How the Weak Win Wars? A Theory of Asymmetric Conflict

Ivan Arreguín-Toft

No one had given Muhammad Ali a chance against George Foreman in the World heavyweight Championship fight of October 30, 1974. Foreman, none of whose opponents had lasted more than three rounds in the ring, was the strongest, hardest hitting boxer of his generation. Ali, though not as powerful as Foreman, had a slightly faster punch and was lighter on his feet. In the weeks leading up to the fight, however, Foreman had practiced against nimble sparring partners. He was ready. But when the bell rang just after 4:00 a.m. in Kinshasa, something completely unexpected happened. In round two, instead of moving into the ring to meet Foreman, Ali appeared to cower against the ropes. Foreman, now confident of victory, pounded him again and again, while Ali whispered hoarse taunts: “George, you’re not hittin’,”  “George, you disappoint me.”  Foreman lost his temper, and his punches became a furious blur. To spectators, unaware that the elastic ring ropes were absorbing much of the force of Foreman’s blows, it looked as if Ali would surely fall. By the fifth round, however, Foreman was worn out. And in round eight, as stunned commentators and a delirious crowd looked on, Muhammad Ali knocked George Foreman to the canvas, and the fight was over.

This fight illustrates an important yet relatively unexplored feature of interstate conflict: how a weak actor’s strategy can make a strong actor’s power irrelevant. If power implies victory in war, then weak actors should almost never win against stronger opponents, especially when the gap in relative power is very large. Yet history suggests otherwise: Weak actors sometimes do win. The question is how.

Read more: How the Weak Win Wars? A Theory of Asymmetric Conflict

Unconventional Deterrence Strategy

Mindaugas Rekasius
Naval Postgraduate School 
June 2005

ABSTRACT 

This thesis examines a largely unexplored area of deterrence theory – unconventional deterrence. Unconventional deterrence is defined herein as “persuading the opponent not to attack, via threats of unconventional warfare, such as guerrilla resistance and terrorism.” It treats terrorism as a punishment strategy, through which the one deterring threatens to punish the aggressor’s population. Guerrilla warfare is a denial strategy, through which the one deterring threatens to protract a war and deny the aggressor his political objectives. This study questions the underlying hypothesis of deterrence theory which says that the balance of the opponents’ military capabilities is the basic determinant of successful deterrence. Rather, the hypothesis here is that the deterrer may deter the aggressor from attacking by adopting a strategy that makes the aggressor’s military superiority irrelevant. The present thesis focuses primarily on relatively weak states. Unconventional deterrence is explored as a means for a weaker state to deter a considerably stronger opponent.

This thesis discusses the requirements for successful deterrence, and the peculiarities of unconventional deterrence. As well, the dynamics of small wars are explored in order to unfold a paradoxical phenomenon: the possibility of an underdog’s victory in war.  Two  case  studies:  (1) the  Vietnam  War  of  1964-73 and (2)  the Afghanistan War of 1979-89 – are explored as examples of the weak denying the strong their objectives.

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The Invasion of Iraq: A Balance Sheet

by Brian Michael Jenkins March 22, 2013 in RAND

Historically, wars were fought primarily for material gain: livestock, treasure, tribute, or territory. More recently, however, the profit motive for war has declined as life has become more precious and conquest and plunder have become less acceptable, although conflicts waged for control of diamonds and other precious commodities continue in parts of the world. International law generally prohibits military action by one state against another except for reasons of self-defense. In modern warfare, “gains” must be measured in less-tangible forms, such as preserving national security, liberating threatened populations from tyranny, protecting human rights. Military action to achieve such ends is considered unavoidable and is rarely assessed as an investment.

The invasion of Iraq was a war of choice, however, and therefore should be assessed in terms of costs and benefits. Neither the United States nor its allies had been attacked by Iraq, and there was no evidence that any attack was imminent. Saddam Hussein was a brutal tyrant, and his regime was an affront to human rights, but the country had suffered under his rule for many years. Iraq's liberation was not the reason for going to war. The official purpose of the invasion was to remove any threat posed by Iraq's presumed arsenal of weapons of mass destruction. Regime change was a consequence, not a cause. And although Iraq's citizens are freer now, they are by no means more pro-American.

