RUSSIA IN AFGHANISTAN AND CHECHNYA:

MILITARY STRATEGIC CULTURE AND THE

PARADOXES OF ASYMMETRIC CONFLICT

Robert M. Cassidy

February 2003
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ISBN 1-58487-110-5

ii
FOREWORD

Asymmetric warfare poses some of the most pressing

and complex challenges faced by the United States today. As

American defense leaders and strategic thinkers adapt to

this era of asymmetry, it is important that we learn both

from our own experience and from that of other nations

which have faced asymmetric enemies.

In this monograph, Major Robert Cassidy uses a detailed

assessment of the Russian experience in Afghanistan and

Chechnya to draw important conclusions about asymmetric

warfare. He then uses this to provide recommendations for

the U.S. military, particularly the Army. Major Cassidy

points out that small wars are difficult for every great

power, yet are the most common kind. Even in this era of

asymmetry, the U.S. Army exhibits a cultural preference for

the “big war” paradigm. He suggests that the U.S. military

in general, including the Army, needs a cultural

transformation to master the challenge of asymmetry fully.

From this will grow doctrine and organizational change.

The Strategic Studies Institute is pleased to offer this

monograph as part of the ongoing assessment of the

challenges and opportunities posed by strategic asymmetry.

DOUGLAS C. LOVELACE, JR.

Director

Strategic Studies Institute

iii
BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH OF THE AUTHOR

ROBERT M. CASSIDY, a major in the U.S. Army, is the S3

of the 4th Brigade of the 4th Infantry Division

(Mechanized). He has served as a heavy division cavalry

executive officer, an assistant professor of international

relations at West Point and as a cavalry troop commander in

the 82nd Airborne Division. Major Cassidy is a graduate of

the French Joint Defense College and has a Ph.D. in

International Security from the Fletcher School of Law and

Diplomacy at Tufts University.

iv
SUMMARY

This study examines and compares the performance of

the Soviet military in Afghanistan and the Russian military

in Chechnya. It aims to discern continuity or change in

methods and doctrine. Because of Russian military cultural

preferences for a big-war paradigm that have been

embedded over time, moreover, this work posits that

continuity rather than change was much more probable,

even though Russia’s great power position had diminished

in an enormous way by 1994. However, continuity—

manifested in the continued embrace of a conventional and

predictably symmetric approach—was more probable, since

cultural change usually requires up to 10 years.

Several paradoxes also inhere in asymmetric conflict—

these are also very much related to the cultural baggage

that accompanies great power status. In fact, the Russian

military’s failures in both wars are attributable to the

paradoxes of asymmetric conflict. These paradoxes come

into play whenever a great power faces a pre-industrial and

semi-feudal enemy who is intrinsically compelled to

mitigate the great power’s numerous advantages with

cunning and asymmetry. In other words, great powers often

do poorly in small wars simply because they are great

powers that must embrace a big-war paradigm by necessity.

This study identifies and explains six paradoxes of

asymmetric conflict. It also examines each paradox in the

context of Afghanistan and Chechnya.

Ultimately, this monograph concludes with several

implications for U.S. Army transformation. It shows how

the continued and nearly exclusive espousal of a big-war

paradigm can undermine effectiveness in the realm of

asymmetry, how it can stifle innovation and adaptation,

and how this can impede transformation. Both these

conflicts and the paradoxes of asymmetric conflict are very

germane to those thinking about change in the U.S.

military.

v
RUSSIA IN AFGHANISTAN AND CHECHNYA:

MILITARY STRATEGIC CULTURE AND THE

PARADOXES OF ASYMMETRIC CONFLICT

INTRODUCTION

The enemy’s objective is to have us concentrate our main

forces for a decisive engagement. Our objective is exactly the

opposite. We want to choose conditions favorable to us,

concentrate superior forces and fight decisive campaigns and

battles only when we are sure of victory, . . . we want to avoid

decisive engagements under unfavorable conditions when we

are not sure of victory.

Mao Tse-Tung1

On Christmas Eve in 1979, Soviet forces conducted a

conventional assault on Kabul and other key points in

Afghanistan with the aim of implanting a stable

Soviet-friendly government and of quelling an insurrection.

Almost 10 years later, Soviet forces withdrew after

suffering close to 14,000 killed, leaving behind a very

precarious pro-Soviet government and an ongoing civil war.

In December 1994, Russian forces invaded Chechnya,

employing almost the same conventional template used in

Afghanistan. On New Year’s Eve 1994, Russian forces

launched their main assault on Grozny, initially suffering

huge losses and meeting with failure. The goals in

Chechnya were almost the same as the goals sought in

Afghanistan 15 years earlier—to implant a pro-Russian

government and to stabilize the Chechen republic. Russian

forces pulled out of Chechnya almost 2 years later after

suffering close to 6000 killed, having failed to meet their

objectives. As a great power, the Soviet Union failed to win a

small war in Afghanistan. As a former great power, Russia

failed to win in Chechnya.

In both cases, Soviet/Russian forces possessed a

technological advantage and a latent numerical advantage

1
in forces. In both cases, Soviet/Russian forces fought

conventionally against an adversary who fought

unconventionally. In both conflicts, the Russians faced

ideologically-driven indigenous movements fighting for

independence. The significant differences between

Afghanistan and Chechnya were: 1) the structure of the

international system underwent an enormous change—

from bipolar to unipolar; and 2) Russia ceased to be a great

power. Notwithstanding these two enormous changes, this

study postulates that one would observe continuity in

Russian military-strategic cultural preferences in

Chechnya because not enough time elapsed between the

end of the Cold War and the conflict in Chechnya for a

cultural change to occur—military cultural change

normally takes 5-10 years. Thus, one would expect to

observe continuity in Russian preferences for the use of

force—these preferences should reflect a focus on the big

war, or conventional, paradigm for war.

PURPOSE AND CONTEXT

The purpose of this monograph is twofold: 1) to identify

Russian military-strategic preferences for the use of force;

and 2) to explain how the paradoxes of asymmetric conflict,

coupled with, and sometimes stemming from, these

preferences, made it probable that Russia would not win in

Afghanistan or Chechnya. Concerning the war in

Chechnya, this monograph is limited to an analysis of the

conflict between 1994 and 1996. This subject is particularly

germane to the U.S. military and its allies because

asymmetric conflict is the most probable form of conflict

that NATO faces. Four factors point to this probability:

The Trans-Atlantic Alliance is represented by

countries that have the most advanced militaries

(technology and firepower) in the world;

The economic and political homogenization among

these states essentially precludes a war among them;

2
Most rational adversaries in the second tier would

have learned from the Gulf War not to confront the

West on its terms; and,

As a result, the United States and its European allies

will employ their firepower and technology in the

less-developed world, against inferior adversaries,

using asymmetric approaches. Asymmetric conflict

will therefore be the norm, not the exception. Though

this monograph was completed in the spring of 2001,

U.S. operations in Afghanistan after September 2001

also attest to the salience of this subject.2

In addition, the military organizations of great powers

are normally large and hierarchical institutions that

innovate incrementally, if at all. This means that one can

expect the Russian military to adapt very slowly to a new

type of war, even in the face of a changed security

environment. This is particularly true when the required

innovations and adaptations lie outside the scope of the

conventional war focus. In other words, great powers do not

win small wars because they are great powers: their

militaries must maintain a central competence in

symmetric warfare to preserve their great power status

vis-à-vis other great powers; and their militaries must be

large organizations. These two characteristics combine to

create a formidable competence on the plains of Europe or in

the deserts of Iraq. However, these two traits do not produce

institutions and cultures that are amenable to

omni-competence.

THE PARADOXES OF ASYMMETRIC CONFLICT

In addition to this big war culture, some contradictions

simply derive from the logic that exists when a superior

industrial power faces an inferior, semi-feudal,

semi-colonial, and underdeveloped adversary. For example,

the great power intrinsically brings overwhelmingly

superior resources and technology to this type of conflict.

3
However, the seemingly inferior opponent generally

exhibits a superiority in will, demonstrated by a willingness

to accept higher costs and by a willingness to persevere

against many odds. This disparity in will is one of the most

fundamental paradoxes of asymmetric conflict. “Death or

victory” is not simply a pithy bumper sticker, it is a dilemma

that embodies asymmetric conflicts: on the one hand, the

qualitatively or quantitatively inferior opponent fights with

limited means for unlimited strategic objectives—

independence. On the other hand, the qualitatively or

quantitatively superior opponent fights with potentially

unlimited means for limited ends—the maintenance of

some peripheral imperial territory or outpost. Ostensibly

weaker military forces often prevail over an overwhelming

superiority in firepower and technology because they

must—they are fighting for survival.3

History offers many examples of big power failure in the

context of asymmetric conflict: the Romans in the

Teutoburg Forest, the British in the American War of

Independence, the French in the Peninsular War, the

French in Indochina and Algeria, the Americans in

Vietnam, the Russians in Afghanistan and Chechnya, and

the Americans in Somalia. This list is not entirely

homogeneous, and it is important to clarify that the

American Revolution, the Peninsular War, and the Vietnam

War represent examples of great powers failing to win

against strategies that combined asymmetric approaches

with symmetric approaches. Washington combined a

Fabian, but conventional, approach in the north, while

Greene combined conventional with unconventional tactics

to wear down Cornwallis in the south. Moreover, it was a

combined French and American conventional force that

ultimately and decisively defeated Cornwallis at the Battle

of Yorktown. Likewise, Wellington coupled the use of his

regular forces with the hit-and-run tactics of the Spanish

(original) guerrillas to drive the French from Spain. To be

certain, the Tet Offensive was a political/strategic victory

for the Vietnamese and a harbinger of the incremental

4
reduction of a direct U.S. role. Nonetheless, it was the North

Vietnamese Army’s conventional campaign that ultimately

secured a victory in the south.4

Two more salient points about big powers and small

wars require clarification. First, big powers do not

necessarily lose small wars, they simply fail to win them. In

fact, they often win many tactical victories on the

battlefield. However, in the absence of a threat to survival,

the big power’s failure to quickly and decisively attain its

strategic aim leads to an erosion of domestic cohesion.

Second, the weaker opponent must be strategically

circumspect enough to avoid confronting the great power

symmetrically in a conventional war. History also points to

many examples wherein big powers achieved crushing

victories over small powers when the inferior side was

injudicious enough to fight a battle or a war according to the

big power paradigm. The Battle of the Pyramids, the Battle

of Omdurman, the Italians in Abyssinia, and the Persian

Gulf War offer the most conspicuous examples of backward

militaries facing advanced militaries symmetrically. All

four represent disastrous defeats. After analyzing the

Battle of Omdurman and the Italians’ war in Abyssinia,

both instances where European forces decimated

indigenous forces, Mao Tse-tung observed that defeat is the

inevitable result when native forces fight against

modernized forces on the latter’s terms.5

However, a host of definitions of asymmetric warfare

and asymmetric strategy exists—so many that asymmetry

has become the strategic “term de jour” since the mid-1990s

and has come to mean many things to different people. For

example, the Joint Doctrine (JP) Encyclopedia

characterizes asymmetry as attacks “posing threats from a

variety of directions with a broad range of weapons systems

to stress the enemy’s defenses.” However, JP 3-0, Doctrine

for Joint Operations, describes asymmetric actions as those

in which “forces, technologies, and weapons are different” or

those in which terrorism and a rejection of the conventional

approach is the norm. The 1999 Joint Strategy Review,

5
moreover, defined asymmetry even more broadly as

“attempts to circumvent or undermine U.S. strengths while

exploiting U.S. weaknesses using methods that differ

significantly from the United States’ expected method of

operations.”6 Finally, a professor at the U.S. Army War

College offers this definition for strategic asymmetry:

In military affairs and national security, asymmetry is acting,

organizing and thinking differently from opponents to

maximize relative strengths, exploit opponents’ weaknesses or

gain greater freedom of action. It can be political-strategic,

military-strategic, operational or a combination, and entail

different methods, technologies, values, organizations or time

perspectives. It can be short-term, long-term, or by default. It

can also be discrete or pursued in conjunction with symmetric

approaches and have both psychological and physical

dimensions.7

However, according to this definition, even the German

offensive of 1918 would constitute an asymmetric approach.

The problem with so broad a definition is if almost every

type of conflict or attack, except perhaps a direct frontal

conventional attack, is subsumed within the scope of

“asymmetry,” then what does not lie within that scope, and

what exactly is the term defining or delimiting? At present

the term asymmetric has come to include so many

approaches that it has lost some of its utility and clarity. For

example, one article described Japan’s World War II

conventional, but indirect, attack against the British

conventional forces in Singapore as asymmetric. A term or

concept that subsumes almost everything does not offer

much clarity or utility. Max Manwaring, an expert on

counterinsurgency, in another monograph for the U.S.

Army War College, limits the scope of asymmetric warfare

to insurgencies and small internal wars. Manwaring also

explicitly refers to the U.S. experience fighting guerrillas in

Vietnam as an asymmetric war. In fact, it was the U.S.

experience in Vietnam that was the focus of an article that

first referred to this notion of “asymmetric conflict.”8

6
Notwithstanding these newer and broader definitions,

however, asymmetric conflict is not a new concept. This type

of conflict, with its concomitant contradictions, dates at

least as far back as the Roman occupation of Spain and the

Levant. My definition of asymmetric conflict is a bit more

circumscribed: it is conflict in which a superior external

military force (national or multinational) confronts an

inferior state or indigenous group on the latter’s territory.

Insurgencies and small wars lie in this category, and this

monograph uses both terms interchangeably. Small wars

are not big, force-on-force, state-on-state, conventional,

orthodox, unambiguous wars in which success is

measurable by phase lines crossed or hills seized. Small

wars are counterinsurgencies and low intensity conflicts,

where ambiguity rules and success is not necessarily

guaranteed by superior firepower. This monograph also

explains six paradoxes that characterize asymmetric

conflicts. The first two contradictions are closely related and

comprise what one historian refers to as a “strategic

paradox.” The chart below depicts the paradoxes of

asymmetric conflict. 9

The Paradoxes of Asymmetric Conflict

Nature of

Paradox

Superior

Opponent

Inferior

Opponent

Strategic Goals Limited Unlimited

Strategic Means Unlimited Limited

Technology/

Armament Superior Inferior

Will/Domestic

Cohesion Conditional Unconditional

Military Culture Clausewitzian/

Direct

Fabian-Maoist/

Indirect

Time and Space Concentrated Dispersed

7
MILITARY-STRATEGIC CULTURE

This monograph defines military strategy as the art and

science of employing the armed forces of a state to secure the

aims of national policy by the application of force or threat of

force. In war, military strategy encompasses the

identification of strategic objectives, the allocation of

resources, decisions on the use of force, and the development

of war plans. Moreover, organizational culture is the

pattern of assumptions, ideas, and beliefs that prescribe

how a group should adapt to its external environment and

manage its internal structure. Finally, military-strategic

culture is a set of beliefs, attitudes, and values within the

military establishment that shape collective (shared)

preferences of how and when military means should be used

to accomplish strategic aims. It is derived or developed as a

result of historical experience, geography, and political

culture. Core leaders perpetuate and inculcate it, but it is

most pronounced at the operational level because, when

armies have met with success in war, it is the operational

techniques and the operational histories by which enemies

were defeated and which are consecrated in memory.

Finally, while military-strategic culture is not quantifiable,

one can empirically discern preferences for how and when to

use military forces. These qualitative preferences are

observable in military doctrine, military operations, and in

statements by the core military elites. Together, these three

historically observable components of military-strategic

culture tend to demonstrate a preferred paradigm for war.10

THE SOVIET AND RUSSIAN PREFERRED

PARADIGM FOR WAR

It can be argued that Russian commanders in the 18th century

were overly impressed by the Frederician model, which they

adopted with great success.11

Combined arms doctrine still pervades Soviet thinking and the

offensive is still the preferred method of warfare.12

8
There is an old military adage that “armies are always

preparing for the last war,” but a more accurate truism is

that militaries are always preparing for the last good war or

the last successful war. The last good war for the Soviet and

the post-Soviet Russian military was the Great War for the

Fatherland—a total and conventional war of annihilation

fought for the survival of Mother Russia. To be sure, as a

great power, Russia had to embrace the big power paradigm

for war at least since the 18th century. Also, certainly the

Euro-centric model of war evolved based on changes in

industrial/technological capacities and due to socio-political

changes that enabled nations and states to more efficiently

harness and train soldiers. However, whether Russia was

enamored of the Frederician, Jominian, or Clausewitzian

model for war, it had to stay competent in the principal

paradigm de jour to compete as a great power. In other

words, the Russians, the Soviets, and then the Russians

again embraced the big war paradigm for the better part of

three centuries. Likewise, the Soviet forces that invaded

Afghanistan and the Russian forces that invaded Chechnya

embraced the big, conventional war paradigm—tanks,

artillery, and phase lines.13

That the Soviet Union inherited some historical baggage

from imperial Russia is evident in Assistant to the

President for National Security Affairs Condoleezza Rice’s

characterization of the Soviet military: “Reliance on the

military power of the state, acquired at great cost and

organized like that of military powers of the past, was

handed down to the Soviets by historical experience.”

