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US Army War College

STRATEGIC STUDIES INSTITUTE

AND 

US ARMY WAR COLLEGE PRESS

NONSTATE ACTORS 

AND ANTI-ACCESS/AREA DENIAL 

STRATEGIES: THE COMING CHALLENGE

Jean-Loup Samaan

February 2020

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Generate • Incubate • Propagate
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US Army War College

SUMMARY

This monograph explores the emerging challenge 

of nonstate actors’ anti-access and area denial (A2/

AD) strategies and their implications for the United 

States and its allies. This monograph starts from one 

major development: the historical monopoly of states 

over precision-guided munitions has eroded, and this 

evolution eventually challenges the ability of the most 

advanced militaries to operate in certain environments. 

Questioning the type of strategy that nonstate 

actors may implement as they gain greater access to 

advanced military technology, the research argues 

some of these groups increasingly lean toward A2/

AD strategies. The analysis focuses on two regions, the 

Middle East and Eastern Europe, where case studies 

include Hezbollah in Lebanon, Hamas in the Gaza 

Strip, the Houthis in Yemen, and separatist groups 

in Ukraine. Three key parameters are underlined to 

assess emerging nonstate A2/AD strategies: a political 

shift toward the preservation of the status quo vis-àvis opponents, a significant focus of military resources 

dedicated to A2/AD capabilities—primarily missiles 

and rockets, and finally, a consequential adaptation of 

the military units responsible for the implementation 

of this new strategy.

These postures are still in their infancy and 

should not be equated to those of major regional or 

world powers, such as Iran, Russia, or China. The 

development of nonstate A2/AD postures currently 

remains dependent on the ability of the nonstate 

actors to attract state sponsorship: Hezbollah was 

able to acquire its arsenal because of its support 

from Iran and Syria; the Houthis could not sustain 

their ongoing missile campaign against Saudi Arabia 
vi

US Army War College

without significant help from Tehran; and, likewise, 

the Ukrainian separatists only became a credible threat 

to Kiev thanks to the provision of military resources 

by Russia. Thus, without state sponsorship, these 

emerging nonstate A2/AD strategies would hardly 

constitute a major threat.

Bearing in mind this precondition, if a scenario 

of multiple nonstate A2/AD “bubbles” were to 

unfold, the United States and its allies could face 

unprecedented challenges, especially in the field of 

counterterrorism campaigns. For military planners 

considering scenarios in Europe and the Middle East, 

the new constraints would need to be factored in when 

assessing the option of using military force in regional 

interventions. In addition, this type of conflict would 

potentially raise the level of casualties and constitute 

a kind of life insurance for the terrorist organizations.
1

NONSTATE ACTORS AND ANTI-ACCESS/

AREA DENIAL STRATEGIES: THE COMING 

CHALLENGE

INTRODUCTION

On July 14, 2006, the third day of the Second 

Lebanon War, the Israeli corvette INS Hanit was 

patrolling Lebanese waters approximately 10 nautical 

miles off the coast of Beirut when it was suddenly 

hit by a C-802 anti-ship missile. Four soldiers were 

killed and the boat almost sank. Fired by Hezbollah, 

the missile had been supplied by Iran. After the 

conflict, government investigations in Israel revealed 

significant mistakes. Specifically, intelligence agencies 

had no information about an Iranian transfer of 

an anti-ship missile to Hezbollah. Although some 

military planners in Tel Aviv had warned such a 

scenario would call for an appropriate response from 

the Israeli Navy to protect its forces, the information 

failed to translate into operational orders at the level 

of the ship’s commander.1

This almost-forgotten event of the 2006 conflict 

was a revealing episode of how modern armed forces 

urgently need to revise their assumptions about the 

sophistication of weaponry controlled by militias and 

terrorist organizations. For the Israeli Defense Forces 

(IDF), this painful wake-up call illustrated the new 

vulnerabilities the proliferation of missiles and rockets 

had engendered. More broadly, the case of Hezbollah’s 

anti-ship missile was a signal: the historical monopoly 

of states—primarily, the United States and its allies—

over precision-guided munitions was eroding, and 

1. Amos Harel and Avi Issacharoff, “How the Navy Missed 

Its Boat,” Haaretz, January 18, 2008.
2

this evolution would eventually challenge the ability 

of the most advanced militaries to operate in certain 

environments.2

This monograph explores the strategic significance 

of this phenomenon. Specifically, it questions the type 

of strategy that nonstate actors may implement as they 

gain greater access to advanced military technology. 

In that context, it argues some of these groups 

increasingly lean toward anti-access and area denial 

(A2/AD) strategies.

In some ways, this trend could be seen as a logical 

evolution; as armed groups acquire technologies 

previously controlled by states, they may also be 

tempted to emulate state strategies specifically 

designed to overcome a conventional inferiority. As 

a result, the following pages look at this emerging 

challenge of nonstate actors’ A2/AD strategies 

and their implications for Western armed forces. 

Specifically, this monograph looks at how this threat 

is growing in the Middle East and Eastern European 

theaters. In both areas, this monograph looks at 

the capabilities and the ambition of groups such as 

Lebanese Hezbollah, the Houthis in Yemen, and 

Ukrainian separatists to emulate traditional A2/AD 

postures.

The assessment emphasizes throughout that 

nonstate actors’ A2/AD strategies eventually involve 

significant help from state patronage (in the cases 

mentioned, either Iran or Russia). Until recently, 

only states purchased these capabilities because of 

their cost and the level of training their use required, 

which is why scholarship on A2/AD strategies has 

2. Andrew Krepinevich, Maritime Competition in a Mature 

Precision-Strike Regime (Washington, DC: Center for Strategic and 

Budgetary Assessments, 2014).
3

mostly covered the policies of states such as Russia, 

China, or Iran.3 But this monograph demonstrates 

that some elements of the military strategy of these 

nonstate actors resonate with those A2/AD postures. 

The underlying assumption here is that this emerging 

trend—these nascent strategies—could consolidate 

and become a major challenge.

To support this argument, this monograph first 

provides an analytical framework by putting the issue 

into perspective with regard to the basic principles 

of A2/AD strategies and the evolution of nonstate 

warfare. We identify and specify three key parameters 

to assess emerging nonstate A2/AD strategies: the 

adoption of a status quo political agenda, the presence 

of sufficient military capabilities to deny access to a 

state opponent, and a military strategy that evidences 

institutional adaptation to this new posture. We then 

look at the first case, the Lebanese Hezbollah. Emerging 

in the middle of the Lebanese Civil War around 1983, 

the group has grown to become the most powerful 

nonstate actor in the region in terms of military 

capabilities and political influence. The evolution of 

Hezbollah’s military strategy is intrinsically linked to 

the history of the Iranian regional strategy—or, more 

specifically, the strategy of the Islamic Revolutionary 

Guard Corps. As we explore in the following pages, the 

evolution of Hezbollah’s military strategy evidences 

3. See Roger Cliff et al., Entering the Dragon’s Lair, Chinese 

Antiaccess Strategies and Their Implications for the United States

(Santa Monica, CA: RAND Corporation, 2007); Stephan Frühling 

and Guillaume Lasconjarias, “NATO, A2/AD and the Kaliningrad 

Challenge,” Survival 58, no. 2 (April–May 2016): 95–116; Mark 

Gunzinger, Outside-In: Defeating Iran’s Anti-Access and Area-Denial 

Threat (Washington, DC: Center for Strategic and Budgetary 

Assessments, 2012); and Shahryar Pasandideh, “Iran Boosts Its 

A2AD Capabilities,” Diplomat, May 23, 2014.
4

clear Iranian influences in the field of A2/AD. Rockets 

and missiles have become a major component of 

Hezbollah’s military posture. The third section looks 

at other cases in the Middle East where the Hezbollah 

experience could be a source of inspiration for other 

armed groups—in particular, Hamas in the Gaza 

Strip and the Houthi insurgency in Yemen. The fourth 

section broadens the geographical scope of our case 

studies by looking at the separatist movements in 

Ukraine and by underlining the similar patterns at 

play in these regions. Finally, the fifth section draws 

major lessons learned regarding how these emerging 

trends could alter the regional security landscapes 

and eventually challenge the defense policies of the 

United States and its allies by constraining their future 

options for military intervention.

NONSTATE A2/AD STRATEGIES: DEFINING 

THE ISSUE

This monograph endeavors to bring to light the 

emerging phenomenon of A2/AD strategies being 

implemented by nonstate actors. To that aim, the 

argument connects two topics—A2/AD strategies 

and nonstate actors—that may at first sight seem 

unconnected. In the strategic literature, both issues 

are usually discussed in separate chapters. In the 

2014 Quadrennial Defense Review, for instance, the 

authors clearly distinguish between the two ends of 

the spectrum of conflict: on the lower end is “hybrid 

contingencies against proxy groups using asymmetric 

approaches” and on the higher end is “conflict 

against a state power armed with [weapons of mass 

destruction] or technologically advanced anti-access 
5

and area-denial capabilities.”4 In other words, A2/AD 

scenarios would only involve states, and conversely, 

nonstate actors would rely on less ambitious strategies.

In this perspective, one needs to first define 

the relationship between the two elements of our 

proposition and identify how their combination 

is altering the strategic environment. The most 

appropriate starting point is the definition of A2/AD 

strategies: “Those actions and capabilities, usually 

long-range, designed to prevent an opposing force 

from entering an operational area. Area denial refers 

to those actions and capabilities, usually of shorter 

range, designed not to keep an opposing force out, but 

to limit its freedom of action within the operational 

area.”5

 Released in the wake of the discussion on 

the American need to address the challenges posed 

by the maritime strategies of states like China in the 

South China Sea and Iran in the Persian Gulf, the 

document aimed to provide guidance for the military 

services. But the topic of A2/AD itself is much older: it 

emerged in the American strategic debate in the early 

nineties and was, to a certain extent, a by-product 

of the discussion on the emerging revolution in 

military affairs initiated within Andrew Marshall’s 

Office of Net Assessment within the US Department 

of Defense.6

 In 1993, Andrew Krepinevich—then a 

lieutenant colonel assigned to Marshall’s office—wrote 

4. US Department of Defense (DoD), Quadrennial Defense 

Review (Washington, DC: DoD, 2014), VII, http://archive.defense

.gov/home/features/2014/0314_sdr/qdr.aspx.

