Wars of National Liberation

Wars of national liberation or national liberation revolutions are conflicts fought by nationalities to gain independence. The term is used in conjunction with wars against foreign powers to establish separate sovereign states for the rebelling nationality. From a different of view, these wars are called insurgencies, rebellions, or wars of independence. Guerrilla warfare or asymmetric warfare is sometimes used by national liberation movements, often with intervention from other states.

More specifically, wars of national liberation can refer to those fought during the decolonization movement, primarily in the third world against Western powers and their economic influence, and was a major aspect of the Cold War. According to political scientist Gérard Chaliand, guerrilla wars against European powers were always a political success, although they may have been in some cases a military defeat. However, according to Gwynne Dyer, the tactics and strategies used against colonial powers were almost invariably failures when used against indigenous regimes. Some of these wars were either vocally or materially supported by the Soviet Union, which stated itself to be an anti-imperialist power, supporting the replacement of western-backed governments with local communist or other non pro-western parties. However, this did not always guarantee Soviet influence in those countries. According to certain activists and theorists, the Soviet Union and the People's Republic of China presented themselves as models of independent nationalist development outside of Western influence. As such they were regarded as a threat to Western power as they could politically, economically and militarily assist other movements such as in Vietnam. In January 1961 Soviet premier Nikita Khrushchev pledged support for "wars of national liberation" throughout the world.

This concept of "imperialism" and its relations to colonies had been theorized in Lenin's 1916 book, Imperialism, the Highest Stage of Capitalism while Ho Chi Minh, who founded the Viet-Minh in 1930 and declared the independence of Vietnam on September 2, 1945, following the 1945 August Revolution, was a founding member of the French Communist Party (PCF) in 1921.