has begun to form around the core proposition that it is possible for the aggressor to achieve his principal strategic objectives in the theater—to induce U.S. withdrawal before achievement of its war aims—without resorting to the high-risk use of nuclear, biological, or chemical threats or attacks. Adherents of this camp generally believe that regional actors are likely to have sufficient conventional power to achieve their ends, even if that conventional power is far inferior to that of the United States, and that the necessary strategic behaviors can be induced of Washington without projecting the war into the American homeland (which they also tend to see as unnecessarily risky). In the words of one analyst, "first principles for defeating a global power [without WMD] are in wide discussion 'out there'." [Statement made as an introductory remark by one of the speakers at a day-long symposium at IDA… The speaker was a senior member of the Intelligence Community, speaking on a not-for-attribution basis. The 11 principles that follow in this text reflect the author’s effort to distill the key strategic points from that discussion.] These principles appear to still be in the formative stage of debate among U.S. experts, but the research performed for this study suggests that they encompass the following:

1. The weak can defeat the strong.
2. Take a long time to prepare.
3. Red can out-innovate Blue.
4. Strike a fait accompli, reversible only at high cost.
5. The Information Age empowers Red as much as Blue.
6. Blue precision-guided munitions can be defeated.
7. Red counterstrikes cannot be "defeated."
8. Embarrass America.
9. Time is not to the U.S. advantage. America fears quagmires.
10. Escalate in ways that make it hard for the U.S. to counter-escalate.
11. Don’t surrender. So long as you never lose, you’ve won.

The essence of this approach to asymmetric conflict is that the American public can be made weary of the costs of prolonged war, which will translate into an eventual political willingness to settle the conflict on terms that preserve the aggressor regime and potentially some of its original gains. And it can be made weary through sustained generation of U.S. casualties that will not result in U.S. escalation so long as those casualties do not occur suddenly or dramatically or otherwise generate great fear or anger among the American public. Indeed, recourse to WMD attacks in-theater and to terrorist attacks on the U.S. public could be seen as unnecessarily provocative. As Freedberg has argued, "If an adversary’s greatest asset is American indifference to conflicts in distant lands, then the last thing he wants to do is bring the war home to America.

[S]uicide terrorism is a form of weaponry that terrorist groups, secular and religious, operate at a level above the suicide bombers. Suicide attacks are efficient weapons in that they have an effective homing capacity combined with obstacle avoidance and best timing of detonation...

Robert Pape, author of Dying to Win: The Strategic Logic of Suicide Terrorism, [notes that] religion is NOT the important criterion for a suicide volunteer. The principal stimulus to volunteering IS foreign occupation which increases nationalist resistance. (Religion is, however, a multiplier when the foreign occupying power has a religion different from the local community which the terrorists can exploit to their benefit…). Suicide terrorism is a quintessential asymmetrical attack tool in that suicide coercion is the inverse of the military coercion of the larger, ostensibly stronger power. The "presence of foreign combat troops on territory that the terrorists prize" cuts across all other drivers, be it religion, social status, revenge, poverty, or low education. Following the success of Hezbollah and its Iranian handlers in dissuading the US, France and Israel to remain in Lebanon, other asymmetric groups adopted the strategy (although much of the technical advances have been made by the Tamil Tigers in Sri Lanka). Of the terrorist campaigns since 1980 that Pape has studied, 13 have concluded while 5 are still ongoing. Of the 13, 7 resulted in territorial gains for the terrorists while 6 did not. Pape writes:

"The main purpose of suicide terrorism is to use the threat of punishment to compel a target government to change policy and most especially to cause democratic states to withdraw forces from land the terrorists perceive as their national homeland."

Pape states the reality of needing to "find a lasting solution to suicide terrorism that does not compromise our core interest in maintaining access to one of the world’s key oil-producing regions." Dying to Win points to the need for counterterrorist strategies that defeat the current pool of suicide terrorists while deflecting or disarming the forthcoming emergence of a larger pool. Pape paints a steep slope that is not now being pursued, certainly not with sufficient competence, consistency, or funding, combining such actions as thoughtful concessions to occupied areas that rob terrorist groups of their support and possibly their legitimacy among the sea in which they swim, reconciliation with Muslim states and developing core alliances with Iraq and Saudi Arabia to combat of anti-Americanism in the Middle East.

Video: Islamic Terrorists Behead Russian Diplomats
John LIttle
Blogs of War
June 25th 2006
Note: The video link is no longer active but the stills are

AFTER THE WAR: FRONTIER; Conflict on Iraq-Syria Border Feeds Rage Against the U.S.
By DEXTER FILKINS
New York Times
July 15, 2003
Fee archive
Mirror LFP - Lebanese Foundation for Peace

Asymmetric Conflict 2010
Brad Roberts
Prepared by IDA
November 2000