Asymmetric warfare

Asymmetric warfare (or asymmetric engagement) is war between belligerents whose relative military power differs significantly, or whose strategy or tactics differ significantly. This is typically a war between a standing, professional army and an insurgency or resistance movement.

Asymmetric warfare can describe a conflict in which the resources of two belligerents differ in essence and in the struggle, interact and attempt to exploit each other's characteristic weaknesses. Such struggles often involve strategies and tactics of unconventional warfare, the weaker combatants attempting to use strategy to offset deficiencies in quantity or quality.[1] Such strategies may not necessarily be militarized.[2] This is in contrast to symmetric warfare, where two powers have similar military power and resources and rely on tactics that are similar overall, differing only in details and execution.

The term is also frequently used to describe what is also called "guerrilla warfare", "insurgency", "terrorism", "counterinsurgency", and "counterterrorism", essentially violent conflict between a formal military and an informal, less equipped and supported, undermanned but resilient opponent. Asymmetric warfare is a form of irregular warfare.

Definition and differences

The popularity of the term dates from Andrew J. R. Mack's 1975 article "Why Big Nations Lose Small Wars" in World Politics, in which "asymmetric" referred simply to a significant disparity in power between opposing actors in a conflict. "Power," in this sense, is broadly understood to mean material power, such as a large army, sophisticated weapons, an advanced economy, and so on. Mack's analysis was largely ignored in its day, but the end of the Cold War sparked renewed interest among academics. By the late 1990s, new research building on Mack's insights was beginning to mature, and, after 2004, the U.S. military began once again seriously to consider the problems associated with asymmetric warfare.

Discussion since 2004 has been complicated by the tendency of academic and military communities to use the term in different ways, and by its close association with guerrilla warfare, insurgency, terrorism, counterinsurgency, and counterterrorism. Military authors tend to use the term "asymmetric" to refer to the indirect nature of the strategies many weak actors adopt, or even to the nature of the adversary itself (e.g., "asymmetric adversaries can be expected to ...") rather than to the correlation of forces.

Academic authors tend to focus on explaining two puzzles in asymmetric conflict. First, if "power" determines victory in conflict, then why would weaker actors decide to fight stronger actors? Key explanations include:

  1. Weaker actors may have secret weapons;[3]
  2. Weaker actors may have powerful allies;[3]
  3. Stronger actors are unable to make threats credible;[4]
  4. The demands of a stronger actor is extreme;[4]
  5. The weaker actor must consider its regional rivals when responding to threats from powerful actors[5]

Second, if "power", as conventionally understood, conduces to victory in war, then how is the victory of the "weak" over the "strong" explained? Key explanations include:

  1. Strategic interaction;
  2. Willingness of the weak to suffer more or bear higher costs;
  3. External support of weak actors;
  4. Reluctance to escalate violence on the part of strong actors;
  5. Internal group dynamics[6] and
  6. Inflated strong actor war aims.
  7. Evolution of asymmetric rivals' attitudes towards time[7]

Asymmetric conflicts include both interstate and civil wars, and over the past two hundred years have generally been won by strong actors. Since 1950, however, weak actors have won a majority of all asymmetric conflicts.[8]

Strategic basis

In most conventional warfare, the belligerents deploy forces of a similar type and the outcome can be predicted by the quantity of the opposing forces or by their quality, for example better command and control of their forces (c2). There are times where this is not true because the composition or strategy of the forces makes it impossible for either side to close in battle with the other. An example of this is the standoff between the continental land forces of the French army and the maritime forces of the United Kingdom's Royal Navy during the French Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars. In the words of Admiral Jervis during the campaigns of 1801, "I do not say, my Lords, that the French will not come. I say only they will not come by sea",[9] and a confrontation that Napoleon Bonaparte described as that between the elephant and the whale.[10]

Tactical basis

The tactical success of asymmetric warfare is dependent on at least some of the following assumptions:

Use of terrain

Terrain can be used as a force multiplier by the smaller force and as a force inhibitor against the larger force. Such terrain is called difficult terrain.

