The Other Guy
Spam King
Agreed. Insurgencies have worked quite well in Vietnam and in Iraq, while they were less successful during the time of the romans. And it depends on how you're running your mission to take over, too.Resistance fighters/insurgencies will only work in two situations.
1.) The war is still being fought by two sides, in which case the insurgency helps to reduce the occupying force's ability to fight.
2.) There is an amount of political uncertainty/doubt about the mission, in which case the cost in money, material, and lives becomes enough to tip the balance in favor of leaving.
Other than those two scenarios, it is very unlikely that resistance movements will do anything more than annoy the occupiers and bring reprisals against innocent civilians. The latter is quite effective in putting out insurgencies too, either the locals give up the insurgents or they all die along with the fighters, either way problem solved.
If you're doing as the US did in Vietnam and Iraq, doing it for the sake of the people who live there, the Insurgency is highly effective, because you're trying to protect those who live there while they're secretly blowing you up. If you come in as conquerors, as say the Romans did, it's much more difficult to maintain an insurgency, because there's nothing stopping your conquers for going eye for an eye; you kill 10 of ours, we kill 100 of yours. That tactic completely removes the will to fight of most insurgents.