Six steps to fix a broken Mali

By Greg Mann

 

Posted on March 18, 2013 in Bridges from Bamako

 

It’s too soon to declare Operation Serval a success, and there are already concerns about its eventual end, but the French-led military intervention in Mali has at least brought the country back from the brink of disaster, and opened up a space in which Malians can finally begin to chart a way forward for their nation. If I were advising the people who hold Mali’s fate in their hands — not only Mali’s interim president, but members of influential donor governments in North America and Europe — here’s what I’d recommend: six steps to reform the Malian state, settle conflicts and restore stability.

Afghanistan: Green on Blue Attacks Are Only a Small Part of the Problem

During the last few weeks, coverage of the Afghan War has focused on ‘green on blue attacks’ - the killings of U.S. and other International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) soldiers by members of the Afghan security services. This is part of a natural tendency to ride the headlines, but the coverage has often been misleading, and it reflects a persistent failure to address the far broader range of problems emerging in the war and the needs for major changes in virtually every aspect of the way it is fought.

Read more: http://csis.org/publication/afghanistan-green-on-blue-attacks-are-only-small-part%20of-proble

Great debate on military reform!

Great debate on military reform!

Here is a two and 2/3 hours of greatest debate I have ever heard on military affairs. It is on what is actually important in building a force to be able to win wars. I strongly recommend watching it to all military and military related people – makes you think and understand the priorities in creating the really successful defense of any State.

You will see Colonel John Boyd, Senator Gary Hart etc in front of the House Committee Armed Services in 1991. I can promise that the time will be well spent.

Some keywords: personnel policy, military education, doctrines, bureaucracy, high tech, maneuver warfare, Gulf War.

Credit goes to Major Donald Vandergriff (U.S.) for appointing it out. Thanks Don!

See the video: http://www.c-spanvideo.org/program/AfterO

Petraeus’s Last Stand?

Petraeus’s Last Stand?

February 24, 2011 by Don Vandergriff

The author of this important report in Politics Daily (also attached below), Dave Wood, is a very experienced combat reporter and one of the very best US reporters covering Afghanistan. (Truth in advertising: I have known and admired Dave for 25 years.) Wood has produced an an excellent, if grim, Afghan SITREP that is well worth studying carefully, including its hotlinks.

I think it would be a mistake to conclude that the situation being in a kind a balance, because we are in a strategic stalemate, however. While it is probably true we are in a strategic stalemate in the strictest sense of term ‘strategic,’ every year the Taliban is able to maintain its menacing posture gives the insurgents additional leverage at the far more decisive grand-strategic level of conflict: To wit, ask yourself if any of the following five trends (which are inversions of the five criteria defining a successful grand strategy) is way out of line:

(1) Polls tell us that the political will at home to continue this war is slowing deteriorating;

(2) our allies are also going wobbly and some have already pulled the plug;

(3) uncommitted countries are not being attracted to our cause and our warlike activities are alienating many in the Muslim world;

(4) the insurgents’ will to resist shows no sign of weakening; and

(5) no one the US government has a clue how to end this conflict on favorable terms for the United States that do not sow the seeds of future conflict in the region, or with Islam.

The Afghan insurgents may not understand grand strategy in these terms, but they understand instinctively that they can outlast invaders, because they believe they have done it before to Alexander the Great, the British at the height of their imperial power, and the Soviets. Is there anyone who not think the insurgents’ moral is being boosted by the prospect of outlasting the Americans?

A simple grand-strategic analysis reveals that time is clearly on the Taliban’s side and to assume that battle hardened leaders of the Taliban do not understand this is just a tad optimistic, to put it charitably. In fact, the breakdown of President Obama’s strategic review last December, which devolved into a dispute over when to leave, simply reinforced the obvious.

