This. Asymmetric warfare can never be won. As long as there are imperialist (for lack of a better word) well-equipped armies that invade foreign countries or regions (even righteously), they will inevitably cause civilian casualties, and some relatives of some of the casualties will be prompted into vengeance. Since hi-tech army is hard to hit, go after their softer civilian population instead. Essentially all organised terrorism has originated from a country or region with a supressed people or political group, be it IRA, ETA, ANC's MK wing, Hamas, Al-Qaida or ISIS.
I used to think that too - then I started listening to the Martyr made podcast (which is epic) - and in one of the stories he talks about the Arab revolt in British mandated Palestine, and how the British dealt with that. They didn't give a hoot about civilian casualties, on the contrary they went in as hard as possible in creating them.
No point in tracing down the insurgents who just attacked you, just go to the nearest village, rape, pillage, loot, rape and castrate, then force the inhabitants to blow up their own houses, charge them for the cost of the explosives and the soldiers time. Do so consistently after every attack, and pretty soon the Arabs were blaming themselves for their fate, and hating the insurgents - and that is how you win a counter insurgency.
What you will have trouble doing is winning a counter insurgency while being _nice_. Even then the US army did get a lot of territories from the muj during the battle of Faluja.
Apart from completely defeating the humanitarian aim of world peace, it's not a reliable strategy. Assad brutally cracked down at the first sign of protest and it backfired into a civil war he's barely surviving. Lots of repressive regimes get overthrown.
Soviets couldn't care less about civilian losses in places like Afghanistan or Chechnya and still got their ass*s kicked badly. your specific example worked, but it might not work even in the same place these days, and is definitely an exception
I agree. I was assuming the state actor would be what you call "nice", i.e. not blatantly commit any war crimes or large scale violations of human rights. Which I believe is true of most state actors today.
