Western and Eastern Ways of Special Warfare

Abstract

Special operations were supposedly a new way of irregular warfare that was officially formed during World War II. This pointed to a paradoxical argument that modern-day special operations are a product of Western modern military innovation but utilizing Eastern ways of “ungentlemanly” warfare. This thesis is superfluous as special operations had been well practised by both ancient Western empires such as the Greeks and Romans, and around the same time in the East, such as in China, and Japan. This paper propounds that special operations, or ways of warfare as a whole, have no cultural and geographic divide, but rather very similarly practiced by men from all over the world in attempts to win economically and efficiently.

Keywords:

• special operations
• strategic culture
• ways of warfare

DISCLOSURE STATEMENT

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Additional information

Funding

The author expresses his gratitude to the Malaysian Ministry of Higher Education and the National Defence University of Malaysia for a generous Fundamental Research Grant Scheme (FRGS/1/2015/SS02/UPNM/02/1) which enabled the author to conduct his research on this topic. Nonetheless, the views expressed here are entirely the author's own.