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Appendix, Part 2: Modern Asymmetric WarfareRolf A. F. Witzsche, Oct 1, 2006 Asymmetric warfare is not a new invention. Alexander the Great had used it to some degree to defeat the armies of the Persian Empire that outnumbered his forces by a large margin. The most notable historic case, of course, was Russia's defeating Napoleon. One might call it a textbook case of irregular asymmetric warfare in which Russia' hopeless strategic situation had been turned around into a victory that defied all standard military logic. Napoleon had attacked Russia with a force of over 400,000 men, 100,000 horses, armed with modern weapons, and preceded with a reputation that must have send shivers down the spine of any opponent. Compared with Napoleon's grand army the Russians had a tiny force. But with that tiny force they utterly defeated the military giant, and it was done using irregular warfare. Historian tell us that some Russian leaders had been eager to face Napoleon head on in symmetric battles. But they would have been hopelessly slaughtered. That's when an exiled German patriot, a man who had worked with the great German poet of freedom, Friedrich Schiller, who had explored with him the folly of the Thirty Years War, told the Russians not to face Napoleon head on. He told them to draw Napoleon into the country and attack the logistics in the rear that supports the front. Napoleon wanted blood, but the Russians gave him hunger. Russia was saved on the strength of that idea of asymmetric warfare, the legacy of a dead poet. It is commonly believed that it had been the Russian winter that destroyed Napoleon. That is not true. It was irregular, asymmetric warfare that had enabled the Russians to defeat Napoleon. Asymmetric means the opposite to fighting head on, tit for tat. It means throwing out the rulebook and doing things differently than expected, like looking for a weak flank and exploiting that flank to the full. That is how the Russian 'mouse' killed the boisterous 'elephant.' By the time Napoleon had gotten to Moscow, delayed by many mock battles, and he got there before the winter had even started, his grand army was already a wreck. It had been reduced to barely 100,000 men from half a million, with the reinforcements included. And the men were starving. Even the horses were dying from lack of fodder. Of course the Russian winter also took its toll. Forcing Napoleon to retreat at the onset of winter had been a part of the asymmetric warfare strategy. When Napoleon had triumphantly entered Moscow a surprise had awaited him. He had found nobody there. The city was empty. Napoleon had conquered a sea of empty buildings. Then, as the winter set in, a few Russian patriots burned the city to the ground right under Napoleon's nose, to force Napoleon out of the city and into retreat. It had not been by choice that Napoleon started his long trek back home in the dead of winter. At this point he had only 90,000 men left. It had been that small remnant that was no longer a fighting force that had to face the horrors of traversing an icy land that they hadn't been equipped for. Of the 90,000 that left Moscow only a few thousand made it back home. The cold had claimed many of them, and many had died in the final Russian ambush when the straggling collection of desperate men crossed the last river, fleeing Russia virtually defenseless. Many were picked off like sitting ducks. Now it appears that the asymmetric strategy is being applied in the nuclear world. What is the face of nuclear asymmetric warfare? Here the same process applies. We see the end of the nuclear weapons standoff. The Cold War was symmetric in nature. Everything was matched, missile for missile, threat for thread. It resulted in a standoff in which nobody dared to upset the balance. To do so would have meant getting clobbered in a big way. The doctrine for maintaining peace had been the famous doctrine called Mutually Assured Destruction. || - page index - || - chapter index - || - Exit - ||
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