In a recent Irregular Warfare Initiative podcast, Dr. Jake Shapiro and Dr. Frances Brown highlighted the critical role of irregular warfare (IW) in great power competition. They emphasized the risk of neglecting IW, noting that from 1975 to 1991, irregular conflicts comprised 87 percent of all armed conflicts, with great powers involved in most of them. This historical context suggests that for the US to compete effectively with Russia and China, focusing solely on conventional military strength is inadequate. Strategic advantage in great power competition is likely to be achieved by also emphasizing competence in IW.
This type of warfare includes managing internal conflicts—usually insurgencies—where great powers intervene to shape outcomes in their favor. Another is terrorism. U.S. and allies’ inability to work effectively with partners in Africa to contain the proliferation of terrorism in the Sahel region has created an opening for Russia to step in and exploit natural resources to help finance the war in Ukraine. Managing IW in a way that reflects U.S. strategic goals requires prioritization of interests, appropriate allocation of resources, and interagency cooperation. Equally important is understanding which past and current efforts have been effective, under what conditions they succeeded, and what remains unaddressed or poorly understood.
To support both practitioners and scholars the National Consortium for the Study of Terrorism and Responses to Terrorism (START) at the University of Maryland, has developed an online knowledge and data portal on Global Responses to Asymmetric Threats (GRAT). This online resource, built on extensive coding and analysis of empirical and policy literature from 2002-2022, serves as an important tool for understanding government responses to asymmetric threats and refining strategic approaches to irregular warfare. This article discusses the portal’s utility and showcases how GRAT has already enhanced our organization’s work, thus providing an example of the benefits of leveraging historical and current IW research to inform policy decisions in great power competition.
The Portal’s Value to Researchers and Educators
The GRAT portal can assist in improving our understanding of how governments respond to asymmetric threats across three types of irregular warfare: insurgency, information operations, and terrorism. It helps identify research gaps in the literature more efficiently. The portal features a searchable data tool where users can find relevant insights using keyword searches, such as specific methodologies, state power levers, response targets, or geographical areas. Keywords are based on variable coding in academic articles or the main focus in non-academic texts. Users can also search by author names.
GRAT’s first database focuses on counterinsurgency (COIN) and is currently available to the public. A second database focusing on information operations is in development and set to launch in late summer, with a third on counterterrorism expected by the end of 2024.
Using GRAT’s filtering system, researchers can access a wealth of analytical data about selected articles, including findings, key variables, methodologies, and hypotheses. The findings highlight the relationship between key variables and discuss the outcome of hypothesis testing with an explanation of the logic behind each finding. For pieces with case studies, the findings provide enough depth that users can rely on them as examples to apply to their own research and teaching needs. For policy pieces, the findings are framed as a recommendation to a problem statement that is also noted for the relevant piece.
The portal can be used to provide insights on a variety of research and policy questions that can assist with research and teaching development. For example, users can rely on it to identify existing studies’ findings on the impact of innovation/adaptability on COIN success and conditions under which the value of such innovation increases as they develop literature reviews for their own articles or to situate their own ideas within past frameworks. Educators interested in sharing with their students the examples of cases where indiscriminate use of force helped counterinsurgents and when it worked against them, can use the portal’s keyword filtering system and methodology filter to obtain a set of case studies. Browsing through the description of case study findings can then enable them to select relevant examples. In addition to the database component, the portal also features reports highlighting general and more specific analyses of the insights coming from the literature.
Application: Insights on the Effectiveness of Military COIN Approaches
In a recent START article titled Government Responses to Asymmetric Threats: The State of the Literature on Counterinsurgency, 2002-2022—the Military Lever of Power, I used the GRAT portal to analyze how factors related to the government’s use of the military lever of power were employed in COIN. After I sorted independent and dependent variables into overarching categories, I found that over 41% of studies focused on COIN tactics, indicating dominant interest in this area. However, aspects like military leadership, culture, and the dynamics between external interveners and host governments remain underexplored, representing only 4.1% of all studied variables. The literature is most interested in linking these factors to explain COIN outcomes, such as victory/defeat or success/failure.