The contour of the land is an aid to the army; sizing up opponents to determine victory, assessing dangers and distance. "Those who do battle without knowing these will lose." ― Sun Tzu, The Art of War
The guerrillas must move amongst the people as a fish swims in the sea. ― Mao Zedong.

A good example of this type of strategy is the Battle of Thermopylae, where the narrow terrain of a defile was used to funnel the Persian forces, who were numerically superior, to a point where they could not use their size as an advantage.

An example of successful using of terrain is Nizari Ismaili state. The "state" was consisted of fortresses (such as the Alamut Castle) built on strategic hilltops and highlands which were too difficult to access, and surrounded by hostile territories. Instead of conventional military confrontation, the members of the state, known as the Assassins, developed tactics to eliminate high-value targets that pose threat to their security.

For a detailed description of the advantages for the weaker force in the use of built-up areas when engaging in asymmetric warfare, see the article on urban warfare.

Role of civilians

Civilians could play an important role in determining the outcome of an asymmetric war. In such conflicts, when it is easy for insurgents to quickly assimilate into the population after an attack, tips on timing or location of insurgent activity can greatly undermine the resistance. An information-centric framework,[11] in which civilians are seen primarily as sources of strategic information than resources, provides a paradigm to better understand the dynamics of such conflicts where civilian information-sharing is important. The framework assumes that:

  1. The consequential action of noncombatants (civilians) is information sharing, rather than supplying resources, recruits, or shelter to combatants.
  2. Information can be shared anonymously, without endangering the civilian who relays it.

Given the additional assumption that the larger or dominant force is the government, the framework suggests the following implications:

  1. Civilians receive services from both government and rebel force as an incentive to share valuable information.
  2. Rebel violence can be reduced if government provides services.
  3. Provision of security and services are complementary in reducing violence.
  4. Civilian casualties reduce civilian support to the perpetrating group.
  5. Provision of information is strongly correlated with the level of anonymity that can be ensured.

A survey of empirical literature on conflict,[11] does not provide conclusive evidence on the aforementioned claims. But the framework provides a starting point to further explore the role of civilian information sharing in asymmetric warfares.

War by proxy

Where asymmetric warfare is carried out (generally covertly) by allegedly non-governmental actors who are connected to or sympathetic to a particular nation's (the "state actor's") interest, it may be deemed war by proxy. This is typically done to give deniability to the state actor. The deniability can be important to keep the state actor from being tainted by the actions, to allow the state actor to negotiate in apparent good faith by claiming they are not responsible for the actions of parties who are merely sympathizers, or to avoid being accused of belligerent actions or war crimes. If proof emerges of the true extent of the state actor's involvement, this strategy can backfire; for example see Iran-contra and Philip Agee.

Asymmetric warfare and terrorism

There are two different viewpoints on the relationship between asymmetric warfare and terrorism. In the modern context, asymmetric warfare is increasingly considered a component of fourth generation warfare. When practiced outside the laws of war, it is often defined as terrorism, though rarely by its practitioners or their supporters.[12]

The other view is that asymmetric warfare does not coincide with terrorism. The use of terror by the much lesser Mongol forces in the creation and control of the Mongol empire could be viewed as asymmetric warfare. The other is the use of state terrorism by the superior Nazi forces in the Balkans, in an attempt to suppress the resistance movement.

Examples

American Revolutionary War

From its initiation, the American Revolutionary War was, necessarily, a showcase for asymmetric techniques. In the 1920s, Harold Murdock of Boston attempted to solve the puzzle of the first shots fired on Lexington Green, and came to the suspicion that the few score militia men who gathered before sunrise to await the arrival of hundreds of well-prepared British soldiers were sent specifically to provoke an incident which could be used for propaganda purposes.[13] The return of the British force to Boston following the search operations at Concord was subject to constant skirmishing, using partisan forces gathered from communities all along the route, making maximum use of the terrain (particularly trees and stone field walls) to overcome the limitations of their weapons- muskets with an effective range of only about 50–70 metres. Throughout the war, skirmishing tactics against British troops on the move continued to be a key factor in the Patriots' success; however, they may also have encouraged the occasional incidents, particularly in the later stages, where British troops used alleged surrender violations as a justification for killing large numbers of captives (e.g., Waxhaw and Groton Heights).