Moreover, Soviet military thought, as it evolved from the

uncertain days of 1917 to the victory over Germany in 1945,

was the basis on which Soviet military power was

constructed. General Mikhail Vasileyvich Frunze’s concept

of warfare was total—mass warfare supported by the total

mobilization of the state. Believing that the small,

professional army characteristic of bourgeois states could

not win the future war, he predicted that every member of

the population would have to be inducted into the war effort.

9
Frunze underlined the primacy of the offensive and the

“centrality of maneuver in warfare.” Of the Soviet military,

one also observed an odd coupling of offensive military

strategy with defensive political doctrine. The Soviets’

military strategy sought to gain the upper hand by

initiating attack.14

The Russian Civil War taught the Soviet high command

to avoid attritional wars against coalitions and to conduct

rapid offensives against isolated enemies. After its victory

in the Civil War, the Soviet Army codified this experience

into formal military doctrine that emphasized offensive

warfare employing large-scale combined arms formations

suitable to the terrain of the central European plateau.

Tanks, infantry, and artillery played the principal role.

Moreover, the Soviets established a highly centralized

system of command and control and doctrinal development.

“However, the problem with centralized control over the

doctrinal process is that it stifles initiative and promotes

rigid operations.”15

In the 1920s, the Soviet Army adopted the operational

art, precipitating the development of the principals of the

deep operation and the deep battle, moving from a theory of

attrition to a theory of maneuver. In 1928, Tukhachevskii

took command of the Leningrad Military District where he

started the first experiments with mechanization and the

use of parachute troops. Tukhachevskii became an avowed

and impassioned supporter of mechanization—the mass,

mechanized army, implementing the new operational art on

the battlefield, would be capable of carrying out the total

destruction of the enemy through sequential and deep

operations. In autumn of 1931, the newly created

Operations Department of the Frunze Academy

reexamined the fundamentals of the operational art and

began investigating the means for decisive and annihilating

operations. Moreover, the 1936 Provisional Field Service

Regulations embraced the concept of deep battle with

modern technology—it called for decisive offensives and the

total destruction of enemy forces.16

10
The Soviet and Russian forces who invaded Afghanistan

and Chechnya, as well as their force structure and doctrine,

were a product of the Velikaya Otchestvennaya Voyna. The

years 1942-43 witnessed the evolution of an offensive

method in which centrally controlled supporting fires

preceded and supported the assault in depth. After 1943,

the Soviets resurrected deep battle and the operational art

with enormous success. In 1944-45 multi-front deep battles

of annihilation emerged that conformed exactly to a

strategy that pursued both military and political objectives.

However, the driving force for the elaboration and evolution

of this form of an operational art was technology. After

Stalin’s death, Zhukov modified the force structure by

eliminating the corps and the mechanized army. Thus, from

the 1950s until the 1990s, Soviet ground forces principally

comprised the tank division and the motorized rifle division.

In the 1970s, the Soviets’ big-war model culminated with

the development of the land-air battle concept that relied on

technology to conduct “modern combined arms battle”

fought “throughout the entire depth of the enemy battle

formation.”17

The Soviet armed forces that invaded Afghanistan and

the Russian armed forces that attacked Grozny were

structured and trained for large-scale conventional warfare.

Moreover, Soviet military doctrine envisaged the

employment of Soviet forces on flat, undulating terrain, like

the plains of central Europe. This big war approach is

characterized by “heavy tank and mechanized formations,

massed and echeloned to conduct breaches of dense

defenses, followed by rapid advance into the enemy rear to

encircle and destroy him.” These offensives are supported

by air ground attack, long-range artillery, and airmobile

assaults throughout the depth of the enemy’s defense. The

Soviet/Russian doctrine seeks quick and decisive victory.

Afghanistan confirmed what was already suspected about

the general fighting capacity of the Soviet Army—it relied

more on a concentration (quantity) of forces and artillery

preparation than on flexibility and maneuver. However,

11
there is a more puzzling paradox—Soviet military experts

knew what to do to win in Afghanistan but did not do it

because of a cultural reluctance, in other words, cultural

inertia. There was no desire to change the doctrine,

training, and organization of an Army that was well

adapted for a European war against its principal

adversary.18

In addition, in 1992 the Russian Ministry of Defense

issued a draft security doctrine stating that NATO

remained the long-term threat but that regional conflicts

and low-intensity warfare were more probable. However,

the type of military doctrine and forces required for these

two types of conflict seemed irreconcilable. The Russian

General Staff also studied the Persian Gulf War in the

context of other 20th century regional conflicts and

concluded that conventional, but nonlinear battle was the

solution. This type of offensive would require mobile forces

conducting simultaneous operational and tactical

maneuvers throughout the depths of the enemy territory. In

1992 Russian Defense Minister General Grachev adopted a

new Mobile Forces Directorate to implement this idea, and

in November 1994, President Yeltsin announced that the

creation of the Mobile Force was complete.19

Finally, the following observation is a lucid and concise

recapitulation of the Russian military’s traditional role in

Central Asia and the Caucasus:

The Russian military has a long tradition of involvement in

little wars on the edge of the empire. This tradition has at times

had a positive effect on military innovation and reform. The

military reforms of the 1860s-70s originated at least partly in

the theater reforms carried out in the Caucasus by Dmitri

Miliutin and his commanding general. Yet, more often, this

military involvement engendered an independent and

imperially minded set of officers, like Cherniaev, who tried to

carry out their own foreign policies in Central Asia.20

12
THE STRATEGIC PARADOX—MEANS VERSUS

ENDS

Symmetric wars are total wars wherein the struggle is a

zero-sum one for survival by both sides—the world wars

being an example. On the other hand, an asymmetric

struggle implies that the war for the indigenous insurgents

is total but that it is inherently limited for the great power.

This is because the insurgents pose no direct threat to the

survival of the great power. Moreover, for the great power in

an asymmetric situation, full military mobilization is

neither politically possible nor considered necessary. The

disparity in military capabilities is so great and the

confidence that military power will predominate is so acute

that victory is expected. However, although the inferior side

possesses limited means, its aim is nonetheless the

expulsion of the great power. The choice for the underdog is

literally “death or victory.”21

Interestingly, both the Mujahadeen and the Chechens,

confronted with a strategic paradox of unlimited aims and

limited means, were compelled to adopt a Fabian strategy

against the Russian military. “The strategy of Fabius was

not merely an evasion of battle to gain time, but calculated

for its effect on the morale of the enemy.” According to

Liddell Hart, the Roman general Fabius knew his enemy’s

military superiority too well to risk a decision in direct

battle; therefore, Fabius sought to avoid it and instead

sought by “military pin-pricks to wear down the invaders’

endurance.” Thus, Fabius’ strategy was designed to protract

the war with hit-and-run tactics, avoiding direct battles

against the enemy’s superior concentrations.22

A Fabian strategy normally stems from a huge

asymmetry of means that inheres in this strategic paradox.

Quintus Sertorius, who during Rome’s Civil War used the

metaphor cited below to convince his Spanish barbarian

troops that it would be imprudent to engage the Roman

army in direct battle, elucidated this paradox well. He

brought into the presence of his troops two horses, one very

13
strong, the other very feeble. Then he brought up two youths

of corresponding physique, one robust and one slight. The

stronger youth was commanded to pull out the entire tail of

the feeble horse, while the slight youth was commanded to

pull out the hairs of the strong horse one by one. Then, when

the slight youth had succeeded in his task, while the strong

one was still vainly struggling with the tail of the weak

horse, Sertorius observed:

By this illustration I have exhibited to you, my men, the nature

of the Roman cohorts. They are invincible to him who attacks

them in a body; yet he who assails them by groups will tear and

rend them.23

Afghanistan.

The overarching component of Soviet strategy beginning

in December 1979 was its determination to limit the level of

its military commitment. In view of the size force it was

willing to commit, a plan of conquest and occupation was not

feasible, nor was it ever considered. From the beginning, the

Soviet strategy was based on the rejuvenation and the

employment of the Democratic Republic of Afghanistan’s

(DRA) army. It seems that the Soviets initially believed that

they confronted a limited insurgency in Afghanistan.

However, they eventually realized that the support of the

population for the resistance was so strong that it exceeded

the puppet DRA forces’ capacity to counter it effectively.24

Soviet operations in the Afghan War, in fact, did not aim

as much at defeating the Mujahideen as they did aim to

intimidate and terrorize the population into abandoning

areas of intense resistance and withdrawing support for the

guerrillas. The methods and weapons employed—

deliberate destruction of villages, high altitude carpet

bombing, napalm, fragmentation bombs, and the use of

booby-trapped toys—testify to the intent of the Soviet

military’s effort to terrorize the Afghan civilian population.

These methods, together with a scorched-earth policy and

the heavy mining of the key highways and the perimeters of

14
towns, also resulted in the destruction of a large part of

agricultural lands. Moreover, according to a 1984 report by

French doctors working in the resistance-controlled areas,

more than 80 percent of the casualties inflicted by the Soviet

military were civilian.25

Afghanistan was a limited or asymmetric conflict

because the Soviet Union fought a limited war while the

Mujahideen fought a total war. Moscow intentionally

limited both the scope of its operations and the amount of

forces it committed. On the other hand, for the resistance it

was a total war—a war for the survival and the future of

their country. To be sure, the Soviet military did not lose the

fight in Afghanistan, it simply failed to win—it did not

achieve its goals. Moreover, the Army that returned from

Afghanistan was battered, physically and psychologically.

On the other hand, the Mujahideen were not victorious but

remained unvanquished nonetheless. “The guerrillas

quickly established that they would not attain a resounding

victory, but could sap the invaders” will to fight on.

Essentially, the Afghan guerrillas proved Kissinger’s

maxim—“the guerrilla wins if he does not lose; the

conventional army loses if it does not win.” The Afghani

resistance fighters effectively countered the Soviet strategy

of annihilation by conducting a protracted war of attrition.26

Chechnya.

There is no winning. We know that if we are fighting we are

winning. If we are not, we have lost. The Russians can kill us

and destroy this land. Then they will win. But we will make it

very painful for them.27

The fledgling Chechen army defeated a Eurasian great

power’s ostensibly superior army because it was able to use

conventional tactics in an unorthodox manner to

concentrate against Russian Army weaknesses. In Grozny,

Dudayev successfully used a combination of conventional

and unconventional methods to fight the Russians. Since

asymmetry characterized the relationship between the

15
Chechen Army and the Russian Army, the Chechens’

methods in urban combat were sound because the Chechens

avoided open battle against the Russian forces and

exploited the advantages of urban defense to inflict

enormous casualties against them.

Since Dudayev’s Army was limited in personnel,

resources, and training, he soon realized that committing

his troops to open battle against the Russians would invite

disaster. Therefore, after the Chechen Army’s costly

defenses of Grozny in 1995, Dudayev avoided head-on

collisions with the Russian Army. Acknowledging these

limitations, Dudayev adopted an indirect strategy of

attrition in which he avoided general actions against the

Russian main efforts but instead concentrated what forces

he had against weak enemy outposts and piecemeal

detachments. Dudayev’s plan for victory was to keep the

war going by preserving his forces and wearing down the

Russian will to fight with raids against the periphery of its

forces. A corollary to Dudayev’s approach was the notion

that his recruiting pool would increase as the Russians used

more force less discriminately in their pursuit of the

guerrillas. Russell Weigley, a prominent U.S. military

historian, first explained this strategic paradox in the

context of the American Revolution. The Chechens faced the

same paradox and from this contradiction stemmed their

“strategy of erosion”: on the one hand the Chechens had a

political objective that was absolute—the absolute removal

of the Russian military from Chechnya; however, on the

other hand the Chechens’ military means were so weak that

there was no other alternative than a strategic defensive.28

Therefore, the Russian Army in Chechnya was

confounded by the “principal contradiction” that

characterizes asymmetric struggles. The Russians,

moreover, had fallen into the dilemma of a war of posts

conceived as a counter to a guerrilla campaign. Once

dispersed, their outposts had never been numerous enough

really to control the country, because partisan raids on the

smaller posts had compelled them to consolidate into fewer

16
and fewer garrisons. But the garrisons were too few and too

small to check the partisans’ operations throughout the

countryside. Notwithstanding Chechnya’s relatively small

size, there simply were not enough troops to control the

entire country against a tenacious opponent fighting for

survival.29 Once more, Henry Kissinger’s pithy description

of the U.S. counterinsurgency effort in Vietnam provides a

powerful explanation of the strategic paradox: “The

guerrilla wins if he does not lose. The conventional army

loses if it does not win.”30

Thus, the Chechen strategy of erosion against the

Russians was not unlike both Mao Tse-tung’s and Henry

Kissinger’s prescriptions for guerrilla victory. Dudayev’s

strategic purpose had to be to break the resolve of the

Russian government and the Russian population through

gradual and persistent engagements against peripheral

and poorly organized detachments of Russian forces. The

Chechens, on the other hand, conducted a strategic

defensive coupled with tactical attacks aimed at inflicting

Russian losses, and “did not lose” by preserving their small

army. Dudayev’s forces were so weak compared to the

Russian forces that he could not afford to confront the

Russians in many conventional battles because his soldiers

could not win. However, the Chechens’ political

objectives—to expel the Russian Army and gain

independence—were total. To find a way out of this

contradiction, Dudayev had to rely mainly not on a total

military victory but on the possibility that the political

opposition in Moscow might in time force the Yeltsin

government to abandon the conflict. The weaker, but more

skillful, Chechen warriors accomplished this by refusing to

confront the Russians on their own terms and by instead

resorting to unorthodox approaches.

THE PARADOX OF TECHNOLOGY

This paradox stems from a huge disparity in resource

power. Because huge differences in the levels of

17
technological and industrial capacities between adversaries

in asymmetric conflicts exist, the big power possesses an

overwhelming advantage in potential combat power. This

disparity inheres in the structure of any conflict which

witnesses a peripheral power facing a core power. History

points to many cases where imperial armies have fought

“barbarians,” or technologically inferior adversaries. Some

of the most pronounced asymmetries in technology in this

century manifested themselves during the Vietnam War

and the Soviet war in Afghanistan. One can certainly

conclude from these examples that not only do conventional

military and technological superiority not ensure victory,

but that they may even undermine victory in an asymmetric

context. One need only ask a veteran of Afghanistan or a

veteran of the battles in Grozny how superior numbers and

technology fare against a guileful opponent using an

asymmetric approach.31

Afghanistan.

The Soviets brought the entire repertoire of an

industrialized power’s military technology to bear against

the Mujahideen and the Afghan people. However, the

Russians failed to recognize that technology is no substitute

for strategy and will. In fact, using force indiscriminately,

coupled with the absence of anything approximating a

counterinsurgency campaign, helped undermine the

Soviets’ efforts in Afghanistan by alienating the population.

