Review: Nonstate Warfare and The Competitive Advantage
Why institutions matter in combat and the distinction between guerilla and conventional war is fake.
Bottom Line Up Front:
War is organized, mass violence for political ends. Neatly dividing it into “conventional” and “guerilla” war is impossible.
The best regular armies disperse, hide, and fight like insurgents; the best insurgents are organized and fight like regular armies.
Institutions matter, including in combat. They make modern combined arms warfare possible and have direct influence on battlefield performance.
Skills commonly associated with counterinsurgency, like cultural understanding, winning the hearts and minds of civilians, and working with friendly irregulars, have been crucial in past wars between great powers and they will be in future ones as well.
“Conventional” and “Guerilla” Warfare
It is often written, by both professionals and laymen, that there is a clear division between “conventional” war and “unconventional” or “guerilla” war, sometimes with “hybrid” war jammed in the middle. Conventional war is fought between the armies of states; they wear uniforms and carry their weapons openly; they mass troops, take ground, and hold defensive positions against attacks, all using heavy weaponry; and they attempt to control territory and defeat their opponents outright. On the other hand, guerrillas — insurgents, militias, tribal warriors, and other nonstate groups — do not have the combat power to fight like this. Instead, they disperse and hide in rough terrain or among the local population; disguise themselves as civilians and hide their weapons; conduct hit and run attacks where their opponents are weak and are willing while melting away where they are strong; and focus on inflicting costs on their opponents to wear them down while building up the support of the population. These are distinct methods of warfighting, so defeating each requires different doctrines and strategies. A commander who uses methods appropriate to fight one when he is actually fighting the other is bound to fail.
I consider this dichotomy fake. Nonstate, irregular forces, including those held up as quintessential guerilla fighters, frequently display every characteristic of conventional armies listed above. For example:
In 2014, Daesh conducted a major offensive to take and hold cities in northern Iraq. Although much of their success was due to terror tactics and the poor morale of their Iraqi opponents, it also depended on their ability to execute complex, large scale operations integrating armored vehicles, indirect fire, suicide bombers, and and infantry assaults to seize defensive positions. They generally carried their arms openly and undoubtedly aimed to control and defend population centers. When the Coalition counterattacked and forced them onto the back foot, they held their ground and defended in some of the bloodiest urban combat since World War Two.
When Israel invaded Lebanon in 2006 in response to rocket attacks and the kidnapping of IDF soldiers, they were met by a belt of fortified positions defended by full time fighters in camouflage, body armor, and kevlar helmets, armed with rocket artillery and anti-tank guided missiles (ATGMs). They defended these positions tenaciously, in some cases for up to 24 hours, until they were forced to withdraw or were destroyed in place.
In the first Chechen War from 1994-1996, Chechen insurgents attempted to defend urban areas with trench lines and anti-tank weapons. When this failed and they were pushed out, they successfully counterattacked back into the capital, Grozny, in August 1996 to eliminate the Russian garrison and retake control of the city.
The Rwandan backed M23 rebel group in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, which is currently launching an offensive in the east of the country, has fighters who are likewise equipped with helmets, uniforms, body armor, night vision equipment, and modern heavy weaponry like artillery, mortars, and heavy machine guns. They have attacked, taken, and held onto DRC military positions, in some cases after multiday attacks. According to UN reporting they are planning a further offensive to take and hold Goma, a city with a population of two million.
The Taliban's final offensive in May-August 2021 consisted of first taking control of rural areas in order to isolate government forces in cities before overrunning these in turn. Some government forces simply melted away, but not all of them did — at least 1,500 Afghan security forces were killed in the last four months of the war, and probably more. Some elite Taliban units, at least, like the Red Units and Badri 313, wore uniforms, received formal training, and used modern infantry equipment.
