Nonstate Warfare

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Since September 11, 2001, armed nonstate actors have garnered significant attention from scholars, policymakers, and the military. A key assumption in discussions of nonstate warfare is that state and nonstate actors engage in fundamentally different combat styles. Stephen Biddle challenges this notion, arguing that there is no intrinsic difference in military behavior between the two. Through a detailed examination of nonstate military conduct, he reveals that many nonstate armies now employ more conventional tactics than some state armies. Biddle posits that the internal politics of nonstate actors—specifically their institutional maturity and the stakes of wartime—are more influential in shaping their strategies than their material resources. He presents a continuum of military methods, ranging from Fabian-style irregular warfare to Napoleonic-style massed armies, and offers a systematic theory to explain a nonstate actor's position on this spectrum. Biddle contends that most warfare over the past century has occupied this blended middle ground. By analyzing historical examples from Lebanon, Iraq, Somalia, Croatia, and the Vietcong, he argues that treating state and nonstate warfighting as mutually exclusive can lead to significant errors in policy and scholarship. This work provides a comprehensive account of combat methods and military rationale, leading to a new understanding of wartime military behavior.