WASHINGTON POST: Unconventional wars are our most pressing national security concern. They’re also the most ancient form of war in the world. Max Boot on the lessons of insurgency we seem unable to learn…
- Guerrilla warfare is not new. Tribal war, pitting one guerrilla force against another, is as old as humankind. A new form of warfare, pitting guerrillas against “conventional” forces, is of only slightly more recent vintage—it arose in Mesopotamia 5,000 years ago. Calling guerrilla warfare “irregular” or “unconventional” has it backward: It is the norm of armed conflict…
- 2. Guerrilla warfare is the form of conflict universally favored by the weak, not an “Eastern” way of war. Thanks largely to the success of Chinese and Vietnamese Communists in seizing power in the 20th century, there has been a tendency to portray guerrilla tactics as the outgrowth of Sun Tzu and other Chinese philosophers who were supposedly at odds with the conventional tactics espoused by Western sages such as Carl von Clausewitz. … (more)
EDITOR: Article well worth reading in full.
