Three Dangerous Men: Russia, China, Iran and the Rise of Irregular Warfare

by Seth G. Jones

But Chinese, Russian, and Iranian activity during the COVID-19 pandemic highlighted some of the major foreign policy instruments that those countries used to compete with the United States. Cyber campaigns, covert action, support to state and nonstate proxies, information and disinformation, espionage, and economic coercion—these are the tools of irregular warfare.

“All the business of war, and indeed all the business of life, is to endeavor to find out what you don’t know by what you do.”21 For Wellington, a great general was defined by an ability to understand what was happening on the “other side of the hill”—behind the opposing lines and in the enemy’s mind.

As Gerasimov admitted: “Our personnel in the field, including commanders,” were “sometimes woefully unprepared” because of a “lack of combat training; personnel being distracted from their training programs by other tasks; and failure to implement our combat training plans.”48

The United States was perfecting its military capabilities to, in his words, “eliminate the statehood of unwanted countries, to undermine sovereignty, and to change lawfully elected bodies of state power” in ways that benefited the United States.22

Gerasimov saw a fundamental flaw in the US approach. “Attempts to transfer the values of Western democracy to countries with their own mentality, spiritual values and traditions lead to the opposite result,” he remarked.

“The occupation of Iraq, the elimination of the next leader and the ‘democratization’ of the country at gunpoint led to the fact that most of the dispersed armed forces and the remaining political elite formed the backbone of ISIS and established their power in a significant part of this country.”25

Not only did the US fail to ensure peace, Gerasimov lectured, but the wars “led to an escalation of tension, the exacerbation of contradictions, the growth of armed violence and civil wars, the death of civilians.”26

Ever the military student, Gerasimov concluded that war was now conducted by a roughly 4:1 ratio of nonmilitary and military tools. These nonmilitary measures include economic sanctions, disruption of diplomatic ties, and political and diplomatic pressure.41

In other words, wars were fought and often won long before the start of formal hostilities. Gerasimov believed that Russia paid a heavy price in ignoring Isserson.5 He felt it was now time for Russia to respond—to embrace a new form of warfare that the United States had already adopted.

While each war might be different, Gerasimov and other Russian officials concluded that the primary tools of Russia’s “new generation war” would include a heavy dose of intelligence efforts, special operations, and information activities.22 It was irregular warfare.

Russian leaders also believed that their actions in Ukraine and other countries would deter US action in Russia’s periphery, such as Belarus, Moldova, and Georgia.36

With a limited response from Washington, a growing regional perception that the United States was unwilling to support its traditional partners, and a steady stream of Russian officials and activity in the region, Middle Eastern leaders had to make peace with Moscow.

Russia adopted a punishment strategy, not a population-centric strategy characterized by winning local hearts and minds.81 Russian and allied military forces inflicted civilian harm on opposition-controlled areas by using artillery and indiscriminate weapons, such as thermobaric, incendiary, and cluster munitions.82 As the Russians demonstrated in Grozny during Gerasimov’s time in Chechnya, a punishment strategy is designed to raise the societal costs of continued resistance and coerce rebels to give up.83

Russia’s strategy with private military companies was straightforward: to undermine US power and increase Moscow’s influence by using low-profile, deniable forces that could do everything from providing foreign leaders with security to training, advising, and assisting partner security forces.

THE IRAN-IRAQ WAR had a profound impact on Soleimani in two ways. First, he concluded that Iran was surrounded by enemies.

Second, Soleimani realized that Iran was not—and would likely never be—a conventional power. Its comparative advantage would have to be irregular operations.

In early 2002, tensions between the United States and Iran significantly deteriorated for at least two reasons. The first was the decision by US president George W. Bush in January 2002 to finger Iran—along with North Korea and Iraq—as states that sponsored terrorism and produced weapons of mass destruction.

A second reason for the collapse of US-Iranian relations centered on al-Qaeda.

If the United States attacked Iran, al-Qaeda could be helpful in responding. Once again, under Soleimani’s guidance, Iran had employed an asymmetric approach, choosing to work with an enemy in order to balance the greater threat: the United States.

More than almost any single event since 9/11, the 2003 US invasion of Iraq shifted the balance of power in the region in favor of Iran and Soleimani. It gave Soleimani a chance to support Iraq’s majority Shia population, influence a government in Baghdad that had shed so much Iranian blood during the Iran-Iraq War, and target vulnerable US forces. Iran would capitalize on the US miscalculation not through conventional means, but by developing a sophisticated irregular warfare campaign.

To expand Iranian influence, Soleimani developed a two-pronged approach: increase attacks against US forces from Iran-aided militia groups, and become more deeply enmeshed in Iraq’s formal security institutions.39 This approach was classic irregular warfare, since Iran was operating against the United States indirectly through Iraqi partner forces—rather than directly through Iranian conventional forces.

Soleimani did not exert his influence directly, but rather indirectly through militia forces. A US Army lessons-learned study summed up the result of the US withdrawal. “An emboldened and expansionist Iran appears to be the only victor,” it concluded.81

“Soleimani and the Quds Force were very important in retaking Aleppo,” said the CIA’s Roule. “The Iranians brought the whole battle space together, which included the Syrians, Russians, Hezbollah, and others.”19

It was part of Iran’s “axis of resistance.”23 As the CIA’s Mike Morell assessed, “Iran wants to be the hegemonic power in the Middle East. They want to reestablish the Persian Empire.”

