Low-Intensity Conflicts Why The Gap Between Theory and Practise

Defense and Security Analysis
ISSN: 1475-1798 (Print) 1475-1801 (Online) Journal homepage: www.tandfonline.com/journals/cdan20
Low-intensity Conflicts: Why the Gap Between

Theory and Practise?
Avi Kober
To cite this article: Avi Kober (2002) Low-intensity Conflicts: Why the Gap Between Theory and
Practise?, Defense and Security Analysis, 18:1, 15-38, DOI: 10.1080/07430170120113712
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Defense & Security Analysis Vol. 18, No. 1, pp. 15–38, 2002
Low-intensity Con icts: Why the Gap

Between Theory and Practise?
Avi Kober
Department of Political Studies, Bar-Ilan University, Ramat-Gan 52900, Israel
When the Soviet Union collapsed and the Cold War came to an end, many expected the
stability of the international system to increase. Within a short time, however, it became
clear that con ict and war had not become obsolete and that there could even be an
increase in violence. This was most likely in “zones of turmoil”1 or “Second-Tier”
countries2 – de ned as those areas and countries which had previously not been cate-
gorized as Third World, such as the former Soviet republics and Yugoslavia – and this
could lead to an era of general instability and war.3
Conventional, inter-state war has become a rare phenomenon in the post-Cold War
era. Most of the con icts have taken place below the level of traditional conventional
war – often called ‘high-intensity con ict’ (HIC) – but above that of routine, peaceful
competition among states. Such conflicts are often referred to as “low-intensity
con icts” (LICs).4 Both the pervasiveness of LICs and their importance justify serious
intellectual attention. The intellectual energy devoted to LIC, however, has been
marginal, compared with that spent on conventional or non-conventional war. The
theoretical fruit of the study of LIC has remained unsatisfactory in terms of quantity
and quality, content and methodology. Theory of LICs still does not suf ciently occupy
the pages of leading forums for theoretical discourse in the eld of international
relations and security studies. Consideration of LICs is of a doctrinal or policy-oriented
nature, rather than a theoretical one. The concept also suffers from a primitive image,
as expressed explicitly by scholars such as Van Creveld5 and implicitly by others.
This article addresses the following questions:
1. Why is it that strategic thinkers have done such an unsatisfactory job in crystalliz-
ing a theory of LIC?
2. What needs to be done to ll the gap between the importance of LICs and their the-
oretical coverage, if anything?
ISSN 1475-1798 print; 1475-1801 online/02/010015-24 © 2002 Taylor & Francis Ltd 15
DOI: 10.1080/07430170120113712
16 AV I K O BE R
The following key arguments are presented:
1. The main reasons accounting for the poor theoretical treatment of LICs are: their
image as being something less than the apparently “real thing”, i.e. conventional or
non-conventional war; the fact that they absorb a broad spectrum of con icts, the
delineations between which are often blurred and combinations whereof are common-
place; their multi-dimensional dynamic nature; and the subjective and autocentristic
nature of the thought on LICs, due to the unique strategic circumstances of the partic-
ular actors and the personal experience of the theoreticians and practitioners involved.
2. LIC is a highly signi cant phenomenon, and, as such, it deserves to be the focus of
more study and research. Its importance lies in the fact that LICs are the most
common con icts in the international system. Despite their name, they can have a
devastating effect on the peoples involved; they can threaten the stability of states, sub-
systems, and the international system as a whole; they put the instrumental value of
force in question; and they might even negatively affect the future of the nation-state.
3. The lacuna in the theoretical treatment of LIC notwithstanding, one does not
necessarily need a speci c set of theoretical tools for the purpose of analyzing this
phenomenon and devising ways of coping with it. One can employ the existing set
of general theoretical tools in the eld of war and strategy.
The structure of this article is as follows: I shall rst characterize the theoretical
treatment of LICs and try to explain why it has been so poor. I will then discuss the
importance of LICs, with the aim of explaining why they deserve to be treated more
seriously from a theoretical point of view. Finally, I will address the question of whether
a new, unique set of concepts and variables is needed for the sake of lling in the theo-
retical lacuna.
L ICs IN TH E L ITERAT URE