Within the Tactics and COIN outcomes categories, I identified the top 10 most frequently studied tactics and relied on portal-provided descriptions of findings to determine if the tactics’ impact was positive, negative, mixed, or had no impact. The top 10 ten most frequently analyzed tactics in empirical studies include:
1. The use of armed non-state actors (private military & security companies, mercenaries, militias, civilian defense forces)
2. Military presence/use of kinetic operations/use of conventional forces
3. Use of indiscriminate violence or repressive force
4. Forced population resettlement
5. Provision of security to the public
6. Restraint and legitimacy in the use of force
7. Cordon & search operations
8. Use of special forces
9. Use of air power
10. Use of former insurgents as forces
There are more positive than negative findings on the value of each of these tactics except for the use of indiscriminate/repressive force and the use of air power, both of which are more likely associated with COIN loss than victory. In most instances, the positive contribution of a given tactic depends on the presence of specific conditions. For example, forced population resettlement conducted with care for the population is linked to COIN success but not when done merely as a tool of relocation. However, the analysis of existing research revealed that many of the insights on these tactics are based on a single-case study, and some of the tactics are understudied despite making it into the top 10 most frequently analyzed list. A notable exception to this is the work on governments’ use of armed non-state actors, with a solid depth of findings derived from over 20 qualitative and quantitative studies based on small and large samples.
Working with the portal deepened my understanding of the current research on military responses to asymmetric threats in insurgencies. It also set the stage for proposing directions for future studies. Extending the analysis to a global sample of cases and relying on statistical approaches would significantly improve the generalizability of the findings.
For case studies, there is a need to move beyond Afghanistan and Iraq; these two countries have been the focus of over 42 percent of all pieces (empirical and non-empirical) that explore state use of its military lever of power in COIN. Despite the prevalence of insurgencies in sub-Saharan Africa and South America, only Nigeria, Kenya, Colombia, and El Salvador made it to the top 15 most frequently analyzed countries. Finally, my analysis of tactics demonstrated some overlooked areas within this specific category. Mainly limited focus on empirical testing of the benefits garnered by the military’s adoption of new technologies in gaining advantage over the insurgents and the impact of women in COIN-relevant leadership positions on strategic and tactical outcomes.
As demand grows to leverage IW tools for strategic advantage, it is crucial to identify and synthesize existing findings and pinpoint gaps in previous research. The GRAT portal is an important resource, helping scholars and practitioners deepen their understanding and refine their approaches to IW. By employing this tool, users can effectively expand their repertoire and address the evolving challenges of IW.
Dr. Elizabeth Radziszewski is an associate research scientist at START, the National Consortium for the Study of Terrorism and Responses to Terrorism, University of Maryland, where she leads the Irregular Warfare and Conflict Assessment Group. She is the author of Private Militaries and the Security Industry in Civil Wars: Competition and Market Accountability (Oxford University Press, 2020) and Social Networks and Public Support for the European Union (Routledge, 2013).
This article is based on research conducted for the Global Responses to Asymmetric Threats: Irregular Warfare Net Assessment Data Structure project, which is part of the Asymmetric Threat Analysis Center (ATAC), a joint program between START and the University of Maryland’s Applied Research Lab for Intelligence and Security (ARLIS). ATAC is funded by the Department of Defense.
Views expressed in this article solely reflect those of the author and do not reflect the official position of the Irregular Warfare Initiative, Princeton University’s Empirical Studies of Conflict Project, the Modern War Institute at West Point, or the United States Government.
Main Image: A U.S. Air Force pararescueman, 83rd Expeditionary Rescue Squadron, scans for ground threats during a mission on November 7, 2012, over Afghanistan. (Jonathan Snyder via DVIDS)
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Martell Wilkins says
War is going to war and the only statistics that matter are who and what is left. That’s why some of those factors you mention are understudied: very few will document or acknowledge the vast number of minor COIN failures regarding civilian impact, but there are indicators to follow. I imagine an empathetic or subjective IW approach to a region and its collective stakeholders’ mission will generate slow but quality results. I’m not a practitioner yet, but I feel strongly about the objective categorizing of tactics with no region-bespoke strategy in sight. The West is fighting with hands behind its back, and like many of your colleagues indicate, and yourself, the Modern-Axis is taking advantage of Our self-righteousness image of democracy. The West has an ego, and it is a dangerous one: to address threats with the same generalized strategy for varied threats is insane and wasteful.
I look forward to reading more of your work.
