Much of modern guerrilla warfare is attributed to
Che Guevara, who formed his vision of the strategy and the
tactics required during the leadup to the Cuban Revolution. This does not mean to imply that Che invented the concept; many of the
tenets of
guerrilla resistance or
insurgency are to be found, fully formed, in such ancient texts as Master
Sun Tzu's
The Art of War or
Miyamoto Musashi's
The Five Rings.
One minor quibble with yaar's writeup above concerning Vietnam's American War - while the strategy of guerrilla warfare was indeed one of survival for the Viet Cong, it should not be contrasted with a strategy for victory - the two were one and the same. As Ho Chi Minh is credited with saying, "to defeat the American we must cling to his belt buckle." The close-in fighting and concealment weren't just to avoid destruction, but to neutralize the American advantages in technology, materièl and firepower.