Chuck Spinney

Read more: http://donvandergriff.wordpress.com/2011/02/24/petraeuss-last-stand/

Thinking Critically about COIN and Creatively about Strategy and War: An Interview with Colonel Gian Gentile

Thinking Critically about COIN and Creatively about Strategy and War: An Interview with Colonel Gian Gentile

Octavian Manea

That has been the whole problem with the COIN narrative that developed at least in US Army circles since the end of the Vietnam War. It was, and is, premised on the idea that the Vietnam War could have been won by better counterinsurgency tactics and operations.

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When General David Petraeus talks of the “right inputs finally being in place” he betrays a deep seated adherence to the COIN narrative that better generals and reinvented armies can rescue failed strategy and policy. Unfortunately, upon inspection history demolishes this myth.

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The warning it should provide is that you should never think that improved tactics, whether it is a conventional or a counterinsurgency war, can rescue a failed strategy or policy. Sun Tzu offers one of the most profound statements on the relationship between tactics and strategy: Strategy without tactics is the slow road to victory, but tactics without strategy is the noise before defeat. Another historical example comes to mind. The German army up to a certain point in WWII was arguably one of the finest tactically fighting armies in history. But it lost. The warning is to be careful how much faith you place in the idea that better tactics can save a failed strategy or policy

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By the way, have we lost Clausewitz in Afghanistan? Because it seems to me that General Petraeus designed a highly integrated comprehensive approach in Afghanistan, one in which economical, civil and military resources are all put in the service of a unified political purpose. All of these things were put together in a sophisticated integrated operational approach which essentially is boiling down to a nation building at the barrel of the gun. Can it work? Sure. But it is not going to take a few years, but multiple years, decades. If one looks to history in the modern world when has a foreign occupying country been successful in this kind of nation building endeavor or operation in a similar context that you have in Afghanistan? I keep using the metaphor of a box - the methods, tactics and techniques of nation building that have come to eclipse consideration of strategy and policy. But if you step out of the box of the tactics and operations of counterinsurgency (which it seems that many folks are locked into) and view things from the level of strategy and say, ok maybe COIN can work in Afghanistan, but it is going to take a very long time that will require a huge commitment of American blood and treasure. Then strategy demands to ask the question of this war relative to what the policy objective given to the military by President Obama is for Afghanistan. And the policy objective, the political objective that was given to the American military by President Obama is actually quite limited. Disrupt, dismantle and defeat Al Qaeda from using Afghanistan as a base for attacks. Our strategy seems to me out of sorts because we have a maximalist tactical approach to achieve a rather minimalist political objective.

Galula, Thompson and Kitson defined the center of gravity in a COIN campaign as being “the people”. Protecting and controlling the people became also the main emphasis of FM 3-24. Could we find an alternative center of gravity in a COIN campaign?

Absolutely. Let's go back to Clausewitz. He said that the center of gravity is something to be discovered. The problem with FM 3-24 is that it has taken a center of gravity which could; in theory, looking at the strategy, based on the political objective, and judging the alternatives; be the population. But it doesn't have to be. Let me repeat, IT DOESN’T HAVE TO BE. When we make by rule the population as the center of gravity for any counterinsurgency, well, we have just allowed the tactics of population centric COIN to eclipse strategy. We are trapped therefore in the tactics of population centric counterinsurgency. To prove how much the American Army has become locked down by this rule just peruse the issues of the journal Military Review for 2010 and see how much we have accepted the rule that in ANY counterinsurgency the population is the prize, or the center of gravity. This supreme dogmatism seems to me to preside over the death of strategy. When you say that the population is the center of gravity then you derive a certain set of operational methods. And that is Galula: dispersion of troops, as many troops you can get, live out amongst population, do clear hold and build, protect them, inject energy and resources thus trying to win the population over to your side. The problem is that when you make by rule that the population is the center of gravity in any COIN then you have no more strategy since you have excluded other options or alternatives for dealing with the instability or insurgency.

Why are the core principles of the population-centric technology contestable? After all, they are grounded in historical experiences and validated by the history of COIN campaigns-as the best practices in field. They passed the empirical test in Algeria and Malaya.

