The Counterrevolution in Strategic Affairs

Lawrence Freedman

Abstract: Claims from the 1990s about a revolution or transformation in military affairs are assessed in
light of the experience of the 2000s in Iraq and Afghanistan. The importance of considering political as
well as military affairs is stressed. Though the United States developed evident predominance in capabil-
ities for regular war, it was caught out when drawn into irregular forms of warfare, such as terrorism and
insurgency. The United States signi½cantly improved its counterinsurgency capabilities. It does not fol-
low, however, that the United States will now engage more in irregular conflicts. Indeed, the military cir-
cumstances of the past decade were in many ways unique and led to an exaggeration of the strategic value
of irregular forms and the need for the United States to respond. Meanwhile, the political legacy of the
experience is likely to be a more limited engagement with the problems associated with “failed” and
“rogue” states.

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War, as Carl von Clausewitz reminds us, is gov-

erned by politics, which provides its purpose, pas-
sion, and accounting. Yet politics is often treated in
military theory as an awkward exogenous factor, at
best a necessary inconvenience and at worst a
source of weakness and constraint–a disruptive
influence interfering with the proper conduct of
war. This outlook has featured prominently in
American military thought. There has long been
a clear preference, reflected in force structure
and doctrine, for big, regular wars against serious
great-power competition. With the end of the Cold
War, this preference came under pressure. The
United States had no obvious “peer competitor,”
and many in the military apparently felt that the
sort of operations coming into vogue –tellingly
described as “operations other than war”–were
beneath them. There was an evident lack of enthu-
siasm as the United States was drawn into the se-
ries of conflicts connected with the breakup of the
former Yugoslavia, culminating in the 1999 cam-
paign against Serbia over Kosovo. The withdrawal
from Somalia in 1994, like that from Beirut a de-
cade earlier, was taken as a cautionary tale about

LAWRENCE FREEDMAN is Pro-
fessor of War Studies and Vice-
Principal at King’s College Lon-
don. His recent publications in-
clude The Of½cial History of the Falk-
lands Campaign (2005), The Trans-
formation of Strategic Affairs (2006),
and A Choice of Enemies: America
Confronts the Middle East (2008),
which received the 2009 Lionel
Gelber Prize and the 2009 Duke of
Westminster’s Medal for Military
Literature.

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the folly of such involvements. In these
conflicts, the military could not simply
take political direction and then get on
with the ½ghting; rather, it found every
move full of political sensitivity and its
freedom of action restrained at each turn.
As a symptom of the attitude toward
operations of this type, the proposition
that shaped high-level thinking in the
U.S. defense establishment during the
1990s and into the 2000s disregarded
them entirely. The proposition held that
a “Revolution in Military Affairs” was
under way, involving a step change in the
nature of war. It gained suf½cient accep-
tance for the acronym rma to become
familiar shorthand for what appeared to
be an irreversible trend, an inexorable
phenomenon to which all military estab-
lishments must respond. Those which
mastered the rma most effectively would
have a sure route to victory.

The roots of the revolution were as-
sumed to be technological rather than
political. Thus, the United States, which
was demonstrably to the fore in the rele-
vant information and communication
technologies, would be in the vanguard.
Even better, the logic of the revolution
anticipated that the conduct of military
affairs would be pushed in a direction
that most suited the United States: one
favoring high-tempo conventional war-
fare. These predictions further reinforced
the presumption that the United States
could maintain its “hyperpower” status
for decades to come. The effect was to
play down the importance of the political
dimension in shaping contemporary con-
flict. Making sense of what has changed
over the past decade, therefore, requires
looking not only at the lessons of warfare
but also at the changing geopolitical en-
vironment.

This essay is concerned with “strategic”
rather than purely “military” affairs.
First, I consider political changes and, in

particular, the shifting relationship be-
tween the United States and the states
that used to be known collectively as the
third world. Next, I address the problems
with the rma and the asymmetrical re-
sponses that promotion of the strategy
naturally encouraged. As these reactions
included forms of irregular warfare, no-
tably terrorism and insurgency over the
last ten years, I then explore whether the
intervention in Afghanistan set a pattern
for the future in terms of both its objec-
tive and its conduct. (The speci½c ori-
gins of the Iraq intervention render that
conflict almost sui generis, although the
conduct there reinforces the lessons of
Afghanistan.) I argue that, on balance, Af-
ghanistan does not set a precedent. Com-
bined with the political changes dis-
cussed in the ½rst section of the essay,
the situation in Afghanistan suggests a
much more limited engagement with the
problems associated with “failed” and
“rogue” states. I conclude by hedging my
bets, in part through an examination of
the operation in Libya that began in
March 2011.

The term third world was coined in France

in the early 1950s to describe countries
that were economically underdeveloped,
politically unaligned, and therefore at a
distance from the liberal capitalist ½rst
world and the state socialist second
world. The long-forgotten inspirational
model for the term was the “third estate”
of French commoners, who eventually, in
1789, revolted against the ½rst and second
estates of priests and nobles. The term
therefore captured an idea of a coherent
group, a coalition of the disadvantaged,
that might one day overthrow the estab-
lished order. It came to include many
states that gained independence as a re-
sult of post–World War II decolonization.
The sheer diversity in shape, size, and
status of this group prevented member

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140 (3) Summer 2011

The
Counter-
revolution
in Strategic
Affairs

states from ever coming together as a
coherent whole (or geopolitical force).
Moreover, while many such states af-
½rmed the principle of non-alignment,
joining the “non-aligned movement”
founded in 1961, they did so largely as
a means of keeping their options open.
In practice, they often seemed to lean
toward one bloc or the other, typically in
return for arms sales and diplomatic sup-
port. Both Washington and Moscow as-
sumed that the newly independent states
would need to make their ideological
choices, for either liberal capitalism or
state socialism, and that their political
allegiances would follow. In a number of
cases, the superpowers were drawn into
civil wars on the assumption (often mis-
taken) that the local contest had real
links with their global ideological con-
frontation. The shifting allegiances in the
Horn of Africa in the 1970s and 1980s, as
Ethiopia and Somalia swapped camps,
illustrate the point.

