{"id":2819,"date":"2021-03-19T09:23:58","date_gmt":"2021-03-19T03:53:58","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/55nda.com\/blogs\/anil-khosla\/?p=2819"},"modified":"2024-12-27T15:34:34","modified_gmt":"2024-12-27T10:04:34","slug":"war-warfare-part-2-types-of-war","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/55nda.com\/blogs\/anil-khosla\/2021\/03\/19\/war-warfare-part-2-types-of-war\/","title":{"rendered":"76: WAR & WARFARE (PART 2): TYPES OF WAR"},"content":{"rendered":"

In this part of the series we have a look at the types of war. War has been classified into various types over the years depending upon factors like extent, duration, cause, means and domains etc.<\/span><\/p>\n

TYPES OF WAR<\/u><\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

Total War.<\/u><\/strong> In the mid-19th century, scholars identified total war as a separate class of warfare. The term has been defined as “A war that is unrestricted in terms of the weapons used, the territory or combatants involved, or the objectives pursued, especially one in which the laws of war could be disregarded.” Total war is a war, which a country devotes its entire human, economic and military resources. Targets are not restricted to the army. Civilians also get attacked for the purpose \u201ctotal\u201d victory over the enemy\u2019s political, social and military structure.<\/span><\/p>\n

Limited War<\/u><\/strong>. <\/strong>Limited war is the opposite concept to\u00a0total war. A\u00a0limited war\u00a0is one in which the\u00a0belligerents\u00a0do not expend all of the\u00a0resources\u00a0at their disposal, whether human, industrial, agricultural, military, natural, technological, or otherwise in a specific conflict.\u00a0 The War is limited by geographical area, type of target, weapons or degree of mobilization.<\/span><\/p>\n

World War.<\/u><\/strong>\u00a0This is “a\u00a0war\u00a0engaged in by all or most of the principal nations of the world”.\u00a0The term is usually reserved to two major international conflicts that occurred during the 20th century:\u00a0World War\u00a0I\u00a0(1914\u201318) and\u00a0World War\u00a0II\u00a0(1939\u201345). However, a variety of global conflicts have been subjectively deemed “world wars”, such as the\u00a0Cold War\u00a0and the\u00a0War on Terror.<\/span><\/p>\n

Civil War.<\/u><\/strong> Civil war is war within one’s own geographic boundaries, usually between people of different ethnic or religious groups or with different ideology. Its total chaos with multiple groups randomly fighting against each other, sometimes not really sure who is a friend or foe, but still creating a lot of blood bath. The ultimate goal is often lost in the carnage, with no definite winners. (Most often the only loser is humanity).<\/span><\/p>\n

Religious War\u00a0or\u00a0Holy War<\/u><\/strong>.<\/u> \u00a0A war between religions or over religious issues (primarily caused or justified by differences in religion). It is also called jihad or crusade. In the\u00a0modern period, debates are common over the extent to which religious,\u00a0economic, or\u00a0ethnic\u00a0aspects of a conflict predominate in a given war<\/span><\/p>\n

Cold War<\/u><\/strong>.<\/u> Cold war is a state of conflict between nations that does not involve direct military action but is pursued primarily through economic and political actions, propaganda, acts of espionage or proxy wars waged by surrogates. This term is most commonly used to refer to the Soviet\u2013American Cold War of 1947\u20131991. The surrogates are typically states that are satellites of the conflicting nations, i.e., nations allied to them or under their political influence. Opponents in a cold war often provide economic or military aid, such as weapons, tactical support or military advisors, to lesser nations involved in conflicts with the opposing country.<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

Colonial War.<\/em><\/u><\/strong> Colonial war is a blanket term relating to the various conflicts that arose as the result of overseas territories being settled by foreign powers creating a colony. The term especially refers to wars fought during the nineteenth century between European armies in Africa, Asia and the Caribbean.<\/span><\/p>\n

Ideological War<\/u><\/strong>.<\/u> A clash of opposing ideals, ideologies, or concepts through which nations or groups use strategic influence to promote their interests abroad.<\/span><\/p>\n

