RELATIVE WEAKNESS: THE SECRET TO UNDERSTANDING IRREGULAR WARFARE
Articles
Wed, 07/06/2022 - 9:28pm
Relative Weakness: The Secret to Understanding Irregular Warfare
By Dr. Douglas A. Borer and Dr. Shannon C. Houck
Irregular warfare is an approach to peer-to-peer competition that Congressional legislators and civilian policymakers must better understand. Irregular warfare is how the Taliban drove the Western Alliance out of Afghanistan, and it is how Ukraine is presently checking Russia’s invasion of its territory. As these cases show, in the year 2022, the weak have won (and can win) wars. Knowing how to fight from a position of relative weakness is the true secret to understanding irregular warfare.
One essential requirement is confessional. The United States is often weak, but it is usually unwilling to recognize, let alone admit, its common weaknesses. For instance, in Afghanistan (and subsequently in Iraq), the US went to war with a belief that inside every Afghan was an American waiting to jump out. All we had to do is show up, remove their bad leaders, show them how liberal democracy works, provide economic and technical aid, and they would all commit themselves to giving up the old ways of sorting things out and resolve conflict through peaceful means (Note: a commitment to peaceful conflict resolution is the primary requirement for a working democracy). It didn’t happen. Bottom line: Naïve western egocentrism contributed to war loss in Afghanistan, and nearly did so in Iraq. We need to stop thinking this way or we will lose more wars than we win.
Fortunately for Ukraine and its friends, Vladimir Putin showed the same wrong-headed egocentrism when he decided to invade. Putin believed inside every Ukrainian was a Russian waiting to jump out. This may have been true with some Ukrainians after the fall of the Soviet Union in 1991, but after 2014 when Russia annexed Crimea, the Ukrainians literally dug-in in the Donbas and started fighting the Russians. American military advisors, mostly Green Berets from the 10th SF Group, were authorized to conduct Foreign Internal Defense (FID). FID included training Ukrainian units in the science and art of guerrilla warfare, which is the oldest form of irregular warfare. At its essence, guerrilla war boils down to a weak actor gaining a temporary force advantage in tactical situations in which they can “get in, destroy the enemy, seize some useful gear, and get out” before the opponent can bring sufficient counterforce to bear. This is accomplished in part because of “home-field advantage,” meaning the Ukrainians know the terrain (both rural and urban) better than the Russians. FID also included many NATO allies providing advanced lethal aid and training to the Ukrainians (Turkish drones, British and American anti-tank and anti-aircraft weapons, and the like). As such, before the invasion, even though on paper the Ukraine appeared much weaker than the Russians, in truth it fielded a more capable fight force than Putin ever imagined.
https://smallwarsjournal.com/index.php/jrnl/art/relative-weakness-secret-understanding-irregular-warfare