5. DoD, Joint Operational Access Concept (Washington, 

DC: DoD, January 17, 2012), i, https://dod.defense.gov/Portals/1

/Documents/pubs/JOAC_Jan%202012_Signed.pdf.

6. Andrew Krepinevich and Barry Watts, The Last Warrior: 

Andrew Marshall and the Shaping of Modern American Defense 

Strategy (New York: Basic Books, 2015).
6

in a policy brief that “as peer competitors [states with 

military potential comparable to that of the United 

States] become increasingly proficient in exploiting 

advanced technologies . . . and as many Third World 

states acquire more destructive, extended-range 

weaponry, the conduct of forcible-entry operations 

will change dramatically.”7

In essence, A2/AD defensive strategies aimed to 

protect one actor’s control over a territory were to be 

based on the combination of a wide array of weaponry, 

such as precision-guided missiles, anti-ship and antiair defense systems, and armed drones. Because of 

the level of sophistication these military technologies 

required, only states were assumed to be able to build 

such A2/AD postures. China was the primary object 

of US speculation since the fall of the Soviet Union 

in 1991. But soon other countries were included on 

the list: Russia was believed to be building A2/AD 

strategies in Eastern Europe, particularly around the 

country’s Kaliningrad oblast, and Iran’s Revolutionary 

Guards engaged in similar activities in the Persian 

Gulf.

Which signals could warn us about the 

development of such military postures? In his book 

Anti-Access Warfare, Sam Tangredi designates five 

indicators to explain the inclination of a state toward 

A2/AD strategies: (1) the perception of conventional 

inferiority vis-à-vis a potential aggressor, (2) the use 

of geography as an element to facilitate the attrition 

of the opponent, (3) the primacy of the maritime 

domain—which, in Tangredi’s view, includes both the 

maritime and the air and space components, (4) the 

centrality of information and intelligence to support 

7. Andrew Krepinevich, Why AirSea Battle? (Washington, 

DC: Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments, 2010), 8.
7

the posture, and (5) the objective of the strategy, which 

is to neutralize the enemy—not destroy it—until it 

gets too exhausted and loses its determination.8

Historians of strategy may argue A2/AD is merely 

a buzzword and the principles behind it are nothing 

new. The concept relies on the idea of building 

defensive measures not to defeat an enemy—whose 

superiority is acknowledged—but simply to convince 

the latter that the cost of an invasion, at the human 

and technological levels, would be so prohibitive 

that the invasion would not be a conceivable option 

in the first place.9

 Simply put, A2/AD strategies work 

to deter a conventional attack, but the real innovation 

today is the combination of this old principle with 

a high degree of technological sophistication. The 

growth in the use of precision-guided munitions and 

long-range weapons and their exponential acquisition 

by countries that are not the most technologically 

advanced have had a dramatic impact on US national 

security: it accelerated the ability of these states to 

challenge America’s traditional military superiority 

by maximizing the potential damage inflicted on 

intervening forces. Applied effectively, the strategy 

could prevent an external intervention in a specific 

area—hence, the term “A2/AD bubbles.” But if 

the strategic literature has mostly discussed how 

states have been implementing this strategy, we are 

currently witnessing a new phase of development. 

The increasing ability of nonstate actors to emulate 

8. Sam J. Tangredi, Anti-Access Warfare. Countering A2/AD 

Strategies (Annapolis, MD: Naval Institute Press, 2013).

9. For a critical look at the A2/AD debate in the Chinese 

context, see Stephen Biddle and Ivan Oelrich, “Future Warfare in 

the Western Pacific: Chinese Antiaccess/Area Denial, US AirSea 

Battle, and Command of the Commons in East Asia,” International 

Security 41, no. 1 (Summer 2016): 7–48.
8

this posture results from two parameters. First, the 

modern dissemination of military or dual technologies 

outside the sphere of state-controlled entities is 

impacting the distribution of power; criminal 

organizations or terrorist groups can use smartphones, 

3D printing, robotic and autonomous systems, as 

well as indigenously-made rockets. For instance, it 

is estimated that a short-range Qassam rocket such 

as those Hamas controls in the Gaza Strip costs 

approximately $1,000.10 As a result, the progress made 

in rocket and missile technology (accuracy, throw 

weight, and penetration aids) acquired by extremist 

groups changes the way they can use, or threaten to 

use, violence on the battlefield.

Thus, technological progress relates more broadly 

to the implications of the growth of precision-guided 

munitions, as described by strategists since the early 

1990s. Thomas Mahnken wrote the following:

Wars in a mature precision-strike regime will likely 

focus on coercion and limited political objectives. In this 

world, the ability to punish an adversary to force him to 

concede—what Thomas Schelling dubbed the “power to 

hurt”—is likely to become an increasingly popular theory 

of victory. One potential result of this strategic interaction 

would be conflicts that involve campaigns whereby each 

side uses precision-strike weapons to hold the other’s 

economic and industrial infrastructure at risk. In such a 

situation, stability would depend on each side possessing 

an assured survivable retaliatory capability.11

10. Uzi Rubin, The Missile Threat from Gaza: From Nuisance 

to Strategic Threat (Tel Aviv: Begin-Sadat Center for Strategic 

Studies, 2011), 15.

11. See the analysis of Thomas Mahnken, “Weapons: The 

Growth and Spread of the Precision-Strike Regime,” Daedalus 140, 

no. 3 (Summer 2011): 53.
9

Mahnken’s reasoning applied to strategies among 

states. But the pace of this technological revolution 

and the diffusion of military power it engenders are 

such that the demarcation between states and nonstate 

actors in this domain is being eroded.

This change, however, is not simply a matter of 

technology. The proliferation of rockets and missiles 

eventually becomes a game changer if these new 

capabilities are integrated into a cohesive military 

organization that carries out a coherent strategy. One 

should not underestimate the level of knowledge and 

training required at the individual and collective level 

with regard to the efficient use of rockets and missiles. 

Scholarship in the field has emphasized the importance 

of not looking only at capabilities as an indicator of 

military power.12 In his book Military Power: Explaining 

Victory and Defeat in Modern Battle, Stephen Biddle uses 

the variable of force employment—understood as “the 

doctrine and tactics by which armies use their materiel 

in the field”—to explain whether armed forces will be 

effective in battle.13 In Biddle’s view, the way militaries 

use their resources is as important as the resources 

themselves. Likewise, in The Diffusion of Military 

Power, Michael Horowitz argues military innovation 

succeeds when the actor invests significant efforts 

12. For more on the early debate on the revolution in military 

affairs, see William Odom, America’s Military Revolution: Strategy 

and Structure After the Cold War (Washington, DC: American 

University Press, 1993); Michael Mazarr, The Military-Technical 

Revolution: A Structural Framework (Washington, DC: Center 

for Strategic and International Studies, 1993); Earl Tilford, The 

Revolution in Military Affairs: Prospects and Cautions (Carlisle, PA: 

Strategic Studies Institute, 1995); and Eliot Cohen, “A Revolution 

in Warfare,” Foreign Affairs 75, no. 2 (March–April 1996): 37–54.

13. Stephen Biddle, Military Power: Explaining Victory and 

Defeat in Modern Battle (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 

2006), 2.
10

in terms of financial resources and organizational 

changes to adopt the new technology fully: “It is the 

employment of technologies by organizations, rather 

than the technologies themselves, that most often 

makes the difference.”14

Obviously small entities such as extremist 

groups may face lesser challenges than the huge 

bureaucracies needed by national armed forces 

to implement organizational changes. Smaller 

entities are less constrained by competing chains of 

command, bureaucratic battles, or political oversight 

that typically hinder the implementation of a reform 

in modern militaries.15 This organization means the 

contemporary tendency of nonstate groups to adopt 

A2/AD postures cannot be solely understood by their 

access to the most advanced technologies; rather, it is 

understood by the combination of this access with an 

internal reformation of the group’s military structure 

and a new political agenda. A classic counterargument 

could indeed be that terrorist organizations obtaining 

weapons of mass destruction or ballistic missiles are 

likely to use them because their objective by design is 

to terrorize, not deter, which is why A2/AD postures 

will become attractive to these groups if they are 

combined with a shift in their political agendas. As 

explained earlier, the logic behind a credible A2/

AD strategy requires a proponent that is rational 

and who can effectively convey the message that an 

attack on its area of influence will lead to major losses 

for the offender. By extension, this posture implies 

14. Michael Horowitz, The Diffusion of Military Power: Causes 

and Consequences for International Politics (Princeton, NJ: Princeton 

University Press, 2010), 2.

15. John Arquilla, Insurgents, Raiders and Bandits: How Masters 

of Irregular Warfare Have Shaped Our World (Chicago: Ivan R. Dee, 

2011).
11

the nonstate actor does not try to change the current 

status quo. It suggests only those violent groups that 

abandon a revolutionary platform and instead accept 

the existing state of affairs as a tacit agreement will 

favor an A2/AD strategy.16

The embrace of this status quo is likely to occur 

when a group exercises its power in a specific 

area, both militarily as well as politically, socially, 

and economically. Usually, factions aiming for the 

status quo will try as much as possible not to lose 

their command over this territory. Defending the 

conditions on the ground enables them to protect 

themselves against external adversaries as well as 

internal competitors. Overall, for the nonstate actors 

operating as quasi-states, these territorial gains 

become vulnerabilities that need to be protected.17

Against this backdrop, this monograph posits 

that three parameters need to be met to signal 

the emergence of a nonstate A2/AD posture: the 

combination of a robust arsenal of sophisticated 

weapons, a political agenda accepting the status quo, 

and a revised military strategy that will favor the 

adoption of a nonstate A2/AD strategy.

1. A credible military strength. A2/AD postures 

rely on sophisticated capabilities on which states 

have the monopoly for the most part. Therefore, 

only a limited number of nonstate groups can 

access these technologies. As of today, the 

main, if not unique, component of nonstate 

A2/AD postures is artillery—specifically, the 

16. On the notion of tacit agreement in conflict, see Thomas 

Schelling, The Strategy of Conflict (Oxford: Oxford University 

Press, 1960).

