How Big Powers Fight Small Wars

• Date: 01 January 2014
• DOI: 10.1177/0095327X13496774
• Published date: 01 January 2014
• Subject Matter: Forum: Revisiting Small Wars

Forum: Revisiting Small Wars

How Big Powers

Fight Small Wars:

Contending Traditions

of Asymmetry in the

British and American

Ways of War

Emrys Chew

1

Abstract

‘‘Globalized’’ low-intensity conflicts renew debates about how leading world powers

contend with evolving complexities in unconventional warfare. The ‘‘foreign entan-

glements’’ of America’s imperial present have been compared with the ‘‘savage wars

of peace’’ from Britain’s colonial past.

1

Beyond the template of Anglo-American

civilization, however, military, economic, and cultural manifestations of power must

be set in their systemic and structural context for more meaningful comparison.

Britain’s variegated experience of unconventional warfare stemmed from its vast

colonial milieu of ‘‘small wars’’ and ‘‘imperial policing.’’ America’s experience reflects

transformational civil–military responses to both existential and ideological threats,

reinforcing the evolution of a massive ‘‘way of war’’ over persistent frontier warfare.

Integral to reading these small war traditions is the historical method, emphasizing

particularity of causation while underscoring the value of flexible, hybrid approaches

against overinstitutionalized ‘‘ways in warfare.’’

2

Operational success, delivered by

blending military skills with political savvy and cultural sensitivity, not only secured

populations but support and legitimacy, without which even global powers risked

defeat.

1

S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies, Nanyang Technological University, Singapore, Singapore

Corresponding Author:

Emrys Chew, S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies, Nanyang Technological University, Block S4,

Level B4, Nanyang Avenue, Singapore 639798, Singapore.

Email: isechew@ntu.edu.sg

Armed Forces & Society

2014, Vol 40(1) 17-48

ªThe Author(s) 2013

Reprints and permission:

sagepub.com/journalsPermissions.nav

DOI: 10.1177/0095327X13496774

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Keywords

low-intensity conflicts, counterinsurgency, asymmetric warfare, hybrid warfare, Brit-

ish colonial campaigns, American way of war

Britain’s Greece to America’s Rome?

Reaffirming the ‘‘special relationship’’ after the debacle of the 1956 Suez Crisis,

Prime MinisterHarold Macmillan declared howBritain might reinvent its globalrole:

We are the Greeks of the Hellenistic Age. The power has passed from us to Rome’s

equivalent, the United States of America, and we can at most aspire to civilize and

occasionally to influence them.

3

Margaret Thatcher, having led the United Kingdom to victory in the 1982 Falk-

lands War, likewise reminded US President George H. W. Bush of Britain’s mature

understanding of Gulf affairs, its chief qualification for rendering military assis-

tance. Tony Blair’s New Labour Government reprised Macmillan’s imperial ana-

logy a half-century later, amid the post–9/11 scenario of American-led coalition

operations in Afghanistan.

4

Over a tumultuous decade that witnessed escalation of the ‘‘Global War on Ter-

ror’’ in Afghanistan (2001–) and Iraq (2003–2011), military practitioners on both

sides of the Atlantic joined civilian policy makers in critical discourse on how to

wage unconventional war in the new millennium.

5

Soldier-scholars, statesmen, and

strategists sought lessons for an embattled global hegemon from Britain’s volumi-

nous repertoire of ‘‘smallwars’’ and ‘‘imperial policing.’’

6

Few could have done bet-

ter than begin with Gilbert and Sullivan’s ‘‘very model of a modern major-general’’

Garnet Wolseley, who apart from three knighthoods and numerous accolades

became Viscount (1885), Field Marshal (1894), and Commander-in-Chief of the

Forces (1895–1900). Once parodied as ‘‘a great General on a small scale,’’ this was

precisely Wolseley’s genius: a master tactician who distilled knowledge from at

least ten limited wars, fought across four continents between 1852 and 1885.

7

Wolseley appreciated the importance of targeting genuine ‘‘centers of gravity’’ and

‘‘critical vulnerabilities’’ in the non-European theater, scoring decisively hence cur-

tailing conflict: ‘‘In planning a war against an uncivilized nation who have perhaps

no capital, your first object should be the capture of whatever they prize most, and

the destruction or deprivation of which will probably bring the war most rapidly to a

conclusion.’’

8

More mutable and multifaceted than the most exotic chameleon, the cross-

cultural nature of colonial wars made them peculiarly asymmetric and tricky to ana-

lyze.

9

Tactical hybridity offered some solution, when conventional forces and con-

ventional weapons were deployed unconventionally, or when forces incorporating

significant irregular components were recalibrated from one campaign to another.

18 Armed Forces & Society 40(1)

The British developed virtually shape-shifting capabilities across multiple geostra-

tegic arenas, in order to engage multifarious opponents—whether guerrilla-type

operations against tribal adversaries armed with technologically less sophisticated

but still lethal weaponry, or hybrid armies fighting set-piece battles against enemy

forces operating on a similar tactical system. The second edition of Wolseley’s

best-selling Soldier’s Pocket-Book (1871) underscored the importance of learning,

anticipating, and adapting on the spot:

Practise yourself constantly in forming plans of how you would handle independent

brigades, battalions, and even companies, on various sorts of ground, for attack and

defense. Do not run away with the idea that tactics is an affair for the general only; the

captain commanding a company out skirmishing, or on outpost duty, requires tactical

knowledge as much as the officer commanding the army. I have long thought that what

we are really all most deficient in is this knowledge of minor tactics ... . to perform

some of the very minor operations of war.

10

Tactical hybridity and flexibility scoped to military objectives in turn supported

political objectives. Forces that responded effectively to surprises and setbacks were

more likely to attain desirable outcomes, thus achieving ‘‘victory.’’ Conversely,

‘‘defeat’’ resulted from a combination of external factors (a better opponent, more

adept, armed effectively, at home on the terrain) and internal factors (human error,

organizational weakness, and even institutional failure).

11

Recalibrating forces was a perennial challenge. Formed to protect the English

East India Company’s commercial interests from French rivals and their indigenous

allies, the Madras Army saw its role expand in tandem with British rule in India.

Organized to provide internal security in support of the civil administration, it per-

formed admirably in assisting the suppression of the Indian Mutiny-Rebellion

(1857). Although never designed to serve imperial interests overseas, it was never-

theless recalibrated for colonial campaigns. Madras Native Infantry units—veterans

of the Carnatic Wars, Anglo-Mysore Wars, and Anglo-Maratha Wars (c. 1760–

1818)—thereby faced logistical disaster amid the Irrawaddy’s malarial swamps in

the First Anglo-Burmese War (1824–1826).

12

This was the costliest and longest

of British India’s wars: 15,000 British and Indian military casualties, with campaign

expenditure between an estimated five and thirteen million pounds sterling (approx-

imately US$18.5 billion to US$48 billion in 2006) plunging British India into eco-

nomic crisis in 1833.

13

Fortunately, the war more than achieved British objectives:

neutralization of the formidable Burmese military; stable borders, confirming Brit-

ish authority over Assam and Manipur (plus new coastal provinces, Arakan and

Tenasserim, abundant sources of rice and teak, for provisioning the Royal Navy);

an indemnity of one million pounds, crippling Burma’s political economy; and dip-

lomatic relations, expediting negotiations over a commercial treaty.

14

If there is a unifying theme throughout Britain’s variegated experience of colonial

warfare, it must surely be the geostrategic imperative of the ‘‘small scale’’ as

Chew 19