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Abstract
Despite its own extensive experience in nontraditional wars, the United States has rarely excelled at this portion of the conflict spectrum in the past half century. Its current conventional military superiority will ensure that it gets much more experience in today's Small Wars Century, an era that began in the 1950s with the rise of revolutionary warfare. For several decades, thanks in large part due to lingering myths from the Vietnam war, this area has been a conceptual and intellectual orphan in US professional military institutions. Without understanding the past, and how new conditions impact the relevance of this experience as a guide, US military planners and policy makers will be unable to translate America's intentions into effective campaigns. Without a sound grasp of history and the characteristics of nontraditional war as part of the overall social phenomena of war, the US will continue to find its overwhelming military dominance irrelevant to its most pressing security interests.
Acknowledgement
An earlier version of this paper was presented at the annual meeting of the American Political Science Association in Washington, DC on 1 September 2005. This paper has been shaped by a number of scholars and experts over the past year. In particular, I need to thank Drs. Eliot A. Cohen and Thomas Mahnken from Johns Hopkins, Bard O'Neil from the National War College, Colin Gray at the University of Reading, Don Chisholm from the US Naval War College, and Janine Davidson of SAIC. Over several years, I have heavily relied upon Dr. Steven Metz and Tony Echevarria of the Army's Strategic Studies Institute for their insights. Furthermore, my professional colleagues: Lt. Col. David Kilcullen from Australia, Colonel Richard Iron and Lt. Col. Ian Thomas from the United Kingdom, Colonels T.X. Hammes and Tom Seal, USMC (ret) and Col. John Waghlestein, USA (ret), retired Lt. Cols. Noel Williams and R. Scott Moore of the US Marines, Lt. Col. John Nagl, USA, Major John Schmitt, USMC (ret.) and Captain Tyson Belanger, USMCR have significantly informed my thinking on this project.
Notes
1 John Lewis Gaddis, The United States and the End of the Cold War (New York: Oxford UP 1992) p.3.
2 Bernard B. Fall, ‘The Theory and Practice of Insurgency and Counter-Insurgency’, Naval War College Review (Winter 1998). This is a reprint of Fall's article from April 1965.
3 Different databases count the number of conflicts with different and conflicting definitions. Monty G. Marshall and Ted Robert Gurr, Peace and Conflict 2005: A Global Survey of Armed Conflicts, Self-Determination, and Democracy (College Park, MD: University of Maryland Press 2005).
4 Donald Rumsfeld, The National Defense Strategy (Washington, DC: Department of Defense 2005) p.3.
5 Thomas E. Ricks, ‘Shift from Traditional War Seen at Pentagon’, Washington Post, 3 Sept. 2004, p.A1; Jason Sherman, ‘U.S. Goals Sought on Battling the Unconventional’, Defense News, 20 Sept. 2004, p.4: Bradley Graham, ‘Pentagon Prepares to Rethink Focus on Conventional Warfare’, Washington Post, 26 Jan. 2005, p.A1.
6 Sam C. Sarkesian, America's Forgotten Wars: The Counterrevolutionary Past and Lessons for the Future (Westport, CT: Greenwood Press 1984). For a general overview of this history, see Max Boot, The Savage Wars of Peace: Small Wars and the Rise of American Power (New York: Perseus Books 2002).
7 Russell F. Weigley quoted in John D. Waghelstein, ‘More Ruminations of a Pachyderm’, undated paper.
8 Robert Taber, The War of the Flea: Guerrilla Warfare in Theory and Practice (New York: Lyle Stuart 1965). M.L.R. Smith, ‘Guerrillas in the Mist: Reassessing Strategy and Low Intensity Warfare’, Review of International Studies 29 (Jan. 2003) p.21.
9 This definition is a variation of Charles E. Callwell, Small Wars: A Tactical Handbook for Imperial Soldiers (London: HMSO 1906) p.21; and Colin S. Gray, Modern Strategy (New York: Oxford UP 1999) p.273.