LIC, as a concept, has had to compete with a plethora of concepts related to it in one
form or another. Some of the concepts had preceded LIC and had stood for something
similar to the types of con ict or strategies referred to by LIC.6 “Popular warfare” was
developed in the nineteenth century by thinkers who had experienced it in the course
of their career, such as Clausewitz,7 Jomini,8 Moltke,9 and Engels.10 It took on the
meaning of a war conducted with the participation of the population, wherein actions
were carried out by men not having military status, in order to tie down enemy forces
and possibly serve as a support for their own armies.
With the proliferation of wars connected with political and social revolution, after
the Second World War, the terms “revolutionary war”,11 “subversive war”, “insurrec-
tion”, and “insurgency”12 became central. Whereas revolutionary war expressed a
struggle for the transformation of the political or social structures of the state, subver-
sive war and insurgency referred to struggles against the established authorities, usually
with the help of the people.
Of the many concepts related to LICs, guerrilla warfare and small wars, in particu-
lar, have proven survivability throughout the nineteenth and the twentieth centuries,
L OW-I N T E N SI T Y C O N F L IC T S 17
including the Cold War era, though both concepts have a relatively narrow meaning and
a limited explanatory value. Guerrilla warfare focuses on the strategy used by the weak
against the strong. Guerrilla and counter-guerrilla warfare have become pivotal
concepts since the Second World War, particularly in the context of anti-colonialist and
revolutionary struggles. They have served as axes around which relevant types of
con ict have been dealt with, such as national liberation and revolution (often referred
to as “guerrilla revolutionary warfare”), civil war, and insurgency.13 The term “small
war”, which is literally a translation to English of guerrilla, emerged in the nineteenth
century. It, too, referred to asymmetrical war, but from the stronger side’s point of view.
Small wars usually took place far from the homeland and necessitated a form of military
action which was different from those that conventional forces were equipped, struc-
tured, and trained to meet. As such, the concept anticipated much of the recent
literature on low-intensity con icts.14 Indeed, small war is closer to LIC than all other
concepts related to it.
Four concepts which have attracted the attention of many researchers and practi-
tioners in the post-Cold War era and which can be considered types of LIC are “internal
war”, “sub-national con ict/war”, “ethnic con ict” and “operations other than war”
(OOTW). “Internal war” needs no explanation. It quite explicitly refers to the shift from
wars between states to war within states that has taken place during the latter half of the
twentieth century in general. In the last decade in particular, “civil war”, a term that has
been used for many years for internal war, is still valid and often used.15
“Sub-national con ict” and “ethnic con ict” both refer to the causes of con ict and
war and the actors involved, rather than the place where they occur. They concentrate
on domestic divisions, most of which are caused by the ethnic factor, especially in states
having arti cial borders and, consequently, heterogeneous societies. Division within
states is an old phenomenon,16 but, whereas during the Cold War it was typical of the
Third World, and was quite successfully controlled and contained in Europe, in the
post-Cold War era it has also occurred in the heart of Europe, where it has caused insta-
bility.
Unlike the concepts mentioned above, OOTW, which emerged in US Army’s
doctrine in the early 1990s, is very problematic. It is a post-modern concept, which
confuses traditional missions ful lled by the military, such as “support for insurgencies
and counterinsurgencies”, typical of LICs, and missions that do not require any
combat, ranging from “support to US, state and local governments, disaster relief,
nation assistance, and drug interdiction to peace-keeping, noncombatant evacuation,
and peace enforcement”.17 The latter certainly do not deserve to be included in the
framework of LIC.
LICs, under their various names, have been approached from different angles.
First, they have been addressed by theorists interested in the general nature of con ict
and war, such as Clausewitz, Jomini, and Liddell Hart18 on the one hand, and doctri-
naires looking for ways of effectively conducting war, on the other. Second, they have
been considered by military professionals (either theorists or practitioners) on the one
hand, and ideologists-strategists mainly interested in the effectiveness of sub-conven-
tional warfare – particularly in guerrilla and terrorism in the framework of a
revolutionary struggle – such as Engels, Lenin,19 Mao,20 Giap,21 and Guevara,22 on the
18 AV I K O BE R
other. Third, they have been contemplated by those representing the militarily weaker
side’s point of view, as opposed to those representing the stronger side’s point of view in
its struggle against the so-called insurgents. Professional thinking related to the
stronger side is represented by works by Callwell, Thompson23 or Trinquier.24 Profes-
sional thinking from the weaker side’s point of view is represented by Lawrence of
Arabia. A professional-ideological mixture especially typi es works by Marxists such as
Engels, Lenin, Mao, Giap, and Guevara, but also others, like Debray.25
LIC, like small wars, has been received with “much apathy and disdain from
military professionals”.26 Many of them have believed that the concept “possesses no
referential framework of its own”, that its meaning is “highly relative”, or that it has
“many possible connotations”. No consensus as to the “upper and lower limits of the
realm” has ever existed. Instead, there has been “endless debate over the number and
types of con ict elements that should be included”, and “considerable disagreement
over fundamental causes and critical centers of gravity within each of the con ict
elements”.27 Most of the works on LIC deal with the doctrinal or policy aspects of the
phenomenon, rather than theory. Despite this practical orientation, however, it has
often been claimed that LIC “lacks utility in precisely those instances where an
unequivocal understanding is crucial to national security – in pinning down the types of
low-intensity con ict that must be addressed through policy, strategy, doctrine, and
force structure initiatives”.28 True, new professional journals specializing in LICs have
appeared in recent decades, such as the Journal of Small Wars, Studies in Con ict and
Terrorism, and Insurgency and Counterinsurgency. This encouraging trend has, however,
been overshadowed by the general neglect of LICs on the part of leading journals in the
elds of international relations, security studies and military affairs.29
W H Y IS LIC TH EO RY S O PO O R?
The main reasons accounting for the aforesaid state of the theory of LICs are their
image of being marginal; the fact that they apply to a whole spectrum of con icts
between which the borders are often blurred and combinations of which are common-
place; their multi-dimensional, dynamic nature; the impact of the speci c conditions of
the theorists’ countries; and the theorists’ personal experience (if any).
Although LICs are no novelty, they are sometimes treated as such, since, for
decades, they have been perceived – especially in the West – as something less than the
“real”, “substantive” con ict, which is conventional or non-conventional war. As such,
LICs have apparently not merited being treated in the most serious manner. Nine-
teenth-century British thinkers treated small war as an asymmetrical con ict entailing
“campaigns other than those where both the opposing sides consist of regular troops”.30
For them, small war was something less than a confrontation between armies, although,
in practise, their country made no serious provisions for HIC on land, either. In the
twentieth-century US, small wars have been de ned as “con icts waged against the
forces of the lesser powers, to include indigenous guerrilla-type movements [and] wars
waged against the proxy forces of other great powers”.31 LIC has been referred to as “a
limited undertaking that required neither national mobilization nor an extensive com-
mitment of resource”.32 Nowadays, it is still perceived of in the US as belonging to a
so-called “C-list” – a category of con icts representing a signi cantly lesser challenge
than both global existential threats and intermediate threats such as the Gulf War (A-
list and B-list, respectively).33 Israelis have traditionally considered “current security” –
until the outbreak of the Palestinian Intifada, their name for LICs – to be a minor
challenge relative to the “basic-security” challenges posed by the regular armies of Arab
states. As Peres once put it, “referring to current security as the major [Israeli] security
challenge [ . . . ] would be like xing an unstitched dress when the entire body is in
danger”.34 For years, Israeli decision-makers and experts used to point out the fact that
the volume of casualties in icted by guerrilla or terrorist activities has never exceeded
those incurred in car accidents. The Soviets, who, during the Cold War, were used to
waging surrogate wars against the West, did not even bother to develop their own
doctrine for LICs.
LICs absorb a whole spectrum of con icts. The delineation between them is often
blurred, and combinations of types of con ict are commonplace. At different stages of
the same con ict, one may nd different types of LIC. For example, Afghanistan, from
1979 to 2001, has witnessed a struggle for national liberation vis-à-vis the Soviets,
insurgency vis-à-vis the pro-Soviet Afghan government, Islamic revolution against the
secular Marxist regime, and – once the Soviet forces evacuated the country and the
secular regime supported by them collapsed – a civil war between the major Islamic
factions. The problem of classi cation, affected by the subjectivity of those involved in
the con ict, complicates things even further. For example, what the weaker side might
de ne as a struggle for national liberation may be referred to by the stronger side as
insurgency. If, in the past, it was unrealistic to imagine that an overall theory of war or
paradigm might some day emerge, the many faces of LICs have even further decreased
the likelihood of reducing the phenomenon to a concise theoretical format with clear-
cut concepts.
War, in general, is a dynamic phenomenon. Like a chameleon, it takes on different
forms.35 The dynamic nature of conventional war since the Industrial Revolution can
primarily be attributed to technological changes which have, in turn, affected war’s
operational, logistical and societal dimensions.36 Changes in HICs – such as the range,
precision and destructive power of weapons systems, their impact on the relative weight
of repower and maneuver and, consequently, on the relative strength of offense and
defense; new meaning of time and space as a result of technological changes; or the
obliteration of the borderline between rear and front – are all very important but also
relatively easy to detect and forecast. The dynamic nature of LICs, on the other hand,
is more heavily affected by political, societal and ideological factors. In most LICs, the
societal dimension, in general, and the struggle to win the hearts and minds of the
peoples concerned or put their resilience to test, in particular, play a major role. As
such, LICs are both more modern and much more dif cult to capture and conceptual-
ize in the framework of a comprehensive and coherent theory.
The dynamic nature of LICs can be demonstrated by the following processes they
have undergone in the twentieth century. From an auxiliary military activity, they
became an independent phenomenon. Their stakes have slowly but consistently shifted
from national liberation to revolutions and struggles for political domination within
states, and, subsequently, from secular to religious stakes. As for strategies and tactics,
20 AV I K O BE R
LICs have witnessed a shift from guerrilla and counter-guerrilla warfare to terrorism
and post-modern terrorism.37 The arms used in LICs by non-state actors, which in the
past were relatively primitive, have gradually become more sophisticated; at times, even
highly destructive. Finally, as far as place is concerned, most LICs have become
internal rather than external; in other words, they take place within the borders of states
and are either intra-community or inter-community con icts.38
In many cases, thought on LICs has re ected the speci c conditions of the thinkers’
countries. This association with speci c contexts, rather than universal characteristics,
has caused much thought on LIC to be ethnocentric, or autocentristic in nature,39 and
to take on the characteristics of doctrine or policy rather than theory, in other words, a
collection of or guidelines for practical use, which is oriented towards the strategic cir-
cumstances of the speci c country or army.40
Most of the examples of strategic thought intrinsically related to place refer to
guerrilla warfare. Guerrilla warfare in particular re ects the speci c circumstances of
the thinker’s countries: Engels was thinking in terms of the proletariat in industrialized
countries such as Germany or England, so he and Marx assigned a central role to the
proletariat in their revolutionary doctrines. Lenin, on the other hand, due to the very
different socio-economic conditions in Russia, was, for tactical reasons, constrained to
integrate the peasants into the revolutionary process. Mao Tse-tung deviated even
further from Engels by building his doctrine on the common Chinese agrarian heritage.
The sheer size of China enabled the guerrilla forces to disperse and keep their distance
from the hostile regular army. Thus, in the Chinese socio-economic and physical
context, the peasantry played a key role in the revolution and guerrilla warfare.
A similar tendency can be traced with regard to counter-guerrilla or counter-insur-
gency thinking, which emerged in the wake of the French, British and American
struggles against local groups and organizations in Asia and Africa during the de-
colonization period and the Cold War, especially in Indochina/Vietnam, Algeria, and
Malaya. The Soviets, unlike Western powers, never had to conduct counter-insurgency
warfare of their own until 1979 (the civil war excluded). They, therefore, almost
ignored the theoretical and doctrinal aspects of LIC, distinguishing only between
global war, on the one hand, and local war, on the other, the latter category consisting
of both conventional and sub-conventional wars.41 No distinction was made between
counter-insurgency operations and large-scale conventional operations typical of wars
such as the Arab–Israeli wars, the utility of which was limited vis-à-vis Afghanistan. The
result was that counter-insurgency operations were far beyond Soviet intent or capabil-
ity. Their military forces in Afghanistan abstained from playing any kind of political role
and from making any real effort to win the hearts and minds of the people of that
country. They were surprised by the nature of the war, particularly by the fact that
“there were no front lines, no tactical anti-air defense zones, no outstanding targets,
and so forth – all of which were the staples of Soviet tactical training”.42
American theorists have dominated strategic thinking since the Second World War.
As Americans, and of course against the background of both the Cold War and the
Vietnam War, many of them believed that Third World insurgency in combination
could endanger the US and the West. They thus assumed responsibility for the counter-
insurgency paradigm.43 However, in marked contrast to the quality of American
thinking on conventional and non-conventional warfare, American strategic thought

failed to produce a signi cant theory of LIC. In the post-Cold War era, there are
American researchers who emphasize the irrelevance of the Third World to US
interests.44 On the other hand, there are researchers who hold a dissenting view,
claiming that “the Third World still matters”.45
In their thought on LIC, the armies of highly technological countries often demon-
strate the naive belief that their technological edge will enable them to cope effectively
with irregular forces and at relatively low cost. They sometimes fail to grasp and inter-
nalize the complexity of LICs and all too often put their faith in airborne weapon
systems, pointing at their qualitative and operational advantage; particularly their
superior repower, higher maneuverability and greater exibility in comparison with
ground counter-insurgency forces. Airborne weapons systems are believed to reduce
the number of casualties in icted on counter-insurgency forces, thereby easing the
problem of legitimization for conducting LICs, which is particularly important to open
Western societies. Examples include the Americans in Vietnam and Kosovo, the Israelis
in Lebanon,46 and even the Soviets in Afghanistan and the Russians in Daghestan.
Modern theoretical thinking on LIC, which started as far back as the nineteenth
century, has been affected by the personal experiences of the thinkers – frequently
senior army of cers whose main interest has been the solution of the practical, speci c
and concrete problems of their countries and their armed forces, rather than the for-
mulation of theory. As one analyst put it, “many theorists and practitioners have a fuzzy
vision of what small wars are [ . . . ]. Their descriptions are often based on personal
experience with a few actual systems rather than generalizations based on broad survey
and analysis.”47 To mention only a few among many examples: Engels developed his
negative views on barricade warfare from his personal experience during the German
uprisings in 1848–49.48 Jomini and Moltke, each in his own time, fashioned their views
on popular warfare on the basis of their own experience. Jomini, as Marshal Ney’s Chief
of Staff in Spain, had witnessed the disastrous consequences of this kind of warfare for
regular armies. His conclusion was that, “no army, however disciplined, can contend
successfully against such national resistance unless it is strong enough to hold all the
essential points of the country, cover its communications, and at the same time furnish
an active force suf cient to beat the enemy wherever he may present himself ”.49 By
contrast, Moltke, who had observed a similar phenomenon during the Franco–
Prussian War, tried to distinguish between his morally positive approach toward a
nation attempting to avoid its subjection, on the one hand, and the practical conclusion
he had developed on the basis of his personal experience, on the other, to the effect that
popular uprising has no real chance when confronted by a well-trained and disciplined
regular army.50
Lawrence of Arabia derived many of his theoretical conclusions about guerrilla
warfare, such as the importance of secure base areas and the exploitation of space by
small and highly mobile forces furnished with good intelligence, or the importance of
morale and popular support, from his experience during the Arab revolt in the years
1916–18. 51 Thompson based his analysis of insurgency and his recommendations as to
the ways of ef ciently coping with it – such as the importance of the political, social and
organizational aspects of the struggle – on his personal experience in Malaya and
22 AV I K O BE R
Vietnam. Trinquier’s counter-insurgency doctrine, too, initially emerged from his own
experience in Indochina and Algeria.
W H Y DO LIC s D ESERVE TO B E TREAT ED MO RE

