The Nature of Insurgent Warfare
Guerilla, or irregular warfare, focuses on competition below the level of state-to-state armed conflict, allowing antagonists to achieve military objectives without risking escalation into more costly wars with uncertain outcomes.
Irregular warfare is founded on the assumption that conventional and irregular tactics are distinct, yet this is a false premise; there is no meaningful difference between conventional and guerrilla (or irregular) warfare when it comes to tactics.
Conventional armies and guerrilla organisations hold no monopoly on any single tactic or set of tactics. The principles of warfare and technological change drive both soldiers and guerrillas towards the same tactical adaptations, for example, avoiding large unit concentrations due to the devastating capability of modern artillery and close air support. The only tangible differences between conventional and non-conventional organisations are uniforms, codified regulations, and official designation.
Guerrilla strategy is primarily based on alertness, mobility, and attack. It must adapt to the enemy situation, terrain, communication lines, relative strengths, weather, and the population's situation.
Tactics include appearing to come from one direction and attacking from another, avoiding solid targets, attacking hollow ones, and delivering lightning blows. When engaging a stronger enemy, guerrillas withdraw when the enemy advances, harass when they stop, strike when they are weary, and pursue when they withdraw. The enemy's rear, flanks, and vulnerable spots are vital points for harassment, attack, dispersal, exhaustion, and annihilation.
The primary functions of guerrillas are threefold: to conduct war on exterior lines (in the enemy's rear), to establish bases, and to extend war areas. Guerrilla participation involves strategic considerations beyond purely local tactics. Popular support is indispensable for successful guerrilla action, as guerrillas are typically weak and lack the weapons, equipment, supplies, technical skills, and numbers needed to fight conventionally.
Guerrillas recruit from the populace, gaining confidence from millions of their countrymen because the enemy is often a foreigner or barbarian. This popular psychological base provides vital intelligence to guerrillas while denying it to their opponents. Guerrillas may recruit from both supporters and indifferent populations.
Guerrilla war cannot be won quickly; it can only be a protracted war. It often involves a process of rural consolidation, providing an inviolable sanctuary from which to attack and withdraw at will.
Guerilla leaders may use terror to coerce or intimidate, but the critical question is whether coercion alienates more people than it intimidates. Historical evidence suggests that a policy of terror can undermine political indoctrination campaigns and drive supporters away, as seen with Greek and Malayan Communists and, eventually, Algerians.
However, terrorism can disrupt life to such an extent that peace on any terms becomes preferable, or it can achieve objectives against a colonial regime weakened by political difficulties, as in Palestine and Cyprus.
Territorial bases are of great value even before operations become regularised, providing training and rest areas, supply depots, and hospital facilities. However, bases offer fixed targets that counterguerrilla forces seek. Guerrilla groups can evolve into regular armies, but this typically requires foreign assistance.
The Rise of Hybrid Warfare
The concept of a "hybrid threat" has gained prominence, exemplified by Hezbollah's performance against the Israel Defense Force in 2006. Hezbollah used sophisticated tactics and strong defensive positions, refusing to abandon them as expected, acting in many ways as "conventional" as some state actors. This appearance of a blend of conventional and irregular tactics is not new, but rather ancient. This "modern system" is the new normal, and actors, whether state or non-state, must adopt it or risk defeat.
State-supported violent non-state actors (VNSAs) like the Vietminh, Russian-led separatist forces (RLSF) in Ukraine, and the Houthis, combine the lethality of conventional warfare with the challenges of operating against a highly dispersed enemy integrated with civilian populations. States can provide sophisticated weaponry, materiel, training, and organisational assistance that VNSAs rarely acquire otherwise. This includes short-range air defence, anti-tank guided missiles, artillery, and mines. Such support enables VNSAs to inflict significant casualties and operate effectively at higher echelons. The electronic and cyber warfare practiced by RLSF indicates the level of sophistication VNSAs can achieve with major power backing.
State support for VNSAs complicates traditional models for responding to insurgencies, raising the risk of escalation that can foreclose potential response options. The increased lethality makes it difficult for interveners to sustain long-term commitment due to higher casualties and domestic political costs. It also limits escalation options against supply routes or sanctuaries due to the risk of drawing the state sponsor into a direct combat role.
Challenges for Western Nations
Western nations' defence strategy is an expensive gamble, and policymakers rarely get a clear view of whether investments have paid off without direct conflict. Today, the war in Ukraine once again prompts the question of whether the United States needs to re-examine its preparation for future conflict, especially regarding the nature of great-power wars in the 21st century—whether they will be short or protracted.
