LIT6: Gray 2012 Chapter 16: War and peace after the Cold War - An interwar decade & Chapter 18: Irregular warfare - Guarrillas, insurgents and terrorists Flashcards
What is Gray’s interwar thesis?
- It is the proposition that
there is another great power conflict waiting to occur in the future, most probably organized around the United States and China as competing poles. - One can break away from the traditional focus on great interstate struggles and instead endorse the official American view which holds that ‘America is a nation at
war’. It produced a strategic context wherein the sole global superpower, the
United States, is at war with Islamic extremists who resort to violence
What was the problem with US forces in the 90’s
The United States alone had a convincing global military reach, but
without a Soviet enemy US foreign policy and its military backstop were suddenly bereft of navigational guidance.
A political vision of a new world order requires a political visionary, and the United States was not governed by a political visionary in the 1990s.
Generally, the United States was hardly inactive on the world stage in the 1990s, but its behaviour generally was reactive, episodic and not especially determined in the
face of any opposition
What are New and Old wars? Gray?
The strategic violence of the 1990s and beyond was tied by some scholars into a
master narrative which postulated two kinds of war, the ‘old’ and the ‘new’.
Old wars were those between states and their Industrial Age regular armed forces.
The **new wars **of the post-Cold War era, in contrast, were expected to be principally internal to states, possibly transnational, and at least one of the belligerents would not carry state authority.
What is Gray’s opinion on New Wars and the application of Clausewitz?
Clausewitz’s primary trinity – passion, chance and probability or genius, and
reason or policy – is valid for wars of all kinds and for warfare of any character,
so also for the ‘new wars’.
What is critique against the new war thesis?
There are no old wars or new wars, at least not with respect to their nature. But assuredly the character of warfare periodically is transformed by socio-cultural, political and technological change.
What is the Bloody Decade?
The 1990s were a bloody decade. The highest, or perhaps lowest, points in the all-too ample strategic history of the post-Cold War devade are:
1. The first gulf war - 1991
2. The wars of Yugoslavian succession
3. African anarchy
What is Gray conclusion about the state of war in the 90’s?
The master strategic narrative that has carried this history along from the end of the eighteenth century to the demise of the USSR was resting in the 1990s.
Political, criminal and even recreational violence were widespread in the post-Cold War decade, but that
violence generally lacked strategic or political meaning beyond the local.
An exception to that condition is religiously motivated irregular warfare, especially in the form of catastrophe terrorism.
What is Regular Warfare and Irregular Warfare?
- Regular warfare
Warfare between the regular, armed forces of states. - Irregular warfare
Warfare between those forces and the irregular armed forces of non-state
political entities.
To be outstanding at regular warfare does not mean that one will even be competent, let
alone good, at warfare of an irregular kind.
Why does irregular warfare exist?
Irregulars fight irregularly because they cannot succeed, or even survive, in any
other way.
What are the two most common forms of Irregular warfare?
The most popular of those names has been guerrilla warfare.
Terrorism is another mode of irregular combat, and it may or may not accompany guerrilla warfare.
What is Irregular Warfare?
Said to include all campaigns other than those where both the opposing sides
consist of regular troops.
What is Guerrilla Warfare?
The character of warfare waged of necessity by irregular belligerents. Its
hallmarks are surprise and the avoidance of large-scale open combat. But to be
conducted successfully, guerrilla warfare generally requires a friendly, or at least
acquiescent, civilian contex
What is Insurgency?
A protracted struggle conducted methodically, step by step, in order to obtain specific intermediate objectives leading finally to the overthrow of the existing order. Is inherently contingent and they must employ irregular tactics.
What is Terrorism?
The deliberate creation and exploitation of fear through the use, or the threat, of
violence for political ends.
What forms of irregular warfare are military techniques?
Guerrilla warfare and terrorism are simply military techniques that anyone can learn.
Insurgency, in contrast, is not a military technique. It requires military prowess,
but the skills that matter most contribute to public safety, good governance and cultural empathy. And in practice, insurgent movements shift back and forth between guerrilla and conventional tactics.
