I'm not sure it's avoidable. To some extent, the only difference between a police action and a counterinsurgency is the ideology of the non-state actors in question, Mexico being the current gold standard for this concept. To go in another direction, the Wikileaks hullabaloo blurs the line between small (info)war and criminal activity. Another example is that clashes with sovereign citizens could technically be considered small wars--section 1076 of HR5122(2006) could theoretically be used to get around posse comitatus.
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