Insurgents and Imperialists

(fm the BC thread "Kilcullen vs Sullivan")

I am unaware of any insurgency since WWII that has lost to a foreign power.

Add to Don Rodrigo's excellent list; the NPA in the Philippines, and Latin American groups such as Sendoro Luminoso, Tupamoros, the Arbenz faction in Guatemala in 1954, and the Bolivian ELN of 1965-66. The last two involving Che Guevera. In all cases the revolutionaries themselves would claim that their defeats are attributable to the support given to government forces by the US. The IRA has arguably lost its effort to impose a Marxist dictatorship over either the Republic or the 9 counties controlled by the UK. Insurgencies in The Congo during the 1960s (another appearance by the sadistic medico Che Guevera) collapsed under foreign pressure. The Tibetan insurgency against invading chinese is looking a bit thin after 50 to 60 years. The last is anomalous being the one case of successful communist conquest as an invader, in the world's most isolated backwater. There however the marxist invaders have to resort to genocide.

The belief in successful native workers and peasants insurgencies against corrupt decadent Capitalist Imperialists and their stuffed shirt stooges is one of those hoary old chestnuts that is allowed to persist as a romantic trope because it has been made socially inconvenient to slap it down. The basic premise is a lie. The real Imperialists peddling alien philosophies and using co-opted elites to rule through disciplined hierarchical structures are the Communists and the Islamists.

British and Americans helped the Greeks. I heard Prof William McNeill mention having visited the Acropolis during the battle.

dan,
(who noted claims that the Soviets threatened to use nukes during Suez)
I don't know and if I did I would neither confirm nor deny but it sounds plausible to me.

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RagnarD at the BC pointed out I was sloppy, 6 of Ulster's 9 counties.