The lack of decision in Syria’s civil war, now entering its third year, can be explained by the failure of the various rebel groups to coalesce into more coherent military formations and develop beyond the low-level guerrilla tactics they have been using since the beginning of the uprising in 2011.
In Syria, unlike the other states that have experienced the turbulence of the so-called “Arab Spring,” the rebels are facing an entrenched regime based in a threatened minority population: the Alawites. Consequently, for the regime itself and the 2.6 million Alawites of Syria, holding onto power is an existential question; victory is survival and defeat is annihilation. These are primary interests not subject to mediation or compromise motivated by the gradual exhaustion of political will. In other words, the Assad regime will not lose the will to fight. This leaves only one strategic path for the rebels: military victory. A tall order, but not one without precedent or doctrine. For guidance, they must look to the eternal form of war for the weak: guerrilla warfare. They are already practicing this at the tactical level, but their challenge is to produce strategic outcomes.
No new ruler, let me point out, has ever disarmed his subjects; on the contrary, when he has found them disarmed, he has always armed them. For, when you arm them, their arms become yours, those who have been hostile to you become loyal, while those who have been loyal remain so, and progress from being your obedient subjects to being your active supporters … But if you take their arms away from those who have been armed, you begin to alienate them. You make it clear you do not trust them, either because you think they are poor soldiers or disloyal. Whichever view they attribute to you, they will begin to hate you.
A few months ago I posted a link to an article I published on smallwarsjournal.com, in which I argued that the principle of destruction – as defined by Clausewitz – constitutes an important continuity between regular and irregular warfare. To achieve victory, a guerrilla movement must be able to defeat its enemy in battle; in essence the object of guerrilla warfare is to build enough strength to shed its guerrilla nature and transform into regular warfare, a process Mao called “protracted war.” The major exception occurs in situations where the enemy belligerent has only a secondary or tertiary interest in the conflict, and it is therefore possible to defeat him by exhausting his political will to continue fighting with constant guerrilla warfare.
Thus, irregular warfare can achieve the political object by one of two paths: protracted war, or political exhaustion. I created a chart to visually represent these two simple processes of irregular warfare, but I did not include it with the article:
Of course, political exhaustion is not a strategy exclusive to irregular warfare; Hans Delbucke noted that strategies can be divided according to the categories of annihilation and exhaustion, and that holds true for all warfare.
2011 was not the year to quit blogging. The world is on fire. But I have been unable to study the flames.
Because I’m now in them.
In other news, I’ve hit the big time: an article based on my work in graduate school was recently published by Small Wars Journal. The abstract is as follows:
According to the principle of destruction the best way to achieve victory in war is to disarm the enemy by destroying his forces in battle. However, irregular warfare is commonly assumed to operate through processes that make the principle of destruction irrelevant. An analysis of the writings and military experiences of T.E. Lawrence, Mao Tse-tung and Ernesto “Che” Guevara, three of the 20th century’s most influential theorists of irregular war, supports the argument that the principle of destruction remains valid in irregular warfare. This conclusion admits of one major exception in conflicts where a sharp asymmetry of interests exists between the belligerent parties, when it is possible for irregulars to achieve victory by exhausting the enemy’s political will, rather than by destroying his military forces.
I encourage all my readers to head on over to SWJ and take a look, though unfortunately, my present circumstances preclude me from active participation in the discussion.
China’s magic bullet – the supposed carrier-killing DF-21D anti-ship ballistic missile – is all over the news…again. This time because CINCPAC Adm. Robert F. Willard commented that the weapon system had reached “initial operating capability,” giving the media yet another excuse to indulge in more orgasmic Sinophilia. Judging by the many gleeful proclamations of the impending death of the U.S. Navy, one gets the impression that certain elements in the media are looking forward to a Chinese-dominated world-order (at least until they get the memo on changes to intellectual property rights).
The last time this story was making the rounds, back in August, I posted that the threat of the DF-21D, though not insignificant, has been greatly exaggerated. Analyses that predicts the dislocation of power balances due to the introduction of a single weapon system is fundamentally flawed because it examines strategy solely from a technical perspective, neglecting technical, operational, and strategic considerations that dictate how the weapons are actually used.