Even before the end of the Cold War,
it had become apparent that while con-
flicts in the third world might be re-
shaped as a result of superpower inter-
ference, they were ignited by distinctive
local factors. Ideological af½nity did not
seem to produce political harmony. In
Asia, shared Marxism-Leninism did not
prevent the Soviet Union, China, Cam-
bodia, and Vietnam from clashing with
each other. Moreover, the general ap-
peal of state socialism declined as a re-
sult of its evident failure in the Soviet
bloc. A number of the former leaders of
the non-aligned camp that had once ex-
hibited socialist inclinations–such as
Indonesia and Egypt–ultimately moved
into the Western camp, though they were
not exactly liberal in their internal prac-
tices. After the implosion of European
communism, a general continental re-
alignment formed on the basis of the core
Western institutions of nato and the eu.

This was the moment when liberal cap-
italism peaked. As an ideology, capital-
ism had always contained many strands
and was often contradictory, yet its core
themes–with regard to free markets and
human rights–had been continually in-
fluential for more than two centuries.
The collapse of state socialism meant that
capitalism emerged from the Cold War a
clear winner. In this narrative, the West’s
victory was not simply a matter of deter-
rence and political cohesion but also a
result of intellectual vitality and entre-
preneurial drive. After the Cold War, lib-
eral capitalism was promoted as the mod-
el to emulate if states wanted to get ahead
in a globalized world. The idea of “glob-
alization” stressed the breaking down of
boundaries, particularly with regard to
capital, goods, and services, but also
ideas and people.

For a while, this vision suggested that
under the influence of free markets,
countries around the word–including
former adversaries–would adopt ½rst the
economic and then the political forms of
liberal capitalism. The embrace of de-
mocracy was considered particularly im-
portant, not only because it meant that a
larger proportion of the world’s popula-
tion would enjoy political rights, but also
because of the assumption that democra-
cies do not ½ght one another. Those with
regimes resistant to this path, and likely
to pose threats to their neighbors, were
described as “rogue.” Iraq, Iran, and
North Korea fell into this category. Those
unable to cope, often because they were
torn apart by internal violence, such as
Somalia, Congo, and Yugoslavia, were
described as “failing.”

It was always likely that many states
would go their own way, rather than fol-
low a liberal democratic model, without
becoming evidently roguish or failing.
The main problem was the uncertain re-
lationship between relatively free econ-

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omies, with active participation in global
trade and ½nancial markets, and relative-
ly free polities, with support for human
rights and democratic elections. As the
example of China vividly illustrates, it is
possible, at least for a substantial period
of time, to combine a strong capitalist
ethos with an authoritarian political sys-
tem. Even governments responsive to
public opinion and subject to democratic
accountability would not always wish to
align themselves with the United States,
especially as the American brand became
more toxic during the 2000s. Liberalism,
capitalism, and alignment with the Unit-
ed States turned out not to be inextrica-
bly linked. Furthermore, the particular
capitalist model practiced by the West
suffered a loss of credibility as a result of
the ½nancial crisis that began in 2008. As
a more practical consequence, the crisis
ushered in a more austere age, thereby
reducing the appetite for expensive mili-
tary interventions and possibly causing
greater reluctance in the provision of
economic assistance.

The U.S. appetite for military opera-
tions and foreign economic aid was al-
ready declining as a result of the cost and
disappointing results of the interven-
tions of the past two decades. Humani-
tarian intervention developed as a re-
sponse to failing states, providing a meth-
odology for the assertion of liberal values
in areas marked by severe strife. Bosnia,
Kosovo, and Sierra Leone were cited as
evidence of how harm could be mitigated
by timely intervention; Rwanda was the
prime example of the consequences of
abandoning a country in crisis. Interven-
tion on humanitarian grounds implied a
direct challenge to the post-Westphalian
norms of international behavior by threat-
ening to subvert sovereignty through the
expressed readiness to interfere in the in-
ternal affairs of others. Challenges to sov-
ereignty were always controversial, espe-

cially with states, including Russia and
China, that wanted no interference in
their more dissident and troublesome
regions.

Humanitarian interventions also gen-
erated long-term and expensive responsi-
bilities to those places where interven-
tion took place. Initially, the action might
have been prompted by evidence of acute
but short-term humanitarian distress,
but once engaged, the interveners felt
obliged to undertake wholesale recon-
struction of the target countries by set-
ting them on the road to democracy. The
same impulse was evident in Iraq and
Afghanistan. But as the United States be-
came bogged down in Iraq, it let its own
liberal standards drop in the conduct of
interrogations and counterinsurgency
operations. At the same time it demon-
strated an inability to reshape local polit-
ical structures according to its own pref-
erences. Unless a functioning democracy
was created, it was argued, there could be
no guarantee that the conditions that cre-
ated the problem in the ½rst place would
not recur. Why costly military exertions
should be used to reestablish an authori-
tarian regime was hard to explain. The
only way out was to work with the local
political grain, which was not necessarily
a natural support for the practices and
norms on which liberal democracy de-
pends and which would be under addi-
tional strain as a result of the internal
violence that had prompted the inter-
vention. On the one hand, walking away
from a country still in recovery would
have been dif½cult; on the other, an ex-
tended stay risked creating a local de-
pendency culture and increasing resis-
tance and hostility toward the United
States and its allies.

This shifting political context moved
U.S. military strategy a long way from the
promise of the rma. At the start of the

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140 (3) Summer 2011

The
Counter-
revolution
in Strategic
Affairs

2000s, hope had been very much alive.
Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld’s
“transformation” agenda was intended
to demonstrate the potential of forces
that were high on quality and relatively
low on quantity. Iraq, at least in its ½rst
stage, was taken as proof of those pre-
cepts. This new “dominant” form of com-
bat involved moving with greater speed
and precision, and over longer ranges,
than was possible for the enemy; disori-
enting as much as destroying; attacking
only what was necessary; and avoiding
unnecessary collateral damage to civilian
life and property. In the more enthusiastic
versions, the prospect was to lift the fog
of war. On land, where the fog was always
the greatest, the rma promised to dispel
the inherent confusion caused by ½ght-
ing in and around uneven terrain–woods,
rivers, towns, and cities–day and night,
in all weather, with the location of friends
as much a mystery as that of enemies.

This form of warfare suited the United
States because it played to U.S. strengths:
it could be capital rather than labor in-
tensive; it reflected a preference for out-
smarting opponents; it avoided excessive
casualties both received and inflicted;
and it conveyed an aura of almost effort-
less superiority.