10 One distinguished strategist calls these ‘absurd distinctions’. Ibid. p.274.
11 Richard P. Cincotta, Robert Engelman and Daniele Anastasion, The Security Demographic: Population and Civil Conflict after the Cold War (Washington, DC: Population Action International 2003) p.22.
12 This historical overview expands on Wray Johnson, Vietnam and American Small Wars (Bangkok, Thailand: White Lotus 2001).
13 The original use of this term is William S. Lind, Keith Nightengale, John F. Schmitt, Joseph W. Sutton and Gary I. Wilson, ‘The Changing Face of War: Into the Fourth Generation’, Marine Corps Gazette (Oct. 1989) pp.22–6; Thomas X. Hammes, ‘Another Look at Fourth Generation Warfare’, Marine Corps Gazette (Oct. 1994); and Thomas X. Hammes, ‘Insurgency: Modern Warfare Evolves into a Fourth Generation’, Fort McNair, Washington, DC: Institute for National Strategic Studies, Strategic Forum No. 135 (Jan. 2005). Closely related to this school is the argument for ‘nontrinitarian’ wars by Martin van Creveld, The Transformation of War (New York: Free Press 1991).
14 The term is usually attributed to Mary Kaldor, New and Old Wars: Organized Violence in a Global Era (Cambridge: Polity 1999); and more recently, Herfried Munkler, The New Wars (Malden, MA: Polity Press 2005) pp.5–31.
15 Thomas X. Hammes, The Sling and Stone, On War in the 21st Century (St. Paul, WI: Zenith Press 2004) pp.2, 208.
16 Carl von Clausewitz, On War, Michael Howard and Peter Paret (eds) (Princeton, NJ: Princeton UP 1989) p.77. Here Clausewitz described the totality of the enemy's capacity to resist as ‘two inseparable factors, … the total means at his disposal and the strength of his will’.
17 For more detailed critiques see Antulio J. Echevarria II, ‘Deconstructing the Theory of Fourth-Generation War’, Contemporary Security Policy 26/2 (Aug. 2005) pp.233–41; Lawrence Freedman, ‘War Evolves into the Fourth Generation’, Contemporary Security Policy 26/2 (Aug. 2005) pp.254–63.
18 Stuart Kinross, ‘Clausewitz and Low Intensity Conflict’, Journal of Strategic Studies 27/1 (March 2004) pp.35–58; Werner Hahlweg, ‘Clausewitz and Guerrilla Warfare’, in Michael I. Handel (ed.), Clausewitz and Modern Strategy (London: Frank Cass 1986).
19 Clausewitz, On War, p.515. I am indebted to Dr. Colin Gray for stressing this point in ‘Clausewitz and the Modern Strategic World’, in Contemporary Essays: Occasional No. 47 (Wiltshire: Strategic and Combat Studies Institute 2004).
20 Gwyn Prins, The Heart of War: On Power, Conflict and Obligation in the Twenty-First Century (New York: Routledge 2002) p.xxii.
21 Clausewitz, On War, p.606.
22 Gil Merom, How Democracies Lose Small Wars: State, Society and the Failures of France in Algeria, Israel in Lebanon, and the United States in Vietnam (New York: Cambridge UP 2005).
23 Eliot A. Cohen, ‘Constraints on America's Conduct of Small Wars’, International Security (Fall 1984) pp.151–81.
24 Ivan Arreguin-Toft, ‘How the Weak Win Wars: A Theory of Asymmetric Conflict’, International Security 26/1 (Summer 2001) pp.93–128; Robert M. Cassidy, ‘Why Great Powers Fight Small Wars Badly’, Military Review (Sept./Oct. 2002) pp.41–53.
25 Seth Jones, Jeremy M. Wilson, Andrew Rathmell and K. Jack Riley, Establishing Law and Order after Conflict (Santa Monica, CA: RAND 2005); Brent Scrowcroft and Sandy Berger, In the Wake of War: Improving U.S. Post-Conflict Capabilities (New York: Council on Foreign Relations 2005); Clark A. Murdock and Michele A. Flournoy, Beyond Goldwater Nichols: U.S. Government and Defense Reform for a New Strategic Era, Phase 2 Report (Washington, DC: Center for Strategic and International Studies 2005). For a concise overview of ongoing US government actions, see Stephen D. Krasner and Carlos Pascual, ‘Addressing State Failure’, Foreign Affairs (July/Aug. 2005) pp.153–63.
