Asymmetrical Warfare

Asymmetrical Warfare

Author: Roger W. Barnett

Publisher: Potomac Books

Published: 2003

Total Pages: 202

ISBN-13:

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Possible 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

Asymmetric Warfare in South Asia

Author: Peter R. Lavoy

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Published: 2009-11-12

Total Pages: 427

ISBN-13: 0521767210

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A unique account of military conflict under the shadow of nuclear escalation, with access to the soldiers and politicians involved.


Asymmetric Warfare

Asymmetric Warfare

Author: Rod Thornton

Publisher: Polity

Published: 2007-02-12

Total Pages: 253

ISBN-13: 0745633641

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In 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 Complexity of Modern Asymmetric Warfare

The Complexity of Modern Asymmetric Warfare

Author: Max G. Manwaring

Publisher: University of Oklahoma Press

Published: 2012-09-05

Total Pages: 226

ISBN-13: 0806188073

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Today more than one hundred small, asymmetric, and revolutionary wars are being waged around the world. This book provides invaluable tools for fighting such wars by taking enemy perspectives into consideration. The third volume of a trilogy by Max G. Manwaring, it continues the arguments the author presented in Insurgency, Terrorism, and Crime and Gangs, Pseudo-Militaries, and Other Modern Mercenaries. Using case studies, Manwaring outlines vital survival lessons for leaders and organizations concerned with national security in our contemporary world. The insurgencies Manwaring describes span the globe. Beginning with conflicts in Algeria in the 1950s and 1960s and El Salvador in the 1980s, he goes on to cover the Shining Path and its resurgence in Peru, Al Qaeda in Spain, popular militias in Cuba, Haiti, and Brazil, the Russian youth group Nashi, and drugs and politics in Guatemala, as well as cyber warfare. Large, wealthy, well-armed nations such as the United States have learned from experience that these small wars and insurgencies do not resemble traditional wars fought between geographically distinct nation-state adversaries by easily identified military forces. Twenty-first-century irregular conflicts blur traditional distinctions among crime, terrorism, subversion, insurgency, militia, mercenary and gang activity, and warfare. Manwaring’s multidimensional paradigm offers military and civilian leaders a much needed blueprint for achieving strategic victories and ensuring global security now and in the future. It combines military and police efforts with politics, diplomacy, economics, psychology, and ethics. The challenge he presents to civilian and military leaders is to take probable enemy perspectives into consideration, and turn resultant conceptions into strategic victories.


The Moral Dimension of Asymmetrical Warfare

The Moral Dimension of Asymmetrical Warfare

Author: Th. A. Van Baarda

Publisher: Martinus Nijhoff Publishers

Published: 2009

Total Pages: 545

ISBN-13: 9004171290

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PART I The superpower and asymmetry PART II Jus ad bellum, jus in bello, jus post bellum PART III Leadership and accountability PART IV Soldiers perspectives PART V Ethical Education and Decision-making for the Military PART VI Stress and trauma PART VII The media PART VIII Democracy under Scrutiny PART IX In Hindsight


Drones and Terrorism

Drones and Terrorism

Author: Nicholas Grossman

Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing

Published: 2018-01-31

Total Pages: 236

ISBN-13: 1838608427

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In warzones, ordinary commercially-available drones are used for extraordinary reconnaissance and information gathering. They can also be used for bombings - a drone carrying an explosive charge is potentially a powerful weapon. At the same time asymmetric warfare has become the norm - with large states increasingly fighting marginal terrorist groups in the Middle East and elsewhere. Here, Nicholas Grossman shows how we are entering the age of the drone terrorist - groups such as Hezbollah are already using them in the Middle East. Grossman will analyse the ways in which the United States, Israel and other advanced militaries use aerial drones and ground-based robots to fight non-state actors (e.g. ISIS, al Qaeda, the Iraqi and Afghan insurgencies, Hezbollah, Hamas, etc.) and how these groups, as well as individual terrorists, are utilizing less advanced commercially-available drones to fight powerful state opponents. Robotics has huge implications for the future of security, terrorism and international relations and this will be essential reading on the subject of terrorism and drone warfare.


Terrorism, Asymmetric Warfare, and Weapons of Mass Destruction

Terrorism, Asymmetric Warfare, and Weapons of Mass Destruction

Author: Anthony H. Cordesman

Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing USA

Published: 2001-11-30

Total Pages: 462

ISBN-13: 0313006903

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There is a wide spectrum of potential threats to the U.S. homeland that do not involve overt attacks by states using long-range missiles or conventional military forces. Such threats include covert attacks by state actors, state use of proxies, independent terrorist and extremist attacks by foreign groups or individuals, and independent terrorist and extremist attacks by residents of the United States. These threats are currently limited in scope and frequency, but are emerging as potentially significant issues for future U.S. security. In this comprehensive work, Cordesman argues that new threats require new thinking, and offers a range of recommendations, from expanding the understanding of what constitutes a threat and bolstering Homeland defense measures, to bettering resource allocation and improving intelligence gathering and analysis. No pattern of actual attacks on U.S. territory has yet emerged that provides a clear basis for predicting how serious any given form of attack might be in the future, what means of attack might be used, or how lethal new forms of attack might be. As a result, there is a major ongoing debate over the seriousness of the threat and how the U.S. government should react. This work is an invaluable contribution to that debate.


New Battlefields/Old Laws

New Battlefields/Old Laws

Author: William C. Banks

Publisher: Columbia University Press

Published: 2011-10-25

Total Pages: 320

ISBN-13: 0231526563

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An 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.


Asymmetric Conflicts

Asymmetric Conflicts

Author: T. V. Paul

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Published: 1994-03-10

Total Pages: 268

ISBN-13: 9780521466219

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This 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.


Asymmetric Killing

Asymmetric Killing

Author: Neil C. Renic

Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA

Published: 2020-04-29

Total Pages: 263

ISBN-13: 0198851464

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This 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.