Those ideas were deeply comforting,
and not entirely wrong. Information and
communication technologies were bound
to make a difference in military practice.
Perhaps the rma agenda understated the
extent to which American predominance
was dependent on not only the sophisti-
cation of its technology but also the sheer
amount of ½repower–particularly air-
delivered–it had at its disposal. None-
theless, the formidable cumulative im-
pact was impressive. Furthermore, while
the United States’ evident military supe-
riority in a particular type of war was
likely to encourage others to ½ght in dif-
ferent ways, that military capacity would

also constrain opponents’ ambitions. As
a regular conventional war against the
United States appeared to be an increas-
ingly foolish proposition, especially after
its convincing performance in the 1991
Persian Gulf War, one form of potential
challenge to American predominance
was removed, just as the prospect of
mutual assured destruction (mad) had
earlier removed nuclear war as a serious
policy option.

But there was an important difference.
With mad, everybody would lose once
nuclear exchanges began, which meant
that, in principle, the side stronger in
conventional forces could incur an ad-
vantage. The Warsaw Pact countries were
believed to be in this position during the
Cold War, thus putting the onus on nato
to escalate to nuclear use if its members
were losing the battle. Once the nato
countries gained conventional superiority,
deterrence was complete–at least against
other great powers. If an aspirant super-
power could in no way expect to ½ght and
win (in any meaningful sense) a massive
conflict along the lines of the two world
wars, then not only was America’s posi-
tion more secure, but the risk of another
catastrophic global conflagration was di-
minished. As with nuclear forces (whose
mid-century arrival had also been de-
scribed at the time as a “revolution in mil-
itary affairs”), the rma agenda required
maintaining substantial conventional
forces designed for a form of conflict that
the very existence of those forces ren-
dered unlikely. The challenge was to ex-
plain the need to pay for expensive forces
that might never be used.

Yet the rma model was deeply flawed.
Far from representing a real revolution in
military affairs, it harked back to an ear-
lier, idealized prototype of modern war-
fare in which a decisive military victory
can settle the fate of nations and, indeed,
of whole civilizations. Once its forces have

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been defeated, an enemy government will
have no choice but to hand over sover-
eignty to the victor. If war is accepted as
the arbiter, politicians can set objectives
and hold the commanders accountable,
but the military must be allowed to con-
duct the campaign according to its pro-
fessional judgment with a minimum role
for civilians–preferably not as victims
and certainly not as strategists. Under the
most idealized version of this model, the
victory comes quickly. The longer the war
drags on, the more uncertain the situa-
tion becomes, as both sides increasingly
depend on the performance of allies; the
test becomes one of social and economic
endurance more than military skill; mor-
ale suffers; and politicians become impa-
tient. Thus, for military innovators, the
acme of success is a new route to a swift
and politically decisive military victory.
This was the claim made for the rma.

However, the lack of a political context
was problematic. It ½xed on trends in
military capabilities and neglected the
types of conflict that might need to be ad-
dressed through force of arms. The new
doctrine recognized that armed force
could have a range of purposes other than
regular war but tended to set these possi-
bilities to one side, imagining such cases
either would be smaller in scale and easi-
ly supported by capabilities designed for
regular war or would involve goals that
could be picked up by lesser powers, such
as peacekeeping duties.

A further problem was the assumption
that, because the new technologies ½t
so well with American strategic prefer-
ences, they would not serve different and
opposed objectives. If the capabilities
had been purely military in character,
this outcome might have been more like-
ly. In practice, however, these technolo-
gies encouraged a progressive overlap be-
tween the civilian and military spheres.
High-quality surveillance and intelli-

gence, communications, and navigation
became widely available as consumer
gadgets could be exploited by otherwise
crude, small organizations with limited
budgets. Precision intelligence, instanta-
neously communicated and combined
with precision guidance, made it possible
to concentrate ½re accurately on solely
military targets in order to cause maxi-
mum disruption to the enemy military
effort. But it did not mandate such at-
tacks. It could support concepts less de-
pendent on discriminate targeting. In-
deed, the same systems that made it pos-
sible to limit damage to civil society
could also be used to ensure that attacks
on civil society were more effective. Even
on the American model there were always
dual-use facilities that served both mili-
tary and civilian purposes–for example,
power and transportation. They might be
targeted as part of a military purpose but
still led to the disruption of civilian life.

By the end of the 1990s, the challenge
to the rma was recognized to lie in what
was described as “asymmetrical war-
fare.” Enemies would refuse to ½ght on
America’s terms, attempting to turn war-
fare toward civil society rather than away.
The approach most feared was the direct
targeting of large population centers with
chemical, biological, or nuclear weapons
(of which nuclear are in a category all
their own, although they are lumped
together with other weapons of mass
destruction [wmd]). The approach that
was actually largely followed was to
adopt the various forms of irregular war-
fare: that is, to rely on the support of a
section of the civilian population as well
as on guerrilla and terrorist tactics. A de-
gree of overlap between the two approach-
es manifested when terrorists found ways
of causing mass casualties, particularly
using vulnerabilities in transport. The 9/11
attacks, the most spectacular example of
this type of warfare, raised the specter of

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140 (3) Summer 2011

The
Counter-
revolution
in Strategic
Affairs

terrorist access to wmd, perhaps aided
by “rogue” states. The event signi½cantly
affected U.S. priorities in the subsequent
decade, shaping the two main U.S. mili-
tary operations in Afghanistan and Iraq.
In both these operations, enemy regu-
lar forces were unable to offer much re-
sistance to U.S. strength. (The Taliban
was already battling the Northern Alli-
ance, and U.S. airpower and special forces
tipped the balance.) Both conventional
campaigns could be considered a vindica-
tion of rma-type concepts in that quality
defeated quantity with remarkable speed.
Thereafter, however, the United States
was stuck dealing with resourceful and
determined irregular opponents while it
desperately sought to construct sustain-
able indigenous state structures and
forces. The experience underlined the
danger of operating against the local po-
litical grain.

