Judy Wallace November 13, 2024 0

In partial fulfillment of Liberty University course HIWD 660: Asymmetrical and Irregular Warfare, Dr. Shawn Carrington, Jr., Professor.

First submitted May 10, 2024

This research paper aimed to discuss and analyze the implications of modern warfare on US national security by addressing three critical questions. The focus, therefore, was on identifying the most dangerous types of warfare, the most threatening tactics, and one of the most formidable adversaries to the United States. The analysis used the evidence to contextualize modern warfare threats within the framework of history and culture. The research revealed a historical context and rationale. By examining antecedent evidence linked to a fundamental question, the study involved a retrospective analysis of historical attitudes that shaped the concept of proper warfare strategy, influenced by the prevailing culture and its definition of victory. The fundamental question interrogated chivalry in Western history and the modern cultural value of honor. It next contrasted the chivalry and honor of the West with the depiction of upper hand tactics, or one-upmanship, in Middle Eastern and Eastern literatures, traditional folkways, and current diplomatic strategies. The analysis reconsidered how these East/West narratives dangerously collide and manifest in asymmetrical and irregular warfare. The specific country of Iran was highlighted as posing the most significant asymmetric threat in terms of warfare. The following definitions for the most dangerous types of warfare were workable for the scope of the research.

Symmetrical involved state actors with comparable military capabilities and resources
Asymmetricalinvolved conflicts where parties differed significantly in military capabilities, often leading to the use of unconventional tactics

The Most Dangerous Type of Warfare

Total war can be conventionally defined as a war that ended when the enemy was politically hopeless.1 The conventional goal was typically to achieve a stable peace, where conflict was resolved, and normalcy restored. Hybrid warfare tactics mix conventional strategies with asymmetrical warfare, plus irregular and cyber tactics. While total war aimed for complete dominance, often through overwhelming force, hybrid warfare participants pursued goals to advance a state of continued conflict, leveraging the chaos for strategic advantages. Therefore, hybrid warfare is more dangerous than a conventional total war due to its multiplex goal setting. 

Hybrid warfare originating from the US and other Western countries have antecedents in chivalry and honor. Historically interwoven with the conventions of warfare that emphasize nobility, virtue, and a code of conduct, Westernized hybrid tactics continue to reflect principles akin to King Arthur’s Knights of the Round Table.2 For example, conventions of respect toward women and protecting defenseless non-combatants equaled bravery, then and now. These two ideals have been valorized in Western histories and cultures. Therefore, the strategic issue of war termination was the primum movens since fifth-century BC Thucydides, eighteenth century Clausewitz, and to the present twenty-first century US diplomatic and war policies.3 

However, like a coup-contrecoup injury to the prosocial contributions of these Western values, a disconcerting threat has been known to emerge due to the subversive scourge of white supremacy. Nevertheless, evidence indicated that these misrepresentations of superiority are not intrinsic. They are, rather, utterly rejectable racist distortions of chivalry and honor. 

Hybrid warfare originating from the Middle East and Eastern continents have antecedents in one-upmanship. One-upmanship refers to the practice of trying to outdo or surpass others, often in a competitive or boastful manner, to assert superiority or gain an advantage. It involved seeking to be one step ahead or to have the upper hand in various situations, whether in business, diplomacy, or military interactions. In the Middle East and Eastern continents, the goal was not war termination. Absent the history of Pax Romana and Pax Sinica, Middle Eastern cultures prioritize winning the war over winning the peace.4 Yet, there was always one-upmanship, more to be won, so the fight must continue. An Eastern ideology suggests that true peace can never be realized until an idealized, unachievable, globalized future perfects “an unprecedented independent, happy, and liberal epoch of peace.”5

Sun Tzu taught his warrior students to turn trouble to one’s own advantage and to use devious, rather than direct, tactics.6 Thus, proxy-based war tactics emerging from the Middle East and Eastern regions have employed hybrid warfare strategies, driven by a tenuous equilibrium between sponsored operational capabilities and the protected deniability offered by proxies.7 Proxy warfare allows for time to fill in incomplete information. Intelligence gathering is not for the war, it is the war.8 Therefore, the burden to know or speak the truth was traditionally placed upon the listener rather than the speaker. 