The Soviets introduced and tested new technology during

the Afghan War. The most notable of the new weapons were

the armored infantry carrier (BMP)-2, the BTR-80, the

82mm automatic mortar, the self-propelled mortar, the

AGS-17 automatic grenade launcher, the BM-22 Multiple

Rocket Launcher System, the MI-8T helicopter, the SU-25

ground support aircraft, and the ASU-74 assault rifle. In

addition, the Soviets introduced several models of the MI-24

attack helicopter during the war. However, despite all this

technology, Afghanistan was a war for the light infantry

and the Soviets did not have light infantry.32

18
Not only did the Soviets lack light infantry, however, but

their motorized infantry troops could not easily transition to

light infantry because they were married to their armored

personnel carriers and to the heavy technology that such a

marriage entails. The Soviet reliance on mechanized forces

and massive firepower made the soldiers load so heavy that

any movement on foot beyond one kilometer from their

BMP, especially given the terrain and heat in Afghanistan,

would exhaust them. For example, the standard flak jacket

weighed 16 kilograms, and the Soviet emphasis on massive

firepower instead of accuracy meant the soldier carried a lot

more ammunition. Plus, the weight of crew-served weapons

was prohibitive for serious dismounted maneuver—the

12.7mm heavy machine gun weighs 34 kilograms without

its tripod, the AGS-17 weighs 30.4 kilograms, and one

AGS-17 ammunition drum weighs 14.7 kilograms. Thus

benefiting from all this technology, a dismounted Soviet

soldier in Afghanistan was so encumbered that he could not

catch up with the Afghan guerrillas.33

Nonetheless, the Soviets in Afghanistan, like the

Americans in Vietnam, discovered that helicopters were

very useful for fighting the Mujahideen because of their

mobility, armament, range, and versatility. Considering the

vast territory to cover and the decentralized nature of

operations in Afghanistan, the Soviets would have done

much worse without the helicopter. The helicopter did not

enable the Soviets to adapt from a conventionally-oriented

force to a truly counterinsurgency oriented force, but it did

help them bring the fight to the Mujahideen much more

effectively. “Helicopters provided a mobility of combat

power that the rebels in no way could match, enhanced

surprise, reduced rebel reaction time, enabled Soviet forces

to react to rebel threats rapidly, and provided Soviet forces

their best means of exercising the initiative.” In addition,

the low-air defense threat (until 1986) allowed the Soviets

the luxury of seasoning their pilots and testing their

helicopters in a relatively low risk environment.34

19
However, the Soviet strategy in Afghanistan essentially

focused on the use of high technology and tactical mobility

(mainly provided by the helicopter) as a means to inflict

casualties on the Afghanis, while at the same time holding

Soviet casualities to a minimum. In fact, the Soviets used

their technology to conduct a combination of the scorched

earth method and “migratory genocide.” Numerous reports

showed that Soviet forces, especially attack helicopters,

were used to destroy villages and burn crops to force the

population—the main source of support for the

Mujahideen—to leave the country. Other reports implied

that the Soviets were declaring free-fire zones in areas

where there was a strong presence of resistance forces.

According to one expert on the Soviets, “the Soviet monopoly

on high technology” in Afghanistan “magnified the

destructive aspects of their behavior.” The average quantity

of “high technology” airborne platforms in Afghanistan was

around 240 attack helicopters, 400 other helicopters,

several squadrons of MiG-21s and MiG-23s, and at least one

squadron of SU-25 ground attack aircraft. Afghanistan was

also the first operational deployment for the SU-25. The

following excerpt helps underline the normal template for

the Soviets’ use of technology and firepower:35

Notably in the valleys around Kabul, the Russians undertook a

series of large operations engaging hundreds of tanks,

mobilizing significant means, using bombs, rockets, napalm,

and even, once gas, destroying all in their path, not accepting

any quarter, and not expecting any in return.36

Moreover, after Gorbachev’s assumption of power in

March 1985, the Soviet forces in Afghanistan better

employed their technological advantage to improve their

performance. They made particularly effective use of the

Mi-24 and Mi-25 Hind helicopters and of the insertion of

special forces units behind enemy lines. Prior to 1985, the

Soviet forces largely remained in their garrisons, and

outside their garrisons, they generally only operated in

armored vehicles along the main highways connecting the

major cities. By 1986, the Soviet military’s technological

20
and tactical innovations (although still fixed within a

conventional war paradigm) were getting results against

the Mujahideen resistance. However, in April 1986 the

Americans decided to provide the Mujahideen with Stinger

shoulder-fired anti-aircraft missiles, and this marked a

turning point in the war. The guerrillas were then able to

undermine a key Soviet technological advantage—the

mobility and firepower of helicopters. Estimated aircraft

losses were one per day. As a result, the Soviets were no

longer able to use helicopter gun ships in a ground support

role and the effectiveness of the Spetznaz was degraded as

insertion by helicopter became limited.37

The introduction and employment of the Stinger

beginning in 1986 showed how guerrillas could inflict heavy

losses against a regular industrialized army without having

a high level of training and organization. The result was

also an increased Soviet reliance on artillery and high-level

aerial bombardment. The longer the war lasted and the

more the Soviets tried to use technology and massive

firepower to limit their losses, the more they caused civilian

losses. As a result, the resistance to the Soviets became

stronger, more organized, and effective. Despite the Soviets’

relatively high technology and the Mujahideen’s relatively

primitive technology, notwithstanding the Stingers, the

Soviets’ equipment losses in Afghanistan were 118 jets, 333

helicopters, 147 tanks, 1,314 armored personnel carriers,

433 artillery pieces and mortars, 1,138 radio sets and CP

vehicles, 510 engineering vehicles, and 11,369 trucks.38

Considering the Soviets’ huge technological advantage,

they certainly lost a significant amount of materiel to the

primitive and barbaric Afghanis. This clearly shows that an

asymmetry of technology does not ensure victory—for every

technological advantage, there is a counter, either

technologically as was the case with the Stinger; or

adaptively as was the case with the rocket-propelled

grenade (RPG). Before the Stingers arrived in theater, the

guerrillas had already shot down several hundred

helicopters with well-placed machine guns and RPGs

21
modified with a fan tail device (to redirect the back blast)

that allowed the Mujahideen to aim this shoulder-fired

anti-tank weapon at airborne targets. Twenty years later,

Somali militiamen trained by Mujahideen veterans,

similarly employed RPGs to shoot down two American

Blackhawk helicopters, precipitating a U.S. withdrawal

from Somalia. As a footnote, the Afghanis also used sheep to

clear minefields—a very low-technology solution to a

high-technology problem.

Chechnya.

For the Chechens, an outright military victory was

unlikely, so their goal was to inflict as many casualties as

possible on the Russian people and erode their will to fight.

The Chechens used an “asymmetric” strategy that avoided

battle in the open against Russian armor, artillery, and

airpower. They sought to even the fight by fighting an

infantry war. Time and again, the Chechens forced their

Russian counterparts to meet them on the urban battlefield

where a Russian infantryman could die just as easily.39

The Russian forces that assaulted Grozny on December

31, 1994, were technologically and quantitatively superior

to the Chechen defenders of Grozny. Perhaps the Russian

military’s perception of its own invulnerability, stemming

from a numerical and technological superiority, even

contributed to the haphazard manner by which it ambled

into a veritable beehive of Chechen anti-armor ambushes.

Just for a look at raw numbers, the Russians employed 230

tanks, 454 armored infantry vehicles, and 388 artillery

guns. The Chechens, on the other hand, had 50 tanks, 100

armored infantry vehicles, and 60 artillery guns. Yet

despite Russian superiority across all weapons systems, the

Russians were unable to maneuver the Chechens into a

disadvantageous position. Despite former Russian Defense

Minister Grachev’s claim that he could topple the Dudayev

regime in a couple of hours with one parachute regiment,

the Chechen forces’ skillful resistance in Grozny compelled

22
the Russian forces to fall back from the city center to

regroup. Firing from all sides and from all floors, from city

block to city block, Chechen anti-armor teams

systematically destroyed a large number of Russian tanks

with RPG-7s. In fact, during the New Year’s Eve assault,

one Russian regiment lost 102 out of 120 vehicles as well as

most of its officers.40 As Sun Tzu wrote, “Best policy in war—

thwart the enemy’s strategy, second best—disrupt his

alliances through diplomacy, third best—attack his army in

the field, worst strategy—attack walled cities.”41

Chechen fighters turned every city and town into a

network of ambushes and inflicted serious losses on the

numerically and technologically superior Russian columns.

One method by which the cunning Chechens turned

Russia’s technological superiority to their own advantage

was to draw fire from Russian combat aircraft to

intentionally precipitate collateral damage. When the

Russian aircraft returned fire on the single weapon in an

urban environment, they would invariably destroy a nearby

house or road. Such seemingly wanton destruction

inevitably angered the local population, thus making

recruiting much easier for the Chechen side. Another

example of Chechen ingenuity was for Chechen guerrillas to

interpose themselves in between two Russian regiments

during darkness and to fire in both directions. This often

triggered intense fratricidal firefights between the Russian

units.42

Whether in the cities or in the mountains, however, the

1994-96 conflict in Chechnya witnessed a massive use of

Russian technology and firepower—carpet bombings and

massive artillery strikes—most of which exhibited little

concern over civilian casualties and collateral damage. On

the other hand, for the remainder of this war, the Chechen

forces continued to avoid direct battles, instead isolating

Russian forces into smaller detachments that could then be

ambushed and destroyed piecemeal. For the Russians,

unskilled in the techniques and nuances of counterinsurgency, massed artillery became substitute for infantry

23
maneuver and the conventional principle of the offensive

“came to be interpreted as the tons of ordnance dropped on

target.” It seems, then, that instead of adopting the

preferred counterinsurgency approach of separating the

guerrillas from the population by winning hearts and

minds, the Russians in Chechnya tried to extirpate the

population with artillery fires and technology.43

The fact that the Russians’ technological and numerical

superiority did not enable them to achieve their objectives

only highlights the chimerical nature of technology. Lester

Grau maintains that guerrilla war negates many of the

advantages of technology because it is more a test of

national will and endurance. What is more, asymmetric

warfare is the most effective and rational way for a

technologically inferior group or state to fight a great power.

Grau offers a cogent conclusion on technology and

asymmetric conflict: “Technology offers little decisive

advantage in guerrilla warfare, urban combat, peace

operations, and combat in rugged terrain. The weapon of

choice in these conditions remains copious quantities of

well-trained infantrymen.”44

THE PARADOX OF WILL

As far back as two millennia, the professional, salaried,

pensioned, and career-minded citizen-soldiers of the Roman

legions routinely had to fight against warriors eager to die

gloriously for tribe or religion. Already then, their superiors

were far from indifferent to the casualties of combat, if only

because trained troops were very costly and citizen manpower

was very scarce.45

This quotation helps highlight a profound disparity that

characterizes conflicts between “imperial powers” and

nonimperial powers, or “barbarians.” Core big powers are

unable or unwilling to accept high casualties indefinitely in

peripheral wars. The weaker side’s national endurance,

will, or high threshold for pain, sometimes manifested by a

capacity to willingly accept whatever the costs—even if it

24
means “copious quantities of well-trained [dead]

infantrymen”—enables small powers to succeed against big

powers. From the Teutoburg Forest, to the Long March, to

the siege of Dien Bien Phu, adversaries who were

unambiguously inferior by more tangible measures of

military might—weapons, technology, organization—have

managed to persevere to ultimately attain victory against

superior powers. An expert on Sun-Tzu and Mao Tse-tung

explains why “will” is so salient:

Guerrilla war is not dependent for success on the efficient

operation of complex mechanical devices, highly organized

logistical systems, or the accuracy of electronic computers. Its

basic element is man, and man is more complex than any of his

machines. He is endowed with intelligence, emotion, and

will.

46

All asymmetric conflicts exhibit the same contradiction

of will. No single phrase better captures this disparity than

this excerpt from a movie about the Vietnam War: “How do

you beat an enemy who is willing to fight helicopters with

bows and arrows?”47 What is more, in Somalia the enemy

used slingshots against helicopters, and he used women and

children as human shields during firefights. In Vietnam,

moreover, enemy tactics seemed “to be motivated by a desire

to impose casualties on Americans regardless of the cost to

themselves.” According to one RAND analysis of Vietnam,

the enemy was “willing to suffer losses at a far greater rate

than our own, but he has not accepted these losses as

decisive and refuses to sue for peace.”48

However, not only does superior conventional military

strength not guarantee victory, but, under certain

conditions it may undermine it. Since the weaker opponent

lacks the technological capacity to destroy the external

power’s military capability, but nonetheless has unlimited

political aims such as independence, it must look to the

political impact on the metropolis. In other words, “the

insurgents must retain a minimum degree of

invulnerability” to avoid defeat, and to win they must be

25
able to impose a continual aggregation of costs on their

adversaries. From a strategic perspective, the rebels’ aim

must be to provoke the great power into escalating the

conflict. This in turn will incur political and economic costs

on the external power—the normal costs of war, such as

soldiers killed and equipment destroyed—but over time

these may be seen as too high when the security of the great

power is not directly threatened. 49

The direct costs of lives and equipment lost only gain

strategic importance when they achieve the indirect results

of psychologically and politically amplifying disharmony in

the metropolitan power. Domestic criticism in the great

power will therefore increase as battle losses and economic

costs escalate in a war against an adversary that poses no

direct threat to its vital interests: “In a limited war, it is not

at all clear to those groups whose interests are adversely

affected why such sacrifices are necessary.” Equally salient

is the fact that the need to risk death will seem less clear to

both conscripts and professional soldiers when the survival

of their country is not at risk. This consideration is germane

to both counterinsurgency and peace operations, when

great powers employ modern militaries in less developed

areas.50

Afghanistan.

The ceiling of intervention chosen by Brezhnev, although rather

low, was too high for Gorbachev. Soviet public opinion became

more vocal; and in light of the “charm offensive” directed at the

West, the war appeared increasingly objectionable.51

The paradox of will was particularly apparent in

Afghanistan because even from the outset of direct Soviet

involvement, the Brezhnev government sought to limit the

Soviet commitment to a tolerable level. Moreover, the

Clausewitzian-minded Soviet security apparatus

incorrectly determined that the destruction of the Afghan

villages and crops would strip the guerrillas of their means

to wage war, thereby making their will to wage it irrelevant.

26
The Soviets might have succeeded in bombing the Afghanis

into the “stone Age” but for the fact that they were already

there. Notwithstanding tons of bombs and hundreds of

thousands of dead, the enemy’s will was resolute, and the

Soviets will to see the war to a successful conclusion was

limited. Lacking the military means to destroy the Soviet

capacity to wage war, the Mujahideen focused on raising the

costs and undermining Moscow’s political capability to

continue to support the prosecution of the war. Mao

expressed this as “the destruction of the unity of the enemy”

but Mack explains it even more lucidly: “If the external

power’s will to continue the struggle is destroyed, then its

military capability—no matter how powerful—is totally

irrelevant.”52

In Afghanistan, the domestic dimensions of the conflict

were superseded by jihad, or a religious war against the

invading infidels. Islam and nationalism became

interwoven, and a galvanized ideological crusade against

the Soviets superseded the more secular tribal perspective.

Moreover, instead of gaining support for the more moderate

government it installed, the Soviet invasion in fact

precipitated a backlash even among those Afghans

previously loyal to the government. The invasion fused

Islamic ideology with the cause of national liberation. After

the invasion, thousands of officers and soldiers of the

Afghan Army defected to the Mujahideen, and the

insurgents seized hundreds of government outposts, most of

which had been abdicated by defecting soldiers. For

example, Massoud gained control of the entire Panjshir

Valley during the spring of 1980, whereas before the

invasion his forces had been confined to a much smaller part

of the upper valley.53

On the other hand, the Soviets sought to limit their role

in the war from the outset because they were not prepared to

incur the necessary human costs. The Soviet aim was never

to win outright victory on the battlefield but instead to

undermine and divide the Mujahideen with an indirect and

long-term strategy. This strategy was threefold: conducting

27
a war of attrition and reprisals; sealing the borders against

supply routes, coupled with direct pressure on Pakistan by

bombing and terrorist operations; and penetrating the

resistance movement. In addition, aware of the American

debacle in Vietnam, the Soviets wanted to avoid the

“Vietnam syndrome” by keeping the war local and at a low

level as well as avoiding escalation or direct spillover into

adjacent countries. Moreover, the Soviet Union could not

afford to commit its best units for a prolonged time in

Afghanistan because the “maintenance of its empire

depended on a heavy and permanent military presence in

its satellite states.” This unwillingness to commit

significant forces there made the Soviets very cautious and

conservative militarily, at all levels. During their 10-year

war in Afghanistan, not once did the Soviets endeavor to

build a counterinsurgency force or establish counterinsurgency doctrine.54

Thus, to keep the Afghan war at a low level, the Soviets

had to limit the human, economic, diplomatic, and political

costs. As a result, they put the troop ceiling at 115,000, did

not pursue the enemy into his sanctuary in Pakistan, tried

to minimize casualties as much as possible, tried to avoid

extended diplomatic isolation, and tried to consolidate the

Kabul government militarily and politically in order to limit

the direct involvement of Soviet troops. However, the

political will even for this limited level of commitment was

not sustainable in the long term. Although the actual costs

of the Soviet war in Afghanistan did not change in 1985,

Gorbachev’s new policies could not bear this level of

commitment. The costs were less bearable because Soviet

public opinion became more vocal under Glasnost; the war

appeared objectionable vis-à-vis the “charm offensive”

toward the West; and the Soviet government became more

reluctant to subsidize ineffective governments in the Third

World, for example, Cuba and Vietnam.55

In the end, “the Kremlin’s leadership simply was

unwilling to make a larger troop commitment when the

numbers that might be necessary for victory were unclear in

28
the first place, and the political and economic costs of such

escalation would be too high.” As a result, the Soviets chose

to conduct the war with a heavy reliance on bombing and air

power—an approach that surely kept the Mujahideen from

achieving quick victory but which by itself could not destroy

the resistance. As long as the Mujahideen were willing to

suffer the punishment required to sustain and to protract

their struggle for national survival, and as long as

neighboring states provided sanctuary and external

support, the inevitable outcome was a stalemate.56

Chechnya.

