The fight against insurgents, guerrillas and resistance movements is an 'incredibly unpopular' topic with experts and military personnel, says Professor by Special Appointment of Military History Thijs Brocades Zaalberg in his inaugural lecture. He warns that ignoring these forms of irregular warfare is a mistake.
In recent years, NATO countries have, logically, focused on large-scale, conventional interstate wars, such as the war in Ukraine, and defending NATO territory. But, says Brocades Zaalberg, this regular warfare is nothing new and difficult to separate from irregular warfare. 'In reality, they are intertwined. In Iraq, it started with an invasion but soon turned into a bloody guerrilla war. Wars are often hybrid, be they the Eighty Years' War, the Napoleonic Wars, the American Civil War or the Vietnam War. But there is a strong tendency to compartmentalise the two forms.'
The distinction between regular and irregular warfare is mainly made out of analytical convenience and wishful thinking, he says. 'In reality, wars are fluid. Successful conquests often result in occupations, and failing occupations lead to uprisings and resistance. This triangle of regular, irregular and occupation often determines how wars develop.'
Lessons from the past
What can we learn from the long history of irregular warfare? 'Applied history and recipe books aren't my thing. What I have noted is that armed forces tend to engage in selective learning, often driven by military-cultural or political preferences. So they either see an offensive "decapitation strategy" as the key to rapid success or a "population-focused approach" with "winning hearts and minds" as the magic solution. That goes back to the colonial wars around 1900. Unpopular wars in distant lands had to be sold to the public at home as a socioeconomic reconstruction project. It's often glossed over that control, force and extreme violence often prevail.'
He also sees certain patterns: underestimating the opponent, overestimating the value of technology and the superiority of one's own organisation, and poor preparation for what happens once the regular fighting ceases.
Criticism of 'hybrid warfare'
Since the invasion of Crimea in 2014, politicians and the media have often used the term 'hybrid warfare' to describe various hostile acts. Brocades Zaalberg is not a fan of this concept. 'The concept once had real substance: it referred to the combination of regular and irregular tactics, as with Hezbollah in Lebanon. But after 2014, NATO started using it for nearly all forms of Russian threats in particular - so subversion, espionage and sabotage. Stripped of meaning, it drifted further and further away from warfare.'
Brocades Zaalberg thinks it is unwise to classify cyber attacks, disinformation or influence tactics as hybrid warfare. 'I'm not saying the threat is low, but it's going a bit far to call it warfare. The term is also used because it sounds dramatic, to create a sense of urgency. But it encompasses so much now that it no longer says anything.'
How does he view European rearmament after the Russian invasion? 'It's only logical that attention is now being focused on compensating for years of neglecting our defence. But it's dangerous to think a large-scale conflict is the only threat, and anyway, preparing for irregular warfare is mainly an intellectual exercise rather than one that requires expensive equipment. What is key is education and awareness of the importance of the civil environment.' So a crucial role for universities and military academies? 'Military history should have a more prominent role in education at Dutch universities as it is.'
Colonial violence
Another form of rigid categorisation that Brocades Zaalberg problematises is the distinction made between colonial violence and violence in non-colonial contexts. Are the form, scale and motives behind extreme violence in the colonial domain really that different?
'Colonial violence is regarded as unique because its brutality was frequently intended to serve as a deterrent, and was compounded by a racist element. That is true to a certain extent. Racial stereotypes undoubtedly lowered the threshold for acts of brutality, but religious and political othering - as seen in civil wars in Europe, America or Asia - can have a similar effect, often triggering comparable patterns of escalation, retaliation and brutality. Moreover, is it the irregular nature of the conflict that explains the escalation of violence, or the specific colonial context? And where does the colonial domain end and 'regular' foreign domination begin?'
Brocades Zaalberg suspects that colonial violence was less exceptional than is sometimes assumed. He hopes to conduct further research involving more systematic comparisons and exploring war 'from below': through ego documents such as diaries and letters. The main aim of such research and teaching is to deepen our understanding of warfare and how military violence can spiral out of control.
