asymmetric warfare 23933a

Asymmetric Warfare

Edited by John Andreas Olsen

The Royal Norwegian Air Force Academy

Title:Asymmetric Warfare

Publisher: The Royal Norwegian Air Force Academy

Editor: John Andreas Olsen

ISSN 1502 - 6280

Contents

Introduction Dr. John Andreas Olsen . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5

PrologueDr. Nils Naastad . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15

PART I: Perspectives on Air Power Theory

Air Power Versus Asymmetric Enemies:A Framework for Evaluating Effectiveness Dr. Mark Clodfelter . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 23

The Evolution of Airpower Theory in the United States:From World War I to Colonel John Warden’s The Air CampaignColonel Peter Faber . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 45

Threatening What the Enemy Values:Punitive Disarmament as a Coercive StrategyDr. Karl P. Mueller . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 117

Small Nations and Asymmetric Air PowerWing Commander Shaun Clarke . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 143

Asymmetric Advantage and Homeland DefenceDr. Alan Stephens . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 189

Modern Competitiveness TheoryColonel (ret.) John A. Warden III . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 211

PART II: Perspectives on Military Theory

Centers of Gravity and Asymmetrical WarfareColonel (ret.) Richard Szafranski . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 239

Asymmetric Warfare: Rediscovering the Essence of StrategyLieutenant Colonel Frans Osigna . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 267

Asymmetrical Warfare:Ends or Means?Dr. Christopher Coker . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 319

The Changing Face of War: Into the Fourth GenerationMr. William S. Lind . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 341

Some Thoughts on Warfare in 21st CenturyGroup Captain Ian MacFarling . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 357

Chechnya:Russia’s Experience of Asymmetrical WarfareMr. Ivan Safranchuk . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 371

Another Gathering Darkness:The Pessimist’s Guide to the FutureDr. H. P. Willmott . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 389

Epilogue:Mr. Øistein Espenes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 409

Biographical Notes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 419

Introduction

This book is a function of the search for terms and concepts on militaryoperations in the Post Cold War Era. During the Cold War much of theterminology made sense: one had an understanding of the concept ofwar, and then there were operations other than wars (OOTW). With thelast decade’s civil uprisings, air campaigns and humanitarian operations,the use of armed forces has been diverse, and the need for new terms andconcepts are paramount to thinking clearly about current and futurethreats and responses.

Sir Michael Howard, in a presentation delivered at RUSI 30 October2001, was quite clear that the 11 September attacks on the Twin Towers,resulting in several thousand American casualties, do not qualify for adeclaration of “war”: “To ‘declare war’ on terrorists, or even more illiter-ately, on ‘terrorism’ is at once to accord them a status and dignity thatthey seek and which they do not deserve. It confers on them a kind oflegitimacy”. According to Howard, the use of force is then no longer alast resort, but a first, and the immediate expectations are decisive results.Such actions could furthermore be counter-productive to the qualitiesthat are needed to conquer terrorists: “secrecy, intelligence, politicalsagacity, quiet ruthlessness, covert actions that remain covert, [and]above all infinite patience”. Thus, it is a “battle for hearts and minds” and a clash of cultures, but war it is not as we understand it in a Clause-witzian sense.

There is definitely a span between terrorist acts and conventional mili-tary fighting, and within that span one often talks about “asymmetricwarfare”. In discussing the notion of asymmetry, the following essays isone attempt to improve our understanding of our military profession, byexploring different perspectives on air power theory specifically, and mili-tary theory generally.

Dr. Mark Clodfelter offers an analytical framework for examining vari-ous air power applications, based on five key variables that affect airpower’s ability to achieve success: the nature of the enemy, the type ofwar that the enemy wages, the nature of the combat environment, themagnitude of military controls, and the nature of the political objectivessought. In doing so he also offers an interesting distinction betweenpositive and negative objectives. The former goals are those that can be“achieved only by applying military force”, while the latter goals, in con-trast, “can be achieved only by limiting military force”. In the second halfof the paper Clodfelter uses the framework to analyse Operation RollingThunder, and by going into each of the five key variables he provides anassessment of what went wrong, and thus the limits of air power. He sug-gests that President Johnson and his advisers misread their enemy, com-pounding that mistake by misreading the type of war that their enemyfought. Moreover, by going for North Vietnam, rather than Viet Congproper, the Americans went for the wrong targets. In conclusionClodfelter argues that “the effectiveness of air power depends on howwell it supports the positive goals without risking the achievement of thenegative ones”. Although the framework is used to analyse the Vietnamexperience, it forms the basis for analysing any application of militaryforce, and importantly, the framework should be used to assess bothsides.

Colonel Peter Faber focuses on the quest by American air power thinkersfor theories, strategies, and doctrines that they could truly call their own.To support this overall theme, the article first focuses on genealogy. Itdescribes the two dominant “languages” developed by modern militarythinkers to analyse and characterise war, while also stressing the distortingeffects these approaches later had on the thinking of air power theorists.The theorists, however, did not always articulate their ideas clearly, theychanged them over time, or they developed concepts of operations thatwere not readily distinguishable from each other, or at least only at themargins. To help clarify who said what, the second part of the article pro-vides an analytic tool that not only helps differentiate fourteen 20th cen-tury air power theories from each other, but also provides a template forthe development of new theories in the future. Lastly, with both a his-torical context and tool for analysis readily at hand, Faber turns to the

INTRODUCTION6

evolution of American air power theory, largely from 1945 through theappearance of John Warden’s seminal The Air Campaign (1988). Faberprovides as such a tale of creation, loss, and recovery. He suggests it is atale where the predecessors of the USAF struggled mightily to create aunique theory of air warfare – high altitude precision daylight bombard-ment against the key economic and societal nodes of modern states. It isa tale where “blue suiters” then either lost their theoretical/doctrinalbearings in the Cold War, or, to take a more charitable view, failed toelaborate and refine them further. Ultimately though, it is a tale ofrecovery. Faber concludes that, beginning in the mid-1980s, Americanairmen regained control of their long-lost intellectual destiny, and there-fore ushered in a renaissance in aerospace thinking that continues to thisday.

Dr. Karl P. Mueller suggests that for at least the past eighty years, debatesregarding how best to employ air power and other military force for coer-cion have been dominated by two strategic approaches. One, associatedwith strategic bombing advocates and coercion theorists from GiulioDouhet to Thomas Schelling to John Warden, is based on punishingcivilian populations or their leaders, in order to convince the enemy thatdefying the coercer’s demands will be prohibitively expensive. The other,favoured by Clausewitz and recently promoted by Robert Pape, empha-sises denying the enemy the prospect of victory through attacks onmilitary forces or war industry until the inevitability of defeat convincesthe opponent to capitulate. In this essay Mueller explores a third strategicalternative: attacking the armed forces of an adversary based on theirvalue to the enemy regime rather than their contribution to victory in thecurrent confrontation. Mueller suggests that largely as a result of the pre-cision weapons and sensors revolutions, threatening to destroy militaryassets that the enemy values highly now offers a potentially viable coercivestrategy for many situations in which frustrating the enemy’s militarystrategy is impractical or irrelevant, without turning to attacks on civiliantargets that are likely to be formally illegal, politically unacceptable, andultimately ineffective. However, the author concludes, such “punitivedisarmament” strategies are not appropriate in every case, so this chapterexamines their strengths and weaknesses in order to identify factors thatwill make them more or less likely to succeed.