The Chechens knew it would be very difficult to actually

destroy Russian armed forces in battle; they sought to destroy

their opponent’s will to fight.57

A principal reason why many observers and the Russian

government underestimated the Chechen will to resist was

because the Dudayev regime appeared so ramshackle and

his troops seemed so unimpressive and so disliked by the

majority of the Chechen population. What the Russian

government missed “were the deep underlying strengths of

Chechen society and the Chechen tradition, as tempered

and hardened by the historical experience of the past two

hundred years.” Although these same characteristics have

impeded the creation of modern and democratic

institutions, they have afforded the Chechens a very

formidable capacity for national armed resistance. The

Chechens are, in fact, one of the great warrior peoples of

modern history. However, this underestimation of the

Chechens was very characteristic of some colonial

approaches to ethnography and in “an equally common

pattern, this was related to a view of the enemy society as

not just primitive but also static.” This capacity of the

Russians to underestimate less-developed adversaries is a

bit surprising because the first conflict in Chechnya came

only 6 years after the Soviet withdrawal from Afghanistan,

an event that should have taught the Russians not to

29
underestimate semi-primitive opponents in the context of

asymmetric conflict.58

From the outset of the conflict in Chechnya, there was a

conspicuous Russian lack of will to prosecute it. Oddly

enough, the unwillingness was initially most acute among

the Russian forces who entered Grozny: they were

underpaid, poorly equipped, poorly clothed, and uninformed

about the purpose and goals of the operation. In addition,

the average Russian soldier and some Russian officers were

not enthused about shooting at what they viewed as fellow

Russian citizens. Contrariwise, there was not really a lot of

support for Dudayev’s corrupt and inefficient government

before the conflict began. However, the Russian invasion,

coupled with the inappropriate and excessive methods

employed by the Russians, quickly catalyzed a consolidation

of Chechen resistance. A huge asymmetry of will grew as a

result: the Chechen tactics and techniques inflicted huge

casualties on the Russians who had no strong desire or clear

reasons for fighting there, whereas the Russians excessive

and indiscriminate use of force, causing much death and

destruction among noncombatants, increased and

reinforced the will of the Chechens to continue the struggle.

Their god is liberty and their law is war.

—Lermontov

Some unique Chechen cultural characteristics also

contribute to the will of the Chechen people to resist foreign

domination. Two principal traditions are adat and teip.

Adat is an ancient system of retribution, an unwritten code

based on revenge which incorporates “an eye for an eye”

sense of justice. Teip is a tradition that requires clan

members to fight fiercely to preserve their clan’s

independence, culture, and separate identity. In addition,

another very old Chechen tradition is looking to older men

for wisdom and to younger men for the warrior spirit. These

two characteristics unite Chechen society and explain their

30
will to resist foreign domination. This kind of will can

outlast superior combat forces and superior technology. To

the Chechens’ warrior culture, one can add intense

historical hatred of Russia and Russians among elements of

the Chechen population. Beginning with General

Yermelov’s scorched-earth policy in 1816, continuing with

several decades of Russian cut-and-burn counterinsurgency

and deportations, and ending with Stalin’s 1944

deportation of the entire Chechen population to Central

Asia, no other people evokes the enmity of the Chechens

more than the Russians. Inexplicably, and exacerbating an

already strong Russophobia among the Chechen

population, in 1949 Soviet authorities erected a statue of

General Yermelov in Grozny. The inscription on the statue

declared, “There is no people under the sun more vile and

deceitful than this one.”59

In addition, the Russians did nothing to win the battle of

wills in Chechnya—no effort was made to “win the hearts

and minds” of the people. Even though most experts in

counterinsurgency would underline the importance of

winning over the population, the Russian Army entered

Chechnya without any civil affairs or psychological

operations units. They failed to consider both the will and

the skill of the opponent they would face in one of the most

difficult venues for combat—urban combat. On the other

hand, the lack of leadership and political conviction on the

Russian side created a vulnerability that could be exploited

by the Chechens. Since political support for Yeltsin’s

decision to invade was weak from the outset, both the

Yeltsin administration and the Chechens realized that the

will of the Russian people was an important target. Yeltsin

tried to bolster public support for the war through a

disinformation campaign—the government provided

distorted accounts of friendly casualties, civilian casualties,

and types of weapons used.60

However, the Chechens very effectively used two

psychological operations instruments to undermine

Russian support for the war: the media and dramatic raids

31
into Russian territory. Chechen guerrillas conducted two

raids against urban areas—Budyonnovsk and

Pervomaiskoye—that were highly publicized by the media

and that triggered intense public outcries about the conduct

of the conflict among the Russian people and world

opinion.61

THE CONTRADICTION IN MILITARY-STRATEGIC

CULTURES: CLAUSEWITZ VERSUS MAO

The enemy, employing his small forces against a vast country,

can only occupy some big cities and main lines of communication

and part of the plains. Thus there are extensive areas in the

territory under his occupation which he has had to leave

ungarrisoned, and which provide a vast arena for our guerrilla

warfare.

— Mao Tse-Tung62

All great powers exhibit a degree of homogeneity of

military thought—since the stunning Prussian victory in

the Franco-Prussian War, big powers have embraced

Clausewitz as the quintessential oracle of war, and they

have emulated the Prussian model. However, one can also

discern a singularly Jominian trait in the military cultures

of great powers—an inclination to divorce the political

sphere from the military sphere once the war begins. This

creates two corollary problems for great powers in

asymmetric conflicts: 1) poor or nonexistent politicalmilitary integration; and 2) a “go-with-what-you- know”

approach, which translates to the preferred paradigm—

mid- to high-intensity conventional war. Add to this the

tendency of large organizations to change very slowly, and

the result is a military that clings to a conventional

approach when that approach is not relevant or successful,

for example, during asymmetric conflicts.63

Afghanistan.

Nowhere is this more manifest than in the Soviet

invasion of Afghanistan. The Soviet Army that invaded

32
Afghanistan was not an army trained to conduct

counterguerrilla operations but an army trained to conduct

conventional high-intensity warfare on the plains of

Europe. According to one author, “This latter kind of

warfare is characterized doctrinally by deep offensive

operations carried out by heavy tank-mechanized

formations, massed and echeloned to conduct breaches of

dense defenses, followed by rapid advance into the enemy

rear to encircle and destroy him.” Ground offensives are

conducted with simultaneity of effort by aviation,

long-range artillery, missiles, and coordinated airmobile

and airborne assaults as well as combined arms actions at

all levels. Soviet doctrine sought decisive and quick victory

by the application of overwhelming force—the habitual big

war paradigm that great powers historically have

embraced. However obvious the inappropriateness of such a

force structure and doctrine is for a counterguerrilla war in

an undeveloped and mountainous country such as

Afghanistan, the Soviets’ approach reflected this

conventional mindset for the first several years of the war in

Afghanistan.64

Thus, although the Soviet political leadership ordered

the Soviet military to invade Afghanistan, the Soviet Army,

with a military culture that preferred a big European war

paradigm, did not have a mindset or a skill set that were

appropriate in that context. Both the mountainous terrain

and the enemy were more amenable to guerrilla warfare.

There were no conventional “fronts” or “rears” to penetrate

with massed advances of heavy armor forces. In fact, the

Soviets faced an unorthodox, tenacious, and elusive enemy.

Consequently, the goal of a quick and decisive victory

quickly became unrealistic.65

Olivier Roy also supports the notion that the Soviet

Army exhibited a rigid adherence to a big war paradigm:

“The Soviets invaded Afghanistan using the same military

tactics as in the 1968 invasion of Czechoslovakia.” What is

more, the same officer who commanded the Czechoslovakian invasion, General Pavlovsky, also commanded

33
the initial incursion into Afghanistan. The Soviet Army

conducted large-scale armor warfare until 1982—about

twice a year, the Soviets launched huge conventional

offensives, using motorized rifle divisions trained for battle

against NATO in central Europe rather than their lighter

and better-suited airborne units. However, in 1982 the

Soviets made changes in equipment and tactics to counter

the Mujahideen—the Russians increasingly relied on their

300 MI-24 combat helicopters in Afghanistan to counter the

guerrillas. They also introduced the SU-25 fighter-bomber

in 1984 and their standard footprint for an offensive

involved intensive air and artillery preparation, the landing

of heliborne troops, and direct drives by mechanized forces.

If the Soviets had studied and learned anything from the

Americans in Vietnam, they might have known that more

technology—helicopter mobility and advanced bombers—

does not make a military that embraces the big war doctrine

any less conventional or more successful.66

The excessive force and indiscriminate destruction that

such an approach entails, however, did not win any hearts

and minds. The obverse was true, the Soviet’s

scorched-earth approach of the mid-1980s offered more

utility as a recruiting aid for the enemy. One example was

the offensive Panjshir VII in 1984. High-altitude TU-16

bombings and an attack on the Panjshir Valley in April were

followed by an offensive near Herat in June in which the

Soviets destroyed all villages and suburbs within 20

kilometers west of the city. The Soviets encountered stiff

resistance around the city of Mazar-I Sharif, and 1984 was

the worst year for Soviet casualties—2,060 killed in action.

As usually was the pattern, the government forces soon had

to withdraw from the objectives they seized during Panjshir

VII, only to see the terrain be reoccupied by the Mujahideen.

Another author compared the Soviets’ reliance on roads,

bombs, artillery, rockets, napalm, and gas to the American

Operations ATTLEBORO and JUNCTION CITY in

Vietnam. Both approaches achieved nothing decisive in

spite of the destruction they wreaked. Excepting a few

34
minor differences, the Russians applied an approach in

Afghanistan that was like the American approach in

Vietnam—a sort of counterguerrilla “douhetism.” The

problem is that big power militaries are conditioned to use a

sledgehammer, although a screwdriver is more appropriate

for an asymmetric conflict.67

On the other hand, however, the Mujahideen did not

represent an enemy in the sense of conventional warfare—

the Soviets faced a nebulous enemy force against which the

notion of a quick and decisive victory became absurd. The

guerrillas understood that the Soviets faced international

opprobrium and that a long, protracted war would best

erode the Soviet will to fight. The Mujahideen chose the

places and time to attack their enemy and drew the Soviet

mechanized forces into terrain suitable for dismounted

ambush. The guerrillas would only fight under favorable

conditions, and, when conditions became unfavorable, like

ghosts, the insurgents would disappear into the

surrounding terrain. Initially, they could not rely upon any

artillery, anti-tank, or air defense support, and they had no

emplacements for the Soviets to roll over. Moreover, in the

beginning of the war, before the Soviets moved away from

an over reliance on mechanized forces, they always

employed the same template for offensive operations: an

extensive preparatory bombardment of the objective area

by aircraft, attack helicopters, and artillery, followed by

mechanized attacks along the major roads leading into

mountain valleys, under constant fire support.68

However, the guileful guerrillas did not require much

time or creativity to anticipate these predictable offensives.

The Mujahideen would simply leave the area under aerial

and artillery bombardment and come back after the Soviet

forces had returned to their bases. On the other hand, before

and after each one of these offensives, the guerrillas knew

the avenues of approach and return, and were able to

ambush the weary Soviet columns. Also, the Soviet forces

were not prepared for the resistance of the Mujahideen.

Instead of a coherent, conventional foe in prepared

35
defenses, they found a hardy, resilient guerrilla force which

generally refused to stand and fight. The guerrillas were

equipped only with light arms and a limited quantity of

heavy weapons and operated in small groups of 20 to 50

men. The Mujahideen conducted a Maoist hit-and-run

guerrilla war and the decentralized nature of their

operations precluded the coordination and employment of

large forces on a large scale against the Soviets. However,

their approach did afford them security by dispersion, as

well as making it difficult for the Soviets to concentrate.69

A standard technique of the guerrillas was to attack the

lead and rear vehicles of a supply convoy to paralyze and

then destroy it piecemeal. In one such ambush in June 1981,

guerrillas from Panjshir blocked a Soviet convoy on the

Salang highway and forced the Soviets to destroy most of its

120 trucks, which could not be evacuated with the troops. In

another engagement in the summer of 1983, the resistance

attacked a two-battalion convoy that became bogged down

in the mud on a twisted canyon road enroute to relieve

Urgun. After a mine destroyed the lead tank, the rebels

killed 300 of the 800 Soviet troops—bad weather precluded

air support.70

Unfortunately, the Soviets did not systematically

distribute the lessons of the 40th Army in Afghanistan to

the Soviet Army as a whole. Individual units developed

their own tactics and techniques as a result of their

experiences, but they rarely shared these techniques with

other units. Moreover, even the motorized units who

received some specialized training before deploying to

Afghanistan were not responsive or effective in nonlinear

tactics. Finally, the conventional and Clausewitzian

focused 40th Army was not capable of suppressing the

resistance fighters. The few innovations that were

realized—bounding over-watch, the bronegruppa, and

enveloping detachments—remained conventional and were

compromised by other shortcomings. These shortcomings

were insufficient unit field strengths, poor integration of

civilian and military authorities, and the absence of a

36
campaign to win the hearts and minds. In other words, the

Soviets failed to employ the classic principles of any

successful counterinsurgency campaign.71

Chechnya.

One execution will save the life of a hundred Russians and

prevent a thousand Muslims from committing treason.

General Yermolov72

The historical continuity manifested by the Russian

invasion of Chechnya, approximately 5 years after Soviet

troops withdrew from Afghanistan, is remarkable. To be

certain, Russia was much weaker, and the Russian armed

forces that went into Grozny in December 1994 were even

less trained and more poorly equipped. Nonetheless,

however much Russia had fallen from superpower status

and however much Russian military power was degraded,

the Russian forces that invaded Chechnya still exhibited

the military strategic preferences of a great power. Being

consistent with the Russian great-power tradition, Yeltsin

adopted a hard line against the Chechens and surrounded

himself with advisers who were hawks. He removed

hesitant military commanders, fired the doves in the

Ministry of Defense, and denounced his critics in the press.

Moreover, the Russian military employed massive force,

including heavy aerial and artillery bombardments of

Grozny and other cities, that created a level of

indiscriminate carnage that reminded many observers of

the Afghan war. After weeks of such methods, which

resulted in thousands of military and civilian casualties, the

Russians took control of Grozny and began a string of very

costly, but successful attacks on other cities using the same

approach. General Yermelov would have been smiling in his

grave.73

Russian forces surrounded Grozny on three sides and

entered the city from the north, moving headlong into hell.

