Irregular warfare

 

Irregular warfare with China, Russia: Ready or not, it's coming — if not already here

Last week, amid the hubbub of the presidential debate, revelations about President Trump’s taxes, the “SCOTUS War” and the COVID-plagued White House, something important happened that almost everybody missed. The Defense Department released the unclassified summary of the Irregular Warfare Annex to the 2018 National Defense Strategy. 

The strategy tells our armed forces how to prepare for and win the next war, which almost certainly will be an “irregular war” fight. The military uses terms such as “irregular,” “unconventional,” “asymmetrical,” “hybrid” and “gray zone” to describe any style of combat not resembling the Battle of the Bulge (aka, “regular” war).

What makes warfare “regular”? No one knows. However, we do know what it looks like: state-on-state armed conflict, in which militaries are like gladiators battling for the fate of the world. Combatants are expected to wear uniforms, have patriot zeal, and honor peace treaties. It’s what famed military theorist Carl von Clausewitz envisioned, and what the “Laws of War” seek to regulate.