Roger Trinquier

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Roger Trinquier (March 20, 1908 - 1986) was a French army officer with an immense impact on the development of Counter-insurgency theory.

1 Biography
2 Modern Warfare
3 Influence
4 Bibliography
5 External links

[edit] Biography

Trinquier was posted to China in the 1930s where he learned Chinese. Trinquier served in the French Shanghai concession between 1940 and 1946. When the Japanese occupied China during World War II the Vichy French forces were left armed and unmolested until March of 1945 and then imprisoned. Unlike many Vichy officers, Trinquier was kept in service after the war due to the attention of General Raoul Salan. Trinquier was posted alternately to Indochina and to the Commando Training Center. In 1951 he became commander of all anti-communist guerrillas in north Indochina and his teams were very successful until the Battle of Dien Bien Phu caused the withdrawal of the French army from Indochina.

He was posted in 1957 to Algiers during the Algerian War of Independence. In Algiers he was at the origin of the Dispositif de Protection Urbain. A member of the Catholic fundamentalist group Cité catholique, created as an off-shoot from the monarchist Action française, Trinquier retired in 1961 and went to the Congo to support the Katanga rebellion of Moïse Tschombé.

[edit] Modern Warfare

Trinquier is a major theorist in the style of warfare he called Modern Warfare, an "interlocking system of actions - political, economic, psychological, military - that aims at the overthrow of the established authority in a country and its replacement by another regime." (Modern Warfare, Ch. 2). He was critical of the traditional army's inability to adapt to this new warfare. These tactics included the use of small and mobile commando teams, torture, the setting-up of self-defense forces recruited in the local population, and their forced relocation in camps, as well as psychological and educational operations.

Perhaps his most original contribution was his study and application of terrorism and torture as it related to this Modern Warfare. He argued that it was immoral to treat terrorists as criminals, and to hold them criminally liable for their acts. In his view terrorists should be treated as soldiers, albeit with the qualification that while they may attack civilian targets and wear no uniform, they also must be tortured for the very specific purpose of betraying their organization. Trinquier's criteria for torture was that the terrorist was to be asked only questions that related to the organization of his movement, that the interrogators must know what to ask, and that once the information is obtained the torture must stop and the terrorist is then treated as any other prisoner of war. (See Chapter 4 of Modern Warfare).

The French army applied Trinquier's tactics during the Algerian War of Independence. In the short run these tactics resulted in a decisive victory in the Battle of Algiers Template:E. Behr 'The Algerian Problem'. These tactics were exposed by the press, which had little or no effect at the time, as they were generally regarded as a necessary evil. in the longer term the debate on the tactics used, particularly torture, would re-emerge in the french press for decades to come. (see trials of Ausseresses and Papon)

[edit] Influence

In the 1960s, Trinquier's book on modern warfare rapidly became a bible of anti-guerilla warfare and internal repression, first in South America. He became well known for his designation of political adversaries as 'internal enemies' in a Total War. French journalist Roger Faligot noted in Guerre spéciale en Europe (1980) that Frank Kitson's 1971 book, Low Intensity Operations: Subversion, Insurgency and Peacekeeping, considered as the "Bible" used by the British Army during the Troubles in Ireland heavily quoted Roger Trinquier.

The US Army showed a strong interest in his experiences and theories when preparing the counterinsurgency warfare by the US Green Berets in South Vietnam in the early 1960s and again in today's Iraq.

[edit] Bibliography

Writings of Trinquier:

Modern Warfare: A French View of Counterinsurgency (1961)

Available online at the US Command and General Staff College

Roger Trinquier, La Guerre moderne, Paris: La Table ronde, 1961.
Roger Trinquier, Le coup d’état du 13 mai. Esprit Nouveau, 1962. Trinquier denounces the foundation of the French Fifth Republic as a coup d'etat.
Roger Trinquier, Jacques Duchemin, and Jacques Le Bailley, Notre guerre au Katanga. Paris: La Pensée Moderne, 1963. Trinquier relates his implication in Katanga.
Roger Trinquier, L’Etat Nouveau. Nouvelles Editions Latines, 1964.
Roger Trinquier, Modern Warfare: A French View of Counterinsurgency, trans. Daniel Lee (New York: Frederick A. Praeger, 1964).
Roger Trinquier, La Bataille pour l’élection du président de la république. L’Indépendant, 1965
Roger Trinquier, Guerre, subversion, révolution. Paris: Robert Laffont, 1968.
Roger Trinquier, Les Maquis d’Indochine. Les missions spéciales du service action. Paris: Albatros, 1976.
Roger Trinquier, Le premier bataillon des Bérets rouges: Indochine 1947-1949. Paris: Plon, 1984.
Roger Trinquier, La Guerre. Paris: Albin Michel.