17. John Lea and Kevin Stenson, “Security, Sovereignty, and 

Non-State Governance ‘From Below,’” Canadian Journal of Law & 

Society 22, no. 2 (2007): 9–27.
12

acquisition of missiles and rockets that will 

enable their owner to challenge the conventional 

superiority of its opponent. Because these 

resources are demanding in terms of both cost 

and manpower (requiring significant training 

for engineers and operators), groups that 

allocate their efforts toward these investments 

will progressively abandon—or decrease their 

reliance on—traditional terrorist tactics, such as 

suicide attacks and car bombings.

2. A political preference for status quo. Violent 

extremist groups are more likely to build an 

A2/AD posture if their political agenda moves 

away from a revolutionary model—whether 

driven by religion or ideology—and leans 

toward a status quo position. At the rhetorical 

level, actors may not explicitly reject all 

revolutionary aspirations. But a shift in terms of 

priorities should occur as the leadership of the 

group expresses the decision not to transform 

its security environment in an effort to preserve 

its presence in and its influence within the 

environment.

3. A revised military strategy. The combination 

of a shifting political agenda and sufficient 

military strength should translate at the strategic 

level into a new way of using force. Because 

the group becomes a status quo player, it will 

likely refocus its efforts on defense rather than 

offense, which does not exclude the potential 

for occasional aggression such as hit-and-run 

attacks. Overall, military operations are no 

longer about changing a situation; rather, they 

are about maintaining the current balance of 

power. It could be argued that by doing so, 
13

the nonstate group shifts its strategy from 

compellence, supported by the terrorist tactic 

of constant harassment, to limited deterrence, 

relying on arsenals able to reach the territory or 

troops of the enemy.18

In the following pages, this analytical framework 

will enable us to better apprehend the emerging 

trends in nonstate military strategies. From this 

perspective, the monograph looks at two regions of 

the world where nascent nonstate A2/AD strategies 

can be identified: the Middle East and Eastern 

Europe—specifically, Ukraine. In both cases, we can 

observe the ability of militias or separatist movements 

to defy modern states and to impose, to a certain 

extent, their conditions, forcing the other side to halt 

its intervention or concede the status quo. In the Arab 

world, Hezbollah, Hamas, and the Houthi insurgency 

have been able to circumvent their fundamental 

inferiority vis-à-vis stronger states, such as Israel 

or Saudi Arabia. The nonstate actors have used 

their arsenals to constrain the ability of the states to 

intervene in their strongholds. Similarly, Ukrainian 

separatists have developed a strategy that, in practice, 

aims to freeze indefinitely the conflict by preventing 

the regular forces commanded by the authorities in 

18. We use the concepts of compellence and deterrence here 

as being both types of coercion, according to Thomas Schelling’s 

definition in Thomas Schelling, Arms and Influence (New York: 

Praeger, 1977). “Compellence” is understood as threatening 

an adversary to change his behavior vis-à-vis the conflict, and 

“deterrence” is a threat intended to keep the adversary from 

changing his position. In his seminal book, Schelling underlines 

the “difference between inducting inaction [deterrence] and 

making someone perform [compellence].”
14

Kiev to retake control of the disputed territories in the 

east of the country.

HEZBOLLAH: A MODEL OF NONSTATE A2/AD 

POSTURE

Hezbollah, which was famously characterized by 

former Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage 

as the “A-Team of Terrorists,” has for a long time 

been depicted as one of the most emblematic 

terrorist groups in the Middle East.19 But this popular 

perception does not grasp the multifaceted reality 

of Hezbollah as it stands today or, more specifically, 

how it has evolved since the mid-1990s. Hezbollah—

literally the “Party of God”—emerged in 1983 in the 

middle of the Lebanese Civil War. It was born from 

a combination of two factors: the growing discontent 

of the local Shia community feeling disenfranchised 

by the government in Beirut and suffering Israel’s 

invasion of the country and the Iranian strategy of 

spreading its model to the Middle East by supporting 

a proxy.20 The group achieved notoriety by kidnapping 

Western hostages and by bombing the US embassy 

and the US and French military barracks in Beirut. For 

the first decade of its existence, Hezbollah behaved 

as a typical terrorist organization and promoted a 

revolutionary agenda: the establishment of an Iranlike Islamic regime in Lebanon and the destruction 

of Israel, which the group described as the “Zionist 

entity.” But the organization underwent a major 

revision in the early 1990s as Lebanon ended the civil 

19. Quoted in Rebecca Leung, “Hezbollah: ‘A-Team of 

Terrorists,’” CBS News, April 18, 2003, https://www.cbsnews.com

/news/hezbollah-a-team-of-terrorists/.

20. Augustus Norton, Hezbollah. A Short History (Princeton, 

NJ: Princeton University Press, 2007).
15

war and a new political life emerged in Beirut. It is this 

reorganization we will now examine using our three 

parameters.

First, at the political level, the shift emerged in 

1992 under the leadership of Hezbollah’s newly 

appointed secretary general, Hassan Nasrallah. Under 

his leadership, Hezbollah started an internal process 

of “Lebanonization.” In practice, the group adhered 

to the principles of the Lebanese political system and 

participated in national and local elections. The party 

no longer advocated for the import of an Islamic 

regime into the country. It embraced the balance of 

power among the various Lebanese sects. Hezbollah 

became so effective at this game that it became a full 

player in Lebanese politics—arguably, the strongest 

one today—and joined blocs and alliances.21 As 

an illustration of this new reality, the group was 

instrumental in the election of Michel Aoun in 2016 as 

president of Lebanon.22

Alongside this process, the group consolidated its 

grip over vast parts of Lebanon, from the southern 

region to the Bekaa Valley. This consolidation implied 

both a strong military footprint and a significant 

involvement in the local economy, which eventually 

led Hezbollah to become an agent of the status quo 

within the Lebanese political system. References 

to the Iranian political system have become part of 

Hezbollah’s folklore, but no more than that.23 At the 

21. Judith Palmer Harik, Hezbollah: The Changing Face of 

Terrorism (London: I.B. Tauris, 2005).

22. Thanassis Cambanis, “Michel Aoun Rises to Lebanese 

Presidency, Ending Power Vacuum,” New York Times, October 31, 

2016.

23. Krista Wiegand, “Reformation of a Terrorist Group: 

Hezbollah as a Lebanese Political Party,” Studies in Conflict & 

Terrorism 32, no. 8 (2009): 669–80.
16

same time, Hezbollah has been working hard not to 

let its opponents discuss or question its arsenal. Any 

attempt by its political rivals to challenge Hezbollah’s 

military and economic power was systematically 

met with defiance and a strong show of force, as 

demonstrated by the clash in western Beirut in May 

2008.24

This political position was supplemented by the 

spectacular development of Hezbollah’s military 

power. The combination of indigenous, rudimentary 

rockets and Iranian-made ballistic missiles has enabled 

Hezbollah to build a military force to be reckoned 

with in southern Lebanon. Eventually, this weapons 

buildup allowed Hezbollah to deny Israel’s access to 

the group’s controlled territories. As in other places, 

Israel and its international allies have been unable 

to prevent the steady growth of Hezbollah’s arsenal. 

By the start of the Second Lebanon War, the group 

had stored approximately 12,000 rockets, and Israeli 

officials estimated that, by 2017, Hezbollah possessed 

150,000 rockets.25 The exact size of this arsenal is 

withheld by Hezbollah, which maintains a calculated 

opacity. But the figures provide us with a fair idea of 

the group’s change of scale over the last decade.

These weapons are not simply short-range 

projectiles of limited accuracy. Hezbollah’s arsenal 

also includes short- to medium-range ballistic missiles 

provided by the Iranian and Syrian regimes. By 2010, 

Western intelligence sources believed the Bashar 

al-Assad regime had supplied the Lebanese group 

24. Robert Worth and Nada Bakri, “Hezbollah Seizes Swath 

of Beirut from US-Backed Lebanon Government,” New York Times, 

May 10, 2008.

25. Avi Issacharoff, “Israel Raises Hezbollah Rocket Estimate 

to 150,000,” Times of Israel, November 12, 2017.
17

with M-600 short-range ballistic missiles, a variant of 

the Fateh-110, able to carry a 1,100-pound warhead 

with a range of 210 kilometers (km). It is estimated 

the inertial guidance system of the M-600 allows the 

missile to strike its target within 460 meters. That same 

year, Syria reportedly transferred Scud-B ballistic 

missiles to Hezbollah, triggering a statement from the 

US Department of State: “The United States condemns 

in the strongest terms the transfer of any arms, and 

especially ballistic missile systems such as the Scud, 

from Syria to Hezbollah. . . . The transfer of these arms 

can only have a destabilizing effect on the region, 

and would pose an immediate threat to both the 

security of Israel and the sovereignty of Lebanon.”26

State patronage should not be underestimated; 

Hezbollah’s inventory remains highly dependable on 

its connections with Syria and Iran. Brigadier General 

Yossi Baidatz, former intelligence research director for 

the IDF, has underlined the nature of this triangular 

relation: “Weapons are transferred to Hezbollah on 

a regular basis and this transfer is organized by the 

Syrian and Iranian regimes. Therefore, it should not be 

called smuggling of arms to Lebanon—it is organized 

and official transfer.”27

If the start of the Syrian Civil War in March 2011 

led observers to wonder about the ability of Hezbollah 

to sustain its arsenal without the gateway provided 

by the Assad regime, in practice, the group did not 

suffer from the conflict but actually grew bigger.28 In 

26. Mark Landler, “US Speaks to Syrian Envoy of Arms 

Worries,” New York Times, April 19, 2010.

27. Amnon Meranda, “Military Intelligence: Hezbollah Scuds 

Tip of Iceberg,” Ynetnews.com, May 4, 2010, https://www.ynetnews

.com/articles/0,7340,L-3884753,00.html.