To say that, during the course of the
2000s, the United States mastered coun-
terinsurgency operations would be an
overstatement, yet after the severe initial
setbacks in Iraq, the United States adapt-
ed. The group associated with General
David Petraeus took some of the tech-
nologies associated with the rma, ac-
cepted that numbers still made a differ-
ence, and then brought in a more street-
wise grasp of the political circumstances
in which the military was operating. The
strategy emphasized that military actions
must be evaluated by reference to their
political effects, not simply by traditional
metrics geared toward eliminating en-
emy forces, and stressed the importance
of reinforcing these effects through what
are now called “information operations.”
This approach has required not only
tenacity but also a commitment of re-
sources and a tolerance of casualties that
would have been considered excessive,
even prohibitive, as the campaigns were
½rst planned in the aftermath of 9/11. The

situation demonstrates how much worse
it is to lose a ½ght than to walk away from
a ½ght before it has begun. Doctrine and
tactics have been changed to deal with
novel, and in some respects unique, situ-
ations. The enemy is unlikely to win in
Afghanistan or Iraq in the sense that it
will not be able to seize the state. But it is
also true that in neither case can it be said
that the United States’ side clearly won.
Both U.S. occupied countries remain un-
stable and have suffered very high costs
in lives and depressed social and econom-
ic development. Their long-term political
prospects are unclear. With one naturally
centralized and oil-rich and the other frag-
mented and poor, their circumstances are
very different. In their own ways, both
provide telling reminders that defeating
insurgencies depends on the quality of
government as much as, if not more than,
military technique.

Can we assume that recent military en-

gagements will set the pattern for the fu-
ture? The military history of the 2000s
was nothing like that of the 1990s, which
in turn was quite different from the 1980s.
Why should we expect to be able to pre-
dict the 2010s? Indeed, this decade has
already begun with a reluctant interven-
tion in Libya. The combination of high
ambition and self-imposed restraints
that characterize this engagement is un-
like any that has come before.

The main continuity in the post–Cold
War period, in addition to the reduced
risk of a great-power confrontation, has
been in the shift of focus from preparing
to deal with challenges from strong states
to engaging with weak and failed states,
at ½rst under the guise of peacekeeping
and humanitarian intervention and then
under the capacious umbrella of the “war
on terror.”

Unlike the large-scale great-power wars
of the past, in which the stakes were

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clear, the consequences of defeat grim,
involving the mobilization of whole soci-
eties and international alliances, the stra-
tegic imperatives behind the operations
of the past two decades have been more
controversial. The reason, however, is not
the level of casualties. Those who ½ght are
largely volunteer regulars. Losses have
not approached the industrial scale of the
great wars, though in some respects, that
difference has made individual sacri½ces
more personal and poignant. Politically,
the main issue is whether these lives are
being sacri½ced to any good purpose.
Questions are constantly asked about
why and how a war is being fought and
the probability of success.

An attempt was made, notably by the
Bush administration, to distinguish the
“wars of choice” of the 1990s from the
“wars of necessity” of the 2000s. This dis-
tinction, for which I take some respon-
sibility, is misleading. There is always a
choice, even if it is a terrible one. Un-
doubtedly different was how the stakes
were perceived. With the humanitarian
interventions of the 1990s, the choice
was ½rst about whether to pay attention,
and only then to decide what to do. If the
issues that might have prompted, and in
some cases did prompt, these interven-
tions were ignored, the consequences for
those directly involved might have been
dire, but others could have carried on as
before. Indifference was an option. The
term “war of necessity” implied the pres-
ence of an existential security threat, the
handling of which would determine a
state’s future position. In these cases, in-
difference was not an option.

It was dif½cult both before and after
9/11 to measure the threat posed by Al
Qaeda. The rhetoric of leaders such as
Osama bin Laden was extravagant in its
incitement to violence, yet their follow-
ers had only occasional successes. They
made an appeal to an underlying ideolo-

gy that ran deep and wide in certain
countries but was patchy in others. The
resulting violence was largely localized
and sporadic.

For the moment, at least, the spectacu-
lar attacks on the World Trade Center
and the Pentagon remain unique. At the
same time, the insurgencies in both Iraq
and Afghanistan, and countries where
the United States and its allies have not
made the same military commitments,
have been persistent, intensive, and trou-
blesome. Strategy has become preoccu-
pied with issues such as the relationship
between military technique and political
legitimacy, the radicalization of popula-
tions, the management of intercommu-
nal violence, governance and corruption,
and the role of international opinion.

If the recent past has set a pattern that
will continue for some time, we are now
entering a period when conflicts will be
dominated by irregular forms of warfare.
Talk of a fourth generation of warfare suf-
fers from a historicist fallacy similar to the
one affecting the rma concept: namely,
that forms of warfare pass through a nat-
ural progression. The difference is that
the rhetoric behind the rma was buoyed
by a technological optimism, while the
gloom surrounding the notion of the
fourth generation reflects cultural and
political pessimism. Irregular warfare,
however, is hardly a novel phenomenon.
It was used in the ½ght against colonial-
ism to circumvent the evident superiority
of the metropolitan states in military
organization and ½repower. During the
course of major regular wars, there were
often irregular elements. The two forms
are not exclusive and can coexist. One
of the textbooks of irregular warfare,
Lawrence of Arabia’s Seven Pillars of Wis-
dom, was based on his role in Arab ha-
rassment of Turkish forces during World
War I. In World War II, German forces
in Europe had to defend their territorial

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140 (3) Summer 2011

The
Counter-
revolution
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Affairs

gains from irregular partisan attacks as
well as from regular allied forces. Regular
war supposes that political disputes can
be settled through battle with a military
surrender followed by a transfer of sover-
eignty. But if a suf½cient portion of a pop-
ulation refuses to accept the result, popu-
lar militias, along with other forms of re-
sistance, may challenge the apparent vic-
tor. At this stage, the conflict is no longer
a regular war. One such popular uprising
occurred in France after the 1871 war
with Prussia, eventually leading to the
Paris Commune. It also happened in 2001
in Afghanistan and in 2003 in Iraq.

Regular warfare is perceived to be in
decline. This view can be attributed to
the likely destructiveness of war between
great powers, especially those armed
with nuclear weapons; a consequential
readiness to solve great-power disputes
by means other than war; and the superi-
ority of Western states in the conduct of
regular war. The increased focus on irreg-
ular war emerged from the apparent
invincibility of U.S. forces, with or with-
out their allies, in conventional battle.
To the extent that states, not necessarily
great powers, remain ready to resolve
disputes through force of arms, regular
war remains a possibility, as Palestine and
Israel, India and Pakistan have shown
over the years. For the moment, these
particular conflicts are being carried out
largely through irregular means, al-
though Israel and India have indicated
they are prepared to use regular forces
if irregular attacks are pushed too far.
The conflict in Libya has seen regular
forces taking on a cobbled-together mil-
itia that could survive only with support
from nato airpower. Future regular wars
that do not involve the United States and
its allies directly are possible, even if
they take on a cataclysmic form (for ex-
ample, a confrontation between China
and India).