The Most Threatening Tactic to the United States

The most threatening tactic to the US may be the application of polymorphic and competing outcome goals of hybrid warfare as held differently due to the East/West cultural divide.9 This is evident in the tactic of strategic miscommunication. What is transparent and obvious in one culture can be obscure or irrelevant in another, leading to dangerous misunderstandings and bellicose propaganda. The divergent cultural narratives in Eastern and Western societies can lead to different expectations in negotiations. The distinct economic, religious, socio-psychological, and political justifications for Iran’s hybrid warfare tactics have been highlighted as a significant area deserving further analysis. 

To counter strategic miscommunication, modern warfare threats should be contextualized with history and culture. Scholars looked to Edward M. Coffman who stated the axiom that “oral history goes naturally with military history.”10 Storytelling reflects and explores conflicts, although the tales themselves may be fictional or fantastical. Emphasis on cunning and strategic trickery was evident in Middle Eastern oral traditions, such as Shahrazad’s 1001 Tales; and Djeha, the North African trickster. In Western literature, a comparable theme is found in picaresque novels, a sub-genre that celebrates cleverness and survival through wit, like Huckleberry Finn (1884), “The Ransom of Red Chief” (1907), and The Mafia Don (1972).11

Biblical Worldview

Existential dread, or fear, is a notorious form of strategic miscommunication deployed as both a threat and weapon.12 This research paper acknowledges fear and other threats to human rights during acts of war. Yet, freedom from fear is a fundamental human right. For historians who hold personal faith, a biblical worldview should offer greater guidance. Biblical perspectives admit fear and human vulnerability (Psalm 39: 4-6, Ecclesiastes 3:11, James 4: 13-15). Daniel Hostetter wrote on fear, 

“Research shows that subthreshold negative emotions supersede conscious reason as the initial and strongest motivators of political behavior. When the use of these emotions is observed in political rhetoric, three common characteristics emerge: exaggerated threat, tribal combat, and religious apocalypse.”13 

Hostetter argued that fearmongering exaggerates threats, conflates them with physical threats, and justifies threats and combat through metaphors of religious apocalypse. He hoped that instead of weaponizing emotions deep in the human soul, stories and narratives can instead “shape men’s imaginations in beautiful, true, and good ways.”14

The Most Threatening Country or Organization

This research project delved into Iran and Iran-backed militia groups. Iran had seemed to be the locus of danger so much so that it has motivated some East/West rapprochement. Therefore, this research paper identified this country as most threatening. In 2024, scholars stated that “Iran’s nuclear deal and the subsequent US withdrawal from the deal, and other events have shaped the Arab ruling elite’s strategic thinking.”15 The base of rapprochement for the Middle East majority Sunni areas seemed to be set in the building of trust and respect over time, rather than focusing solely on achieving a specific outcome at a particular milestone moment, as valued in Western civilization. Case in point, scholars have argued that the formal announcement on August 13, 2020, of the Abraham Accords brought behind-the-scenes progress from the 1990s and 2000s “into plain view.”16 

The research for this third section considered the historical and cultural significance of the Battle of Badr, fought in 624 in what is now Saudi Arabia, with the warfare technology, history, and culture of the Crusades in Western civilization. The Battle was celebrated as a moment of divine intervention and a turning point for Islam.17 Initiated in the eleventh century, the Crusades were a series of religious wars between Christians and Muslims, centered around the control of holy sites. The Crusades had a profound effect on the relationship between the Christian and Muslim worlds, shaping their cultures and interactions for centuries. There was no direct evidence linking the Battle of Badr with the Crusades; however, research warranted a reconsideration of their cultural and ideological echoes: the term crusade has been used in modern contexts, notably by U.S. President George Bush in the twenty-first century, reflecting the enduring impact of crusader rhetoric.18 In order to face hybrid war and strategic miscommunication, scholars from a Western perspective must revisit the previously neglected history of the Battle of Badr to understand how terror tactics hybridize offensive and defensive warfare.19 Additionally, they must address the over-used and harmful narrative of the Crusades, which is dreadfully invoked by both Eastern and Western sources.20

