IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/taf/fswixx/v28y2017i3p524-545.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Was FARC militarily defeated?

Author

Listed:
  • Carlos Alberto Ospina Ovalle

Abstract

The concept of military victory has become opaque and quite different from the days of the industrial wars. Full military victory through total annihilation of the enemy has yielded to more complex ways of achieving political objectives. Eventually the understanding of the fact that the war is unwinnable on martial terms shifts insurgent strategy to one of survival, normally peace talks. It is this very shift of strategy, albeit the absence of insurgent annihilation, that constitutes the core of military victory for the government. Politicians and decision makers, if not military forces, blinded by the victory idea of the past, are unable to understand this reality. Hence, when peace talks are held, they are approached as the end of conflict rather than a shift to war by other means. This gives the upper hand to the insurgents.

Suggested Citation

  • Carlos Alberto Ospina Ovalle, 2017. "Was FARC militarily defeated?," Small Wars and Insurgencies, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 28(3), pages 524-545, May.
    • Handle: RePEc:taf:fswixx:v:28:y:2017:i:3:p:524-545
    DOI: 10.1080/09592318.2017.1307613
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/09592318.2017.1307613
    Download Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1080/09592318.2017.1307613?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:taf:fswixx:v:28:y:2017:i:3:p:524-545. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Chris Longhurst (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.tandfonline.com/fswi .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.