26 Anthony H. Cordesman, The Iraq War: Strategy, Tactics and Military Lessons (Washington, DC: Center for Strategic and International Studies 2003) pp.498–500.
27 F.G. Hoffman, Decisive Force: The New American Way of War (Westport, CT: Praeger 1996) pp.5–12. On American strategic culture, see also Colin S. Gray, ‘Strategy in the Nuclear Age’, in The Making of Strategy, pp.592–8; Sarkesian, America's Forgotten Wars, pp.19–29.
28 Eliot Cohen, ‘America's Conduct of Small Wars’, p.165.
29 This view has been most ably argued by John A. Nagl, Counterinsurgency Lessons from Malaya and Vietnam: Learning to Eat Soup with a Knife (Westport, CT: Praeger 2002).
30 Bruce Hoffman, Insurgency and Counterinsurgency in Iraq (Washington, DC: RAND 2004) pp.6–7.
31 Roger Spiller, ‘The Small Change of Soldiering and American Military Experience’, Australian Army Journal II/1 (Spring 2005) p.169.
32 On this era see Fred Anderson, Crucible of War (New York: Vintage 2000).
33 On the southern campaign of 1781 see Don Higginbotham, The War of American Independence: Military Attitudes, Policies, and Practice 1763–1789 (Boston, MA: Northeastern UP 1983) pp.352–88; Russell F. Weigley, The American Way of War: A History of the United States Military Strategy and Policy (Bloomington, IN: Indiana UP 1973) pp.18–39.
34 Robert M. Utley, Frontiersmen in Blue: The U.S. Army and the Indian, 1848–1865 (New York: Macmillan 1967); Andrew J. Birtle, U.S. Army Counterinsurgency and Contingency Operations Doctrine, 1860–1941 (Washington, DC: US Army Center of Military History 1998).
35 The definitive study of this conflict is Brian M. Linn, The U.S. Army and Counterinsurgency in the Philippine War, 1899–1902 (Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press 1989). See also Max Boot, Savage Wars of Peace, pp.99–128.
36 Allan R. Millett, Semper Fidelis: The History of the United States Marine Corps (New York: Macmillan 1991) pp.258–65.
37 Thomas M. Huber (ed.), Compound Warfare: That Fatal Knot (Honolulu: UP of the Pacific 2004). Huber defines compound wars as those where regular and irregular forces are used in concert.
38 The classic critique of the Army and the misapplication of its prevailing concept is Andrew F. Krepinevich, The Army in Vietnam (Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins UP 1986).
39 Mark Moyar, Phoenix and the Birds of Prey: The CIA's Secret Campaign to Destroy the Viet Cong (Annapolis, MD: Naval Institute Press 1997).
40 The Combined Arms Program was drawn from the Marine experiences with combined American/indigenous force patrols in Nicaragua. In Vietnam, the Corps employed almost 2,000 Marines in squad-sized units embedded in Vietnamese villages, collocated with Popular Force units to provide security and train local units. The program is usually cited as an innovative concept with significant results out of proportion to their investment. Sir Robert Thompson concluded ‘Of all the United States forces the Marine Corps alone made a serious attempt to achieve permanent and lasting results in their tactical area of responsibility by seeking to protect the rural population’. Quoted in Krepinevich, The Army in Vietnam, p.172. See also Francis J. West, Jr., The Village (New York: Harper and Row 1972) and Neil Sheehan, A Bright Shining Lie (New York: Vintage 1989) pp.630–8.
41 Conrad C. Crane, Avoiding Vietnam: The U.S. Army's Response to Defeat in Southeast Asia (Carlisle, PA: Army War College, Strategic Studies Institute 2003).
