The end of war as we knew it? Insurgency, counterinsurgency and lessons from the forgotten history of early terror networks

Abstract

The growing potency of networked organisations has manifested itself over the past decade in the fresh energy evident among terrorists and insurgents—most notably al-Qaida and Hezbollah. Networks have even shown a capacity to wage war toe-to-toe against nation-states—with some success, as can be seen in the outcome of the First Russo-Chechen War (1994 – 96). The range of choices available to networks thus covers an entire spectrum of conflict, posing the prospect of a significant blurring of the lines between insurgency, terror and war. While history provides some useful examples to stimulate strategic thought about such problems, coping with networks that can fight in so many different ways—sparking myriad, hybrid forms of conflict—is going to require some innovative thinking to go along with more traditional introspection about the relevant lessons of history.

Notes

This paper has grown from a talk on the terror war given by the author in April 2005 to representatives of the US Under Secretary of Defense for Intelligence and of the Assistant Secretary of Defense for Special Operations/Low Intensity Conflict. Their comments and suggestions, along with those of Bob O'Connell and David Tucker, are much appreciated. The views expressed here are solely the author's and do not represent official US Defense Department policy.

1 The Mongol use of such terror tactics is described in detail by James Chambers, The Devil's Horsemen: The Mongol Invasion of Europe, New York: Atheneum, 1985; and Jack Weatherford, Genghis Khan and the Making of the Modern World, New York: Crown, 2004.

2 On this theme, see Caleb Carr, The Lessons of Terror: A History of Warfare Against Civilians; Why It Has Always Failed and Why It Will Fail Again, New York: Random House, 2002.

3 Giulio Douhet, trans Dino Ferrari, The Command of the Air, New York: McCann, 1942. Although he did not adopt Douhet's call for the use of chemical weapons, similarly terror-oriented themes were also developed at the time in Alexander de Seversky, Victory Through Air Power, New York: Simon and Schuster, 1942.

4 As Carr puts it, ‘the strategy of terror is a spectacularly failed one’. See Carr, The Lessons of Terror, p 11.

5 Robert A Pape, Jr, Bombing to Win: Air Power and Coercion in War, Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1996.

6 The best history of this long struggle is Peter Earl, Corsairs of Malta and Barbary, London: Sidgwick and Jackson, 1970. The USA became involved near the very end, early in the 19th century. On our confrontation with the ‘Muslim terrorists’ of that time, see ABC Whipple, To the Shores of Tripoli, New York: William Morrow, 1991.

7 See Ernle Bradford, The Great Siege, New York: Harcourt, Brace & World, 1961.

8 Francis Parkman called these terror campaigns ‘partisan warfare’ in his Montcalm and Wolfe: The Decline and Fall of the French Empire in North America, New York: Collier, 1964 (1884).

9 As Parkman reckons it, the English colonists totalled slightly more than one million, over 10 times the number of French settlers, explorers and traders. See Ibid, pp 38 – 47. See also Fred Anderson, Crucible of War: The Seven Years' War and the Fate of Empire in British North America, 1754 – 1766, New York: Vintage Books, 2000, pp 14 – 18.

10 On this last point, the activities of the partisan leaders Sumter, Pickens and Marion were seen as crucial to wearing down regular British forces during the decisive campaign in the South. As to the brutality between Tory and rebel, Thomas Fleming recounts this vignette:

• A South Carolina rebel named Reed was visiting a neighbor's house when the man's wife saw two loyalists approaching. She advised Reed to flee, but Reed said they were old friends and went out to shake hands. The loyalists shot him dead. Reed's aged mother rode to a rebel camp in North Carolina and displayed his bloody wallet. Twenty-five men leaped on horses and soon executed the murderers.

  Fleming, Liberty! The American Revolution, New York: Viking, 1997, pp 311 – 312.

11 See Thomas Goodrich, Black Flag: Guerrilla War on the Western Frontier, 1861 – 1865, Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 1999. For a remarkable eyewitness account of this kind of war, see John McCorkle (as told to OS Barton), Three Years With Quantrill, New York: Buffalo-Head Press, 1966.

12 At the same time as the Boxer Rebellion, other insurgencies were underway in South Africa and the Philippines—both of which were more purely military (but highly unconventional). Indeed, to the extent to which terror tactics were employed in these conflicts, they were more the product of the respective British and American counter-insurgent forces. On Lord Kitchener's ‘ruthless methods’ against the Boers, see Byron Farwell, The Great Boer War, New York: Harper and Row, 1976, esp pp 346 – 365. On the Philippine War, see Brian Linn, The United States Army and Counterinsurgency in the Philippines, 1899 – 1902, Charlotte, NC: University of North Carolina Press, 2000.

13 For an overview of this conflict, see Wunyabari O Maloba, Mau Mau and Kenya: An Analysis of a Peasant Revolt, Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 1993.

14 The best account of this counterinsurgency was written by Frank Kitson, the officer who had championed the pseudo-gang idea. See his Gangs and Counter Gangs, London: Barrie and Rockliff, 1960. It is important to note that, in addition to the failure of more conventional military approaches to dealing with the Mau Mau, the British also engaged in some ethically questionable practices with regard to detainees and the general indigenous population. See Caroline Elkins, Imperial Reckoning: The Untold Story of Britain's Gulag in Kenya, New York: Henry Holt 2005. Similar charges could be made against the British for their behaviour towards both prisoners and the general civilian populace during the Boer War.

