Asymmetric Warfare Is An Inherently Relational Concept

Over the course of history, the strategic environment has changed rapidly and is now more complex than ever before – it is currently characterized by unpredictability and disorder, and may yet manifest itself in the collapse of nuclear armed nations, destabilizing conflict in geo-politically vital regions, and humanitarian crises. A world of disparate actors – not all nation states – now exists. Unpredictable events will continue to cause strategic surprise. The widespread effects of past conflicts such as World War II, Vietnam and the Iraq war are still being felt and have created significant strategic repercussions. The failures of these conflicts are the result of our military and political leaders’ failure to quickly adapt to wartime conditions. This occurs because of a general refusal to commit to a military culture of learning that encourages serious debate, critical assessments of our military operations, and challenges to our doctrine in the face of emerging change. Additionally, leaders have struggled with the critical responsibility of forecasting and providing for a ready force, one that is well-resourced and prepared to conduct future operations. It is the responsibility of our military and political leaders to send our military to war with a ready force, and a strategy that will ultimately result in victory. But understanding war and warriors is critical if societies and governments are to make sound judgments concerning military policy.

The concept of war as a static and unchanging occurrence is an outdated and dangerous miscalculation. More accurately, war is a fluidic, evolving and shifting phenomenon constantly reinventing itself, rendering stagnant, inflexible principles potentially disastrous. Consequently, as students of war and future players in this transforming theatre, the study of eras of significant development is an extremely relevant pursuit. Recognizing the need for adaptation and the creation of doctrine is now a prerequisite for any effective modern commander. War is unpredictable in nature and particularly so in current theatres of operation, in which change is rapid

To be sure, a surprise strategic Chinese attack is a valuable worst-case scenario to study, but protracted multi-dimensional U.S.-China competition for Pacific influence—akin to the contemporary era—is arguably more likely and, thus, a more sensible scenario against which to wargame. Also, despite its plausible portrayal of a localized insurgency, the novel stops short of depicting mass civil unrest elsewhere and social stability considerations that would almost certainly accompany a future world war. Nonetheless, Ghost Fleet’s technical narrative provides ample realistic content for today’s security and defense officials to balance and refine tomorrow’s warfare strategies. Singer and Cole’s near-future depiction of U.S. technological vulnerability in warfare should spur those officials to enable American innovation and adaptation in warfighting solutions well before the onset of strategic

Carl Von Clausewitz and Helmuth Moltke the Elder were both practitioners and theorists of the war art in the 19th century. Their military thoughts on war’s character and its dynamics have influenced the later militaries in the conduct of war. Particularly, the Clausewitzian concept of the “culminating point of victory” and the Moltke’s principle of “Auftragstaktik”, or mission type tactics by a decentralized command were implemented and culminated in the battlefield of World War II. Moreover, today, the US Army has adopted both concepts in its latest refined “AirLand Battle” doctrine recognizing their importance in the operational art of modern warfare.

While the development of guerrilla war does not factor into Weigley’s thesis that the United States has moved from a strategy of attrition to a strategy of annihilation, it is important in understanding how and why the United States made that change. For Weigley, this change came during the American Civil War when Grant became Commanding General of the Army. Grant did not believe the war could be won with a single, decisive victory against the Confederate Army, rather, he initiated a strategy to destroy the Confederate Armies through many battles and by attacking their economic resources. The orders to begin destroying the war resources of the Confederacy may have had their roots in the Western and Trans-Mississippian Theaters of the war because of frustrations associated with guerrilla war.

The notion of an American way of war informs how scholars, policymakers, and strategists understand how Americans fight. A way of war—defined as a society’s cultural preferences for waging war—is not static. Change can occur as a result of important cultural events, often in the form of traumatic experiences or major social transformations. A way of war is therefore the malleable product of culturally significant past experiences. Reflecting several underlying cultural ideals, the current American way of war consists of three primary tenets—the desire for moral clarity, the primacy of technology, and the centrality of scientific management systems—which combine to create a preference for decisive, large-scale conventional wars with clear objectives and an aversion to morally ambiguous low-intensity conflicts that is relevant to planners because it helps them address American strategic vulnerabilities.

