Low Intensity Conflict (LIC) Flashcards
LIC is which level/cause/category of conflict?
State (among international, state, and individual)
The focus of LIC
State legitimacy, state disintegration, concept of ungovernability
Definition of LIC
A national security concept principally developed by the U.S.
Describe political and military confrontations short of conventional war between a group or a movement and a state
In terms of tools, military violence and political, psychological, economic and informational means
LIC in the Cold War
- Localized
- Generally taking place in the third worldCrisis of legitimacy (significant amount of tensions within weak and fragile states
- Ho Chi Minh, Che Guevara-Employs guerrilla tactics in conjunction with a complex clandestine organization, which employs political, psychological techniques to seize power over population-the ultimate goal: to establish a new political order or new regime
- unconventional, irregular military tactics with political and psychological tactics to establish a competing ideological, political narrative
- The French encountered revolutionary warfare when they returned to Indochina to reclaim the empire. Also in Algeria. In Vietnam. In Central America. In the Philippines-beginning in the 70s/80s, issue of international terrorism (use of force directed not against security forces but against civilian targets - Munich Olympics)
- State-sponsored terrorism: a number of states began to provide assistance and support to insurgent and terrorist organizations as an asymmetrical form of warfare (Syria, Iraq, Iran, the Soviet Union, the US & Reagan doctrine and western countries)
- Civil resistance movements - use force without violence or warfares without guerrillas
- International criminal organizations
LIC in the post Cold War & post 9/11
The extent to which the localized conflict begins to add transnational dimensions to itself
Irregular warfare or unconventional warfare tactics include both military and non-military ones
In the aftermath of the Cold War, the doctrine of ethnicity and religion. The rise of ethnic and religious forces becomes ideological basis for the insurgent warfares of the 90s
Ethno-nationalist, secessionist, religious extremist
In the Cold War, the political forces tended to be ideological. In the post Cold War, the irregular environment was characterized by ethno-national, and religious forces.
Drug cartels in Colombia were among the first to go abroad
Fukuyama and “The End of History” – the idea that ethnicity and religion could become powerful forces for instability, political competition, violence, and insurrection. Nobody else thought it was remotely possible after the Cold War, even during the 1980s. E.g., Iranian Revolution (the NIEs said that Iran wasn’t in the revolutionary condition. There was no Lennon, no Marx, no Mao.)
Kosovo and other: Deals with weak, failing states. Kaplan’s argument in coming anarchy. Weak states. Those readings tell you that in the 1990s, the sources of instability that characterizes this environment of the 90s, the sources of the instabily were growing out of thefact that there was a significant number o f states in varioeus stages of legitimacy crisis.
Evolution of the conflict from the Cold War, post Cold War, to post 9/11
The ability of non-state actors or groups to take advantage of the informational and technological developments of the 90s and globalization
Allowed to operate in a broader landscape than earlier groups
Abstract ideologies of the left in the Cold War vs. ethno-nationalism and different religious doctrines in the 90s and beyond
Jeffrey White and “A Different Kind of Threat: Some Thoughts on Irregular Warfare”
The irregular warfare differs from the view of war and strategy that dominated the modern military thinking and war experience during the 19th and 20th centuries
The direct force dominated the way the states thought about military power
After WWII, the modern military found it difficult to develop a strategy for LIC (primarily, revolutionary warfare or insurgent warfare)
John Shy and Thomas W. Collier and “Revolutionary War”
Written in the 1940s, there was little to suggest among military thinkers the emergence of a new kind of warfare whose aims and methods diverge sharply from the long tradition of the western warfare
Some of the WWII partisan resistance experience was the forerunner to the post WWII revolutionary warfare (40s to the 80s)
The allied powers during WWII didn’t see that some of the partisan leaders were combining political, ideological, and psychological irregular military tactics into a new doctrine
These local forces were developing a new doctrine of conflict that sought not just to help Allies win the war but also to seize power and implement revolutionary change (Yugoslavia, China, Vietnam)
The objectives of revolutionary warfare take a total form, its means are limited
Guerrilla warfare vs. revolutionary warfare
Guerrilla warfare wasn’t something new (Napoleon, American Civil War)
In the revolutionary warfare, there is a political doctrine which seeks to change the political structure within the state) - a form of warfare that seeks a radical change
After WWII, these doctrines were ones of the left (Lennon, Marx)
LIC/revolutionary warfare vs. conventional war
- It’s protracted
- The use of force is only part of the strategy
- Political struggle over who has the legitimacy
- Not easy to measure success (states can win battles but lose the war) - e.g., Vietnam
The origins of the irregular tactics (terrorism)
- Conducting revolutionary warfare was a rural exercise by the end of the 60s, esp. in Latin America (except in Cuba). Not much success. The idea emerged to change the area of operations to the cities. Because in urban areas security forces were there, urban guerrillas started to shrink and focus on targets such as police stations, assassinating political leaders, kidnappings, executions.
- Palestinians groups found in the 60s and 70s that carrying out guerrilla operations along the Israeli borders was a losing proposition. It led them to use terrorism due to the narrowing of tactical options for these Palestinian groups.
- In the Western Europe and the U.S. in the late 60s, radical student movements.
The origin of the upsurge in religious, ethno conflicts in the 1990s
-In the state formation following WWII, following WWI. What one finds is that there was the creation of multi ethnic states, many of which had limited legitimacy. While the creation of such new states made sense to the decision makers at that time, the result was the incorporation of the various groups, often against their will into a new political entity in which there wasn’t a common political community.
One of the unintended consequences was the creation of many new states that had to figure out how to establish legitimacy, political letigimacy in a context in whcih you had fragmented groups - different group, tribal, religious, communal identiies. Challenge to establish an environment in which political development takes place.
Depending on regions, there may be more or less of ethnic, religious conflicts. During the Cold War, the Soviet Union was not homogenous. USSR created an identity above ethnicity that all these different ethnic elements had come to subscribed to. New political identity. Not based on blood, not based on religion. Based on a set of abstract political principles that comprised of Marxism. When the CW ended, what happended in Russia was ethnic fragmentation.
Chracteristics of those involved in ethnic conflicts
They are part of severely divided society.
These are states where various ethnicies are connected by geography and policing power. (Iraq under Saddam, Syria under Assad). These societies were maintained by policing and security powers of the government.
In such severely divided societies, there’s potential for ethnic conflcits. As soon as Iraq was weakened after the First Gulf War, Shi’a uprising in the south and the Kurdish uprising in the north.
Ethnic groups in such societies can be large and they can see their differences with other communities as irreconcilable. Ethnicity is a principal form of identity for these groups – used to differentiate from the larger society.
The inability of many places to find a common identity above ethnicity or religion.
