The purpose of this chapter is not historical explanation. Contemporary terrorism
was discussed in Chapter 17. Rather, the intention here is to explore the character of
irregular warfare, to identify and distinguish among its several forms, and to analyse its
strategic advantages and disadvantages. Nearly every chapter up to now has described
and discussed regular warfare. Here, a modest corrective is provided to that deliberate
imbalance.
Guerrilla warfare, insurgency and terrorism
Historically, it is easily justifiable to define irregular warfare essentially politically.
But, more strictly viewed, irregular warfare simply encompasses military organization,
tactics and styles in combat. It need imply nothing about the political character and
purposes of the belligerents. Even a state may find itself obliged to fight an irregular style
of war. In addition, to risk muddying the water further, many states, including super- and
great powers, have developed and now maintain regular forces trained to fight irregularly.
Those soldiers are members of what are called special forces. Britain has its SAS
(Special Air Service) and SBS (Special Boat Squadron), the United States its Delta Force
and Navy SEALs (Sea, Air and Land) and Army Green Berets, and Russia its Spetsnaz.
Most countries have found a strategic need for necessarily small, elite, commando-type
units that are created for, and are prepared to undertake, missions of a kind far removed
from the mainstream of behaviour in regular warfare. One might comment that special
forces are guerrillas, even terrorists, in uniform. However, sometimes they dispense with
the uniforms, even though they need them in order to claim protection under the laws of
war. Few wholly irregular belligerents know or care about such civilized niceties, though.
It is almost a definitional truth to claim that regular forces are much stronger than
irregulars in combat. If that were not the case, the irregular side would rapidly shift to
fighting in a regular mode in order to bid for clear-cut victory. Regular forces typically
have advantages in numbers, equipment, training and discipline. Because of the dramatic
asymmetry between regulars and irregulars, the latter are compelled to wage a style, or
styles, of warfare that favours their distinctive strengths, and disadvantages the regular
enemy. Irregulars fight irregularly because they cannot succeed, or even survive, in any
other way.
Irregular warfare comes in different modes and has been known by many different
names. The most popular of those names has been guerrilla warfare, a title borrowed
from the Spanish for ‘little war’. Spaniards waged irregular warfare, in guerrilla mode,
with their popular resistance to French occupation from 1808 to 1814. Spanish regular
forces generally could not stand against the French, though they did win one notable
battle at Baylen on 19 July 1808, when a French army 20,000 strong was compelled to
surrender. To lose in Spain was always bad for the health of French soldiers. Many of the
20,000 prisoners taken at Baylen were promptly massacred, contrary to the terms of
surrender as well as to the standard practice of the time. Most of those who survived the
immediate fury of the Spaniards expired subsequently on prison hulks.
Cruelty and brutality unmodified by rules of war are basic and enduring characteristics
of irregular warfare. Not for nothing did Clausewitz, in his famous trinity of elements
that is the heart of his theory of war, associate violence and passion most closely with
‘the people’ (Clausewitz, 1976: 89). From the Napoleonic Wars to the former Yugoslavia
246 War, peace and international relations