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Wing Commander Shaun Clarke’s paper is about adopting rather thancountering asymmetric attack. He suggests that asymmetric warfare hasbeen a feature of “conventional” war throughout history, as it is princi-pally the process of pitting strength against weakness and only in the ter-rorist application, bereft of legal and moral consideration, is asymmetricwarfare an undignified pursuit. In a world of large and medium powers,there is an unavoidable asymmetry about being small. For small nations,asymmetric warfare is a corollary of asymmetric means. The authorpoints out that there is no victory anticipated in a frontal clash with alarger foe, and therefore no choice but to seek alternative strategies inadvance. This paper is about the quest for alternative strategies – or asym-metric strategy – for small nation air strike. It recognises the typical“offensive air support” orientation of small nation air power in service ofland and sea, and seeks to know whether there is a more powerful appli-cation. “Strategic bombing” against the enemy’s very will and capacityfor war has remained the exclusive franchise of greater nations, and thequestion is whether small nations affected by scale – but not sufferingany lack of skill, sophistication or agility – might be capable of moredirectly affecting the strategic objectives over which war is ultimatelyfought. Clarke asks if strategic bombing is within the reach of small mod-ern nation offensive air power? Or are the demands of mass, tempo andsustainability – so characteristic of last century’s strategic bombingcampaigns – disqualifiers for small players? The answer lies in an exami-nation of the small nation perspective on war, an understanding of coer-cion theory and a review of lessons learned from revolutionary warfare.

Dr. Alan Stephens argues that the nature of homeland defence haschanged as a consequence of 11 September. His paper is concerned withfuture military responses, suggesting that one can no longer endorse adefensive approach, and that one needs to optimise the asymmetricadvantage that reside in having the technological edge. A central part ofStephens’s thesis is that the relationship between air power and groundpower has changed. During the last three wars – Deliberate Force, AlliedForce and Enduring Freedom – the Western coalitions chose not to useconventional ground forces. Not only must the armies therefore reassessthe concepts of “mass” and “closing with the enemy”, but the wholenotion of “seizing and holding territory”. Although holding ground may

INTRODUCTION8

still be the “primary objective” of many military actions, it is no longerthe “primary means” for achieving it, as modern warfare is more con-cerned with the acceptable political outcome. However, armies do stillhave a central role in advanced war-fighting according to the author, andin the second half of the paper he discusses air power’s technological edgein the context of “proxy” ground forces, urban warfare, the use of specialforces and peace operations. The author concludes, nevertheless, that forthe last decade “asymmetric aerospace power has been the key to victoryin a succession of theatre-level campaigns which, when measured againstthe sweep of history, have been extraordinarily quick, decisive, and low-casualty”.

Colonel (ret.) John A. Warden argues that there are sub-theories for air,ground and naval operations, but on an aggregated level it is all part of alarger competition theory. Drawing from his own operational experience,and particularly the Instant Thunder concept, which became the theoret-ical foundation for the first phase of Operation Desert Storm, Wardendevelops a set of imperatives for how to win in the modern world. Thefirst imperative is to “design the future”, which is about assessing theenvironment in which one is operating, defining the end-state, guidanceprecepts and measures of merit. The next step is to select the right centresof gravity, “targeting for success”. It is about adding or removing energyto the system one wants to effect, acknowledging the interrelations andworkings of that entity. The third step is “campaigning to win”, whereone applies the resources available as effectively as possible. The final stepdeals with the ability to finish a campaign at the right moment, termi-nating while in the lead or at the top. These four imperatives are thePrometheus Process, which, according to Warden, allows you to succeed inthe modern world, be it in the military or the civilian business.

Colonel (ret.) Richard Szafranski defines centres of gravity as “thatwhich we or our adversary can least afford to have badly hurt at any givenmoment”. After reviewing centres of gravity in the context of Tofflers’three waves of warfare, Szafranski illustrates that the notion has changed,epoch to epoch. The first observation is that only the one dependent onthem knows the genuine centres of gravity. It is a secret vulnerability cre-

INTRODUCTION 9

ated by intentions, plans, and the changes in time-space-matter configu-rations. Next, if the centre is badly hurt, it will affect the capacity toretain the initiative and prosecute plans. Thus, an important feature ofthe centres is the value the owner places in them, and this “value” goesdeeper than the “utility” that defines material objects. Consequently,asymmetric operations by nature have an important non-materialdimension, wherein one seeks “huge psychological shock” and “rude sur-prises”. The target is that which the attacker perceives will surprise,unbalance, disorient and leave the target susceptible to a cascading col-lapse of power structures. Asymmetric operations do not attack utility asmuch as they attack what the holder values. In sum Szafranski argues thatunderstanding centres of gravity and appreciating the logic of asym-metric operations help prevent the unsatisfactory outcomes that oftenfollow the unpredictable era of great change. One finds centres of gravityby searching, moment by moment, for what adversary values, and inorder to develop strategies for victory one must also search for asym-metries therein.

Lieutenant Colonel Frans Osinga argues that the current debate in theWest on asymmetric warfare focuses on certain threats, weapons andtactics. The events of 11 September reinvigorated this debate, but alsosteered it towards a particular view on what asymmetric means withterrorism taking centre stage as an asymmetric threat. The result is thatasymmetry means something different to different people, or is dismissedby some as a hollow concept, because asymmetric warfare is essentially asold as warfare itself. In this essay Osinga introduces various inter-pretations and comments, and attempts to shed light on the debate. Hisobjective is to improve our understanding of asymmetric warfare, ratherthan formulate a new definition, and in the process he revisits a classic instrategic theory: Sun Tzu’s The Art of War. The author argues thatfinding, creating and exploiting asymmetries is the essence of strategy,and that Sun Tzu provides several important insights into the nature ofasymmetric warfare – a notable one being that asymmetric warfarerequires above all a specific mindset and approach to studying war andmaking strategy. Osinga stresses that although the debate on asymmetricwarfare contains nothing new, it is far from useless. Rather, in view of thestrategic mistakes of the past decades, and in view of the fact that several

INTRODUCTION10

countries seem to adhere to Sun Tzu’s mode of thinking, the debate isuseful as a re-education on the essence of strategy, because asymmetricwarfare was, is and will remain the norm, instead of the exception.

Dr. Christopher Coker argues that the non-Western understanding ofthe Americans has reached an all time high, while the United States forits part is remarkably ill-informed about the rest of the world – “its igno-rance may cost it dear”. He explores the underpinning nature of today’sconflicts by searching for general developments in society, emphasisingthat although one might be trained to kill, one does not come to gripswith the concept of being willing to die for a cause. “Zero tolerance ofcasualties” is a notion that does not go together with the phenomenon ofwar, and herein lies the West’s vulnerability which any enemy will takeadvantage of. Coker suggests that this will only be strengthened in thefuture, because the next generation does no longer comprehend the senseof tragedy that one found in Greek plays, and “without a sense of thetragic it is difficult to justify casualties”. When one adds the role of themedia in today’s conflict, where human suffering is no longer acceptedand all intervention must be in the name of “humanitarianism”, themilitary becomes divided between “worriers” and “humanitarians”, a dis-tinction that manifests the West’s vulnerability and may underminemilitary effectiveness. Drawing on examples from Iraq, Somalia, Bosniaand Kosovo, Coker suggests the West has a “risk-averse” culture thatopens itself to asymmetric threats. He concludes that the “meaning ofvictory” needs to be reassessed. It is not all about winning, but avoidingdefeat. It is about ensuring that one survives, “if necessary to fightanother day”.