Revolutionary War<\/u><\/strong>.<\/u> A war fought with the aim of overthrowing a corrupt or ineffective government.<\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Military classifications<\/u><\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

Military conflict.<\/u><\/strong> When armies of two groups fight with weapons to gain supremacy on its opponent. It may be to grab territory, extend borders, extend influence, or to become more powerful. It’s as old as humanity and the list is endless.<\/span><\/p>\n

Insurgency.<\/u><\/strong> Insurgency is a violent, armed rebellion against authority. An insurgency can be fought via counter-insurgency warfare, and may also be opposed by measures to protect the population and by political and economic actions of various kinds, as well as propaganda aimed at undermining the insurgents’ claims against the incumbent regime. As a concept, insurgency’s nature is ambiguous. Not all rebellions are insurgencies.<\/span><\/p>\n

Proxy War.<\/u><\/strong> \u00a0Proxy war is an armed conflict between two states or\u00a0non-state actors\u00a0which act on the instigation or on behalf of other parties that are not directly involved in the hostilities.\u00a0In order for a conflict to be considered a proxy war, there must be a direct, long-term relationship between external actors and the belligerents involved.\u00a0The aforementioned relationship usually takes the form of funding, military training, arms, or other forms of material assistance which assist a belligerent party in sustaining its war effort.<\/span><\/p>\n

Guerrilla War.<\/u><\/strong> \u00a0Guerrilla war is usually a hit-and-run war waged by an apparently weaker army, against a relatively much larger but less mobile highly organised army. Usually undertaken by a militia group of the defeated or near defeated people who are desperate to drive the invaders away. For them, its total war, whereas for the standing army it’s only a partial war, who are less motivated, and actually, pretty wary.<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

Militancy.<\/u><\/strong> Militancy is a war of terrorists with a desire to inflict damage to those they hate the most, but can’t directly win with a full-scale armed military conflict. They create maximum nuisance at minimum cost and kill as many innocents as they can and claim victory.<\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Domains Wise Classification<\/u><\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

Besides the domains of land (ground war), Air (air war) and sea (naval war), other domains are as follows:<\/span><\/p>\n

Economic war.<\/u><\/strong> \u00a0You don’t fire bullets and mortars, but use economic strength to throttle the other nation to submission. This is a sophisticated modern day invasion strategy. Strategy of sanctions, unfair <\/span>trade practices\u00a0 and debt traps are used in this type of warfare.<\/span><\/p>\n

Diplomatic Wars.<\/u><\/strong> \u00a0It is the typical war that goes on between hostile nations at an apparently civilised international platform, like the UN. It’s all about gaining a few brawny points in a war of words in front of an international audience, most of whom are generally biased.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Nuclear Warfare.<\/u><\/strong> This is a\u00a0 war fought with nuclear weapons. It is too risky and mutual destruction is assured. So far it is restricted to threats and as a deterrent.<\/span><\/p>\n

Cyber war.<\/u><\/strong> Cyber warfare involves the actions by a nation-state or international organization to attack and attempt to damage another nation’s computers or information networks through, computer viruses or denial-of-service attacks.\u00a0Computer technology is used to disrupt the activities of a state or organization, especially the deliberate attacking of information systems for strategic or military purposes and\u00a0cyber espionage.<\/span><\/p>\n

Space war.<\/u><\/strong> \u00a0<\/strong>Space warfare\u00a0is combat that takes place in\u00a0outer space. The scope of space warfare therefore includes\u00a0ground-to-space warfare<\/em>, such as attacking\u00a0satellites\u00a0from the earth;\u00a0space-to-space warfare<\/em>, such as satellites attacking satellites; and\u00a0space-to-ground warfare<\/em>, such as satellites attacking earth-based targets.<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

Psychological warfare.<\/u><\/strong> \u00a0Literally, a war of words and nerves. You try to wrestle your opponent by wearing him down through constant threats of violence.<\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

The nature of war is changing very rapidly. New classifications are being made to describe the prevailing situations. More about these changes and classifications later.<\/em><\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Coming up next: Warfare definition and types<\/span><\/p>\n