On the other side of things, the regular armies of states have almost all of the features identified with guerillas. Raids, ambushes, and infiltration through rough terrain, often seen as the bread and butter of guerilla warfare, are basic infantry tactics that are taught to and employed by US soldiers, as well as those of other regular armies. The mobile defense — avoiding fixed defensive positions and “trading space for time” — and attacking vulnerable but important components of an enemy's system, like their supplies lines, are likewise part of US military doctrine. Although US military personnel usually wear uniforms, like other states it employs Special Operations Forces who frequently do not. Moreover, the United States has found itself conducting tasks frequently associated with counterinsurgency like building partner forces, providing advice and support to friendly irregulars, and attempting to win the hearts and minds of civilian populations even in archetypical “conventional” wars like World War Two and the Korean War.
Nonstate Warfare: The Military Methods of Guerillas, Warlords and Militias
The first book I am reviewing here, Nonstate Warfare: The Military Methods of Guerillas, Warlords and Militias by Stephen Biddle, is an effort to resolve this paradox. As Biddle puts it:
The chief problem is that the commonplace intuitive notions of “conventional” and “guerilla” warfare are actually very difficult to parse into consistent, mutually exclusive categories. Almost all real combatants combine elements from both intuitive models—the more closely one examines real combat, the fewer truly unique features one can find in either intuitive style. Even the German Wehrmacht in 1944 displayed strikingly “guerilla-like” methods in important respects; even the Vietcong in 1965 did many things that most people associate with “conventional” war fighting. In fact the real differences are all matters of degree and relative emphasis among an array of shared requirements for survival against modern firepower.
Throughout his book, Biddle argues that the dynamics of modern warfare force militaries away from both extremes — which he calls “Fabian” and “Napoleonic” warfare, as a reminder that they are ideal abstractions unlikely to be found in real life — and towards the middle. Modern firepower is so lethal at such great distances that state armies are forced to disperse, use cover and concealment, and support each other with suppressive fire and maneuver by small units in order to survive. Conversely, if guerillas wish to inflict meaningful casualties on their opponents, hold territory, or effectively control and protect civilians — all of which are usually necessary to accomplish their political goals — they need to be willing and able to fight decisive engagements, which pushes them to be more like archetypical conventional forces. In the past, this may have been impossible, but with the development of compact but lethal modern weaponry like ATGMs and man-portable surface-to-air missiles (MANPADS) it has become more feasible for nonstate forces to fight state armies and win. Both sides, therefore, are pushed towards the middle. He writes:
The net result has been a material military incentive for all actors to move toward the middle of the Fabian-Napoleonic spectrum. Numerically preponderant, once-Napoleonic states have an incentive to become more Fabian in the search for cover against increasingly lethal weapons; numerically inferior, once-Fabian nonstate actors have an incentive to become less Fabian as real territorial control becomes more realistically possible for them.
If “moving up the spectrum” is necessary for guerillas to succeed, why don't they all do it? The modern weapons technology necessary for high intensity combat is widely available and few insurgents are unable to aquire it. With it, if employed effectively, they can destroy aircraft and armored vehicles, force regulars to disperse, and defeat them in combat.
However, combined arms tactics by large units and the effective use of cover, concealment, and suppressive fire are incredibly complex, far harder than shooting the local collaborator from the back of a motorbike, and require intensive training and specialization. They also require trust — if one commander is unwilling to support another in combat because he views him as a rival, or if a commander refuses to conduct an important attack because many of his fighters will be killed and they are his political power base, they are impossible. Similarly, if political leaders do not trust their military not to overthrow them, they will “coup-proof” them by promoting incompetent but loyal officers, giving the best equipment to “palace guard” troops far behind the front line, and filling combat units with informants and political commissars, and the competency necessary for this method of warfare will be undermined. These requirements — skill and trust — are difficult enough that even many regular state armies cannot manage them, and the difference between those who can and those can't is institutions.
Biddle argues that:
the primary difference between those who can and those who cannot overcome these challenges is their political makeup—and in particular, their stakes in the conflict (and the war aims that derive from these) and their institutional development. In particular, those nonstate actors with mature institutions and existential stakes face low barriers to cooperation and will typically respond to the pressures of wartime by training troops as needed to remove skill constraints and enable such actors to implement complex midspectrum methods. By contrast, actors with immature institutions and limited stakes face the highest barriers to cooperation and will typically face skill constraints that make effective midspectrum war fighting dangerously impractical, and which encourage them to default to simpler, often more Fabian approaches.