Another feature of the long march from Concord was the urban warfare technique of using buildings along the route as additional cover for snipers. When revolutionary forces forced their way into Norfolk, Virginia, and used waterfront buildings as cover for shots at British vessels out in the river, the response of destruction of those buildings was ingeniously used to the advantage of the rebels, who encouraged the spread of fire throughout the largely Loyalist town, and spread propaganda blaming it on the British. Shortly afterwards they destroyed the remaining houses, on the grounds that they might provide cover for British soldiers. On the subject of propaganda, it should be borne in mind that, contrary to the impression given in the popular American film The Patriot, British forces never adopted a popular response to partisan-style asymmetric warfare—retribution massacres of groups selected on a semi-random basis from the population at large.

The rebels also adopted a form of asymmetric sea warfare, by using small, fast vessels to avoid the Royal Navy, and capturing or sinking large numbers of merchant ships; however the British responded by issuing letters of marque permitting private armed vessels to undertake reciprocal attacks on enemy shipping. John Paul Jones became notorious in Britain for his expedition from France in the little sloop of war Ranger in April 1778, during which, in addition to his attacks on merchant shipping, he made two landings on British soil. The effect of these raids, particularly when coupled with his capture of the Royal Navy's HMS Drake—the first such success in British waters, but not Jones's last—was to force the British government to increase resources for coastal defence, and to create a climate of fear among the British public which was subsequently fed by press reports of his preparations for the 1779 Bonhomme Richard mission.

From 1776, the conflict turned increasingly into a proxy war on behalf of France, following a strategy proposed in the 1760s but initially resisted by the idealistic young King Louis XVI, who came to the throne at the age of 19 a few months before Lexington. France also encouraged proxy wars against the British in India, but ultimately drove Great Britain to the brink of defeat by entering the war(s) directly, on several fronts throughout the world.[14]

American Civil War

The American Civil War saw the rise of asymmetric warfare in the Border States, and in particular on the US Western Territorial Border after the Kansas-Nebraska Act of 1854 opened the territories to voting on the expansion of slavery beyond the Missouri Compromise lines. Political implications of this broken 1820s compromise were nothing less than the potential expansion of slavery all across the North American continent, including the northern reaches of the annexed Mexican territories to California and Oregon. So the stakes were high and it caused a flood of immigration to the border: some to grab land and expand slavery west, others to grab land and vote down the expansion of slavery. The pro-slavery land grabbers began asymmetric violent attacks against the more pacifist abolitionists who had settled Lawrence and other territorial towns for suppressing slavery. John Brown travelled to Osawatomie in the Kansas Territory expressly to foment retaliatory attacks back against the pro-slavery guerrillas who, by 1858, had twice ransacked both Lawrence and Osawatomie (where one of Brown's sons was shot dead).

The abolitionists would not return the attacks and Brown theorized that a violent spark set off on "the Border" would be a way to finally ignite his long hoped-for slave rebellion.[15] Brown had broad-sworded slave owners at Potawatomi Creek, so the bloody civilian violence was initially symmetrical; however, once the American Civil War ignited in 1861, and when the state of Missouri voted overwhelmingly not to secede from the Union, the pro-slavers on the MO-KS border were driven either south to Arkansas and Texas, or underground—where they became guerrilla fighters and "Bushwhackers" living in the brushy ravines throughout northwest Missouri across the (now) state line from Kansas. The bloody "Border War" lasted all during the Civil War (and long after with guerrilla partisans like the James brothers cynically robbing and murdering, aided and abetted by lingering lost-causers[16]). Tragically the Western Border War was an asymmetric war: pro-slavery guerrillas and paramilitary partisans on the pro-Confederate side attacking pro-Union townspeople and commissioned Union military units; with the Union army trying to keep both in check: blocking Kansans and pro-Union Missourians from organizing militarily against the marauding Bushwhackers.