Elizabeth Radziszewski says
Thanks, Martell. I hope future research will move more in the direction you mentioned. Data availability continues to be a challenge in pursuing that endeavor. Best wishes, Elizabeth
Terry Tucker, SGM, USA Ret, PhD says
Was this working group aware of publications by RAND titled, Victory has a Thousand Fathers? There are two books on this topic, one on detailed counterinsurgency case studies and the other on sources of success. Irregular warfare and insurgencies / counterinsurgencies are merely degrees of separation across the domains. Interestingly, the common theme across IW and COIN is that regardless of the distinctiveness of the narrative, those engaged in countering IW (Insurgencies) must determine and employ multiple simultaneous practices to be successful Refer to table 5.1 in the summary in the RAND report or book titled; Victory has a Thousand Fathers, sources of success in counterinsurgency. I get the feeling that we are reinventing the wheel with our emphasis on technology and tactics. By inference tactics and technology usually means kinetic action. Two little known Brits were had mixed success in the Northwest Frontier Provinces, but there are significant lessons in what they did that was successful – the emphasis was on culture and relationships – . Sir Robert Warburton and Sir Robert Sandman. (Robert Sandeman, Administrator, Baluchistan and Robert Warburton, Administrator, Kyhber)
Here is synthesis from my instructor notes when I was a COIN advisor.
Here is my synthesis of guiding principles that I used and taught from 2006 -2012.
1. The Sandeman System: you made friends with the tribes, you dealt with them through their chiefs, you paid them to patrol your LOC’s, you adhered to tribal custom and settled disputes by Jurga, and kept a constant military presence, Created Baluch Regiments
2. Pashtuns consider themselves descended from Mohammed, (karling, a foundling and adopted son of the 4th Qais Abdur Rashid an Contemporary of Mohammed (Lesson – KNOW YOUR CULTURE IN CONTEXT)
3. Pashtuns – “We are Content with Discord, we are content with alarms, we are content with blood, we will never be content with a master ( Warburton and Sandeman never used an intermediary with Pashtuns. They dealt directly with each Pashtun tribe
4. Pashtuns – American may have the wrist watches, we have all the time
5. Pashtuns – A shot fired in Anger echos for a hundred years
6. History is not studied, only from an Islamic or Muslim view in order to prove the order of Gods purpose, western history has no value
7. Arab historical tradition holds a different tradition than the west: Man is limited in his ability to shape his destiny, therefore there is a tendency to write off the past.
8. Cognitively, there is no hypothetical thinking, it is tied to the study of history. To think forward hypothetically is to infer and or state the ability to predict Gods will, More Importantly, it implies an explicit lack of divine faith in events that only God can know and has predestined
9. The Western concept to resist bad government is alien to Islam, however they have a mandate to resist impious government.
10. Freedom is a legal, not a political concept
11. Criticism is discussed as just and unjust. It is the duty of the ruler not a right of the subject. The converse of tyranny was justice, not freedom, the converse of freedom was not tyranny but bondage or slavery; Under Napoleonic Law the definition of Freedom is the same as justice and equity
12. The doctrine of Taqiya: it is obedience and dissimulation to preserve the religion
13. Sunni from the Arabic word sunna. Custom/tradition
14. Khalifa: Deputy or successor
15. 300 year old internal fault line between the Durrani and Ghilzai Tribes – Achmed Shah Durrani
16. The afghan individual is surrounded by concentric rings consisting of family, extended family, clan, tribe, confederacy, and major cultural-linguistic groups. The hierarchy of loyalty corresponds to these rings and is more intense as the ring gets smaller
17. social, political and economic activities within these rings has created a segmentation which is a historical reason why no foreign entity from Alexander, to the British, Russians, Afghans or Pakis have never been able to reconcile control
18. Sandeman / Warburton ” use a policy of masterly inactivity; use the tribes, liberal payment for services rendered
19. Mirza Ali Khan, a Waziri Pashtun led British and Pakistani forces on a 30 year chase around the frontier, he was never caught
20. Mullah Hadda aka The Mad Mulluh movement of the 1897 revolt / Mullah Powindah
21. One must ask why some tribes revolt and others don’t or that some area’s are ungovernable. because the idea that poverty is the key is simply not true, all the tribes have the same basic level of comparative poverty, tribalism and segmentation. Downplaying the role of tribalism or pastunwali is a dangerous proposition. Central government has always been anathema
Elizabeth Radziszewski says
Thank you for your notes, Terry, I greatly appreciate them. The RAND work that you mentioned is included in the GRAT portal and used in the analysis. Best wishes, Elizabeth
Elizabeth Radziszewski says
Thanks for your notes, Terry. I greatly appreciate them. We used RAND’s work that you are noting, it is in the GRAT portal and was part of the analysis that informed this piece and other reports.