The Art of War in an Asymmetric World (July 5, 2012)
On July 5, 2012 Continuum Books published my newest book on strategic theory, The Art of War in an Asymmetric World: Strategy for the Post-Cold War Era, which examines the rise of the movements against globalization, modernization, and Western dominance that followed the collapse of the bipolar world at the end of the Cold War.
It describes U.S. efforts to adapt to this new, asymmetrical world of conflict and America's strategic, doctrinal and theoretical responses to the threats of terrorism and insurgency that have come to define the Global War on Terror (GWOT). Featuring the ideas of key theorists such as John Arquilla, Thomas P.M. Barnett, Arthur K. Cebrowski, Jim Gant, Samuel P. Huntington, Robert D. Kaplan, David J. Kilcullen, William H. McRaven, and David Ronfeldt, the book considers movements from the Zapatista rebellion through to Al Qaeda’s global jihad within a broader historical framework -- connecting pre- and post-9/11 conflicts under the unifying theme of a struggle against the forces of modernization, and the restoration of tribal order in the contemporary world.
This 352-page monograph includes a foreword by Dr. David A. Anderson, Professor of Strategic Studies and Odom Chair of Joint, Interagency and Multinational Operations at the U.S. Army Command and General Staff College, and has five chapters: 1. Global Disorder: The Post-Cold War Era -- Bipolar Collapse and the Rise of Global Entropy; 2. Asymmetrical Conflict and the Information Age: From Globalization to Global Rebellion; 3. The Global War on Terror: Rethinking Order in the Post-9/11 World; 4. The Art of War in an Asymmetric World; and 5. The Tribal Foundations of Order: Restoring Order, One Tribe at a Time.
Endorsements
“Barry Zellen has assembled a comprehensive work that is a must for the bookshelves of security theoreticians, practitioners, students, and teachers. Wonderfully written and always thought-provoking, this book serves as a beacon in an ever-changing world.”
-- Andrew R. Thomas, Associate Professor of International Business, University of Akron, USA and Founding Editor-in-Chief, Journal of Transportation Security
“The Art of War in an Asymmetric World is a much needed work synthesizing modern thinking about war and refreshing it for the 21st century. It offers an interdisciplinary look into the human dimensions of war and the impacts of technology, globalization, and increased complexity. Moving beyond the sound bites of strategic thinking, it is a profound pondering about war, strategy, and sources of conflict. Much like Michael Handel’s 1992 classic, Masters of War: Classic Strategic Thought, Zellen’s new book is bound to stir debate among America’s strategic thinkers.”
-- Commander Youssef H. Aboul-Enein, MSC, USN, Adjunct Islamic Studies Chair, Industrial College of the Armed Forces and Adjunct Faculty, Middle East Counter-Terrorism Analysis, National Intelligence University, Washington D.C. Author of Militant Islamist Ideology (Naval Institute Press 2010).
“Barry Zellen has provided a book that stretches the boundaries of our thinking on the nature of global disorder following the collapse of the bipolar world in the 1990s. As noted by Zellen, the world is today riven by a variety of clashes surrounding different aspects of modernity, globalization, disenfranchised populations, human rights, religion, and ethnicity. This work points out that war and conflict in today's world need to be understood in the context of systemic global complexity and are not attributable to a single factor. All students and scholars of strategy and conflict in the current era should take note of Zellen's important and lasting contribution to our understanding of war in the modern world.”
-- James Russell, Associate Professor, Department of National Security Affairs, Naval Postgraduate School, Monterey, USA. Author of Innovation, Transformation, and War: Counterinsurgency Operations in Anbar and Ninewa Provinces, Iraq, 2005-2007 (Stanford University Press 2010).
“In his fascinating new book, The Art of War in an Asymmetric World, Barry Scott Zellen breaks new theoretical ground, exploring both the theorists of disorder who emerged after the Cold War's end, and the strategists of order who responded to this new, chaotic world. While much of our world has globalized, Zellen reminds us that in the remote regions where today's wars are being waged, the world remains inherently tribal. Zellen provocatively argues only tribal order - and not state-imposed centralized orders - can provide us with a stable, and enduring structure of world politics, and a foundation for the return of peace. One need not share Zellen's enthusiastic embrace of tribalism to both understand and appreciate that his book initiates a much-needed debate on tribalism in the modern world.”
