Henry A. Kissinger Quotes

Irregular war is far more intellectual than a bayonet charge.

The consequences of U. S. superiority is that its opponents, both state and non-state actors, will have little choice but to resort to guerilla tactics and urban warfare because they simply cannot confront U. S. forces head on..

Guerrilla war is a kind of war waged by the few but dependent on the support of many.

The guerrilla wins if he does not lose. The conventional army loses if it does not win.

The whole idea in war is to fight as unfairly and disproportionately as possible.

Guerrilla warfare is essentially a political war.

Time and again, attempts by machine-age armies to impose their will on irregular forces supported by a sympathetic population failed.

If we were fighting an army, the work would be comparatively easy. We are fighting a secret revolutionary organization.

Divide our forces to arouse the masses, concentrate our forces to deal with the enemy. The enemy advances, we retreat; the enemy camps, we harass; the enemy tires, we attack; the enemy retreats, we pursue. To extend stable base areas, employ the policy of advancing in waves; when pursued by a powerful enemy, employ the policy of circling around. Arouse the largest numbers of the masses in the shortest possible time and by the best possible methods.

The insurgent can sow disorder anywhere, whereas the counterinsurgent—fighting on behalf of the government—has to maintain order everywhere.

Who do you call a civilian in a guerilla war? I mean, it might be a farmer by day or a merchant, a housewife, and by night the housewife may be helping to make landmines and booby traps and who knows.

Guerrilla wars, and even more so terrorist assaults, are conducted only by forces with insufficient strength to carry out a real war.

You can't talk about defeating insurgencies in the same way that you can with a conventional army.

I believe that this is a different war than America has ever fought in the past. It is a non-conventional war. It means that you've got to use every tool you've got available to you.

An insurgency is the most difficult to fight of all military activities.

Insurgencies have a way of going on for a long time historically.

We fought a military war; our opponents fought a political one… The North Vietnamese used their armed forces the way a bull-fighter uses his cape — to keep us lunging in areas of marginal political importance.

It is permitted to surprise the infidels under cover of night, to bombard them with catapults and to attack them without declaring war.

Throughout most of our species’ long and bloody slog, warfare has primarily been carried out by bands of loosely organized, ill-disciplined, and lightly armed volunteers who distained open battle in favor of stealthy raids and ambushes: the strategies of both tribal warriors and modern guerrillas and terrorists. In fact, conventional warfare is the relatively recent invention.

In war, numbers alone confer no advantage. Do not advance relying on sheer military power.

In Afghanistan this week, outnumbered Northern Alliance rebels on horseback defeated Taliban forces armed with tanks. Experts say the victory is just like the story of David and Goliath and David's friend, the Stealth Bomber.

George Washington hated the guerrillas. He wanted to imitate the British red coat armies, fighting as gentlemen are supposed to fight.

Part of this new world of completely improvisational terrorism is that there were codes of war that disintegrated in the face of terrorism.

Asymmetrical warfare is a euphemism for terrorism, just like collateral damage is a euphemism for killing innocent civilians.

Twenty-first century war adds new risks: more and more often there are no front lines, no central command, no rules of engagement - only a chaotic collision of politics, power, faith and bloodlust. Victims are as likely to be civilians as soldiers.