Mr. Willam S. Lind has developed a framework for how to examinemilitary theory and practice through his four generations of warfare. Inthis paper, originally published in 1989, he speculated on the fourth gen-eration, which contained many elements of the previous generation ofmanoeuvre warfare wherein non-linear tactics, mission-orders and thefluid battlefield manifested itself, as opposed to classic attrition style war-fare. Lind et al. developed scenarios where the shift was driven by tech-nology on the one hand, and ideas and concepts on the other. The

INTRODUCTION 11

authors stressed that the future would witness wars in which nation-states did not necessarily have a monopoly on war and the line betweencivilian and military would become ever less tangible. Although pointingout that terrorism did not equal fourth generation warfare, Lind specu-lated that it would be difficult to imagine future conflicts in which ter-rorism was not a central element. In hindsight it was a glimpse of thefuture, and in the second half Lind sets out to use the framework of thefourth generation to comment on the recent Afghan War. He argues thatthe most important aspect in examining the leadership of al-Quaida isthat the centres of gravity in the Afghan War do not reside in Afghanistanitself, but in Pakistan, Saudi Arabia and Egypt. Drawing on cultural, reli-gious and ideological factors Lind argues that Washington has misper-ceived the very nature of the terrorism that it sets out to defeat.

Group Captain Ian MacFarling’s dictum is that “War – as in all practicalactivities – is a matter of communications. If communications breakdown then conflict – and perhaps war – will ensue. Resolution of any con-flict requires that the parties resume contact”. Thus, all communicationsrequire words, and this essay discusses terms that relate to our under-standing of war. What is the difference between war and warfare? Whyshould the word war be used with care? Why is the word asymmetrictautological when applied to war? What is a military capability? Shouldwe develop capabilities on the basis of the threats we face, or the vulner-abilities we suffer? How should we send messages to potential opponentsand what might happen if they are misinterpreted? If we are in a conflicthow should we use the principles of discrimination and proportionality?The practical questions are equally important. What is the implication ofusing precision as the major criterion for weapon performance when weshould be using accuracy? Is it reasonable to believe that we can makeweapon delivery exact? Should we use historical examples to determinewhether our skills at warfare have improved? The final issues thatMacFarling deals with are philosophical. What does a society expect fromits armed forces? If the armed forces are the sole arbiters of lethal violencein defence of the state then how should they behave in operations otherthan war? Air forces have always had a problem in such scenarios, and theissue of cold violence in both war and other forms of conflict is one thatcauses modern philosophers much concern. How should air forces edu-

INTRODUCTION12

cate their members to cope with the theoretical and practical problemsthey might face? The author stresses that there is no place for dogma andcertainty in war and warfare as one enters the Third Millennium.

Mr. Ivan Safranchuk suggests that the issue of Chechnya is extremelycomplicated and controversial. With the understanding that differenthumanitarian aspects of the conflict have already become the subject forclose scrutiny, his thesis focuses mostly, if not exclusively, on the Russianmilitary experience in facing a non-traditional, guerrilla style adversary.He argues that this is per definition asymmetrical warfare, and politicalquestions are only covered when inseparable from the military context.According to the author asymmetrical warfare is when you have advan-tages in equipment and manpower, but the enemy is using tactics andmeans in an environment that does not provide for the opportunity toexploit the advantages of traditional military forces. Safranchuk providesa comparison of Russian and Chechen forces, defining characteristics ofthe conflict, identifying major tactics, analysing the means used, andsumming up the lessons of the Chechen experience on four levels: theindividual, the unit, the army and the regime. The author concludes that“the major problem is that in traditional societies, like the Chechen one,with unclear, but powerful clan divisions, it is not difficult to conclude apeace accord with selected clans, but it is really a challenge to make thisaccord comprehensive and extend it to the majority of rebels”.

Dr. H. P. Willmott provides a discourse on the 20th century, arguing thatalthough the two world wars define the landscape, the critical momentmay well have been 28 October 1929. Indeed, he suggests that theSecond World War was perhaps the last war of the 19th century.Willmott’s thesis is that warfare is but one integrated part of society, andin order to get the former in proper perspective one needs to compre-hend such developments as the Green Revolution, the medical revolu-tion, the population explosion, racial hate, illiteracy, tribalism, theimpact of ecological degradation and what he argues is the less notableaspects of the Information Revolution, “namely the erosion of the basisof consensus as it has evolved over time”. Willmott argues that while hightechnology identifies modern states military doctrine, Third World

INTRODUCTION 13

countries will seek an asymmetric approach of guerrilla warfare. Addedto this dimension there are the infamous genetic weapons which form animportant part of the biotech revolution – the very consequence of sub-optimised knowledge on the one hand, but on the other hand theInformation Revolution seems to have “eroded the common base of soci-eties as developed over the past decades”. Thus, in order to understandwarfare, the author suggests that one develops an understanding forseveral general and specific developments throughout the century thatmay or may on coagulate, and consequently armed conflict is determinedby a range of non-military factors that at first sight seem unrelated.

INTRODUCTION14

Prologue: Some Introductory Remarks

Dr. Nils Naastad (RNoAF Academy)Asymmetric warfare is a theme shrouded in some mystery. It is also atheme very much in vougue these days. One might even argue that it ison the way of replacing the prominent position held by the concept ofmanouever warfare during the last decade by the Norwegian militaryestablishment. One might get the idea that changing from the creed ofmanouever warfare directly to asymmetrical war will require a mentalflexibility that we are not likely to find in many military minds. But I sayon to you – do not fear. Asymmetry is not as bad as it sounds.

Most of you corageously confronted this day by studying yourself in thebathroom mirror. Whether you liked what you saw or deplored it, is noconcern for us. My point is that the countenance you studied was asym-metrical. It is a fact of life that most people are not symmetrical neitherabove nor below the collar. Human asymmetry is a normal fact of life.

Symmetry and FightingBut les us now change our focus and go on to symmetry and war, or atleast symmetry and fighting.

The perfect symmetry as far as fighting is concerned is the classicalWestern duel. People met each other on equal terms. To make sure thatsymmetry was maintained the duel developed into the European duelwith seconds. The assisting gentlemen were there in order to make surethat the rules were agreed upon and respected.

These days, duels are a thing of the past. Instead we have games, such astennis, and to make sure that symmetry is maintained we have refereesor umpires. Games have developed further, some will say degenerated,into soccer matches as we find them today, but still symmetry is main-

tained. It is maintained by a common acceptance of the rules and by thehelp of referees for those who try to break the rules.

It is my basic assumption that most games are possible precisely becausethey are symmetrical. Furhermore, to keep games symmetrical, rules areabsolutely neccessary. If we had no rules, symmetry would break down.Games are not only defined by a set of rules, they are also defined by atime limit. If a clear outcome is not reached by a certain time, the gamemight end in a draw.

If we had no referees I submit that rules would break down. The strongermight resort to force, the weaker might bring a tool to help him etc.Symmetry would break down because rules were not upheld. The gamecould turn nasty, and it would most likely become asymmetrical. Let meconclude: Games will stay symmetrical because they are governed by a setof rules. Games are by nature symmetrical.

There are of course borderline cases. Some of you may remember whenan American, Bill Koch, started skating when skiing, or when a Swedestarted a new trend in skijumping. They did not break the rules, theyonly bent them. The almost unanimous Norwegian reaction merits con-sideration: We were against these changes. We wanted rules against thissort of creativity. New ideas will not come from masters of the old trade.

