From successful defense to problematic offense: the devolution of unconventional warfare
Masters thesis — Naval Postgraduate School, 2016. Full text: https://archive.org/details/fromsuccessfulde1094551617
Arguments
From successful defense to problematic offense: the devolution of unconventional warfare
It names the mechanism behind every proxy-war debate — backing someone else's fighters looks cheap until the proxies, the blowback, and the perception bill arrive.
Unconventional warfare began in World War II as a defensive tactic for assisting an occupied ally, but Special Forces later redefined it to include offensive regime change; offensive UW, practiced extensively by the CIA during the Cold War, produced poor results, and it remains problematic — unreliable proxy forces, unpredictable outcomes, negative international perception. Defensive UW, under certain conditions, remains justified and practical.
Why it matters
It names the mechanism behind every proxy-war debate — backing someone else's fighters looks cheap until the proxies, the blowback, and the perception bill arrive. The CIA's own 2014 study (cited in the thesis) found arming rebels seldom works.
Use when: Offense by proxy inherits everyone else's agency — if you can't vet the proxy, you can't own the outcome.