Western militaries frequently struggle to balance the competing demands of conventional and irregular warfare, which become fused through the higher capabilities state support provides to VNSAs. There is a widening "restraint gap" between how liberal-democratic states use force and how adversaries do. Increased public concern for civilian casualties means that Western forces must invest in greater precision to avoid legal and political backlash, especially in counterterrorism and grey-zone operations. Adversaries are adept at manipulating international law through "lawfare" and spreading disinformation through social media, potentially deterring U.S. or allied military action.
Western nations may face an increasing inability to control strategic outcomes, with a growing potential for entrapment in regional conflicts not of their choosing. Maintaining domestic political support in prolonged conflicts with unclear objectives can be extremely difficult. Efforts to reduce a military footprint to ease domestic pressure are complicated by lethal state-supported VNSAs that demand larger forces and inflict higher casualties.
There is concern about the atrophy of conventional armies that participate in counterinsurgency campaigns, with warnings that essential skills for defeating conventional threats may be lost. However, good tactics learned against insurgents can transfer to professional armies. Dodging ambushes in combat can be better training than sanitised armoured manoeuvres in sterile environments. Despite this, many observers are sceptical that the U.S. military is truly committed to retaining irregular warfare expertise, often reverting to a conventional warfare focus.
The "by, with, and through" approach, where local actors bear the brunt of fighting with external support, may be inadequate against militarily sophisticated, state-supported VNSAs. These VNSAs have defeated local actors and even major powers, raising questions about relying on less-sophisticated allies and partners.
Strategies for Western Nations to Counter Insurgents
Successful counterinsurgency requires a comprehensive approach, integrating political, social, economic, and military fronts. It necessitates understanding the problems, hopes, and fears of the local population. Key to success is winning popular support and legitimacy for the government, rather than alienating the populace. This involves:
- Strict discipline among troops to respect civilian rights and property.
- Avoiding excessive or inconsiderate police methods that might increase civilian sympathy for guerrillas.
- Offering help, such as legal services or essential supplies, rather than living off the countryside.
- Administering reforms effectively and honestly without appearing to simply respond to guerrilla programmes.
- Permitting more, rather than less, political activity, including criticism, to keep discontent visible and provide alternatives to supporting insurgents.
- Accepting that real grievances drive guerrilla warfare and preparing to meet or undercut those demands.
- Persuading people to defend themselves by forming militia-type local defence units to defeat guerrillas, protect communities, and provide intelligence, which also serves the political function of breaking the community's ties with guerrillas.
First-class intelligence organisation is vital. Information is the "lifeblood of the antiguerrilla system". This includes careful attention to intelligence work, gathering information from maps, patrol reports, agents, and aerial photographs. Psychological warfare and information operations are critical for breaking the guerrilla-civilian link and undermining enemy morale. This involves providing factual information, countering adversary narratives, and inducing defections.
Militarily, Western forces must adapt their weapons and tactics to the terrain and local customs. The solution is often to adopt the same weapons and tactics as the insurgents to fight them. This includes:
- Constant patrolling, surprise attacks, and deep jungle operations.
- Small-unit operations.
- Developing expertise in ambushes and counter-ambushes: This requires meticulous planning, intelligence gathering, selecting appropriate terrain, rehearsing, and ensuring strict battle discipline and immediate-action drills for vehicle convoys.
- Utilising helicopters, which can be a battle-winning weapon in antiguerrilla warfare for rapid movement and deep jungle insertion.
- Combining a grid system of territorial control with mobile striking forces.
- Maintaining effective training programmes that introduce troops to antiguerrilla tactics in realistic environments. This initial training should ideally occur in a comparatively safe area within the country of deployment, enabling acclimatisation and local understanding.
Special Operations Forces (SOF) have a unique role in strategic disruption, which involves proactively setting favourable conditions to achieve national objectives by delaying, degrading, or denying an adversary's ability to achieve core interests through their preferred courses of action. This includes:
- Enabling resistance or insurgency movements to coerce, disrupt, or overthrow an adversary government or occupying power, or deter an occupation. This can support diplomatic efforts by forcing policy changes or undermining legitimacy.
- Building partner capacity and providing security cooperation support for internal defence and national resilience, especially against coercion and malign influence by state actors. This expanded framework could deter adversary states.
- Precision targeting of high-value targets and infrastructure, leveraging real-time intelligence developed by SOF to frustrate adversary strategies, and limiting escalation.
- Deep understanding of adversary strategies and priorities is crucial for strategic disruption, requiring investment in efforts to probe their preferred courses of action, risk tolerance, and escalation thresholds.
Overall, successful counterinsurgency is not solely a military endeavour; it is heavily influenced by the ability to connect with the civilian population and address underlying grievances. Over-simplification, undue stress on either military or non-military action, and impatience are major pitfalls. Ultimately, a guerrilla war must be fought primarily by those on the spot, with external support helping to create conditions for success and assisting local forces.
