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Abstract
Since the end of the Cold War, a huge debate over how war has been changing has emerged; a common feature is that modern conflicts are not state vs. state wars, but ‘irregular wars’. In order to better understand modern irregular warfare, it is important to analyse past authors and ideas. Carlo Bianco’s concept of Guerra per bande highlights elements of mobility with different cooperating units, of terror, and of complex terrain. The present study offers the first English analysis of Carlo Bianco and underlines the similarities of his work to the hybrid warfare concept.
Notes
1. Arreguín-Toft, ‘Contemporary Asymmetric Conflict Theory’
2. Robert Bunker drew up an interesting bibliography on the unconventional war philosophers, wherein he cited Bianco and an early version of his main work, Bunker, ‘Unconventional Warfare Philosophers’.
3. Laqueur, ‘The Origins of Guerrilla Doctrine’; Laqueur, Guerrilla.
4. Modern Insurgencies and Counter-Insurgencies, 15.
5. Heuser, Rebellen, Partisanen Guerrilleros, 36–8, references to Mazzini and Gentilini are frequent in the first two chapters.
6. In 1835, he published Guida del milite, a sort of manual on partisan warfare in which he used the same arguments as Bianco. In 1848, he published La guerra degli stracorridori, o guerra guerreggiata and then Guida alla guerra d’insurrezione, ossia guerra degli stracorridori (guerilla).
7. Frank Hoffman, Conflict in the 21st Century, 8.
8. Murray and Mansoor, Hybrid Warfare. In 1996, Huber edited Compound Warfare, the title indicating the coexistence of regular and irregular elements in military history. Arquilla does not use the term ‘hybrid warfare’ but his study is very interesting: Arquilla, Insurgents, Raiders, and Bandits.
9. According to the context, in this article I will use both the Italian singular banda and the Italian plural bande.
10. Grob-Fitzgibbon, ‘From the Dagger to the Bomb’.
11. Hybrid warfare is an example, as well as fourth generation warfare theory, see Lind, ‘The Changing Face of War’; Bell and Evans, ‘Terrorism to Insurgency’; Moghadam, ‘Defining Suicide Terrorism’.
12. On the history and evolution of the concept, see Picaud-Monnerat, La petite guerre. She was also the author of a very useful and complete bibliography on the subject: ‘The Petite Guerre of the 18th Century in Europe’.
13. Heuser, Rebellen, Partisanen Guerrilleros, 36.
14. Lüh, ‘Strategie und Taktik im Ancien Régime’.
15. Rink, Vom ‘Parthaygänger’ zum Partisanen, 79.
16. Ibid., 114–15.
17. Ibid., 81.
18. Ibid., 86–7.
19. Rink, ‘Der kleine Krieg’.
20. Kunisch, Der Kleine Krieg, 18, mainly Chapter 1.
21. Rink, Vom ‘Parthaygänger’ zum Partisanen, 84–5.
22. Ibid., 108–10.
23. Bianco, Manuale, 80.
24. Rink, Vom ‘Parthaygänger’ zum Partisanen, 87–90.
25. Ibid., 102–3.
26. Bath, ‘“Partisan” und “Partisanenkrieg”’.
27. Ibid.; Heuser, ‘Small Wars in the Age of Clausewitz’.
28. Schmidt underlines the importance of this war in the development of modern guerrilla and modern partisan warfare. Schmidt, ‘Der Guerrillero’.
29. Rink, Vom ‘Parthaygänger’ zum Partisanen, 137–8.
30. Hahlweg, Storia della guerriglia.
31. Rink, Vom ‘Parthaygänger’ zum Partisanen, 308.
32. Ibid., 279–80; Rink, ‘The German Wars of Liberation 1807–1815’.
33. Hahlweg, Storia della guerriglia, 87–9.
34. On the Le Mière influence on Bianco, see Liberti, Tecniche della guerra partigiana.
35. Laqueur, Guerrilla, 113.
36. Breccia, L’arte della guerriglia, 55.
37. On the Italian debate on guerrilla warfare, see Pieri, Storia militare del Risorgimento; Scotti Douglas, ‘La guerriglia negli scrittori’.