The worst act of domestic terror in US history came in August 1863 when paramilitary guerrillas amassed 350 strong and rode all night 50 miles across eastern Kansas to the abolitionist stronghold of Lawrence (a political target) and destroyed the town, gunning down 150 civilians. The Confederate officer whose company had joined Quantrill's gang that day witnessed the civilian slaughter and forbade his soldiers from joining in the carnage. The commissioned officer refused to participate in Quantrill's asymmetric warfare on civilians.[17]

Philippine–American War

The Philippine–American War (1899–1902) was an armed conflict between the United States and Filipino revolutionaries. Estimates of the Filipino forces vary between 100,000 and 1,000,000, with tens of thousands of auxiliaries.[18] Lack of weapons and ammunition was a significant impediment to the Filipinos, so most of the forces were only armed with bolo knives, bows and arrows, spears and other primitive weapons that, in practice, proved vastly inferior to U.S. firepower.

Remnants of rifles used by Filipino soldiers during the War on display at Clark Museum.

The goal, or end-state, sought by the First Philippine Republic was a sovereign, independent, socially stable Philippines led by the ilustrado (intellectual) oligarchy.[19] Local chieftains, landowners, and businessmen were the principales who controlled local politics. The war was strongest when illustrados, principales, and peasants were unified in opposition to annexation.[19] The peasants, who provided the bulk of guerrilla manpower, had interests different from their illustrado leaders and the principales of their villages.[19] Coupled with the ethnic and geographic fragmentation, unity was a daunting task. The challenge for Aguinaldo and his generals was to sustain unified Filipino public opposition; this was the revolutionaries' strategic center of gravity.[19] The Filipino operational center of gravity was the ability to sustain its force of 100,000 irregulars in the field.[20] The Filipino general Francisco Macabulos described the Filipinos' war aim as, "not to vanquish the U.S. Army but to inflict on them constant losses." They initially sought to use conventional tactics and an increasing toll of U.S. casualties to contribute to McKinley's defeat in the 1900 presidential election.[20] Their hope was that as President the avowedly anti-imperialist future Secretary of state William Jennings Bryan would withdraw from the Philippines.[20] They pursued this short-term goal with guerrilla tactics better suited to a protracted struggle.[20] While targeting McKinley motivated the revolutionaries in the short term, his victory demoralized them and convinced many undecided Filipinos that the United States would not depart precipitously.[20] For most of 1899, the revolutionary leadership had viewed guerrilla warfare strategically only as a tactical option of final recourse, not as a means of operation which better suited their disadvantaged situation. On November 13, 1899, Emilio Aguinaldo decreed that guerrilla war would henceforth be the strategy. This made American occupation of the Philippine archipelago all the more difficult over the next few years. In fact, during just the first four months of the guerrilla war, the Americans had nearly 500 casualties. The Philippine Revolutionary Army began staging bloody ambushes and raids, such as the guerrilla victories at Paye, Catubig, Makahambus, Pulang Lupa, Balangiga and Mabitac. At first, it even seemed as if the Filipinos would fight the Americans to a stalemate and force them to withdraw. This was even considered by President McKinley at the beginning of the phase. The shift to guerrilla warfare drove the US Army to adopt counter-insurgency tactics. Civilians were given identification and forced into concentration camps with a publicly announced deadline after which all persons found outside of camps without identification would be shot on sight. Thousands of civilians died in these camps due to poor conditions.

20th century

Second Boer War

Asymmetric warfare featured prominently during the Second Boer War. After an initial phase, which was fought by both sides as a conventional war, the British captured Johannesburg, the Boers' largest city, and captured the capitals of the two Boer Republics. The British then expected the Boers to accept peace as dictated by the victors in the traditional European way. However instead of capitulating, the Boers fought a protracted guerrilla war. 20,000-30,000 Boer guerrillas were only defeated after the British brought to bear 450,000 troops, about ten times as many as were used in the conventional phase of the war. During this phase the British introduced internment in concentration camps for the Boer civilian population and also implemented a scorched earth policy. Later, the British began using blockhouses built within machine gun range of one another and flanked by barbed wire to slow the Boers' movement across the countryside and block paths to valuable targets. Such tactics eventually evolved into today's counter insurgency tactics.

