Is Irregular Warfare Really "Irregular" Anymore?
This is obviously a loaded question. Like most who contribute to this site, I’ve spent the better part of my career studying and occasionally participating in actions that many would classify as “irregular” warfare, yet I've never been able to quite put my finger on what defines a particular conflict or action as "irregular." The root of my question is that the word “irregular” implies that the alternative would be “regular.” However, in characterizing the conflicts that have occurred over just the past 20 years, it seems to me that very few actually fit the mold of what is generally considered to be “traditional” or “conventional” warfare. With the notable exceptions of the Iran-Iraq War, the Gulf War, and a scant few others, the age of Napoleonic-like formations and even traditional Westphalian state-on-state warfare seems to have devolved into the exception rather than the norm.
In other words, has what was once considered to be “regular” warfare become “irregular” itself? Likewise, have the conflicts that we once considered to be “irregular” morphed into “regular” warfare? I ask this because as we all have seen, DoD in general and specifically those of us stationed down here continue to struggle with the definition of “irregular” warfare. Does warfare itself fundamentally remain dominated by states in their role as the sponsor or target of aggression? States with democratic ideals would affirm such a notion, but those states and non-state entities with limited to no democratic leanings would surely disagree. Moreover, who actually defines a conflict as “regular” or “irregular”? Undoubtedly, there are many cases where a state has considered itself to be embroiled in an insurgency while the very insurgents or guerrillas with whom they were fighting viewed the conflict as essentially a conventional battle for their own survival.
Ultimately, and I do not intend to tread on the feet of those 4GW specialists who are far more well-versed in that topic than I ever will be, perhaps it is time to start treating “irregular” warfare as the norm rather than the exception; recent history would surely support such a supposition. Of course, if this were to occur, then true adherence would require a significant shift in resources dedicated to studying, training, equipping, and manning because as we all know, the only true way to find where priorities actually exist is to follow the money…However, back to the question at hand, I was just wondering what the members here thought of this one...Is Irregular Warfare really "irregular" anymore?
The term irregular warfare is an artifact of western culture?
Bohdi,
My take is that we in the west compartmentalize war into mental 'buckets' Regular, Irregular, MCO, COIN, etc. This leads to our inter-agency troubles among other things...
I am not so sure that this mindset is the case in other parts of the world. China's full court press across the DIME spectrum in Latin America and Africa, and Russia's internet, energy, economics play seem to provide examples worth studying.
Irregular Warfare: Everything yet Nothing
I'm transferring my post from the blog to the discussion panel, because I know most of us knuckle draggers are mo comfortable in this forum. However, please refer to the blog to see the article and some excellent posts.
http://smallwarsjournal.com/blog/200...ng-y/index.php
Glenn, thank you for your words of wisdom. Since you already addressed my concerns about confusing reality with dated doctrinal references, I will address a couple of other areas.
I found it interesting that the authors did not address recent IW examples such as Iraq where we initially made little to no progress when our effort was focused on the so called overt guerrilla elements. Progress wasn't made until the additional troops were sent in to protect the populace to break the coercive influence link between the insurgent and the populace.
In Vietnam securing and mobilizing the populace was critical (CIDG, Phoenix, etc.), and it was effective where applied, but unfortunately it was too little too late. Of course there were numerous parallels where the populace was critical in other IW conflicts such as Malaysia, the Philippines, El Salvador, Algeria, etc. How the counterinsurgent went after the population was different in each conflict. By focusing your efforts on the populace you are setting yourself in position to defeat the entire resistance organization, not just the overt guerrillas.
While the construct of guerrilla, underground, and auxillary can be a useful model to visualize an insurgency's structure, it is not dogma, and not all insurgencies or resistence elements organize along these lines(apparently we still find it odd that other groups and countries do not feel obligated to follow our doctrine). The lines between these categories are blurred more frequently than not.
Another disconnect in logic jumped out at me when the authors identified the strategic issue as the population, but wanted to narrow IW's definition to the tactical realm. First they claim that the strategic level of IW is the underground, and that the underground is largely focused on the populace (thus strategic victory = populace), but then they argue that IW should only be focused on the overt guerrillas, or at the tactical level? We tried that a few times in our history, and I can't think of a case where it was a successful strategy.
