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| title | chunk | source | category | tags | date_saved | instance |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Asymmetric warfare | 3/7 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asymmetric_warfare | reference | science, encyclopedia | 2026-05-05T14:29:44.383892+00:00 | kb-cron |
Civilians receive services from government and rebel forces as an incentive to share valuable information. Rebel violence can be reduced if the government provides services. Provision of security and services are complementary in reducing violence. Civilian casualties reduce civilian support to the perpetrating group. Provision of information is strongly correlated with the level of anonymity that can be ensured. A survey of the empirical literature on conflict, does not provide conclusive evidence on the claims. But the framework gives a starting point to explore the role of civilian information sharing in asymmetric warfare.
== War by proxy == Where asymmetric warfare is carried out (generally covertly) by allegedly non-governmental actors who are connected to or sympathetic to a particular nation's (the "state actor's") interest, it may be deemed war by proxy. This is typically done to give the state actor deniability. The deniability can be crucial to keep the state actor from being tainted by the actions, to allow the state actor to negotiate in apparent good faith by claiming they are not responsible for the actions of parties who are merely sympathizers, or to avoid being accused of belligerent actions or war crimes. If proof emerges of the true extent of the state actor's involvement, this strategy can backfire; for example, see Iran-contra affair and Philip Agee.
== Examples ==
=== American Indian Wars ===
Benjamin Church designed his force primarily to emulate Native American patterns of war. Toward this end, Church endeavored to learn to fight like Native Americans from Native Americans. Americans became rangers exclusively under the tutelage of the Native American allies. (Until the end of the colonial period, rangers depended on Native Americans as both allies and teachers.) Church developed a special full-time unit mixing white colonists selected for frontier skills with friendly Native Americans to carry out offensive strikes against hostile Native Americans in terrain where normal militia units were ineffective. Church paid special care to outfitting, supplying and instructing his troops in ways inspired by indigenous methods of warfare and ways of living. He emphasized the adoption of indigenous techniques, which prioritized small, mobile and flexible units which used the countryside for cover, in lieu of massed frontal assaults by large formations. Benjamin Church is sometimes referred to as the father of Unconventional warfare.
=== American Revolutionary War === From its initiation, the American Revolutionary War was, necessarily, a showcase for asymmetric techniques. In the 1920s, Harold Murdock of Boston attempted to solve the puzzle of the first shots fired at Lexington, Massachusetts and came to the suspicion that the few dozen American minutemen who gathered before sunrise to await the arrival of a column of British regulars were sent to provoke an incident which could be used for Patriot propaganda purposes. The return of the British column to Boston following search operations at Concord, Massachusetts was subject to constant skirmishing attacks by minutemen gathered from communities all along the route, making maximum use of the terrain (particularly, trees and stone field walls) to overcome the limitations of their weapons – muskets with an effective range of only about 50–70 meters. Throughout the war, skirmishing tactics against enemy forces on the move continued to be a key factor in American victories, particularly in the western theater of the American Revolutionary War. During the Revolutionary War, both British and American warships engaged in asymmetric warfare tactics, primarily against civilian targets such as merchant vessels and coastal communities. Small Continental Navy ships such as USS Reprisal, USS Ranger, and USS Surprise made incursions into British and Irish waters during the war, attacking British-flagged merchantmen and forcing Britain to deploy more warships to the area along with increasing coastal defences. Although these incursions only inflicted minor losses on the Royal Navy and Britain's merchant fleet, they had a disproportionate psychological effect on the British public, which responded by demanding greater protection from American naval attacks. The Royal Navy also used asymmetric tactics to target American coastal communities, such as the burning of Falmouth by a force under Captain Henry Mowat. These attacks, carried out using small, mobile forces, spread terror among the Americans and destroyed vast quantities of buildings and material in exchange for minor losses. In 1778, France entered the Revolutionary War on the American side, transforming the conflict into a global one and sharply reducing the asymmetric nature of the war. However, in the backcountry of North America, particularly in the American South, engagements between British and American forces often remained mostly asymmetric in nature.
=== American Civil War ===