Modern Wars 1945–Present

By Amber Books Ltd

Even as the last shots of World War II were being fired, new conflicts were springing up around the globe. The wars that followed 1945 ranged from minor insurgencies through to full-blown conventional conflicts, and they have changed the political and social map of the world while creating millions of casualties and refugees. The Modern Wars 1945–Present – volume seven in the Encyclopedia of Warfare Series – charts the wars and revolutions that have taken place across the globe since the end of World War II. This is a chronological guide to conflicts on every continent, including the Cuban Revolution, the Vietnam War, the various Iraq wars and the events of the Arab Spring and the current uprising in Syria. Covering the key military events from the past few decades and featuring specially-commissioned full colour maps illustrating the formations and strategies used, the narrative descriptions of the circumstances behind each battle build into a comprehensive guide to the conflicts of the modern world. The Encyclopedia of Warfare Series is an authoritative compendium of almost five millennia of conflict, from the ancient world to the Arab Spring. Written in a style accessible to both the student and the general enthusiast, it reflects the latest thinking among military historians.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Amber Books Ltd
• Release date: Sep 16, 2013
• ISBN: 9781782741299

Book preview

THE ENCYCLOPEDIA OF WARFARE

MODERN WARS

1945–PRESENT

This digital edition first published in 2013

Published by

Amber Books Ltd

74–77 White Lion Street

London N1 9PF

United Kingdom

Website: www.amberbooks.co.uk

Appstore: itunes.com/apps/amberbooksltd

Facebook: www.facebook.com/amberbooks

Twitter: @amberbooks

Publishing Manager: Charles Catton

Project Editors: Sarah Uttridge and Michael Spilling

Design Manager: Mark Batley

Design: Colin Hawes, Andrew Easton and Rick Fawcett

Cartographer: Alexander Swanston at Red Lion Media

Consulting Editors: Marcus Cowper and Chris McNab

Proofreader: Alison Worthington and David Worthington

Indexers: Malcolm Henley, Michael Forder and Penny Brown

With thanks to Patrick Mulrey, Ben Way and Martin Dougherty

for their assistance

Copyright © 2013 Amber Books Ltd

ISBN: 978-1-78274-129-9

All rights reserved. With the exception of quoting brief passages for the purpose of review no part of this publication may be reproduced without prior written permission from the publisher. The information in this book is true and complete to the best of our knowledge. All recommendations are made without any guarantee on the part of the author or publisher, who also disclaim any liability incurred in connection with the use of this data or specific details.

www.amberbooks.co.uk

Titles available in the Encyclopedia of Warfare series:

Ancient Wars

c.2500BCE–500CE

Medieval Wars

500–1500

Early Modern Wars

1500–1775

Revolutionary Wars

1775–c.1815

Imperial Wars

1815–1914

World Wars

1914–1945

Modern Wars

1945–Present

CONTENTS

CHINESE CIVIL WAR 1945–49

INDOCHINA 1945–54

INDO-PAKISTAN WAR 1947–48

ARAB–ISRAELI WAR 1948–49

COSTA RICAN CIVIL WAR 1948

TIBET 1950–51

KOREAN WAR 1950–53

LAOTIAN WAR 1953–75

CUBAN REVOLUTION 1953–59

ALGERIAN WAR OF INDEPENDENCE 1954–62

HUNGARIAN REVOLUTION 1956

SUEZ CRISIS 1956–57

CONGO CRISIS 1960–66

BAY OF PIGS INVASION 1961

INVASION OF GOA 1961

ERITREAN WAR OF INDEPENDENCE 1961–91

SINO-INDIAN WAR 1962

DHOFAR REBELLION 1962–75

NORTH YEMEN CIVIL WAR 1962–70

SAND WAR (ALGERIA–MOROCCO) 1963

GUINEA-BISSAU WAR OF INDEPENDENCE 1963–74

VIETNAM WAR 1963–75

MOZAMBIQUE WAR OF INDEPENDENCE 1964–74

RHODESIAN BUSH WAR 1964–79

COLOMBIAN CIVIL WAR 1964–

US OCCUPATION OF THE DOMINICAN REPUBLIC 1965–66

INDO-PAKISTANI WAR 1965

SIX-DAY WAR 1967

CAMBODIAN CIVIL WAR 1967–75

NIGERIAN CIVIL WAR 1967–70

CZECHOSLOVAKIA 1968

FOOTBALL WAR 1969

SINO-SOVIET BORDER CONFLICT 1969

INDO-PAKISTANI WAR 1971

YOM KIPPUR WAR 1973

Sinai Front

Golan Front

Air War

Naval War

TURKISH INVASION OF CYPRUS 1974

ANGOLAN CIVIL WAR 1975–2002

LEBANESE WARS 1975–90

CAMBODIAN-VIETNAMESE WAR 1975–89

INDONESIAN INVASION OF EAST TIMOR 1975

LIBYAN–EGYPTIAN WAR 1977

OGADEN WAR 1977–78

UGANDAN–TANZANIAN WAR 1978–79

CHADIAN–LIBYAN CONFLICT 1978–87

SINO-VIETNAMESE WAR 1979–89

SOVIET WAR IN AFGHANISTAN 1979–89

IRAN–IRAQ WAR 1980–88

FALKLANDS WAR 1982

INVASION OF GRENADA 1983

SRI LANKAN CIVIL WAR 1983–2009

UGANDAN CIVIL WAR 1987–2009

SOMALI CIVIL WAR 1991–

NAGORNO-KARABAKH 1988–94

US INVASION OF PANAMA 1989–90

FIRST AFGHAN CIVIL WAR 1989-92

FIRST LIBERIAN CIVIL WAR 1989–96

FIRST GULF WAR 1990–91

BREAK-UP OF YUGOSLAVIA 1991–99

Slovenia

Croatia

Bosnia and Herzegovina

Kosovo

SOUTH OSSETIA WAR 1991–92

SIERRA LEONE CIVIL WAR 1991–2002

YEMEN CIVIL WAR 1994

FIRST CHECHEN WAR 1994–96

CENEPA WAR 1995

ERITREAN–ETHIOPIAN WAR 1998–2000

OPERATION DESERT FOX

SECOND LIBERIAN CIVIL WAR 1999–2003

SECOND CHECHEN WAR 1999–2000

AFGHANISTAN 2001–

IRAQ 2003–

NORTHWEST PAKISTAN 2004–

LEBANON WAR 2006

INTERNAL LEBANESE CONFLICT 2007

SOUTH OSSETIA 2008

ARAB SPRING 2010–

AUTHORS AND CONTRIBUTORS

HOW TO USE THE MAPS

KEY TO THE MAP SYMBOLS

BATTLES AND SIEGES INDEX

GENERAL INDEX

MAPS

Dien Bien Phu, 1953–54

Spread of Communism in China, 1945–50

Indochina War, 1946–54

Korean War, 1950

Inchon, 1950

Korean War, 1951

Korean War, 1953

Cuban Revolution, 1953–58

South American Conflicts and Revolutions

Cuban Crisis, 1960–62

Sino-Indian War, 1962

Ap Bac, 2 January 1963

Tet, January–June 1968

Khe Sanh, 1968

Victory in Vietnam, 1975

Six Day War, 5–8 June 1967

Indo-Pakistan War, 1971

Yom Kippur, 1973

Soviet–Afghan War, 1979–89

Iran–Iraq War, 1980

Falklands War, 1982

Goose Green, 1982

Sri Lanka, 1983–2009

Mogadishu, October 1993

African Conflicts, 1945–2010

Operation Desert Storm, 1991

End of USSR, 1990–93

Siege of Sarajevo, 1992–96

Grozny, 1994

Tora Bora, 2001

Anaconda, 2002

Afghanistan, 2001–11

Iraqi Freedom, 2003

Baghdad, 2003

Fallujah, November–December 2004

South Ossetia, 2008

FOREWORD TO THE SERIES

by Dennis Showalter

The Encyclopedia of Warfare offers five characteristics justifying its possession. First, it is chronological. Its entries reflect a fundamental characteristic of history. History is linear. It starts somewhere in time. It goes somewhere in time. Its events interact in a temporal context. And the encyclopedia’s chronological perspective enables making connections that otherwise might remain obscure. It contextualizes, for example, the 1147 siege of Lisbon with the Crusader-Turkish wars of the same period – and in the process demonstrating the comprehensive aspect of Christian–Muslim rivalry. Lisbon was far from Jerusalem only in terms of miles.

The encyclopedia is also comprehensive. It eschews a Western-centric perspective that too often sacrifices understanding for familiarity. The chronological chapters are subdivided by time and place. Thus they integrate the ancient wars of China and of South and South-East Asia, the battles of early Rome and those of Ireland in the twenty-fifth century BCE (a single entry, to be sure, but meriting consideration!) Cross-referencing cannot be easier. And that cross referencing enables not merely juxtaposition, but comparison on a global scale of war’s methods and war’s consequences.

The encyclopedia is concise. Its entries honour a time-tested formula. They address ‘who’, ‘what’, ‘when’, ‘where’, ‘why’, and thereby offer frameworks for further investigation of taproots and ramifications. But that does not mean a ‘one size fits all’ template. Events recognized as important – Hattin, Gettysburg, the Somme – are more fully developed without distorting the essentially economical format. Nor are the entries mere narratives. They incorporate analytical dimensions relative to their length and insightful whether phrases, sentences or paragraphs – like the comment that Crusader Jerusalem’s 1187 surrender to Saladin involved ransoming most of the population ‘at reasonable rates’!

The encyclopedia is user-friendly and clearly written. Not only are its more than five thousand entries individually intelligible. The graphics synergise with the text, enhancing rather than challenging or submerging it. The maps in particular are models of their kind, both accurate and informative.

