Unconventional warfare (UW) is the opposite of conventional warfare. Where conventional warfare seeks to reduce an opponent's military capability, unconventional warfare is an attempt to achieve military victory through acquiescence, capitulation, or clandestine support for one side of an existing conflict. On the surface, UW contrasts with conventional warfare in that: forces or objectives are covert or not well-defined, tactics and weapons intensify environments of subversion or intimidation, and the general or long-term goals are coercive or subversive to a political body.

Unconventional warfare seeks to instill a belief that peace and security are not possible without compromise or concession. Objectives include inducement of weariness, curtailment of civilian standards of living and civil liberties associated with greater security demands, economic hardship linked to the costs of war; hopelessness to defend against assaults, fear, depression, and disintegration of morale. The ultimate goal of this type of warfare is to motivate an enemy to stop attacking or resisting even if it has the ability to continue. Failing this, a secondary objective can be to emasculate the enemy before a conventional invasion.

Limited conventional warfare tactics can be used unconventionally to demonstrate might and power, rather than to substantially reduce the enemy's ability to fight. In addition to the coercive use of traditional weapons, armaments that primarily target civilians can be used: atomic weapons, urban incendiary devices, white phosphorus or other such weapons. Special forces, inserted behind an enemy's front line, can be used unconventionally to spread subversion and propaganda, to aid native resistance fighters, and to ultimately build environments of fear and confusion. Tactics of destroying non-military infrastructure and blockading civilian staples are used to decrease the morale of civilians and, when applicable, also the soldiers in the field through concern for their families. Globalization dissenters broadly criticise the managed-trade system as a planet-wide version of the blockading tactic of unconventional warfare.

UW is one of the nine core missions of U.S. Army Special Forces. The United States Department of Defense defines UW as a broad spectrum of military and paramilitary operations, normally of short duration, predominantly conducted by indigenous or surrogate forces who are organized, trained, equipped, supported, and directed in varying degrees by an external source. It includes guerrilla warfare and other direct offensive, low visibility, covert, or clandestine operations, as well as the indirect activities of subversion, sabotage, intelligence activities, and evasion and escape.

Sergyi Way
23.05.2007

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