28. Jean-Loup Samaan, Hezbollah beyond the Syrian Conflict

(Abu Dhabi: Emirates Diplomatic Academy, February 2017).
18

September 2018, the former deputy chief of Israel’s 

Mossad, Naftali Granot, argued publicly that despite 

frequent air raids on Syria, Israel had failed to prevent 

significant transfers to Hezbollah. Granot went on 

to say the group “recently received small numbers 

of GPS precision-guided systems that will help it to 

convert some heavy rockets into accurate missiles.”29

In fact, these latest developments have led observers 

to speculate Hezbollah was trying to change the status 

quo by creating new facts on the ground, whether 

in terms of its missile inventory or its territorial 

posture. Israeli forces have been very nervous about 

Hezbollah’s and Iran’s activities inside Syria near the 

Golan Heights. Over recent years, it has appeared both 

actors have not been solely fighting Syrian rebels near 

the armistice line of the Golan Heights, but rather, 

turning this area into a new forward operating base 

to target Israel. Various reports claim tunnels and 

bunkers are being built to prepare for the next conflict 

with the Israeli military.30

At the level of military organization and strategy, 

Hezbollah has grown into an ambitious nonstate 

actor that has mastered the use of rockets and ballistic 

missiles to support its political goals. The first record 

of Hezbollah firing rockets on Israel was in February 

1992. Following the assassination by the IDF of Abbas 

al-Musawi, the secretary general of Hezbollah, it 

retaliated by launching rockets on Israel’s northern 

cities. In the following years, this tit-for-tat tactic 

became a pattern: Hezbollah would use its rockets 

29. Yonah Jeremy Bob, “Ex-Deputy Mossad Chief: IDF 

Didn’t Fully Stop New Hezbollah Rocket Tech,” Jerusalem Post, 

September 7, 2018.

30. Jean-Loup Samaan, “In Golan, a Battle Looms between 

Iran and Israel,” National, October 26, 2015.
19

to compel the IDF to withdraw its occupying forces 

from southern Lebanon. The military structure of 

Hezbollah adapted to this new technology. Artillery 

units were reorganized and militants went through 

intensive training.31 As this significantly changed the 

effectiveness of the group on the battlefield, Israeli 

governments launched three major operations (in 

1993, 1996, and 2006) to destroy Hezbollah’s military 

power. But their efforts did not succeed and only 

resulted in temporary pauses.

At the historical level, it is important to distinguish 

between Hezbollah’s missile strategy until the Israeli 

withdrawal from southern Lebanon in 2000 and 

the missile strategy since that time. Between 1992 

and 2000, Hezbollah used rockets as a means of 

compellence to force Israel out of the occupied area of 

Lebanon. Hassan Nasrallah made this logic of the use 

of rockets clear in an interview given to the Lebanese 

newspaper As-Safir on February 27, 1992: “We have 

to work . . . toward creating a situation in which the 

enemy is subject to our conditions. We should tell him: 

‘If you attack us, we will use our Katyushas; if you do 

not attack us, we will not use our Katyushas.’”32

The new logic was followed by a decreased 

reliance on terrorist tactics in the area. This strategic 

emphasis on rockets as means of compellence may 

have been influenced by the Iranian military advisors 

to Hezbollah and their own experience of missile 

warfare during the Iran-Iraq War of the previous 

decade. During that conflict, Iran suffered major losses 

31. Nicholas Blanford, Warriors of God: Inside Hezbollah’s 

Thirty-Year Struggle against Israel (New York: Random House, 

2011), 33.

32. Hassan Nasrallah, Voice of Hezbollah: The Statements of 

Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah, ed. Nicholas Noe (London: Verso, 2007), 

62.
20

in the War of the Cities when the Iraqi leader Saddam 

Hussein launched missiles on the major Iranian urban 

centers to break the morale of the country. As a result, 

the ballistic program of Tehran grew in earnest in the 

1990s.33

Remarkably, as the political agenda of Hezbollah 

evolved in Lebanon’s post-civil war period, so did 

its military strategy. In 2000, the decision of Israel’s 

Prime Minister Ehud Barak to remove Israeli forces 

from Lebanon was in itself a major challenge for the 

party that had defined itself according to the Israeli 

occupation. It had to find a new raison d’être if it 

wanted to avoid becoming “a rebel without a cause,” 

to use an expression of an International Crisis Group 

report at the time.34 If Hezbollah initially rejected the 

new border circumscribed by UN Resolution 425 as the 

“blue line,” it eventually respected the demarcation. 

Because Hezbollah wanted to maintain its political 

influence and military arsenal, it adopted a status quo 

posture that militarily translated into a deterrence 

strategy: the goal was no longer to push the IDF into 

retreat but to threaten Israel with painful retaliation 

if the IDF attacked Lebanon.35 This logic only grew 

more extreme after the 2006 war; the feeling within 

Hezbollah circles was its missile force had successfully 

defied Israeli air power. In one major speech, Hassan 

33. Kevin Woods et al., A Survey of Saddam’s Audio Files, 

1978–2001: Toward an Understanding of Authoritarian Regimes

(Alexandria, VA: Institute for Defense Analyses, 2010).

34. “Hizbollah: Rebel without a Cause?,” International 

Crisis Group, July 30, 2003, https://www.crisisgroup.org

/middle-east-north-africa/eastern-mediterranean/lebanon

/hizbollah-rebel-without-cause.

35. Daniel Sobelman, New Rules of the Game: Israel and 

Hizbollah after the Withdrawal from Lebanon (Tel Aviv: Jaffee Center 

for Strategic Studies, January 2004).
21

Nasrallah clarified the type of “force employment” he 

now conceived with regard to missiles and rockets.

They think they can demolish Dahiya’s buildings as we 

barely “puncture their walls.” But I tell them today: You 

destroy a Dahiya building and we will destroy buildings 

in Tel Aviv. . . . If you target Beirut’s Rafik Hariri International Airport, we will strike Tel Aviv’s Ben Gurion International Airport. If you target our electricity stations, we 

will target yours. If you target our plants, we will target 

yours.36

In another speech in 2010, Nasrallah repeated 

this reasoning: “If you blockade our coastline, shores 

and ports, all military and commercial ships heading 

toward Palestine throughout the Mediterranean 

Sea will be targeted by the rockets of the Islamic 

Resistance.”37

Deterrence is by design a strategy that enforces 

the status quo. Moreover, it could be added that 

this deterrence calculus vis-à-vis Israel reads as a 

convenient way for Hezbollah to sell the rationale for 

maintaining its hold on its arsenal and avoiding any 

disarmament inside Lebanon.

All in all, Hezbollah’s military strategy has 

matured. It now reflects a shift from past revolutionary 

aspirations to a focus on maintaining the current status 

quo—both vis-à-vis the Lebanese polity and the Israeli 

armed forces. Hezbollah’s strategy also evidences 

an effective adaptation of its apparatus to the new 

firepower obtained with its missile inventories. This 

36. Hassan Nasrallah, Khitaab al radaa’ (Beirut: Al-Manar, 

2010), DVD.

37. Nicholas Blanford and Bilal Saab, The Next War: How 

another Conflict between Hizballah and Israel Could Look and How Both 

Sides are Preparing for It (Washington, DC: Brookings Institution, 

2011), 10.
22

adaptation is visible in the speeches of Hezbollah’s 

leader Hassan Nasrallah, considered as a kind of 

declaratory policy, as well as in the training and 

force posture of Hezbollah combatants. As a result, 

it significantly constrains Israeli decisionmakers 

contemplating future interventions similar to the 

campaign of 2006. Planners of an Israeli campaign 

over Lebanon now have to factor in the firepower 

of Hezbollah and the level of damage it could cause 

for the IDF as well as the Israeli population. In other 

words, Hezbollah has turned southern Lebanon into a 

quasi-A2/AD bubble.

As of today, the Hezbollah experience might be the 

closest case to an emerging nonstate A2/AD strategy. 

Still, the transfer of new precision-guided munitions 

from Syria and the buildup of military positions near 

the Golan Heights may indicate Hezbollah is not 

entirely relying on a logic of maintaining the status 

quo, and is perhaps trying to establish new facts on the 

ground, even if that means risking an Israeli retaliation. 

But notwithstanding this issue, the ability of the group 

to significantly coerce Israel is one of the reasons why 

the group has become a reference for most of the other 

insurgents and terrorist organizations in the Middle 

East looking to turn their conquests into defensible 

gains. The next section looks at some other cases.

RISING NONSTATE A2/AD STRATEGIES IN THE 

MIDDLE EAST

Numerous nonstate actors have been tempted to 

emulate the Hezbollah model, but only a few have been 

able to reach a sufficient level of internal development 

as defined by our three parameters of political agenda, 

military strength, and military strategy. This section 
23

aims to identify those groups that have embarked on 

a process of political-military reforms that could lead 

them to morph into a Hezbollah-like organization. It 

looks at two different cases: Hamas in the Gaza Strip 

and the Houthis in Yemen.38 Although each is in a 

different phase of its development, both have grown 

into major nonstate organizations challenging modern 

armed forces.

Hamas was the first group that followed 

Hezbollah’s path. Founded in 1987 as an offshoot of 

the Muslim Brotherhood in the Palestinian territories, 

Hamas—which stands for Harakat al Muqawama 

al Islamiya, or the “Movement of the Islamic 

Resistance”—was initially operating as a terrorist 

group that employed suicide attacks as its primary 

tactic.39 Condemning the Oslo Accords of 1993, Hamas 

progressively outflanked Yasser Arafat’s Palestinian 

Authority by becoming the vanguard of “resistance 

and revolution” against Israel, in particular during 

the second Intifada in the first part of the 2000s. In 

the aftermath of the second intifada, the leadership 

of the Palestinian Authority was seriously questioned 

in the light of numerous corruption cases and its 

inability to reach a deal with Israel that would benefit 

the Palestinian population. As a result, Hamas won 

the legislative election of 2006, leading to a major 

inter-Palestinian crisis: the Palestine Liberation 

Organization removed Hamas from the West Bank 

and Hamas responded by returning the favor in the 

38. For a detailed comparison between Hezbollah and 

Hamas, see Joshua Gleis and Benedetta Berti, Hezbollah and Hamas: 

A Comparative Study (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 

2012).

39. Khaled Hroub, Hamas: Political Thought and Practice

(Washington, DC: Institute for Palestine Studies, 2010).
24

Gaza Strip. Since then, Hamas has been the de facto 

ruling party in Gaza.

The transition of Hamas from revolutionary 

rhetoric to a status quo position has been rather similar 

to Hezbollah’s. Following the Israeli withdrawal from 

Gaza in 2005, Hamas focused on building its control 

over the territory by establishing its own government 

structures and controlling the economy, the health 

system, and the media networks.40 As Hamas 

became the main political force in Gaza, it implicitly 

recognized the existence of Israel by accepting a state 

of deterrence similar to—but more fragile than—the 

one already prevailing with Hezbollah.