Through separate publications, Geoffrey Parker and Victor Hanson describe principal foundations (Parker) and a prominent element (Hanson) that serve as the basis for their argument in defining a Western Way of War. However, both men fall short in clearly describing what is a true Western Way of War. Both the principal foundations by Parker and the prominent element by Hanson, while insightful, only delineate a single type of warfare that was used by the armies of Europe and the United States, however they fail to capitalize on the basis of their argument because neither man legitimately compares that type of warfare to any other method of fighting that was used, or is currently used, by other nations around the world. Hence, there is no

Set-up - Warfare is constantly changing, for the tools of war are always evolving, as do the societies that wage war. Between 1400 and 1918, western warfare went through four periods that saw such profound change that it can fairly be said that a "military revolution" occurred. According to historians MacGregor Knox and Williamson Murray, military revolutions "fundamentally change the framework of war" and "recast society and the state as well as military organizations." While all of the military revolutions studied in H100 were important in the evolution of warfare, one clearly stimulated greater change than the others.

This paper reviews America’s paradoxical love-hate relationship with war and how this relationship influences American warfare through the research and study of the interpretation and analyzation of American military models, policy and goal changes, the use of military technology, “American way of war,” and the relationship with, preparation for, and application of war.

There are no universal theories to explain the true nature and character of war, and any war theories are not a fact or absolute truth. All strategic principles are dynamic and contextual, so “every age had its own kind of war, its own limiting conditions, and its own peculiar preconceptions.” The battlefield environment of the 21st century will be the volatile, uncertain, complex, and ambiguous, and nature of war will be completely different because of the Revolution in Military Affairs. Highly advance communication and information technologies, a dramatic increase in computing capabilities, developed of precision munitions, dominant air and space power ‘war could be waged by the projection of

Sun Tzu’s work is the most powerful as it requires one to evaluate a plethora of conditions in warfare. I will first discuss the antithesis, between Machiavelli and Sun Tzu’s arguments, followed by the changes that have influenced warfare. I believe the controversies between the different political views of power as well as the technological changes are important as they change and affect the way in which security has played out. San Tzu’s

The book Adapting to Win is about a style of warfare called Insurgency. The author Katagiri Noriyuki explains that the new age of global conflicts that uses asymmetric warfare is not really asymmetric but uses a term called “extrasystemic”. The reason that wars in Iraq and Afghanistan are not really asymmetric warfare, but are extrasystemic is because asymmetric warfare is fought by two established powers and with the growing non state sponsored insurgents they are classified as extrasystemic. The author’s thesis in this book is about why an insurgency is successful or not, based on the model of insurgency used. I believe that the author does a good job explaining his thesis, but I do not really agree with the new classification of extrasystemic.

Martin van Creveld wrote The Transformation of War book in 1991 when he detailed a predictive hypothesis about the changing character of war into what he called ?Nontrinitarian War. There were conflicts arise as intrastate wars and were not based on the simplified version of Clausewitz?s ?remarkable trinity? of government, people and military forces (Van Creveld, 1991, pg. 49). In his book, Van Creveld offers an account of warfare in the previous millennium and suggests what the future might hold. The drive was that major war was draining and the emergence of forms of war ?that are simultaneously old and new? now threatened to create havoc.

Clausewitz defines war as an “act of force to compel our enemy to do our will.” The nature of war is enduring yet the character of war changes over time. Current US strategic guidance is advancing the point of view that since the character of war has changed to focus on irregular wars then the US military should prepare for a future of irregular wars. This shift in focus forgets that the nature of war is enduring and in order to be successful, we must prepare for all types of conflict. This paper will define the types of conflict and the likelihood of each followed by a discussion of US strategic guidance and ending with an analysis of the training resources and force structure requirements needed to achieve success for all types of

Giulio Douhet, in his seminal treatise on air power titled The Command of the Air, argued, “A man who wants to make a good instrument must first have a precise understanding of what the instrument is to be used for; and he who intends to build a good instrument of war must first ask himself what the next war will be like.” The United States (US) military establishment has been asking itself this exact question for hundreds of years, in an attempt to be better postured for the future. From the Civil War, through the American Indian Wars, and up until World War II (WWII) the American military’s way of war consisted of fighting traditional, or conventional, wars focused on total annihilation of an enemy. Since that time, there has been a gradual shift from the traditional framework towards one that can properly address non-traditional, or irregular wars. While the US maintains a capability to conduct conventional warfare, the preponderance of operations where the US military has been engaged since WWII have been irregular wars. Therefore, this question articulated by Douhet, as to understanding the character of the next war in order to properly plan, train, and equip, is certainly germane to the current discussion of regular war versus irregular war. In today’s fiscally constrained environment, the questions remains, which will dominate the future and therefore, garner further funding and priority. Based on the current threats and the US role as a superpower, the US