Winning wars without battles : hybrid warfare and other 'indirect' approaches in the history of strategic thought

Title of complete working paper: Russia and Hybrid Warfare - Going Beyond the Label Editors: Bettina Renz, Hanna Smith. Project: “Russia and Hybrid Warfare: definitions, capabilities, scope and possible responses” report 1/2016. Funding: The Finnish Prime Minister’s Office, government’s analysis, assessments and research activities fund, http://vnk.fi/en/government-s-analysis-assessment-and-research-activities.Publisher PD

Fighting irregular fighters: Is the law of armed conflict outdated?

The law of armed conflict has often been described as outdated and ill suited to military conflicts in the twenty-first century. Both academics and practitioners have argued that today’s wars tend to be asymmetric conflicts between states and nonstate actors, whereas the law of armed conflict was made with a view to symmetrical interstate war. This article challenges that notion.Non peer reviewe

'The most beautiful of wars' : Carl von Clausewitz and small wars

Carl von Clausewitz was both an avid analyst of small wars and people’s war and, during the wars of liberation, a practitioner of small war. While Clausewitz scholars have increasingly recognised the centrality of small wars for Clausewitz’s thought, the sources and inspirations of his writings on small wars have remained understudied. This article contextualises Clausewitz’s thought on small wars and people’s war in the tradition of German philosophical and aesthetic discourses around 1800. It shows how Clausewitz developed core concepts such as the integration of passion and reason and the idea of war in its ‘absolute perfection’ as a regulative ideal in the framework of his works on small wars and people’s war. Contextualising Clausewitz inevitably distances him from the twenty-first-century strategic context, but, as this article shows, it can help us to ask pertinent questions about the configuration of society, the armed forces and the government in today’s Western states.PostprintPeer reviewe

Irregular auxiliaries after 1945

Collaboration with native auxiliaries in wars in the peripheries of the international system is an age-old practice, the relevance of which is likely to increase in the twenty-first century. Yet, the parameters of such collaboration are understudied. This article aims to contribute to the nascent yet fragmentary scholarship on the use of native auxiliaries. It identifies three intellectual templates of the collaboration between Western regular forces and native auxiliaries: the eighteenth-century model of auxiliary ‘partisans’ as tactical complements to regular armed forces; the nineteenth-century transformation of the ‘partisan’ into the irregular guerrilla fighter and the concomitant rise of the ‘martial races’ discourse; and, finally, the post-1945 model of the loyalist auxiliary as a symbol of the political legitimacy of the counter-insurgent side in wars of decolonisation and post-colonial insurgencies. The article focuses on the rise of loyalism after 1945 in particular, a phenomenon that it seeks to understand within the broader context of irregular warfare and the moral reappraisal of irregular fighters after the Second World War.PostprintPeer reviewe

'Do not despair at your fate' : Carl von Clausewitz in French captivity, 1806-1807

Carl von Clausewitz’s time in French captivity is well documented, but has never been studied in its own right. However, it is both fascinating and relevant, as Clausewitz’s experience of captivity took place against the backdrop of the nationalization of war and the concomitant politicization of prisoners in war. Clausewitz framed his observations by contrasting the ‘French’ and the ‘German’ national characters. While Germany as a political identity ceased to play a role for Clausewitz after his return to Prussia, he held on to his characterization of the French as a politically backward society and, ultimately, as an empire in decline.PostprintPeer reviewe