Can We Compare Games and War?In war there are also rules to obey. There are things you can do and thereare things you cannot do. The problem is that if the underdog finds thatrules are not to his advantage, that the rules favours his opponent, he islikely to break them. There is no umpire who can tell him to leave thefield. The final arbiter is the result itself – if you break rules and win, youhave created new rules. If you win you will most likely get away with it.Because of this, and in parallell with what we said about games, war hasan inherent tendency to produce new rules. In other words, war has aninherent tendency to become asymmetrical.

Also, and in contrast to games, there is no time limit to wars. Time there-fore becomes a commodity in itself. Rules therefore tend to be broken inthis respect too. One of the parts might want to go on fighting while the

PROLOGUE16

other wants to go home. Again, the one who stays the longest in the fieldwill carry the day.

What does this amount to? It amounts to a conclusion that wars are notgoverned by generally accepted rules. Wars are therefore by nature asym-metrical. If the underdog fights symmetrically, he does so due to lack ofopitons or lack of creativity. Wars are therefore not deadly games. Weought to consider this: Military organisations are governed by a set ofrather rigid operating principles; there are doctrines and the like. Warshowever, obeying no rules, are the business of the creative mind. I am notentirely convinced that our daily bureaucratic business, our operatingprinciples, encourages creativity.

ExamplesLet me round this introduction off by a couple of examples. The motherof all wars, the First World War, or the Great War as the British will have it,was at least on the Western Front, symmetrical. It was fought to a stand-still on the midfield. It ended because the Germans wanted to go home.Time became the central commodity. Out of W.W.I came Air Power. Firsta creation of the imagination, but then, over the years, as a reality.

What was Air Power going to achieve? What was it, the prophets argued,that was going to be its main contribution? Air Power would lift war outof the trenches. It would lift war away from the symmetrical battlefieldand onto segments of the enemy population who did not fight back. Inother words: Air Power promised to make war asymmetrical. The WesternFront symmetry resulted in a four year deadlock. Air Power promised tosee to it that this did not happen again, by making a new set of rules.

What about the legal rules? According to Giulio Douhet

It is useless to delude ourselves. All the restrictions, all the inter-national agreements made during peacetime are fated to beswept away like dried leaves on the winds of war...

In other words, break international law if you by so doing will be able towin. Those who had the privilige of experiencing this new Western wayof warfare were the inhabitants of Iraq in the early 1920s, as well

PROLOGUE 17

obstreperous tribes in several areas of Africa. ”The natives and their cattlewere bombed and machinegunned with good effect”, according to theRAF.

Over the last decade the West has fought several wars, and fought themmainly by air power. We could of course have met our opponent on equalterms. We optet not to, and we all know why. Meeting him on his termswould not be to our advantage. Highly sophisticated air power enablesus to fight asymmetrical wars. On this field air power has kept itspromise: Air Power came of day promising to make wars asymmetrical.In this respect, at least with regard to the poorer part of the world, wehave succeeded.

Our kind of asymmetry is technological asymmetry. Our Asymmetry isthe asymmetry money can buy. One of the reasons for this Westernpreference is the fact that we through our technology can fight clinicallywith next to no losses, and as you all know we have a distinct distase forlosses these days.

Our opponents are well aware of this. They will therefore seek otherkinds of asymmetry. If our Achilles’ heel is our distaste for losses, weshould know what to expect, and to achieve the asymmetry of the under-dog, our opponents will break the rules. The attackers of September 11th

had overlooked one lesson though – there is hardly any evidence thatbombing the civilian population of a nation will weaken the nationalresolve. There is, however, ample evidence of the opposite.

Ladies and gentlemen, Wars have been, are and will remain asymmetric.The Western way of asymmetry is the kind that technology and moneycan buy. We should not however, expect to be allowed to define whatkind of asymmetry that will be practiced.

SummaryLet me summarise this introduction in a few sentences:

• Symmetrical violence is a duel• You fight symmetrically because it is your only option (or because

you are stupid)

PROLOGUE18

• War is an inherently asymmetrical business• Air power came into being to restore asymmetry to war. It has suc-

ceeded.• Our opponents are not likely to fight symmetrically on our techno-

logicial home field.

With this I leave this book to asymmetrical people to share theirthoughts with us on an inherently sad and asymmetrical business,namely war.

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Part I

Perspectives on Air Power Theory

Air Power Versus Asymmetric Enemies:A Framework for Evaluating Effectiveness

Dr. Mark Clodfelter“Asymmetric” is the current buzzword to describe a type of warfare thathas been with us much longer than the newfangled term.1 A weakerpower’s use of an unanticipated means to strike at a stronger enemy’s vul-nerability hearkens to the epic combat between David and Goliath, andsimilar examples abound throughout military history. Any type ofmilitary force can be applied asymmetrically, including air power, as AlQaeda’s terrorists demonstrated in devastating fashion on 11 September2001. Yet how might air power best be used against an asymmetric foe?The answer is not so different from the response to the fundamentalquestion regarding any application of air power against any enemy – howcan it be used as an effective instrument of war?

Gauging air power’s effectiveness is often a difficult task. To help in thatregard, the following framework may prove useful – though, like all trueframeworks–this one does not provide a set of standard answers. Instead,what it offers is a consistent approach for examining various air power appli-cations. Clausewitzian notions lurk in many of the questions that itpresents, as well as in the basic belief that its questions should be asked beforepolitical leaders decide to use air power to help achieve their war aims.

One caveat must be stated up front, however. What follows is a frame-work, not a theory. A theory provides “a codified, systematic body ofpropositions, related to a particular field of knowledge,” that defines,categorizes, explains, and connects.2 In contrast, the framework presentsrelationships rather than “systematic propositions,” and those relation-ships are definitely not codified. A theory also tends to anticipate – orpredict – the future, while the framework offers no universal guide forsuccess or failure. Yet it does provide considerations and cautions for the

statesman who may decide to use air power to achieve political goals, aswell as for the military commander charged with transforming politicalgoals into military objectives.

Given that conditions in war are never constant, the framework examinesfive key variables that affect air power’s ability to achieve success: thenature of the enemy, the type of war that the enemy wages, the nature ofthe combat environment, the magnitude of military controls, and thenature of the political objectives sought. The individual importance ofthese variables will likely change in different situations to yield differentresults. Thus, it is essential for those who would employ air power tounderstand exactly what the variables are, and how they might blendtogether to produce a particular outcome. America’s air war in Vietnamduring the “Rolling Thunder” era of the conflict provides one example ofhow the variables can combine with tragic effects to undermine the vari-ous applications of air power against an asymmetric enemy. That episode,perhaps better than any other, demonstrates that flawed assumptions anda failure to consider each variable fully can doom any chance for airpower success. Hopefully, the framework will provide a method foranalyzing air power applications that allows for a thorough dissection ofthe variables and how their integration may affect air power’s ability toachieve the ultimate measure of success – the accomplishment of thedesired political goals.

Before delving into the framework’s particulars, a definition of the elusiveterm, “air power,” seems in order. The American Billy Mitchell specifiedit as “the ability to do something in the air,”3 but that description is reallytoo vague to be useful. Much better is the definition offered by BritishAir Marshal R.J. Armitage and Air Vice Marshal R.A. Mason in theirclassic work, Air Power in the Nuclear Age: “The ability to project militaryforce through a platform in the third dimension above the surface of theearth.”4 Although Armitage and Mason admit that their definition con-tains gray areas, such as whether it includes ballistic missiles or surface-to-air weapons, it suffices to guide the proffered framework. Indeed,their definition recognizes qualities of air power “that are sometimesoverlooked” – its latent impact, and its ability to apply force directly orto distribute it.5 These characteristics form the basic distinctions used inthe framework to categorize air power missions.