As the authors probably know, there may be several relevant population groups that the competitors may want to influence, to include external actors. This also applies to conventional war, but more so in IW, where the opponent's primary objective may be influencing the populace versus defeating the oppoent's military forces. The Vietnamese didn't intend to defeat us by defeating our military, most of their activities directed against us were focused on influencing our home population, which effectively led to political paralysis in the end. The take away is that the violence is ultimately directed at relevant population group, not defeating the opposing military directly, and that is the difference between IW and conventional war.
The terrorists who conducted the Madrid bombings were not focused on Spain's economy or security forces, but rather influencing the voting population, which in this case effectively resulted in the anti-war candidate being elected and the withdrawal of their military from Iraq. AQ's focus on various external population groups is plain to see, and they are trying to isolate their opponents by cutting off external support. War is war, but the strategy (not just the tactics) varies considerably between conventional and irregular warfare.
Furthermore it is hard to kill the bad guys you can't see, and since we can't win by only defeating the overt forces we need to be able to find the underground. If you want to find and defeat the underground then you have to control the populace to get the human intelligence necessary to purge the threat. Drive by COIN and targeting only overt guerrillas is clearly a recipe for failure.
Random Thoughts on Irregular Warfare and Security Assistance
Random Thoughts on Irregular Warfare and Security Assistance by Colonel David Maxwell, Small Wars Journal
Random Thoughts on Irregular Warfare and Security Assistance (Full PDF Article)
Quote:
As we continue the debate on how we are going to organize our forces for operations in the Irregular Warfare and we think about enabling other forces would like to think a couple of things before we chase new “shiny things” as in new “designer organizations.”
First we need to look at ourselves critically and ask if we have been able to develop effective strategies and campaign plans and then support and execute them, respectively. I think that most all of our challenges can be attributed to our strategies and campaign plans (and I will caveat this and say we need to understand that in this world of irregular warfare, complex operations and hybrid warfare there is no cookie cutter strategy or campaign plan template that will work the first time, every time. We need to be agile and flexible and be able to adapt to constantly morphing conditions). But I would say that this is where we need to focus most of all because our forces at the tactical level from all Services have proven very adept and capable and have demonstrated that they are truly learning organizations.
The second point that no one talks about are authorities and processes. If we are going to truly be effective in the Security Force Assistance, Building Partner Capacity, Train, Advise and Assist, COIN, Foreign Internal Defense areas (or whatever we what to call these types of operations – what is the flavor of the month right now?? J But I digress with my sarcasm). Our security assistance processes are broken and not supportive of whatever strategies and campaign plans we may develop. We do not have agile processes that allow us to rapidly and effectively support our friends, partners, or allies. We have Congressional constraints and limitations placed on us for political reasons that are sometimes (and perhaps often) counter to objectives or end states we are trying to achieve from a security perspective. But all the talk of an Advisory Corps whether in the military or a combined civilian-military one will be moot if we do not update, simplify, streamline, and make effective our security assistance processes and redesign them so they can support national and regional and Country Team strategies and campaign plans...
Some scatter gun comments
1. Use of human shields took place in the Korean War, Vietnam, and now today in Iraq, Afghanistan, and parts of Pakistan.
2. Today I think intel does a good enough job to target insurgent leadership who have/use human schields, to include members of their own families.
3. If we are good enough to target insurgents off the so-called battlefield, at rest or at their "office" then the ways and means we target them suggests to me that we are doing much better at this war (irregular or whatever anyone wants to label it) than the media gives us credit for.
4. Finally, winning "Hearts and minds" of often blood kin Pakhtuns, some of whom are belligerant Taliban, some of whom are not belligerants but grew up with those who have become belligerants...then the so called winning of hearts and minds gets "muddled" and ethnic loyalties, in common religion and such makes specific actions in specific places a matter of deciding to kill off enemy terrorist leadership and forgetting about the so-called hearts and minds aspect.
5. The upside of such irregular actions by us against them is that the vast majority, over 85% of the Pakistan population (this is not true of course in Afghanistan) are not Pukhtuns, did not grow up and play with as children the terrorists, and would be glad to be rid of as many Puhtun terrorists as possible.
My two cents. We have developed sufficient tools, ways and means, but are hindered by the difference in populations between and among Afghanistan, Pakistan, and the large "other areas" of Paksitan which are non-Pukhtun to repeat myself and shut down now.