How does one win against asymmetrical strategic warfare? You've got modern terrorist that are organize and aren't like a traditional army as they can be anyone from your next door neighbor to the shop owner down the street.
This is an interesting question, that has annoyed me since reading up on the Vietnam war.
How does a modern army fight this style of warfare? I'd say the only logical solution would be strategic destruction with waves of bombers just like WW2 as during that period germans were hiding within towns making it harder to find their sniper nests and bunkers.
yea, why not just nuke the place for a few dumb fucks
Isaiah Bennett
You can't without diplomacy. Guerrillas are usually motivated by ideology, have no permanent territory, and receive funding from states.
Caleb Sanchez
Because avoiding international backlash matters more than edgy teenagers think?
Oliver Moore
>yea, why not just nuke the place for a few dumb fucks That's why i want to know a better way to fight asymmetrical as obviously nuclear warfare or destruction is silly if you intent to occupy those areas.
Jackson Clark
A lot of it requires improving conditions on the ground enough so that people feel like they’d be losing something by joining the insurgency. As long as people see the potential for a better life by fighting, the insurgency will flourish.
Leo Evans
Literal Total War but no country is gonna do that theses day it would me destroying entire middle east and rebuilding it in modern ways, it will most likely never happen maybe if were lucky and world changes in next 100 years best hypothetical way to see it is like cod:aw and that's supposed to be 2060 (pic related new Baghdad in game)
Not entirely true in the case of ISIS, a lot of fighters lived in relatively prosperous and stable countries before joining.
Hunter Miller
That’s a good point. But it’s also worth noting that ISIS is more or less an example of an insurgency that was eventually defeated.
Jonathan Collins
>But it’s also worth noting that ISIS is more or less an example of an insurgency that was eventually defeated. That's because they change from insurgency to a conventional army.
Bentley Ramirez
Well, I’d argue a major part of their collapse can be attributed to their members losing confidence in the organization as a whole. Once people realized they were more likely to die than establish a caliphate, they lost most of their recruitment.
Brandon Martinez
I'd say it was more that they were so batshit crazy they ran out of people willing to fight for them. When you advertise to the world that you are absolutely ruthless and insane, sure, you scare people, but you also hand motivation to everyone in your immediate vicinity that you are a rabid animal and need to be put down. Their tendency towards barbarism and cruelty ultimately ended up uniting a lot of people and factions against them. They didn't really offer anything particularly good for the people they sought to conquer; at best, the option to exist as a vassal or to die horribly.
Caleb Harris
IS didn't run out of people, they persuaded supporters to fight elsewhere, just not the Levant where they were getting raped.
Brayden Cruz
Divide Iraq and Afghanistan into a series of "protected villages" that require all their populace to have IDs and follow a curfew. After the curfew anyone can be killed. The food, water, and all weapons will be accounted for by Army personnel and distributed to the village people. This prevents aid from falling into Talibam hands, because villagers cannot give them food. The regions between the protected regions are no-go zones constantly patrolled by strike force elements such as air assault soldiers and lrrps. They kill anyone not authorized in the area or there past curfew. This way the Taliban cannot get local support because locals don't control their own food. They cannot stay in villages because all villages are US occupied and we know the names/inhabitants of all villages, and if they go into the mountains they risk roving bands of US soldiers killing them >this is how the Rhodesians did it >This is how the British did it during the Mau Mau rebellion >this is how the French did it in Algeria But instead because these measures are too harsh we just post soldiers in fobs to get shot at all day and once in a blue moon wax a hajji out of pure luck and with 100 tons of artillery
Jaxon Evans
And who the fuck is going to pay for all that?
Mason Miller
By staying in your own country and not letting in foreigners
Nathan Murphy
Mass surveilance.
Easton Jenkins
>You can't beat ideas
That's why there are so many Indians fighting the government.
Really that's how you do it. Kill the insurgents, kill anyone harboring insurgents. Displace the people so they lose connections with the homeland they're fighting for. Make it so the majority get so sick of the misery, lose hope that they turn against the insurrectionists.
Blake Flores
genocide?
Brandon Edwards
Literally just kill everyone.
Lucas Bailey
Always go to basics: Logistics, morale, personnel
Even terrorists using an asymmetric strategy need to get money & guns from somewhere. Identify their sources and cut them off/degrade them. In Syria, that was oil production.
Morale needs a strong narrative. Put yours out, don't let theirs out. Control media, deny enemy statements or disapprove them, promote your own. Produce and develop flashy and innovative methods to reach a target audience. Use force to illuminate your message. The Gulf War is still the masterpiece for a Western power in the modern age, in this regard.
Personnel is where you see results in an asymetric campaign, though it can be slow going: You CAN kill them directly, but it is better to deny the relatively view hardcores you are fighting fresh recruits by swinging the population over to you, or at least against them. You don't have to be nice about it, but it doesn't always require violence: bribe local authority figures, develop and support local infrastructure or economic initiatives, destroy or cripple centers of enemy recruitment. Provide a clear carrot and stick. Classic examples range from the British anti-Communist campaign in Malaya to the flipping of Sunni tribes in Iraq (Awakening Councils) against Al Qaida during the Iraq War.