-- Robin Truth Goodman, Professor of English and Director of the Literature Program at Florida State University, USA. Author of Policing Narratives and the State of Terror (SUNY Press 2009).
"Zellen has once again created a masterpiece. With a unique and penetrating view of the world and human behavior, Zellen has penned another stirring analysis of our modern condition. You don't have to agree with him, but you cannot ignore him."
-- Alan Tidwell, Director, Center for Australian and New Zealand Studies, Edmund Walsh School of Foreign Service, Georgetown University, USA.
Reviews
Reviewed by Andrew McCracken in the LSE School of Economics and Political Science blog on August 18, 2013:
Barry Scott Zellen explores how the U.S. has had to adapt to the new asymmetrical world of conflict that followed the end of the Cold War and that culminates with today’s global jihadist movements. Featuring the works of key theorists such as John Arquilla, Thomas P.M. Barnett, Arthur K. Cebrowski, and David Ronfeldt, this book is to be recommended to students of strategic studies willing to bear with this dense study from beginning to end, writes Andrew McCracken.
The Art of War in an Asymmetric World – or AWAW, to use the sort of acronym so beloved of the armed forces – is both a history of military planning in the US over the past few decades and a prescription aimed at what the author considers to be its flaws. Barry Scott Zellen writes: “indigenous tribes and the most modern of states are waging a new and very asymmetric kind of conflict, one that is redefining the very building blocks of world order.” In AWAW, Zellen synthesises the academic discourse surrounding America’s military strategy over the past few decades. Inevitably for such a study, the war on terror looms large throughout; subject of the book’s central chapter, the conflict also informs the entirety of AWAW. ...
The work itself is an esoteric tome unlikely to appeal to readers unfamiliar with the field. Typically for strategic studies, familiarity with the works of Sun Tzu, Clausewitz and lesser theorists, in addition to a grounding in how the war on terror has unfolded, is taken as a given.
Indubitably, this is not Contemporary Warfare for Dummies.
Read on here.
Foreword
The collapse of the Soviet Union did not create the utopian world that many hoped it would. Throughout recorded history, conflict has been a constant in the state of world affairs. We were quickly reminded of this by the events that unfolded in such places as the former Yugoslavia, Rwanda, Sri Lanka and Afghanistan, to name just a few. However, what is changing are some of the reasons and mechanisms for waging conflict. Although globalization; the evolving means, outlets and speed of communication; and the rapid pace of technological innovation have changed the global landscape positively (albeit primarily in Western states), it has also become the catalyst for, and the means to, promulgate conflict, and in ways that we have not previously imagined.
In order to protect national security interests in our increasingly globalized, interconnected and interdependent world—particularly against terrorism, states must now contend with the global rebalancing of economic and state power (e.g., the rise of China). They must also deal with globally disconnected states such as North Korea and Iran; disenfranchised ethnic groups like the Zapatistas in Mexico; non-state actors like Al Qaeda and Hezbollah; and what Thomas Friedman has dubbed “super empowered” individuals such as Osama Bin Laden—all equipped with a new set of readily accessible means for inflicting harm and generating chaos in order to promote their contentious agendas. As exemplified by events on 9/11 and the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, military superiority alone will no longer be enough to address state threats.
In the foreseeable future, no state or non-state actor will take on the U.S. or its allies in a conventional fight. This imposes a most troubling challenge to the U.S. and other targeted states—the evolving asymmetric and network centric nature of warfare, fueled by extremism and facilitated by technology, diverse communication means and financial support—making the world a much more dangerous and unpredictable place. For example, in the past, terrorists used to operate as isolated and independent groups. Today, many are interlinked and mutually supporting. Furthermore, it is quickly becoming all too common for affiliated groups to form cells around the world in order to promote and expand their ideology. Born out of necessity, an immediate response to combat these concerning activities was to create the U.S. Department of Homeland Security and the U.S. African Geographic Command.
