We are in a new world of warfare where small groups can commit acts of disproportionate damage. This is called asymmetric warfare and is the kind of conflict we will be engaged in for the foreseeable future, unless, God help us, we begin to use nuclear bombs.
There are a few people who know this and are writing about it. In the US, John Robb of http://globalguerrillas.typepad.com/ and, from a somewhat different point of view, Thomas Barnett of http://www.thomaspmbarnett.com/...
One name that keeps on coming up is Martin van Creveld, an Israeli. His book, The Transformation of War, was published in 1991 and is prescient and pertinent. I wonder if they read him in the Pentagon. I hope we will read him here on dailykos. My (extensive) notes from the book follow.
The Transformation of War by Martin van Creveld
NY: The Free Press, 1991
ISBN 0-02-933155-2
(10) Over the last forty-five years it would be difficult to point out even a single case when a state possessing nuclear arms was able to change the status quo by threatening their use, let alone by using them. In other words, their political effect, if any, has been merely to enforce caution and freeze existing borders. The most important reason behind this state of affairs is, of course, that nobody has yet figured out how to wage a nuclear war without risk of global suicide. Truth to say, nuclear weapons are instruments of mass murder. Given that there is no defense, the only thing they are suitable for is an act of butchery that would be beyond history, and quite possibly would put an end to it. They cannot, however, be employed for waging war in any meaningful sense of that term. The chasm separating the apocalyptic implications of nuclear weapons from the puny attempts to "use" them, for sensible ends is tremendous, even inconceivable, so much so, in fact, that the most rational response to the oddly matched pair may be that of a young woman, a student of mine, who as we were discussing these things in class broke into uncontrollable, hysterical laughter.
(11) The rimlands are a broad belt of territory stretching from west to east and dividing Asia into two regions, northern and southern.
NB: Rimlands and Barnett's idea of the Gap
(13) Americans are not secretive, but they regard the inventions of military doctrines as both an industry and a pastime: as a result, so many conflicting doctrines have been put forward by so many people representing so many interests that it is often difficult to take them seriously at all.
(22) Perhaps the best indication of the political importance of LIC [low intensity conflict] is that its results, unlike those of conventional wars, have usually been recognized by the international community. Often, indeed, recognition preceded victory rather than following it, shedding an interesting light on the interaction of right with might in the modern world. Considered from this point of view - "by their fruits thou shalt know them" - the term LIC itself is grossly misconceived. The same applies to related terms such as "terrorism," "insurgency," brushfire war," or "guerrilla war." Truth to say, what we are dealing with here is neither low-intensity nor some bastard offspring of war. Rather, it is WARRE in the elemental, Hobbesian sense of the word, by far the most important form of armed conflict in our time.
(35) It was one of Clausewitz's most important contentions that war is a social activity, As such, war is molded by social relationships - by the type of society by which it is conducted, and the kind of government which that society admits.
(48) In Yugoslavia, Tito's partisans, though comprising neither government nor army, came close to waging full-scale conventional conflict; and indeed in retrospect this may have been the most important of all the changes which the War brought about.
(64) Never one to mince his words, Clausewitz serves explicit and emphatic warning against introducing "moderation" into the "principle" of war. Armed force is presented as subject to no rules except those of its won nature and those of the political purpose for which it is waged. He has no patience for the "philanthropist" belief that war could (or should) be restrained and waged with a minimum of violence: "in dangerous things such as war, errors made out of kindness are the worst." Again, he said: "Let us hear no more about generals who conquer without bloodshed.' Whether Clausewitz himself, the "philosopher in uniform," was capable of practicing what he preached is open to doubt. This character remains something of a riddle to us; it does not seem to have included that ruthless streak that perhaps is essential to the great commander.
(78) Though over two centuries have passed since the death of Emeric Vattel in 1767, present-day notions concerning the treatment of non-combatants are still based on his work, Droit des gens, and date to the time of the absolute states. From his time to ours, the central idea upon which everything else rests is that the military constitutes a separate legal entity that, alone among all the organs of the state, is entitled to wage war. Under modern international law, people who are not members of armed forces or accountable to established authority are not supposed to take up arms, fight, or resist in any way. In return, their persons are not supposed to be violated by an invading army.