They didn’t pass Algeria because the French lost. It’s not that you want to devalue the point of not studying them at all - the tactical and operational activity. No. But one must be careful about how far you go with elevating the importance of tactics and operations when France looses a war like in Algeria. And then with Malaya? No. This has been the construction of the counterinsurgency narrative that is premised in a key way on what people think that British did in Malaya and the notion that the British, once they put a better General, Gerald Templer, in command in February 1952, and then he turned his army on a dime and starting doing population centric counterinsurgency correctly (hearts and minds), they focused on population protection, injecting energy and resources and persuasion to bring people over to the government side which in the end, as this story goes, broke the back of the communist insurgents. No. It is wrong. It is not supported by current scholarship or supported by the historical record. In fact the Malayan communist insurgency was broken before even General Templer took command. And it was broken by large scale resettlement of the Malayan Chinese population that severed their physical link with the communist insurgents. So yes the British did win at counterinsurgency in Malaya, but they didn’t win through a population centric hearts and minds counterinsurgency.

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The idea that hearts and minds have been won by foreign occupying powers in modern counterinsurgency war is just simply hokum.

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So I don't buy at all the whole surge triumph narrative, based on a flawed understanding of Vietnam and an equal misunderstanding of Malaya, that the American Army fumbled in Iraq from 2003-2006 but was rescued in 2007 by a better General who armed his army with a new method of COIN (codified in FM 3-24), the American Army was thus reinvented and because of what it did differently that is what produced a lowering of violence in the summer of 2007. No.

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Personally, I think that it should be organized and optimized around the principles of firepower, protection and mobility and not around the principles of nation building, stability operations and counterinsurgency. If you have an army optimized for combined arms warfare it still can do other kinds of missions. However, if you optimize an army to do nation building and small wars it becomes much more problematic to step into the direction of doing fighting at the high end of the spectrum. History shows that this tends to be the case: look at the Israelis in Lebanon in 2006, South Vietnamese Army between 1973 and 1975, and the British Army in the second Boer War. These were all armies that became predominantly focused on counterinsurgencies and small wars and when confronted with a foe that fought them in a sophisticated way they had problems and they paid a heavy price.

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We should absolutely retain the lessons, the experience, the institutional knowledge that we have gained in the last eight or nine years of operations. But we should be aware of one key lesson: we should get beyond tactics and not place our faith in the idea that improvements in techniques and methods will somehow make the problem of strategy go away. It’s just doesn’t work that way. Nor should we think that Iraq and Afghanistan define the face of future war.

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Does the American Army today know how to plan and execute a population centric coin (nation building) campaign? Of course it does. But does it have the capability to plan and execute a movement to contact into Pakistan to secure lose nuclear weapons, or to conduct a strategic raid with ground forces into Yemen to punish tribes associated with al Qaeda, or to conduct an extensive occupation of North Korea after it collapses which will require a good deal of fighting recalcitrant North Korean infantry dug in along the way?

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Read more: http://smallwarsjournal.com/blog/journal/docs-temp/625-manea.pdf

Hybrid Warfare and Challenges

Hybrid Warfare and Challenges

Frank G. Hoffman

In his classic history, Thucydides detailed the savage 27-year conflict between Sparta and Athens. Sparta was the overwhelming land power of its day, and its hoplites were drilled to perfection. The Athenians, led by Pericles, were the supreme maritime power, supported by a walled capital, a fleet of powerful triremes, and tributary allies.

The Spartan leader, Archidamius, warned his kinsmen about Athens’ relative power, but the Spartans and their supporters would not heed their king. In 431 BCE, the Spartans marched through Attica and ravaged the Athenian country estates and surrounding farms. They encamped and awaited the Athenian heralds and army for what they hoped would be a decisive battle and a short war.

The scarlet-clad Spartans learned the first lesson of military history—the enemy gets a vote. The Athenians elected to remain behind their walls and fight a protracted campaign that played to their strengths and worked against their enemies.  Thucydides’ ponderous tome on the carnage of the Peloponnesian War is an extended history of the operational adaptation of each side as they strove to gain a sustainable advantage over their enemy. These key lessons are, as he intended, a valuable “possession for all time.”