The U.S. has learned many lessons in Iraq, Afghanistan, and other post Cold War engagements about the changing the nature of warfare. The U.S. military has transformed into a more adaptive and flexible force, particularly in conducting counter-insurgency operations, employing special operations forces, combating terrorism and cyber attacks, working with U.S. inter-agencies, as well as embracing the importance of dominating the information domain. Its doctrine has been appropriately evolving to reflect this transformation, including incorporating the concept of operational design in the initial phase of the military planning process to help commanders better understand the complexity of the operational environment in which they operate. Departments within the U.S. government are building deployable pre- and post-conflict capabilities as a direct way of preventing or responding to conflicts, such as establishing the Bureau for Conflict and Stabilization Operations, which was designed to coordinate these activities.
Restoring order in an increasingly complex and chaotic world is no small task, particularly in a challenging budgetary environment. Among major economies, the U.S. owns $2.8 trillion of the $7.6 trillion debt that matures in 2012. It also has another $12 trillion of debt lingering over the horizon. The U.S. will have to leverage its allies and its intellectual might to match the wit and ingenuity of those seeking to undermine our and our allies’ interests around the world. This charge is not just complicated by the diverse mix of non-state actors that one must contend with, but by the makeup of some of the state actors involved. Iran is a well known sponsor of terrorism, particularly terrorist acts against Israel and the U.S. China has established cyber units to not only protect its own diplomatic, economic, and military vital interests; it has used these same units to penetrate the vital interests of other states. Recently, China even penetrated sensitive information in the U.S. Department of Commerce and on Wall Street.
The world is becoming progressively more complex and dangerous as a result of the empowering of state and non-traditional actors with ill-will schema. This reality will increasingly confront strategic, operational and tactical level thinking throughout the U.S. government on how to best ensure national security and U.S. security interests around the world. Barry Scott Zellen’s The Art of War in an Asymmetric World: Strategy for the Post-Cold War Era gives us a full appreciation of the security challenge ahead; highlights actions the U.S. has taken to engage threats and combat its enemies; and, by synthesizing prominent theorists’ ideas, provides a thought-provoking way ahead on how to win the “long war” on terrorism to cultivate an enduring peace.
Dr. David A. Anderson
Professor of Strategic Studies
Odom Chair of Joint, Interagency and Multinational Operations
U.S. Army Command and General Staff College
Fort Leavenworth, Kansas
Expanded TOC
Chapter 1: Global Disorder: The Post–Cold War Era
Bipolar Collapse and the Rise of Global Entropy
The Myth of Global Chaos
Toward a Neo-Medieval Era
The Return of Ancient Times
Chapter 2: Asymmetrical Conflict and the Information Age
War against Modernity: The Zapatista Uprising—From Tribal Insurgency to Netwar
From Globalization to Global Rebellion—The “Zapatista Effect”
Anatomy of a Netwar
Netwar Comes of Age
Technology Strikes Back: Harnessing Disruption Strategy for the Information Age
Info Warfare in the Age of Asymmetry: The Disruptive Technology Framework
Strategic Disruption: William H. McRaven’s Theory of Special Operations
Doctrinal Disruption: Arthur K. Cebrowski’s Vision of Force Transformation
Tactical Disruption: John R. Boyd’s OODA Loop
Chapter 3: The Global War on Terror
Restoring Order in the Post-9/11 World
America, Insurgency, and Counterinsurgency
Learning and Adaptation at War: The Heart of FM 3-24
Drawing the Wrong Lessons from America’s Vietnam
The Cult of the COINdinistas: Journey from Theory to Dogma
The 'Soup of War': Knives versus Spoons—A Debate
Chapter 4: The Art of War in an Asymmetric World
Gap versus Core: Digital Divide as New Boundary Line between Order and Chaos
Complexity Theory: Fortune’s Return
Complexity and COIN: An Organic Systems Model of Insurgency
Insurgency in an Age of Complexity
Counterinsurgency Redux: The Flip Side of the COIN
A Trinity of Counterinsurgency Warfare
Twenty-Eight Articles: From Theory to Practice; Reducing Complexity to Actionable Maxims
Chapter 5: The Tribal Foundations of Order
Restoring World Order. One Tribe at a Time
Order in the Vacuum of “Ungoverned Spaces”
The Art of War in the Tribal Zone
Tribe–State Conflict and the War on Terror: A Persistent Fault Line of Conflict
The Tribe: Both a New and an Old Foundation of World Order
Arab Spring: Glimmer of an Emergent Order
Rethinking the Subcomponents of World Order
Foundation of a New Trinity: The Organic, Synthetic, and Ethereal
Endorsements
“Barry Zellen has assembled a comprehensive work that is a must for the bookshelves of security theoreticians, practitioners, students, and teachers. Wonderfully written and always thought-provoking, this book serves as a beacon in an ever-changing world.”