Value additions are most welcome<\/span><\/p>\n

References:<\/u><\/span><\/p>\n

    \n
  1. https:\/\/core.ac.uk\/download\/pdf\/12857871.pdf<\/a><\/span><\/li>\n
  2. https:\/\/smallwarsjournal.com\/jrnl\/art\/what-is-war-a-new-point-of-view<\/a><\/span><\/li>\n
  3. Brian Orend, \u201cWar\u201d, The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Fall 2008 Edition), ed. Edward N. Zalta, accessed September 18, 2012.<\/span><\/li>\n
  4. http:\/\/plato.stanford.edu\/archives\/fall2008\/entries\/war\/<\/a>.<\/span><\/li>\n
  5. Carl von Clausewitz,\u00a0On War<\/em>, ed. and trans. Michael Howard and Peter Paret (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1976), 75<\/span><\/li>\n
  6. Joseph S. Nye,\u00a0The Future of Power<\/em>, (New York, NY: Public Affairs), 113.<\/span><\/li>\n
  7. Thomas L. Friedman,\u00a0The World is Flat: A Brief History of the 21st<\/sup>Century<\/em>, 2005 (New York, NY: Farrar, Straus and Giroux).<\/span><\/li>\n
  8. Michael Howard,\u00a0The Causes of War from the Causes of War and Other Essays<\/em>, (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1983), 16.<\/span><\/li>\n
  9. United States Government,\u00a0The Financial Crisis Inquiry Report<\/em>, January 2011, (Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office), 417-420.<\/span><\/li>\n
  10. Jack Sine, Defining the \u2018Precision weapon\u2019 in effects-based terms,\u00a0Air & Space Power Journal,<\/em> Spring 2006, accessed March 3, 2011, http:\/\/www.freepatentsonline.com\/article\/Air-Space-Power-Journal\/154817984.html.<\/span><\/li>\n
  11. General Norton A. Schwartz and Admiral Jonathan W. Greenert, \u201cAir-Sea Battle: Promoting Stability in an Era of Uncertainty\u201d,\u00a0The American Interest<\/em>, February 12, 2012, accessed September 12, 2012.<\/span><\/li>\n
  12. http:\/\/www.the-american-interest.com\/article.cfm?piece=1212<\/a>.<\/span><\/li>\n
  13. Robert C. Nation, U.S. Army War College Seminar Lecture, September 6, 2012.<\/span><\/li>\n
  14. Gene Sharp, The Role of Power in Nonviolent Struggle<\/em>, (Boston, MA: The Albert Einstein Institution, 1990), 9.Sun Tzu,\u00a0The Art of War<\/em>, trans. Samuel B. Griffith (New York: Oxf<\/span>ord University Press, 1963).<\/span><\/li>\n<\/ol>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

    In this part of the series we have a look at the types of war. War has been classified into various types over the years depending upon factors like extent, duration, cause, means and domains etc. TYPES OF WAR \u00a0 Total War. In the mid-19th century, scholars identified total war as a separate class of … <\/p>\n

    Continue reading “76: WAR & WARFARE (PART 2): TYPES OF WAR”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5,19,26,25,28,1],"tags":[6,24,47,29,39,38,31,52,125,40],"class_list":["post-2819","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-airpower","category-article","category-best-military-quotes","category-china","category-technology","category-uncategorized","tag-airpower","tag-china","tag-defence-services","tag-digital-addiction","tag-india","tag-indian-air-force","tag-internet","tag-strategic-thinking","tag-war-warfare","tag-world-order"],"post_mailing_queue_ids":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/55nda.com\/blogs\/anil-khosla\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2819","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/55nda.com\/blogs\/anil-khosla\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/55nda.com\/blogs\/anil-khosla\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/55nda.com\/blogs\/anil-khosla\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/55nda.com\/blogs\/anil-khosla\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2819"}],"version-history":[{"count":11,"href":"https:\/\/55nda.com\/blogs\/anil-khosla\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2819\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8548,"href":"https:\/\/55nda.com\/blogs\/anil-khosla\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2819\/revisions\/8548"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/55nda.com\/blogs\/anil-khosla\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2819"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/55nda.com\/blogs\/anil-khosla\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2819"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/55nda.com\/blogs\/anil-khosla\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2819"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}