Measuring Success in Populace and Resources Control

A characteristic of insurgency and internal defense is the difficulty of leaders to accurately gauge progress or regression. The measurement of progress is necessary in order to provide officials with a basis for continuing, improving, or discarding the adopted strategy. Tradition indicators of success such as divisions destroyed, territory occupied, and shipping tonnage sunk have much less applicability in insurgent warfare than in general war; yet some method must be devised to measure progress. By evaluating success in populace and resource control, the number of restrictive measures can be kept to a minimum; and timely changes and the program can be made to cope with variations in the levels of insurgent activity.