Writing around the year 500 BCE, the Chinese philosopher Sun Tzu said:
“In the operations of war, where there are in the field a thousand swift chariots, as many heavy chariots, and a hundred thousand mail-clad soldiers, with provisions enough to carry them a thousand li the expenditure at home and at the front, including entertainment of guests, small items such as glue and paint, and sums spent on
chariots and armor, will reach the total of a thousand ounces of silver per day. Such is the cost of raising an army of 100,000 men. ”
Even at the time of Sun Tzu’s writing, during China’s Spring and Autumn period , economic concerns greatly influenced warfare. Furthermore, the idea of optimizing use of forces in the face of a stronger enemy existed even then:
“If [an enemy] is secure at all points, be prepared for him. If
he is in superior strength, evade him… Attack him where he is unprepared, appear where you are not expected…if the campaign is protracted, the resources of
the State will not be equal to the strain. ”
Sun Tzu’s final statement regarding the resources of the state resonates quite strongly with recent American travails in both Vietnam and Iraq. Although the United States Army is often considered to be the best equipped and most modern army in the world, it has encountered problems in many recent engagements. A key example are the current operations in Iraq, where At least 4,226 American servicemen have died in Iraq as of Monday, 12 January 2009 according to a recent Associated Press report , of which a substantial majority actually died in post- combat operations. The United States armed forces’ experience in Iraq prompts a very pertinent question: “How is it that the United States is neither able to completely prevent fatalities nor to completely destroy insurgent resistance in Iraq?”
The conflict between the highly-armed coalition forces and the insurgency presents us with a classic case of asymmetrical warfare.
During most of the post-WWII decades of the 20th century, the United States focused military preparations mainly on its cold war nemesis, the Soviet Union. The Soviet Union was a superpower, like the United States, and hence represented a symmetric threat. Although both sides of the conflict may or may not have chosen to employ similar tactics or technologies in the event of a hot conflict, they were similar in the amount of resources available to them and the sizes of their land masses. On the other hand, the United States differs greatly from Iraq in the amount of financial, technological, and military resources it possesses, in the size of its army, and in its level of access to satellite maps and information. In all conventional areas, the United States outclasses local forces in Iraq. The conflict between US forces and local insurgents is therefore, asymmetrical.
Asymmetrical warfare requires an extension of maneuver warfare to its logical conclusion: the weaker side must fight with minimum use of materiel and manpower, and only striking at an enemy’s weak points. Any waste of resources on the part of the weaker actor cannot be tolerated---in fact, attrition warfare is anathema to the weaker party in an asymmetrical conflict. Rather, the weaker party in an asymmetrical conflict uses advantages in terrain, information gathering, organizational structure and stealth as force multipliers. Distribution of such advantages may vary depending on whether the weaker actor attacks or defends; however, under the right set of circumstances, weaker actors are still able to survive when fighting against a stronger enemy, even one so large and powerful as the United States. According to a 1996 article, “leadership for the foreseeable future will proceed less from the military capacity to crush
any opponent and more from the ability quickly to reduce the ambiguity of violent situations, to respond flexibly, and to use force, where necessary, with precision and accuracy.” Although new weaponry technology has allowed for more precise use of force, for example by use of cruise missiles or targeted air strikes, such technology has not advanced to the point that it is able to completely locate and overcome troops mixing into a conquered civilian population. Thus, the choice becomes whether to annihilate a region’s populace indiscriminately and thereby risk loss of moral authority and other soft power, or to attempt surgical strikes. Before the advent of mass media, the first choice functioned adequately to prevent insurgencies, but presently, the second method has become more prevalent.
Unfortunately, advances in weapons and information technology have not always been able properly differentiate targets in order to prevent waste of materials and civilian casualties, nor can they overcome widespread support for insurgencies that arises from outside forces’ occasional use of heavy-handed tactics and lack of knowledge or respect regarding local languages and customs. Each day an insurgency survives, an invading large state wastes excessive amounts of resources to maintain its soldiers on the alert, whereas the insurgency forces often spend relatively little---the needs of varying actors varies greatly. In the case of symmetrical warfare, similarity of needs comprises a key factor in both the tactics employed and the goals held by actors. In the case of asymmetrical warfare, the weaker can utilize its low needs and simple defensive goals to great advantage. Examples abound: insurgent forces use devices such as shoulder-mounted RPGs and IEDs, as well as tactics such as abduction and bombings, to level force disparities with significant rates of efficacy. The new development of warfare is sometimes called 4th generational war- whereas the United States still operates a centrally-controlled 2nd generation army which focuses mainly on close fire coordination and material advantages. Oddly enough, although 4th generation forces use contemporary weapons systems, combination of these contemporary weapons systems with tactics such as those described by Sun Tzu over 2000 years ago has tilted the balance of asymmetrical warfare towards the smaller actor.