AIR POWER VERSUS ASYMMETRIC ENEMIES24

Air power’s modes of application – the ways in which it can be used – arekey components of the framework. First, air power poised for use but notactually engaged in an operation is a latent application – a potentialimpact – that corresponds to its deterrent value. In this case, air power isnot directly involved in a contingency; its use is threatened. Examples ofthe latent application abound: Adolf Hitler’s references to the Luftwaffeduring the 1936 reoccupation of the Rhineland or the 1938 Munichcrisis; President Harry Truman’s deployment of B-29s to England duringthe 1948 Berlin Airlift; President Dwight Eisenhower’s warning of anatomic air attack against North Korea and Manchuria during the closingstages of the Korean War; and President John Kennedy’s reliance onStrategic Air Command’s B-52s and missile force during the 1962 CubanMissile Crisis are but a few instances.

While the framework acknowledges such latent applications, its heart isreally the actual use of air power during a contingency. In a crisis, theapplication of air power is twofold, based upon the purpose of the mis-sion: it is either direct or indirect, and it is either auxiliary or independent.The direct application of air power is the intended lethal application –that designed to expend ordnance. Applications that involve droppingbombs, shooting missiles, or firing guns fall into the direct category ofemployment. Conversely, the indirect application is the intended non-lethal use of air power. Airlift, reconnaissance, electronic jamming, andaerial refueling provide examples of the indirect application.

Besides being direct or indirect, the use of air power is also either auxili-ary or independent. Auxiliary air power is that applied to support groundor sea forces on a specific battlefield, whereas independent air power aimsto achieve objectives apart from those sought by armies or navies at aspecific location. Close air support (CAS) is one example of the auxiliaryuse; so too is an air attack against enemy forces on the battlefield who arenot in contact with friendly troops.6 So-called “strategic” bombing – thataimed at an enemy’s war-making potential before it can be brought tobear on the battlefield–exemplifies the independent application. Yet theterms strategic and tactical often overlap and frequently blur. Many airattacks during the last half-century’s limited wars have not only affectedthe ebb and flow of a particular campaign, but also have had significant“strategic” consequences. For instance, the American air strikes on Iraqi

AIR POWER VERSUS ASYMMETRIC ENEMIES 25

mobile Scud launchers during the 1991 Persian Gulf War aimed to wreckIraq’s tactical capability to launch ballistic missiles, as well as to achievethe strategic goal of placating the Israelis and keeping them out of theconflict.

Because of such blurred distinctions, the terms auxiliary and independentseem better suited than tactical and strategic to delineate various air powerapplications. The former terms, however, are not completely pristinethemselves, because their distinction depends on how the user defines theword, “battlefield.” In modern war, a specific battlefield may extend formany hundreds of miles; in an insurgent conflict like Vietnam, the battle-field may be even larger. General William Westmoreland, theCommander of US Military Assistance Command, Vietnam from1964–1968, described the battlefield in his conflict as “the whole countryof South Vietnam.”7 While such a parameter may seem extreme, itillustrates that the definition of the battlefield depends to a large extenton the type of war being fought.8 In a “conventional” conflict fought toseize or preserve territory, a battlefield’s boundaries are likely to be muchmore distinct than those for a guerrilla war, especially one like Vietnamin which insurgent forces fought very infrequently.

Using the framework’s terminology, each application of air power willhave two designations: direct or indirect, and auxiliary or independent.For example, the American bombing of Schweinfurt’s ball-bearingfactories during World War II was a direct/independent application; the1948–1949 Berlin airlift was an indirect/independent application; the B-52 strikes around Khe Sanh during the 1968 siege in Vietnam were adirect/auxiliary application; and the C-130 airlift of supplies into thebeleaguered Marine base was an indirect/auxiliary application. The dualdesignators describe the purpose of individual air power missions moreclearly than the amorphous terms tactical and strategic. In addition, theframework’s focus on mission intent highlights air power’s inherent flexi-bility by showing that one type of aircraft – whether designated bomber,fighter, airlift, etc. – can participate in multiple types of application.

Yet what about the air superiority mission? Where does that fit in theframework? The air control mission is either auxiliary or independent,depending on the use that will then be made of the airspace. For instance,


obtaining air superiority over Kuwait to enable allied ground forces toattack Iraqi troops would be a direct/auxiliary application. Achieving airsuperiority over Baghdad to enable aircraft to strike the city’s key com-munication and electric power facilities would be a direct/independentapplication. On occasion, gaining air superiority can be both an auxiliaryand an independent application. The achievement of daylight air superi-ority over the European continent as a result of the “Big Week”operations in February 1944 is one such example – the air controlguaranteed that American bomber operations would continue againstGerman industry, and it also provided the prerequisite protection for theNormandy invasion.

Some might contend that air superiority should be a separate category inthe framework, much the way that “counterair” is a distinctive “air andspace power function” in the current edition of the Air Force’s basic doc-trine manual.9 The framework does not list air superiority separatelybecause air superiority is not an end in itself. Air control – whichemploys both direct and indirect methods – allows the direct, indirect,auxiliary, and independent applications to occur. In much the same fash-ion, the categorization of such indirect applications as aerial refueling,airlift, and reconnaissance depends on the type of mission that they facil-itate. For example, refueling fighters that will provide close air supportfor ground forces would be an indirect/auxiliary application. Airliftingsmart bombs for F-117 operations against Belgrade targets duringOperation Allied Force would be an indirect/independent application.Obtaining reconnaissance photographs of Iraqi frontline positions inKuwait would be an indirect/auxiliary application.

Yet achieving air superiority that facilitates a cross-channel invasion, orsecuring reconnaissance photographs that lead to a breakthrough of Iraqidefenses, does not necessarily indicate a successful application of airpower. There is only one true way to evaluate air power success, regard-less of whether the application was direct, indirect, auxiliary, or indepen-dent. That criterion is the ultimate bottom line – how well did the appli-cation contribute to achieving the desired political objective? Did it, in fact,help to win the war? Answering that question first requires a determinationof what is meant by “winning.” The war aims must be defined, and theapplication of air power must be linked to accomplishing those objectives.


The following diagram may help illustrate the relationships:

WAR AIMS

|GRAND STRATEGY

|MILITARY STRATEGY

|MILITARY OBJECTIVES

INDEP/AUX INDEPENDENT/AUX INDEP/AUX

AIR OPS GROUND OPS SEA OPS

War aims are the political goals of a nation or organization at war, andcan range from limited to total. Grand strategy blends diplomatic, eco-nomic, military, and informational instruments together in a concertedeffort to achieve those war aims. Meanwhile, military strategy combinesvarious components of military force to gain military objectives thatshould, in turn, help to achieve the political goals. Achieving the militaryobjectives may require a mixture of ground, sea, or air operations, andthe forces performing those operations may act in either independent orauxiliary fashion. These definitions and connections are relativelystraightforward.