At the military level, Hamas began acquiring 

a vast amount of Qassam rockets. Its first use of a 

Qassam rocket in Gaza is said to have occurred in 

2001 during the second intifada.41 There exists today 

four models of these rockets: the Qassam I ranges 3 

km and consequently can only reach urban places like 

Sderot, the western Negev city. The Qassam II, with a 

range of up to 7 km, can only modestly go beyond the 

first model. The Qassam III, with a maximum range 

of 10 km, puts Ashkelon in its reach. And, finally, the 

Qassam IV has a range of 15 km.

Hamas also benefited from Iran’s support, though 

it remained more limited than in the case of Hezbollah. 

In 2012, Israeli media reported the Palestinian group 

had fired the Iran-made Fajr-5 rocket. With its 75-km 

range, the Fajr-5 was a significant breakthrough 

for Hamas that enabled it to aim deeper into Israeli 

territory. In total, Hamas is said to have accumulated 

approximately 10,000 rockets inside Gaza—a slightly 

40. Bjorn Brenner, Gaza under Hamas: From Islamic Democracy 

to Islamist Governance (London: I.B. Tauris, 2017).

41. Rubin, Missile Threat.
25

lower number than Hezbollah’s inventory before the 

2006 war.42

At the level of strategic adaptation, Hamas has 

not advanced as far as Hezbollah in terms of military 

professionalization. Hamas remains at a crossroads: 

there are indications that, like Hezbollah, it favors 

a status quo position to secure its grip on Gaza—

especially vis-à-vis other competing Palestinian 

groups—but it has not yet fully abandoned its past 

terrorist tactics. On the one hand, Hamas has made 

rockets the cornerstone of its military strategy, as 

evidenced by the lessons from Israeli Operation Pillar 

of Defense (2012) and Operation Protective Edge 

(2014).43 The psychological effect achieved by rocket 

warfare and the inability of the IDF in both campaigns 

to decisively degrade the arsenal only reinforced 

Hamas’s reliance on them.44 More and more, its leaders 

have used the image of rockets in their speeches in 

the same way Hezbollah did. When Prime Minister 

Ariel Sharon decided to withdraw the IDF from the 

Gaza Strip in 2005, the leader of Hamas and disputed 

Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh had already declared, 

“Sharon cannot evade the truth. The Qassam [rocket] 

is what forced the enemy out.”45

42. “IDF Official: Hamas Has Replenished Its Missile 

Capability since 2014 War,” Jerusalem Post, January 31, 2017,

https://www.jpost.com/Arab-Israeli-ConflictIDF-official-Hamas-has

-replenished-its-missile-capability-since-2014-war-480175.

43. Raphael Cohen et al., From Cast Lead to Protective Edge: 

Lessons from Israel’s Wars in Gaza (Santa Monica, CA: RAND 

Corporation, 2017).

44. Yiftah S. Shapir, “Rocket Warfare in Operation Protective 

Edge,” in The Lessons of Protective Edge, ed. Anat Kurz and Shlomo 

Brom (Tel Aviv: Institute for National Security, 2014).

45. Daniel Byman, A High Price: The Triumphs and Failures of 

Israeli Counterterrorism (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011), 

177.
26

In terms of military structure, the artillery forces 

of Hamas’s military wing have been the primary 

component of the movement since the second half 

of the 2000s. It has also been argued that operational 

orders such as the firing of a rocket are not taken at the 

level of battlefield command, but at a higher political 

level to ensure cohesion between military tactics 

and political objectives. Like Hezbollah, Hamas has 

invested in indigenous capabilities; by the end of the 

2000s, it had built a rocket research and development 

center at the Islamic University of Gaza that directly 

supported the production of Qassam rockets.46

At the same time, Hamas has maintained 

ambiguity regarding some of its past revolutionary 

rhetoric. In 2017, the group revised its founding 

charter to soften its criticism of Israel. Specifically, 

it recognized the principle of a Palestinian state that 

would be established within the borders created 

by the 1967 Third Arab-Israeli War. But it refrained 

from recognizing the existence of Israel: “Hamas 

considers the establishment of a fully sovereign and 

independent Palestinian state, with Jerusalem as its 

capital along the lines of the 4th of June 1967 . . . to be a 

formula of national consensus.” It also declares, “The 

establishment of the Zionist entity therein . . . [does] 

not annul the right of the Palestinian people to their 

entire land” and “there shall be no recognition of the 

legitimacy of the Zionist entity.”47

46. Yoram Cohen and Jeffrey White, Hamas in Combat: The 

Military Performance of the Palestinian Islamic Resistance Movement

(Washington, DC: Washington Institute for Near East Policy, 

October 2009).

47. “A Document of General Principles and 

Policies,” Hamas, May 1, 2017, http://hamas.ps/en/post

/678/a-document-of-general-principles-and-policies.
27

Likewise, the group did not fully abandon terrorist 

tactics. Starting in 2015, Hamas’s propaganda machine 

renewed its call for a new wave of suicide attacks 

against Israel.48 In April 2016, a Palestinian bomber 

targeting a bus in Jerusalem was identified by Israeli 

security services as a member of Hamas.49 Among 

other cases, in October 2018, Israel’s Shin Bet, the 

internal security agency, declared it had prevented 

multiple terrorist attacks planned by Hamas from 

the Gaza Strip.50 As a result, the Israeli authorities 

have alerted their Western partners about the risk of 

misreading the evolution of Hamas. From a strategic 

point of view, this resurgence of terrorist tactics 

demonstrates an inability or unwillingness, as of yet, 

of the organization to transform itself into a status 

quo actor, as Hezbollah did. This approach has less 

to do with the military capabilities of the group than 

its political agenda. And the subsequent choice made 

for its prevailing military strategy might evolve in 

the near future, depending on Hamas’s power plays 

within the Palestinian political arena vis-à-vis Fatah, 

the Palestinian Islamic Jihad, and other Salafi groups 

operating in Gaza.

A second group that might contemplate the 

Hezbollah model is the Houthi rebellion—otherwise 

known as Ansar Allah—in Yemen. Although the 

group is frequently depicted as the Yemeni version 

of Hezbollah, this analogy hides the complexities of 

48. “Hamas Call for Suicide Bombings in Israeli Buses,” Times 

of Israel, February 7, 2016.

49. “Israel Says Jerusalem Bus Bombing Was Hamas Suicide 

Attack,” BBC News, April 21, 2016, https://www.bbc.com/news

/world-middle-east-36100485.

50. Anna Ahronheim, “Shin Bet Thwarts Planned Hamas 

Terror Attacks against Israeli Targets,” Jerusalem Post, October 3, 

2018.
28

the group’s local trajectory. The movement grew in 

earnest in 2004 as a Zaidi cleric, Hussein Badr Eddin 

al Houthi, called for a rebellion against the regime 

of Ali Abdullah Saleh in the northern province of 

Sa’da.51 The upheaval built on the resentment of the 

Zaidi community—one of the branches of Shia Islam 

considered the closest to the Sunni tradition—toward 

the inability of the government in Sanaa to deliver on 

social and economic development. A first war erupted 

by the summer of 2004. Following the killing of 

Hussein Badr Eddin al Houthi later that same year, his 

father and brother assumed leadership and ramped 

up the confrontational rhetoric against the regime. 

In total, six wars between the Houthi forces and the 

government occurred between 2004 and 2010.

A year later, Saleh was overthrown by a popular 

revolt in the midst of the Arab Spring. As Saleh left 

the country, he was replaced by his vice president 

Abd Rabbuh Mansur Hadi. Hadi was elected 

president during the elections of 2012. His transitional 

government proved unable to establish a semblance 

of authority in the country, and by September 2014, 

the Houthis launched a new offensive that enabled 

them to quickly seize the capital Sanaa and expand 

their territory. In March 2015, the Battle of Aden saw 

the Houthis fighting in an odd coalition alongside the 

army units loyal to Ali Abdullah Saleh against the 

forces of Abd Rabbuh Mansur Hadi. By the end of the 

month, the Houthi-Saleh coalition had taken control 

of Aden, and Hadi fled to Saudi Arabia. This event 

triggered the decision in Riyadh to launch the buildup 

of a Saudi-led coalition to intervene in Yemen.

51. Uzi Rabi, Yemen: Revolution, Civil War and Unification

(London: I.B. Tauris, 2015), 154.
29

In the years since the Yemeni conflict started in 

2015, Houthi conduct has been influenced by the 

Hezbollah experience in many ways. Both the Iranian 

Revolutionary Guards and Hezbollah fighters have 

provided military support to the Houthi insurgents. 

Hezbollah’s presence in the country started before the 

war, as military operatives such as Khalil Harb and 

Abu Ali Tabatabai had been reportedly traveling there 

in previous years.52

As the war against the Saudi-led coalition 

escalated, the Hezbollah model became an inspiration 

for the Houthis in two fields: guerrilla and missile 

warfare. More specifically, starting in 2016, the conflict 

turned into a kind of war of attrition that led to an 

intensification in the frequency and range of missiles 

being fired by the Houthis, either on Saudi territory 

or on ships crossing the Red Sea. Noticeably, in 

October 2016, the Houthis used an anti-ship missile 

in the Red Sea that struck a United Arab Emirates 

(UAE) vessel. The missile was later assessed by 

experts to be a Chinese-made C-802, the same type 

Hezbollah used against the Israeli Navy during the 

2006 conflict.53 Although it was undoubtedly delivered 

by Iran, Hezbollah may have played a role as trainer.54

Some sources even go as far as to suggest Hezbollah 

combatants may have been the ones launching the 

missiles.55 Likewise, a widely circulated video in the 

spring of 2016 showed Hezbollah commander Abu 

52. Matthew Levitt, “Hezbollah’s Pivot toward the Gulf,” 

CTC Sentinel, August 22, 2016.

53. Jeremy Binnie, “UAE’s Swift Hit by Anti-Ship Missile,” 

IHS Jane’s Defence Weekly, October 4, 2016.

54. Former US government analyst, interview by the author, 

December 2016.

