the latter half of the 19th century, defeating irregulars with impressive economy of force. Rather than debate over the appropriate response to a new generation of warfare, policymakers should recognize that the Russian government is conducting a form of warfare that has been firmly rooted in U.S. military doctrine for over 50 years. Tehran possesses formidable irregular capabilities led by the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps-Quds Force. Commentary is produced by the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS), a private, tax-exempt institution focusing on international public policy issues. The Russian Army today, contemplating the creation of a joint regional rapid-reaction force for dealing with crises and terrorist threats, and also itself still individually engaged in low-intensity fighting in the North Caucasus, is the intellectual and doctrinal inheritor of over 200 years of rich experience in low-intensity and counter-insurgency conflict. Their strategic host-nation partner in Afghanistan, the People's Democratic Party of Afghanistan (PDPA), was riddled by corruption and infighting, significantly hampering all Soviet attempts to push forward a unified political-military effort. In addition, Iran maintains the largest ballistic and cruise missile force in the Middle East, courtesy of Russian, Chinese, and North Korean support. The PDPA's own extreme programme of socialist transformation had triggered the rural rebellion that forced Soviet intervention in the first place, whilst PDPA representatives thereafter still rarely ventured out into the Afghan countryside, generating a fatal degree of perceptual disconnect between the Kabul government and the peasantry. The defence of Georgia itself, however, depended upon preservation of the Georgian Military Road connecting Tbilisi to Vladikavkaz, and consequently upon the subjugation of the increasingly Islamicised mountaineer tribes (the Chechens, Ingush, Dagestanis and Circassians) who lived on either side of that road. Russian forces used irregular warfare to defeat Napoleons army in 1812. Shamil established a theocratic proto-state, or Imamate, in the North Caucasus, enjoying tax gathering powers and even employing a small artillery park, assets which enabled him to combine irregular raiding activities with regular sieges of forward based Russian positions (as the Taliban, employing white phosphorus shells, recently attempted against American forces in Afghanistan). This debate has only led to further inaction. Chinaâs leaders are attempting to extend the countryâs global economic, political, military, and technological reach using Chinaâs global development strategies like the Belt and Road Initiative. The conciliatory gestures made by the Soviet-backed Afghan leader Babrak Karmal in 1980-81 - releasing political prisoners, offering amnesties to regime opponents, and publicly re-embracing Islam - proved insufficient to remove the taint of illegitimacy generated by the 1979 invasion which had first installed him in power. This article proposes that ‘professional irregular’ forces would provide the Baltics with the best defence against Russian aggression. U.S. Options in Afghanistan, 'Thereâs a huge transnational component' to combating U.S. extremism, Destructive Protests by Anarchists and Extremists Signal Divided Left as Biden Administration Begins, Fears of Extreme Violence in US Haunt World as Biden Debuts, Family, Co-Workers, Old FB Friends Helped Catch Capitol Intruders, Records Show. By then however, the Soviet decision to withdraw had already been made. The traditional challenge, already experienced with the basmachi, of managing a porous border, combined with the relatively novel difficulty of essentially undertaking nation-building in a failed state scenario, had combined in crippling fashion. The collection is dedicated to developing our knowledge of war and sharing theoretical approaches to modern military thinking... read more, The Library is now closed until further notice due to the Coronavirus. Russian Hybrid Warfare is a tactical application of the chaos strategy. But there are limits to what the United States can and should do overseas, particularly with military force.