(79) The Nazis regarded as murderers those civilians who attacked their soldiers while not wearing a distinguishing mark and not carrying arms openly. What is more, from the standpoint of international law as it then stood the Nazis had right on their side. Partly because the absurdity of such a position came to be widely recognized after the War, partly because of the sheer number of national liberation struggles since 1945, international law is slowly being amended. In 1977, a meeting assembled in Geneva decided that "freedom fighters" would also be granted combatants' rights. This may not have been as positive a development as appears on first sight. For one thing, each government insists that, whatever the situation elsewhere, their homegrown variety of rebels are not freedom fighters but bandits, assassins, and terrorists who don't come under the protection of the law. And possibly more important, if terrorists are entitled to be treated as combatants, then combatants might also be treated as terrorists. It is difficult to see who has benefitted from the change, aside from the terrorists themselves.
(89) The purpose of the laws of war is not, as Clausewitz and many of his followers seem to think, simply to appease the conscience of a few tender-hearted people. Its first and foremost function is to protect the armed forces themselves. This is because war is the domain of uncertainty and agony. Nothing is more likely than the terror of war to cause rationality to go by the board, nor is anything more conducive to make even the most even-minded start behaving somewhat strangely. The paradox is that war, the most confused and confusing of all human activities, at the same time is also one of the most organized. If armed conflict is to be carried on with any prospect of success, then it must involved the trained cooperation of many men working as a team. Men cannot cooperate, nor can organizations even exist, unless they subject themselves to a common code of behavior. The code in question should be in accord with the prevailing cultural climate, clear to all, and capable of being enforced.
(101) From the time of the battle of Rapha in 217 BC to that of Malplaquet in 1709, field armies much stronger than 100,000 men seem to have existed mainly in legend. Napoleon was perhaps the ablest general who ever lived; yet when he concentrated 180,000 men at Leipzig in 1813 even he lost control.
(104-105) As we saw, a cardinal component of force is sheer size. "Everything else being equal, the side with the larger battalions wins" - so runs the common wisdom that could base itself on Clausewitz and Napoleon. One reason for this is psychological. A preference for size, so long as it is not excessive, seems to have been programmed into the psyche of men and animals alike. Even today when their most important function is to attract tourists, royal guards all over the world consist of big, powerful men. Now war, before it is anything else, is a question of psychology to quote vom Kreige again, it is "a mental and physical struggle conducted by means of the latter." Other things being equal, an army going to war should therefore take care to appear as large and as powerful as possible, thus intimidating the enemy, impressing neutrals, and encouraging its own men.
The remaining elements that make up force are excellent equipment, good organization, tough training, strict discipline, and high morale. These can overcome sheer size, within certain limits and as long as circumstances are not too unfavorable. Whatever the exact relationship between quality and quantity, a problem that has formed the subject of a vast literature, the preponderance of numerical force unquestionably plays a vital role in war. Among the manifold factors that make for victory, its importance is second to none.
The existence of a large force, however, also gives rise to problems. Again applying the eternal caveat - other things being equal - the larger any given body of troops, the less flexible it is. A squad may be able to operate in any kind of terrain, but not a division with all its transport. A squad, but not a division with its tremendous logistic requirements, may cut loose from its administrative tail, live off the country, and operate independently for a time. A single warrior can turn around at a moment's notice to face an attacker coming from either flank. A line consisting of ten men will find the same maneuver more difficult to carry out, and the greater the numbers the worse the problem. Nor is this simply a question of geometry; the larger the unit, the more cumbersome the command-procedures involved, and the longer its reaction time. Sophisticated technology can help alleviate these problems to some extent, but it most definitely cannot solve them. For example, modern Standard Operating Porcedure (SOP) rests on the assumption that an army corps will be able to respond to two to three orders per twenty-four-hour period, a figure that has remained unchanged for two centuries and, indeed, ever since the corps d'armee itself was invented.
(106) A division during the Franco-Prussian War consumed about 50 tons a day on average, consisting mainly of food and fodder. By 1916 the figure had risen to approximately 150 tons, most of the increase being accounted for by ammunition, fuel, spare parts, and engineering supplies. In 1940-42, the German General Staff worked on the assumption that an armored division in the Western desert needed 300 tons daily to remain operational. Allied planners in 1944-45 postulated 650 tons a day per American division in Western Europs, a figure that has probably doubled or tripled during the decades since then.