The Boer commando raids deep into the Cape Colony, which were organized and commanded by Jan Smuts, resonated throughout the century as the British adopted and adapted the tactics first used against them by the Boers.

World War I

Between the World Wars

World War II

Britain
United States

After World War II

Cold War

The end of World War II established the two most powerful victors, the United States of America (USA, or just the United States) and the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR, or just the Soviet Union) as the two dominant world superpowers.

Cold War examples of proxy wars

In Southeast Asia, specifically Vietnam, the Viet Minh, NLF and other insurgencies engaged in asymmetrical guerrilla warfare with France, at first, then, later, the United States during the period of the Vietnam War.

Likewise, the war between the mujahideen and the Red Army during the Soviet war in Afghanistan has been claimed as the source of the term "asymmetric warfare",[21] although this war occurred years after Mack wrote of "asymmetric conflict," it is notable that the term became well known in the West only in the 1990s.[22] The aid given by the U.S. to the mujahadeen during the war was only covert at the tactical level, the Reagan Administration told the world that it was helping the "freedom-loving people of Afghanistan". This proxy war was aided by many countries including the USA against the USSR during the Cold War. It was considered cost effective and politically successful,[23] as it was a drain on the resources and manpower of the USSR and turned out to be a contributing factor to its collapse in 1991.

21st century

Israel/Palestine

The ongoing battle between the Israelis and some Palestinian organizations (such as Hamas and Islamic Jihad) is a classic case of asymmetric warfare. Israel has a powerful army, air force and navy, while the Palestinian organisations have no access to large-scale military equipment with which to conduct operations; instead, they utilize asymmetric tactics, such as: small gunfights, cross-border sniping, rocket attacks,[24] and suicide bombing.[25]

Sri Lanka

The Sri Lankan Civil War, which raged on and off from 1983 to 2009, between the Sri Lankan government and the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) saw large-scale asymmetric warfare. The war started as an insurgency and progressed to a large-scale conflict with the mixture of guerrilla and conventional warfare. The LTTE used of suicide bombing and with the use of male/female & child suicide bombers both on and off battlefield mainly targeting innocent civilians; use of explosive-filled boats for suicide attacks on military shipping; use of light aircraft targeting military installations.

Kashmir

Pakistan claims territorial rights to the region of Kashmir owned by India and vice versa, where both sides have engaged in proxy wars on numerous occasions.

Iraq

The victory by the US-led coalition forces in the 1991 Persian Gulf War and the 2003 invasion of Iraq, demonstrated that training, tactics and technology can provide overwhelming victories in the field of battle during modern conventional warfare. After Saddam Hussein's regime was removed from power, the Iraq campaign moved into a different type of asymmetric warfare where the coalition's use of superior conventional warfare training, tactics and technology was of much less use against continued opposition from the various partisan groups operating inside Iraq.

Syria

Much of the 2012–2017 Syrian civil war has been fought asymmetrically. The Syrian National Coalition along with the Mujahideen and Kurdish Democratic Union Party, have been engaging with the forces of the Syrian government through asymmetric means. The conflict has seen large-scale asymmetric warfare across the country, with the forces opposed to the government unable to engage symmetrically with the Syrian government and have to resort to other asymmetric tactics such as suicide bombings[26][27] and targeted assassinations.