55. Alexander Corbeil and Amarnah Amarsingam, “The 

Houthi Hezbollah,” Foreign Affairs, March 31, 2016.
30

Saleh meeting with Houthi fighters and discussing the 

planning of operations inside Saudi Arabia.56

In the following months, Saudi Arabia became a 

frequent target of the Houthis’ missiles. In October 

2016, the King Abdul Aziz International Airport in 

Jeddah was attacked. In November 2017, the capital, 

Riyadh, was hit by a Burkan-2H missile that traveled 

about 900 km.

The other contributor to the Saudi-led coalition, the 

UAE, has also been the target of failed attempts by the 

Houthis to launch missiles on its territory. In December 

2017, the Houthis declared they had launched a cruise 

missile on the Barakah nuclear reactor in the emirate 

of Abu Dhabi. No signs of destruction were reported, 

and Emirati authorities denied the claim. Similarly, 

the Houthis reported in August 2018 they had 

targeted Dubai International Airport with a drone but 

were unable to provide any evidence.57 These failed 

attempts obviously call for a cautious assessment on 

the real capacities of the group.

As in the case of Hezbollah, the ability of the 

Houthis to use their arsenal was made possible thanks 

to state support, namely from Iran. Prior to the conflict, 

Yemen had not been known to build its own ballistic 

missiles. Saleh’s regime had stored some Scud-B 

missiles and Hwasong-6 missiles, but the images of 

the missiles fired at Saudi Arabia suggested at least 

some of them were of Iranian origin.58 Furthermore, 

a few days after the presumed attack on the UAE in 

56. Corbeil and Amarsingam, “Houthi Hezbollah.”

57. “UAE Denies Report of Houthi Drone Attack on Dubai 

Airport,” Reuters, August 27, 2018, https://www.reuters.com/article

/us-emirates-security/uae-denies-report-of-houthi-drone-attack-on

-dubai-airport-idUSKCN1LC1YQ.

58. IHS Markit, “Yemeni Rebels Enhance Ballistic Missile 

Campaign,” IHS Jane’s Intelligence Review, July 7, 2017.
31

December 2017, the US ambassador to the United 

Nations, Nikki Haley, issued a strong statement 

accusing Iran of transferring these weapons to the 

rebels in Yemen.59 Several public assessments from 

US intelligence agencies subsequently supported this 

claim.60 In January 2018, the UN Panel of Experts on 

Yemen wrote in its report that Iran had “failed to 

take the necessary measures to prevent the direct or 

indirect supply, sale or transfer of such technology to 

the Houthi-Saleh forces.”61 The UN Panel of Experts 

also confirmed the Houthis have been using drones 

such as Qasef-1 unmanned aerial vehicles, similar “in 

design, dimensions and capability” to the Iranianmade Ababil-T.62

In many instances, the Houthi way of war mirrors 

Hezbollah’s strategy that emerged in the 1990s. 

Contrary to Hamas, the Yemeni insurgents appear to 

favor guerrilla tactics—however gruesome they may 

be—over terrorist measures. Their political rhetoric 

has not had the revolutionary undertones of Hamas or 

Hezbollah from the early 1980s; they do not pretend 

to annihilate Saudi Arabia or to spread a new political 

model for the whole of the Arabian Peninsula. Rather, 

their main objective is to take full control of the state 

of Yemen. Shortly after their takeover of the state 

institutions, they issued a constitutional declaration 

59. John Ismay and Helene Cooper, “US Accuses Iran of UN 

Violation, but Evidence Falls Short,” New York Times, December 

14, 2017.

60. Daniel Coats, Worldwide Threat Assessment of the US 

Intelligence Community (Washington, DC: Office of the Director of 

National Intelligence, February 13, 2018, https://www.dni.gov/files

/documents/Newsroom/Testimonies/2018-ATA---Unclassified-SSCI

.pdf.

61. UN Security Council, Final Report of the Panel of Experts on 

Yemen, United Nations, January 26, 2018, 30.

62. UN Security Council, Final Report, 32.
32

that was immediately rejected by most of the Arab 

and Western countries.

The current logic of the Houthi missile warfare 

campaign is to compel the Saudi-led coalition into 

withdrawing its forces from the country. Although it 

is doubtful that the Houthi combatants would be able 

to regain parts of the Yemeni territory or fully control 

it, they may find ways to maintain their grip on some 

areas and try to force the Gulf Cooperation Council 

countries into accepting a Houthi-controlled enclave 

as a fait accompli. In this scenario, it is likely the group 

would then turn its military strategy into one of A2/

AD.

To assess this possible development, we would 

need to factor in the role of Iran and, more specifically, 

the Revolutionary Guards. The latter has already 

shored up its support to the Houthis since the war 

started and in a context of regional proxy wars, 

they could see an opportunity to enforce a Houthicontrolled A2/AD bubble by providing logistics and 

military training. At the same time, Iran’s increased 

support to the Houthis is an exercise in brinkmanship; 

it enables the Yemeni insurgents to launch deadlier 

attacks on the Saudi-led coalition and eventually 

raises Western and Gulf pressures on Iran to cease it. 

The Revolutionary Guards may believe low-intensity 

proxy warfare in Yemen would not escalate into a 

regional confrontation. But if a missile attack from 

the Houthis killed a significant number of Saudi or 

Emirati citizens, Riyadh and Abu Dhabi would very 

likely retaliate.

As a result, the major concern for Saudi Arabia, 

and to a lesser extent the UAE, would be to see the 

protracted conflict in Yemen evolving in such a way 

that it leaves in place a security threat—a Houthi 
33

enclave defended by a vast arsenal—that would 

increasingly look like the threat Hezbollah represents 

to northern Israel. In other words, the missile threat 

would become a fact of life for Gulf countries that 

would require significant adaptation at the defensive 

level. For Saudi Arabia, this circumstance has already 

changed the framing of the issue, which initially was 

one for commanders on the battlefield inside Yemen, 

into a domestic concern for the authorities responsible 

for the protection of their territory, infrastructure, and 

citizens.

Finally, as this section discusses Middle East case 

studies, one may wonder why a nonstate actor such as 

the Islamic State (IS) is not covered. As IS took control 

of military bases in Syria and Iraq, it had military 

capabilities that could have enabled it to build a rather 

strong A2/AD posture. But if we verify the two other 

parameters, it seems clear the group was not leaning 

toward this goal. First, at the political level, IS designed 

a revolutionary agenda that denied the modern 

international system and its Westphalian principles of 

state sovereignty in the Middle East. It claimed instead 

a return to the Caliphate era, an objective which 

would almost frame Hezbollah’s call for a Lebanese 

Islamic republic in the 1980s as a more realistic goal, 

comparatively speaking. The Islamic State constantly 

looked at its territorial gains in Syria and Iraq as part 

of a broader momentum to conquer the entire Muslim 

world. Its project was a self-contrived utopia based on 

an eschatological vision: the belief in a final struggle 

between Muslims and their enemies, the armies of 

“Rome.”63 As a result, the military strategy of IS was 

63. Jean-Loup Samaan, An End-of-Time Utopia: Understanding 

the Narrative of the Islamic State (Rome: NATO Defense College, 

April 2015).
34

not one favoring any status quo. It favored guerilla 

tactics in the territories it controlled and terrorist 

campaigns in the countries opposing its rule. Given its 

revolutionary agenda and the scale of the international 

response it triggered, the IS experience can be seen 

more as an exception than a possible pattern for other 

armed militant groups. Ultimately, the reign of IS over 

some territories in Syria and Iraq did not last, in part 

because of this revolutionary posture, so militias may 

logically look at the Hezbollah case as a more relevant 

lesson on how to secure territorial gains.

In this perspective, Hamas and the Houthis 

demonstrate the increased tendency of nonstate 

groups in the Middle East to emulate state-inspired 

strategies of A2/AD. In both cases, there are signs in 

terms of political rhetoric, military capabilities, and 

strategy that these groups may try to build such a 

posture. Admittedly, these initiatives would be less 

sophisticated than in the case of Hezbollah, given the 

many limitations existing in terms of political agenda, 

armament, and organizations.

As discussed in previous sections, this overview 

does not suggest an automatic path toward nonstate 

A2/AD postures. On the one hand, the leadership of 

Hamas may have the capabilities in terms of rockets 

required to build a rather credible defense of Gaza. 

But the group remains ambivalent when it comes 

to its inclination toward political status quo and 

the rejection of terrorist tactics. On the other hand, 

the strategy of the Houthis might transition more 

effectively toward an A2/AD posture. For the last 

few years, the frontlines have been rather static in the 

ongoing conflict in Yemen, which could nurture the 

belief among the insurgents that the preservation of 

the status quo is achievable. Moreover, the Houthis’ 
35

resorting to missile warfare echoes Hezbollah’s 

practice from the 1990s. An A2/AD posture in this 

case could imply stronger support from external 

actors—namely, Iran and Hezbollah.

More broadly, this reminds us that although the 

diffusion of military power to nonstate actors has 

increased significantly in the last few decades, the 

cases exposed here reveal how much militias have 

to rely on external patronage to access sophisticated 

weaponry and to conduct ambitious strategies. In 

this sense, these nonstate A2/AD postures can be 

understood as a by-product of proxy warfare. In the 

next section, the example of Ukrainian separatists 

reflects similar findings.

A2/AD BUBBLES IN UKRAINE’S CONTESTED 

TERRITORIES

If the Middle East constitutes a revealing laboratory 

of emerging nonstate military strategies, it is worth 

looking at other regions of the world to assess whether 

the trend toward A2/AD postures is identifiable 

elsewhere. In this context, Eastern Europe, and more 

specifically the Ukrainian theater with its secessionist 

group tactics, resonates with the developments 

covered in the previous sections. As in the Gaza Strip, 

Yemen, and southern Lebanon, eastern Ukraine has 

become a battlefield where state authorities have been 

undermined and de facto replaced by local nonstate 

organizations that have aimed to contest the control of 

Kiev over these territories. As they toppled the regular 

forces of the state, separatists pursued a politicalmilitary strategy consisting of changing the facts on 

the ground and then forcing external actors to accept 

the new state of affairs. To implement this strategy, 
36

Ukrainian separatists needed outside support—

namely, Russia. If Iranian support was undoubtedly 

instrumental in the making of Hezbollah’s and 

the Houthis’ current military strategy, the Russian 

patronage of secessionist militias inside Ukraine was 

even more decisive.