38. All biographical information may be found in Schettino, ‘Terrorista per sistema’, 11–13.
39. Ibid., 43.
40. Now in Bianco, Manuale, 207–17.
41. Actually, it has been republished twice in the last 40 years: Liberti, Tecniche; Bianco, Manuale.
42. Liberti, Tecniche, 414–15.
43. Peruta, Mazzini e i rivoluzionari italiani.
44. On Buonarroti’s influence on Bianco, see Laqueur, Guerrilla, 130–1.
45. Schettino, Terrorista per sistema, 80–2.
46. Scotti Douglas, ‘La guerriglia negli scrittori’.
47. Bianco, Trattato, xviii.
48. Ibid., 133.
49. Luraghi, ‘Carlo Bianco’. In order to explain his thinking, Luraghi uses the example of John Brown and his raid on Harpers Ferry; see Lutz and Lutz, ‘John Brown as Guerrilla Terrorist’.
50. Catucci, Postfazione, in Bianco, Manuale, 230.
51. Bianco, Trattato, xci–xcii.
52. Scotti Douglas, ‘Carlo Bianco’, 47–8.
53. Bianco, Manuale, 23–4.
54. Schmitt, Theorie des Partisanen.
55. Bianco, Manuale, 26.
56. Ibid.
57. Ibid., 23.
58. Ibid., 24.
59. Ibid., 25.
60. Ibid., 26–7.
61. Ibid., 27.
62. Zambernardi, ‘Counterinsurgency’s Impossible Trilemma’.
63. Bianco, Manuale, 29.
64. Ibid., 30.
65. Ibid., 34–5.
66. Ibid., 73.
67. Ibid., 79.
68. Ibid., 101–4.
69. Ibid., 107.
70. Ibid., 144.
71. Ibid., 111–14.
72. Ibid., 44–5.
73. Ibid., 49.
74. Ibid., 82.
75. Ibid., 55.
76. Ibid., 61.
77. Ibid., 63.
78. Ibid., 67.
79. Ibid., 68.
80. Ibid., 67.
81. Ibid., 85–7.
82. Ibid., 90.
83. Ibid.
84. Ibid., 87.
85. Ibid., 96.
86. Ibid., 115.
87. Ibid., 115–16.
88. Ibid., 119.
89. Ibid., 129.
90. Ibid., 140.
91. Ibid., 148.
92. McRaven, Spec Ops, 16–19.
93. Morris, ‘Surprise and Terrorism’.
94. Bianco, Manuale, 152.
95. Ibid., 149–50.
96. Ibid., 150.
97. Ibid., 157.
98. Ibid., 158.
99. Ibid., 182.
100. Ibid., 185.
101. Ibid., 193.
102. Ibid., 195–99.
103. Kydd and Walter, ‘The Strategies of Terrorism’.
104. Kalyvas, ‘The Paradox of Terrorism’.
105. Hoffman, Conflict in the 21st Century, 8.
106. Schmid and Longman, Political Terrorism, 20–1.
107. Whiteside, ‘Catch and Release’. See also Whiteside, The Smiling, Scented Men.
108. Merari, ‘Terrorism as a Strategy of Insurgency’.
109. Metz, ‘Rethinking Insurgency’, 38.
110. Merari, ‘Terrorism as a Strategy of Insurgency’, 213–51.
111. Ibid.
112. Hoffman, Conflict in the 21st Century, 16.
113. Bianco, Manuale, 144.
114. Ibid., 203.
115. Ibid., 188.
116. Brun, ‘While You’re Busy Making Other Plans’; Beccaro and Bertolotti, ‘Suicide Attacks’, a shorter version can be find online here: http://www.ispionline.it/it/pubblicazione/suicide-attacks-strategy-perspective-and-afghan-war-13002.
117. Hoffman, Conflict in the 21st Century, 15.
118. Bianco, Manuale, 105.
119. David Kilcullen, Out of the Mountains.
120. Bianco, Manuale, 180.