Conclusion

In conclusion, this research project has engaged in a review of past conflict narratives to identify recurring patterns and outcomes associated with symmetrical and asymmetrical warfare. Hybrid warfare, a combo of conventional and asymmetrical tactics, represents the most dangerous type of warfare due to its equivocal end goals. Analysis formed a contradistinction of overt virtue signaling like King Arthur’s Knights of the Round Table with subtle power encounters of one-upmanship. Despite East/West differences, features in common were the trickster and picaresque hero stories. Strategic miscommunication stood out as the most threatening tactic against the US, primarily because of our country’s dependency on informatics, “the power and possibility of digital technology to transform data and information into knowledge that people use every day.”21 A humanitarian and biblical worldview named fear as a dangerous and threatening weapon of strategic miscommunication. Among the various adversaries, Iran was the state actor with significant technological and resource advantages and the will to act. Finally, the project attempted to present a possible collocation of the history and culture of the Battle of Badr with the Crusades to benefit from both Eastern and Western epistemologies.22 

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  1. 1.  Lawrence Freedman, Strategy: A History (New York: Oxford University Press, 2015), 71. ↩︎
  2. 2.  Sarah Wente, “‘In a Land of Myth and a Time of Magic’: The Role and Adaptability of the Arthurian Tradition in the Twentieth and Twenty-First Centuries,” SOPHIA (Antonian Scholars Honors Project, St. Catherine University, 2013), 2. ↩︎
  3. 3. Karl Walling, “Thucydides on Policy, Strategy, and War Termination,” Naval War College Review 66, no. 4 (2013): 47; Carl Von Clausewitz, On War, trans. Michael Eliot Howard and Peter Paret, Revised (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1989), 80; Homeland Security Council and George W. Bush Jr., “National Strategy for Homeland Security,” October 5, 2007, 49; Shawn Carrington Jr., “US National Policy and Strategies,” Liberty University Class Lecture, 0:29. ↩︎
  4. 4.  Pax Sinica refers to the imperial hegemony in ancient China and is also applied to modern China’s status as the “Central Country” in East Asia. Weol-Hoi Kim and Kihoon Kim, “Pax Romana and Pax Sinica: Some Historical Aspects,” Horizons: Seoul Journal of Humanities 7, no. 2 (2016): 175; on defeat, Shawn Carrington, “The Conflict III,” Liberty University Class Lecture, 0:59; for a politically progressive viewpoint on winning the peace, see video podcast by Indonesian WEF member Gita Wirjawan, “How Not to Win the War, but the Peace – Stephen Kotkin | Endgame #174 (Luminaries),” January 31, 2024. ↩︎
  5. 5.  Mao Tse-Tung, Mao Tse-Tung on Guerrilla Warfare, trans. Samuel B. Griffith (1989; repr., New Zealand: Hauraki Publishing, 2015), 59. ↩︎
  6. 6. Sun Tzu, The Art of War: A New Translation, trans. Michael Nylan (New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 2020), 79.
    ↩︎
  7. 7.  Andrew Lewis Peek, “On the Effective Use of Proxy Warfare” (PhD dissertation, Johns Hopkins University, 2021), 403. ↩︎
  8. 8.  Nasir Majeed Malik et al., “Intelligence System of the Holy Prophet (PBUH),” Habibia Islamicus (The International Journal of Arabic and Islamic Research) 1, no. 2 (2017): 3; Tse-Tung, Mao Tse-Tung on Guerrilla Warfare, 67. ↩︎