(108) According to Clausewitz, the one factor that can help an army deal with friction is experience. By acting like the oil among the cogwheels of a machine, experience can alleviate the worst problems of friction without, however, eliminating it. This proposition can also be turned upside down. Experienced troops who have known each other for a long time recognize that each man, each piece of equipment, and each unit are liable to an occasional failure, turning themselves into sources of friction. They help one another, often without words. A good army is one that, whether by foresight or experience or in any other way, has learned to avoid friction where it can and live with it where it cannot.
(110) As Moltke once put it, of the three courses that the enemy can take normally he selects the fourth....
Thus, on both sides of the conflict, simply to create the greatest possible force is not enough. A force, once it exists, represents a source of problems, namely those of uncertainty, friction, and inflexibility; and the larger it is the more true this becomes. Whatever else may be involved in the conduct of war, it is very much a question of managing this inter-related trio, even to the point where victory depends on the army's ability to cope with them. Each of the three factors is rooted in the forces' own structure as well as the environment in which they operate. However, uncertainty differs from the rest in that it is also deliberately introduced by the enemy. Hence it must not just be overcome, it must be used; and it is by using uncertainty as much as anything else that war is, and should be, fought.
NB: Bush's certainty
(111) The first decision that has to be made always concerns the question of defense versus attack. Of the two, defense is, in itself and everything else being equal, the stronger form of war. As Clausewitz writes, there are three reasons why this is so. First, holding on to something is easier and requires less effort than taking it away. Second, since the goal of the defense is to protect things as they are, it has time on its side; whatever does not happen helps the defense. Third, to the extent that the offense involves a geographical advance, operating away from one's bases, and progressively occupying hostile territory, it causes the attacker's lines of communications to become longer even as those of the defender contract....
NB: This may not be true today, especially in asymmetric warfare
The attacker enjoys the advantage of the initiative. He is in a position where he can impose his will on the enemy and, by that very fact, prevent many of the enemy's plans from bearing fruit and even from being initiated. On this rests the wisdom behind the popular adage, "when in doubt - attack." Nevertheless, it should never be forgotten that an attack qua attack is the weaker form of war. Therefore the side that intends to attack ordinarily requires a superiority of force, whether quantitative, qualitative, or both.
(113) Throughout history, the side best able to concentrate it's force even while taking a calculated risk was the one that emerged on top.
(138) Whatever we think of the American attempt to "save democracy' in Vietnam, probably it was not so different from King Philip II of Spain's attempts to save the souls of his Dutch subjects from the Protestant heresy infecting them. In neither case was idealism unmixed with opportunistic considerations of every kind. Often the admixture made for strange actions (Vietnam veterans will recognize "burning heretics for the good of their souls" as a surprisingly modern phrase) and stranger bedfellows. Still, a strong element of idealism was present in both, especially at the outset; just as Westerners today cannot conceive of a just world that is not democratic, so in early Europe no ordered society could even be imagined that was not based on the right religion.
(158) At bottom, the reason why fighting can never be a question of interest is - to put it bluntly - that dead men have no interests. A person may well lay down his life in the name of God, king, country, and family, or even for all four at once. However, to say that he does so because he has some kind of posthumous "interest" in the survival even of his nearest and dearest is to invert the meaning of the term and turn it into a caricature of itself. Thus considered, warfare constitutes the great proof that man is not motivated by selfish interest; as the original meaning of the term berserker (holy fighter) testifies, in some ways it represents the most altruistic of all human activities, akin to the sacred and merging into it. It is the absence of interest on the part of those who brave death or die bravely that explains why society so often confers the highest honors on them, even to the point where, like Greek or Norse heroes, they are taken into the pantheon and themselves become gods.
(160) In any war, the readiness to suffer and die, as well as to kill, represents the single most important factor. Take it away, and even the most numerous, best organized, best trained, best equipped army in the world will turn out to be a brittle instrument. This applies to all wars regardless of time, place, and circumstance. It also applies regardless of the degree of technological sophistication involved, whether it is with the aid of sticks or tanks that the actual fighting is done.
(164) Danger is much more than simply the medium in which war takes place; from the point of view of participants and spectators alike, it is among the principal attractions, one would almost say its raison d'etre. Had war not involved braving danger, coping with it, and overcoming it, then not only would there have been no point in fighting but the activity itself would become impossible. Coping with danger calls forth qualities such as boldness, pride, loyalty, and determination. It is thus able to cause people to transcend themselves, become more than they are. Conversely, it is only in the face of danger that determination, loyalty, pride, and boldness make sense and manifest themselves. In short, danger is what makes war go round. As in any sport, the greater the danger the greater both the challenge of braving it and the honor associated with doing so.
