McLaughlin, The Rhodesian War: A Military History (Pen & Sword Books, 2008), 66.
[2] Ibid., 66.
[3] Ibid., 96.
[4] Ibid., 100.
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