From Successful Defense to Problematic Offense: The Devolution of Unconventional Warfare
Journal: Calhoun: The Naval Postgraduate School Institutional Archive (Naval Postgraduate School)
Year: 2016

Unconventional warfare (UW) originated in World War II as a defensive tactic, utilized to assist an occupied ally during a conventional war. Since then, Special Forces (SF) has changed the definition of UW to include offensive regime change as a strategic option. This type of UW was practiced extensively by the Central Intelligence Agency during the Cold War with poor results. The use of offensive UW by the United States is problematic for a variety of reasons, ranging from unreliable proxy forc