(165-166) What makes coping with danger so supremely enjoyable is the unique sense of freedom it is capable of inspiring. As Tolstoy notes of Prince Andrej on the eve of the Battle of Austerlitz, he who has no future before him is free of care; which is why the very terror of fighting is capable of inducing excitement, exhilaration, even vertigo. Fighting demands the utmost concentration. By compelling the sense to focus themselves on the here and now, it can cause a man to take his leave of them. In this way it is granted to the warrior to approach, even cross, the thin dividing line between life and death. In the whole of human experience the only thing that even comes close is the act of sex, as is also evident from the fact that the same terms are often used to describe both activities. However, the thrills of war and fighting are probably more intense than those of the boudoir. War causes human qualities, the best as well as the worst, to realize their full potential. From the time of Homer on, there has always been a sense in which it is only those who risk their lives willingly, even joyfully, who can be completely themselves, completely human.
(174) Weakness turns into strength, strength into weakness. The principal reason behind this phenomenon is that war represents perhaps the most imitative activity known to man. The whole secret of victory consists of trying to understand the enemy in order to outwit him. A mutual learning process ensues. Even as the struggle proceeds, both sides adapt their tactical methods, the means that they employ, and - most important of all - their morale to fit the opponent. Doing so, sooner or later the point will come where they are no longer distinguishable.
NB: "Choose your enemies carefully, because you become like them."
(175) However, over the long run no amount of pampering can make up for the fact that fighting the weak demeans those who engage in it and, therefore, undermines its own purpose. He who loses out to the weak loses; he who triumphs over the weak also loses. In such an enterprise there can be neither profit nor honor. Provided only the exercise is repeated often enough, as surely as night follows day the point will come when enterprise collapses...
Necessity knows no bounds; hence he who is weak can afford to go to the greatest lengths, resort to the most underhand means, and commit every kind of atrocity without compromising his political support and, more important still, his own moral principles. Conversely, almost anything that the strong does or does not do is, in one sense, unnecessary and, therefore, cruel. For him, the only road to salvation is to win quickly in order to escape the worst consequences of his own cruelty; swift, ruthless brutality may well prove to be more merciful than prolonged restraint. A terrible end is better than endless terror and is certainly more effective.
NB: We have chosen co-dependence with terrorists. Bush requires a threat like bin Laden or Saddam or Ahmadinejad in order to maintain his own political control.
(192) Should present trends continue then the kind of war that is based on the division between government, army, and people seems to be on its way out. The rise of low-intensity conflict may, unless it can be quickly contained, end up destroying the state. Over the long run, the place of the state will be taken by warmaking organizations of a different type.
NB: Corporations, freelancers, and global guerrillas
(195) Strategy is interactive by definition; any attempt to defeat the enemy that involves outwitting and deceiving him must be preceded by an endeavor to understand him.... Belligerants who were originally very dissimilar will come to resemble each other first in point of the methods that they use and then, gradually, other respects. As this happens, provided only the struggle lasts long enough, the point will come where the reasons for which they originally went to war are forgotten.
(197) In the future, war will not be waged by armies but by groups whom we today call terrorists, guerrillas, bandits, and robbers, but who will undoubtedly hit on more formal titles to describe themselves. Their organization are likely to be constructed on charismatic lines rather than institutional ones, and to be motivated less by "professionalism" than by fanatical, ideologically-based, loyalties. While clearly subject to some kind of leadership with coercive powers at its disposal, that leadership will be hardly distinguishable from the organization as a whole; hence it will bear greater similarity to "The Old Man of the Mountains" than to institutionalized government as the modern world has come to understand that term.
(201) Again, in 1989 the Israelis successfully kidnapped three leaders of the Pro-Iranian Hizbulla organization in Lebanon, thus proving that he who fights terrorists for any period of time is likely to become one himself.
(203) Organizations waging low-intensity conflict will, almost be definition, be unable to control large, contiguous pieces of territory any more than medieval and early modern governments did. The difference between "front" and "rear" - both of them comparatively recent terms inseparable from the modern state - will progressively break down. Under such circumstances war will become a much more direct experience for most civilians, even to the point where the term itself may be abolished, or its meaning altered. War will affect people of all ages and both sexes. They will be affected not just accidentally of incidentally or anonymously from afar, as in the case of strategic bombing, but as immediate participants, targets, and victims. Practices that for three centuries have been considered uncivilized, such as capturing civilians and even entire communities for ransom, are almost certain to make a comeback. Indeed in many countries infested with low-intensity conflict they already have made a comeback, and in some they had never really been abandoned.