The Chechen force was not a regular army but rather a

composite force of armed militia (guerrillas) and a few

37
regular forces. Much of the equipment they used had been

left behind by Russia’s armed forces when they departed in

1993. However, the Chechens spoke Russian, had served in

the Russian armed forces, and had Russian uniforms. This

made it easier to understand Russian plans, tactics, and to

use deception against the Russians. Clearly, the Chechens

also had an enormous advantage as a native defender in the

battle of Grozny. In addition to the guerrillas’ knowledge of

the city’s sewer, metro, and tram systems, they also knew

the back alleys, buildings, and streets. On the other hand,

the Russians did not know Grozny, they lacked the right

maps, and as a result they often got lost, stumbling into

Chechen ambushes or firing on friendly forces. Unit

boundaries were virtually impossible to coordinate because

of the lack of good maps. Although the guerrillas fought the

Battle of Grozny more conventionally than they did

operations subsequent to this battle, they nonetheless used

an unorthodox Fabian approach, harnessing the

advantages of urban sprawl to undermine the Russians’

technology. Their preferred tactic was to isolate Russian

forces in some alley to ambush and destroy the Russian

force piecemeal.74

After the battle of Grozny, the Chechens chose to conduct

a battle of successive cities, intending to repeat the pain

they inflicted on the Russians in Grozny elsewhere. They

moved their operations to Argun, Shali, and other urban

centers because they realized that they could accomplish

two goals with urban warfare: they could negate the

Russian advantages in firepower in open terrain from

helicopters, combat aircraft, and tanks; and they could

blend in with the local population to their advantage. This

not only made it very difficult to discriminate between

civilians and combatants, but it also helped the Chechens

recruit more warriors and win the support of the population,

thanks to the Russians’ use of force. When Russian forces

entered a city, they typically killed and wounded civilians

and destroyed property—not the ideal way to “win hearts

and minds.”75

38
On February 9, 1995, the Chechen command decided to

withdraw the largest portion of its forces from Grozny

because the balance of forces was shifting against them and

because the Russians were getting smarter about fighting

there. Even though the Chechens had inflicted significant

casualties on the Russians, they also had suffered serious

losses in Grozny. In the true Maoist style of “hit and run to

fight another day,” the Chechens decided to cut their losses

and move their base of operations to the mountains—

another milieu in which mechanized conventional forces are

at a distinct disadvantage. Once in the mountains, the

Chechen Defense Committee made a deliberate shift to

partisan methods that included attacks against isolated

Russian outposts, ambushes along roadways, diversionary

attack against railway lines, and attacks against lines of

logistics. Moreover, the guerrillas consistently avoided

direct battles with Russian forces and focused instead on

surprise attacks, always withdrawing with their dead

immediately afterward.76

In addition, there are several anecdotal examples of how

the Chechens employed Maoist/asymmetric methods to

exploit the weaknesses of their conventional Russian

enemy. One such method was to use the seams between the

Russian units, coupled with the poor coordination between

Russian units, to provoke the Russian elements to fire at

each other. A small group of Chechen warriors would

infiltrate between the Russian units at night and fire their

weapons in both directions, with machine guns and grenade

launchers. Sometimes the Chechens would even use

trotyl-enhanced anti-tanks grenades. As soon as the

Russian troops responded with fire, the Chechens would

withdraw. As a result, the Russian units would continue to

fire at each other for a long time before they realized they

were committing fratricide. Often enough, they kept firing

at each other until sunrise the next morning when

helicopters providing assistance could observe and clarify

the situation. The guerrillas also intercepted nonsecure

Russian radio transmissions, and as a result, the Chechens

39
were sometimes able to deceive Russian aircraft into

attacking their own troops.77

The Russians also had difficulty pursuing dismounted

infantry in an urban environment. Chechen infantry

consistently eluded Russian troops for the duration of the

war. Every time a Russian mechanized task force

surrounded a Chechen village, most Chechens often were

able to exfiltrate through the surrounding Russian units.

The Chechen advantage stemmed from the fact that they

used an asymmetric approach that fused Fabius with Mao.

Their tactics were simple; they had light and portable

grenade launchers, machine guns and anti-tank weapons,

and, as a result, they were mobile. In addition, the Chechens

avoided situations in which Russian numbers and

conventional forces would be at an advantage—they

avoided strengths and attacked weakness. On the other

hand, the Russian Army was Clausewitzian, trained to fight

according to the conventional rules against other regular

army units on the plains of Europe. The Russians were not

trained to fight against an enemy comprising small groups,

in either urban or mountainous terrain.78

THE PARADOX OF TIME AND SPACE—THE

DISPERSION/CONCENTRATION CONUNDRUM

Strategy is the art of making use of time and space.

—Napoleon79

In the vast expanses of China, Mao masterfully

manipulated time and space to cause Japanese forces to

disperse. By inducing the dispersal of the Kwantung Army,

Chinese guerrillas could attack isolated outposts and attrite

Japanese forces piecemeal. Essentially, the weaker

opponent can use time and space factors to shape the

concentration/dispersion chimera to its advantage. The

asymmetric strategist uses space to draw his enemy out to

the countryside, making it difficult for the big power to

concentrate its numerical superiority. The conventional

force, then, must use more and more troops to secure its

40
lines of communications, resulting in a host of isolated

outposts. The weaker adversary is thereby able to locally

concentrate his inferior numbers against overextended

detachments. B. H. Liddell Hart refers to this as an

inversion of the orthodox principle of concentration and

offers this description:

dispersion is an essential condition of survival and success on

the guerrilla side, which must never present a target and thus

can only operate in minute particles, though these may

momentarily coagulate like globules of quick-silver to

overwhelm some weakly guarded objective.80

In other words, a prudent peripheral opponent

harnesses time and space to disperse the great power’s

military forces, thereby protracting the conflict: “Mao and

Giap have repeatedly emphasized that the principal

contradiction which the imperialist army must confront on

the ground derives from the fact that forces dispersed to

control territory become spread so thinly that they are

vulnerable to attack.” What is more, if the big power

concentrates its forces to overcome this vulnerability, then

other areas are left insecure. A massive increase in

metropolitan forces can help resolve this operational

contradiction, but it also immediately increases the

domestic costs of the war. Conversely, if the great power

wants to placate domestic opposition by withdrawing some

forces, the contradiction at the operational level becomes

more acute.81

Also, Mao explained that the “guerrilla can prolong his

struggle and make it a protracted war by employing

manpower in proper concentrations and dispersions” and by

concentrating against dispersed enemy detachments that

are relatively weaker. For every territorial space, there is an

inevitable mathematical logic that dictates how many

troops are required to exert control. For example, T. E.

Lawrence claimed that it would have required 20 Turkish

soldiers for every square mile (600,000 total—a prohibitive

number) to control the Arab revolt. Similarly, although the

41
Russian forces were far superior in numbers, they were

unable to concentrate against their enemies because of the

terrain and because of the ability of the Mujahideen and

Chechen guerillas to use the terrain to protract the war.

Both guerrillas compelled the Russians to disperse in order

to protect their vulnerable lines of communication (LOC).82

Afghanistan.

We must make war everywhere and cause dispersal of his forces

and dissipation of his strength.

—Mao Tse-tung83

The absence of a well-developed transportation

infrastructure and the difficult terrain in Afghanistan

dictated the terms of combat to a large degree. Although

there were single major highways that connected the major

cities and despite the route to the Soviet frontier,

Afghanistan lacked a serious road network. Consequently,

the mobility of modern mechanized and motorized forces in

the rugged terrain in the central and northern regions

proved exceedingly difficult and vulnerable to attack by

small guerrilla bands. Nevertheless, the Soviets did carry

the war to the resistance by conducting air and helicopter

operations into rebel-controlled areas. “Aerial bombing,

sometimes massive, typically accompanied such campaigns

and contributed to a population exodus on such a scale that

one Afghanistan expert used the term ‘migratory genocide’

to describe it.” The Soviets, like the Americans in Vietnam,

bombed potential resistance pockets, destroying crops,

villages, and anything else that might support guerrilla

operations. However, even though the Soviets showed that

they could go wherever they wanted, they could not hunt

down and rout the guerrillas, who melted away into the

mountains and ravines. When the Soviets withdrew, the

insurgents returned.84

It was not the capabilities of the guerrilla fighters alone

that prevented the Soviets from winning in Afghanistan.

The Soviets’ conventional doctrine did not work in that type

42
physical environment. Instead of the open terrain and

moderate climate of Europe, the Soviets found desert and

very restrictive mountainous terrain, with very extreme

variations in temperature and weather. Also, the road, rail,

and logistical infrastructure was very underdeveloped. This

environment was an advantage for the Mujahideen because

it restricted the movement and fires of the heavy Soviet

forces, and it caused huge command and control problems.

Moreover, the Soviets’ own air and ground logistical

organizations were not initially capable of supporting

dispersed forces in such difficult terrain.85

The vast space of Afghanistan and the limited quantity

of Soviet troops practically guaranteed a temporal and

spatial problem for the Soviets. For most of the war in

Afghanistan, Soviet troop strength was between 80,000 and

115,000, but at least 30-35 percent of that was dedicated to

securing LOCs and bases. For example, the defense of

convoy units against ambush, “the most venerated tactic in

the guerrilla repertoire,” posed an enormous security

problem. Even still, the lack of good highways and the

frequency of Mujahideen ambushes had already congested

the transportation network in Afghanistan. However, the

Soviets’ principal priority was the control of their LOCs

back to Soviet territory. Their second priority was the

disruption of the Mujahideen’s logistics. As a result, the

paradox of concentration and dispersion that stems from

unfavorable time and space factors was clearly manifest in

Afghanistan: the majority of Soviet forces were

concentrated on their bases, and their LOC and the rest of

their forces were inevitably over dispersed in the valleys

and the mountains, hunting guerrillas.86

Chechnya.

And if I concentrate while he divides, I can use my strength to

attack a fraction of his. There, I will be numerically superior.

Then if I am able to use many to strike few at a selected point,

those I deal with will be in dire straits.

—Sun Tzu87

43
The Chechens made good use of urban and nonurban

terrain to delay the Russian forces, to inflict significant

casualties, and to protract what Russian political and

military leaders hoped would be a quick and decisive war.

Russian Minister of Defense Grachev was so confident of a

quick victory that he boasted it would require only one

Russian parachute regiment to topple the Dudayev regime

in a couple of hours. There were two aspects to the

Chechens’ conduct of the war: urban guerrilla and mountain

guerrilla. Certainly, the urban terrain was very different

from the terrain that either Mao or Sun-Tsu envisaged

when they explained the notions of dispersion,

concentration, time, and space. However, the Chechens

knowledge of Grozny, combined with their guileful

asymmetric methods did allow them to exploit the

concentration/dispersion conundrum. For example, in

Grozny whenever the Russians occupied defensive positions

they usually placed several people in every building—in the

urban version of an outpost. Consequently, such Russian

forces were dispersed and vulnerable and the Chechens

generally exploited this by concentrating a single strike

force, or fist, to attack these urban outposts piecemeal.88

There was also the notion of urban defense as

“defenseless defense.” The Chechens chose not to defend

from strong points but to remain absolutely mobile and

difficult to find. Their hit-and-run tactics in the cities made

it very difficult for Russian troops to locate, fix, and bring

overwhelming firepower against them. As a result, the

Russians’ strengths were mitigated, and the Russians often

attacked with piecemeal forces. According to another

author, the battle for the cities showed that the urban

forests of the 19th century have been replaced by the “urban

forests” so skillfully exploited by the Chechens. The

Chechens simply applied their mastery at the art of forest

warfare, so evident in the 18th and 19th centuries, to the

urban forests in Grozny and other cities. In the 19th century

the Russians had shown that they could cut down enormous

swaths of forest and make the land unsuitable for

44
asymmetric strategies, but a city destroyed by artillery and

bombs is just as good as an intact one for conducting

guerrilla operations against conventional forces. Anatol

Lieven convincingly explains this phenomenon:89

For a guerrilla-type defensive force, this new urban forest

therefore provides many of the same possibilities as the old

natural one in terms of opportunities for sniping, mines,

booby-traps, and ambushes, and of negating the enemy’s

superiority in cavalry, armor, air power, and artillery.90

However, although the Chechens used urban and

mountain guerrilla methods to avoid direct battle against

Russia’s quantitatively superior forces, there really was not

enough suitable (urban and forested mountain) space to

protract the conflict and still preserve the Chechen

guerrillas as a fighting force. Yermelov’s successors had

deforested such a large part of Chechnya in the 19th century

that the amount of forested terrain suitable for a protracted

guerrilla struggle was limited in the 1990s. Moreover, both

in 1995 and 1996, when the Chechens were in dire straits as

a result of losses due to superior (quantitatively) Russian

forces and the Russians’ use of massive firepower, the

Chechens chose to conduct terrorist raids against

Budionovsk and Pervomaiskoye, inside Russian territory.

Thus, the Chechens opted for an ingenious and perfidious

asymmetric technique—they used Russia’s space and

porous borders to conduct raids inside Russia—raids aimed

at shock effect, to undermine Russian political and popular

support for the war. In June 1995 a Chechen detachment

under the command of Shamil Basajev infiltrated the

Stavropol District of Russia in Russian military trucks and

attacked the city of Budinovsk, shooting soldiers and

civilians, taking hostages, and occupying the city hospital.

The raid came right after the Russians had taken the

mountain villages of Noshi Jurt and Shatoja—the Russian

commander had already declared the last phase of the

mountain war against the Chechens to be a success.91

45
In January 1996, Salman Raduyev led another raid into

Dagestan with 250 guerrillas—they attacked the city of

Kizlyar and seized about 3,000 hostages. After some

negotiation, the Chechens loaded up several buses with the

hostages but were stopped at Pervomaiskoye where the

Chechens dismounted and entrenched themselves. This

raid was a big media disaster for the Russians because it

showed how ineffective they were against a detachment of

lightly-armed Chechen warriors. After the Russians

reinforced the position, Russia’s “elite” Alpha unit attacked

the village and was repulsed several times even though it

had the support of Russian helicopters, tanks, and artillery.

After 3 days without successfully seizing the Chechen-held

village, the Russians pulled back their infantry and

pulverized the city with firepower. However, the Chechens

had already exfiltrated through the Russian positions

before the village was destroyed. The media covered the

assault and reported the excessive military and civilian

casualties, causing a general public condemnation of the

Yeltsin government’s conduct of the war.92

Budionovsk had shown the Yeltsin government the very

high political price it might have to pay for continuing the

war, as well as the Chechens’ capacity to inflict serious

public humiliation through asymmetric attacks. The

debacle at Pervomaiskoye showed the Russian public and

the world how poorly trained and unwilling the Russian

troops were to risk their lives taking a small village, even

against an outnumbered and surrounded enemy. In March

1996, the Chechens launched a counterattack against

Grozny—they seized the center, killed about 150 Russians,

and withdrew after 3 days. Finally, on August 6, the day of

Yeltsin’s second inauguration, the Chechens launched their

“zero option”—they simultaneously attacked Grozny,

Argun, and Gudermes in what was the largest Chechen

offensive of the war. In Grozny, the guerrillas quickly

occupied the center, captured the “government

headquarters,” and surrounded or over ran Russian

military outposts even though the Chechens were

46
numerically inferior to the Russian defenders by three to

one. 93

This was a pivotal use of urban terrain and psychological

shock to attack the Russians’ will to continue the war—by

the second day, the Russians had suffered 500 killed and

1,500 wounded, and were pushed back to their pre-assault

positions of December 1994. This huge defeat caused the

Russians to negotiate for peace and end the first campaign

against the Chechens. It is worth mentioning how

analogous the Chechens’ “zero option” assault against the

principal cities in 1996 was to the Viet Cong’s Tet Offensive

against the cities of South Vietnam in 1968. Both offensives

were decisive in causing two great powers to quit small wars

and both were quintessentially asymmetric in that they

were indirect attacks against the two great powers’ centers

of gravity—their will to continue these limited wars.94

CONCLUSION

In both Afghanistan and Chechnya, Russian forces

demonstrated a conspicuous lack of agility because they

remained tied to mechanized/heavy forces and to a

conventional doctrine, both of which were unsuitable for

counterinsurgencies in rugged mountain terrain and urban

terrain. The Mujahideen and the Chechens, on the other

hand, were much more agile and adept. The guerrillas in

both conflicts were able to use Maoist hit-and-run tactics to

mitigate the Russians’ superiority in combat systems.

According to Edward Luttwak, “The Romans evidently

thought it was much more important to minimize their own

casualties than to maximize those of the enemy.” Below, one

need only substitute Russian troops in Afghanistan for

“legionary” and BMP for “full breast plate,” and the

comparison becomes alarmingly apparent. The following

quotation about the Romans’ role in peripheral wars

underscores why the Russians’ lack of agility was

germane.95

47
It is enough to recall images of legionary troops to see how far

offensive performance was deliberately sacrificed to reduce

casualties. The large rectangular shield, sturdy metal helmet,

full breastplate, shoulder guard, and foot grieves were so heavy

that they greatly restricted agility. Legionnaires were

extremely well protected but could hardly chase enemies who

ran away, nor even pursue them for long if they merely

retreated at a quick pace.96

The asymmetry of will, and concomitantly of pain, that

inheres in the logic of small wars was a determining factor

in the Soviet and Russian failures in Afghanistan and

Chechnya. The Soviet Union and Russia were willing to

accept far fewer casualties than their guerrilla adversaries

were willing to accept. In asymmetric struggles, the weaker

side has two options—victory or death. The great power’s

options, on the other hand, are victory or go home. Even in

the Soviet era, under a totalitarian regime and with

complete government control of the media, Moscow was not

able to sustain the will required to commit a sufficient

amount of troops for a sufficient duration to succeed.