These linkages are not, however, the only ones that determine whethermilitary force – and air power in particular – will be effective in achievingthe desired war aims. Besides being either limited or total, war aims arealso positive or negative.10 Positive goals are those that can be achievedonly by applying military force, while negative goals, in contrast, can beachieved only by limiting military force. For example, for the UnitedStates, the unconditional surrender of Germany in World War II was apositive political goal – one that required the destruction of Germany’sarmed forces, government, and the National Socialist way of life – andthe application of military force was essential to achieve it. Few negativeobjectives limited America’s use of the military instrument. By comparison,in Kosovo the United States had the positive objective of removing Serbforces from the province. Yet, at the same time, America had the negativeobjective of preserving the NATO alliance, and that goal restrained the


amount of force that the United States could apply. A similar examplecomes from the 1991 Persian Gulf War, although there the American aimof preserving the alliance was both a positive and negative goal –President George H. Bush had to commit American military forceagainst Iraqi Scuds to keep the Israelis out of the war, yet if he appliedtoo much force in the air campaign he risked dissolving the coalition.

While some critics might equate the notion of negative objectives to con-straints, to do so would be a mistake, for negative objectives are moresignificant than that, and in fact are equal in importance to positivegoals. Failure to secure either the positive or the negative goals results indefeat, and both must be obtained to achieve victory. The United Statescould not have achieved success during the 1991 Gulf War or in Kosovoin 1999 had the coalitions that backed those enterprises collapsed. A keyproblem in achieving positive and negative goals, of course, is that theyare contradictory – what helps to achieve a positive objective worksagainst achieving a negative one. In a limited war, negative objectives willalways exist, and the more limited the war, the greater the number ofnegative objectives. As President Lyndon Johnson tragically found out inVietnam, his negative objectives eclipsed his positive goals. Once thatoccurred, he lost the ability to achieve success with any military force,especially air power.

How do positive and negative objectives affect the application of airpower? The absence of negative goals encourages the design of an aircampaign with few restrictions, such as World War II’s CombinedBomber Offensive against Germany, or the assault by Twentieth AirForce against Japan. A preponderance of negative goals, on the otherhand, limits the application of air power. Negative objectives haverestrained American air campaigns in every major conflict that the United States has fought since World War II – Korea, Vietnam, the Persian Gulf, Bosnia, Kosovo, and most recently, Afghanistan. Therestrictions typically appear in the form of rules of engagement, “directivesissued by competent military authority which delineate the circum-stances and limitations under which United States forces will initiateand/or continue combat engagement with other forces encountered.”11

The impetus for these directives comes from political leaders and theirnegative goals.


The greater the number of negative objectives – and the greater thesignificance attached to them by political leaders – the more difficult itbecomes for air power to achieve success in obtaining the positive goals.This assessment is especially true regarding the direct, independentapplication of air power. If the negative objectives outweigh the positivegoals, they are likely to curtail – or perhaps prohibit – air power’s abilityto strike at the heart of an enemy state or organization. Yet before a userof the framework points to this statement as a basic truth, he or sheshould realize that the measuring of positive versus negative objectives isan inherently subjective activity. Positive and negative goals are typicallynot quantifiable, and even when they are, comparing numerical results islikely to equate to comparing apples and orange juice. Moreover, positiveand negative objectives may be stated explicitly or only implied, whichfurther muddies the water in terms of evaluating results.

Spelling out the objectives is no guarantee of clarity, however, and thelack of clearly defined goals makes gauging their achievement particularlydifficult. For instance, in the 1991 Persian Gulf War, the stated Americanpositive goals of “immediate, complete, and unconditional withdrawal ofIraqi forces from Kuwait” and “restoration of Kuwait’s legitimate govern-ment” were straightforward, and success in achieving them was easy todetermine. In contrast, determining success in obtaining the statedpositive objective of “security and stability of Saudi Arabia and thePersian Gulf” was anything but straightforward during the conflict, andits evaluation has remained uncertain in the aftermath of the war.12

In the case of the Persian Gulf War, the negative objectives of preservingthe coalition, and maintaining American and world public support, didnot prevent air power from helping to remove Iraqi troops from Kuwait.Likewise, the various applications of air power in the Gulf War did notstop President George H. Bush from achieving his negative goals, thoughthe direct, independent application that hit the Al Firdos bunker inBaghdad, and direct, auxiliary applications that produced friendly firedeaths in Kuwait, made achieving the negative objectives more difficult.Ultimately, that is how air power effectiveness must be measured – interms of how well it supported the positive goals without jeopardizingthe achievement of the negative objectives.


In determining when air power is most likely to help achieve the positivegoals, five main variables come into play.13 These variables are complexfactors that cannot be easily dissected, nor can one variable be consideredin isolation from the others because their effects are often complementary.Each variable has a series of questions associated with it, and the ques-tions listed are not all-inclusive – others will certainly come to mind.Answering the questions differently for one variable may cause the othervariables to assume a greater or lesser importance. No formula deter-mines which of the variables may be the most important in any particularsituation, or how their combined effect may contribute to – or hinder –the achievement of the positive goals sought. Yet if all of the five variablesargue against a particular application of air power, that application isunlikely to be beneficial. As the Vietnam example shows, the assump-tions made in answering the questions for each variable are of criticalimportance. If those assumptions are flawed, the assessment of the vari-ables is likely to be flawed as well.

The first of the five variables is the nature of the enemy. What militarycapabilities does the enemy possess? What is the nature of its militaryestablishment – a conscript force, a volunteer military, or a blend? Is theenemy population unified – socially, ethnically, and ideologically? Whereis the bulk of the populace located? Is the populace primarily urban oragrarian? What type of government, or central leadership apparatus, doesthe enemy have? What about the individuals who lead it – are they strongor weak, supported by the populace or despised, or is the populaceambivalent? What is their relationship with the military and its com-manders? How resolute is the political leadership? The military? Thepopulace? How does the enemy state or organization make its money? Isit self-sufficient in any area? How important is trade? What allies does theenemy have, and how much support do they provide? If facing morethan one enemy, these questions should be asked about each, plus adetermination should be made as to which enemy poses the greatestthreat.

Besides the nature of the enemy, the type of war that the enemy fights is akey variable that affects air power’s ability to achieve a positive politicalobjective. Is the conflict a conventional war to seize or hold territory? Isit an unconventional guerrilla struggle? An insurgency supported by a


third party? Is the conflict a war of movement, or a stagnant fight fromfixed positions? How often does the fighting occur? In general, the directapplication of air power, whether applied independently or as an auxil-iary function, works best against an enemy waging a fast-paced, conven-tional war of movement. The Korean War offers one such example, whenthe combination of independent and auxiliary attacks during the“dynamic” first year of the war had a telling effect on the North Koreanand Chinese ability to fight. During the final two years of the conflict,when the North Koreans and Chinese fought sluggishly in a confinedarea along the 38th parallel, the direct application of air power made littleheadway in achieving President Truman’s goal of a negotiated settlementthat preserved a non-communist South Korea.

The third variable is the nature of the environment. What are the climate,weather, terrain, and vegetation in the hostile area? How might theyaffect applications of air power? Are adequate bases available? What arethe distances involved in applying air power, and can those distances beovercome? What type of support is required?

