Tactical Success Is Not Enough

This paper focuses on why France, a country with tremendous advantages in resources and military strength was defeated by a group of poorly equipped and largely untrained Algerian insurgents who mainly operated in groups of ten to twenty men and probably never had over fifteen thousand active fighters inside the borders of Algeria.1 The crux of the issue is that France failed to understand the nature of the war and why the Algerians were fighting. This failure led the French to misidentify the Algerian strategic center of gravity and by their actions, to make French centers of gravity, their legitimacy to rule and their will to fight, vulnerable to attack. Demonstrated by analyzing French and Algerian will, intelligence, and civil-military relations.