The lack of will was even more manifest in Chechnya

where the Russians essentially lacked any indigenous

troops to do some of their fighting for them, and where the

losses inflicted were more acute, over a shorter period of

time. In 2 years in Chechnya, the Russians suffered almost

half the total number of soldiers killed during 10 years in

Afghanistan (6,000 versus 14,000). In addition, in

Chechnya the Russian military was suffering from huge

morale problems due to the poor quality of life, poor pay, and

poor training. It is important to underline this as an

important difference between the war in Afghanistan and

the war in Chechnya: the state of readiness of the Russian

forces who entered Chechnya in 1994 was significantly

degraded compared to the state of readiness of Soviet forces

that entered Afghanistan in 1979.97 One author explained

this very lucidly: “A rickety, corrupt, and collapsing military

machine was to be pitted against a keenly motivated and

48
well-armed warrior people adept at guerrilla tactics. The

results should have been predictable.”98

This is the essence of the paradox of will—no great power

ultimately demonstrates the will to stay in a protracted war,

not in defense of vital national interests, and against an

enemy who does not fight by the great power’s rules.

However, the U.S. war in Afghanistan differs significantly

from the Soviet war there because we are fighting against

an enemy who has attacked our homeland and who

continues to threaten the security of our population.

Imperial Russia, Soviet Russia, and present-day Russia

have manifested continuous geopolitical and strategic

predilections to assert control over their perceived spheres

of influence along Russia’s southern rim. For Imperial

Russia, it was a messianic crusade to expand, “civilize,” and

russify a multinational empire. Soviet Russia also

continued to dominate and subjugate the peoples of the

Caucasus and Central Asia, but under the pretext of

ideological consolidation and of securing a vast land empire

inherited from the imperial period. Since 1991 it has been

Russia, the former great power, using military force and

economic coercion to reassert its influence over the “Near

Abroad” as a method of reclaiming its great power status.

The “patrimonial mentality embedded in the Russian

psyche” that posits that everything inherited from previous

epochs is “inalienable property” argues against accepting

the separation of the former republics as a fait accompli.

However, for the last several centuries of Russian Empire,

one thing remained constant—Russia maintained an

empire solely through brute force. In fact, both Russia’s and

the Soviets’ great power status did not stem from cultural or

economic prowess—it stemmed from raw military power

and from the fact that Russia is a huge country that

dominates the Eurasian land mass. An expert on Russia

emphasizes this point: “Russia’s claim to be a world power

has traditionally rested on military prowess, and the

temptation is to resort to this expedient once again.” 99

49
The Soviet and Russian federation forces exhibited more

continuity than change, and this was manifest in the

prosecution of counterguerrilla warfare with conventional

doctrine and conventional forces. In Afghanistan, the

Russians did modify their approach with the use of

helicopters and the insertion of special units, but their

approach remained conventional nonetheless. Also during

their second war in Chechnya, the Russian military has

employed an improved, but nonetheless conventional,

approach. Interestingly, during the second Chechen war,

the Russians finally reexamined some of the lessons they

paid with blood spilled in Afghanistan, but ones they had

ignored and paid for with similar losses during the first

Chechen war. For example, during the second Chechen

conflict, the Russians relied more on their technological

advantages in artillery and bombing stand-off ranges to

avoid close urban combat since they had suffered huge

losses in urban combat between 1994 and 1996.100

One can surmise from the paradoxes explained in this

monograph that small wars are very difficult for great

powers. This is particularly germane for Russia as a

long-time continental great power. For most of the previous

2 centuries, Russia and the Russian military have embraced

the conventional paradigm and eschewed the

unconventional one. The implication is evident: if the

Russian military wants to be successful in small wars, it

needs to cultivate a mindset and doctrine that does not focus

exclusively on the big war paradigm and it needs to become

an institution that can learn, innovate, and adapt.

The Russian military can learn from the British and

French, who have had much experience in prosecuting

small/asymmetric wars. In addition, one expert on military

reform and small wars offered this germane observation

about small wars: the promotion of the values of

decentralization, lightness, unit cohesion, and quality of

training are no less important for the asymmetric wars of

the future than they were for the small wars of the past.

Counterinsurgency in difficult terrain against tenacious

50
mountain fighters, then, requires specialized, elite, light,

cohesive, and tactically versatile forces. Thus asymmetric

conflicts require the opposite type of military culture, force

structure, and doctrine than the Soviet and Russian great

power militaries brought to those wars. It also requires good

intelligence and a very precise and minimal application of

lethal force. This conclusion, in particular, is quite germane

to the U.S. military’s counterguerrilla war in Afghanistan.

There light and special units are trying to gather good

intelligence to precision bomb and root out al-Queda

fighters on the same terrain that the Soviets fought the

Mujahideen over a decade ago.101

In fact, one could add yet another contradiction to the

paradoxes of asymmetric conflict—the paradox of hubris

and humility. Great powers always underestimate the will,

skill, and tenacity of their adversaries in small wars. The

following postscript cogently underlines Russia’s

geopolitical and strategic cultural continuity in the

southern periphery:

The goal of preserving a “Great Russia” was always at the

heart of the Russian Federation’s efforts [in Chechnya]. The

basic contours of this policy had remained unchanged since

tsarist times with only the tools of modern warfare being

added to the methodology. All the old ramifications of empire

went with it and, in essence, hegemony by force of arms

remained its key ingredient.102

IMPLICATIONS FOR U.S. ARMY

TRANSFORMATION

How is this monograph germane to the U.S. Army and its

efforts to transform itself? In addition, are there linkages

between these Russian failures and the U.S. military’s

withdrawals from Vietnam and Somalia? It seems that the

Soviet and Russian debacles in Afghanistan and Chechnya

are manifestly relevant: as a superpower and former

superpower, the Russian military embraced and continued

to cling to a big-war paradigm, to its extreme detriment.

51
Likewise, the U.S. Army has embraced a big-war paradigm

at least since World War I, and more probably since the

influence of Emory Upton during the last quarter of the 19th

century. This preference for the conventional paradigm

became embedded in U.S. military culture over time and by

the Vietnam War, this preference shaped the U.S Army so

much that it was unable to adapt itself to counterinsurgency, instead preferring to apply a big war paradigm

when it was entirely inappropriate. The salience of one big

power’s failures in asymmetric conflict for the future of the

Army’s transformation is this: the U.S. Army exhibits a

cultural preference for the big war paradigm; culture

generally changes incrementally instead of innovatively;

and culture hugely influences doctrine and force structure.

Thus, the lack of military cultural change that led the

Russian military down the road to defeat should serve as

one impetus, and warning, that U.S. military culture must

change more rapidly. The remainder of this monograph

illuminates some of the cultural predilections of the U.S.

military and identifies some of the obstacles on the path to

transformation.

The U.S. Army remains the principal land force of the

sole remaining superpower, and, having been focused

against its Soviet competitor’s armed forces for almost half a

century for a big war show down on the plains of Europe, its

orientation is, in essence, conventional and symmetric. The

troops of the U.S. Special Operations Command comprise

the small portion of U.S. forces that embrace anything close

to approximating an asymmetric mindset. Yet even these

specially trained warriors look at asymmetric and

unconventional approaches through the filters of decades

and centuries worth of Western military tradition. One need

only recall that the most elite of these forces (TF Ranger)

had used the same exact template seven times in

Mogadishu, making itself very predictable and vulnerable

to an asymmetric approach by thugs armed with RPGs. The

paradox of the present period is that those forces that are

best armed to fight a conventional war—the Western

52
militaries—are least likely to fight a war against each other.

Moreover, the West and its military forces have generally

dominated and monopolized the conventional paradigm of

war, usually winning when the East or the South decided to

fight according to this paradigm. The philosophies of

Jomini, Clausewitz, and Svechin are embedded in the

cultures of these militaries. As a result, the West has tended

to embrace the direct use of military force, combining

maneuver and firepower to mass combat power at the

decisive point (this point usually equates to the destruction

or annihilation of some enemy force or army).

The problem is that the enemy that we are most likely to

fight is one who has for many more centuries embraced a

different philosophy of war. Potential adversaries are from

Asia and the Near East, cultures that generally embrace an

Eastern tradition of war. Moreover, the Eastern way of war

stems from the philosophies of Sun Tzu and Mao. It is

distinguished from the Western way by its reliance on

indirectness and attrition. In other words, the Eastern way

of war is inherently more asymmetric. Four objective facts

point to the probability that the United States and the West

will most likely face an asymmetrically oriented adversary:

the Western powers represent the countries that have the

most advanced militaries (technology and firepower) in the

world; the economic and political homogenization among

these states essentially precludes a war among them; most

rational adversaries in the non-Western world would have

learned from the Gulf War not to confront the West on its

terms; and, as a result, the United States and its European

allies will employ their firepower and technology in the

less-developed world against ostensibly inferior adversaries

employing asymmetric approaches. Asymmetric conflict

will therefore be the norm, not the exception. Even though

the war in Afghanistan differs from the model of

asymmetric conflict presented in this monograph, the

asymmetric nature of the war there only underscores the

salience of asymmetric conflicts. Thus, the implication for

an army that is transforming itself to meet these new

53
threats is threefold: the U.S. Army must change its military

culture, its doctrine, and it must reexamine the utility and

relevance of its preferred tactical formation—the division.

American Military Culture and Cultural Change.

No living organization, and the Army is a living organization,

can survive without change.103

The impetus for changing the Army has been manifold:

the paradigm shift from Cold-War bipolar system to the

post-Cold War unipolar system; the resultant increase in

constabulary operations and operations other than war in

the 1990s; the conspicuous lack of strategic versatility that

was manifest in Task Force Hawk; and finally, the insidious

threat that al-Qaeda and its sponsors pose to the security of

the U.S. homeland. The events on and after September 11

alone have added a new sense of urgency to the impetus for

transformation. Since September 11, 2001, moreover, the

U.S. Army has been called on to defeat a serious asymmetric

threat, relying initially and principally on special

operations land forces to undermine al-Qaeda and its

Taliban supporters in Afghanistan. In addition, the U.S. Air

Force played no small role in defeating the Taliban, in

concert with the special operations forces. All of these facts

combine to offer another catalyst for transformation: if the

Army does not adapt to meet the asymmetric exigencies of

the emerging security environment, and if the Army does

not become more strategically versatile, then the

conventional Army risks becoming irrelevant. However,

adaptiveness and innovativeness have much to do with an

institution’s culture and, often, cultural change is a

prerequisite to transformation. For the U.S. Army to really

transform, its military culture—the values and attitudes

that it embraces about the use of force—must change.

To quickly restate the salient aspects of military

strategic culture, military culture is “assessed according to

the ideas and beliefs about how to wage war that

characterize a particular military bureaucracy.” Empirical

54
and measurable indicators include internal correspondence, planning documents, memoirs, and regulations.

However, the organizational cultures of the military

services are particularly strong because these

bureaucracies have a closed-career principle—members

spend their careers almost exclusively in these

organizations. Because mission identity is an important

part of a military’s self-concept, military organizations will

seek to promote core missions and to defeat any challenges

to core mission functions. Even if other missions are

assigned, if the organization perceives them as peripheral to

its core mission, then it will reject them as possible

detractions from its core focus. Cultural change occurs in

terms of “cultural epochs” that normally range in length

from just a decade to as long as a century.104

Moreover, another group of scholars from RAND

concluded that “the beliefs and attitudes that comprise

organizational culture can block change and cause

organizations to fail.” These authors explain that culture

often originates from successes in an organization’s history:

what worked in the past is repeated and internalized; what

didn’t work is modified or rejected. If the organization

survives, historically successful approaches are

internalized and gradually transformed into “the way we

think.” The RAND group used a comparative approach:

“comparisons with other armies can highlight different

approaches to the preparation and conduct of warfare, some

of which may be culture based.” Finally, the author arrived

at two important conclusions: first, cultural change requires

a significant amount of time—the monograph determines 5

years as the minimum time to inculcate a major cultural

change; second, major cultural change must come from the

top—leaders at the highest levels must unambiguously

back the change.105

Having highlighted that militaries do have unique

cultures, that cultural change occurs slowly, and that

cultural preferences for one type of war may impede

adaptation to other modes of war, what generalizations can

55
be drawn about U.S. military strategic culture? First,

although insular geography has afforded the United States

a degree of cheap security, history and geography have

shaped American military culture significantly. Vast land

space, hostile indigenous tribes, and a cataclysmic civil war

embedded a direct and absolute approach to war. A salient

component of this approach was a perceived or real struggle

for survival on the new continent dating back to King

Philip’s War. As a consequence of the Civil War and of an

adulation of first the French, then the Prussian model of

war, the U.S. Army became focused on conventional war

(alone) and massive firepower. Moreover, Sherman, Upton,

and their disciples, as advocates of the conventional

Prussian model, fused it with their total-war-ofannihilation approach in the Civil War and imbued it in the

profession through institutions and journals. As a result,

anything outside of the core paradigm came to be viewed as

aberrant and ephemeral.

In addition, American political culture, vast resources,

and values combine to create the view that war is bad and

should only be waged as a crusade to achieve victory swiftly

and justly. As a result, the notion of war as a last resort but

with maximum force evolved. The U.S. Army for most of this

century has also embraced the combat division as the

preferred combat formation—this is a “no brainer”—the

combat division was the most appropriate formation for the

U.S. Army’s favorite kind of war. Also salient, and topical in

the context of peace operations, is a U.S. military cultural

over emphasis on casualty avoidance and an over reliance

on the “silver bullet,” or technology. Finally, the aforementioned factors, coupled with the way and context in

which the U.S. Army professionalized at the end of the last

century led to what I have called the notion of an “Uptonian

Paradox”: the U.S. military ostensibly worships Clausewitz

as the principal philosopher/oracle of war on the one hand,

but on the other hand it exhibits a Jominian predilection to

divorce the political from the military when the shooting

starts. U.S. military strategic culture also, while in no way

56
usurping civilian control of the military ultimately, exhibits

a tendency to reshape its political masters’ views to make

those views on war congruent with its preferred paradigm

for war. Moreover, Vietnam, Harry Summers’ book, On

Strategy, and the Weinberger-Powell Doctrine have all

helped perpetuate and exacerbate this tendency of the

military to prescribe to the civilian elite “what kind of wars

we do and don’t do.”106

The U.S. military’s cultural tendency to rely on

technology to minimize casualties is particularly salient as,

potentially, we can face industrial and pre-industrial foes

who will employ asymmetry to mitigate our technological

advantages. This “silver bullet syndrome” had been

exacerbated since the Persian Gulf War, the Powell

Corollary, and the antiseptic air campaign against Kosovo.

Together these events have created the impression that the

U.S. military can harness technology to win decisively

without casualties and with a minimum number of troops

on the ground. However, America’s defeat in Vietnam and

the Soviets’ and Russians’ defeats in Afghanistan and

Chechnya show that technological disparity does not

necessarily ensure victory either on the field of battle or at

the negotiating table. According to two experts on military

policy, the “U.S military policy remains imprisoned in an

unresolved dialectic between history and technology,

between those for whom the past is prologue and those for

whom it is irrelevant.” 107

These same two experts also cogently maintain, “for

those who place unbridled faith in technology, war is a

predictable, if disorderly phenomenon, defeat a matter of

simple cost/benefit analysis, and the effectiveness of any

military capability a finite calculus of targets destroyed and

casualties inflicted.” However, history reveals a very

different account—uncertainty, chance, friction, and the fog

of battle and of the human mind under stress seriously

constrain our capacity to predict the result. Defeat must be

visited upon the minds and the will of the vanquished for it

to carry any significance. In asymmetric conflicts, human

57
factors and will are more salient than technological factors

in determining victory or defeat—in Vietnam, Afghanistan,

Somalia, and Chechnya, adaptive and resolute enemies

found ways to mitigate or undermine altogether the

advantage of technological superiority.108

Military Cultural Change and Doctrinal Change.

Doctrinal change is one indicator of military cultural

change and incremental doctrinal change reflects an

incremental change in military culture. The best work on

this subject is that of Colonel Richard Duncan Downie who

published a book that examines institutional learning and

low intensity conflict doctrine. In Learning from Conflict,

Downie focuses on doctrinal continuity and change as a

result of the relationship between a changing security

landscape that necessitates change and the military’s

ability to adapt, based on the timing of its cyclical

institutional learning process. More specifically, Downie

contends that changes in U.S. Army doctrine can serve as

observable measures of institutional learning. Two

assumptions underpin Downie’s approach: 1) change to an

organization’s institutional memory is a precondition to

institutional learning; and 2) military doctrine is “useful

representation of the U.S. Army’s institutional memory.”109

According to Downie, an organization’s “conventional

wisdom,” as reflected in norms, standard operating

procedures, and doctrine that are widely accepted and

practiced, constitutes an organization’s institutional

memory. To be sure, his conception of institutional memory

is very close to the notion of military culture. Institutional

memory is “what old members of an organization know and

what new members learn through a process of

socialization.” Institutional memory does not change

quickly or easily, and it can perpetuate doctrinal continuity

even when the doctrine leads to suboptimal performance.