Civilians, when faced with an invading force, can undertake a variety of actions, both directly and in support roles, to resist and undermine the occupying power. This often involves engaging in irregular warfare, which is a form of conflict that operates below the level of traditional armed conflict between nation states.
Active Resistance and Direct Action:
##### Engage in Irregular Warfare and Guerrilla Operations:
Civilians can participate in irregular warfare and guerrilla activities, often using unorthodox and imaginative tactics. This approach emphasises constant alertness, mobility, and attack.
##### Utilise Guerrilla Tactics:
This includes common tactics such as ambushes, cover and concealment, and hit-and-run attacks. Civilians can infiltrate positions close to objectives and maintain continuous small-arms fire.
##### Target Enemy Weaknesses:
Focus attacks on the enemy's rear, flanks, and other vulnerable spots to harass, attack, disperse, exhaust, and annihilate them. Success can be achieved through many small, local victories which cumulatively weaken the enemy.
##### Conduct Sabotage:
Civilians or resistance fighters can carry out acts of sabotage, such as blowing up trains or paralysing critical infrastructure and communication lines.
##### Assassinations:
In Russian-occupied areas of Ukraine, officials and turncoats are routinely assassinated by saboteurs.
##### Employ Rudimentary and Emerging Technologies:
Civilians can use simple, readily available weapons like sticks, spears, scimitars, bows, and flintlocks. More recently, Ukrainian irregular warriors have used sea drones and aerial drones to strike targets and evade air defences. Additionally, cyber capabilities may provide a new type of partner force for resistance, with groups like Ukraine's "IT Army" engaging in volunteer cyber operations against Russia.
##### Avoid Direct, Conventional Confrontation:
When confronting a stronger enemy, resistance forces should withdraw when the enemy advances, harass when they stop, strike when they are weary, and rout them when they withdraw. The objective is to destroy enemy manpower, not to hold or occupy land.
##### Support and Mobilisation of the Population:
Provide Intelligence and Information: The active support of the civilian population is an indispensable condition for successful guerrilla action. Civilians provide vital intelligence and information about the enemy, which is considered the "lifeblood of the antiguerrilla system". They should also deny information to the enemy.
##### Offer Logistical Support:
The local populace provides essential logistical support, including food, shelter, medical care, and money for the resistance.
##### Form Self-Defence Units:
Communities can organise self-defence units, often formed from the local populace, to support combatant guerrillas. These units can perform local sentry duties, gather intelligence, arrest traitors, and prevent enemy propaganda. They also protect their communities and assist mobile forces.
##### Political Mobilisation:
Educating, mobilising, organising, and arming the whole people is crucial. This includes fostering discontent with the invading government and undermining its legitimacy.
##### Strategic Communication:
Influence efforts can involve shaping attitudes and behaviours of foreign actors and discrediting the enemy's narrative. This can range from using radio programming and leaflet campaigns to circulating rumours and fake orders to demoralise enemy troops.
General Principles and Mindset for Resistance:
##### Prioritise Survivability and Flexibility:
Guerrillas operate with the fluidity of water and the ease of the blowing wind when the situation is serious. They must never risk a defeat, as psychological damage can outweigh military losses. The wise soldier lives to fight another day.
##### Leverage Local Knowledge:
Guerrilla fighters are often natives, fighting among people and on ground they have known since birth, which is a significant advantage. Tactics should be adapted to the specific terrain and customs of the local people.
##### Maintain Popular Support:
This is paramount. Troops must be disciplined, respect civilian rights and property, and avoid creating hardship for the population. Guerrillas are described as starving without the support of the people. Conversely, bad treatment of civilians can multiply guerrilla effectiveness.
##### Prepare for a Protracted Struggle:
Great-power wars in the 21st century may be grinding, protracted struggles rather than short, sharp affairs.
##### Understand the Enemy's Psychology:
It's important for those leading resistance efforts to understand the psychology of the indigenous population and how to gain their confidence.
Resources for Civillians to Fight
Civilians fighting an invading force should focus on acquiring and leveraging a range of resources, encompassing combat tools, logistical support, and vital information, often by drawing on local availability and even from the enemy.
- Weapons and Ammunition:
- Simple, readily available weapons are crucial, especially for guerrilla units formed from the populace. This can include old rifles or bird guns, revolvers, pistols, spears, big swords, and landmines and mortars of local manufacture. More rudimentary items like sticks, spears, scimitars, bows, and flintlocks can also be effective.