See also

References

  1. ↑ Tomes, Robert (Spring 2004). "Relearning Counterinsurgency Warfare" (PDF). Parameters. US Army War College. Archived from the original (PDF) on 7 June 2010.
  2. ↑ Stepanova, E. 2008 Terrorism in asymmetrical conflict: SIPRI Report 23 (PDF). Oxford Univ. Press. Retrieved 2016-03-19.
  3. 1 2 Paul, Thazha Varkey (1994). Asymmetric conflicts: war initiation by weaker powers. New York, NY: Cambridge University Press. ISBN 9780521466219.
  4. 1 2 Allen, Michael A.; Fordham, Benjamin O. (2011). "From Melos to Baghdad: Explaining Resistance to Militarized Challenges from More Powerful States". International Studies Quarterly. 4 (55): 1025–1045. doi:10.1111/j.1468-2478.2011.00680.x.
  5. ↑ Allen, Michael A.; Bell, Sam R.; Clay, K. Chad (2016). "Deadly Triangles: The Implications of Regional Competition on Interactions in Asymmetric Dyads". Foreign Policy Analysis.
  6. ↑ Zhao; et al. (2 October 2009). "Anomalously Slow Attrition Times for Asymmetric Populations with Internal Group Dynamics". Physical Review Letters. APS. 103 (14): 148701. Bibcode:2009PhRvL.103n8701Z. PMID 19905607. arXiv:0910.1622 Freely accessible. doi:10.1103/PhysRevLett.103.148701.
  7. ↑ Resnick, Uri (2013). Dynamics of Asymmetric Territorial Conflict: the evolution of patience. Basingstoke, UK: Palgrave-Macmillan. p. 287. ISBN 978-1-137-30398-1.
  8. ↑ Arreguín-Toft, Ivan. "How the weak win wars - A theory of asymmetric conflict" (PDF). Retrieved 17 September 2012.
  9. ↑ Andidora, Ronald (2000). Iron Admirals: Naval Leadership in the Twentieth Century. Greenwood Publishing Group. p. 3. ISBN 0-313-31266-4. Retrieved 2016-03-19.
  10. ↑ Nicolson, Adam (2005). Men of Honor: Trafalgar and the making of the English Hero. HarperCollins. p. 73. ISBN 0-00-719209-6.
  11. 1 2 Berman, Eli; Matanock, Aila M. (2015-05-11). "The Empiricists' Insurgency". http://dx.doi.org/10.1146/annurev-polisci-082312-124553. doi:10.1146/annurev-polisci-082312-124553. Retrieved 2017-04-10. External link in |website= (help)
  12. ↑ Reshaping the military for asymmetric warfare Center for Defense Information Archived copy at the Library of Congress (July 7, 2012).
  13. ↑ "Harold Murdock’s “The Nineteenth Of April 1775”". Retrieved 5 August 2015.
  14. ↑ Bicheno, Hugh (2003). Rebels & Redcoats. London: HarperCollins. ISBN 0-00-715625-1.
  15. ↑ Rapley, Rob (Writer, Producer, Director) (2012). "The Abolitionists". The American Experience. Season 24. Episode 9, 10, 11. Transcript. PBS. Retrieved 2016-03-19.
  16. ↑ T.J. Stiles, "Jesse James: Last Rebel of the Civil War", 2002
  17. ↑ Border War Sesquicentennial proceedings at Lawrence, Kan., August 2013
  18. ↑ Deady 2005, p. 55
  19. 1 2 3 4 Deady 2005, p. 57
  20. 1 2 3 4 5 Deady 2005, p. 58
  21. ↑ Chris Bray, The Media and GI Joe, in Reason (Feb 2002)
  22. ↑ Oxford English Dictionary
  23. ↑ Anonymous (Michael Scheuer), Imperial Hubris - Why the West is Losing the War on Terrorism, Washington DC, Brassey's (2004) ISBN 1-57488-849-8, Chap. 2
  24. ↑ "Hamas claims responsibility for attack". 6 May 2009. Retrieved 2009-05-06.
  25. ↑ McCarthy, Rory (1 January 2008). "Death toll in Arab-Israeli conflict fell in 2007". London: The Guardian. Retrieved 2008-02-18.
  26. ↑ "Several killed in Syria car bombings". BBC News. 5 November 2012.
  27. ↑ "Syrian rebels emboldened after assassinations". CBS News. 19 July 2012.

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