To understand how the situation in eastern Ukraine 

unraveled, one needs to go back to 2014, when the 

collapse of Viktor Yanukovych’s presidency in Kiev 

triggered a national crisis that led to the Russian 

annexation of Crimea. Leaning toward a closer 

relation with Russia, Yanukovych had postponed 

the conclusion of an agreement that would have 

strengthened the ties between Kiev and the European 

Union. The move was followed by the Euromaidan 

protests and the ousting of Yanukovych in February 

2014. A month later, Russian forces entered Crimea 

following an illegal referendum on secession of the 

region. Though Moscow argued its intervention was 

driven by the need to protect the Russian population 

in the area, it led to the de facto annexation of Crimea.64

Eastern and southern Ukraine started to unravel 

as separatist movements saw the Russian takeover 

of Crimea as evidence of potential Russian support 

to their own aspirations. By April 2014, movements 

calling themselves “people’s republics” burgeoned 

in Donetsk, Kharkov, Luhansk, and Odessa. 

Following the seizure of local state institutions by 

these groups, a protracted war ensued between the 

Ukrainian regular army and militiamen. Confronted 

with repeat accusations of interference by Kiev and 

Western countries, Moscow systematically denied its 

64. Rajan Menon and Eugene Rumer, Conflict in Ukraine: The 

Unwinding of the Post-Cold War Order (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 

2015).
37

involvement. But various assessments have shown 

these organizations were supported by the Russian 

Federation and that Moscow provided economic, 

logistic, and intelligence assistance.65 By March 2015, 

it was estimated by the US Army Europe Commander, 

Lieutenant General Ben Hodges, that there were 

approximately 12,000 Russian troops in eastern 

Ukraine backing up the separatists.66 The numbers 

went down in the following months, and two years 

later, the Ukrainian Minister of Foreign Affairs, Pavlo 

Klimkin, stated about 4,200 Russian troops were 

still present.67 In addition, Russian citizens acting as 

“volunteers” joined the ranks of the groups fighting 

Ukraine’s armed forces.

The common denominator of these local conflicts 

was the objective of separatists—and Russian forces—

to swiftly take control of the regions and their 

institutions and then freeze the conflict to force the 

government in Kiev and the international community 

into accepting the fait accompli.68 For instance, the 

Stanichno-Luhansk border guard division in Ukraine’s 

Luhansk province was captured by rebels after five 

65. “Russia and the Separatists in Eastern Ukraine,” 

International Crisis Group, February 5, 2016, https://www

.crisisgroup.org/europe-central-asia/eastern-europe/ukraine

/russia-and-separatists-eastern-ukraine.

66. “Some 12,000 Russian Soldiers in Ukraine Supporting 

Rebels: US Commander,” Reuters, March 3, 2015, http://

www.reuters.com/article/us-ukraine-russia-soldiers/some-12000

-russian-soldiers-in-ukraine-supporting-rebels-u-s-commander

-idUSKBN0LZ2FV20150303.

67. Hearing on Russian Policies and Intentions toward Specific 

European Countries Before the Senate Subcommittee on State, Foreign 

Operations, and Related Programs, 115th Cong. (2017) (statement of 

Pavlo Klimkin, Minister of Foreign Affairs, Ukraine).

68. Tor Bukkvoll, “Russian Special Operations Forces in 

Crimea and Donbas,” Parameters 46, no. 2 (Summer 2016): 14.
38

days of fighting. This ultimately led to a stalemate with 

the Ukrainian forces, which proved unable to regain 

these territories. Eventually, separatists were able to 

reach this prolonged deadlock because they received 

Russian funding vital to their war effort. In 2016, the 

nongovernmental organization International Crisis 

Group estimated Moscow was directly bankrolling the 

pensions, the social benefits, and the salaries of local 

officials and military forces. The estimate concludes 

the extent of this support was such that it could cost 

the Russian treasury more than $1 billion annually to 

sustain this situation.69

To achieve their political goals, Ukrainian separatist 

groups needed credible military power to prevent 

or defeat a Ukrainian offensive on their positions. 

Therefore, they relied on capabilities similar to those 

acquired by Middle East nonstate actors as illicit arms 

flows dramatically increased following the start of the 

conflict.70 There is limited knowledge with regard to 

the military organization of these separatist groups 

and the role they assign to missile warfare. But public 

statements and tactics employed on the battlefield 

provide significant information. Numerous incidents 

have evidenced the use of rockets by the separatists. 

On June 14, 2014, a Ukrainian military transport plane 

was shot down as it was approaching its descent 

into the eastern city of Luhansk. The following day, 

the commander of the Luhansk People’s Republic 

confirmed in a YouTube video that “the IL-76 was hit 

by our militia, the air defense forces of the Luhansk 

69. “Ukraine: Military Deadlock, Political Crisis,” 

International Crisis Group, December 19, 2016, https://www

.crisisgroup.org/europe-central-asia/eastern-europe/ukraine

/b85-ukraine-military-deadlock-political-crisis.

70. Anton Martyniuk, Measuring Illicit Arms Flows: Ukraine

(Geneva: Small Arms Survey, April 2017).
39

People’s Republic.”71 Separatists claimed later that the 

weapon used was an Igla-1 rocket launcher, a manportable air-defense system.72 Ukrainian authorities 

have repeatedly reported cases of Russian-made 

rockets being seized from separatists in the east of 

the country. Weaponry that has been said to flow 

between Russia and Ukrainian secessionist regions 

includes small arms, armored personnel carriers, 

tanks, and missile systems. These weapon supplies 

have understandably stirred the controversy behind 

the shooting down of Malaysia Airlines Flight MH17 

in July 2014 that killed about 300 people. According 

to Reuters, the attack was perpetrated by Ukrainian 

separatists using BUK rockets provided by Russia—a 

claim vigorously rejected by Moscow.73

In terms of force employment, statements are also 

revealing. In an interview with Western journalists, 

Alexander Gureyev, a militiaman from Luhansk, 

described the systematic tactics of targeting Ukrainian 

airplanes: “They simply flew above us, we were 

already fed up with it all and decided that we would 

start shooting at everything: we simply took anything 

out of the sky that flew above us.”74 Just like the 

Houthis in Yemen, the separatists in Ukraine have 

used their weapons arsenal to prevent any incursion 

71. Thomas Grove and Warren Strobel, “Special report: 

Where Ukraine’s Separatists Get Their Weapons,” Reuters, July 

29, 2014, https://www.reuters.com/article/us-ukraine-crisis-arms

-specialreport/special-report-where-ukraines-separatists-get-their

-weapons-idUSKBN0FY0UA20140729.

72. Grove and Strobel, “Special report.”

73. Toby Sterling and Anthony Deutsch, “Malaysian Flight 

MH17 Downed by Russian-Made Missile: Prosecutors,” Reuters, 

September 28, 2016, https://www.reuters.com/article/us-ukraine

-crisis-mh17/malaysian-flight-mh17-downed-by-russian-made-missile

-prosecutors-idUSKCN11Y0WN.

74. Sterling and Deutsch, “Malaysian Flight MH17.”
40

from the regular Ukrainian forces and to consolidate 

their territorial gains. Although they were able to seize 

arms and munitions from the Ukrainian armed forces 

after the state authorities collapsed in these regions, it 

is likely they also received Russian military support. 

Comparatively speaking, this Russian patronage was 

more significant than the Iranian patronage in Yemen; 

Russian forces both provided logistics and weaponry 

and probably trained separatists to turn the seized 

regions into sanctuaries. Events evidenced a strong 

similarity between the separatists’ tactics and Russian 

military culture—in particular, the implementation of 

A2/AD bubbles.75

More broadly, the development in these Ukrainian 

regions needs to be put into perspective with the 

emergence of a Russian hybrid strategy. Although 

this strategy has no official character, Western defense 

analysts have speculated the Russian forces were 

conducting campaigns with the intent to blur the 

distinction between state and nonstate means. The 

speculation grew in earnest following the publication 

of an article written by Russia’s Chief of the General 

Staff, General Valery Gerasimov, in February 2013 in 

the newspaper Voenno-Promyshlenni Kurier (MilitaryIndustrial Courier). In the text, Gerasimov expounded 

in great detail to speculate on the types of campaigns 

that could be launched in a hybrid-strategy context, 

such as “the use of special-operations forces and 

internal opposition to create a permanently operating 

front through the entire territory of the enemy state, 

as well as informational actions.”76 The article logically 

took on a prophetic dimension a year later when 

75. Phillip Karber, Lessons Learned from the Russo-Ukrainian 

War (Vienna, VA: Potomac Foundation, July 8, 2015).

76. Phillip Karber, Lessons Learned.
41

Russia annexed Crimea. In particular, the appearance 

of so-called “little green men” stirred a heated 

discussion. These men, who were armed with Russian 

equipment but wearing uniforms without insignia, 

started occupying the international airport and the 

parliament of Simferopol and soon deployed to the 

military bases located in Crimea. Russian authorities 

denied Western accusations that these soldiers were 

actually Russian and called them “local self-defense 

units.”77 The alleged use of the little green men 

allowed Moscow to achieve its strategic objectives, 

first in Crimea and later in the separatist regions, 

while providing the Russian authorities with plausible 

denial vis-à-vis the international community.78

Applying the three parameters of our nonstate 

A2/AD model to the case of the Ukrainian separatists 

enables us to see the similarities with the Middle 

East examples. Politically, these groups have quickly 

shifted their strategies from a revolutionary position, 

prior to 2014, to a status quo mode today. In other 

words, after challenging the boundaries of Ukrainian 

sovereignty and changing the facts on the ground in 

early 2014, the separatists then went on the defensive 

and held their positions along the 500-km de facto 

border acknowledged by the Minsk protocol of 

September 2014.

This status quo orientation, however, did not 

make these nonstate actors or quasi-states more stable 

internally. In November 2017, a coup within the 

Luhansk People’s Republic toppled Igor Plotnisky, 

and the leader of the Donetsk People’s Republic, 

77. Steven Pifer, “Watch Out for Little Green Men,” Der 

Spiegel, July 7, 2014.

