Leadership Attributes, Shared Understanding, and Stress Management in Irregular Warfare
Abstract
When people think about war, they usually imagine the contemporary methodology that most of today's nation-states employ. Their mental image might be of infantry Soldiers executing tactical maneuvers in various formations or tanks and field artillery raining steel on enemy positions. On the contrary, most people's minds might not summon visions of guerilla fighters or insurgents who engage their enemy and then melt away into the background. However, this sort of fighter exists on today's battlefield and illustrates an atypical form of conflict - irregular warfare. Irregular warfare includes guerilla fighters and insurgencies and can incorporate other activities such as terrorism, sabotage, subversion, and other asymmetrical threats (Department of Defense, 2010). Wars such as World War I, World War II, the Korean War, and the Gulf War highlight the application of contemporary methods due to large-scale combat operations. However, wars like Vietnam, Afghanistan, Iraq, and Ukraine demonstrate the use of noncontemporary means to achieve results because the fighting conditions changed for all participants and varied from that of large-scale battles. In relative terms, irregular warfare tends to have a negative or less-than-honorable connotation. However, many nations, including the United States, utilize irregular warfare to achieve an end state that would be otherwise impossible to attain using contemporary methods. Furthermore, it is imperative to understand that, just like contemporary warfare, irregular warfare requires agile and sophisticated leadership to yield success on the battlefield. This concept stems from the axiom that irregular warfare commonly requires small group tactics that cut off fighting elements from their larger organization and thus require a decentralized form of command and control.
Document Details
- Document Type
- Technical Report
- Publication Date
- Nov 06, 2022
- Accession Number
- AD1199380
Entities
People
- Garrett D. Jr Roberson