Americans and Asymmetric Conflict
Author: Adam Lowther
Publisher:
Published: 2007
Total Pages: 233
ISBN-13:
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How the Weak Win Wars
Author: Ivan Arreguín-Toft
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Published: 2005-12-08
Total Pages: 275
ISBN-13: 1316583007
DOWNLOAD EBOOKHow do the weak win wars? The likelihood of victory and defeat in asymmetric conflicts depends on the interaction of the strategies weak and strong actors use. Using statistical and in-depth historical analyses of conflicts spanning two hundred years, in this 2005 book Ivan Arregúin-Toft shows that, independent of regime type and weapons technology, the interaction of similar strategic approaches favors strong actors, while opposite strategic approaches favors the weak. This approach to understanding asymmetric conflicts allows us to makes sense of how the United States was able to win its war in Afghanistan (2002) in a few months, while the Soviet Union lost after a decade of brutal war (1979–89). Arreguín-Toft's strategic interaction theory has implications not only for international relations theory, but for policy makers grappling with interstate and civil wars, as well as terrorism.
Asymmetric Conflicts
Author: T. V. Paul
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Published: 1994-03-10
Total Pages: 268
ISBN-13: 9780521466219
DOWNLOAD EBOOKThis book examines a question generally neglected in the study of international relations: why does a militarily and economically less powerful state initiate conflict against a relatively strong state? T. V. Paul analyses this phenomenon by focusing on the strategic and political considerations, domestic and international, which influence a weaker state to initiate war against a more powerful adversary. The key argument of deterrence theory is that the military superiority of the status quo power, coupled with a credible retaliatory threat, will prevent attack by challengers. The author challenges this assumption by examining six twentieth-century asymmetric wars, from the Japanese offensive against Russia in 1904 to the Argentine invasion of the Falkland Islands in 1982. The book's findings have wide implications for the study of war, power, deterrence, coercive diplomacy, strategy, arms races, and alliances.
Asymmetrical Warfare
Author: Roger W. Barnett
Publisher: Potomac Books
Published: 2003
Total Pages: 202
ISBN-13:
DOWNLOAD EBOOKPossible asymmetrical warfare scenarios include launching chemical, biological, or suicide attacks; taking indiscriminate actions against critical infrastructure; using hostages or human shields; deliberately destroying the environment; and targeting noncombatants.".
Asymmetric Warfare in South Asia
Author: Peter R. Lavoy
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Published: 2009-11-12
Total Pages: 427
ISBN-13: 0521767210
DOWNLOAD EBOOKA unique account of military conflict under the shadow of nuclear escalation, with access to the soldiers and politicians involved.
Asymmetric Warfare
Author: Rod Thornton
Publisher: Polity
Published: 2007-02-12
Total Pages: 253
ISBN-13: 0745633641
DOWNLOAD EBOOKIn recent years, the nature of conflict has changed. Through asymmetric warfare radical groups and weak state actors are using unexpected means to deal stunning blows to more powerful opponents in the West. From terrorism to information warfare, the Wests air power, sea power and land power are open to attack from clever, but much weaker, enemies. In this clear and engaging introduction, Rod Thornton unpacks the meaning and significance of asymmetric warfare, in both civilian and military realms, and examines why it has become such an important subject for study. He seeks to provide answers to key questions, such as how weaker opponents apply asymmetric techniques against the Western world, and shows how the Wests military superiority can be seriously undermined by asymmetric threats. The book concludes by looking at the ways in which the US, the state most vulnerable to asymmetric attack, is attempting to cope with some new battlefield realities. This is an indispensable guide to one of the key topics in security studies today.
The American Way of Irregular War
Author: Charles T. Cleveland
Publisher:
Published: 2020-09-15
Total Pages: 276
ISBN-13: 9781977405449
DOWNLOAD EBOOKThe United States has failed to achieve strategic objectives in nearly every military campaign since Vietnam. This memoir describes how the United States can begin to build the American way of irregular war needed for success in modern conflict.