The fourth variable is the magnitude of military controls – constraintsplaced on air power applications by military, rather than political leaders.Ideally, no military controls exist, but that may or may not be the case,and military controls can stem from many sources. Is there unity of com-mand? What are the administrative arrangements for controlling airpower, and do those arrangements conflict with operational control? Isthe doctrine guiding the various applications of air power adaptable todifferent circumstances? What are the personal beliefs of commandersregarding how best to apply air power? Personal convictions can play asignificant role in limiting air power applications, as evidenced in theKorean War. There, United Nations Commander and Army GeneralMatthew Ridgway prohibited the bombing of North Korean hydro-electric plants, even though he had the authority to conduct the raids andhad been encouraged to do so by the Joint Chiefs of Staff. Ridgwaybelieved that such attacks might expand the scope of the war, while hissuccessor, General Mark Clark, had no such misgivings.14 One monthafter Clark took command, Air Force and Navy aircraft attacked thefacilities.


The final variable is often the most important: the nature of the politicalobjectives sought. Are the positive goals truly achievable through the appli-cation of military force? Is the application of air power necessary toobtain the positive objectives? How committed is the leadership applyingair power to achieving the positive goals? How committed is its populace?Can the positive goals be obtained without preventing the achievementof the negative objectives? How do the negative objectives limit airpower’s ability to help achieve the positive goals? The direct, independentapplication of air power seems to work best for a belligerent with nonegative objectives – provided a suitable type of enemy wages a suitable typeof war in a suitable type of environment free of significant military restric-tions. For the United States in World War II, the suitable conditions werepresent. Few negative objectives or military controls limited the applica-tion of military force. Americans had a decent understanding of bothenemies, the Germans and the Japanese, who fought as expected inenvironments that ultimately proved conducive to the direct, indepen-dent application of air power. However, since World War II, negativeobjectives have played prominent roles in guiding American war efforts,and for the United States in the foreseeable future, the prospect of a warwithout them is remote indeed.

America has also had difficulty understanding many of the enemies it hasfaced in its wars after 1945. Those enemies have not always fought asexpected, and the environments have not always been hospitable to airpower. Such asymmetric foes have had notable success in confoundingAmerican air power applications, perhaps none more telling than duringthe war in Vietnam. That conflict provides a relevant example for exam-ining how the framework’s variables can affect air power’s ability to helpachieve political goals against an asymmetric opponent. LyndonJohnson’s war provided a strong mix of positive and negative objectives,and a tenacious enemy fought across a forbidding landscape in a mannerthat defied expectations. Military controls further disrupted theAmerican war effort. The Vietnam analysis may provide useful insightsfor applying air power against similarly motivated enemies who boththink and fight asymmetrically – though the way in which the variablescombine to affect air power success in one conflict will never conformexactly to the way that they blend in another.


In his war in Southeast Asia, Johnson sought the positive political goal ofan “independent, stable, non-communist South Vietnam.” Whethersuch a goal could actually be achieved through military means – muchless air power – was problematic, but the President and his advisorsnevertheless set out to do so. Several negative objectives limited Johnson’sability to pursue his positive goal. First, he aimed to avoid active Chineseor Soviet involvement in the conflict, which he thought might lead to agreatly expanded war and possibly World War III.15 Second, thePresident wanted to maintain a positive image of the United States onthe world stage, and he could not allow a portrayal of his country asbrutal Goliath wreaking havoc against a hapless North Vietnamese“David.” Finally, Johnson wanted to keep the American public’s focus onhis Great Society programs for domestic social reform, not on a war8,000 miles away in a strange land.

Throughout his presidency, Johnson remained torn between the com-peting positive and negative goals, and he refused to yield on any of themuntil it was too late. “I knew from the start that I was bound to becrucified either way I moved,” he reflected in 1970.

If I left the woman I really loved – the Great Society – in orderto get involved in that bitch of a war on the other side of theworld, then I would lose everything at home. All my pro-grams…. Yet everything I knew about history told me that if Igot out of Vietnam and let Ho Chi Minh run through the streetsof Saigon, then I’d be doing exactly what Chamberlain did inWorld War II. I’d be giving a big fat reward to aggression.16

In the end, Johnson failed to achieve his positive goal and most of thenegative ones, with the exception of keeping the Soviets and Chinesefrom active intervention. The preponderance of negative goals emaciatedthe application of direct, independent air power against targets in NorthVietnam, and assured that the effort had a minimal effect on achieving astable, independent, non-communist South.

Johnson’s negative objectives dictated the targeting process that was atthe heart of Operation Rolling Thunder, the direct, independent appli-cation of air power against North Vietnam that began in March 1965


and lasted for three and a half years. Because of his fears that Americanmilitary chiefs might design a campaign that prevented him fromachieving his negative goals, Johnson severely limited their inputs to theair war over the North. Army General Earle Wheeler, the Chairman ofthe Joint Chiefs of Staff, could submit targeting proposals to Secretary ofDefense Robert S. McNamara, but Wheeler could not – until October1967 – participate in the actual target selection process, which typicallyoccurred on Tuesday afternoons in the White House following lunch.17

A small number of Johnson’s key advisors, including McNamara,Secretary of State Dean Rusk, National Security Advisor McGeorgeBundy (until his replacement by Walt Rostow), and White House PressSecretary Bill Moyers were regulars; Johnson would occasionally allowtrusted friends such as Clark Clifford to participate as well. The advisorshad no requirement to endorse the proposals that McNamara broughtwith him from Wheeler, and they often made other choices. PresidentJohnson usually approved targets for attack in only two-week increments,with a specified number of sorties designed to achieve an 80 percent rateof destruction. Until accomplishing that amount of damage, aircrewsrepeatedly attacked the same targets during the two-week period. ThePresident then removed the targets from “approved” list, with noguarantee that he would add them back later. Any sorties that remainedto be flown were lost.18

Johnson’s approach guaranteed that negative objectives would dominateRolling Thunder. His targeting process, combined with rules of engage-ment that restricted attacks inside Hanoi and Haiphong, against MiGairfields, and along the Chinese border, severely limited any chance ofconducting a campaign against enemy systems such as transportation, oil,or electric power. Without a systematic approach, Rolling Thunder evolvedinto a haphazard series of fits and starts without any true focus, other thanits emphasis on attacking targets in North Vietnamese territory.

To the President and his advisors, North Vietnam was the main enemyresponsible for the war in the South. While they realized that the VietCong guerrillas were indigenous to South Vietnam, and formed the vastbulk of the enemy forces there, Johnson and his advisors believed that theViet Cong were incapable of fighting without the support and directionof Ho Chi Minh’s North. This notion became Rolling Thunder’s funda-


mental premise. Johnson and his advisors deemed the hardware andsupplies that Ho gleaned from China and the Soviet Union, and in turntransferred down his namesake trail along with North Vietnamesetroops, essential to the Viet Cong war effort. The President and hisadvisors also believed that leadership cadres from the North were the keycomponents of Viet Cong resistance. They viewed Northern tenacity asthe spark that kept the insurgency going, yet neither the President norhis advisors thought that Northern will could prevail against Americanresolve and resources. In the aftermath of the Cuban Missile Crisis – inwhich the latent application of American air power had made America’smightiest enemy back down – Johnson and his principals could notimagine that “a raggedy-ass little fourth-rate country” like NorthVietnam could win.19 As a result, they discounted the depth of NorthVietnamese commitment to a unified Vietnam. Secretary of State Rusklater recalled: “I thought that the North Vietnamese would reach a point,like the Chinese and North Koreans in Korea, and Stalin during theBerlin airlift, when they would finally give in.”20

