Chapter 4 explores how appellate authorities in the EU understand and approach situations of armed conflict. This chapter claims that appellate authorities approach situations of armed conflict predominantly through the perspective of conventional warfare and a notion of territoriality. Such a perspective fails to acknowledge that one of the main strategies of fighting parties is to exercise political control over territory by forcibly displacing and terrorising populations through highly visible forms of human rights violations. The findings bring to the fore the misconceptions regarding the application of the Refugee Convention to persons fleeing armed conflicts, namely a perceived dichotomy between a risk of individual persecution and a risk arising from widespread violence. The research challenges appellate authorities’ conflation of asymmetrical warfare with lower levels of violence and less serious forms of violence contrary to knowledge in the field of feminist and security studies indicating that non-conventional armed conflicts are in fact characterised by armed groups’ relative control over the exercise of strategic, and thus political, violence. The chapter concludes that the existence of two distinct legal statuses in the EU based on reasons for flight operates as an obstacle to the development of international refugee law.

For more than thirty years, a conventional mindset of applying force has clashed with the passions of the Iraqi people, complicating decisive outcomes despite US-led coalitions possessing overwhelming technological superiority in Iraq. Most studies of Operation Iraqi Freedom focus almost exclusively on the first few weeks of largely conventional

force employment, thereby missing how much this campaign has in common with other contemporary air campaigns. Air power made enormous contributions against the military “leg” of the Clausewitzian triangle over the course of thirty years with precision and stealth capabilities, but this advantage does not translate neatly into enduring strategic effect. As such, OIF should be reevaluated in a balanced manner that focuses more on the complex interactions between militaries, governments, and people and less on the overwhelming application of US kinetic force.

It is common to argue that the communist-led Democratic Republic of Vietnam, following the theory of "people's war," defeated the French in the First Indochina War. This argument is correct everywhere except for southern Vietnam. France's slow and systematic implementation of what it called "pacification," in concert with allied self-defense and paramilitary forces, slowly brought increasing parts of the Mekong Delta under the control of France and its allies. In reaction, The Resistance pursued a four-prong strategy: 1) they strengthened the communist core of the Resistance by recruiting cadres, purging "unreliable" non-communists, and working to capture control of the Resistance at all levels; 2) they reached out to potential allies like the Khmer, Chinese, Buddhists, and Catholics; 3) they practiced outreach towards rivals and enemies through proselytization (Địch vận); 4) they strengthened Resistance ability to engage in a sophisticated repertoire of violence ranging from intimidation to conventional warfare. Despite this sound strategy, the Resistance precipitously shifted to conventional warfare. The French-led forces took advantage of this costly mistake. France's commission of war crimes in keeping food from the population, its access to increased American funding after 1949, and contingent factors also contributed to Resistance failure.