ABSTRACT
It is both useful and historically justifiable to divide the experience of warfare into two broad categories: regular and irregular. The former is warfare between the regular, armed forces of states, while the latter is warfare between those forces and the irregular armed forces of non-state political entities. Irregular warfare is asymmetrical: the opponents are certain to be very different. Also, the warfare may well be transcultural. It follows that such belligerency must pose unusual, and unusually severe, challenges to the regular side. An army justly proud of its military effectiveness in regular warfare is apt to discover that irregular combat, with the absence of large-scale open combat, prices its strength at a heavy discount. To be outstanding at regular warfare does not mean that one will even be competent, let alone good, at warfare of an irregular kind. To employ a vital Clausewitzian concept, the ‘grammar’of irregular warfare is radically different from that of regular warfare (Clausewitz, 1976: 605).