(210 - 211) Toys, particularly those that look powerful and dangerous, may have their attractions for generals in and out of uniform. However, from the point of view of society at large it simply makes no sense to produce weapons that are too expensive, too fast, too indiscriminate, too big, too unmaneuverable and too powerful to use in real-life war. It makes even less sense to design weapons whose development costs are such that they can only be produced on condition that they are sold to others; particularly since lead times are now so long - ten to fifteen years - as to make it likely that some of the buyers will have become enemies. The American F-14 Tomcat naval air-superiority fighters, sold to the Shah of Iran in 1974-75 in return for the latter saving the manufacturer (the Grumman Corporation) from bankruptcy, are a case in point. Much of the modern heavy weapons industry is, militarily speaking, a house of cards. It supports itself through exporting its own uselessness.
This does not mean that new technology has no role to play in the military future. What it does mean is a move away from today's large, expensive, powerful machines toward small, cheap gadgets capable of being manufactured in large numbers and used almost everywhere, much as, in the past, firearms replaced the knight and his cumbersome armor. Already magnetic identification cards are widely used to allow their owners to enter and leave buildings. Once the technology matures, cards will be provided with transmitters and linked to computers permitting their wearers to be continually traced as they move through secure zones, bases, or installations. Similar equipment, only slightly modified, may be applicable to the license-plates of vehicles. Surveillance cameras and closed circuit-television currently being used to monitor the inside of buildings as well as city-traffic may be adapted for wider purposes; the Israel Defgense Forces in connection with the Intifada have experimented with cameras mounted on balloons. The race between scramblers and listening devices is on. So is the one between monitoring machines and the odorless, signature-less, explosives used by terrorists, together with poisoned umbrellas and booby-traps of every kind. All these gadgets have more in common with George Orwell's telescreen - itself a real technical possibility - than with today's tanks, missiles, and aircraft....
The problem of subversion is likely to be serious. In the recent past, military establishments, so long as they fought each other, were able to take national loyalties more or less for granted. However, this will be decreasingly the case.
(214 - 215) Already as these lines are being written the fastest growing religion in the world is Islam. While there are many reasons for this, perhaps it would not be so far fetched to say that its very militancy is one factor behind its spread. By this I do not mean to say merely that Islam strives to achieve its aims by fighting; rather, that people in many parts of the world - including downtrodden groups in the developed world - are finding Islam attractive precisely because it is prepared to fight. Obviously, the resurgence of religion as a cause of armed conflict will cause the war convention to change in other ways as well.
If the growing militancy of one religion continues, it almost certainly will compel others to follow suit. People will be driven to defend their ideals and way of life, and their physical existence, and this they will be able to do only under the banner of some great and powerful idea. That idea may be secular buy origin; however, they very fact that it is fought for will cause it to acquire religious overtones and be adhered to with something like religious fervor. Thus Muhammed's recent revival may yet bring on that of the Christian Lord, and He will be not the Lord of love but of battles.
(218) The reason why other activities do not provide a substitute is precisely because they are
"civilized": in other words, bound by artificial rules. Compared to war, der Ernstfall as the Germans used to say, every one of the many other activities in which men play with their lives is merely a game, and a trivial one at that. Though war too is in one sense an artificial activity, it differs from all the rest in that it offers complete freedom, including paradoxically freedom from death. War alone presents man with the opportunity of employing all his faculties, putting everything at risk, and testing his ultimate worth against an opponent as strong as himself. It is the stakes that can make a game serious, even noble. While war's usefulness as a servant of power, interest, and profit may be questioned, the inherent fascination it has held for men at all times and places is a matter of historical fact. When all is said and done, the only way to account for this fascination is to regard war as the game with the highest stakes of all.
(221) However unpalatable the fact, the real reason why we have wars is that men like fighting, and women like those men who are prepared to fight on their behalf.
(231) The Fierce People by N Chagnon (NY, Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1968)
An anthropologist's account of life in an Amazonian tribe that was addicted to war
(241) Arms and Influence by T Schelling (New Haven CT, Yale Univ Press, 1966)
The best work on strategy written since 1945
The Strategy of Conflict by T Schelling (Cambridge, MA, Harvard Univ Press, 1960)
Strategy as a double-sided exercise common to war and games