R ESPEC TFULLY?
LICs are currently the most common con icts in the international system. Despite
their name and the inclination to portray them as less dangerous than HICs,52 they may
be highly intensive and in ict destruction on the peoples involved. They also threaten
the stability of the international system. Furthermore, they put the value of force as an
instrument of politics into question and might even negatively affect the future of the
nation-state.
Frequency
Inter-state war has become a rare phenomenon. Some 80 percent of the con icts
during the Cold War were LICs, as were 95 percent of the con icts that took place in
the period 1989–96.53 The various causes of LICs have also accounted for their perva-
siveness. Both can be explained by factors at the international system and state levels.
The systemic level

The de-colonization period after the Second World War featured a series of struggles
for national liberation all over Asia and Africa which, in most cases, resulted in the
emergence of new nation-states. The dissolution of the Soviet Union, in its turn,
brought about the creation of new nation-states. In both cases, the collapse of an empire
released ethnic energies that had been suppressed in the former colonies and in states
such as the multi-ethnic Soviet Empire or Yugoslavia. However, many of the nation-
states that emerged from the ashes of the old empires after having struggled for
independence in the name of ethnicity have been weak, arti cial constructs. Ironically,
the ethnic energies that had in the past been mobilized against occupiers are now being
directed either against the government or against rival ethnic groups within the new
states.
World order, both during the Cold War era and its aftermath, has nurtured LICs,
though the LICs of the respective periods were due to different factors. During the
period of East–West rivalry, violence was channeled away from Europe, where neither
superpower could risk confrontation, to the peripheral areas of the Third World, where
the superpowers were involved, sometimes even nding it necessary to intervene,
whether directly or by proxy. During the post-Cold War era, by contrast, LICs have,
instead, been encouraged by the marginalization of local con icts. The global powers
have lost much of their incentives to be involved – let alone intervene – in local con icts,
except in extreme cases.54 Their decision to ultimately do so has, in some cases, been
affected by the general belief that today’s wars are less dangerous to ght.55
The new isolationism or inclination toward disengagement on the part of the great
powers has often left the scene open for local forces to use violence against each other
and for regional powers to intervene in LICs even more than they used to during the
Cold War era. Intervention has taken place for interests such as self-defense (e.g.,
Turkey in northern Iraq against rebel Kurds in 1995), protection of ethnic groups, be it
brethren or not (e.g., Serbia vs. Croatia and Bosnia, Armenia vs. Azerbaijan over
Nagorno-Karabakh, since the early 1990s), or support for either friendly governments
or rebels (e.g., Angola, Zimbabwe and Namibia for the governments of Congo,
Uganda, Rwanda and UNITA for the rebels in 1998).56 The phenomenon of state-
sponsored guerrilla and terrorist activities is still commonplace.
Even in Africa, where – due to the multi-ethnic structure of the states concerned –
the principle of non-intervention in the internal affairs of other states used to be widely
respected, especially by the Organization of African Unity (OAU), that principle has
been eroding in recent years. There has been a growing inclination on the part of states
and regional organizations to intervene, as exempli ed by the military intervention by
the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) in Liberia and the
Nigeria-led West African peace-keeping force (ECOMOG) intervention in the civil war
in Sierra Leone. Transnational organizations, too, have been involved in internal
con icts. For example, the World Council of Churches and the All-African Conference
of Churches have been involved in the con ict in South Sudan, so as to bring the parties
to the negotiating table.
The unit level

The disintegration of empires has shifted the focus from international war to intra-
national, sub-national, or sub-state war within the newly emerging countries. Many
Third World countries reached independence while lacking effective institutions,
socio-political cohesion, and popular legitimacy. They also inherited extremely com-
plicated social and economic structures. The fact that these countries have suffered
from so many weaknesses has enabled LICs to ourish.
The internal causes of LICs have been various. First, there is the level of indepen-
dence of the states concerned. During the colonial period, the lack of independence
had encouraged struggles for national liberation. Once the new states gained their inde-
pendence, however, the divisions within their sometimes artificial borders and
heterogeneous societies brought about new LICs. A similar process has been taking
place since the end of the Cold War. Weaknesses in the domestic scene have eroded the
full independence of many countries, thus accounting for the decision by groups to
resort to violent struggle so as to provide for their own defense and gain political rights
or even independence. It has sometimes led to a situation wherein there emerged one
or more competing power centers within the country, each dominating an autonomous
territorial base, a condition typical of civil war. In a few cases, a situation of almost
complete political vacuum has developed, like the one that has existed in Somalia since
the early 1990s.
Most of the countries in the international system are heterogeneous. Third World or
Second-Tier countries in particular feature ethnic, tribal, or religious divisions and
often suffer from contentious minorities seeking the right of self-determination and
striving for secession. In many Asian and African countries, such divisions are a result
24 AV I K O BE R
of their arti cially drawn boundaries. The state-to-nation ratio in those countries is
asymmetrical: national challenges to the existing state-system from below the level of
the state lead to strong claims, on national grounds, that there are too few states in the
particular region.57
It often happens in Third World or Second-Tier countries that socio-economic
expectations can barely be met by the government. Many of these countries also suffer
from crippled economies, which unavoidably leads to cutbacks in social spending. Such
conditions can easily thwart political reform and economic development, serve as
fertile ground for the growth of a sense of relative deprivation, and eventually lead to de-
legitimization of the ruling élite, instability, and violent struggle.58
Con icting ideological convictions, competing economic interests, and outright
power struggles between and among competing élites driven by personal, political
motivations are most common in the Third World. They, too, contribute to the perva-
siveness of LICs there, especially when three conditions exist: vulnerable political
élites, antagonistic group histories, and mounting domestic economic problems.59
Given the fact that many of the states beset by internal instability are also least able to
govern effectively in any event, government incompetence encourages resistance on the
part of opposition groups. When central authority declines, even relatively peaceful and
satis ed groups become fearful for their security and are driven to become more
violent.60 This is an extension of the concept of the security dilemma to LICs.61
Furthermore, the nature of the struggle in LICs, particularly the sharp division
within the state re ected by them and the lack of constitutional and political processes
for settling internal conflicts, often makes LICs much less amenable to conflict
reduction, let alone con ict resolution, than the traditional international con icts and
wars.62 For example, between 1940 and 1990, enemies in civil wars almost always failed
to reach successful negotiated solutions to their con icts, unless outside power guaran-
teed the safety of the belligerents during a transition period.63
Most Third World or Second-Tier countries have mixed regimes. They are no
longer tyrannies or closed societies but have not yet become enlightened, fully demo-
cratic, open societies with a tradition of constitutional rule. As such, they lack either the
tight control typical of tyrannies or the pluralistic spirit and the inclination toward
peaceful bridging over differences typical of deeply rooted, mature democracies.
Violence proneness in democratizing countries is therefore relatively high.64
Finally, in countries where the territory is “rough and inaccessible”, to use Clause-
witz’s words,65 either because of natural obstacles or because of “the local methods of
cultivation”;66 where the country is “fairly large”;67 where the country is rural rather
than urbanized; and where the population is located in peripheral areas beyond the
control of the central power – all of the aforesaid being typical of many Third World or
Second-Tier countries – there exist relatively good conditions for groups hostile to the
government to effectively confront it using protracted rural-based guerrilla warfare
with relatively high impunity.68 Under the category of dif cult terrain, one can include
mountains, typical of countries like Greece, Yugoslavia, Cuba, Cyprus, Kurdistan, or
Afghanistan; deserts, such as the Arabian desert or the Sahara; swamps, such as the
Mekong Delta; and forests and jungles, typical of countries such as Vietnam, the
Philippines, or Malaya. For many years now, we have been witnessing a shift from
guerrilla warfare to terrorism or a combination of guerrilla and terrorism. This can, to

a large extent, be attributed to both urbanization processes and the perceived effective-
ness of terrorism in built-up areas, by virtue of both the sensitivity and vulnerability of
modern states and societies (particularly of developed Western democracies) and the
higher impunity for terrorists operating in urban environments in comparison with
guerrillas. 69
Devastating effect on the peoples involved

