Assuming the United States emerges
through this internally turbulent political timeframe intact (which I believe she
will), we will find ourselves embroiled in another armed conflict on some
distant shore soon enough. After participating
in the post-War on Terror conflicts and observing the conflicts the US has
taken part in over the last 50 or so years, I’ve come to one conclusion: Insurgents,
terrorists, and guerillas rarely pay attention to the majority share of global power
political scientists claim we have carved out for ourselves. Gone are the days of uniformed US and German
soldiers dug in at the Bulge, singing Christmas carols to ease the pain of war
during the holidays before another day of relentless artillery shelling. We may never see another General Umezu sign
an instrument of surrender aboard a US aircraft carrier to end the onslaught of
the US advance. More likely, future
conflicts will devolve into far more personal counter insurgency and counter terrorism
combat as the US projects power forward.
Once the US has abandoned the old force-on-force model and is inclined or
required to adopt this more intimate model, the looming question remains: Given
the new model for warfare, how powerful is the United States?
At the end of the day, the ability to project military might is a massive aspect of the power of a state, and nobody can project military might like the US can… in theory. Karl W. Eikenberry discusses the cost ofcounter insurgency operations in Afghanistan and the challenges the US continues to face placing Enduring Freedom in the win column.
At the end of the day, the ability to project military might is a massive aspect of the power of a state, and nobody can project military might like the US can… in theory. Karl W. Eikenberry discusses the cost ofcounter insurgency operations in Afghanistan and the challenges the US continues to face placing Enduring Freedom in the win column.
“two consecutive U.S. administrations have labored mightily to help Afghanistan create a state inhospitable to terrorist organizations with transnational aspirations and capabilities. The goal has been clear enough, but its attainment has proved vexing. Officials have struggled to define the necessary attributes of a stable post-Taliban Afghan state and to agree on the best means for achieving them.”
Despite many challenges, the US has been able to project
massive warfighting capability overseas for well over 12 years. What, in this case is more important to the
definition of power: the ability to project power or the ability to accomplish
military goals? Increasingly, one has
little to do with the other. The results
of massive military spending, which is often a metric used to measure power,
produces war machines like the Joint Strike Fighter which have little to no effect
on an individual enemy on the ground operating independently and with no large
military support. Joint Strike Fighters,
Abrams Tanks, and aircraft carriers are goal-driven pieces of military
equipment which don’t satisfy the goals of counter insurgency and counter
terrorism, but the US continues to try and use them as if they were. General James Mattis has discussed the needfor the US to become “superior at irregular warfare”, and the need to become a
hybrid-force to stay relevant militarily.
The US continues to send sledgehammers instead of scalpels. The only true irregular warfare option which
uses the technological terrors the US has at it’s disposal is to raze the
Earth, but an Economist article from 2007 summed up nicely: “Modern Western
armies cannot, as the Romans did, make a wasteland and call it peace.”
An interesting post Nicholas, however I think it is somewhat misguided in scope to be so pessimistic about the conflict overseas over the past 12 years and how it has shaped U.S. defense policy as well as military objectives.
ReplyDeleteIn regards to your statement about future conflicts devolving into much more personal counterinsurgency and counter terrorism combat I would agree to some extent however if we reflect on the cyclical nature of US defense policy this may be incorrect. While I do agree that presently, counterinsurgency and counter terrorism are the top priority and will most likely remain the top priority for the foreseeable future, the US has always had a history of changing her defense and foreign policy after conflict. We saw how after World War I the US led the way in disarmament and peace resolutions only to be caught unprepared for the outbreak of World War II.
Yes counterinsurgency and counter terrorism are the threat now, but there is an even larger threat of committing fully to reshaping our military for this personal conflict as it leaves us susceptible and unprepared for large-scale conventional war.
Secondly, the US has been slow to adapt to this new warfare, however if we study the reason military raids in both Libya and Somalia, the raid by Seal Team Six on Osama bin Laden's compound, and the newly effective Drone strikes I think we see an increasingly effective military mission being accomplished. The US through immense defense spending and over a decade of trial and error I believe is getting stronger and stronger at being able to exert our influence over insurgency and terrorism all over the world. Whether or not you agree with the legality or morality of these military strikes one can hardly argue against the fact that these strikes have been effective and devastated many central networks of al-Qaeda and other terrorist groups. It's fascinating and somewhat haunting in my eyes to see just how effective a massive military power like the US can be at finding a single person in the fabric of the world.
With that said, I do see the US continuing to narrow our focus on counterinsurgency and counter terrorism but I would strongly encourage her to maintain large-scale conventional military power as the backbone of her military because of the greater threat that poses.
I agree with some of what you say in your post. Overall, the US is at a disadvantage fighting an unconventional war with a traditionally conventional military. I do agree that America's ability to project its military power is being blunted in the current conflict in Afghanistan, although I believe it is for different reasons than the ones you brought up.
ReplyDeleteThe problem our troops face is not our inability to adapt to an unconventional conflict. The problem stems from the heavy cost of conducting such a war. The Afghans and really any guerrilla force for that matter fights by causing large problems for the occupying force with minimal resources. While our drones, aircraft, and sophisticated weapons give US forces a major advantage in combat, they are expensive. Each flight of an aircraft or GPS guided munition expended costs us greatly as well as supplying all of the troops with the necessities to sustain operations in a foreign land. The afghans on the other hand are able to operate with minimal and inexpensive equipment and use the resources of the country side to maintain their supplies. The end result is that the cost of fighting is far more expensive for the US than the Afghans and their ability to outlast our campaigns and sustain their method of fighting is what allows them to resist our superior military power.
