Roger Trinquier
|
|
Roger Trinquier (1908 - ?) was a French army officer with an immense impact on the development of counterinsurgency operations.
Trinquier was posted to China in the 1930s where he learned Chinese. 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. Trinquier retired in 1961.
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 ability to adapt to this new warfare.
Perhaps his most original contribution was his study of terrorism 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)
Bibliography (incomplete)
- Modern Warfare: A French View of Counterinsurgency (1961)
- Available online at the Command and General Staff College (http://www-cgsc.army.mil/carl/resources/csi/trinquier/trinquier.asp)