Intensity of con ict and war is the product of many interactive variables. It may be
affected by factors such as the interests involved, the level of violence, the quantity of
repower and/or forces concentrated in a given area or into a given amount of time, or
the casualties involved. Whether to portray a con ict as a LIC may suit one party but
not another. From the perspective of the militarily stronger side, LICs often mean
interests less vital, a relatively small quantity of re or forces, and, as such, a relatively
low level of violence and consequent relatively low attrition (casualties, losses) rates.
However, if one takes the view of a Third World or Second-Tier party, the so-called
LIC usually means something that is rather highly intense and destructive.
First, the con ict may often entail vital interests such as survival. Second, more
people have been killed in LICs, or “small wars”, in more than 50 years than died in the
Second World War.70 During the Cold War, LICs in icted millions of casualties on
peoples involved.71 For the rst time, in the period 1975–94, intrastate war deaths
exceeded the interstate war deaths – and by a wide margin.72 While civilians accounted
for 10 percent of those killed during the First World War, and 52 percent of those killed
in the Second World War, they make up some 90 percent of contemporary war deaths.73
Third, LICs may bring about the displacement of up to millions of people. The world
total of refugees grew from around two million in 1970 to over 16 million in 1995, with
20 to 30 million people displaced within their own national borders.74 In other words,
for too many people, the con ict has been a high-intensity rather than a low-intensity
one.75
Danger to the stability of the international system

The borders between domestic and foreign policy have blurred, and the strong linkage
between the two has become commonplace. Foreign policy tends both to re ect
domestic politics and aim at the domestic scene of other states, by way of involvement
and intervention. Third World or Second-Tier states are characterized by domestic
instability that can bring about not only internal war but international war as well.76
LICs can spread across state borders in two main processes: diffusion and escala-
tion. Diffusion occurs when LICs affect the stability of neighboring countries in various
ways, such as: refugees radicalizing ethnic populations abroad, rebel activities in neigh-
boring countries undermining state control over its territory and provoking military
clashes, hot pursuit operations and interdiction campaigns on other countries’
territory, success of insurgents or revolutionaries in one country encouraging further
spread to other countries (the so-called demonstration effect), etc.77 These have been
26 AV I K O BE R
typi ed by the Vietnam War during the Cold War era and the cases of Rwanda and
Burundi and Kosovo in the post-Cold War era. In cases where revolution breaks out, it
tends to create a heightened sense of insecurity in the revolutionary state and in other
countries, by shifting the balance of power, encouraging malign perceptions of intent
and spirals of suspicion, and fostering powerful perceptions of offense dominance,
based both on military overcon dence and the belief that revolution is likely to spread.78
If in the past it was Marxist revolution that the West feared most (such as the revolutions
in Cuba, Chile, Nicaragua or Ethiopia), nowadays it is Muslim revivalism 79 and
Muslim revolution.
LICs can also spread through escalation. Escalation usually occurs when a con ict
in one country brings in new, foreign belligerents.80 Since LICs are largely determined
by the relative success of each party in nding external allies, the parties involved in LIC
have strong incentives to drag great powers or local ones into the con ict. Such powers
often take advantage of the con ict to realize foreign policy either through involvement
or intervention. A few among many examples are: Egypt’s support for the FLN in
Algeria and intervention in Yemen; US support for the Contras against the Marxist
regime in Nicaragua or for the Mujahedin in Afghanistan against the Soviets, and of
course its intervention in Vietnam; Syria’s invasion of Lebanon in the initial stages of
the civil war; Rwanda’s intervention in the LIC in Congo on the side of the Tutsis; the
con ict between Armenia and Azerbaijan over Nagorno-Karabakh, or Romania and
Hungary over the Hungarian population in Transylvania; and Western intervention in
Bosnia and Kosovo against Serbia, that brought about Russian threats to come to
Serbia’s help.81
But there is also the danger that LICs might escalate to non-conventional con-
frontation. For example, LIC in Kashmir may escalate to HIC between India and
Pakistan, which both countries wish to avoid, especially in light of their respective
nuclear capability. Another source of concern is the dangerous combination of sub-
conventional and non-conventional warfare, as represented by the phenomenon of
“grand-terrorism”. Arms in general have become more readily available, and the ability
to control their spread is limited. This is true not only for small arms but also for some
kinds of WMDs. WMDs are mostly threatening when in the hands of sub-state groups
such as religious extremists or terrorists, whose behavior can hardly be predicted. The
tendency of some LICs to be non-purposeful; in other words, to produce threats that
are unintended or threats that do not stem from a government but rather from a group
or organization within the country, may make them undeterrable.82 This problem
becomes critical in case that such actors possess WMDs. Unfortunately, the probabil-
ity of sub-state or sub-national actors possessing WMDs has become higher. The
existence of “loose nukes”, the accessibility to information regarding the production of
non-conventional weapons, and the relatively easy ways of producing chemical and bio-
logical weapons, make it even more likely.
The instrumental use of force in crisis

It has been widely accepted that war ought to be the servant of politics. In the wars of
the past, e.g. the Napoleonic wars, the American civil war, the First World War, or the
Second World War, which were conventional, there used to be a relatively high correla-
tion between the military and the political achievements. In our time, however, the
previously clear linkage between the two has been disconnected. One of the outstand-
ing characteristics of LICs is the gap between the military capabilities on the one hand
and the ability to achieve victory – in other words, realize the war objectives – on the
other. In the Vietnam War, for example, as one of its outstanding analysts put it,
on the battle eld itself the Army was unbeatable. In engagement after engagement
the forces of the Viet Cong and of the North Vietnamese Army were thrown back
with terrible losses. Yet, in the end, it was North Vietnam, not the United States,
that emerged victorious.83
After the bloody Tet offensive of early 1968, Walter Cronkite warned the American
public that the only way out would be negotiating with the North Vietnamese, but “not
as victors”.84 Time magazine, too, considered that “victory in Vietnam [ . . . ] may
simply be beyond the grasp of the world’s greatest power”.85 And indeed, in many LICs,
military achievements have not been a prerequisite for the realization of the political
war objectives. The latter could be achieved merely by the use of force, short of battle-
eld decision, as exempli ed by many cases such as Vietnam, Algeria, Afghanistan, or
Lebanon.
The strategy of attrition, often adopted by the militarily weaker side in LICs, is in
many cases responsible for its political effectiveness. The logic of attrition is “death by
a thousand small cuts”,86 and it requires both readiness to wage a protracted war87 and
a very high cost tolerance.88 The military encounters tend to take place at the tactical
level, where they are usually limited in terms of forces, time, and place, whereas the
objectives of those engaged in the con ict, and sometimes also the targets they aim to,
tend to be outside the direct battle eld, at the grand-strategic level. The society and
economy of the enemy have become the center of gravity. The strategic and operational
levels of war are usually bypassed by the militarily weaker side so as to compensate for
its weakness at these levels, and, at least to some extent, try to balance the militarily
stronger side and expose its societal weakness, which in turn affects political persever-
ance.
There have been cases, though, where the stronger did defeat the weaker. For
example, the Peruvian government managed to defeat the “Shining Path” in the early
1990s. Among colonialists, the British have been famous for having managed to adapt
to sub-conventional challenges. Unlike the French in Indo-China and Algeria, or the
Americans in Vietnam, they coped with LICs quite ef ciently. South Africa,89 Palestine
(1936–9), Malaya, Cyprus, Kenya, the Persian Gulf and Northern Ireland have all
become symbols in this respect. However, even as far as Britain goes, the fact that it
eventually decided to disengage from its colonies created a situation in which its
military achievements were almost irrelevant. Again, it was the weaker side that won.
28 AV I K O BE R
LIC and the demise of the nation-state

“The rst duty of any social entity is to protect the lives of its members. Either modern
states cope with low-intensity con ict, or else they will disappear.”90 LICs threaten to
erode the basis upon which the social contract and the nation-state had been founded –
the belief of the individuals in the ability of the society and the state to provide for their
security.91 In the age of globalization, many nation-states have already been losing the
monopoly over economical and social interactions, which have nowadays been growing
out of control and have been taken over by individuals and the private sector.92 The
monopoly over the use of force is something that the nation-state is still trying to
preserve. One of the ways of maintaining that monopoly is to prove to the citizens that
the state can effectively protect them from both foreign and domestic threats. LICs all
too often bring the war home, thereby exposing the anachronistic role played by
borders as a barrier between a state and its enemies. This fact, combined with many
governments’ inef ciencies in preventing LICs or effectively coping with them, may
bring about loss of faith on the part of citizens in the institution of the nation-state.
Along these lines, it has been argued that LICs are responsible for making the tradi-
tional Clausewitzian war – based on the Government–Army–People triangle so typical
of the modern nation-state – obsolete.93 Nevertheless, for the time being we are rather
witnessing the emergence of many new nation-states.94
C O NCL US ION: SH OULD WE WOR RY A BO UT TH E GA P?