He defines institutional learning as “a process by which an

organization uses new knowledge or understanding gained

58
from experience or study to adjust institutional norms,

doctrine, and procedures in ways designed to minimize

previous gaps in performance and maximize future

success.” Learning from Conflict is salient and relevant

because it examines how organizations either learn and act

to change their doctrine, or do not learn and retain

outmoded doctrine. Counterinsurgency and urban

operations are not operations about which the main stream

(conventional) U.S. Army has evinced a great deal of

enthusiasm. However, the U.S. Marine Corps, which is a

better incubator for innovative thinking about the

unorthodox nature of future war, dedicated an entire battle

lab to urban operations, with attendant exercises.110

Defense experts also maintain that the U.S. military has

not yet fully embraced the notion of fighting in urban

terrain because it does not conduct a sufficient degree of

experimentation and training to develop and sustain the

skills for urban warfare. According to some officials, the

U.S. armed forces devote “only a fraction of their training on

the complex scenarios of urban combat.” Over the last

several years, the U.S. Army and the U.S. Marines have

made progress at the tactical level, building urban training

sites and experimenting with technology that is germane to

urban warfare. However, neither the U.S. Army nor the

Marines really maintain proficiency in urban operations

because they do not spend enough time doing it. Randy

Gangle, a retired colonel who works with the urban warfare

experimentation laboratory, explains the problem lucidly:

“If there is a failure in what we are doing, it’s that we don’t

have enough balance in our training between warfare

outside of cities and warfare inside of cities.”111

Until recently, the U.S. Army doctrine for operations

against asymmetric-thinking opponents has been relatively

barren. The manual for operations other than war, now

called stability operations and support operations (SOSO),

has been in revision for the better part of a decade and the

last time it was issued was 1990. The draft Field Manual

(FM) 3-07 (SOSO) includes only one 8-page chapter on

59
Foreign Internal Defense (counterinsurgency) and does not

even address counterinsurgency or asymmetric conflict in

complex urban terrain. This relatively parsimonious

chapter also fails to capture key lessons from the host of

counterinsurgency experiences of the 1980s and 1990s. The

last Army doctrinal manual for urban operations was

published 23 years ago, an indicator of how much

importance is attached to these operations by the Army’s

core elites. The new urban operations manual (FM 3-06) is

out in draft form, and it is quite good. However, while it does

capture most of the lessons from Somalia, it does not

capture all of the key lessons from the Russians urban

operations in Chechnya. In fact, most heavy forces do not

have urban operations as a mission essential task. In

addition, the National Training Center (NTC), where heavy

forces conduct their most intense training, does not even

have one mock-up of an urban area.112

Doctrinal Change and Alternative Force

Structures.

Sacred cows make the best hamburger.

— General John Sheehan113

According to two military thinkers at the U.S. Army War

College, “Today’s debate about the preferred structure of

American military forces thus in the end is a debate about

the future of war itself.” Moreover, another innovative

thinker asserts, “At a time when the pace of technological

and social changes is without precedent in human history,

our military is clinging to the past. We are behaving like a

blue-collar union in a smokestack industry.” What is

essential to the future of armored warfare is the ability to

erase past expectations and perceptions of what tanks

should do and to imagine and envision creative ways to use

armor to meet the exigencies of the emerging and future

security landscape. Asymmetry is really an afterthought in

the tactical realm where full-spectrum dominance sounds

neat but where tribal loyalty remains wedded to very

60
conventionally focused training strategies. Before

September 11, 2001, mastering, or even acknowledging, the

asymmetric domain did not “offer opportunities for

overwhelming victory associated with conventional warfare

because asymmetry in any form is unlikely to ever threaten

the nation’s survival.” However, now it is apparent that

opponents who embrace asymmetric methods are as real a

threat as any potential conventional opponent. It is also

evident that heavy forces coupled to outdated force

structures are not the ideal formations for fighting

asymmetric warfare in complex terrain. In sum, “the

challenges of the changing quality of conflict may require

military forces to develop alternative strategies and

capabilities, forces structure and design, or innovative

applications of military power that today are in short

supply.”114

Today, the division remains the defining organization of

the U.S. Army. It was created on a permanent basis in 1914

subsequent to Army Chief of Staff Leonard Wood’s

experiment with a maneuver division in San Antonio in

1911. The Stimson Plan, named after Secretary of War

Henry L. Stimson, was the catalyst for the establishment of

the three-brigade division in the U.S. Army. Stimson first

proposed his plan for four maneuver divisions in 1913 to all

the general officers that were stationed within the

continental United States. “Some of the older ones still had

hesitated before so drastic a departure from what they

knew.” The 1910 Field Services Regulations were revised to

reflect the new organization; it defined the division as “a

self-contained unit made up of all necessary arms and

services, and complete in itself with every requirement for

independent action incident to its operations.” Robert

Doughty’s study traces the tactical doctrine of the U.S.

Army from 1946 until 1976; it also traces the evolution of the

U.S. Army division. And, although strategic requirements,

doctrine, and tactics underwent various changes,

eliminating the division for the sake of greater dispersion

during the “pentomic era,” or to more realistically meet the

61
terrain and enemy situations in Vietnam, was almost

inconceivable.115

Doughty examines the evolution of the Army division

over 30 years: from the World War II division through the

Korean War; the pentomic division for the nuclear

battlefield; the ROAD through the ostensible counterinsurgency era; the short-lived triple capability (TRICAP)

division; back to the conventional division during the

post-Vietnam era; and the Army of Excellence (AOE) of the

1980s. A case in point, in 1945 Major General Jim Gavin

concluded that a nuclear battlefield required widely

dispersed and relatively autonomous “battle groups, each

one capable of sustained combat on its own.” Even though it

could be argued that abandoning the division for

regimental-sized battle groups would have been a better

option, five battle groups came to comprise a redesigned

division. Moreover, after World War I, in the inter-war

period, any reorganization of the division was controversial.

John Wilson observes, “Once that organizational structure

[the division] became embedded in both the Regular Army

and the reserve components, it became exceedingly difficult

to alter it in any way.”116

By the 1980s the Army of Excellence (AOE) concept

introduced the “light infantry division (LID),” even though

the Kupperman Study had asserted that the Army’s

organizational [divisional] structure would not permit it to

win in a low intensity conflict (LIC) environment. The study

had proposed the creation of regionally-oriented light

infantry brigades to be trained and equipped under a pilot

light infantry division training headquarters. In fact, the

LID was being designed to augment heavy forces even

though it was originally conceived as a LIC organization.

One author writing in the mid-1980s argued that the light

infantry brigade concept clashed with the U.S. Army’s

large-unit, division and above emphasis. As a footnote to the

centrality of the division, Doughty observed that from

1946-76, the doctrine for the armor and artillery branches

seemed almost static. “For most of the period under study,

62
both performed in essentially the same fashion they had in

World War II.”117

“The combat division is the centerpiece of Army

war-fighting doctrine and the focus of its operational plans.”

A RAND study, Army Culture and Planning in a Time of

Great Change, identifies “the centrality of the division” as a

distinctive characteristic of U.S. Army culture. This study

asserts that the division has long been viewed as the “most

prestigious Army assignment and the most sought-after

organization in which to command troops.” U.S. Army

divisions comprise the greater part of its combat power; and

to some degree, the Army assesses its state of preparedness

by the number of divisions it maintains, especially regular

Army divisions. “As an artifact of the industrial age, the

division has remained continually in existence since before

World War I.” Although the Army has periodically

redesigned the organization of the division, the division as a

concept and an organizing principle remains unaltered.

Another author supports this proposition,

recognizing that the development of American military

tactics, doctrine, and war fighting organizations for future

conflict has been rendered more difficult because the

character of the threat is no longer specified, it is not

surprising that the Army’s Force XXI program has not

resulted in any significant change in the war-fighting

structure of Army forces since the Persian Gulf War.118

In contemporary Army thinking, the division is still the

dominant U.S. Army organization that trains and fights as

a team—the division combined arms team is still the

centerpiece of the U.S. Army’s war-fighting structure and

doctrine. Even the creation of Force XXI, a truly innovative

and forward-looking concept to fundamentally redesign the

Army for information-age warfare, implicitly retains the

idea of the division as a basic building block. “The very fact

that Force XXI testing revolves around brigade, division,

and corps operations suggests that test results will

explicitly confirm the division’s importance.” In fact,

63
somewhat ironically, the cultural resistance to move away

from the division to a regimental-sized combined battle

group at the end of the 20th century is as strong as was the

Army’s resistance to transition from regimental operations

to divisional operations at the beginning of this century.

Macgregor elucidates this problem: “trained and organized

for a style of war that has changed very little since World

War II, current Army organizational structures will limit

the control and exploitation of superior military technology

and human potential in future operations.”119

To the degree that the central role of the Army division

stems from cultural preference and resistance rather than a

deliberately and comprehensively considered decision, it is

likely that the Army may dismiss future changes in

technology, the international security landscape, and the

national security strategy, if these changes, in fact,

prescribe the demise of its organizational centerpiece. With

the current division-based force structure, the American

Army “continues to reflect the distinguishing features of the

industrial age forces that it developed during World War II.”

Today’s Army forces, according to Macgregor, still comprise

large industrial era forces capable of massing firepower.120

Since a regimental system is effective for small wars, it

might be the most appropriate, deployable, and flexible

organization for smaller scale contingencies. The British

have an advantage since the regiment is embedded in their

culture. However, although the U.S. Army Chief of Staff is

driving the creation of medium-weight and lighter brigades,

there is still much intransigence about abandoning the

division. It is a bit ironic that exactly a century ago, the

regiment was the central organization of the U.S. Army, as

was imperial policing (Philippines) a salient mission.

Regimental-sized combined arms battle groups would be

the most suitable adaptation to technology and to the

emerging security landscape.121 “If one can reduce warfare

to the destruction of a few key target sets by small teams of

warriors rather than the application of organized violence

by large operational formations, military culture would

64
then place more value on the former rather than the

latter.”122

POSTSCRIPT

The officer corps as the core cultural elite of the U.S.

Army must do some serious thinking and innovating about

the future of war. “Thinking outside the box” must become a

reality, not just a popular but meaningless bumper sticker

in the Army vernacular. Currently our culture is this “box,”

and most of our potential or real adversaries know our

template—combined maneuver warfare, very mobile armor

and airmobile formations, and massing effects with our

technological superiority. Moreover, because our military

culture has embraced the Clausewitzian paradigm of war

for so long, it will be hard to break this template. It requires

more than just strapping on advanced technology to old

systems and old ideas. Industrial and pre-industrial

opponents who are resolute and cunning will want to fight

U.S. forces in complex terrain that undercuts our

technological superiority, in urban environments for

example. The institutional impetus for change is already

here—General Eric Shinseki has made it clear that the U.S.

Army must transform if it wants to remain relevant.123

However, military culture and large centralized and

hierarchical institutions change very incrementally. At

Fort Hood, where the largest single concentration of armor

forces resides, huge strides have been made in the area of

digital transformation but there is no manifest change in

thinking outside the orthodox and conventional methods of

employing these forces. The NTC, where most of these forces

conduct their annual “super bowl” training event, prides

itself as a learning organization but it is not. The NTC offers

a superb and challenging tactical training environment but

it seems to be the cultural Praetorian Guard of a paradigm

lost. The box at NTC accounts for much about the orthodox

box that Army culture has prescribed for itself—the

observer controller group has turned “compliance with the

65
template” into a very lock step series of checking checklists.

It is a dangerous thing to transform the current doctrine,

which already reflects only incremental and suboptimal

change, into dogma. The Chief of Staff of the Army and the

security environment are catalyzing change, but

momentum must also come from within—tribal loyalties

and predilections need to be cast away in order to move

forward unfettered by cultural baggage.

ENDNOTES

1. Mao Tse-Tung, On Protracted Warfare, Peking: Foreign

Language Press, 1967, p. 97.

2. Inferior connotes a weakness only according to conventional

measures of military power, it does not necessarily indicate a lack of

war-fighting skills. See Donald M. Snow, The Shape of the Future, 2nd

ed., New York: M. E. Sharpe, 1995, pp. 16-27, 38-52, for a discussion of

the improbability that Western powers will employ force in the Third

World.

3. Andrew Mack, “Why Big Powers Lose Small Wars: The Politics of

Asymmetric Conflict,” in Power, Strategy, and Security: A World Politics

Reader, Klaus Knorr, ed., Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press,

1983, pp. 126-151. For an explanation of asymmetry of development, see

Mao Tse-tung, On Guerrilla Warfare, Samuel B. Griffith, trans.,

Champaign, IL: University of Illinois Press, 1961, pp. 66-70.

4. B. H. Liddell Hart, Strategy, 2nd ed., New York: Praeger, 1967,

pp. 26-27. The term “Fabian” connotes an indirect strategic use of force

and stems from the Roman general Quintus Fabius Maximus Cunctator

(the Delayer) who protracted the war against Hannibal in the Second

Punic War by the avoidance of decisive battles.

5. See Mack, pp. 133-134, for a discussion on internal cohesion.

Vincent Cronin, Napoleon, London: HarperCollins Publishers, 1994, pp.

148-149. During the Battle of Omdurman, the British annihilated their

indigenous adversary, the Dervishes, because the enemy decided to

fight the British according the British conventional paradigm. See

Winston S. Churchill, The River War, London: Prion, 1997, pp. 191-225;

and Daniel P. Bolger, “The Ghosts of Omdurman,” Parameters, Vol. 21,

Autumn 1991, p. 34. Robert M. Utley, The Contribution of the Frontier to

the American Military Tradition, The Harmon Memorial Lecture Series

66
No. 19, Colorado Springs, CO: USAF Academy, 1977, pp. 3-5; and Mack,

p. 127.

6. Joint Chiefs of Staff, Joint Doctrine Encyclopedia, Washington,

DC: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1997, p. 59; Joint Chiefs of Staff,

JP 3-0, Doctrine for Joint Operations, Washington, DC: U.S.

Government Printing Office, 2001, pp. III-9; Joint Strategy Review,

Washington, DC: Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, 1999, p. 2, in

Steven Metz, “Strategic Asymmetry,” Military Review, Vol. 81,

July-August 2001, p. 24.

7. Metz, p. 25.

8. The term first appears in 1974 in Andrew Mack, “The Concept of

Power and Its Uses in Explaining Asymmetric Conflict,” London:

Richardson Institute for Conflict and Peace Research, 1974. See Max G.

Manwaring, Internal War: Rethinking Problem and Response, Carlisle,

PA: Strategic Studies Institute, 2001, pp. vii-viii.

9. The concept “strategic paradox” is from Russell F. Weigley, The

American Way of War: A History of United States Military Strategy and

Policy, Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 1973, p. 18.

10. Ibid., p. xvii; Jeffrey W. Legro, “Military Culture and

Inadvertent Escalation in World War II,” International Security, Vol.

18, Spring 1994, p. 112; Edgar Schein, “Organizational Culture,”

American Psychologist, Vol. 45, February 1990, p. 111; Elizabeth Kier,

“Culture and Military Doctrine: France Between the Wars,”

International Security, Vol. 19, Spring 1995, p. 66; Yitzhak Klein, “A

Theory of Strategic Culture,” Comparative Strategy, Vol. 10, 1991, pp.

5-6, 10, 13; Jeffrey W. Legro, “Culture and Preferences in the

International Cooperation Two-Step,” American Political Science

Review, Vol. 90, March 1996, pp. 118, 121; Alan Macmillan, “Strategic

Culture and National Ways in Warfare: The British Case,” RUSI

Journal, Vol. 140, October 1995, p. 33; and Carnes Lord, “American

Strategic Culture,” Comparative Strategy, Vol. 5, Fall 1985, pp.

273-274.

11. Walter Pintner, “Russian Military Thought: The Western Model

and the Shadow of Suvorov,” in Makers of Modern Stategy, Peter Paret,

ed., Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1986, p. 356.

12. Condoleezza Rice, “The Making of Soviet Strategy,” in Makers of

Modern Strategy, Peter Paret, ed., Princeton, NJ: Princeton University

Press, 1986, p. 674.