“Iran dramatically improved its strategic reach by equipping and supporting proxies in Yemen with the Houthis and in Iraq with the Shia militias,” said Lieutenant General Michael Nagata.

“Iran failed on many of its most important objectives in Yemen, such as controlling the Bab el Mandeb Strait and the Red Sea,” said Roule.47 But Iran nevertheless tied down the Saudis in a quagmire that cost Riyadh over $200 million per day, eroded their international image, embarrassed their military, failed to weaken Iranian influence, killed over 100,000 Yemenis, and displaced more than 4 million people.

Despite a floundering economy—thanks, in part, to US sanctions—Soleimani expanded Iran’s influence in such countries as Lebanon, Syria, Iraq, Afghanistan, and Yemen by providing money, arms, training, and technology to nonstate forces.

Iran projected power not through conventional capabilities like tanks and fighter jets, but through support to nonstate partners, covert action, espionage, and cyber operations. Soleimani was much more like Sun Tzu than like Carl von Clausewitz.

Mao Zedong—founder of the People’s Republic of China, chairman of the Communist Party, and erstwhile guerrilla commander—remarked that Chinese are mistaken when they believe that the task of the army is “to merely fight. They do not understand that the Chinese Red Army is an armed body for carrying out the political tasks of the revolution.”

Mao divided warfare into three stages, which had implications for Zhang and competition with a stronger conventional adversary like the United States.

During the first stage, when the enemy has a disproportionate advantage in numbers and military power, the goal should be to avoid direct confrontation and focus on defense.23

During the second stage, which Mao termed “strategic stalemate,” the focus should be on asymmetric tactics. During this phase, he advised, forces should “attack; withdraw; deliver a lightning blow, seek a lightning decision . . . withdraw when he advances; harass him when...

During the third and final stage, the focus should finally be on conducting offensive, conventional opera...

In March 1956, the CMC held a meeting that gathered together senior military officers. Following the meeting, the CMC completed China’s first national military strategy. It outlined how to thwart an invasion by US forces using a strategy of “forward defense,” which involved attempting to push the front line of a war away from China’s borders and coasts.

In 1964, Mao reoriented China’s military strategy around the concept of “luring the enemy in deep,” in which territory would be yielded to an invader to defeat it in a protracted conflict through mobile and guerrilla warfare.31

“What matters most is that Zhang was shot at, making him one of the few PLA officers with actual combat experience” by the time Xi Jinping became general secretary of the Chinese Communist Party, said China analyst Dennis Blasko, a former US Army attaché to Beijing and Hong Kong.37

Several historical accounts of the Sino-Vietnamese conflict concluded that the PLA performed poorly and suffered from weak leadership, lackluster coordination between units at the tactical level, antiquated weapons and logistics equipment, and inadequate training and readiness.38

Unlike previous guidelines in 1956 and 1980, the 1993 version outlined how China could conduct limited wars through, in part, irregular means.46

Much like Gerasimov, Zhang and other Chinese leaders also studied the US wars in the Balkans later in the decade—including the 1999 Kosovo War.

Neither the United States nor other NATO countries had used their own ground forces as the main maneuver units. Instead, they leveraged irregular forces from the Kosovo Liberation Army to retake territory.48

The 2001 Science of Military Strategy

Echoing Sun Tzu, China’s military strategy was to win without fighting—that is, to achieve its national objectives without going to war. The point was that China’s military strategy was defensive in nature. China had little interest in a conventional war with a much stronger United States.

Where the US Cold War diplomat George Kennan had talked about “the perpetual rhythm of struggle,” the PLA report described warfare as a constant struggle that involved both the enemy and its population:

In an influential piece around this time, Zhang argued that China needed to “promote a multipolar world” and weaken the United States, which he accused of having hegemonic ambitions.63 In other words, the United States remained a threat, especially in a conventional war.

The future of warfare was not necessarily in clashes between armies on a battlefield, he concluded, but competition in areas like the information sphere. “The focus point of war is changing from taking cities through conventional operations and seizing land to information operations,” Zhang wrote in a perceptive article in 2004.64

“There are spies, and then there are Chinese spies. China is in a class by itself in terms of its espionage, covert action and cyber capabilities. It is also in a class by itself because of its absolute obsession with stealing America’s secrets.”9

All countries, including the United States, spied. What was different, however, was how China integrated intelligence into a broader irregular campaign that involved economic, military, and political competition with the United States.

“three warfares.”13 It included three components: yulun zhan (public opinion or media warfare), xinli zhan (psychological warfare), and falu zhanzheng (legal warfare).

Building on Mao’s contention that the military’s goal was to carry out “the political tasks of the revolution,” three warfares offered a way for the PLA to establish and expand Chinese political power at home and abroad.

The first component, public opinion warfare, involved the use of broadcast, print, and online efforts to influence domestic and international public opinion in ways that supported Chinese interests and undermined its competitors.