78. Andras Racz, Russia’s Hybrid War in Ukraine (Helsinki: 

Finnish Institute of International Affairs, 2017), 11.
42

Alexander Zakharchenko, was killed in August 

2018.79 These were two cases among a dozen of other 

assassinations and coups that have happened in these 

regions since 2014. These events did not change the 

military positions on both sides, but indicated the 

fragility of these Russian-backed entities.80 Corruption, 

arbitrary detention, extortion, and major deficiencies 

in the delivery of basic services to the local population 

have prevented these players from being considered 

more than Russian proxies. This may be the most 

significant difference with the organizations covered 

in the previous sections: eastern Ukraine is more 

dependent on Moscow’s patronage than Hezbollah, 

Hamas, or the Houthis are on Iran’s. The selfproclaimed Donetsk People’s Republic and Luhansk 

People’s Republic were set up in the context of the 

momentum brought about by the annexation of 

Crimea. They were in many ways a mere by-product 

of Russia’s strategy in Ukraine. In contrast, Hamas, 

the Houthis, and Hezbollah built platforms in 

the Palestinian territories, Yemen, and Lebanon, 

respectively, that had a grassroots dimension and 

enabled the nonstate actors to mobilize support from 

a constituency. It is very likely in the case of the 

separatists of eastern Ukraine that their grip on the 

contested regions would collapse if Russia were to 

change its broader strategy vis-à-vis Kiev and Western 

countries. Some observers have even defended the 

theory that the killing of separatist leaders could 

be orchestrated by Russian services themselves to 

79. Mansur Mirovalev, “Russia-Backed Separatists in 

Ukraine in Disarray amid Infighting and Violence,” Los Angeles 

Times, October 1, 2018.

80. Maxim Vikhrov, “The Luhansk Coup: Why Armed 

Conflict Erupted in Russia’s Puppet Regime,” Carnegie Moscow 

Center, November 29, 2017, https://carnegie.ru/commentary/74864.
43

maintain their control of the regions in preparation for 

a trade-off with Western countries.81 In this context, 

the Ukrainian case underlines the importance of states 

in the growth of these nonstate A2/AD bubbles. It 

is only because of Russian proxy tactics that these 

separatist movements were effective in defeating the 

Ukrainian regular forces. This lesson also echoes the 

role of Iran in the growth of Hezbollah, Hamas, and 

the Houthi insurgents in this domain, though on a 

different scale. More broadly, the lesson calls for a 

new understanding of the interaction between states 

and nonstate actors on the battlefield, especially in the 

context of emerging A2/AD strategies.

CONCLUSION: FUTURE DEVELOPMENTS AND 

IMPLICATIONS FOR THE UNITED STATES

As demonstrated by the cases presented in this 

monograph, nonstate actors today have the ability 

to build nascent A2/AD strategies. The exponential 

progress in missile technologies, the expansion of 

proliferation networks, and the capacity of armed 

groups to assemble their own indigenous arsenals 

are trends that altogether change the security 

environment in regions such as the Middle East and 

Eastern Europe. Three intertwined parameters can 

help us identify a change in the military orientation of 

these nonstate organizations: a political shift toward 

the preservation of the status quo vis-à-vis opponents; 

a significant focus of military resources dedicated to 

A2/AD capabilities—primarily, missiles and rockets; 

and, finally, a consequential adaptation of the military 

units responsible for the implementation of this new 

strategy.

81. Mirovalev, “Russia-Backed Separatists.”
44

These postures, however, are still in their infancy, 

and should not be equated with those of major 

regional or world powers such as Iran, Russia, or 

China. The development of nonstate A2/AD postures 

currently remains dependent on the ability of the 

nonstate actors to attract state sponsorship. Hezbollah 

was able to acquire its arsenal because of its support 

from Iran and Syria. The Houthis could not sustain 

their ongoing missile campaign against Saudi Arabia 

without significant help from Tehran. Likewise, the 

Ukrainian separatists only became a credible threat to 

Kiev thanks to the provision of military resources by 

Russia.

This context means that without state sponsorship, 

these emerging nonstate A2/AD strategies would 

hardly constitute a major challenge. Although 

rudimentary weapons such as short-range rockets 

are easily accessible to militias, they would not cause 

enough damage to raise the costs of an opponent’s 

retaliation to a threshold of deterrence. Eventually, 

all successful cases discussed in this monograph have 

involved state support. In other words, only if states 

such as Iran or Russia decide to spread their military 

technologies and strategies to regional proxies can the 

nonstate A2/AD phenomenon become a conceivable 

model.

Bearing in mind this precondition, if a scenario of 

multiple nonstate A2/AD bubbles were to unfold, the 

United States and its allies could face unprecedented 

challenges, especially in the field of counterterrorism 

campaigns. For military planners considering scenarios 

in Europe and the Middle East, such a scenario would 

create new constraints to factor in when assessing the 

option of using military force in regional interventions. 

It may raise the level of potential casualties, and 
45

eventually, it could constitute a kind of life insurance 

for those terrorist organizations.

This trend could also have major implications for the 

North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO). Nonstate 

A2/AD strategies on the southern flank of Europe 

would pose various types of threats for populations, 

commercial ships crossing the Mediterranean Sea, 

and NATO troops if they were to operate in the area. 

The lasting collapse of Libyan central authorities and 

the enduring security vacuum in the Sinai Peninsula 

would fuel proliferation networks on the North 

African shores of the Mediterranean. In these areas, 

militias could then contemplate the implementation of 

a Hezbollah model and as a result target civilian ships 

as an effective way of gaining political influence.82

NATO should also consider the consequences of 

the Hezbollah model for its future operations in the 

Middle East region. Militias’ increased access to rockets 

and missiles and their use as a way to deny foreign 

forces access to their strongholds could significantly 

complicate NATO interventions on its southern flank. 

Missions such as enforcing no-fly zones over an area 

could be challenged by the increased vulnerability 

of naval and air assets, which would be targeted by 

these arsenals. This would therefore raise the potential 

human cost of operations—and, by extension, the 

political cost. In other words, could a new intervention 

such as Operation Unified Protector in Libya be 

82. Jean-Loup Samaan, “The Missile Threat in the 

Mediterranean: Implications for European Security,” Real 

Instituto Elcano, October 25, 2017, http://www.realinstitutoelcano

.org/wps/portal/rielcano_en/contenido?WCM_GLOBAL

_CONTEXT=/elcano/elcano_es/zonas_es/defensa+y+seguridad/ari79

-2017-samaan-missile-threat-mediterranean-implications-european

-security.
46

launched if NATO were facing potential resistance 

from a group such as Hezbollah?

The evolution of these nonstate strategies has 

immediate consequences for regional partners that the 

US government aims to strengthen. In countries with 

weak central authority, such as Lebanon, Ukraine, and 

Yemen, nonstate A2/AD strategies serve a strategy 

of fait accompli that forces governments to accept 

the status quo with separatist or terrorist entities. 

Because of the sophistication of these strategies and 

the operational limitations of regular armed forces in 

the countries mentioned, the current situation makes 

it extremely difficult to dislodge these groups.

In this context, the first priority should be to 

strengthen the situational awareness of the United 

States and its allies. Our understanding of the ways 

in which missile proliferation is changing the strategic 

behavior of extremist groups is incomplete and 

should be enhanced via intelligence cooperation and 

military research. For instance, a comprehensive look 

at nonstate actors, including those in other regions, 

such as the Horn of Africa and Southeast Asia, could 

enable us to refine the analytical parameters and build 

a more robust framework for assessment. Eventually, 

this information would allow military planners to 

appraise the extent to which asymmetric capabilities 

such as rockets and missiles are impacting the military 

structure of these organizations. Likewise, planners 

could evaluate whether these inventories should be 

considered as means of deterrence or coercion—or, 

alternatively, as bargaining chips to accumulate power 

on the ground or instruments of terror for attacks on 

civilian targets.

At the same time, the challenge of nonstate 

A2/AD strategies is another factor calling for the 
47

reinforcement of local state capabilities. Enhancing 

the ability of regional partners to monitor the flow of 

arsenals means more resources and training dedicated 

to both conventional armed forces, coast guards, and 

police forces, which play a crucial role in the early 

phase in curbing the flows of armaments.

Finally, these developments stress the need for a 

broader discussion on the redefinition of deterrence 

vis-à-vis nonstate actors. This recommendation is 

likely to provoke a controversy as it implies accepting 

the conditions of the status quo as established by these 

groups. Deterring them today would not inevitably 

mean deterring them (and accepting them) forever. 

The United States and its allies could consider 

accepting a temporary standoff, which would not 

remove the threat, but would at least contain it while 

the measures that could erode the military power of 

these organizations are identified. This effort would, 

perhaps, involve intelligence operations and sanctions 

targeting specific financial assets or the state patronage 

of countries such as Russia and Iran.

All in all, the phenomenon of nonstate A2/AD 

strategies should be of concern for both scholars 

and practitioners as it broadens the array of 

strategic options for militias and other insurgents. It 

redefines the fault lines between conventional and 

nonconventional strategies—in particular, in the 

context of proxy warfare. Finally, it forces us to review 

future military scenarios involving the US armed 

forces and their allies.

NONSTATE ACTORS AND ANTI-ACCESS/

AREA DENIAL STRATEGIES: THE COMING 

CHALLENGE

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Jean-Loup Samaan is an associate professor in strategic 

studies for the United Arab Emirates (UAE) National 

Defense College. His research focuses on Middle 

Eastern strategic affairs—in particular, the IsraelHezbollah conflict and the evolution of the Gulf 

security system. His most recent book, Israel’s Foreign 

Policy beyond the Arab World (2018), looks at Israel’s 

periphery doctrine from the birth of the concept in the 

1950s until its contemporary renaissance. Dr. Samaan 

has authored three other books and several articles for 

various international academic and policy journals, 

such as Survival, Orbis, Comparative Strategy, Turkish 

Policy Quarterly, Politique Etrangère, and Internationale 

Politik. Prior to his position in the UAE, he was a 

researcher for the Middle East Faculty at the NATO 

Defense College in Rome, Italy, between 2011 and 

2016. He was a policy advisor at the French Ministry of 

Defense from 2008 to 2011, where he conducted several 

net assessment studies covering transatlantic military 

affairs. Dr. Samaan is a former student of Arabic at 

the French Institute of Oriental Languages and the 

French Institute for the Near East in Beirut, Lebanon. 

He graduated from the Institute for Political Studies in 

Grenoble, and he holds a PhD in political science from 

the University of Paris, La Sorbonne.