For the United States, the issue is not
the war the country is most likely to ½ght
but the war for which its military should
prepare. Preparedness is a form of deter-
rence; it should mean that the war does
not have to be fought, which inevitably
leaves open the question of whether the
expenditure and effort were necessary in
the ½rst place. This is especially the case
because a defensive preparedness must
involve a substantial capability for ma-
jor war. Thankfully, America’s strength is
only one of a number of reasons why such
a war remains highly unlikely. Regard-
less, we can assume that the ability to
½ght and prevail in a war with another
great power will continue to be the top
priority for U.S. defense. The key ques-
tion is whether the United States will
need to maintain a substantial capacity to
½ght an irregular war. Over the past few
years, it has added a much more sophisti-
cated counterinsurgency capability to its
repertoire. In the 1970s, the U.S. Army
considered Vietnam to be exactly the
sort of war it never wished to ½ght again;
thus, it turned away from counterinsur-
gency in order to concentrate on its core
task of preparing for great-power con-
flict, at that time against the Warsaw Pact
in the center of Europe. In this setting,
the rma emerged: indeed, the embrace
of the relevant technologies can be traced
back to the rediscovery of maneuver war-
fare and the Army’s adoption of “air-land
battle” as core doctrine.

As Iraq and Afghanistan became more
demanding in the 2000s, this comfort
zone was no longer so available. A grow-
ing sense of a global conflict against a
resourceful and ideologically driven op-
ponent suggested another pattern. The
messy, prolonged ½ghts in which the
United States was directly involved, as
well as those in which the United States
had an interest, if a less central role–
such as Pakistan, Yemen, Somalia, Leb-

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anon, and Gaza–appeared to be part of
the picture. Instead of an occasional de-
cisive campaign to ward off a challenge
from an aspirant great power, the future
would likely be marked by a succession of
struggles against Islamist opponents op-
erating in and out of broken, weak states.
In most cases where states facing a seri-
ous Islamist threat looked to the United
States for help, support took the form of
intelligence and training as well as spe-
ci½c capabilities such as special forces
and Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (uavs).
Iraq, to say the least, was hardly an inev-
itable response to 9/11. The intervention
in Afghanistan had a greater logic in that
regard. Al Qaeda, residing brazenly in Af-
ghanistan, could be targeted by means
of a reasonably regular military campaign.
An available conventional response was
an unusual feature of this case, but it en-
couraged the perception of the utility of
conventional military force in the “war
on terror.” However seriously we take the
Islamist threat, it is important to empha-
size that this response is the exception
rather than the norm.

Irregular forms of warfare are favored by

underdogs who know that they have little
chance against superior conventional
forces. By itself, irregular warfare can-
not lead to a decisive victory. Some, of
course, may acknowledge this point
while insisting that it is irrelevant. Their
objectives may be no more than to ex-
press anger, exact retribution, or promote
a particular cause, such as animal rights.
If, however, the objective involves an at-
tempt to liberate some territory or seize
political control, then at some point, a
direct challenge to other regular or mili-
tia-type forces will be required, possibly
leading to open battle rather than to
raids, harassment, and ambushes.

This scenario might come about as fol-
lows: persistent attacks try the patience

and resilience of the ruling elite and its
external supporters; their authority and
con½dence are undermined while an
audience is created for a rival political
creed; and eventually, there is suf½cient
support to topple the regime and put a
new, popular government in its place.
The crucial moment arrives when the
irregulars gain recruits and support, and
the enemy suffers from desertion and
popular disaffection. As the balance of
power shifts, the irregulars will be able to
act in a more regular fashion.

This aspiration was explicit in Asian
guerrilla theory, including in the cam-
paigns of Mao in China or Giap in Viet-
nam. Irregular warfare–for example, in
the form of guerrilla tactics–was not a
preferred way of ½ghting: it was for want
of something better. By itself, it could not
produce victory because it did not allow
power to be wrested directly from the
state. At some point, even if only during
the endgame, the irregulars had to gain
the strength to ensure a decisive victory
over the state or, if the enemy collapsed,
assert their authority as the armed forces
of a state-in-waiting. In this way, Fidel
Castro and his hitherto ragged bunch of
guerrilla ½ghters marked their victory
over the regular forces of Batista in Cuba
a half-century ago. Once state power is
seized, even if relatively little effort is re-
quired, it must be secured against internal
and external enemies. Defending state
rule requires organizational and oper-
ational forms quite different from those
required to wage guerrilla war, let alone
mount random acts of terror.

Regardless of how successful they have
been in mounting individual attacks and
embarrassing enemies, irregular cam-
paigns rarely lead to power. For example,
even if successive terroristic attacks on
U.S. targets persuaded the United States
to disengage entirely from the Middle
East, the responsible group would still be

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140 (3) Summer 2011

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left ½ghting local opponents and rivals
for actual power. Note what happened in
Afghanistan after the Soviet Union with-
drew. In this respect, the Libyan conflict
was almost back-to-front. An anti-Gad-
da½ mass movement developed quickly,
asserted itself in the capital Tripoli, and
soon seized other population centers–
notably, the eastern city of Benghazi.
Using superior ½repower, crudely ap-
plied, the regime was able to regain con-
trol of Tripoli and would then have rolled
up the rebels had it not been for the un-
authorized intervention. Ironically, it was
the beleaguered regime claiming that the
rebels were really Islamist terrorists mas-
querading as democrats, while nato
countries accepted the rebels more or less
at face value, as a loose and largely un-
coordinated collection of anti-regime
elements.

The point here is that the great dramas
of regime change differ signi½cantly; fur-
ther, they often involve substantial armed
components as well as terrorist plots. It is
not that every two-bit terror group must
imagine itself as a great army-in-waiting,
although many do. For most, the ½rst pri-
ority is survival, perhaps through adver-
tising their presence with a conspicuous
act, which may be geared to recruitment
and fundraising as much as to the pursuit
of long-term political objectives. They
may have intense and contentious de-
bates about long-term strategy–indeed,
some do little else–but these are often
exercises in futility. Nonetheless, even
small and simple groups try to present
themselves as regular forces in develop-
ment, distinct from a political wing yet
with military-type command structures
and designations.

