Asymmetric warfare

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Definition and differences[edit]

The popularity of the term dates from Andrew J. R. Mack's 1975 article "Why Big Nations Lose Small Wars" in World Politics, in which "asymmetric" referred simply to a significant disparity in power between opposing actors in a conflict. "Power," in this sense, is broadly understood to mean material power, such as a large army, sophisticated weapons, an advanced economy, and so on. Mack's analysis was largely ignored in its day, but the end of the Cold War sparked renewed interest among academics. By the late 1990s, new research building on Mack's insights was beginning to mature, and, after 2004, the U.S. military began once again to seriously consider the problems associated with asymmetric warfare.[citation needed]


Academic authors tend to focus more on explaining the puzzle of weak actor victory in war: if "power," conventionally understood, conduces to victory in war, then how is the victory of the "weak" over the "strong" explained? Key explanations include

  1. strategic interaction;
  2. willingness of the weak to suffer more or bear higher costs;
  3. external support of weak actors;
  4. reluctance to escalate violence on the part of strong actors;
  5. internal group dynamics[3] and
  6. inflated strong actor war aims.


Strategic basis[edit]


Tactical basis[edit]



Use of terrain[edit]




A good example of this type of strategy is the Battle of Thermopylae, where the narrow terrain of a defile was used to funnel the Persian forces, who were numerically superior, to a point where they could not use their size as an advantage.


War by proxy[edit]


Asymmetric warfare and terrorism[edit]


The other view is that asymmetric warfare does not coincide with terrorism. The use of terror by the much lesser Mongol forces in the creation and control of the Mongol empire could be viewed as asymmetric warfare. The other is the use of state terrorism by the superior Nazi forces in the Balkans, in an attempt to suppress the resistance movement.[citation needed]


American Revolutionary War[edit]





American Civil War[edit]



The worst act of domestic terror in US history came in August 1863 when paramilitary guerrillas amassed 350 strong and rode all night 50 miles across eastern Kansas to the abolitionist stronghold of Lawrence (a political target) and destroyed the town, gunning down 150 civilians. The Confederate officer whose company had joined Quantrill's gang that day witnessed the civilian slaughter and forbade his soldiers from joining in the carnage. The commissioned officer refused to participate in Quantrill's asymmetric warfare on civilians. [12][broken citation]

Philippine-American War[edit]

The Philippine–American War (Filipino/Tagalog: Digmaang Pilipino-Amerikano) (1899–1902)[13] was an armed conflict between the United States and Filipino revolutionaries. Estimates of the Filipino forces vary between 100,000 to 1,000,000, with tens of thousands of auxiliaries.[14] Lack of weapons and ammunition was a significant impediment to the Filipinos, so most of the forces were only armed with bolo knives, bows and arrows, spears and other primitive weapons that, in practice, proved vastly inferior to U.S. firepower.


The goal, or end-state, sought by the First Philippine Republic was a sovereign, independent, socially stable Philippines led by the ilustrado (intellectual) oligarchy.[15] Local chieftains, landowners, and businessmen were the principales who controlled local politics. The war was strongest when illustrados, principales, and peasants were unified in opposition to annexation.[15] The peasants, who provided the bulk of guerrilla manpower, had interests different from their illustrado leaders and the principales of their villages.[15] Coupled with the ethnic and geographic fragmentation, unity was a daunting task. The challenge for Aguinaldo and his generals was to sustain unified Filipino public opposition; this was the revolutionaries' strategic center of gravity.[15] The Filipino operational center of gravity was the ability to sustain its force of 100,000 irregulars in the field.[16] The Filipino general Francisco Macabulos described the Filipinos' war aim as, "not to vanquish the U.S. Army but to inflict on them constant losses." They initially sought to use conventional tactics and an increasing toll of U.S. casualties to contribute to McKinley's defeat in the 1900 presidential election.[16] Their hope was that as President the avowedly anti-imperialist future Secretary of state William Jennings Bryan would withdraw from the Philippines.[16] They pursued this short-term goal with guerrilla tactics better suited to a protracted struggle.[16] While targeting McKinley motivated the revolutionaries in the short term, his victory demoralized them and convinced many undecided Filipinos that the United States would not depart precipitously.[16] For most of 1899, the revolutionary leadership had viewed guerrilla warfare strategically only as a tactical option of final recourse, not as a means of operation which better suited their disadvantaged situation. On November 13, 1899, Emilio Aguinaldo decreed that guerrilla war would henceforth be the strategy. This made American occupation of the Philippine archipelago all the more difficult over the next few years. In fact, during just the first four months of the guerrilla war, the Americans had nearly 500 casualties. The Philippine Revolutionary Army began staging bloody ambushes and raids, such as the guerrilla victories at Paye, Catubig, Makahambus, Pulang Lupa, Balangiga and Mabitac. At first, it even seemed as if the Filipinos would fight the Americans to a stalemate and force them to withdraw. This was even considered by President McKinley at the beginning of the phase. The shift to guerrilla warfare drove the US Army to adopt counter-insurgency tactics. Civilians were given identification and forced into concentration camps with a publicly announced deadline after which all persons found outside of camps without identification would be shot on sight. Thousands of civilians died in these camps due to poor conditions.