According to Biddle, the least successful nonstate groups are those that are weakly institutionalized: they are loosely organized into bands of fighters, decentralized and motivated by personal loyalty to their commanders. Tactical leaders not only lead men in battle, but also collect taxes, ensure their men get paid, and govern civilians. Authority is weak and informal, and when military commanders feud with the leadership of the organization or with each other their fighters support them.
On the other hand, the most successful are organized like bureaucratic states. They have a civilian, political authority above the military and specialized organizations for tasks like revenue collection, propaganda, and counterintelligence. Authority is impersonal — leaders are powerful because of their position; they do not hold their position because they are powerful. Since tactical commanders do not have to worry about shaking down the locals or dispensing justice to informants, they are able to focus on the building the skills necessary for modern combined arms warfare. Moreover, since the political leadership has a firm control over military commanders — unlike weakly institutionalized groups, they are generally able to remove the disloyal or incompetent at will, and do not have to worry about their own military forces being used against them — they can avoid destructive coup-proofing and are able to force cooperation between leaders.
Beyond institutions, Biddle also points to the threats that a nonstate group faces. An organization that faces an existential threat and, more importantly, one whose leaders face the prospect of personally loosing power and being captured or killed, has strong incentives to adopt effective midspectrum combat methods if it is able to do so. Otherwise, it will be destroyed. Those that do not face such threats can devote themselves to political infighting instead.
Although Biddle does not dwell on it — his book is called “Nonstate Warfare” — the same dynamic is true with states. States that have strong institutions will be able to build the skill and trust necessary for modern combined arms operations, those that are weakly institutionalized and built around personal authority will struggle to.
Biddle then tests his theory by examining several nonstate armed groups in detail: Hezbollah in the 2006 Lebanon campaign, the Jaish al Mahdi in Iraq from 2003-2008, the Somali National Alliance from 1992-1993, the ZNG, HV, and SVK in the Yugoslav Wars from 1991-1995, and the Vietcong from 1965-1968. The results generally confirmed his theory — Hezbollah and the ZNG developed strong institutions, were able to conduct effective midspectrum warfare, and accomplished their political goals. The HV and SVK were less institutionalized, but still cohesive enough to move beyond “Fabian” methods, even if neither was effective enough to defeat its enemies and realize its political objectives. The SNA had informal leadership on personal or tribal lines, but the existential threat posed by the UN intervention in Somalia forced them to cooperate and build combat capabilities effective enough to hold off US forces in the Battle of Mogadishu. The Jaish al Mahdi was poorly institutionalized and neither the Iraqi government nor the Coalition had much interest in exterminating them (its leader, Muqtada al Sadr, was able to stop fighting and become a fairly successful political figure) so they were never able to perform effectively on the battlefield or move beyond “Fabian” methods.
The Vietcong is the odd man out. In proper communist fashion, the VC was tightly organized, with bureaucratic organization and military forces firmly subordinated to the party. This translated into high tactical effectiveness — the Vietcong were legendary for their skill as light infantrymen. However, when they attempted to conduct large scale offensive operations with the 1968 Tet Offensive, they were crushed. Biddle argues this is the exception that proves the rule. The Vietcong's strong institutions enabled them to become skilled on the battlefield, but since advanced modern firepower like man-portable guided missiles was unavailable to them, they were unable to use this skill to inflict sufficient casualties on US forces to turn and turn it into strategic success. Modern insurgents do not suffer from this problem.
The Competitive Advantage: Special Operations in Large-Scale Combat Operations
The second book I am reviewing is a collection of essays entitled The Competitive Advantage: Special Operations in Large-Scale Combat Operations, produced by the US Army as part of a series of books on how various aspects of military force are used in high intensity combat at the scale of divisions and above.