42 F.G. Hoffman, Decisive Force, pp.7–9; Gray, ‘Clausewitz and the Modern World’, p.3; Nagl, Counterinsurgency Lessons from Malaya and Vietnam, pp.17–19; Robert M. Cassidy, ‘Prophets or Praetorians? The Uptonian Paradox and the Powell Corollary’, Parameters (Autumn 2003) pp.130–43.
43 Antulio J. Echevarria II, Toward an American Way of War (Carlisle, PA: Army War College, Institute for Strategic Studies 2004).
44 For criticisms of US operations see Alastair Finlan, ‘Trapped in the Dead Ground: U.S. Counter-insurgency Strategy in Iraq’, Small Wars and Insurgencies (March 2005) pp.3–21. On planning failures see James Fallows, ‘Blind into Baghdad’, Atlantic Monthly (Feb. 2004), pp.53–74, and Larry Diamond, ‘What Went Wrong in Iraq, Foreign Affairs (Sept./Oct. 2004).
45 See Conrad C. Crane and W. Andrew Terrill, Reconstructing Iraq: Insights, Challenges, and Missions for Military Forces in a Post-Conflict Scenario (Carlisle, PA: Army War College, Strategic Studies Institute 2003).
46 Robert M. Cassidy, Russia in Afghanistan and Chechnya: Military Strategic Culture and the Paradoxes of Asymmetric Conflict (Carlisle, PA: Army War College, Strategic Studies Institute 2003); Mark Kramer, ‘The Perils of Counterinsurgency: Russia's War in Chechnya’, International Security (Winter 2004/05) pp.5–63.
47 George Packer, The Assassins' Gate: American in Iraq (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux 2005) p.427.
48 Gray, Modern Strategy, p.279.
49 As Frank Fukuyama has concluded, the ‘art of state building will be a key component of national power, as important as the ability to deploy traditional military forces to the maintenance of world order’. Francis Fukuyama, State Building Governance and World Order in the 21st Century (Ithaca, New York: Cornell UP 2004) p.121.
50 George W. Bush, National Security Strategy of the United States (Washington, DC: The White House 2002) p.3. The strategy acknowledges that ‘American is now threatened less by conquering states than we are by failing ones’.
51 One bipartisan US commission concluded ‘Fragmentation or failure of states will occur with destabilizing effects … including an increase in ethnic or religious violence, humanitarian disasters, major catalytic regional crises, and the spread of dangerous weapons’. US National Security Commission/21st Century, New World Coming: American Security in the 21st Century, Phase I Report (Washington, DC: Sept. 1999) pp.142–4.
52 A recent forecast sponsored by the CIA predicted that ‘lagging economies, ethnic affiliations, intense religious convictions, and youth bulges will align to create a “perfect storm” for internal conflict’ in the near future. National Intelligence Council, Mapping the Global Future (Washington, DC: NIC 2005) p.97.
53 Jennifer Taw and Bruce Hoffman, The Urbanization of Insurgency: The Potential Challenge to U.S. Army Operations (Santa Monica, CA: RAND 1994). More recently, Ian Beckett, ‘The Future of Insurgency’, Small Wars and Insurgencies (March 2005) p.31.
54 Max Manwaring, ‘Shadow of Things Past and Images of the Future’, p.36; Bard O'Neill, Insurgency & Terrorism: Inside Modern Revolutionary Warfare (Washington, DC: Brassey's 1990) p.46. For an opposing view, see Stathis N. Kalyvas, ‘The Urban Bias in Research on Civil Wars’, Security Studies (Spring 2004) pp.1–31.
55 National Intelligence Council, Global Trends 2015: A Dialogue about the Future with Nongovernmental Experts (Washington, DC: NIC 2000) pp.6, 15.
56 P.W. Singer, Corporate Warriors: The Rise of the Privatized Military Industry (Ithaca, NY: Cornell UP 2003).
57 Although written in the mid to late 1930s, the authors of the Small Wars Manual realized ‘The rapidity with which a revolution develops is made possible by modern communications facilities and publicity methods’; p.1–13–20.