I agree with the post to an extent. I agree we are at a very real disadvantage fighting with the military structure we have now, in these recent guerrilla style conflicts, but to the brass high up this may been seen as a cost they can absorb. If the US went from what we have now a traditional military to a new more modern special operations type military, the costs of that change would been huge. This may be why the commanders are trying to fight this war with what they have instead of trying to re-train/build an entirely new army. With the grey areas with certain countries like North Korea, these military commanders may be already planning past the irregular war in the Middle East and worrying more about a more traditional one in Asia. The US military stands ready to fight any enemy to the US and allies even though we are fighting smaller terrorist groups that spread across the world currently the US military will always want to stand ready to be able to protect and fight the biggest potential threat out there.
ReplyDeleteI don't really have a strong faith in "counter-terrorism," as it seems to flip flop quite a bit. Everyone has a grip in the Middle East, and by that I mean some sort of stake that might contrary to what the public "should" and "does" believe, and what the unofficial stance on "counter-terrorism" is. President Reagan's establishment and allowance of counter-intelligence (FBI/CIA) and surveillance of foreign individuals in foreign countries...which ended up leaking sensitive CIA information about Iranian troops to Iraq. Consequently Saddam's forces used lethal chemical weapons on Iranian soldiers- all because the U.S didn't want Iran gaining a vital foothold in the Middle East. And as far as chemical weapons and use go, (especially now with Syria in the light of that), is the U.S not contradictory to it's stance of democratic preservation by wittingly allowing the Iraqis to use such force against the Iranians? And just about 10 or more years later the U.S becomes yet again embroiled in the Iran/Iraq debacle. The stakes President Bush Jr. and some corporations held in Middle Eastern Oil reserves (along with a multitude of other reasons) resonated right around the September 11th terrorist attacks, garnering the President and the whole nation's attention. And after that, the supposed liberation of Iran from Saddam and building a fledgeling democratic society, we are still at war fighting something that wasn't fought originally. And now the brave and exhaustive work our own flesh and blood do to make reparations for a society that is foreign to democracy, at a big loss to us. I could give a rats ass about military superiority if that makes us force and imposition a large region negatively. If it makes us disregard country structure and cultural background to preserve some notion of justified democracy at the cost of mostly our own soldiers. If it makes us separate mothers and fathers from children both on the front line and at home.
ReplyDeleteWhy is it that we can support something that ends up attacking its own government in one instance, but then come to the aid of another government who's being antagonized by its own citizens? I understand that there's a fine line of responsibility and collective action. That governments can be responsible just as well as individuals for either promoting or allowing the existence of terrorist groups. That terrorist groups are often incredibly violent and successful in dismantling the safety, democracy, and solidarity of a nation's citizens. That it might be a necessary evil to stand guard in order to ensure that a nation can develop allowing its citizens the utmost freedoms and liberties. I don't intend to undermine the loss of soldiers and citizens abroad in this war, nor September 11th, not various other "terrorist" attacks. It concerns me when there is an established group of rules that most play by, but in total disregard those terrorists, insurgents, and democratic peace dissidents refuse to acknowledge a structured world around them. It just seems like we can't win, regardless of what side we choose or what ideals we cling to.
While I agree with the the articles point, namely that the nature of military threats to the US has become more asymmetric (ie al Qaeda), I believe it would be a grave mistake to focus too heavily on counter-insurgency operations to the detriment of our ability to conduct a large-scale conventional war. Between a resurgent Russia and a rising China, the threat is too real not to meet with appropriate measures of deterrence. As Matt C. mentioned in his comments, the US military has refined its counter-terrorist and counter-insurgency abilities over the past decade but really beginning with the establishment of USSOCOM in 1987, which was(is) basically tasked with meeting unconventional threats to America's security. In 2005? America introduced the next stage in the evolution of military hardware, the UAV. Not only have UAV's proven incredibly effective at providing the best-of-yet available real-time intelligence to US defense forces of all stripes, they also have the nifty capability to stalk and kill individual enemies in inhospitable terrain with precision rivaled only by the most elite tactical units. With the incorporation of UAV's onto Navy carrier platforms, the US now has the ability to strike an individual with relatively exacting precision, anywhere in the world, with no risk to its military personnel. No other nation can do this, or has ever been able to. After the Cold War, when the world became unipolar due to the Soviet Union's demise, it was quite natural that the military threats the US would face would be unconventional because rationality dictates that it would be suicide for any nation to militarily square up with the US. This does not mean the US will perpetually face enemies with vastly inferior military means. The global order is once again in flux, and this flux inevitably will lead to challenges to US global hegemony by most likely China. China seems determined to exercise control in its region (regional disputes over "islands"). The US has major allies in the region, Japan and the more distance Australia. If China decides to make a definitive move towards regional hegemony, Japan is only a short boat ride away. This time US forces would have to storm the beaches of Japan, we would be wise to be prepared.
ReplyDeleteI definitely agree that we are in a new era of warfare and that in the future, we will most likely need to focus on improving COIN strategies. Mary Kaldor actually talks about this new era of warfare in her book, _New and Old Wars_, which reaffirms this point. Additionally, this whole concept of war involving sub-state actors in problematic for the realist perspective, which is based on the very concept of conflict between two state entities, not conflict between a state and non-state actors. As far as US policy goes, I think we have learned to take insurgency seriously in the last 13 years, no matter how powerful we think we are compared to it. At the same time, I think we can still be prepared for a large conventional conflict, although it's not something that we are necessarily likely to face. I think the military has evolved to be more adept at supporting new counterinsurgency missions and if anything this is an addition to our other capabilities, not a subtraction. Because of our experience, we now will be able to face either type of conflict in the future.
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