15 Robert Asprey, War in the Shadows, New York: William Morrow, 1994, esp pp 792 – 829, offers a concise description of the North Vietnamese concept of operations. The best analysis of the communist use of terror tactics in this war is William Colby, Lost Victory: A Firsthand Account of America's Sixteen-Year Involvement in Vietnam, New York: Contemporary Books, 1989.

16 For an overview of this conflict, see Jose Angel Moroni Bracamonte & David Spencer, Strategy and Tactics of the fmln Guerrillas, London: Praeger, 1995.

17 Mao's emphasis on an ultimate shift to conventional offensive operations is made clear in his essay, ‘Strategy in China's revolutionary war’, in Selected Military Writings of Mao Tse-Tung, Beijing: Foreign Languages Press, 1963, pp 95 – 145.

18 See Alistair Horne, A Savage War of Peace: Algeria 1954 – 1962, New York: Viking Press, 1977.

19 The first type being an insurgency that blended conventional and unconventional military operations with occasional acts of terror; the second being a mix of irregular warfare and terror.

20 See Maurice Tugwell, Herzl Street, New York: Xlibris, 1997. Caleb Carr rebuts this view of the utility of Zionist terror tactics, noting that the ‘vicious terrorism’ of the Stern Gang and the Irgun, far from intimidating Palestinians, became the ‘operational model’ for the Palestine Liberation Organisation. Carr, The Lessons of Terror, pp 213 – 214.

21 On the first 25 years of this conflict, see J Bowyer Bell, The Irish Troubles: A Generation of Violence, 1967 – 1992, New York: St Martin's Press, 1993.

22 Carlotta Gall & Thomas de Waal, Chechnya: Calamity in the Caucasus, New York: New York University Press, 1998 offer a compelling, detailed history of this war. John Arquilla & Theodore Karasik, ‘Chechnya: a glimpse of future conflict?’, Studies in Conflict and Terrorism, 22 (1), 1999, pp 207 – 230, focus on the role of small units and networking—but also on the various acts of terror employed—in this conflict.

23 For a sobering assessment of the current state of affairs, see Mark Kramer, ‘The perils of counterinsurgency: Russia's war in Chechnya’, International Security, 29 (3), 2004 – 05, pp 5 – 63.

24 This is one of the central themes of Pape, Bombing to Win. For an argument that air power can sometimes prevail on its own, see Andrew L Stigler, ‘A clear victory for air power: nato's empty threat to invade Kosovo’, International Security, 27 (3), 2003.

25 See Mark Clodfelter, The Limits of Air Power, New York: Free Press, 1989; and Stephen T Hosmer, Psychological Effects of US Air Operations in Four Wars, 1941 – 1991, Santa Monica, CA: rand, 1996.

26 John Mueller has recently argued that ‘the massive and expensive homeland security apparatus erected since 9/11 may be persecuting some, spying on many, inconveniencing most, and taxing all to defend the United States against an enemy that scarcely exists’. J Mueller, ‘Is there still a terrorist threat?’, Foreign Affairs, 85 (5), 2006, pp 2 – 8.

27 Bruce Gudmundsson, Stormtroop Tactics: Innovation in the German Army, 1914 – 1918, London: Praeger, 1995. Linking storm troops to the militaries of antiquity, Lynn Montross, War Through the Ages, New York: Harper & Row, 1960, pp 744 – 745, notes that ‘the armies of 1918 were bringing up to date the ancient tactical duel between the legion and the phalanx’.

28 For a good account of the policy debate that has revolved around this point, see Nina Bernstein, ‘Strategists fight a war about the war’, New York Times, 6 April 2003.

29 Perhaps the most articulate spokesperson for this point of view was Carl von Clausewitz, whose On War advanced the view that ‘friction’ and the ‘fog of war’ would inevitably undermine efforts to know what was going on. A more recent critique of the role and value of intelligence is found in John Keegan, Intelligence in War, New York: Alfred A Knopf, 2002.

30 On this see Weatherford, Genghis Khan and the Making of the Modern World, pp 178 – 180.

31 There is some debate about this. See, for example, Alan Dershowitz, Why Terrorism Works, New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2002, who concludes that terror poses such an effective threat that some civil liberties may have to be sacrificed to improve security.

32 On the ethical and practical problems that arise when the principle of ‘non-combatant immunity’ is violated, see Michael Walzer, Just and Unjust Wars, New York: Basic Books, 1977; and James Turner Johnson, Just War Tradition and the Restraint of War, Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1981.

33 President Bush's Executive Order 13355, signed many months before the creation of a national intelligence directorate, called for the networking of our existing intelligence agencies. It is unfortunate that such a positive step should be undermined by hierarchical habits of mind.

34 The takedown of the Abu Nidal organisation remains to some extent a classified affair. But there has been some public mention of the psychological operations and deceptions employed. See, for example, Faye Bowers, ‘A lesson in defeating a terrorist’, Christian Science Monitor, 15 November 2002, pp 1, 4; and David Tucker, Skirmishes at the Edge of Empire: The United States and International Terrorism, London: Praeger, 1997, pp 40 – 42.