Ryder Harris
Well we gave the Indians casinos and tax free sovereign reservations. Long after they lost but still.
Lucas Turner
Once you have an asymetric force denied of: Ammo, guns, money, supplies Popular support Fresh recruits and a non-fighting support base
THEN, you have fun and squash them like bugs. Watch the ending of the original Red Dawn movie.
What you also need (and this is where democracies frequently fall down) is a crap-ton of patience. Asymetric/guerilla/CT/whatever you want to call campaigns are frequently measured in years, if not decades.
Oh, and you absolutely have to deny the enemy any sanctuary zones where they can retreat into and lick their wounds.
Hudson Roberts
Basically this, although the route to doing that without drawing international ire and disdain is long and slow-going.
Ryder Lewis
They do it by moving towards mass surveillance and other Orwellian police state measures instead of conventional warfare.
This is a retarded strategy. Your system would break down in days. Just trying to patrol all of Afghanistan's villages alone would require a million men - Afghaninstan has just under 50K villages and assuming you need 20 men to a village.
Then to replace the entire water and food logistical network of Afghanistan would take another half a million men and trucks. And what are you going to do about private farms? Apple trees in a backyard? Wild fruits?
And Afghanistan has little formal census. You'd have to do it all on yourself.
Anthony Parker
Consolation prizes for cutting it with the bullshit. No one these days wants to do what it takes to stop an insurgency. Your not supposed to declare half a war. If a country was worth invading it has to be worth decimation and elimination.
Zachary Adams
>if you take the military things from a military they dont work Yeah no shit. Is this also your strategy for defeating Russia?
Chase Bennett
Are you one of those marine retards who think the object of a war is to get a high K/D ratio? War is an extension of geopolitics, not a game of CS:GO. Decimating a country is both very difficult and completely unacceptable internationally.
Asher Watson
>the object of a war is to get a high K/D ratio Absolutely
The Ottomans, Prussians, and British knew how. Isolate civilians from the fighters when possible (the original meaning of concentration camps - see the Boer War), use collective responsibility and reprisals otherwise.
Guerilla war is the weak against the strong. It only works when the strong choose not to use their superior force.
Start dismantling their culture. A Mcdonalds and Walmart on every corner. Pump pop culture like explicit rap songs and 16 and pregnant to the masses. Then start breeding with the women and mixing their children. Within a decade or two the enemy will either turn on their own people or realize there's nothing worth fighting for.
Well successful examples throughout history tends to show that targeted mass executions typically work. Dictatorships tend to be successful at combating asymmetrical warfare overall. Typically through executions. Lots of them.
Robert Miller
He's right that ruthlessness is the only way to stop an insurgency, see the Second Boer War. But you're absolutely right that its prohibitively expensive, and results in diplomatic backlash. As such an insurgency is impossible for a modern western nation to defeat.
Grayson Young
>During the second Chechen war, Russia was able to impose a relatively effective stranglehold on the country cutting down a lot of the rebels movement across borders and limiting supplies of weapons (to the point the rebels were often dependent on capturing Russian equipment), though this was in large part achievable due to the extremely small size of the country.
>Seizing all the main population centers with overwhelming military forces was another part of their strategy, again a factor largely achievable just due to the small size of the country (barely over 1 million people).
>Frequent Search and Destroy operations, patrols and cordons would then keep the rebels constantly on their feet within their last stronghold in their mountain strongholds and villages. Buying the produce from rebel friendly villages at very profitable prices would help starve the rebels as well, so by the end of it all the rebels were so occupied with survival and constant relocation they had increasingly less and less force to spare offensively.
>Now take into account the Country has been in one state or another of conflict for over a decade, and the sympathies of the war weary population towards the "down to the last man standing" rebels versus the relative stability and financial incentives offered by the Russians starts to take its toll on the rebels support base. Also factor in that fighting one of the biggest armies on the planet for over a decade from a population barely scraping over a million has seen overs hundreds of thousands killed or wounded, the rebels are literally running out of man power/recruits, regardless of how willing people are or aren't ready to fight.
>Now the final nail in the coffin is the Russians making concessions and becoming allied to a significant force of former rebels who can take care of their own backyard a lot better and with less resistance then the Russians who are still widely seen as an illegitimate occupation force.
You either contain what is happening and have a near total media ban. This worked for the British in the 1950s and 1960s, then into the 70s as they fought in Oman. The French were making good use of this tactic in Algeria, too, until certain elements of the French press got wind of what was actually happening.
Malaya, Borneo, Oman, etc etc are your textbook COIN operations that worked because they knew exactly how to avoid mission creep and ensure that the troops were as well disciplined and trained as possible.
Dylan Miller
cont. Regardless of the fact the Russian eventually won, I still consider the Chechen rebels as one of the greatest unconventional military units since WW2 and the amount of factors that played into the Russians hands from the get go were quite significant (tiny country, isolation from outside support, tiny population, literally surrounded by your own country and friendly countries geographically etc.).