- Captured enemy equipment is a principal source of supply, allowing guerrillas to increase their armament after a period of resistance. The success of rebel ammunition inventories growing "fatter" during sieges by capturing air-dropped supplies from the enemy highlights this.
- Local manufacturing can supplement captured arms, with an armoury established in each guerrilla district for the manufacture and repair of rifles and the production of cartridges, hand grenades, and bayonets.
- Mines are highlighted as a particularly effective single weapon in the guerrilla arsenal, especially anti-tank and anti-personnel mines, due to their ease of placement without interfering with guerrilla movements and their effectiveness on limited road networks. Demolition materials are also necessary for destroying railway trackage, bridges, and stations in enemy-controlled territory.
- For specific modern examples, Ukrainian irregular warriors have used sea drones and aerial drones to strike targets and evade air defences.
- Intelligence and Information:
- Active support from the civilian population is an indispensable condition for successful guerrilla action. This support provides vital intelligence and information about the enemy.
- Civilians should deny information to the enemy.
- Intelligence can be gathered from various sources, including maps, recent patrol reports, police, special intelligence agents, photographs, and ground and aerial reconnaissances. Even seemingly minor observations like smoke, camps, food plots, trails, and foot tracks are valuable.
- Local knowledge is invaluable for planning operations, particularly ambushes. Patrol commanders' brief reports and sketches of terrain help build a good picture of the operational area.
- Combat intelligence from the civilian population can be "unexcelled in quantity and of dependable accuracy".
- Logistical Support and Sanctuary:
- The local populace provides essential logistical support, including food, shelter, medical care, and money for the resistance. Guerrillas are described as "starving without the support of the people".
- Local medicines should be made to suffice if Western medicines are unavailable.
- Base areas are fundamental for guerrillas, providing training and rest areas, supply dumps, and hospital facilities. These can be in mountainous areas, plains, or river, lake, and bay bases.
- Guerrillas often rely on sanctuary from hostile governments in neighbouring states or in complex terrain such as woods, mountains, or swamps.
- The ability to procure food and other miscellaneous items from the occupied territory or local population is also important, as seen with the Vietcong and NVA.
- Communication and Propaganda Tools:
- Propaganda materials are very important. Large guerrilla units should have a printing press and mimeograph stone, along with paper for printing leaflets and notices.
- Strategic communication efforts can involve shaping attitudes and behaviours of foreign actors and discrediting the enemy's narrative. This can involve circulating rumours, fake orders, and leaflets to demoralise enemy troops.
- Cyber capabilities can provide a new type of partner force for resistance, with groups like Ukraine's "IT Army" engaging in volunteer cyber operations.
- Navigation and Observation Equipment:
- Field glasses, compasses, and military maps are necessary for an accomplished guerrilla unit.
- Human Factors and Organization:
- Political mobilisation is the "most fundamental condition for winning the war," involving educating, mobilising, organising, and arming the whole people.
- Self-defence units can be formed from the populace, providing local sentry duties, gathering intelligence, arresting traitors, and preventing enemy propaganda. They protect their communities and assist mobile combatant guerrillas by furnishing stretcher-bearers for the wounded, carriers for food, and support missions.
- Guerrilla units are formed from the people, often assembling the most valorous elements and arming them with whatever is available. Units can also be organised from enemy troops who come over.
- Survivability, caution, and self-restraint are key principles, as psychological damage from defeat can outweigh military losses. The wise soldier lives to fight another day.
- Discipline among resistance fighters is vital to maintain popular support, ensuring they respect civilian rights and property and avoid creating hardship. Bad treatment of civilians multiplies guerrilla effectiveness for the enemy.
- Local knowledge of terrain and customs is a significant advantage for native fighters.
- Patience and caution are crucial for successful operations and preventing unnecessary casualties.
It is important to understand that irregular warfare often operates in a "gray zone" below the level of traditional armed conflict and relies on asymmetric activities. This type of conflict emphasises local partnerships and gaining legitimacy among local populations, rather than holding territory. While these actions can be effective, direct, conventional confrontation should be avoided when facing a stronger enemy. The objective should be to destroy enemy manpower, not to hold or occupy land.Civilians fighting an invading force should focus on acquiring and leveraging a range of resources, encompassing combat tools, logistical support, and vital information, often by drawing on local availability and even from the enemy.
It should be noted that some of these suggestions derive from historical accounts and military manuals describing guerrilla warfare from both the perspective of those conducting it and those trying to counter it. The context of these sources varies, from historical conflicts like the Yom Kippur War and the Arab-Israeli War, to more recent conflicts in Ukraine, Syria, and various irregular wars. The challenges of fighting amid civilian populations and the moral obligation to reduce civilian harm are also highlighted.