Counterinsurgency and Military Culture: State Regulars versus Non-State Irregulars by Robert M. Cassidy in the 2008 edition of the Baltic Security and Defence Review, the annual publication of the Baltic Defence College.
"Any good soldier can handle guerrillas."
Krepinevich, 1986:37
"Our enemies understand that irregular warfare
is the bane of regular military traditions."
Cassidy, 2007:44
The first quote is attributed to the U.S. Army Chief of Staff during 1961 when the U.S. Army was on the verge of escalating its commitment to help fight insurgents in the jungles of Vietnam. The officer to whom the first quote is attributed was steeped in the conventions of regular Army forces' organization, training, and education. The second quote is an inference about the difficulties that obtain when big power militaries attempt to fight against irregular adversaries without adapting their methods to meet the exigencies of irregular warfare. U.S military operations in Somalia from 1992 to 1994 under the aegis of the UN saw the operation evolve from peace enforcement into what was essentially irregular warfare in and around Mogadishu. By June 1993, U.S. Soldiers and Marines were fighting a counter-guerrilla war against Mohammed Farah Aideed's irregulars. The October 3rd -- 4th, 1993, battle in Mogadishu was the culminating battle which saw U.S. regular and elite infantry battalions, along with special operators, fighting out of the city against swarming irregulars. In fact, the battle in Mogadishu that night represented the most intense light infantry battle experienced by the U.S. Army since Vietnam at that time. Rangers, special operators, and the infantrymen of the 10th Mountain Division acquitted themselves with courage and élan in the most difficult of circumstances. However, the ultimate outcome of Somalia, where the U.S. pulled its military forces out, would seem to refute the veracity of the first quote above and attest to the merit of the second one. In Somalia, American forces possessed a technological advantage and an ostensible numerical advantage in regular military formations. Yet in this first experiment with irregular warfare after the end of the Cold War, the big conventional war military cultural orientation of the American military was manifest, as it had for many years almost exclusively focused on regular or, conventional war. The regular military forces of the U.S. faced Somali indigenous forces which employed the irregular methods of the insurgent...
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