58 T.E. Lawrence, ‘The Evolution of a Revolt’, The Army Quarterly and Defence Journal (Oct. 1920).
59 David E. Kaplan, ‘Hearts, Minds, and Dollars: In an Unseen Front in the War on Terrorism, America is Spending Millions’, U.S. News and World Report (25 April 2005), available at <http://www.usnews.com/usnews/news/articles/050425/25roots.hmt>.
60 Gabriel Weimann, ‘How Modern Terrorism Uses the Internet’, Journal of International Security Affairs (Spring 2005) pp.91–105. See also the series by Susan B. Glasser and Steve Coll, ‘The Web as Weapon’, Washington Post, 7–9 Aug. 2005, p.A1.
61 Gregory F. Treverton, Heather S. Gregg, Daniel Gibran and Charles Yost, Exploring Religious Conflict (Santa Monica, CA: RAND 2005).
62 Bruce Hoffman, ‘Terrorism Trends and Prospects’, in Ian Lesser, et al., Countering New Terrorism (Washington, DC: RAND 1999) pp.15–20; Mark Juergensmeyer, Terror in the Mind of God: The Global Rise of Religious Violence (Los Angeles, CA: University of California Press 2000).
63 Bruce Hoffman, Inside Terrorism (New York: Columbia UP 1998) p.87.
64 Robert A. Pape, Dying to Win: The Strategic Logic of Suicide Terrorism (New York: Random House 2005).
65 Walter Laqueur, ‘Postmodern Terrorism’, Foreign Affairs 75/5 (Sept./Oct. 1996) pp.24–37; and Jessica Stern, The Ultimate Terrorists (Cambridge, MA: Harvard UP 1999).
66 ‘Decisive victory needs to be supplemented in American public discourse with the less imperial notions of strategic advantage and strategic success. It is distinctly American to believe that wars should be unmistakably military winnable and to be intolerant of apparently indecisive operations.’ Colin S. Gray, Defining and Achieving Decisive Victory (Carlisle, PA: Army War College, Strategic Studies Institute 2002) pp.34–5.
67 Colin S. Gray, ‘How Has War Changed Since the End of the Cold War?’ Parameters (Spring 2005) pp.14–26.
68 Small Wars Manual, p.1–17–32.
69 Including British doctrine, British Army Field Manual, Combined Arms Operations, Part 10 Counterinsurgency Operations (July 2001) pp.3–1–3–11.
70 Robert H. Scales, Firepower in Limited War (Novato, CA: Presidio 1997) p.53.
71 Jessica Stern, ‘Protean Enemies’, Foreign Affairs (July/Aug. 2003) pp.27–40.
72 Thomas X. Hammes, ‘4th Generation Warfare: Our Enemy Plays to Their Strengths’, Armed Forces Journal International (Nov. 2004) p.40.
73 Rick Brennan, Adam Grissom, Sara Daly, Peter Chalk, William Rosenau, Kalev Sepp and Steve Dalzell, Future Insurgent Threats (Santa Monica, CA: RAND 2005) p.162. Brennan et al. describe these as ‘a relatively new form of insurgent organization that consists of distributed networks of affiliated insurgent organizations that develop or adopt a common ideology and coordinate strategy, including objectives, operations and resources’. For additional insights into Al Qaeda's cellular networks and their group dynamics see Marc Sageman, Understanding Terror Networks (Philadelphia, PA: University of Pennsylvania Press 2004).
74 Small Wars Manual, p.1–11–19. ‘The knowledge of the people at any given moment of history involves an understanding of their environment, and above all, their past.’
75 Ibid. p.1–8–13.
76 Anthony Zinni, ‘Non-Traditional Military Missions: Their Nature, and the Need for Cultural Awareness and Flexible Thinking’, in Joe Strange, Capital ‘W’ War: A Case for Strategic Principles (Quantico, VA: Marine Corps University 1998), Warfighting Perspectives, No. 6, p.267.