RADM J.C. Wylie is of some significance to this blog. Though I am familiar with his writings and career history, his death 18 years ago precludes anyone from learning more about the man himself. Thus my keen interest when I recently stumbled across a video of Wylie speaking before a USS Fletcher reunion in late 1992, just a few months before his death, in which he shares some humorous anecdotes about his service aboard the destroyer during World War II. The quality of the video could be better, but it shows that Wylie was lucid, eloquent and sharp all the way to the end of his life, and adds some personality to the theory of Power Control.
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LibriVox, which collects audio recordings of public domain works, has available the first four Books of On War, narrated in an Australian accent. Beware, however: the Howard-Paret translation is still owned by Princeton University Press, so the LibriVox audio is based on the nightmarish Graham translation.
Be sure to check out LibriVox’s catalog of other works. Plenty of stuff for the daily commute or jog.
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I have been reading Alistair Horne’s A Savage War of Peace: Algeria 1954 – 1962, the definitive history of the French-Algerian War. He introduces Part 2 of the book with the following letter, attributed to Marcus Flavinius, a Roman centurion of the Augusta Legion:
We had been told, on leaving our native soil, that we were going to defend the sacred rights conferred on us by so many of our citizens settled overseas, so many years of our presence, so many benefits brought by us to populations in need of our assistance and our civilization.
We were able to verify that all this was true, and, because it was true, we did not hesitate to shed our quota of blood, to sacrifice our youth and our hopes. We regretted nothing, but whereas we over here are inspired by this frame of mind, I am told that in Rome factions and conspiracies are rife, that treachery flourishes, and that many people in their uncertainty and confusion lend a ready ear to the dire temptations of relinquishment … Make haste to reassure me, I beg you, and tell me that our fellow-citizens understand us, support us and protect us as we ourselves are protecting the glory of the Empire.
If it should be otherwise, if we should have to leave our bleached b0nes on these desert sands in vain, then beware of the anger of the Legions!
I have a very difficult time believing this authentic; the sentiments seem completely alien for a 1st century AD Roman centurion. In fact, Horne cites the source as Jean Lartéguy famous novel, The Centurions. I am unable to find any earlier reference to the letter, and it seems completely apocryphal. However, I would be fascinated to be proven wrong, if someone has information to the contrary.
Gen. Mohammad Yousaf, who as an ISI officer coordinated the Afghan resistance campaign from 1983 to 1987, concludes his lively [and utterly parochial] memoir with the following comment:
Although I am reluctant to admit it, I feel the only winners in the war in Afghanistan are the Americans. They have their revenge for Vietnam, they have seen the Soviets beaten on the battlefield by a guerrilla force that they helped to finance, and they have prevented an Islamic government replacing a Communist one in Kabul. For the Soviet Union even their military retreat has been turned into a huge political success, with Gorbachev becoming a hero in the West, and still his hand-picked puppet, Najibullah, remains unseated, dependent on Soviet aid for his survival.
The losers are most certainly the people of Afghanistan. It is their homes that are heaps of rubble, their land and fields that have been burnt and sown with millions of mines, it is their husbands, fathers and sons who have died in a war that was almost, and should have been, won.
Yousaf defined “victory” in terms of establishing an Islamist regime in Kabul, which was the best case scenario for both Pakistan’s national interests and Yousaf’s own fundamentalist ideology, which was shared by Muhammad Zia-ul-Haq, President of Pakistan. By this measure, the hazy conclusion of the Soviet-Afghan war was an obvious disappointment, though only a few years later they did get their victory when the Taliban seized power.
Yousaf’s comment reflected the dominant narrative of events in the U.S. at the time of the Soviet withdrawal. For obvious reasons, the intervening decades have cast serious doubt on the notion of an American “victory” in Afghanistan. Instead of rehashing that ongoing debate, a more interesting question is to what extent the Soviets were truly “defeated.”
Thoughts on the ceaseless struggles for power that define our world.
About the author
"NerveAgent" holds an MS in Defense and Strategic Studies. He is currently enlisted in the U.S. Army, and recently concluded a year-long deployment to Afghanistan.
v i s i o n s o f e m p i r e @ g m a i l . c o m
"I believe that the following would be the true way to paradise - learn the way to hell in order to flee from it." -- Niccolo Machiavelli