A gap has existed between the pervasiveness and importance of LICs and their repre-
sentation in current strategic thought. While an effort should be made to ll this gap,
there can be no hope of crystallizing a comprehensive theory of LICs. If no compre-
hensive paradigm-like theory of conventional war has ever emerged over the thousands
of years of military thought, it can persuasively be argued that, given the dynamic and
complex nature of LICs, there is little hope that such a comprehensive theory of sub-
conventional war will possibly develop in the foreseeable future. However, theory has
never lost its role in the thinking and practice of war in general and LICs in particular.
On the contrary: the more complex war becomes, the lesser the chances that existing
doctrines and plans will be suf cient for coping with its challenges, and the more
essential it is to employ a set of universal, theoretical tools. Using such tools, one can
study the characteristics of each particular case, conduct comparative studies, and sort
out practical ways for dealing with speci c con icts as appropriate to the idiosyncrasies
of each case, in the form of new doctrines and plans.
It has been the dream of most warfare theorists to be able to offer a universal set of
recipes for successfully conducting war, of whatever kind, place or time. The fact that
reality has shattered this dream95 should not be reason for criticism or despair. It is
precisely at this point that Clausewitz comes to our assistance. Unlike many other great
thinkers, he was skeptical as to the direct practical value of theory. Indeed, according to
Clausewitz, it is the “more general – indeed, a universal – element with which every
theorist ought above all to be concerned.” One should, however, not fail to “consider
the nature of states and societies as they are determined by their times and prevailing
conditions.” Every age has “its own kind of war, its own limiting conditions, and its own
peculiar preconceptions.”96 For anyone who wants to learn about war, theory “will light
his way, ease his progress, train his judgment, and help him to avoid pitfalls.”97
LICs are different from HICs in many ways. It is both necessary and feasible to
distinguish between traditional conventional war and sub-conventional war, as repre-
sented by LIC, from the points of view of why, by whom, where, and how they are
conducted. But LICs cannot – and should not – be treated as a revolutionary phenom-
enon. There is no reason to believe that one would necessarily need a special set of
theoretical tools for the purpose of analyzing their particular features or thinking of
ways of coping with them. One could, rather, use the existing set of theoretical tools in
the eld of security studies, such as the dimensions of war (Clausewitz’s govern-
ment–military–people triangle), the dimensions of strategy (Howard’s quadrangle
comprising the operational, technological, societal and logistical dimensions98), the
levels-of-war pyramid (grand-strategy, strategy, the operational level, tactics), the
security dilemma, strength versus cost tolerance, attrition, battle eld decision versus
victory, and the like, applying them in accordance with the nature of LICs. For
example, stressing the signi cance of the people in such con icts, the role played by the
societal dimension in their conduct, and the relevance of the levels at the two extremes
of the levels-of-war pyramid – grand-strategy and tactics – rather than the operational
level and strategy. Should new concepts, dimensions, variables, distinctions and
models emerge from the study of LICs, they will be considered desirable by-products,
as was the case with the thought on nuclear war after World War II. Terms such as
grand-terrorism, info- (or cyber-) terrorism, narco-terrorism, or cyber-civil disobe-
sience, and distinctions such as First- versus Second-Tier countries, too-few versus
too-many states, sub-national versus international con ict, or inter-community versus
intra-community con ict, and even OOTW, would only enrich the intellectual pre-
occupation with war in general and LIC in particular.
As for future study of the phenomenon, it seems that future LICs study could best
be directed to certain issues of their causes, management, ending and settlement.
Understanding the causes of LICs is essential for efforts aimed at their prevention and
their settlement. One of the questions worth exploring relates to the common assump-
tion that a combination of economic prosperity and open borders between states,
typical of developed countries, tends to moderate ethnic and religious tensions and blur
ethnic af liations. If this is true, then why is it that alongside European or North
American ethnic groups who have been satis ed with cultural, social, economic and
semi-political autonomy – such as the Catalans in Spain or the French-Canadians – one
nds other groups – such as the IRA in Northern Ireland or ETA in Spain – which have
been using violence in their struggle for national liberation? Another question relates to
the spread of democratic values through the international system and its impact on
ethnic and religious tensions: is the spread of democratic values and procedures
capable of lowering the probability that LICs will erupt in the Third-World or Second-
Tier countries, or will the spread of democracy instead stimulate an outburst of ethnic
aspirations by legitimizing debate on ethnic issues?
As far as the management of LICs is concerned, one of the most intriguing foci for
research seems to be the asymmetries between the adversaries and their in uence on
30 AV I K O BE R
the strategies and tactics employed by them and on the gap between military and
political achievements. A question of great interest is: do liberal-democratic societies
really tend to suffer from a chronic perseverance problem when conducting LICs, or is
it rather the lack of will on the part of politicians, misinterpreting societal resilience,
that all too often accounts for the low-cost tolerance attributed to such societies?
Another issue which deserves more attention relates to the means liberal democracies
have at their disposal in handling LICs: as such states can, nowadays, conduct LICs
with almost no casualties – thanks to precision-guided munitions, thereby overcoming
their societies’ aversion to war – isn’t the strong side again becoming the one that has
better chances of winning LICs, as was the case in the pre-World War II era? Are we not
now facing a new paradox, whereby “peace-loving democracies” are no longer quite as
deterred from waging small wars as they used to be? On the other hand, one should
explore the new force multipliers which might enable the weak side to compensate for
its weaknesses, with many of these multipliers, unlike in the past, also being based on
technology, such as info-terrorism or cyber-civil disobedience. Other questions
regarding the management of LICs to which study might be directed are, for example:
as it is outside the direct battle eld that LICs are won, what should one expect of the
military, and what would be the desired labor division between military and non-
military means? To what extent does high combat effectiveness affect societal
perseverance? How can one cope with the tension between the contrasting command
and control needs in managing LICs – the need to bestow discretion on the tactical
level, on the one hand, and the need to closely command and control tactical missions
because of the possible implications of tactical encounters for policy, on the other?
The third group of issues relates to ending and settling LICs. Two main dilemmas
deserve further attention on the part of researchers. The rst is faced by third parties.
Should they let the adversaries “burn themselves out”, as cruel as this may be, so as to
create favorable conditions for a long-lasting, stable settlement, or should they rather
intervene with the aim of imposing, rst, cease- re, and then a settlement? What are the
chances of a peace enduring if it is either imposed on the parties from the outside or
maintained by outside forces? Would imposed settlement not merely suppress ethnic
energies until such time as they erupt at some point in the future? The second dilemma
relates to integration, separation and political stability in the long run: what would be
more conducive to political stability – keeping warring ethnic groups integrated in one
political entity or, rather, separating them? And how can one possibly compromise two
competing norms: the notion of self-determination – which entails the disintegration of
existing states – on the one hand, and the principle of the territorial integrity of states –
dictating their integration – on the other?
NOTE S
I wish to thank Stuart A. Cohen and Efraim Inbar for their useful comments on an earlier
draft.
1. As opposed to “zones of peace”. Max Singer and Aaron Wildavsky, The Real World
Order: Zones of Peace, Zones of Turmoil, Chatham, NJ: Chatham House, 1993, p. 3.
2. As opposed to “First-Tier countries”. Donald M. Snow, Uncivil War, Boulder: Lynne
Rienner, 1996, p. 11.
3. See for example: Zbigniew Brzezinski, Out of Control: Global Turmoil on the Eve of the
Twenty-First Century, New York: Macmillan, 1993.
4. The term LIC rst appeared as one of the many attempts made in the US in the post-
Vietnam era to conceptually cope with the reality of con icts short of either large-scale
Second World War-like war or direct nuclear confrontation with the Soviets. During the
1970s, an awareness grew in the US of the possibility that, under the nuclear umbrella,
there might develop different types of con ict between East and West. The asymmetri-
cal and complex nature of the war in Vietnam, its non-military aspects, and the
difficulty of coping with the Vietcong served as catalysts to thinking about such
con icts. The US Army was one of the rst to undertake a conceptual effort in order to
cope with the new challenge. One of the outstanding intellectual outcomes of this effort
was the concept of LIC. However, the way LIC was de ned by the US defense estab-
lishment re ected the problem of encompassing the variety of dimensions and variables
that deserved to be taken into consideration in the framework of this type of con ict or
war, which is neither conventional in the traditional sense nor non-conventional. LIC
was defined as a “limited politico-military struggle to achieve political, social,
economic, or psychological objectives. It is often protracted and ranges from diplo-
matic, economic, and psychological pressures through terrorism and insurgency.
Low-intensity con ict is generally con ned to a geographic area and is often character-
ized by constraints on the weaponry, tactics and level of violence.” Department of Defense
Dictionary of Military and Associated Terms, Washington DC: Joint Chiefs of Staff, 1979;
Joint Low-Intensity Con ict Project Final Report, Executive Summary Fort Monroe, VA:
US Army Training and Doctrine Command, August 1986, p. 3. In 1991, a Low-
Intensity Con ict Proponencies Directorate (LIC-PD) was established in the US,
charged with developing, coordinating and documenting concepts, doctrine, organiza-
tional designs, material requirements and training programs.
5. Martin van Creveld, The Transformation of War, New York: The Free Press, 1991.
6. As one scholar put it, “a small war [ . . . ] may be intense but short, or long but charac-
terized by low levels of violence [ . . . ]. In most cases, they involve con icts within
states.” W. J. Olson, “Preface: Small Wars Considered”, Annals of the American Academy
of Political and Social Studies, Vol. 541, September 1995, p. 9.
7. See the chapter “The People in Arms”. Carl von Clausewitz, On War, Princeton:
Princeton University Press, 1976, pp. 479–483.
8. Baron de Jomini, The Art of War, Westport: Greenwood, 1977, pp. 29–35.
9. Jehuda L. Wallach, Kriegstheorien , Frankfurt am Main: Bernard & Graefe Verlag Fur
Wehrwesen, 1972, pp. 25, 83–84.
10. See, for example: Sigmund Neumann and Mark von Hagen, “Engels and Marx on Rev-
olution, War, and the Army in Society”, in Peter Paret (ed.), Makers of Modern Strategy,
Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1986, pp. 262–280.
11. Revolution has many meanings. However, it usually refers to “a sweeping, sudden