  9. 9.  The author of this paper regrets the use of such a bifurcation because it exhibits the Western bias of orientalism. See, Edward W. Said, Orientalism (1978; repr. New York: Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group, 2014); C. Behan McCullagh, “Bias in Historical Description, Interpretation, and Explanation.” History and Theory 39, no. 1 (2000): 39–66. ↩︎
  10. 10.  Edward M. Coffman, “Talking About War: Reflections on Doing Oral History and Military History,” The Journal of American History 87, no. 2 (September 1, 2000): 582. ↩︎
  11. 11.  Stereotypes embedded in culture have been challenged, viz., Native Americans for Westerns, Italian Americans for Mafia novellas, Black Americans for racism. See Lawrence Freedman, Strategy: A History (New York: Oxford University Press, 2015), 430; George William Rae, The Mafia Don: A Picaresque Romance (Minnesota: Pyramid, 1972). ↩︎
  12. 12.  Shawn Carrington, “The Impact of Terrorist Attacks on Academic Aspirations of Young Adults in Nigeria” (PhD Dissertation, The Chicago School of Professional Psychology, 2021), 14. ↩︎
  13. 13.  James Spigelman, “The Forgotten Freedom: Freedom from Fear,” The International and Comparative Law Quarterly 59, no. 3 (2010): 543. ↩︎
  14. 14.  Ibid., 34. ↩︎
  15. 15.  Khurram Abbas, “GCC-Israel Rapprochement Under Abraham Accords: Implications for Israel-Palestine Conflict,” in Arab-Israel Normalisation of Ties, ed. Najimdeen Bakare (Singapore: Palgrave Macmillan, 2024), 147. ↩︎
  16. 16.  Yoel Guzansky and Zachary A. Marshall, “The Abraham Accords: Immediate Significance and Long-Term Implications,” The Israel Journal of Foreign Affairs 14, no. 3 (2020): 379. ↩︎
  17. 17.  John K. Martin, “Islam’s First Arrow: The Battle of Badr as a Decisive Battle in Islamic History and Its Significance Today” (Master’s Thesis, School Of Advanced Air And Space Studies, Maxwell Air Force Base, 2011), 15, 112. ↩︎
  18. 18.  George Bush, “President: Today We Mourned, Tomorrow We Work,” September 20, 2001. ↩︎
  19. 19.  Samantha Mahood and Halim Rane, “Islamist Narratives in ISIS Recruitment Propaganda,” Journal of International Communication 23, no. 1 (December 20, 2016): 23; Tse-Tung, Mao Tse-Tung on Guerrilla Warfare, 73. ↩︎
  20. 20.  Andrew Fiala, “The Crusade for Freedom: A Just War Critique of the Bush Doctrine,” Political Theology 9, no. 1 (February 3, 2008): sec. Abstract. ↩︎
  21. 21.  “What Is Informatics?” Luddy School of Informatics, Computing, and Engineering, n.d. ↩︎
  22. 22.  Clarence St. Hilaire, “Framing Indigenous Perspectives Through Emic and Etic Approaches,” in IntechOpen eBooks, 2023, 1. ↩︎

Bibliography

Abbas, Khurram. “GCC-Israel Rapprochement Under Abraham Accords: Implications for Israel-Palestine Conflict.” In Arab-Israel Normalisation of Ties, edited by Najimdeen Bakare, 143–59. Singapore: Palgrave Macmillan, 2024. https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-981-99-7765-9_8#Sec2.

Bacon, Tricia, and Jason Warner. “Twenty Years After 9/11: The Threat in Africa–The New Epicenter of Global Jihadi Terror.”  14, No. 7 (2021).” CTC Sentinel 14, no. 7 (2021): 76–90. https://drjasonwarner.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/10/bacon-and-warner-2021-final-africa-as-the-new-epicenter-ctc-sentinel.pdf.

Bush, George. “President: Today We Mourned, Tomorrow We Work,” September 20, 2001. https://georgewbush-whitehouse.archives.gov/news/releases/2001/09/20010916-2.html.

Carrington, Shawn. “The Conflict III.” Liberty University Class Lecture. 2022.

———. “The Impact of Terrorist Attacks on Academic Aspirations of Young Adults in Nigeria.” PhD Dissertation, The Chicago School of Professional Psychology, 2021. https://search.proquest.com/openview/0a341fe823aed669128ad09cb6f4ed4b/1.pdf?pq-origsite=gscholar&cbl=18750&diss=y.

