Why ask about the "warfare?"
Clausewitz warned that it was extremely important to understand the "nature of the war" in that it was the "setting forth of policy." Therefore I submit that the nature of IW is defined by the nature of the Policy. It's the WHY, not the HOW or the WHO.
Personally I've totally rejected the idea of IW/RW and Small v Big War. It's not a useful distinction and responsible for much of the current confusion and avant garde BS that surrounds it.
So, in pursuit of a bottle of whiskey...
"IW is a grossly simplified way of explaining that some forms of conflict fall out side regular armies comfort zone, because of a lack of education and training."
It pains me to do this Bill, but in order to
keep you away from demon alcohol and a descent into debauchery, I gotta vote for Wilf's definition:
Quote:
"IW is a grossly simplified way of explaining that some forms of conflict fall out side regular armies comfort zone, because of a lack of education and training."
With a note that I still think the DoD version is acceptable; simply that if there must be a change, Wilf has come up with the most accurate suggestion to date. Now, if you can top that, I can change my vote... ;)
(Not that anyone pays any attention to my votes... :D )
Make it as simple as you can, but not simplier
The ongoing debate over the definition of IW and what it means to the military and the whole of government is creating much confusion, but that confusion is valuable and the debate is long overdue. Unfortunately IW will not lend itself to a simple definition due to its complexity and many shades of gray. Keep in mind that ultimately we're attempting to fix real problems based on our performance in numerous IW environments.
Many in my Special Forces community think we already have the doctrine required in our wealth of unconventional warfare and foreign internal defense doctrine. Yet we have proven time and time again that the existing doctrine is insufficient in many regards. First, it is only intended for Special Forces, and not the Army or Joint community. Since any type of UW or FID operation will fall under the command and control of Geographic Combatant Commander GCC, it is clear that joint doctrine is needed (note, Joint doctrine for FID exists) for SF to be successful. Without it, we'll continue to hear we could have done better if higher knew what they were doing. Second, the current UW doctrine is largely focused at the tactical and operational level in support of a main conventional force effort. A recent article posted to the SWJ titled "Irregular Warfare: Everything yet Nothing" argued that our old UW doctrine said UW activities were focused against the enemy's military, not a civilian populace as stated in the IW definition. What they failed to address was the context that the doctrine was developed in. It was written post WWII to address the Soviet threat. The U.S. vision of UW then was uising it to collect intelligence and to disrupt Soviet military activities in the Soviet occupied areas in case of WWIII. It was UW in support of a conventional war, thus the tactical/operational focus. On the other hand, Mao and many others used UW as a strategic instrument, and the primary focus was on influencing various population groups as stated in our current IW definition. Of course they still had to defeat the hostile military force, but maintaining the support of the populace is what enabled them to defeat the hostile military forces. Therefore, the first and foremost objective was maintaining that support base.
The argument is further blurred when it is argued that conventional or regular warfare is easy (or easier than IW) because the focus is on defeating the enemy's capacity to wage war, which we generally assume to be their conventional military forces. I can't think of one conventional war where our politicians, thus our military strategists, didn't have to focus on maintaining or winning the support of different population groups, so that requirement is hardly unique to IW.
To further muddy the waters about unconventional, irregular, and conventional warfare, the DoD dictionary defines unconventional weapons as chemical, biological and nuclear weapons. If we decided to drop a nuclear weapon on one of our enemies' cities to convince their population to cease supporting their government, is that conventional, unconventional or irregular warfare? Gaining influence over a specific populace can definitely be achieved with coercion; the terrorists prove this again and again.
Who is the "irregular"? General purpose forces cut off from their units can conduct guerrilla warfare, are they irregulars? If Special Forces are supporting an insurgency in another country are those SF soldiers considered irregulars? The character of the war (to some extent) would be same whether the insurgent is a non-state warrior or a Soldier. That implies we still would have use COIN/FID to counter the threat.
There are numerous shades of gray not discussed here, and while debating them over beer may be fun, we just may have to accept the fact that there is no perfect definition. In the long run what is important is that we address our shortfalls in addressing these non-conventional threats. Our history has shown time and again that we have struggled against the irregular threat, and now that this IW threat may be more dangerous to us than at any time in the past we can't afford to neglect it any longer.
Assuming that it is true that war is war, that argument hasn't been helpful in a practical sense. We developed UW, FID/COIN, and counterterrorism doctrine to respond to new types of threats because the existing doctrine was inadequate. We have once again come to that point where our current doctrine is insufficient to address the threats we face today.
I'm not prepared to propose a new definition yet even though I find the current definition troubling, yet in many ways I think it is adequate if we fail to develop a better one.