Roger Trinquier - Modern Warfare

Trinquier is a theorist on the style of warfare he called Modern Warfare, an "interlocking system of actions - political, economic, psychological, military - which aims at the overthrow of the established authority in a country and its replacement by another regime." (Modern Warfare, Ch. 2). He was critical of the traditional army's inability to adapt to this new kind of warfare. These tactics included the use of small and mobile commando teams, torture, the setting-up of self-defense forces recruited in the local population, and their forced relocation in camps, as well as psychological and educational operations.

Perhaps his most original contribution was his study and application of terrorism and torture as it related to this Modern Warfare. He argued that it was immoral to treat terrorists as criminals, and to hold them criminally liable for their acts. In his view terrorists should be treated as soldiers, albeit with the qualification that while they may attack civilian targets and wear no uniform, they also must be tortured for the very specific purpose of betraying their organization. Trinquier's criteria for torture was that the terrorist was to be asked only questions that related to the organization of his movement, that the interrogators must know what to ask, and that once the information is obtained the torture must stop and the terrorist is then treated as any other prisoner of war. (See Chapter 4 of Modern Warfare).

The French army applied Trinquier's tactics during the Algerian War. In the short run these tactics resulted in a decisive victory in the Battle of Algiers. These tactics were exposed by the press, with little or no effect at the time, as they were generally regarded as a necessary evil. In the longer term the debate on the tactics used, particularly torture, would re-emerge in the French press for decades to come (with the trial of Paul Aussaresses)

The US Army showed a strong interest in his experiences and theories when preparing the counterinsurgency warfare practiced by the US Green Berets in South Vietnam in the early 1960s and later in the Iraq war.