attack upon an existing order”. Sam C. Sarkesian, “Revolutionary Guerrilla Warfare”,
in Sam C. Sarkesian (ed.), Revolutionary Guerrilla Warfare, Chicago: Precedent, 1975,
p. 1. Operationally, it entails the “seizure of power that leads to a major restructuring of
government or society and the replacement of the former élite by a new one”, unlike
32 AV I K O BE R
coup d’état which involves “no more than a change of ruling personnel by violence or a
threat of violence”. Lawrence Stone, “Theories of Revolution”, in Sarkesian (ed.),
op. cit, p. 27.
12. Insurgency has been de ned as “an organized movement aimed at the overthrow of
constituted government through the use of subversion and armed con ict”. Dictionary
of Military and Associated Terms, JCS Publication No. 1, Washington DC: Joint Chiefs of
Staff, 1979, p. 123; or as “a struggle between a non-ruling group and the ruling author-
ities in which the non-ruling group consciously uses political resources (e.g.
organizational expertise, propaganda, and demonstrations) and violence to destroy,
reformulate, or sustain the basis of legitimacy of one or more aspects of politics”.
O’Neill, Insurgency and Terrorism, p. 13; or as “unconventional warfare waged for the
purpose of overthrowing and replacing an existing regime or to secede from an existing
state”. Snow, op. cit., p. 65.
13. See Sarkesian’s edited volume Revolutionary Guerrilla Warfare.
14. Stuart A. Cohen and Efraim Inbar, “A Taxonomy of Israel’s Use of Military Force”,
Comparative Strategy, Vol. 10 No. 2, April–June 1991, p. 128.
15. As far as civil wars go, there have also been many de nitions. For example: “con ict
within a society resulting from an attempt to seize or maintain power and symbols of
legitimacy by extra-legal means. It is civil because civilians are engaged in it. It is war
because violence is applied by both sides. Civil war is intra-societal and may take place
within a group, some parts of which either desire to maintain or wish to initiate separate
ethnic and/or political identity or wish to change the government.” J. K. Zawodny,
“Civil War”, in Encyclopedia of the Social Sciences, New York: Macmillan, Vol. 7, 1968,
p. 499. Cited in Sarkesian, “Revolutionary Guerrilla Warfare”, p. 4. Another de nition:
“military con ict between two or more approximately equal governments for sover-
eignty over people and territory native to both”. Lyford P. Edwards, “Civil War”, in
Encyclopedia of the Social Sciences, New York: Macmillan, Vol. 3, 1935, p. 523. Cited in
ibid. p. 5. A more concise and compelling de nition is the following: “[a war] between
two groups in the same nation”. Douglas Pike, Viet Cong, Cambridge: MIT Press,
1966, pp. 32–33. Cited in ibid., p. 5.
16. For a comparison between ethno-political con ict in the Cold War era, on the one hand,
and the post-Cold War era, on the other, see: Ted R. Gurr, “People Against States: Eth-
nopolitical Con ict and the Changing World System”, International Studies Quarterly,
Vol. 38 No. 3, September 1994, pp. 347–377.
17. FM-100-5: Operations, Washington DC: Department of the Army, 1993. It is assumed
that OOTWs would be sensitive, complex, protracted operations, and would demand
special units in order to carry them out. As far as OOTWs go, there are almost no
boundaries between conventional and sub-conventional activities. Very much unlike
LICs, OOTWs are perceived of both as an integral part of war – preceding it, following
it, or occurring simultaneously with war in the same theater or in conjunction with
wartime operations – and as an autonomous channel of operations. As such, OOTWs
require small, versatile units capable of operating vis-à-vis a variety of small challenges,
either conventional or non-conventional. Such units, sometimes referred to as Special
Forces carrying out special operations, are often suited to the conduct of LICs,
however, they also have applications in conventional and non-conventional war. FM-
100-5, p. 13-0-13-1.
18. B. H. Liddell Hart, Strategy: The Indirect Approach, London: Faber & Faber, 1967.
19. See, for example: Vladimir I. Lenin, “Partisan Warfare”, Sarkesian (ed.), op. cit., pp.
187–203.
20. Mao Tse-tung, Selected Works, London: Lawrence & Wishart, 1954.
21. Vo Nguyen Giap, People’s War, People’s Army, Hanoi: Foreign Languages, 1961.
22. Che Guevara, On Guerrilla Warfare, New York: Praeger, 1961.
23. Robert Thompson, Defeating Communist Insurgency, New York: Praeger, 1966.
24. Roger Trinquier, Modern Warfare: A French View on Counterinsurgency, New York:
Praeger, 1967.
25. R. Debray, Strategy for Revolution, London: Jonathan Cape, 1970.
26. Roger Beaumont, “Small Wars: De nitions and Dimensions”, Annals of the American
Academy of Political and Social Science, Vol. 541, September 1995, p. 33.
27. Jerome W. Klingaman, “US Policy and Strategic Planning For Low-Intensity Con ict”,
in Stephen Blank et al., Low-Intensity Con ict in the Third World, Maxwell Air Force
Base, Alabama: Air University Press, 1988, pp. 162–164.
28. Klingaman, “US Policy and Strategic Planning For Low-Intensity Con ict”, p. 163.
29. In the period 1991–7, the international relations and security studies community was
generally interested in other problems, ignoring the fact that some 95 percent of the
con icts in the international system were LICs. Articles that in one way or the other
touched upon aspects of LICs, such as the ethnic factor in Second-Tier countries,
foreign involvement or intervention in such countries, or some speci c internal war,
constituted between 2 percent and 20 percent of the articles published by distinguished
journals. Only a small number of articles were dedicated to the theory of LICs, if at all.
Examples include: International Organization – 2 percent, World Politics – 6 percent,
Security Studies – 6 percent, Military Review – 6 percent, International Security – 11
percent, Parameters – 12 percent. Even Survival, which made a very serious effort to
deal with the phenomenon, dedicated only 20 percent of its articles to LICs. Statistics
by the author.
30. Charles E. Callwell, Small Wars: Their Principles and Practice, Wake eld: E.P. Publish-
ing, 1976, p. 21.
31. Eliot A. Cohen, “Constraints on America’s Conduct of Small Wars”, International
Security, Vol. 9 No. 2, Fall 1984, p. 151.
32. Thompson, “Low-Intensity Con ict: An Overview”, p. 1.
33. Ashton Carter, “Responding to the Threats: Preventive Defense”, paper presented at
the Conference on “Challenges to Global and Middle East Security”, Jaffee Center for
Strategic Studies & Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs, Herzlia, 15–16
June 1998; America’s National Interests, A Report from the Commission on America’s
National Interests Washington DC, 1996. The report distinguishes between “vital”,
“extremely important”, “just important”, and “less important” national interests.
34. Shimon Peres, The Next Phase, Tel-Aviv: Am-Hassefer, 1965, p. 11.
35. Clausewitz, On War, p. 89.
36. Michael Howard, “The Forgotten Dimensions of Strategy”, in Michael Howard, The
Causes of War and Other Essays, Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1984, pp.
101–115.
37. Walter Laqueur, “Postmodern Terrorism”, Foreign Affairs, Vol. 75 No. 5,
September/October 1996, pp. 24–36.
38. Whereas intra-community con icts are primarily about ideology (e.g., the Greek, Viet-
namese, and Nicaraguan civil wars), inter-community ones are driven primarily by
ethnic division (e.g., the Nigerian, Yugoslav, Sri Lankan, Rwandan, and Chechnyan
civil wars). Chaim Kaufman, “Intervention in Ethnic and Ideological Civil Wars”,
Security Studies, Vol. 6 No. 1, Autumn 1996, pp. 62–100.
39. On ethnocentrism in strategic thinking, see: Ken Booth, Strategy and Ethnocentrism;
Alastair I. Johnson, “Thinking about Strategic Culture”, International Security, Vol. 19
No. 4, Spring 1995; Colin S. Gray, War, Peace and Victory, New York: Simon &
Schuster, 1990, pp. 44–45; Yitzhak Klein, “A Theory of Strategic Culture”, Compara-
tive Strategy, Vol. 10 No. 1, January–March 1991, pp. 3–23.
40. On LICs as requiring “an ad hoc set of operational procedures” and the development of
“one-place/one-time adaptive doctrines and methods”, see: Edward N. Luttwak,
“Notes on Low-Intensity Warfare”, in William A. Buckingham (ed.), Defense Planning
for the 1990s,Washington DC: National Defense University Press, 1984, p. 206.
34 AV I K O BE R
41. Stephen Blank, “Soviet Forces in Afghanistan: Unlearning the Lessons of Vietnam”, in
Stephen Blank et al., Responding to Low-Intensity Con ict Challenges. Maxwell Air Base,
Alabama: Air University Press, 1990, pp. 53–176.
42. Blank, “Soviet Forces in Afghanistan”, p. 87.
43. Steven Metz and James Kievit, “The Revolution in Military Affairs and Con ict Short
of War.”
44. For example: Robert H. Johnson, “Exaggerating America’s Stakes in Third World
Con icts”, International Security, Vol. 10 No. 3, Winter 1984/85, pp. 32–68; Richard E.
Feinberg and Kenneth A. Oye, “After the Fall: US Policy Toward Radical Regimes”,
World Policy Journal, Vol. 1 No. 1, Fall 1983, pp. 201–215; Jerome Slater, “Dominoes
on Central America: Will They Fall? Does It Matter?” International Security, Vol. 12
No. 2, Fall 1987, pp. 105–134.
45. Steven R. David, “Why the Third World Matters?” International Security, Vol. 14 No. 1,
Summer 1989, pp. 50–85; Steven R. David, “Why the Third World Still Matters”,
International Security, Vol. 17 No. 3, Winter 1992/93, pp. 127–159.
46. For such an approach, see for example: Shmuel Gordon, The Vulture and the Snake:
Counter-Guerrilla Air Warfare: The War in Southern Lebanon, Ramat-Gan: BESA Center
for Strategic Studies, 1998.
47. Beaumont, “Small Wars: De nitions and Dimensions”, pp. 31–32.
48. See his introduction in Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, Die Klassenkampfe in Frankre-
ich, 1848–1850, Berlin: 1895.
49. A. H. Jomini, “Summary of the Art of War”, in Roots of Strategy: Book 2, Harrisburg:
Stackpole, 1987, p. 445.
50. Wallach, Kriegstheorien, pp. 25, 83–84.
51. T. E. Lawrence, Revolt in the Desert, New York: G. H. Doran Co., 1927.
52. Edward N. Luttwak, “A Post-Heroic Military Policy”, Foreign Affairs, Vol. 75 No. 4,
July/August 1996, p. 40.
53. Ruth L. Sivard (ed.), World Military and Social Expenditures, Washington DC: World
Priorities, 1987, pp. 29–31; ibid., 1989 edition, p. 22; Peter Wallensteen and Margareta
Sollenberg, “The End of International War? Armed Con ict 1989–95”, Journal of Peace
Research, Vol. 33 No. 3, August 1996, pp. 353–370; Klaus J. Gantzel, “War in the Post-
World War II World: Some Empirical Trends and a Theoretical Approach”, in David
Turton (ed.), War and Ethnicity: Global Connections and Local Violence, San Marino:
University of Rochester Press, pp. 125–138.
54. David, op. cit., pp. 142–144. On foreign involvement and intervention in LICs, see for
example: Michael E. Brown, “The Causes and Regional Dimensions of Internal
Con ict”, in Michael E. Brown (ed.), The International Dimensions of Internal Con ict,
Cambridge: MIT Press, 1996, pp. 571–601; Bruce W. Gentleman and Ariel E. Levite,
“The Analysis of Protracted Foreign Military Intervention”, in Ariel E. Levite, Bruce
W. Jentleson and Larry Berman (eds), Foreign Military Intervention: The Dynamics of
Protracted Con ict, New York: Columbia University Press, 1992, pp. 1–22; Eliot A.
Cohen, “Dynamics of Military Intervention”, ibid., pp. 263–284; Robert Cooper and
Mats Berdal, “Outside Intervention in Ethnic Con icts”, Survival, Vol. 35 No. 1,
Spring 1993, pp. 118–142; Bard E. O’Neill, Insurgency and Terrorism, Washington DC:
Brassey’s, 1990, pp. 11–124.
55. Luttwak, “A Post-Heroic Military Policy.”
56. Brown, “The Causes and Regional Dimensions of Internal Con ict.”
57. On state-to-nation ratio and its impact on war and peace, see: Benjamin Miller, “The
Sources of Regional War and Peace”, paper presented at the 1999 annual meeting of the
American Political Science Association, Atlanta, September, 1999; Stephen Van Evera,
“Hypotheses on Nationalism and War”, in Sean M. Lynn-Jones and Steven E. Miller
(eds), Global Dangers: An International Security Reader, Cambridge: MIT Press, 1995.
It is precisely against this background that the notion that keeping warring ethnic
groups integrated paradoxically promotes escalation of violence has been gaining

