CRANFIELD UNIVERSITY DAREN BOWYER JUST WAR DOCTRINE

three are intertwined and inter-related but much of the focus of what follows is on the
clash of regular with irregular armed forces. *
Terrorism, guerrilla and partisan warfare are all variants on this form of asymmetric
warfare. Often the choice of terminology is value-laden but today all variants can be
seen in use, separately and together, as a challenge to the West’s conventional military
superiority. The common factor is of a militarily inferior force (that is, inferior in
numbers, weaponry, organisation and – generally – financial wherewithal) using means
other than direct confrontation with their regular opponents. One way of doing this
(most common in guerrilla and partisan warfare) is to wear down regular opponents
through sudden, low-risk raids and attritional attacks on vulnerable installations, supply
lines or isolated outposts. Another is to undermine political will and drive a wedge
between the population on the one hand and the authorities and their regular armed
forces on the other by demonstrating a continued vulnerability despite the government’s
attempts to assure the population of security and stability. 111
At this point it is just worth noting that although generally speaking in the sort of
asymmetric war at issue here it is the militarily inferior side who seeks to attack the
weak and vulnerable, there have been notable exceptions. In particular, the Soviet
Union’s war of occupation in Afghanistan through the 1980s yields plentiful example of
the militarily superior side nevertheless bringing that might to bear extensively – and
deliberately – on civilian targets, essentially in an attempt to control by de-population:
The Soviets had taken American tactics in Vietnam several steps further and
fought a twenty-first century war, a war that was completely impersonal and
therefore too dangerous for journalists to cover properly, in which the only
strategy was repeated aerial carpet bombings, terrorism, and the laying of
millions of mines. The Hind helicopter gunship, the workhorse of the Soviet
military in Afghanistan, packed no less than 128 rockets and four missiles. It
was able to incinerate an entire village in a few seconds. Against such measures,
the very concept of battle had become nearly obsolete. 112
* Asymmetric warfare may, of course, involve means beyond the use of armed forces: economic
measures, ‘cyber’ attacks on essential IT infrastructure and so on. This work, however, deliberately
restricts itself to issues involving armed forces, though acknowledging that their use in asymmetric
warfare must involve more than simple ‘kinetic’ means.
286