77 Bernard Brodie, War and Politics (New York: Macmillan 1973) p.332. Brodie adds, ‘Some of the greatest military blunders of all time have resulted from juvenile evaluations in this department’.
78 In particular see Montgomery McFate, ‘The Military Utility of Understanding Adversary Culture’, Joint Force Quarterly 38 (2005) pp.42–8; and Montgomery McFate, ‘Anthropology and Counterinsurgency: The Strange Story of their Curious Relationship’, Military Review (March/April 2005) pp.24–38. For a more critical look, Christopher Varhola, ‘The U.S. Military in Iraq: Are We Our Own Worst Enemy?’ Practicing Anthropology 26/4 (2004) pp.40–2.
79 Frank Kitson, Low Intensity Operations (Harrisburg, PA: Stackpole Books 1971); David Galula, Counter-insurgency Warfare: Theory and Practice (St. Petersburg, FL: Hailer 2005); Robert Thompson, Defeating Communist Insurgency: The Lessons of Malaya and Vietnam (New York: Praeger 1966). The most recent edition to the classics is Ian F. W. Beckett, Modern Insurgencies and Counter-Insurgencies: Guerillas and Their Opponents since 1750 (London: Routledge 2001).
80 The phrase ‘super-empowered individuals’ is from Thomas L. Friedman, The Lexus and the Olive Tree: Understanding Globalization (New York: Anchor Book 1999) pp.14–5.
81 Chris Dishman, ‘The Leaderless Nexus: When Crime and Terror Converge’, Studies in Conflict and Terrorism 28 (May/June 2005) pp.237–52; Stern, ‘The Protean Enemy’, Foreign Affairs (July/Aug. 2003) p.30.
82 The origins of this concept are from John Arquilla and David Ronfeld, The Advent of Netwar (Santa Monica, CA: RAND 1996).
83 One expert has identified nine forms of insurgent. Bard E. O'Neill, Insurgency & Terrorism: From Revolution to Apocalypse (Washington, DC: Potomac Books 2005) pp.19–29. This typology includes Anarchist, Egalitarian, Traditionalist, Apocalyptic-Utopian, Pluralist, Secessionist, Reformist, Preservationist, and Commercialist.
84 A solid effort is found at John Mackinlay, Globalization and Insurgency, Adelphi Paper 352 (London: International Institute for Strategic Studies 2002).
85 Daniel Byman, Dangerous Connections, External Support of Insurgencies (New York: Cambridge UP 2005).
86 Brennan, pp.83–5.
87 Michael Evans, ‘From Kadesh to Kandahar: Military Theory and the Future of War’, Naval War College Review (Summer 2003) p.136; Steven Metz and Raymond Millen, Insurgency and Counterinsurgency in the 21st Century: Reconceptualizing Threat and Response (Carlisle, PA: Army War College, Strategic Studies Institute 2004) p.34.
88 Galula, Counter-insurgency Warfare, p.78.
89 This does not suggest that it has been entirely ignored. James D. Kiras, ‘Terrorism and Irregular Warfare’, in John Baylis, James Wirtz, Eliot Cohen and Colin S. Gray (eds), Strategy in the Contemporary World: An Introduction to Strategic Studies (New York: Oxford UP 2002).
90 M. Smith, ‘Guerrillas in the Mist’, p.29.
91 Steven Metz, ‘Review Essay, A Wake for Clausewitz: Toward a Philosophy of 21st-Century Warfare’, Parameters (Winter 1994–95) pp.126–32.
92 John Lewis Gaddis, The Landscape of History: How Historians Map the Past (New York: Oxford UP 2002) p.11. For more on the use of history by military professionals see Antulio J. Echevarria II, ‘The Trouble with History’, Parameters (Summer 2005) pp.78–90; and Eliot A. Cohen, ‘The Historical Mind’, Orbis (Summer 2005) pp.575–88.
93 Macgregor Knox, ‘Continuity and Revolution in Strategy’, in Williamson Murray, MacGregor Knox and Alvin Bernstein (eds), The Making of Strategy: Rulers, States and War (New York: Cambridge UP 1994) p.645.