Nonstate Warfare - by Stephen Biddle

About the Book

"Armed nonstate actors have received increasing attention since September 11th, 2001, both from scholars and from policy makers and soldiers--and with this attention has come a vibrant debate about whether nonstate civil warfare and insurgency is the future of war, and if so, how it should be countered. Yet underlying these debates is one crucial shared assumption: that states and nonstate actors fight very differently. Biddle upturns this distinction in How Nonstate Actors Fight, examining actual military methods to show that many nonstate actors now fight more "conventionally" than many states. Rather than a dichotomy, Biddle frames nonstate and state methods along a continuum and presents a systematic theory to explain any given nonstate actor's position on this spectrum. His theory emphasizes how actors' internal politics - especially their institutional maturity and war aims - determine their military choices. In doing so, Biddle bridges to largely opposing groups of scholarship: materialists who assume that material and structural constraints will lead nonstates to prefer irregular warfare, and culturalists who see nonstate warmaking as connected to social norms. Biddle integrates both materialist and cultural considerations into this theory, but emphasizes internal politics as the chief determinant of how any actor will fight. The first four chapters present Biddle's theory, and the next five test is across a range of historical examples, from Lebanon to Iraq to Somalia to Croatia to the Vietcong"--

Book Synopsis

How nonstate military strategies overturn traditional perspectives on warfare

Since September 11th, 2001, armed nonstate actors have received increased attention and discussion from scholars, policymakers, and the military. Underlying debates about nonstate warfare and how it should be countered is one crucial assumption: that state and nonstate actors fight very differently. In Nonstate Warfare, Stephen Biddle upturns this distinction, arguing that there is actually nothing intrinsic separating state or nonstate military behavior. Through an in-depth look at nonstate military conduct, Biddle shows that many nonstate armies now fight more "conventionally" than many state armies, and that the internal politics of nonstate actors--their institutional maturity and wartime stakes rather than their material weapons or equipment--determines tactics and strategies.

Biddle frames nonstate and state methods along a continuum, spanning Fabian-style irregular warfare to Napoleonic-style warfare involving massed armies, and he presents a systematic theory to explain any given nonstate actor's position on this spectrum. Showing that most warfare for at least a century has kept to the blended middle of the spectrum, Biddle argues that material and tribal culture explanations for nonstate warfare methods do not adequately explain observed patterns of warmaking. Investigating a range of historical examples from Lebanon and Iraq to Somalia, Croatia, and the Vietcong, Biddle demonstrates that viewing state and nonstate warfighting as mutually exclusive can lead to errors in policy and scholarship.

A comprehensive account of combat methods and military rationale, Nonstate Warfare offers a new understanding for wartime military behavior.

Review Quotes

"[An] exemplary work."---Douglas J. Cremer, The European Legacy

"An important and innovative analysis."---Lawrence D. Freedman, Foreign Affairs

"Its publication presents a rare occasion that forces one to re-think received wisdom about rebel groups."---Siddarth Singh, Open Magazine ​​​​​​​

About the Author

Stephen Biddle is professor of international and public affairs at Columbia University and adjunct senior fellow for defense policy at the Council on Foreign Relations. He is the author of Military Power: Explaining Victory and Defeat in Modern Battle (Princeton).