-- Andrew R. Thomas, Associate Professor of International Business, University of Akron, USA and Founding Editor-in-Chief, Journal of Transportation Security
“The Art of War in an Asymmetric World is a much needed work synthesizing modern thinking about war and refreshing it for the 21st century. It offers an interdisciplinary look into the human dimensions of war and the impacts of technology, globalization, and increased complexity. Moving beyond the sound bites of strategic thinking, it is a profound pondering about war, strategy, and sources of conflict. Much like Michael Handel’s 1992 classic, Masters of War: Classic Strategic Thought, Zellen’s new book is bound to stir debate among America’s strategic thinkers.”
-- Commander Youssef H. Aboul-Enein, MSC, USN, Adjunct Islamic Studies Chair, Industrial College of the Armed Forces and Adjunct Faculty, Middle East Counter-Terrorism Analysis, National Intelligence University, Washington D.C. Author of Militant Islamist Ideology (Naval Institute Press 2010).
“Barry Zellen has provided a book that stretches the boundaries of our thinking on the nature of global disorder following the collapse of the bipolar world in the 1990s. As noted by Zellen, the world is today riven by a variety of clashes surrounding different aspects of modernity, globalization, disenfranchised populations, human rights, religion, and ethnicity. This work points out that war and conflict in today's world need to be understood in the context of systemic global complexity and are not attributable to a single factor. All students and scholars of strategy and conflict in the current era should take note of Zellen's important and lasting contribution to our understanding of war in the modern world.”
-- James Russell, Associate Professor, Department of National Security Affairs, Naval Postgraduate School, Monterey, USA. Author of Innovation, Transformation, and War: Counterinsurgency Operations in Anbar and Ninewa Provinces, Iraq, 2005-2007 (Stanford University Press 2010).
“In his fascinating new book, The Art of War in an Asymmetric World, Barry Scott Zellen breaks new theoretical ground, exploring both the theorists of disorder who emerged after the Cold War's end, and the strategists of order who responded to this new, chaotic world. While much of our world has globalized, Zellen reminds us that in the remote regions where today's wars are being waged, the world remains inherently tribal. Zellen provocatively argues only tribal order - and not state-imposed centralized orders - can provide us with a stable, and enduring structure of world politics, and a foundation for the return of peace. One need not share Zellen's enthusiastic embrace of tribalism to both understand and appreciate that his book initiates a much-needed debate on tribalism in the modern world.”
-- Robin Truth Goodman, Professor of English and Director of the Literature Program at Florida State University, USA. Author of Policing Narratives and the State of Terror (SUNY Press 2009).
"Zellen has once again created a masterpiece. With a unique and penetrating view of the world and human behavior, Zellen has penned another stirring analysis of our modern condition. You don't have to agree with him, but you cannot ignore him."
-- Alan Tidwell, Director, Center for Australian and New Zealand Studies, Edmund Walsh School of Foreign Service, Georgetown University, USA.
