Introduction
In the world of terrorism “asymmetrical warfare” is a well known term. It is the huge imbalance between the terrorist and the state. In this entry some of my thoughts on the asymmetrical warfare.
History: state versus state
In most of history, especially from the 15th century onwards, conflicts (especially wars) have mainly been fought between states. The state as a whole had the (economic) power to assemble an army and to fight another state. Later, some of the richest expeditionary companies (the Dutch East India Company for example) had their own navies and their own armies, yet they could hardly win from a state. Up until the collapse of the Soviet Union the armies, navies and airforces of the world were trained and equiped to fight states: The West versus the East. Ever since terrorism became more of a threat to states, they found that were quite unable to fight terrorism as well as they could fight states.
Asymmetrical warfare: state versus group
Most, if not all terrorist groups are organized in small cells or local groups. They never take the form of a state. This has made fighting them quite hard: the normal “old” tactics and strategies of the states don’t seem applicable anymore. Instead of having a clearly defined opponent with a clear territory, states are now fighting groups. These groups are mostly located inside states. So instead of fighting states as a whole, the states which are fighting the war on terror are now fighting groups inside states. The logical question arises: how can you fight a terrorist group who launches attacks on your state if it is located inside the borders of another sovereign state? Declaring war on the state as a whole is risky, illogical and ineffective: instead of dealing with one opponent (the terrorist group), you are now dealing with two: the terrorist group and the state.
The war on terror?
When “the war on terror” was declared by president George W. Bush it wasn’t immediately clear who he was addressing. Did the US declare war on states harbouring terrorist? Were the countries harbouring terrorists now a target? Or did the US merely declare on the terrorist groups living within certain countries? As has been seen with the invasion of Afghanistan, the US mainly targetted the terrorist government, in the form of the Taliban. As such, they attacked the state Afghanistan, not the terrorists directly.
A problem without a solution?
It is unclear what kind of solution can be found for the asymmetrical warfare. It can to some extent be compared to an elephant trying to get rid of a bug: the elephant has a major power (States armed forces) but is slow to respond and unable to exactly pinpoint the bug. The bug on the other hand is nimble, small, agile and highly mobile: before the elephant is ready to take action, the bug has moved. Until states can find a way to quickly and effective deal with terrorist groups, there is little or no solution to this problem.