———. “US National Policy and Strategies.” Liberty University Class Lecture. 2022.

Coffman, Edward M. “Talking About War: Reflections on Doing Oral History and Military History.” The Journal of American History 87, no. 2 (September 1, 2000): 582. https://doi.org/10.2307/2568765.

Fiala, Andrew. “The Crusade for Freedom: A Just War Critique of the Bush Doctrine.” Political Theology 9, no. 1 (February 3, 2008): 47–60. https://doi.org/10.1558/poth.v9i1.47.

Freedman, Lawrence. Strategy: A History. New York: Oxford University Press, 2015.

Guzansky, Yoel, and Zachary A. Marshall. “The Abraham Accords: Immediate Significance and Long-Term Implications.” The Israel Journal of Foreign Affairs 14, no. 3 (September 1, 2020): 379–89. https://doi.org/10.1080/23739770.2020.1831861.

Homeland Security Council, and George W. Bush Jr. “National Strategy for Homeland Security,” October 5, 2007. https://www.dhs.gov/xlibrary/assets/nat_strat_homelandsecurity_2007.pdf.

Hostetter, Daniel. “Charge the Cockpit or Die: An Anatomy of Fear-Driven Political Rhetoric in American Conservatism,” 2024. https://digitalcommons.liberty.edu/honors/1388.

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Luddy School of Informatics, Computing, and Engineering. “What Is Informatics?” n.d. https://luddy.iupui.edu/what-is-informatics/index.html.

Mahood, Samantha, and Halim Rane. “Islamist Narratives in ISIS Recruitment Propaganda.” Journal of International Communication 23, no. 1 (December 20, 2016): 15–35. https://doi.org/10.1080/13216597.2016.1263231.

Malik, Nasir Majeed, Hafiz Munir Ahmed Khan, Ubaid Ahmed Khan, and Aziz Ur Rehman Saifee. “Intelligence System of the Holy Prophet (PBUH).” Habibia Islamicus (the International Journal of Arabic and Islamic Research) 1, no. 2 (2017): 1–11. https://religion.asianindexing.com/images_religion/b/b1/Habibia_Islamicus_1_2_6.pdf.

Martin, John K. “Islam’s First Arrow: The Battle of Badr as a Decisive Battle in Islamic History and Its Significance Today.” Master’s Thesis, School of Advanced Air And Space Studies, Maxwell Air Force Base, 2011. https://apps.dtic.mil/sti/pdfs/AD1019421.pdf.

McCullagh, C. Behan. “Bias in Historical Description, Interpretation, and Explanation.” History and Theory 39, no. 1 (2000): 39–66. http://www.jstor.org/stable/2677997.

Rae, George William. The Mafia Don: A Picaresque Romance. Minnesota: Pyramid, 1972.

Said, Edward W. Orientalism. 1978. Reprint, New York: Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group, 2014.

Spigelman, James. “The Forgotten Freedom: Freedom from Fear.” The International and Comparative Law Quarterly 59, no. 3 (2010): 543–70. http://www.jstor.org/stable/40835424.

St. Hilaire, Clarence. “Framing Indigenous Perspectives Through Emic and Etic Approaches.” In IntechOpen eBooks, 1–18, 2023. https://doi.org/10.5772/intechopen.106728.

Tse-Tung, Mao. Mao Tse-Tung on Guerrilla Warfare. Translated by Samuel B. Griffith. 1989. Reprint, New Zealand: Hauraki Publishing, 2015.

Tzu, Sun. The Art of War: A New Translation. Translated by Michael Nylan. New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 2020.

Von Clausewitz, Carl. On War. Translated by Michael Eliot Howard and Peter Paret. Revised. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1989.

Walling, Karl. “Thucydides on Policy, Strategy, and War Termination.” Naval War College Review 66, no. 4 (2013): 47–86. https://www.jstor.org/stable/26397417.

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