Americans and Asymmetric Conflict
Author: Adam B. Lowther
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing USA
Published: 2007-07-30
Total Pages: 252
ISBN-13: 0275996360
DOWNLOAD EBOOKAs the War in Iraq continues to rage, many in the White House, State Department, Department of Defense, and outside government are left to wonder if it was possible to foresee the difficulty the United States is currently having with Sunni nationalists and Islamic extremists. Recent American military experience offers significant insight into this question. With the fog of the Cold War finally lifting and clarity returning to the nature of conflict, the dominance of asymmetry in the military experience of the United States is all too evident. Lebanon (1982-1984), Somalia (1992-1994), and Afghanistan (2001-2004) offer recent and relevant insight into successes and failures of American attempts to fight adversaries utilizing asymmetric conflict to combat the United States when it intervened in these three states. The results illustrate the difficulty of engaging adversaries unwilling to wage a conventional war and the need for improved strategic and tactical doctrine. It is easy, Lowther writes, for Americans to forget the lessons of past conflicts as the politics of the present dominate.... His purpose here is to highlight some of history's recent lessons so that we may move forward with an awareness of what experience offers.
Asymmetric Killing
Author: Neil C. Renic
Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA
Published: 2020-04-29
Total Pages: 263
ISBN-13: 0198851464
DOWNLOAD EBOOKThis book offers an engaging and historically informed account of the moral challenge of radically asymmetric violence -- warfare conducted by one party in the near-complete absence of physical risk, across the full scope of a conflict zone. What role does physical risk and material threat play in the justifications for killing in war? And crucially, is there a point at which battlefield violence becomes so one-directional as to undermine the moral basis for its use? In order to answers these questions, Asymmetric Killing delves into the morally contested terrain of the warrior ethos and Just War Tradition, locating the historical and contemporary role of reciprocal risk within both. This book also engages two historical episodes of battlefield asymmetry, military sniping and manned aerial bombing. Both modes of violence generated an imbalance of risk between opponents so profound as to call into question their permissibility. These now-resolved controversies will then be contrasted with the UAV-exclusive violence of the United States, robotic killing conducted in the absence of a significant military ground presence in conflict theatres such as Pakistan, Yemen, and Somalia. As will be revealed, the radical asymmetry of this latter case is distinct, undermining reciprocal risk at the structural level of war. Beyond its more resolvable tension with the warrior ethos, UAV-exclusive violence represents a fundamental challenge to the very coherence of the moral justifications for killing in war.
New Battlefields/Old Laws
Author: William C. Banks
Publisher: Columbia University Press
Published: 2011-10-25
Total Pages: 320
ISBN-13: 0231526563
DOWNLOAD EBOOKAn internationally-recognized authority on constitutional law, national security law, and counterterrorism, William C. Banks believes changing patterns of global conflict are forcing a reexamination of the traditional laws of war. The Hague Rules, the customary laws of war, and the post-1949 law of armed conflict no longer account for nonstate groups waging prolonged campaigns of terrorism—or even more conventional insurgent attacks. Recognizing that many of today's conflicts are low-intensity, asymmetrical wars fought between disparate military forces, Banks's collection analyzes nonstate armed groups and irregular forces (such as terrorist and insurgent groups, paramilitaries, child soldiers, civilians participating in hostilities, and private military firms) and their challenge to international humanitarian law. Both he and his contributors believe gaps in the laws of war leave modern battlefields largely unregulated, and they fear state parties suffer without guidelines for responding to terrorists and their asymmetrical tactics, such as the targeting of civilians. These gaps also embolden weaker, nonstate combatants to exploit forbidden strategies and violate the laws of war. Attuned to the contested nature of post-9/11 security and policy, this collection juxtaposes diverse perspectives on existing laws and their application in contemporary conflict. It sets forth a legal definition of new wars, describes the status of new actors, charts the evolution of the twenty-first-century battlefield, and balances humanitarian priorities with military necessity. While the contributors contest each other, they ultimately reestablish the legitimacy of a long-standing legal corpus, and they rehumanize an environment in which the most vulnerable targets, civilian populations, are themselves becoming weapons against conventional power.