This is why it was unusual to be able to
respond to Al Qaeda in 2001 by means of
a regular operation. In general, terrorism
is the most primitive form of irregular
warfare. It might be de½ned as succeed-

ing if the only intention is to cause hurt; if
there is a wider political intention, the
effort normally fails. Al Qaeda’s Afghan
base made it unusual for terrorist groups
because it was not operating against the
host state and, in fact, was afforded a de-
gree of state protection as it mounted at-
tacks elsewhere. When terrorist groups
operate within hostile societies, the best
option is to consider them to be crim-
inals: that is, offenders to be dealt with
through the methods of law enforce-
ment, such as domestic intelligence, the
police, and the judiciary. Terrorists in-
volved in robbery, extortion, and even
kidnapping to obtain ½nance may ½t this
description literally. De½ning them in
this way has bene½ts in terms of propa-
ganda as well as in the choice of counter-
measures. It is also likely to be appropri-
ate as long as the terrorists consist of
small cells of militants hiding within the
host population. The most basic counter-
terrorist work in the West, therefore, in-
volves intelligence gathering, arrests, and
protecting key targets. If these groups
reach the point where they are best dealt
with by military means, then they have
outgrown the terrorist label and have be-
come something altogether more serious.

Groups with the size and persistence

to challenge state power are usually de-
scribed in terms of resistance or insurgency.
Here, the intent is less to attack civil soci-
ety than to use civil society as a base from
which to attack the regular forces of the
enemy, either demonstrating the weak-
ness of the state or inviting the state to
reveal its oppressive nature. Terrorist
acts may play a role in such campaigns as
part of a more integrated strategy involv-
ing various types of operations. Strategic
resistance, which is essentially defensive,
refers to the methods used to prevent an
occupying force from establishing itself;
a strategic insurgency, which is essential-

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ly offensive, refers to the methods used
to expel a purportedly illegitimate force
from a de½ned territory.

At either level, the attitude of the local
population is crucial. Success for a resis-
tance movement typically depends on a
supportive population. The task for an in-
surgency is to create support where, at the
outset, it is scarce. To do so, the insurgents
must ½nd a point of political contact with
the target community. Support leads to
sanctuaries, supply lines, recruits, and
intelligence, without which either type of
warfare risks defeat and suffers from a
constant fear of informers and a lack of
supplies and new recruits. Relations with
the community may be forged on the ba-
sis of a shared patriotism or kinship, but
they may also be based on intimidation
and fear–for example, the consequences
of known collaboration with the enemy,
or the expectation that even when the in-
surgents disappear, they may return ready
for revenge if they ever feel betrayed.

As with any type of warfare, successful
terrorism depends on strong and intel-
ligent leadership and internal discipline
and organization. The clandestine circum-
stances in which terrorists operate make
these qualities much harder to achieve
than in other forms of warfare. In prac-
tice, terrorism tends to rely on barely co-
ordinated and fragmented attacks by in-
dependent cells. It risks alienating likely
sources of support without denting state
power. These groups, in part because of
their radical, ideological nature, are often
prone to fragmentation and intense argu-
ments about political narratives, strategy,
and tactics. Organizational survival may
lead to operations undertaken to demon-
strate leadership of the struggle and main-
tain activist morale as much as to hurt the
enemy. There is always the potential for
internecine warfare, as different groups
vie with each other to control a struggle to
which they all are notionally committed.

If a terrorist group makes progress, it
does so by creating an aura of irresistibil-
ity, suggesting the state’s inability to cope.
This process generally depends on regu-
lar, incessant attacks. Regularity may be
more important than scale because the
aim is to demonstrate an ability to oper-
ate at will–to outsmart the authorities at
every turn–which is possible only with a
degree of popular support. In this regard,
terrorism as a strategy can be de½ned by
its objective to create the conditions for
resistance or insurgency. By extension,
the objective of resistance or insurgen-
cy is to create the conditions for regular
war. And regular warfare, in turn, seeks
to create the conditions for a transfer of
sovereignty.

The basic requirement for countering
opponents who adopt irregular warfare is
to take the progression described above
and push it in the other direction: that
is, force the enemy to take the backward
step from an insurgency to terrorism.
This task entails denying the credibility
of irregulars’ claims to be acting on be-
half of whole communities. Front-line
countering forces must ensure they are
recognizably local and can play the pa-
triotic card as effectively as the enemy.
Further, they must acquire critical intelli-
gence in order to identify and isolate the
militants from their potential sources of
support. These measures take time and
put a premium on patience. They require
sensitivity to grievances and fears and
attention to culture and anthropology as
much as technology and tactics. Their
boundaries are blurred; there is no con-
½ned military space and time to be set
apart from civilian space and time. On
the one hand, heavy-handed tactics may
con½rm enemy propaganda and help the
adversary gain recruits; on the other, an
overly light touch might allow opponents
to establish unencumbered their political
authority–as in no-go areas where state

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140 (3) Summer 2011

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forces dare not enter and where a parallel
government may be established.

To ½ght an irregular war outside one’s
own territory is inherently dif½cult.
Indeed, foreign forces can soon appear to
be an alien force of occupation. This per-
ception will grow if they adopt harsh meth-
ods. Compared with colonial times, overt
coercion of civilians is now out of bounds.
Damage to civilian infrastructure or civil-
ian casualties that result from attacks on
military-related targets are explained as
unintended and regrettable “collateral
damage”; such consequences are not jus-
ti½ed as a means of persuading the enemy
to give up. When an enemy is engaged in
irregular methods, however, following the
precepts of regular warfare in distinguish-
ing at all times between combatants and
noncombatants becomes dif½cult. An en-
emy militant may well look like an inno-
cent civilian. Frightened soldiers are apt to
take few risks when they fear attack. For
them, it can be frustrating to be forbidden
to chase enemy ½ghters into their towns
and villages, or to allow open supply lines
to avoid creating a sense of civilian siege.

The need to win over “hearts and minds”

is a frequent theme in discussions of stra-
tegies for irregular wars. It is referred to
whenever tough methods used by one’s
own side are questioned and whenever
there is a need to persuade people, through
good works and sensitivity to their con-
cerns, that the government and the secu-
rity forces really are on their side. The
term captures the idea of wars being won
in the cognitive (intellectual and emo-
tional) rather than the physical domain.
Practices that diminish support are not
hard to discern: arbitrary arrests, dis-
plays of brute force, rudeness, and disre-
spectful behavior are likely to generate
alienation and hostility. Winning sup-
port is harder: the real concerns and
grievances of the local people must be

addressed, even if attending to this task
means upsetting local power structures.
In part, it may be a matter of civic action
–repairing roads and building schools, or
securing power and sanitation infrastruc-
tures–but at some point, issues of of½-
cial repression, land reform, or ethnic mix
may become germane.