Unlike the first, it is not primarily a work of theory or synthesis; each of its chapters is a different historical case study of Special Operations Forces (SOF) in wars from World War One to the US Invasion of Iraq. “Special Operations” can be a tricky concept to define, but in this book largely means small, elite units, generally working far from the main body of troops, who raid and collect intelligence on strategic targets or who train and advise friendly irregulars. These sensitive missions enable them to support larger and more decisive combat forces. In the words of the book’s introduction:
While the discreet, sensitive, and often spectacular missions are informative themselves the real lessons to observe are how divisions, corps, and armies combined their conventional effects with those of the special operators. Those instances of synergy—the operational synergy that resulted from those combined arms teams—generated powerful dynamics for maneuver that could be applied to future maneuver warfare.
The book's vignettes all cover how SOF and irregular forces were able to create this synergy. For example:
T.E. Lawrence was able to use his in-depth knowledge of Bedouin culture and the Arabic language, along with his study of traditional military theory (he was a particular fan of 18th century French General Maurice de Saxe, whose writings on mobile warfare he found applicable to his own situation) to build the Arab rebellion against the Ottoman Empire into a formidable force. More importantly, he was able to coordinate Bedouin irregulars with both the Arab regular army (formed mostly from POWs and deserters from the Ottoman army) and British troops under General Edmund Allenby to great effect.
Jedburgh teams, each comprised of one French officer, one British or American officer, and one enlisted radioman from any of the nations, were parachuted into France in 1944 to support the French Resistance and coordinate them with the Allied armies invading Europe. Some of these teams — generally those that received support from Allied high command and worked with well established resistance groups — preformed better than others, but the combination of French Resistance fighters and Allied SOF was able to tie down numerous German combat units who would have otherwise been used against the main Allied invasion.
After North Korea invaded South Korea in 1950, an anti-communist insurgency developed in North Korea. This insurgency eventually included up to 25,000 fighters, and tied down up to 500,000 North Korean and later Chinese soldiers. However, the weight of the Chinese intervention was too much for the insurgents to handle, so around 10,000 fled to islands off the Korean coast, protected by the US Navy and Air Force. There, they received training and support from an ad-hoc “Guerilla Command” formed by the Eighth US Army, and continued to conduct raids into North Korean territory until the end of the war.
The book also discusses the use of SOF in the Spanish Civil War, the Pacific Theater of World War Two, the Yom Kippur War, and the US Wars in Vietnam and Iraq. A similar pattern emerges repeatedly — SOF augmented irregulars, making them more combat effective. This was made possible because they had language skills, cultural understanding, and the support of local civilian populations. War is inherently political and fought amongst a human population, so the need for these skills did not disappear just because they were fighting a “conventional” war. Although their methods were often too “Fabian” to be decisive on their own, they could support larger combat forces by tying down their opponents and nibbling at their supply lines.
Both of these books are worth reading, although if you only read one it should be the first. Biddle should be read for his theory of military effectiveness and The Competitive Advantage for its history, although Biddle's description of the tactics and organization of his case studies is valuable on its own. Both get at the same idea from different angles: the clean division between conventional and guerilla warfare isn't real. Insurgents must be able to defeat enemy combat forces and take and hold ground, so they will be pushed into acting like “conventional” forces in order to accomplish their political goals. Regulars fighting other regulars must disperse into the terrain in order to survive modern firepower, and since land warfare is fought among civilian populations they will need to understand their cultures and cultivate their support as well. Both of these books serve as a reminder not to be trapped by artificial distinctions and ideas of “conventional” and “guerilla” warfare.
Edit: I've realized that I used the terms “regular” and “irregular” forces quite a lot without defining them, and it might seem like I've brought back the conventional-guerilla distinction under a different name. However, this a distinction of organization, not tactics. Regulars — which is closer in meaning to regulated than normal — are organized in standardized units, issued uniforms and weapons, and are subject to written rules and officers with impersonal authority. Irregulars are not. The warband of a 5th century Visigothic or Frankish lord would be considered irregulars by modern standards, but could certainly not be described as guerillas.