The term "irregular warfare" has become a catch-all label for those forms of warfare that are neither conventional (that is, involving the land, sea, and air forces of belligerent states using traditional tactics) nor nuclear. It applies to both insurgency and counterinsurgency warfare; it also applies to counter-terrorist and "direct action" missions of special forces and to stabilization, training, and reconstruction operations. The U.S. military efforts today in Iraq and Afghanistan are decidedly examples of irregular warfare; so was much of the Vietnam War. And it is likely that the United States will be involved in more irregular conflicts in the years ahead. As the most recent iteration of the U.S. National Defense Strategy puts it:

U.S. dominance in conventional warfare has given prospective adversaries, particularly non-state actors and their state sponsors, strong motivation to adopt asymmetric methods to counter our advantages. For this reason, we must display a mastery of irregular warfare comparable to that which we possess in conventional combat.

Secretary of Defense Robert M. Gates has driven the point home in speeches, arguing that the United States is "much more likely to engage in asymmetric conflict than conventional conflict" in the years ahead, and that we must "ensure that the capabilities gained and counterinsurgency lessons learned from Iraq and Afghanistan" are institutionalized in the military and the defense bureaucracy.

That is no small order. As Gates and others have noted, making irregular warfare a core competency will require carefully balancing doctrine, training, and resources so the U.S. defense establishment doesn't lose any of its present institutional, cultural, and technological strengths. And there is a further complication: American assumptions about and cultural dispositions toward war do not easily accommodate irregular warfare. In a fine 2006 monograph, Colin S. Gray, a professor of international politics and strategic studies at the University of Reading in the United Kingdom, compiled a list of more than a dozen characteristics of "the American way of war" that must be overcome if the United States is to improve its performance against the strategic "menace posed by irregular enemies." Americans, for example, tend to think of war apolitically, astrategically, and ahistorically; our optimistic penchant for an "engineering fix" inevitably leads us to "attempt the impossible"; we are not rich in the "cultural empathy" needed to engage minds; and we are too dependent on technology, firepower, and large-scale missions. We are also, Gray argues, too impatient and too sensitive to casualties: "If the United States is serious about combating irregular enemies in a way that stands a reasonable prospect of success, it will have to send its soldiers into harm's way to a degree that could promote acute political discomfort" since irregular warfare often requires getting "up close and personal" with an enemy. (The 2006 Army and Marine Corps Counterinsurgency Field Manual, which will be taken up in detail later, represents a valuable institutional effort to address many of these problems.)

Gray's helpful summary makes clear both that Americans are not instinctively good at irregular warfare and that we warily view it as unnecessary and strategically flawed. But in addition to the cultural and historical reasons Gray lists, it seems likely that some Americans are hesitant to support their nation's involvement in irregular warfare for moral reasons, intuitively believing that, when compared to conventional warfare, irregular warfare is somehow ethically dubious or less noble-in a word, more "dirty."

Is there indeed an ethical difference between conventional and irregular warfare? Is there something inherent in the nature and conduct of irregular warfare-particularly insurgency or counterinsurgency warfare-that makes it morally distinct from conventional warfare?

To read the complete article, please go to The New Atlantis website.