There is a chicken-and-egg problem.
These strategies can be too dangerous
to follow without local security; but until
local security is established, they cannot
be followed. Without security, foreign
troops and local people will be unable to
interact closely and develop mutual trust.
Security is not just a matter of immediate
safety. It also requires looking forward to
assess the likely future power structure
that will emerge as the conflict develops.
As the irregulars and the counter-irregu-
lars compete for local support, impres-
sions of strength may be as important as
those of kindness and concern. Support
is as likely to be based on convincing peo-
ple that you will win as it is on promises
of future goods and services.

Thus, unlike regular warfare, irregular
conflicts are unlikely to turn on having
the most advanced technology or over –
whelming force. In these conflicts, poli-
tics does far more than set the terms for
the ½ght: it infuses every move. Incentives
for authorities typically point toward
minimizing the ½ghting and appearing
not to rely on shows of force. The mili-
tary role may therefore be quite limited;
key tasks are instead in the hands of intel-
ligence agencies, the police, and even po-
litical leaders and intellectuals who frame
and describe the core issues at the heart
of the struggle. The challenge for exter-
nal forces intervening in such struggles,
especially if their role is prominent, is not
only to win local support, but also to re-
tain the public’s favor back home. In both
respects, a military strategy must be inte-
grated with a political one.

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This judgment does not change in the
two most dif½cult scenarios. In the ½rst,
groups are able to develop forms of un-
conventional attack that could rock the
foundations of society. The main concern
in this category has been the possibility
of chemical, biological, radiological, and
–most frightening but least likely–nu-
clear weapons campaigns. Alternatively,
irregulars might be able to attack the in-
formation networks that sustain core in-
frastructure. Other than in the particular
case where terrorists are acting as agents
of, or with substantial support from, an-
other state, these threats are still best
addressed through intelligence agencies
and the police. There may be specialized
military capabilities of potential value:
intelligence support, specialist sensors,
and the forms of assistance that may be
required after any catastrophic incident.
The military tends to play a role in the
aftermath of any disaster because it can
offer ½t and disciplined troops as well as
organizational capacity, including man-
aging logistical problems, gathering in-
formation, and maintaining complex com-
munication networks over time and in
adverse conditions.

In the second dif½cult scenario, which
is already common, a weak state that is
unable to cope with a developing chal-
lenge requests support. There may be
good reasons for its weakness. Supposed
counterterrorism operations may just be
part of an attempt to impose political or-
der from the center, as a rationale for
wider repression. Given that the parallel
political processes necessary for a “hearts
and minds” approach may be absent,
there is little prospect that grievances will
be addressed. The police may be unable
to cope or, if they are corrupt, incompe-
tent, sectarian in nature, or distrusted by
the target population, they may be part of
the problem. If the supported regime is
weak for these reasons, the situation is

unlikely to be improved by the insertion
of large numbers of foreign forces. The
commitments in Iraq and Afghanistan
were the result of the direct role the Unit-
ed States played in toppling the previous
regime and its responsibility for what fol-
lowed. Without that responsibility, the
more likely inclination will be to limit lia-
bilities and con½ne support to specialist
capabilities.

Attitudes toward the use of force after

the Cold War have been shaped from the
start by Iraq. When Iraq invaded Kuwait
in August 1990, the crudity of the aggres-
sion and the importance of the region
led to a strong collective response. Desert
Storm was a regular war; Kuwait was lib-
erated by battle; and the vicious repres-
sion that followed the postwar insurrec-
tion led coalition forces to set up safe ha-
vens for the Kurds in northern Iraq. This
engagement set the precedent for sub-
sequent humanitarian interventions. As
Saddam Hussein played games with un
inspectors, the United States used coer-
cive means to force him back into line.
Those efforts culminated in the Decem-
ber 1998 air strikes of Desert Fox. Frus-
tration at the leader’s continued de½ance
and survival led to the 2003 invasion, il-
lustrating just how strong the United
States is when ½ghting on its own terms.
The subsequent irregular warfare, how-
ever, demonstrated just how dif½cult it
½nds ½ghting on another’s terms.

The experience of the past decade has
provided a far better grasp of both the
potential and the limitations of irregular
forms of ½ghting, from terrorism to in-
surgency. Unconventional methods can
create contests of endurance, especially
for external powers trying to assert con-
trol in places where they are not entirely
welcome and where their strategic inter-
ests are uncertain. This scenario creates
a paradox. In conventional warfare, the

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140 (3) Summer 2011

The
Counter-
revolution
in Strategic
Affairs

United States and its allies are unbeatable
against countries lacking advanced mil-
itary capabilities. At the same time, all
powers struggle when facing resistance
from a population, or from segments of
that population. In the end, the United
States and its allies can avoid defeat be-
cause such a loss would require irregular
forces to undergo transformation into a
regular force capable of seizing power. To
win, however, the United States itself de-
pends on the regimes it supports, or in
the anomalous case of Libya, the rebels
it supports, who lacked the wherewithal
to take on the enemy effectively on the
ground. There is no reason to doubt that
Western forces would have faced far less
dif½culty in taking out pro-Gadda½ forces,
but even the anti-Gadda½ forces, in addi-
tion to the relevant Western governments,
felt that such a response would send the
wrong political messages.

This analysis suggests three proposi-
tions. The ½rst, to be blunt, is that after
two decades of high-tempo and contro-
versial operations, absent any further
9/11-type shocks, the United States will be
increasingly wary about entering into any
more long-term commitments involving
direct combat. In Libya the Obama ad-
ministration was prepared to accept the
risks of an inconclusive outcome, and it
framed U.S. involvement as participation
in a coalition led from elsewhere, rather
than as taking responsibility for another
major operation.

