Military

Semi-Symmetric Warfare Is the New Norm

Austin Smith

Published: October 19, 2024 8:30 am

Key Points:

• The Ukraine-Russia war shows a semi-symmetric conflict, with outside aid helping a weaker nation resist a stronger one.
• Proxy wars let superpowers avoid direct confrontation, though they risk escalation.
• Despite conflicts, nuclear deterrence and proxy wars contribute to a relatively peaceful global era.
• Also: Start here to retire rich!

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Edited Video Transcript:

But now you’re talking about asymmetric versus asymmetric.

Are we now in the era where asymmetric warfare dominates?

What is Ukraine?

Ukraine very much does not look like a traditional war.

So what is going on there and what can we learn about the future of war from that conflict?

Sure, I mean, that’s a really interesting point because I think this is a conflict that defies easy characterization.

You can’t really describe it as a symmetric war because it’s not a conflict of two equal powers or two nuclear powers, crucially.

That’s something that we’ve not seen at all since World War II.

The term delicate balance of power, delicate balance of terror, excuse me, is one that’s taken from an article by a nuclear strategist called Albert Wohlstetter, and that was in the

And that’s just something that’s persisted into the current day.

So can we describe Ukraine-Russia as a symmetric war?

I don’t think so.

But equally, can we describe as an asymmetric war in the sense, like I’m sure Putin would want it to be characterized as that, as the special military operation.

So when we say asymmetric war, that tends to be counterterrorism operations, counterinsurgency, when one side is overwhelmingly stronger than the other.

When we talked in a previous session about forever wars, um you know that came up

but I think it exists in a kind of in-between um status

so we might the terror you know I’ve seen the term semi-symmetric being used to describe ukraine russia because ukraine is not does not have military parity with russia

but I wouldn’t describe it as an overwhelming uh you know imbalance

I mean thanks to a lot of foreign support that is allowing ukraine to even the odds and not just sit back and defend against waves of Russian attacks.

We’ve seen lots of examples of Ukraine’s military taking the initiative.

So maybe this is a kind of new type of conflict where a strong power is able to stand up to a global power with outside support.

So perhaps Taiwan might fall under that in a future conflict.

And yeah, and I think that’s probably something we want to bring up as well.

It’s just, you know, can we definitively say there will never be a world war three as much as I’d like to say that I don’t think we can make that claim definitively.

And it may sound a little strange to say this when we’re talking about several ongoing conflicts in the world, but in the vast scope of human history, this is a remarkably peaceful period.

Hmm.

It’s something we are blessed to live in.

We always sort of have a peace dividend right now that we may be taking for granted.

And, you know, I’ll also add on this conversation about symmetric versus asymmetric or semi-symmetric warfare.

It also seems like we’re now in the era of semi-symmetric warfare.

proxy warfare, right?

We have Iran and Hezbollah and Israel and the United States, Ukraine, Russia, United States.

It seems that we have all of this world where maybe there are semi-symmetric warfare, but then in many cases, there’s a proxy element behind it.

Can you comment a little bit about what that dynamic brings to it as there are these major world powers who are reticent or incapable of going to war with each other due to what you talked about, the delicate balance of terror, but maybe they can conduct um warfare via proxies and what does that do to a semi-symmetric nature if you’re a smaller nation backed by a superpower what what does that do for the balance of war and power globally

Sure.

I mean, I think the Cold War, there were several proxy battles there because the two superpowers would obviously not confront each other directly.

So we’re seeing kind of a legacy of that, if you will.

The idea of the United States and Russia going to war directly, even today, of course, Russia is far less powerful than it was, but it’s unthinkable.

So I think that the ability to still strike at one another via proxies, we saw a lot of them in the Cold War.

We’re seeing that to a lesser extent with Iran’s proxies in the Middle East.

Although that is a situation that’s developing, I don’t know how likely that is to escalate into a regional war

I mean it’s the both sides are playing extremely dangerous game of brinkmanship here

um but I think striking through proxies is you know the safest

uh it’s a term I’m not terribly comfortable using but um less risk perhaps

um strike it wants geopolitical enemies indirectly

of course there’s the element of control if someone else is doing it on your behalf then it’s you can’t really have any you know, the lack of direct control over what they’re doing and the danger of escalation increases exponentially in those situations.

It seems like there’s a question, and maybe this is just going to be the eternal question, you know, proxy warfare prevents, let’s say, you know, superpowers from going to war, the rapid escalation nuclear usage, but if you conduct too many proxy wars, at what point does it become quicksand or does it create its own gravity to pull in a superpower?

Maybe that’s the perpetual question we’ll have, you know, is it safer to conduct proxy war and and create these semi-symmetric war situations if it means that superpowers don’t end up going toe to toe?

And the answer may very well be yes.

I’d love to turn a little bit to what we’re talking about the future