Reviews
Reviewed by Andrew McCracken in the LSE School of Economics and Political Science blog on August 18, 2013:
Barry Scott Zellen explores how the U.S. has had to adapt to the new asymmetrical world of conflict that followed the end of the Cold War and that culminates with today’s global jihadist movements. Featuring the works of key theorists such as John Arquilla, Thomas P.M. Barnett, Arthur K. Cebrowski, and David Ronfeldt, this book is to be recommended to students of strategic studies willing to bear with this dense study from beginning to end, writes Andrew McCracken.
The Art of War in an Asymmetric World – or AWAW, to use the sort of acronym so beloved of the armed forces – is both a history of military planning in the US over the past few decades and a prescription aimed at what the author considers to be its flaws. Barry Scott Zellen writes: “indigenous tribes and the most modern of states are waging a new and very asymmetric kind of conflict, one that is redefining the very building blocks of world order.” In AWAW, Zellen synthesises the academic discourse surrounding America’s military strategy over the past few decades. Inevitably for such a study, the war on terror looms large throughout; subject of the book’s central chapter, the conflict also informs the entirety of AWAW. ...
The work itself is an esoteric tome unlikely to appeal to readers unfamiliar with the field. Typically for strategic studies, familiarity with the works of Sun Tzu, Clausewitz and lesser theorists, in addition to a grounding in how the war on terror has unfolded, is taken as a given.
Indubitably, this is not Contemporary Warfare for Dummies.
Read on here.
Foreword
The collapse of the Soviet Union did not create the utopian world that many hoped it would. Throughout recorded history, conflict has been a constant in the state of world affairs. We were quickly reminded of this by the events that unfolded in such places as the former Yugoslavia, Rwanda, Sri Lanka and Afghanistan, to name just a few. However, what is changing are some of the reasons and mechanisms for waging conflict. Although globalization; the evolving means, outlets and speed of communication; and the rapid pace of technological innovation have changed the global landscape positively (albeit primarily in Western states), it has also become the catalyst for, and the means to, promulgate conflict, and in ways that we have not previously imagined.
In order to protect national security interests in our increasingly globalized, interconnected and interdependent world—particularly against terrorism, states must now contend with the global rebalancing of economic and state power (e.g., the rise of China). They must also deal with globally disconnected states such as North Korea and Iran; disenfranchised ethnic groups like the Zapatistas in Mexico; non-state actors like Al Qaeda and Hezbollah; and what Thomas Friedman has dubbed “super empowered” individuals such as Osama Bin Laden—all equipped with a new set of readily accessible means for inflicting harm and generating chaos in order to promote their contentious agendas. As exemplified by events on 9/11 and the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, military superiority alone will no longer be enough to address state threats.
In the foreseeable future, no state or non-state actor will take on the U.S. or its allies in a conventional fight. This imposes a most troubling challenge to the U.S. and other targeted states—the evolving asymmetric and network centric nature of warfare, fueled by extremism and facilitated by technology, diverse communication means and financial support—making the world a much more dangerous and unpredictable place. For example, in the past, terrorists used to operate as isolated and independent groups. Today, many are interlinked and mutually supporting. Furthermore, it is quickly becoming all too common for affiliated groups to form cells around the world in order to promote and expand their ideology. Born out of necessity, an immediate response to combat these concerning activities was to create the U.S. Department of Homeland Security and the U.S. African Geographic Command.
The U.S. has learned many lessons in Iraq, Afghanistan, and other post Cold War engagements about the changing the nature of warfare. The U.S. military has transformed into a more adaptive and flexible force, particularly in conducting counter-insurgency operations, employing special operations forces, combating terrorism and cyber attacks, working with U.S. inter-agencies, as well as embracing the importance of dominating the information domain. Its doctrine has been appropriately evolving to reflect this transformation, including incorporating the concept of operational design in the initial phase of the military planning process to help commanders better understand the complexity of the operational environment in which they operate. Departments within the U.S. government are building deployable pre- and post-conflict capabilities as a direct way of preventing or responding to conflicts, such as establishing the Bureau for Conflict and Stabilization Operations, which was designed to coordinate these activities.