ground, suggesting that separating them might be more conducive to peace and
stability. See: Chaim D. Kaufman, “When All Else Fails: Ethnic Population Transfers
and Partitions in the Twentieth Century”, International Security, Vol. 23 No. 2, Fall
1998, pp. 120–156.
58. W. W. Rostow, United States in the World Arena, New York: Harper & Row, 1960; Ted R.
Gurr, Why Men Rebel, Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1973; James C. Davies,
“The J-Curve of Rising and Declining Satisfactions as a Cause of Some Great Revolu-
tions and a Contained Rebellion”, in Sarkesian (ed.), Revolutionary Guerrilla Warfare,
pp. 117–141; Mancur Olson, “Rapid Growth as a Destabilizing Force”, Journal of
Economic History, Vol. XXII, December 1963, pp. 529–552. “Poor men, used to hard,
strenuous work and deprivation, are generally more vigorous and more warlike,”
Clausewitz diagnosed some 200 years ago. Clausewitz, On War, p. 480.
59. For the importance of this factor, see: Brown, “The Causes and Regional Dimensions
of Internal Con ict.”
60. David A. Lake and Donald Rothchild, “Spreading Fear: The Genesis of Transnational
Ethnic Con ict”, in David A. Lake and Donald Rothchild (eds), The International
Spread of Ethnic Con ict, Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1998, pp. 8, 18.
61. For an application of the concept of the security dilemma to ethnic relations, see: Barry
R. Posen, “The Security Dilemma and Ethnic Con ict”, Survival, Vol. 35 No. 1,
Spring 1993, pp. 27–47.
62. As one researcher put it, “revolutionary or separatist struggles, in which the combatants
have mutually exclusive ideas of who should govern and on what principles, are notori-
ously savage and dif cult to resolve by peaceful means”. W. J. Olson, “Preface: Small
Wars Considered”, p. 15.
63. Barbara F. Walter, “The Critical Barrier to Civil War Settlement”, International Organi-
zation, Vol. 51 No. 3, Summer 1997, pp. 335–364.
64. Edward D. Mans eld and Jack Snyder, “Democratization and the Danger of War”,
International Security, Vol. 20 No. 1, Summer 1995, pp. 5–38. Mans eld and Snyder
differentiate, however, between the democratization processes within former
Communist European states, which, in their view, should cause far less international
instability, and the liberalization of Third World feudal states, which threatens interna-
tional stability far more. See also Steven R. David, “Democracy, Internal War and
Israeli Security”, paper presented at the Conference on “Democracies and Their
Armed Forces Towards the 21st Century”, BESA Center for Strategic Studies, Ramat-
Gan, 8–10 June 1998; Jacob Rösel, “Nationalism and Ethnicity: Ethnic Nationalism
and the Regulation of Ethnic Conflict”, in Turton (ed.), War and Ethnicity, pp.
160–161.
65. Clausewitz, On War, p. 480.
66. Ibid.
67. Ibid.
68. On the important role played by geography, see for example: Arthur Campbell, Guer-
rillas: A History and Analysis, London: Arthur Barker, 1967, pp. 282–284.
69. The “mushroom-like spread of slums and shanty towns” encircling many Third World
cities by “misery-belt of huts patched together out of odd bits of cardboard, tin and
timber” have served as fertile soil on which political violence in general and terrorism in
particular could grow relatively easily. Robert Moss, “Urban Guerrilla Warfare”, in
Sarkesian (ed.), Revolutionary Guerrilla Warfare, p. 483.
70. Olson, “Preface: Small Wars Considered”, p. 8.
71. Sivard (ed.), World Military and Social Expenditures.
72. Wallensteen and Sollenberg, “The End of International War?” p. 356.
73. David Turton, “Introduction”, in Turton (ed.), War and Ethnicity, p. 3.
74. Ibid., p. 2. Prominent examples include: Afghanistan (as of 1978): 5.2 million people;
36 AV I K O BE R
Angola (1975– ): 2 million; Azerbaijan (1990– ): 1.7 million; Bosnia (1992– ): 2.5
million; Liberia (1989– ): 1.7 million; Rwanda (1990– ): 2 million; Somalia (1990– ): 1
million; Sri Lanka (1983– ): 1.2 million. Michael Brown, “Introduction”, in Brown
(ed.), The International Dimensions of Internal Con ict, pp. 4–7.
75. As one researcher put it, “for those unfortunate enough to be involved in the suffering
caused by insurgency or chronic terrorism, the phrase low-intensity con ict does not
begin to capture the trauma and tragedy of their lives. [ . . . ] As one might expect, the
phrase does not enjoy similar popularity in Afghanistan, or Angola, or El Salvador, or
Lebanon, or anywhere else that war is tangible reality.” Loren B. Thompson, “Low-
Intensity Con ict: An Overview”, in Loren B. Thompson (ed.), Low-Intensity Con ict:
The Pattern of Warfare in the Modern World, Lexington: Lexington Books, 1989, pp. 1–2.
The devastating effect of Vietnam was summarized by Eliot Cohen in the following
words: “The war in Vietnam, for example, killed 60,000 Americans, bred turmoil in the
US society, devastated Vietnam for a generation, left Laos a backwater and was at least
indirectly responsible, in neighboring Cambodia, for one of the greatest horrors of the
twentieth century.” Eliot A. Cohen, “The ‘Major’ Consequences of War”, Sur vival,
Vol. 41 No. 2, Summer 1999, p. 143.
76. David, “Why the Third World Still Matters”, p. 131; Lake & Rothchild, “Spreading
Fear”, pp. 3–32. The suggestion that ethnic con icts are prone to spread like wild re is
questioned by Fearon, who claims that ethnic con icts have properties that should tend
to make them self-limiting in geographic extent, such as their particular rather then uni-
versalist nature. James D. Fearon, “Commitment Problems and the Spread of Ethnic
Con ict”, ibid., pp. 109–14.
77. See: Brown, “Causes and Regional Dimensions”, pp. 590–595.
78. Stephen M. Walt, Revolution and War, Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1996.
79. See, for example: Deborah J. Gerner, “Islamic Revivalism and International politics”,
Mershon International Studies Review, 40, April 1996, pp. 104–108.
80. Lake and Rothchild, “Spreading Fear”, pp. 23, 29–32.
81. It has recently been argued by a group of researchers that third party involvement or
intervention had better be avoided so as to enable the adversaries to “burn themselves
out and establish the preconditions for a lasting settlement”. See for example: Edward
N. Luttwak, “Give War a Chance”, Foreign Affairs, Vol. 78 No. 4, July/August 1999,
p. 36. According to Luttwak, Bosnia, for example, was condemned by the Dayton
accords to “remain divided into three rival armed camps, with combat suspended
momentarily but a state of hostility prolonged inde nitely”. Ibid., p. 37.
82. David, “Democracy, Internal War and Israeli Security.”
83. Harry C. Summers, On Strategy: The Vietnam War in Context, Pennsylvania: US Army
War College, 1981, p. 1.
84. Barbara Tuchman, The March of Folly: From Troy to Vietnam, London: M. Joseph, 1984,
p. 352.
85. Ibid.
86. John Shy and Thomas W. Collier, “Revolutionary War”, in Paret (ed.), Makers of
Modern Strategy, p. 852.
87. Many LICs last more than ten years. For example, in Asia: the struggle of the Muslim
militias against the USSR in Afghanistan lasted ten years (1979–89); the Tamils have
been ghting against the government of Sri Lanka for more than 18 years (1984– ); the
struggle of East Timor against the Indonesian government has been conducted for
almost 27 years now (1975– ); the Communists in the Philippines fought against the
government for 17 years (1972–89); the Vietnamese had to fight for nine years
(1945–54) to gain independence from France; and it took the Vietcong and the North
Vietnamese 15 years to get the Americans out of Vietnam and defeat the South
(1960–75). In Africa, too, LICs have been protracted: the FLN against France – eight
years (1954–62); West Sahara against Morocco – 12 years (1975–87); the Eritreans vs.
the Ethiopian government – 15 years (1974–89); Angola’s independence from Portugal