20th century[edit]

Second Boer War[edit]



World War I[edit]

Between the World Wars[edit]

  • Abd el-Krim led resistance in Morocco from 1920 to 1924 against French and Spanish colonial armies ten times as strong as the guerilla force, led by General Philippe Pétain.
  • TIGR, the first anti-fascist national-defensive organization in Europe, fought against Benito Mussolini's regime in northeast Italy.
  • Anglo-Irish War (Irish War of Independence) fought between the Irish Republican Army and the Black and Tans/Auxiliaries. Lloyd George (British Prime Minister at the time) attempted to persuade other nations that it was not a war by refusing to use the army and using the Black and Tans instead but the conflict was conducted as an asymmetric guerrilla war and was registered as a war with the League of Nations by the Irish Free State.

World War II[edit]

United States[edit]

After World War II[edit]

Cold War[edit]

The end of World War II established the two most powerful victors, the United States of America (USA, or just the United States) and the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR, or just the Soviet Union) as the two dominant world superpowers.

Cold War examples of proxy wars[edit]

See also: proxy war


Likewise, the war between the mujahideen and the Red Army during the Soviet war in Afghanistan has been claimed as the source of the term "asymmetric warfare",[17] although this war occurred years after Mack wrote of "asymmetric conflict," it is notable that the term became well known in the West only in the 1990s.[18] The aid given by the U.S. to the mujahadeen during the war was only covert at the tactical level, the Reagan Administration told the world that it was helping the "freedom-loving people of Afghanistan". This proxy war was aided by many countries including the USA against the USSR during the Cold War. It was considered cost effective and politically successful,[19] as it gave the USSR a military defeat which was a contributing factor to its collapse.[citation needed]

21st century[edit]


The ongoing battle between the Israelis and some Palestinian organizations (such as Hamas and Islamic Jihad) is a classic case of asymmetric warfare. Israel has a powerful army, air force and navy, while the Palestinian organisations have no access to large-scale military equipment with which to conduct operations; instead, they utilize asymmetric tactics, such as: small gunfights, cross-border sniping, rocket attacks,[20] use of civilian structures and civilian shields for military attacks,[21] and suicide bombing.[22]

Sri Lanka[edit]

The Sri Lankan Civil War, which raged on and off from 1983 to 2009, between the Sri Lankan government and the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) saw large-scale asymmetric warfare. The war started as an insurgency and progressed to a large-scale conflict with the mixture of guerrilla and conventional warfare. The LTTE pioneered the use of suicide bombing and perfected it with the use of male/female suicide bombers both on and off battlefield; use of explosive-filled boats for suicide attacks on military shipping; use of light aircraft targeting military installations.


Pakistan claims territorial rights to the region of Kashmir, where it has been engaged in a proxy war with India since 1988.




Much of the 2012-2013 Syrian civil war has been fought asymmetrically. The Syrian National Coalition along with the Mujahideen and Kurdish Democratic Union Party, has been engaging with the forces of the Syrian government through asymmetric means. The conflict has seen large-scale asymmetric warfare across the country, with the forces opposed to the government unable to engage symmetrically with the Syrian government so other tactics such as suicide bombings[23][24] and targeted assassinations have been put to effective use.

See also[edit]

US organisations:



  1. ^ Tomes, Robert (Spring 2004). "Relearning Counterinsurgency Warfare" (PDF). Parameters (US Army War College). Archived from the original (PDF) on 7 June 2010. 
  3. ^ Zhao et al. (2 October 2009). "Anomalously Slow Attrition Times for Asymmetric Populations with Internal Group Dynamics". Physical Review Letters 103, 148701 (2009) (APS). 
  4. ^ Arreguín-Toft, Ivan. "How the weak win wars - A theory of asymmetric conflict" (PDF). Retrieved 17 September 2012. 
  5. ^ Andidora, Ronald (2000). Iron Admirals: Naval Leadership in the Twentieth Century. Greenwood Publishing Group. p. 3. ISBN 0-313-31266-4. 
  6. ^ Nicolson, Adam (2005). Men of Honor: Trafalgar and the making of the English Hero. HarperCollins. p. 73. ISBN 0-00-719209-6. 
  7. ^ Reshaping the military for asymmetric warfare[dead link] Center for Defense Information
  8. ^ Toutellot, A.B. "Harold Murdock's "The Nineteenth of April 1775" American Heritage Magazine Vol 10 Issue 5 August 1959
  9. ^ Bicheno, Hugh (2003). Rebels & Redcoats. London: HarperCollins. ISBN 0-00-715625-1. 
  12. ^ Border War Sesquicentennial proceedings at Lawrence, Kan., August 2013
  13. ^ Wolters, W.G. (2004), "Philippine War of Independence", in Keat Gin Ooi, Southeast Asia: A historical encyclopedia from Angkor Wat to East Timor II, Santa Barbara, CA: ABC-CLIO, ISBN 1-57607-770-5 
  14. ^ Deady 2005, p. 55
  15. ^ a b c d Deady 2005, p. 57
  16. ^ a b c d e Deady 2005, p. 58
  18. ^ Oxford English Dictionary
  21. ^ "Hamas admits it DID use schools and hospitals in Gaza Strip as 'human shields' to launch rocket attacks on Israel - but claims it was 'mistake'". 16 September 2014. Retrieved 2014-11-11. 
  22. ^ McCarthy, Rory (1 January 2008). "Death toll in Arab-Israeli conflict fell in 2007". London: The Guardian. Retrieved 2008-02-18. 

Further reading[edit]



  • Beckett, I. F. W. (15 September 2009). Encyclopedia of Guerrilla Warfare (Hardcover). Santa Barbara, California: Abc-Clio Inc. ISBN 0874369290.  ISBN 9780874369298* Barnett, Roger W., Asymmetrical Warfare: Today's Challenge to U.S. Military Power, Washington D.C., Brassey's, 2003 ISBN 1-57488-563-4

Articles and papers[edit]