Finally the encyclopedia is concentrated on warmaking. It eschews military history’s framing concepts, whether economic, cultural or gender, in favour of presenting war at its sharp end. That enables covering the full spectrum: wars and revolutions, campaigns and counter-insurgencies, battle and sieges. And in turn the encyclopedia’s format facilitates integrating, rather than compartmentalising, war’s levels and war’s aspects. In these pages Marathon and Hastings, the rise of the Roman Empire and the British Empire, become subjects for comparison and contrast.

The Encyclopedia of Warfare, in short, admirably fulfills the definition of a work that provides information on many elements of one subject. Its value, however, is also in context. This work makes broader contributions to military history’s reference apparatus, and to its reference mentality, on two levels. The encyclopedia complements the electronic era’s meme of ‘six degrees of separation’. The idea that everything is no more than six steps away from everything else is a natural byproduct of websurfing, where a half-dozen mouse clicks can lead far away indeed from the original reference point. It also encourages diffusion: engagement on peripheries at the expense of the centre.

The Encyclopedia of Warfare encourages and facilitates refocusing on war’s essential elements: the planning, conduct and result of using armed force. Diffusion is a natural aspect of the currently dominant approach to military history as an academic discipline. The concept of pivotal events has been overshadowed by an emphasis on underlying structures: reaching out from the operational towards the institutional, the political and the social dimensions. War’s sharp end at best jostles for place. It can lose out to an intellectual disdain that is also aesthetic and moral. Warfare, in the sense of making war, is arguably to the twenty-first century what sex allegedly was to the Victorians. It involves emotions nice people do not feel and actions nice people do not perform. Writing about it becomes the new pornography, pandering to appetites best left neither nurtured nor acknowledged.

The encyclopedia contributes balance and perspective to this discourse. Its contents reinforce the specific, unique nature and function of armed forces compared to any other institutions. Its entries demonstrate that warmaking has had a direct, significant impact on human affairs; that combat has fundamentally altered history’s course in both short and long terms. To understand this is to understand the world in which we live. And The Encyclopedia of Warfare enables that understanding in an impressive fashion.

DENNIS SHOWALTER

June 2013

Modern Wars 1945–Present

Even as the last shots of World War II were being fired, new conflicts were springing up around the globe.The wars that followed 1945 ranged from minor insurgencies through to full-blown conventional conflicts, and they have changed the political and social map of the world while creating millions of casualties and refugees.

Chinese Civil War 1945–49

■SHANTUNG, 10 SEPTEMBER–12 OCTOBER 1945

Shanxi, in central China’s mountainous north-west, had been a centre of communist power before the Second Sino-Japanese War. With the surrender of Japan in 1945, the region became the scene of renewed hostilities with the government. In the autumn, 35,000 Guomindang government troops, under warlord Gen Yan Xishan, attacked the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) stronghold in the Shangdang Prefecture of southern Shanxi. More than 80,000 communist soldiers, including 50,000 militiamen loyal to Liu Bocheng, confronted the government army. Well armed, the nationalists seized Changzhi city, but could not dominate the surrounding countryside. For their part, the communists could not penetrate the city’s defences. The campaign stalemated until the nationalists,under Shi Zebo,attempted a breakout and were defeated at the Peach river. Both sides had approximately 4000 troops killed, although the communists captured more than 30,000 government troops.

■MUKDEN(SHENYANG), MARCH 1946

The Soviets withdrew in the spring of 1946 from Manchuria. In the opening moves of the renewed Chinese Civil War, Guomindang government troops of Gen Liu Yuzhang’s Twenty-Fifth and Fifty-Second Armies moved in to occupy Shenyang. PLA general Lin Biao unsuccessfully tried to oust his former classmate, Liu. Despite the setback, the communists marched on elsewhere in north-eastern China. By the end of April, they had occupied Siping, and captured Changchun and Harbin.

■FIRST SIPING, 15–17 MARCH 1946

In January 1946, bandit militias loyal to the Guomindang government attempted to drive a communist occupation force from this important Manchurian railway depot. The PLA counter-attacked in the spring, defeating Siping’s 3000-man nationalist garrison.

■SECOND SIPING, 17 APRIL–19 MAY 1946

Government troops again besieged the communist occupation force at Siping. The veteran New First and Seventy-First Armies, under Gen Du Yuming, drove the PLA out after a month of heavy fighting.

■FIRST CHANGCHUN, 17 APRIL–19 MAY 1946

Controlling Manchurian railway lines and surrounding municipalities were strategic objectives for the Guomindang government. At Changchun, the PLA had violated a 10 January ceasefire, driving out government troops on 15 April. With former Japanese armaments, the communists had fortified themselves against a siege. As Gen Du Yuming’s nationalist troops moved against Changchun, their mechanized units became precariously over-extended and bogged down, unable to penetrate Gen Biao’s