67
13. For a discussion of the evolution of war in Europe, see Michael

Howard, War in European History, New York: Oxford University Press,

1977.

14. Rice, pp. 655, 658, 674, 676.

15. Carl Van Dyke, “Kabul to Grozny: A Critique of Soviet (Russian)

Counter-Insurgency Doctrine,” The Journal of Slavic Military Studies,

Vol. 9, December 1996, pp. 690-691.

16. John Erickson, “The Development of Soviet Military Doctrine,”

in The Origins of Contemporary Doctrine, John Gooch, ed., Occasional,

No. 30, Camberley, UK: Strategic and Combat Studies Institute, 1997,

pp. 88-89, 91.

17. Ibid., pp. 81, 88-89, 98-100, 101-103, 105.

18. Scott R. McMichael, “The Soviet Army, Counter-Insurgency,

and the Afghan War,” Parameters, Vol. 19, December 1989, pp. 21-22;

Olivier Roy, The Lessons of the Soviet/Afghan War, Adelphi Paper 259,

London: International Institute for Strategic Studies, 1991, pp. 51-52.

19. Van Dyke, pp. 695-696.

20. Sherman W. Garnett, “Russia and Its Borderlands: A Geography

of Violence,” Parameters, Vol. 27, Spring 1997, pp. 6-7.

21. Mack, “Why Big Powers Lose Small Wars,” p. 132.

22. Liddell Hart, Strategy, pp. 26-27. Also see B. H. Liddell Hart,

The British Way in Warfare, New York: The Macmillan Company, 1933,

p. 97.

23. Cited in Frontinus, Strategems and Aqueducts of Rome, Charles

E. Bennett, trans., Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1997,

pp. 67-68.

24. Robert F. Baumann, Russian-Soviet Unconventional Wars in the

Caucasus, Central Asia, and Afghanistan, Leavenworth Paper No. 20,

Fort Leavenworth, KS: Combat Studies Institute, 1993, p. 135.

25. Alex Alexiev, The War in Afghanistan: Soviet Strategy and the

State of the Resistance, Santa Monica, CA: RAND, 1984, pp. 2-3.

26. Scott E. McIntosh, “Leading with the Chin: Using Svechin to

Analyze the Soviet Incursion into Afghanistan,” The Journal of Slavic

Military Studies, Vol. 8, June 1995, p. 429; Stephen J. Blank,

68
Afghanistan and Beyond: Reflections on the Future of Warfare, Carlisle

Barracks, PA: Strategic Studies Institute, 1993, p. 1; Henry Kissinger,

“The Vietnam Negotiations,” Foreign Affairs, Vol. 47, January 1969, p.

214.

27. Gregory J. Celestan, Wounded Bear: The Ongoing Military

Operation in Chechnya, Fort Leavenworth, KS: Foreign Military

Studies Office (hereafter FMSO), 1996, p. 6.

28. Russell F. Weigley, “American Strategy from its Beginnings

through the First World War,” in Makers of Modern Strategy, Peter

Paret, ed., Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1986, pp.

410-412; and Weigley, The American Way of War, pp. 5, 15, 18-19.

29. This explanation is based on Weigley, The American Way of War,

p. 34. Weigley discusses this contradiction in the context of another

asymmetric conflict—the American Revolution.

30. Henry Kissinger, “The Vietnam Negotiations,” Foreign Affairs,

Vol. 47, January 1969, p. 214.

31. Mack, “Why Big Powers Lose Small Wars,” pp. 128, 133.

32. Lester W. Grau, The Bear Went Over the Mountain: Soviet

Combat Tactics in Afghanistan, Washington, DC: NDU Press, 1996, p.

205.

33. Ibid., pp. 205-206.

34. McMichael, p. 31.

35. Joseph W. Collins, “The Soviet-Afghan War: The First Four

Years,” Parameters, Vol. 14, Summer 1984, pp. 50-51.

36. Bernard Expedit, “The Soviets in Afghanistan,” in Guerilla

Strategies: Revolutionary Wars and Counter-Insurgencies, Gerard

Chaliand, ed., Paris: Gallimard, 1984, p. 327.

37. Robert S. Litwak, “The Soviet Union in Afghanistan” in Foreign

Military Intervention: The Dynamics of Protracted Conflict, Aeriel E.

Levite, Bruce W. Jentleson, and Larry Berman, eds., New York:

Columbia University Press, 1992, p. 84.

38. Roy, p. 53; Litwak, p. 84; and Grau, The Bear Went Over the

Mountain, p. xix.

69
39. Sean J. A. Edwards, Mars Unmasked: The Changing Face of

Urban Operations, Santa Monica, CA: RAND, 2000, p. 28.

40. Timothy Thomas, “The Caucasus Conflict and Russian Security:

The Russian Armed Forces Confront Chechnya, Part III,” Fort

Leavenworth, KS: FMSO, 1997, p. 6; Raymond Finch, “Why the Russian

Military Failed in Chechnya,” Fort Leavenworth, KS: FMSO, 1997, pp.

4-7; Gregory J. Celestan, “Wounded Bear: The Ongoing Russian

Military Operation in Chechnya,” Fort Leavenworth, KS: FMSO, 1996,

p. 4.

41. Sun Tzu, cited in Timothy Thomas, “The Battle of Grozny:

Deadly Classroom for Urban Combat,” Parameters, Vol. 29, Summer

1999, p. 87.

42. Lester W. Grau, Changing Russian Tactics: The Aftermath of the

Battle of Grozny, Strategic Forum No. 38, Washington, DC: Institute for

National Security Studies, 1995, p. 5; and Thomas, “The Caucasus

Conflict,” pp. 9, 22-23.

43. Finch, pp. 5-6; and Celestan, p. 5. This refers to Mao Tse-Tung’s

ubiquitous simile in which the people in a guerrilla war are “likened to

water” and the guerrillas are likened “to the fish who inhabit it” in Mao,

On Guerrilla Warfare, p. 93. Most counterinsurgency experts would

assert the necessity of separating the fish from the water by winning the

hearts and minds of the population.

44. Lester W. Grau, “Bashing the Laser Range Finder with a Rock,”

Fort Leavenworth, KS: FMSO, 1997, p. 4.

45. Edward N. Luttwak, “Toward Post-Heroic Warfare,” Foreign

Affairs, Vol. 74, May/June 1995, p. 116.

46. Samuel B. Griffith, “Introduction,” in Mao Tse-tung, On

Guerrilla Warfare, Samuel B. Griffith, trans., Champaign, IL:

University of Illinois Press, 1961, p. 7.

47. Francis Ford Coppola, Gardens of Stone, produced by Columbia

TriStar Home Video, 111 minutes, 1987, videocassette.

48. Brian M. Jenkins, The Unchangeable War, RM-6278-2-ARPA,

Santa Monica, CA: RAND, 1970, p. 4.

49. Mack, “Why Big Powers Lose Small Wars,” pp. 128, 130,

132-133.

50. Ibid., pp. 136-139.

70
51. Roy, pp. 32-33.

52. Mack, “Why Big Powers Lose Small Wars,” pp. 129-130; and

Mao, On Guerrilla Warfare, p. 90.

53. Roy, pp. 15, 17.

54. Ibid., pp. 20, 32.

55. Ibid., p. 33.

56. Douglas A. Borer, Superpowers Defeated: Vietnam and

Afghanistan Compared, London: Frank Cass, 1999, pp. 234-235.

57. Edwards, p. 73.

58. Anatol Lieven, Chechnya: Tombstone of Russian Power, New

Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1999, pp. 324-325, 336.

59. Thomas, “Deadly Classroom for Urban Combat,” pp. 89-90.

60. Ibid., p. 90; and Edwards, pp. 72-73.

61. Edwards, p. 73.

62. Mao, On Protracted Warfare, p. 65.

63. Samual P. Huntington, The Soldier and the State: The Theory

and Politics of Civil-Military Relations, Cambridge, MA: The Belknap

Press, 1957, pp. 46-65; Graham T. Allison, The Essence of Decision:

Explaining the Cuban Missile Crisis, Boston, MA: Little, Brown, and

Co., 1971, pp. 67-68, 83, 91; Morton H. Halperin, Bureaucratic Politics

and Foreign Policy, Washington, DC: The Brookings Institution, 1974,

pp. 28, 51, 58.

64. McMichael, pp. 21-22, 24.

65. McIntosh, p. 420.

66. Roy, pp. 16, 18. It is hard to miss the similarity, and the

concomitant irony, between the name Pavlovsky and Pavlov. In some

manner, the Soviet Army in Afghanistan resembled Pavlov’s dogs in

that it exhibited a previously conditioned response, however

inappropriate.

67. Ibid., pp. 18, 19; and Expedit, pp. 327-329.

71
68. McIntosh, pp. 420-421, 426.

69. McIntosh, p. 426; and McMichael, p. 22.

70. Baumann, p. 164.

71. Van Dyke, p. 694.

72. Patrick Brunot et Viatcheslav Avioutski, La Tchétchenie, Paris:

Presses Universitaires de France, 1998, p. 11.

73. Borer, pp. 230-231.

74. Thomas, “Deadly Classroom for Urban Contact,” pp. 88, 90-91.

75. Ibid., p. 91.

76. Stasys Knezys and Romanas Sedlickas, The War in Chechnya,

College Station, TX: Texas University Press, 1999, pp. 116-119.

77. Knezys and Sedlickas, p. 120; and Edwards, p. 83, footnote 132.

78. Edwards, p. 83; and Knezys and Sedlickas, pp. 106-107.

79. Napoleon Bonaparte, cited in Michael Handel, Masters of War:

Sun Tzu, Clausewitz, and Jomini, Portland, OR: Frank Cass and Co.

Ltd., 1992, p. 99.

80. Liddell Hart, Strategy, p. 365.

81. Mack, “Why Big Nations Lose Small Wars,” pp. 138-139.

82. Mao, On Guerrilla Warfare, p. 98; Mack, pp. 138-139; and

Liddell Hart, Strategy, p. 366.

83. Mao, On Guerrilla Warfare, p. 68.

84. Baumann, pp. 136, 139, 149.

85. McMichael, p. 22.

86. Baumann, pp. 149-150, 164; Milan Hauner, The Soviet War in

Afghanistan: Patterns of Russian Imperialism, Philadelphia, PA:

University Press of America, 1991, pp. 92-93.

87. Sun Tzu, The Art of War, Samual B. Griffith, trans., New York:

Oxford University Press, 1982, p. 98.

72
88. Knezys and Sedlickas, p. 108.

89. Thomas, “Deadly Classroom for Urban Combat,” p. 95; Lieven,

pp. 113-118.

90. Lieven, p. 114.

91. Knezys and Sedickas, pp. 158-160.

92. Edwards, pp. 73-74.

93. Lieven, pp. 125, 138-141.

94. Ibid., p. 142.

95. Luttwak, pp. 121-22.

96. Ibid., p. 121.

97. Thomas, “Deadly Classroom for Urban Combat,” p. 89.

98. John B. Dunlop, Russia Confronts Chechnya: Roots of a

Separatist Conflict, Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1998,

p. 222.

99. Richard Pipes, “Is Russia Still an Enemy?” Foreign Affairs, Vol.

76, September/October 1997, pp. 71, 74.

100. Lester W. Grau, “Technology and the Second Chechen

Campaign: Not All New and Not that Much,” in The Second Chechen

War, Anne Aldis, ed., Occasional Number 40, London: SCSI, 2000, pp.

101-107.

101. Jeffrey Record, Beyond Military Reform: American Defense

Dilemmas, New York: Pergamon-Brassey’s, 1988, pp. 84-85.

102. Knezys and Sedlickas, p. 211.

103. Williamson Murray, ed., Army Transformation: A View from

the Army War College, Carlisle, PA: Strategic Studies Institute, July

2001, p. 17.

104. Legro, “Culture and Preferences in the International

Cooperation Two-Step,” p. 127; and James M. Smith. “USAF Culture

and Cohesion: Building an Air Force and Space Force for the 21st

Century,” INSS Occasional Paper 19, Colorado Springs, CO: USAF

INSS, 1996, pp. 11-12.

73
105. James Dewar, et al., Army Culture and Planning in a Time of

Great Change, Santa Monica, CA: RAND, 1996, pp. 2-3, 8, 42.

106. Robert M. Cassidy, “The Uptonian Paradox and the

Cardwellian Conundrum: A Comparison of U.S. and British Military

Strategic Cultures and Peace Operations Doctrine, 1990-1995,” Ph.D.

diss., Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy, 2000, pp. 209-210.

107. Paul Van Riper and Robert H. Scales, “Preparing for Warfare in

the 21st Century,” Parameters, Vol. 27, Autumn 1997, p. 5.

108. Ibid. David L. Gray, “New Age Military Progressives: U.S.

Army Officer Professionalism in the Information Age” in Army

Transformation: A View from the Army War College,, Williamson

Murray, ed., Carlisle, PA: Strategic Studies Institute, July 2001, p. 40.

109. Richard Duncan Downie, Learning from Conflict: The U.S.

Military in Vietnam, El Salvador, and the Drug War, Westport, CT:

Praeger, 1998, pp. 20-24; and Cassidy, pp. 32-33.

110. Downie, pp. 22-25, 34.

111. Kim Burger, “U.S. Joint Ops Urban Warfare Training

‘Insufficient,’” Jane’s Defence Weekly, October 2, 2002, World Wide Web

Early Bird.

112. As a side note, some typical responses by Army officers to

comments about the difficulty of urban operations and the Russians’

defeat in Chechnya is to diminish the importance of those lessons by

asserting that the Russians were inept and stupid. However, Army

officers in the early 1960s made similar comments about the French

defeat in Indochina, writing off the Vietminh victory to French military

ineptitude.

113. Quoted in Melissa Applegate, Preparing for Asymmetry: As

Seen through the Lens of Joint Vision 2020, Carlisle Barracks, PA:

Strategic Studies Institute, September 2001, p. 15.

114. Van Riper and Scales, p. 5; Ralph Peters, “The Future of

Armored Warfare,” Parameters, Vol. 27, Autumn 1997, pp. 52, 56; and

Applegate, pp. 23-24.

115. Weigley, History of the United States Army, pp. 334-335; John

B. Wilson, Maneuver and Firepower: The Evolution of Divisions and

Separate Brigade, Washington, DC: U.S. Army Center of Military

History, 1998, pp. 33-34; and Robert A. Doughty, The Evolution of U.S.

Army Tactical Doctrine, 1946-76, Leavenworth Paper No. 1, Ft.

74
Leavenworth, KS: U.S. Army Command and General Staff College,

1979, p. 1. The following discussion is from Cassidy, pp. 196-200.

116. Doughty, p. 16; and Wilson, p. 415.

117. Robert H. Kupperman and Associates, Inc., Low Intensity

Conflict, Vol. 1, Main Report, AD-A 137260, Fort Monroe, VA: U.S.

Army Training and Doctrine Command, 1983, p. 47; Downie, pp. 75-77;

John L. Romjue, The Army of Excellence: The Development of the 1980s

Army, Fort Monroe, VA: U.S. Army TRADOC Military History Office,

1997, p. 119; Peter N. Kafkalas, “The Light Infantry Divisions and Low

Intensity Conflict: Are They Losing Sight of Each Other?” Military

Review, Vol. 66, January 1986, pp. 18-27, in The Army of Excellence, p.

119; and Doughty, p. 48.

118. Dewar, et al., pp. 16, 28-29; Weigley, The History of the United

States Army, pp. 330-340; and Douglas A. Macgregor, Breaking the

Phalanx: A New Design for Landpower in the 21st Century, Westport,

CT: Praeger, 1997, p. 50.

119. Dewar, et al., pp. 16, 28-29; and Macgregor, pp. 62, 227.

120. Dewar, et al., p. 29; and Macgregor, p. 59.

121. The notion of regimental-size battle groups is not new. Most

notably, Colonel Doug Macgregor has proposed the creation of such

forces in Breaking the Phalanx, pp. 70-81.

122. Gray, p. 39.

123. Ibid., p. 55.

75
U.S. ARMY WAR COLLEGE

Major General Robert R. Ivany

Commandant

*****

STRATEGIC STUDIES INSTITUTE

Director

Professor Douglas C. Lovelace, Jr.

Director of Research

Dr. Steven Metz

Author

Major Robert M. Cassidy

Director of Publications

Ms. Marianne P. Cowling

Publications Assistant

Ms. Rita A. Rummel

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Composition

Ms. Kimberly A. Rockwell