Europe’s Small Wars of the Cold War

This chapter explains western Europe’s small wars aimed either to retain colonial territories or to prepare them for independence in the context of the Cold War. The post-Second World War irruption of revolutionary warfare into military history led leftist strategists to attribute negative motives and effectiveness to the counterinsurgency. The post-1945 environment in many ways improved the international legal environment from an insurgent’s point of view. International law (Hague Conventions) gradually extended ‘jus in bello’ rights to insurgents fighting racist regimes, enemy occupations or anti-colonial struggles (including a law approved to this effect in 1977). Captured insurgents in such wars were entitled to be treated as captured soldiers rather than criminals. The intellectual climate favoured anti-colonial struggle, even condoning violence.