If you want some seriously interesting reading about military tactics as well as just downright astounding stories of gritty, untamed, modern combat I'd highly recommend pic related.
Its a compilation of combat stories from Chechen rebels told in great detail by some former USMC guy that interviewed them, he also breaks them down with his own overviews, commentary and maps for more tactical analysis.
If US militias had any sense this book would be on all their essential reading lists, theres a free pdf copy out their if you search it up to.
Afghanistan doesn't require a million men. There is no consensus on the amount of villages in the area with you pulling these numbers out of your ass. And notoriously the Afghans don't rely on the land they rely on local support for Intel and food, making the strategy effective. Like it was, as I said, in Rhodesia, Malaya, Kenya, Uganda, and Algeria. The Taliban are relatively new, it is a simple thing to round up villagers and ask them one at a time who is Taliban. You can then get their support and use them to establish a spy network a la Algeria and local forces not supportive of the Taliban (Northern Alliance, Uzbeks, Hazaras) as opposed to hiring ANA forces randomly. Yes, this requires a lot of soldiers, not a million soldiers more like 50,000. But then the question is then what are you willing to do to win? America said not much and so now we see the consequences
Dylan Sanchez
Terrorist groups require two things: ideological support and financial support.
The ideological support is the tough one, but I think the solution is to avoid starting a war with the entire middle east. This is exactly what the terrorists want. Instead of overthrowing dictators and bombing countries that haven't attacked us, provide funding for alternative ideologies, and this means muslim ones. Muslims might be a group that's easy to hate but the fuck is that there are 1 billion of them, and fighting 2000 of them is a lot easier than fighting 1 billion of them.
Now for the solution you'll probably like. Find one of these rich fucks who donated some money to ISIS and kidnap them and bring them to the white house. The president will take his personal gold plated 1911 and shoot him in the face live on camera until his mother cannot recognize him, then proceed to bomb the ever living shit out of his hometown.
Alternatively have them run over by a tank feet first live at the superbowl, then send his head back to his family in a box filled with scorpions.
These donors are usually soft rich assholes who could be intimidated quite easily. Make an example out of one of them and the rest will spend their money on BMWs, Belly Dancers and Opium instead.
There you go, no stupid endless wars.
Oh yeah and nuke Israel.
Mason Baker
Murder. Keep murdering everyone till anyone who even thinks of fighting is dead. Provide a high quality of life for those who don't fight. Indoctrination for the children in schools and everywhere else for adults. Convince them you are their savior. After a generation or two of indoctrination, increased standard of living for the living, and the real visible punishment of death for those opposed, you win. Look at China, they've been invaded so many times they don't even remember what life was like bf they were invaded. They now claim their Invaders heritage as part of their own history.
Jaxon Butler
This is by far the best answer in the thread.
Its not warfare, as its not an army you are fighting but rather an idea, and you dont fight it with a military. This is a war that is to be fought in the shadows, with extremely brutality by a secret police organization. Say a terrorist suicide bombs something. You go abduct their entire extended family, and they are never seen again, then you abduct anyone you think might possibly have been related, and you keep doing this until the terrorism stops. This method has been repeatedly shown to be the only sustainable method for stopping terrorist groups, but it must be done secretly, or at least with deniability, so as to avoid international backlash. The saddest part of this is that as foreign invaders, we can never make this happen. It has to be a home grown secret police organization, as they are the only ones with sufficient familiarity with the locals to succeed.
Alexander Edwards
The effectiveness of asymmetrical warfare is mostly a meme. It is only effective against incompetent and rigid leadership. Take Vietnam for example. The Johnson/Westmoreland strategy was an ineffective disaster from the get go. Nixon/Abrams reformed the war effort in 1969 by getting rid of S&D, body counts, and constant patrols, while lifting all restrictions on bombing and expanding the war into Laos and Cambodia, while occupying important locations. North Vietnam came to the negotiating table in 3 years. The only reason the US was losing Vietnam was because of Johnson and Co., and anti American propaganda enabled by the media against the US population, which took out of context the cold facts and realities of warfare. But most significantly, the Watergate scandal is what lost the Vietnam War. Obviously this is an extremely condensed version of what happened and there was lots of other factors.
Anyway, the most effective way to combat an insurgency is to cooperate with populations sympathetic to your cause, and disrupt the enemies ability to produce/procure money and other resources, like weapons and ammo, while undermining their credibility as an organization to loosen their grip on society.
For reference: Americas Longest War, Herring USMC MCDP 1-0 USMC MCDP 1-2 USMC MCDP 1-3 Strategy & Grand Strategy: What Students and Practitioners need to know, Biddle (USA war college) The Mattis Way of War: An Examination of Operational Art in Task Force 58, Valenti
This. One thing that drives me crazy is that Nixon’s Vietnamization strategy was largely a success and the war wasn’t “lost” until 1975 (two years after we pulled out) when we gave up all pretense of holding up our end of the bargain when it came to funding/supporting the ARVN during the expected NVA nigouts.