The second proposition is that no single
country, however large and resourceful,
can control the rest of the world to suit its
own interests. A new international polit-
ical con½guration has begun to take shape
with a number of “emerging” powers mak-
ing great strides economically, even as es-
tablished liberal capitalist states have fal-
tered. These emerging powers are unlike-
ly to coalesce into a new bloc–at least, no
more than was ever the case with the

“third world.” Two of them, India and
China, are the most populous countries
on earth, and both are wary of each other.
India, to some extent, has moved much
closer to the West over the past decade, in
part because of a shared concern over Is-
lamism. China, which is now asserting it-
self, is considered a rising superpower and
clearly has great economic clout, but it re-
mains hampered by a lack of obvious allies
(other than North Korea) and wide ideo-
logical appeal. Its foreign policy could be
described as realist and mercantilist. Rus-
sia, which has recovered (largely on the
back of energy prices) from the shambles
of the 1990s, is sometimes classed with
these emergent powers; but its economy
is narrowly based, and Moscow has un-
easy relations with most of its neighbors.
The problems the United States has
faced may help explain why others are
wary of trying to compete for full great-
power status, although they may well act
forcefully around their own borders and,
in a number of cases, have already done
so. Great-power status implies a responsi-
bility and a right to intervene at a distance
from border areas. Any cost/bene½t analy-
sis would encourage caution. For this rea-
son, the rising economic powers might
turn out to be circumspect when claim-
ing such a position for themselves. Brazil,
Russia, India, and China, the supposedly
ascendant powers, all voted against un
Resolution 1973, which authorized the
Libyan intervention, when the decision
came before the Security Council. In-
deed, being a great power is severely
overrated. The duties and responsibili-
ties associated with the status are as like-
ly to turn candidate great powers away as
they are to inspire pursuit of the title. A
wiser policy may be less about bossing
everyone around and more about helping
other peoples sort out their quarrels.

The third proposition, therefore, is that
while the United States is suffering from

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the ½nancial crisis and the cumulative
effects of its more recent interventions,
both of which have diminished its stand-
ing, it will remain the world’s predomi-
nant power. When a coalition of coun-
tries decided to act in Libya, Britain and
France, which were taking the lead, still
needed vital American “enablers.”

The cumulative impact of these con-

clusions points to a unique situation. For
the ½rst time since decolonization, no
evident strategic imperatives draw West-
ern countries into the affairs of the de-
veloping world. Oil continues to make
some parts of the world more important
to the West than others; it becomes a fac-
tor when tensions rise, but not to the ex-
tent where supply issues mandate certain
forms of intervention. There is a view
that scarce resources and other problems
aggravated by climate change, such as
population movements, may result in
much more international conflict. It
would certainly be unwise to argue that
no larger circumstances exist that would
lead to direct military engagement, let
alone less demanding forms of political
or technical assistance. The point is that,
for the moment, the incentives for in-
volvement are much weaker than be-
fore, a situation that carries risks of a
political vacuum.

Another view is that this reluctance to
intervene will be all to the good; that past
Western actions have inflicted more
harm than bene½t, stirring up discontent
and anti-Western feeling; and that indi-
vidual countries should take responsi-
bility for their own regional discontents.
Even ngos, which have decades of devel-
opment experience, are now far more real-
istic than sentimental, emphasizing long-
term capacity building rather than ½nan-
cial subsidies or loans from rich coun-
tries. For a variety of reasons having to
do with resources, practicality, prudence,

and changing attitudes, we may now be
entering a period in which international
crisis management will become progres-
sively less energetic and more dependent
on local attitudes and efforts.

Libya appears as an exception, yet the
intervention occurred only because of
considerable provocation by a regime
whose behavior had already been de-
nounced. Further, a massacre in Benghazi
appeared imminent; the Arab League
was urging action; and even with strong
un support, numerous provisos were
designed to limit the liabilities of the out-
side actors and ensure that the ½nal
struggle was between Libyans. Nothing
in this episode suggests a lack of caution.
In the future we can expect more buck-
passing, or looking to others to take the
lead only to blame them when things go
wrong. In addition, there will be a greater
stress on diplomatic efforts to encourage
“common sense” among disputants and
help mediate settlements. This will re-
place a readiness to actively knock heads
together and impose settlements. In the
face of de½ance, the priority will be to
explore political solutions, and force will
be very much a last resort. Major recon-
struction efforts will be desultory.

Putting Libya to one side, there is al-
ready evidence for this shifting outlook.
It can be seen in the uncertainties over
what to do about North Korea, Iran, and
the Israel/Palestine dispute, or the popu-
lar uprisings in Iran, Egypt, Bahrain, and
Syria. It is expressed in the frustration
over Afghanistan and the lackluster or
belated responses to the tragedies of
Sudan, Congo, and the Ivory Coast. The
Micawberish hope appears to be that
something will turn up, perhaps the over-
throw of an odious regime or an econom-
ic upturn, that will ease problems by cre-
ating a shared interest in prosperity. If this
is the case, and sometimes it is, then in-
ternational order will increasingly de-

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140 (3) Summer 2011

The
Counter-
revolution
in Strategic
Affairs

pend on good luck rather than good man-
agement.

Attempting to predict the future con-
fronts the general problem that prospects
depend on choices yet to be made. None-
theless, in describing matters of degree,
tendencies, shifting emphases, and de-
clining capabilities and will, rather than
their complete absence, the new norm is
one of less activity rather than total pas-
sivity. It is no longer possible to think of
international politics in terms of simple
hierarchies of great powers. Certainly,
particular events can change perceptions.
The expectations about the Bush admin-
istration, which was forecast to follow a
cautious “realist” strategy along the lines
implied here, were overturned by 9/11. A
terrible humanitarian catastrophe or a set
of terrorist outrages may prompt surges
of diplomatic, developmental, and mili-
tary activity. If countries are used as sanc-
tuaries for terrorism, or attempt to
manipulate energy supplies or maritime
trade, defensive measures may not be
enough. There will still be arguments to
address threats emanating from danger-
ous parts of the world at the source; in
these cases, the prevailing view will be
that it is best to nip dangers in the bud
before they become critical. As we have
already seen with Libya, crude forms of
oppression can prompt a revival of the
forms of discretionary interventionism
that developed during the 1990s under
the heading of the “responsibility to pro-
tect.” But again as we have also seen with
Libya, these claims, and the evidence on
which they are based, will have to look
extremely strong before they are taken as
seriously as they were in 2002–2003.

The question of the future of armed
force lies in politics rather than technolo-
gy, and of the two, politics is by far the
murkiest. Nonetheless, the ambition of
the 2000s is likely to be followed by the
caution of the 2010s.

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