Restoring order in an increasingly complex and chaotic world is no small task, particularly in a challenging budgetary environment. Among major economies, the U.S. owns $2.8 trillion of the $7.6 trillion debt that matures in 2012. It also has another $12 trillion of debt lingering over the horizon. The U.S. will have to leverage its allies and its intellectual might to match the wit and ingenuity of those seeking to undermine our and our allies’ interests around the world. This charge is not just complicated by the diverse mix of non-state actors that one must contend with, but by the makeup of some of the state actors involved. Iran is a well known sponsor of terrorism, particularly terrorist acts against Israel and the U.S. China has established cyber units to not only protect its own diplomatic, economic, and military vital interests; it has used these same units to penetrate the vital interests of other states. Recently, China even penetrated sensitive information in the U.S. Department of Commerce and on Wall Street.
The world is becoming progressively more complex and dangerous as a result of the empowering of state and non-traditional actors with ill-will schema. This reality will increasingly confront strategic, operational and tactical level thinking throughout the U.S. government on how to best ensure national security and U.S. security interests around the world. Barry Scott Zellen’s The Art of War in an Asymmetric World: Strategy for the Post-Cold War Era gives us a full appreciation of the security challenge ahead; highlights actions the U.S. has taken to engage threats and combat its enemies; and, by synthesizing prominent theorists’ ideas, provides a thought-provoking way ahead on how to win the “long war” on terrorism to cultivate an enduring peace.
Dr. David A. Anderson
Professor of Strategic Studies
Odom Chair of Joint, Interagency and Multinational Operations
U.S. Army Command and General Staff College
Fort Leavenworth, Kansas
Expanded TOC
Chapter 1: Global Disorder: The Post–Cold War Era
Bipolar Collapse and the Rise of Global Entropy
The Myth of Global Chaos
Toward a Neo-Medieval Era
The Return of Ancient Times
Chapter 2: Asymmetrical Conflict and the Information Age
War against Modernity: The Zapatista Uprising—From Tribal Insurgency to Netwar
From Globalization to Global Rebellion—The “Zapatista Effect”
Anatomy of a Netwar
Netwar Comes of Age
Technology Strikes Back: Harnessing Disruption Strategy for the Information Age
Info Warfare in the Age of Asymmetry: The Disruptive Technology Framework
Strategic Disruption: William H. McRaven’s Theory of Special Operations
Doctrinal Disruption: Arthur K. Cebrowski’s Vision of Force Transformation
Tactical Disruption: John R. Boyd’s OODA Loop
Chapter 3: The Global War on Terror
Restoring Order in the Post-9/11 World
America, Insurgency, and Counterinsurgency
Learning and Adaptation at War: The Heart of FM 3-24
Drawing the Wrong Lessons from America’s Vietnam
The Cult of the COINdinistas: Journey from Theory to Dogma
The 'Soup of War': Knives versus Spoons—A Debate
Chapter 4: The Art of War in an Asymmetric World
Gap versus Core: Digital Divide as New Boundary Line between Order and Chaos
Complexity Theory: Fortune’s Return
Complexity and COIN: An Organic Systems Model of Insurgency
Insurgency in an Age of Complexity
Counterinsurgency Redux: The Flip Side of the COIN
A Trinity of Counterinsurgency Warfare
Twenty-Eight Articles: From Theory to Practice; Reducing Complexity to Actionable Maxims
Chapter 5: The Tribal Foundations of Order
Restoring World Order. One Tribe at a Time
Order in the Vacuum of “Ungoverned Spaces”
The Art of War in the Tribal Zone
Tribe–State Conflict and the War on Terror: A Persistent Fault Line of Conflict
The Tribe: Both a New and an Old Foundation of World Order
Arab Spring: Glimmer of an Emergent Order
Rethinking the Subcomponents of World Order
Foundation of a New Trinity: The Organic, Synthetic, and Ethereal