The Second Lebanon War, 2006

In many details, the amorphous Hizballah is representative of the rising hybrid threat. The 34-day battle in southern Lebanon revealed some weaknesses in the posture of the Israel Defense Forces (IDF)—but it has implications for American defense planners, too. Mixing an organized political movement with decentralized cells employing adaptive tactics in ungoverned zones, Hizballah showed that it could inflict as well as take punishment. Its highly disciplined, well-trained distributed cells contested ground against a modern conventional force using an admixture of guerrilla tactics and technology in densely packed urban centers. Hizballah, like Islamic extremist defenders in the battles in Fallujah in Iraq during April and November of 2004, skillfully exploited the urban terrain to create ambushes and evade detection and to hold strong defensive fortifications in close proximity to noncombatants.

In the field, Israeli troops grudgingly admitted that the Hizballah defenders were tenacious and skilled. The organized resistance was several orders of magnitude more difficult than counterterrorism operations in the West Bank and Gaza Strip. More importantly, the degree of training, fire discipline, and lethal technology demonstrated by Hizballah were much higher.

Tactical combinations and novel applications of technology by the defenders were noteworthy. In particular, the antitank guided missile systems employed by Hizballah against IDF armor and defensive positions, coupled with decentralized tactics, were a surprise. At the battle of Wadi Salouqi, a column of Israeli tanks was stopped in its tracks with telling precision. Hizballah’s antitank weapons include the Russian-made RPG–29, Russian AT–13 Metis, and AT–14 Kornet, which has a range of 3 miles. The IDF found the AT–13 and AT–14 formidable against their first line Merkava Mark IV tank. A total of 18 Merkavas were damaged, and it is estimated that antitank guided missiles accounted for 40 percent of IDF fatalities. Here we see the blurring of conventional systems with irregular forces and nontraditional tactics.

Hizballah even managed to launch a few armed unmanned aerial vehicles, which required the IDF to adapt in order to detect them. These included either the Iranian Mirsad-1 or Ababil-3 Swallow. These concerned Israeli strategists given their global positioning system– based navigational system, 450-kilometer range, and 50-kilogram explosive carrying capacity. There is evidence that Hizballah invested in signals intelligence and monitored IDF cell phone calls for some time, as well as unconfirmed reports that they managed to decrypt IDF radio traffic. The defenders also seemed to have advanced surveillance systems and very advanced night vision equipment. Hizballah’s use of C802 antiship cruise missiles against an Israeli missile ship represents another sample of what “hybrid warfare” might look like, which is certainly relevant to naval analysts as well.

Perhaps Hizballah’s unique capability is its inventory of 14,000 rockets. Many of these are relatively inaccurate older models, but thanks to Iranian or Syrian support, they possess a number of missile systems that can reach deep into Israel. They were used both to terrorize the civilian population and to attack Israel’s military infrastructure. Hizballah managed to fire over 4,100 rockets into Israel between July 12 and August 13, culminating with 250 rockets on the final day, the highest total of the war. Most of these were short range and inaccurate, but they achieved strategic effects both in the physical domain, by forcing Israel to evacuate tens of thousands of citizens, and in the media, by demonstrating their ability to lash back at the region’s most potent military.

Ralph Peters, who visited Lebanon during the fighting, observed that Hizballah displayed impressive flexibility, relying on the ability of cellular units to combine rapidly for specific operations or, when cut off, to operate independently after falling in on prepositioned stockpiles of weapons and ammunition. Hizballah’s combat cells were a hybrid of guerrillas and regular troops—a form of opponent that U.S. forces are apt to encounter with increasing frequency.

Compound Wars

Historians have noted that many if not most wars are characterized by both regular and irregular operations. When a significant degree of strategic coordination between separate regular and irregular forces in conflicts occurs, they can be considered “compound wars.” Compound wars are those major wars that had significant regular and irregular components fighting simultaneously under unified direction. The complementary effects of compound warfare are generated by its ability to exploit the advantages of each kind of force and increase the nature of the threat posed by each kind of force. The irregular force attacks weak areas, compelling a conventional opponent to disperse his security forces. The conventional force generally induces the adversary to concentrate for defense or to achieve critical mass for decisive offensive operations.