– 14 years (1961–75); the civil war in Angola – 14 years (1975–89); Mozambique’s
independence from Portugal – ten years (1965–75); the civil war in Mozambique – eight
years (1981–9); South Sudan vs. Government – 18 years (1984– ); Guinea-Bissau’s
independence from Portugal – 12 years (1962–74). In Latin America: insurgents vs.
Government in El Salvador – ten years (1979–89); Contras vs. Sandinistas in Nicaragua
– seven years (1981–8); Shining Path vs. Government in Peru – 13 years (1983–96);
Liberals vs. Government in Colombia – 13 years (1949–62).
88. Stephen P. Rosen, “War and the Willingness to Suffer”, in Bruce M. Russett (ed.),
Peace, War and Numbers, Beverly Hills: Sage, 1972, pp. 167–183. In the “savage war of
peace” in Algeria it was France, which lost about 25,000 soldiers killed – some 0.05
percent of its population – that was the rst to tire of the war, whereas the Algerians,
who suffered approximately 600,000 dead – about 6 percent of Algeria’s non-European
population – were apparently quite ready to continue ghting. Peter Paret, French Rev-
olutionary Warfare from Indochina to Algeria: the Analysis of a Political and Military
Doctrine, London: Pall Mall Press, 1964; Edgar O’Ballance, The Algerian Insurrection
1954–1962, London: Faber & Faber, 1967; David Schalk, War and the Ivory Tower, New
York: Oxford University Press, 1991; Robert B. Asprey, War in the Shadows: The
Guerrilla in History, New York: Morrow, 1994, Ch. 55; Nathan Key tz and Wilhelm
Flieger, World Population, Chicago: Chicago University Press, 1968. p. 335; Joachim
Joesten, The New Algeria, Chicago: Follett, 1964, p. 14. Apparently the wiser for the
experience of their failure in Indochina, the French army and French military thinkers
attempted to adapt elements of the doctrines of Mao and Giap for the purposes of the
country’s struggle against the movement for national liberation in Algeria – developing
the doctrine of “la guerre revolutionaire”. From a military standpoint, this doctrine rep-
resented an improvement over the manner in which France had previously dealt with
the Vietnamese. As for the challenges in Algeria, the French thinkers showed that they
possessed something of an understanding of the important role that was likely to be
played in LICs by the political element and attempted to integrate it into the militar y
considerations in the form of psychological warfare, re-education, indoctrination of
their own cadres, and shaping of government policy. Peter Paret and John W. Shy, Guer-
rillas in the 1960s, New York: Praeger, 1962, pp. 39–40. They endeavored to
compensate for the feeble will earlier evinced by French society in Indochina by
insisting that French citizens demonstrate strength of will over the struggle in Algeria.
But the very fact that this demand was issued also served to reveal its less admirable
aspects. Above and beyond the fact that the doctrine re ected Fascist tendencies and a
certain undisguised contempt for democracy, by giving its army the task of educating
the French people towards demonstrating a strong stand, it showed that the govern-
ment had misinterpreted the mood among the French people, who detested the long
war and its high price – expressed in the prolonged conscription of hundreds of
thousands of their countrymen, the tens of thousands of casualties among the French
forces, the war costs amounting to about a billion dollars a year, the deep rift that had
opened up across society, and in the chaos that has developed within the political system
– and who had lost most of their sympathy for the army. In Vietnam, too, the efforts
made by the Americans to in ict destruction on the North Vietnamese eventually
became progressively less relevant. In the nal analysis, victory was achieved off the
actual battle eld by the side that had been more willing to tolerate casualties and had
demonstrated greater social resilience, precisely as Ho Chi Minh had predicted. See
John E. Mueller, “The Search for the ‘Breaking Point’ in Vietnam: The Statistics of a
Deadly Quarrel”, International Studies Quarterly, Vol. 24 No. 4, December 1980, pp.
497–519. The prediction of Ho Chi Minh was that “in the end, the Americans will have
killed ten of us for every American soldier who died, but it is they who will tire rst”.
Rosen, “War Power and the Willingness to Suffer”, p. 168. As one researcher put it,
38 AV I K O BE R
“Hanoi bent but never broke because it preferred endless war to defeat; Washington
bent and nally did break because the public preferred defeat to endless war.” Richard
K. Betts, “Comment on Mueller: Interests, Burdens, and Persistence: Asymmetries
Between Washington and Hanoi”, International Studies Quarterly, Vol. 24 No. 4,
December 1980, p. 523.
89. For a comparison of the British and American responses to similar challenges, see for
example: Debora D. Avant, “The Institutional Sources of Military Doctrine:
Hegemons in Peripheral Wars”, International Studies Quarterly, Vol. 37 No. 4,
December 1993, pp. 409–430. Avant explains the differences in adaptivity to LICs
demonstrated by British and Americans by the distinct structure of civilian institutions
and their effect on the development of military organizations.
90. Van Creveld, The Transformation of War.
91. Thomas Hobbes, Leviathan, New York: Collier, 1962; Jean Jacques Rousseau, The
Social Contract and Other Later Political Writings, Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press, 1997.
92. For an analysis of such processes, see: Martin van Creveld, The Rise and Decline of the
State, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999.
93. Van Creveld, The Transformation of War.
94. According to those who foresee the end of violent interstate con ict, there will be a
change in the nature of war, as we know it. Wars will no longer be fought between the
regular armies of nation-states, and nation-states and their regular armies will instead
gradually disappear, with the focus shifting to low-intensity con icts. These latter,
however, will not resemble the low-intensity con icts currently familiar to us, in which
the hostilities are waged between the regular armies of nation-states, on the one hand,
and groups or organizations struggling for self-determination or national liberation, on
the other. They will constitute a more far-reaching type of low-intensity con ict waged
principally between the irregular forces belonging to such groups and organizations,
most probably on the basis of some ethnic, ideological or other dispute. Ibid.
95. Avi Kober, “Nomology vs. Historicism: Formative Factors in Modern Military
Thought”, Defense Analysis, Vol. 10 No. 3, December 1994, pp. 267–284.
96. Clausewitz, On War, pp. 586, 593.
97. Ibid., p. 141.
98. Howard, “The Forgotten Dimensions of Strategy”.

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Low-intensity Con icts: Why the Gap

The following key arguments are presented:

L ICs IN TH E L ITERAT URE

thinking on conventional and non-conventional warfare, American strategic thought

W H Y DO LIC s D ESERVE TO B E TREAT ED MO RE

The systemic level

The unit level

guerrilla warfare to terrorism or a combination of guerrilla and terrorism. This can, to

Devastating effect on the peoples involved

Danger to the stability of the international system

The instrumental use of force in crisis

LIC and the demise of the nation-state

C O NCL US ION: SH OULD WE WOR RY A BO UT TH E GA P?

groups integrated paradoxically promotes escalation of violence has been gaining

the Ethiopian government – 15 years (1974–89); Angola’s independence from Portugal

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Low-intensity Con icts: Why the Gap