One can see this in the American Revolution, when George Washington’s more conventional troops stood as a force in being for much of the war, while the South Carolina campaign was characterized by militia and some irregular combat. The Napoleonic era is frequently viewed in terms of its massive armies marching back and forth across Europe. But the French invasion of Spain turned into a quagmire, with British regulars contesting Napoleon’s control of the major cities, while the Spanish guerrillas successfully harassed his lines of communication. Here again, strategic coordination was achieved, but overall in different battlespaces.

Likewise, the American Civil War is framed by famous battles at Chancellorsville, Gettysburg, Vicksburg, and Antietam. Yet partisan warfare and famous units like John Mosby’s 43d Virginia Cavalry provided less conventional capabilities as an economy of force operation. T.E. Lawrence’s role as an advisor to the Arab revolt against the Ottomans is another classic case of compound war, which materially assisted General Edmund Allenby’s thrusts with the British Expeditionary Force against Jerusalem and Damascus. But here again, Lawrence’s raiders did not fight alongside the British; they were strategically directed by the British and supplied with advisors, arms, and gold only. Vietnam is another classic case of the strategic synergy created by compound wars, posing the irregular tactics of the Viet Cong with the more conventional capabilities of the North Vietnamese army. The ambiguity between conventional and unconventional approaches vexed military planners for several years. Even long afterward, Americans debated what kind of war they actually fought and lost.

Hybrid Wars

As difficult as compound wars have been, the operational fusion of conventional and irregular capabilities in hybrid conflicts may be even more complicated. Compound wars offered synergy and combinations at the strategic level, but not the complexity, fusion, and simultaneity we anticipate at the operational and even tactical levels in wars where one or both sides is blending and fusing the full range of methods and modes of conflict into the battlespace. Irregular forces in cases of compound wars operated largely as a distraction or economy of force measure in a separate theater or adjacent operating area including the rear echelon. Because it is based on operationally separate forces, the compound concept did not capture the merger or blurring modes of war identified in past case studies such as Hizballah in the second Lebanon war of 2006 or future projections.

Thus, the future does not portend a suite of distinct challengers into separate boxes of a matrix chart. Traditional conflict will still pose the most dangerous form of human conflict, especially in scale. With increasing probability, however, we will face adversaries who blur and blend the different methods or modes of warfare. The most distinctive change in the character of modern war is the blurred or blended nature of combat. We do not face a widening number of distinct challenges but their convergence into hybrid wars.

These hybrid wars blend the lethality of state conflict with the fanatical and protracted fervor of irregular warfare. In such conflicts, future adversaries (states, state-sponsored groups, or self-funded actors) will exploit access to modern military capabilities, including encrypted command systems, man-portable air-to-surface missiles, and other modern lethal systems, as well as promote protracted insurgencies that employ ambushes, improvised explosive devices (IEDs), and coercive assassinations. This could include states blending high-tech capabilities such as antisatellite weapons with terrorism and cyber warfare directed against financial targets.

Implications

The rise of hybrid warfare does not represent the end of traditional or conventional warfare. But it does present a complicating factor for defense planning in the 21st century. The implications could be significant. John Arquilla of the Naval Postgraduate School has noted, “While history provides some useful examples to stimulate strategic thought about such problems, coping with networks that can fight in so many different ways—sparking myriad, hybrid forms of conflict—is going to require some innovative thinking.”

Tomorrow’s conflicts will not be easily categorized into conventional or irregular. The emerging character of conflict is more complicated than that. A binary choice of big and conventional versus small or irregular is too simplistic. The United States cannot imagine all future threats as state-based and completely conventional, nor should it assume that state-based conflict has passed into history’s dustbin. Many have made that mistake before. State-based conflict is less likely, but it is not extinct. But neither should we assume that all state-based warfare will be entirely conventional. As this article suggests, the future poses combinations and mergers of the various methods available to our antagonists. Numerous security analysts have acknowledged the blurring of lines between modes of war. Hybrid challengers have passed from a concept to a reality, thanks to Hizballah.

Read more: http://smallwarsjournal.com/documents/jfqhoffman.pdf