American leaders also misjudged the tenacity of the Viet Cong, and theViet Cong, not the North Vietnamese, were the primary enemy. At theend of July 1965, only 7500 NVA troops served in South Vietnam,21 andthat total had risen to just 55,000 out of a 300,000-man enemy force onthe eve of the January 1968 Tet Offensive.22 American political and mili-tary leaders focused on the NVA, as well as on Hanoi’s ability and desireto perpetuate the war, although the 245,000 Viet Cong were the essenceof the enemy war effort. Most of those troops fought not because of theirardor for Ho Chi Minh’s brand of communism, but because of the despi-cable, corrupt nature of the Saigon government. South Vietnamese lead-ers had made stealing land an art form and were completely out of touchwith the peasantry who comprised their country. Even the religious back-grounds were incongruent – the Southern leaders were Catholics in aland that was overwhelmingly Buddhist. “I would have been able toaccept almost any regime that could achieve real independence and hadthe welfare of the people at heart,” lamented Truong Nhu Tang, amember of the Southern aristocracy who recanted his privileged positionto become Viet Cong Minister of Justice. “The Southern revolution wasgenerated of itself, out of the emotions, conscience, and aspirations of theSouthern people.”23


Johnson and his advisors misread their enemy, and they compoundedtheir mistake by misreading the type of war that their enemy fought.Despite frequently stating that the communist army conducted guerrillawarfare, American civilian and military leaders assumed that the destruc-tion of resources necessary for conventional conflict would weaken theenemy’s capability and will to fight unconventionally. It did not, becausethe supplies were not essential to the asymmetric manner in which theViet Cong – and their North Vietnamese allies – waged war. The numberof North Vietnamese troops in South Vietnam never eclipsed thenumber of Viet Cong during the Johnson presidency, and the Viet Congusually fought autonomously. During the years 1967–1968, a time of“peak” combat activity relative to other periods in the war, the com-munist army actually fought very little. Only one percent of Americancombat patrols that sought the enemy on “search and destroy” missionsduring that two-year span made contact. When South Vietnamese com-bat patrols are added to that total, the number drops to one-tenth of onepercent!24 Simply put, the Viet Cong and North Vietnamese avoidedfighting unless they had a distinct advantage. Together, they fought anaverage of one day out of 30 – a single day out of each month. This com-bat infrequency produced supply needs of only 34 tons a day fromsources outside of South Vietnam – a total that could be carried by justseven two-and-a-half ton trucks.25 Against an enemy that fought so dif-ferently from American expectations, the direct, independent application ofair power against North Vietnamese transportation lines was a wasted effort.

So too, in many respects, was the direct, auxiliary application of airpower in South Vietnam. While the preponderance of aerial firepowercould, on occasion, provide salvation for a beleaguered American groundforce pinned down by enemy fire, half of all ground battles occurred inless than 20 minutes, which was too short a span to call upon air powerfor assistance.26 Moreover, the direct, auxiliary application of air power –whether by a fixed-wing, high-speed fighter, or by an Army or Marinehelicopter – was not always the most discriminate application of militaryforce in the often-confused environment of guerrilla war. Accordingly, afavorite Viet Cong tactic was to shoot at an American patrol with one ortwo snipers in a hamlet, and hope that the Americans would respondwith large doses of firepower that would kill or injure many innocent vil-lagers. In a war for the “hearts and minds” of the populace, such episodes


of high-tech retribution were excellent recruiting techniques for a ten-acious enemy that was ready to sacrifice members of its own force as wellas innocents to further the perceived righteous cause.

Besides a failure to understand the enemy and his conduct of the war, alack of appreciation for the environment limited air power’s ability toachieve President Johnson’s positive political goal. Triple-canopy jungle,constant heat and humidity, and unforgiving monsoons combined toundercut air power effectiveness regardless of the type of application.Monsoon weather in particular limited Rolling Thunder’s direct,independent application of air power. President Johnson’s targeting pro-cedure allowed air commanders only two weeks to destroy most targetsin North Vietnam. Because of that restriction, many air commanders feltcompelled to attack the targets throughout the two-week span. Some ofthose strikes occurred in marginal weather, which significantly limitedtheir probability of success. “Obviously, if you do not fly [the allocatedsorties], you can make a case that you did not really need them anyway,”Major General Gilbert L. Meyers, 7th Air Force Deputy Commander,explained. “We wanted to be sure there would be no loss of future sortieson the basis that we had not flown them in the past period.”27

General Meyers’ attitude reflected the frustration felt by many air com-manders in Vietnam, and that frustration produced military controlsthat severely limited air power applications. Perhaps the most memorableof those constraints was the development of the “Route Package” systemthat dissected the airspace over North Vietnam. In 1966, PacificCommand Headquarters divided North Vietnamese airspace into sevenbombing zones, or Route Packages, and assigned three zones to the AirForce and four to the Navy. Originally developed to separate Air Forceand Navy aircraft flying over the North, the system soon became thebasis of a competition between the services to determine which onecould fly the most sorties in enemy airspace, which became the services’warped measure of success. As a result of that emphasis, aircraft attackedNorthern targets with less than a full load of bombs, which in turnendangered additional flyers.28 One Navy A-4 pilot admitted that heattacked the Thanh Hoa Bridge, one of the North’s most heavilydefended targets, with no bombs at all but was told simply to strafe thestructure with 20mm cannon fire.29


While the lack of unity of command plagued the direct, independentapplication of air power against North Vietnam, it also disruptedauxiliary applications of air power in the South. There, no less than sixdirect, auxiliary air efforts provided support for American and SouthVietnamese ground forces, with no one individual in charge. Army heli-copters provided firepower for their forces, as did Marine helicopters andfighter aircraft for theirs. Meanwhile, Navy fighters also provided closeair support, as did Air Force fighters and bombers – though the controlof Air Force fighters and bombers remained separate and distinctthroughout the entire war. Finally, the South Vietnamese Air Forcewaged its own campaign of close air support for South Vietnameseground forces. A similar lack of command coherence plagued airlift’sindirect application. Seventh Air Force controlled the C-123 Providersand C-7A Caribous (after the Army transferred control of the Caribousto the Air Force in 1966) through the 834th Air Division, headquarteredin Saigon. Meanwhile, Pacific Air Forces, headquartered at Honolulu,Hawaii, directed the C-130 Hercules aircraft used in theater, andMilitary Airlift Command at Scott Air Force Base, Illinois, controlled theso-called “strategic” lift provided by C-141s and C-5s.30 The conflictingcommand and control arrangements for both direct and indirect appli-cations produced considerable turmoil throughout the war.

Johnson’s negative objectives, the nature of the enemy and the type ofwar that he fought, the nature of the combat environment, and the mag-nitude of military controls combined to negate any chance that thedirect, independent application of air power had to achieve thePresident’s positive political goal. In reality, any one of those variablescould have precluded that application of air power from obtaining suc-cess; the fact that all five indicated failure guaranteed that result. Yet whatabout the auxiliary application of air power? Even without the militarycontrols, the direct, auxiliary application offered minimum prospects forsuccess, given the type of conflict faced – an infrequent guerrilla warfought to gain the support of the Southern populace against a corruptregime. The indirect, auxiliary application, on the other hand, mighthave fared better, had it received greater emphasis and had Americanground commanders changed their basic approach to the war. Theessence of that approach was “search and destroy,” a strategy geared tofinding the elusive enemy and then using massive quantities of firepower


to kill as many enemy troops as possible. That strategy did little to endearitself to South Vietnamese civilians, and probably did more to bolster theViet Cong’s ranks than it did to reduce them.

An alternative approach, used with success by the Marines in the I Corpsarea during the initial stages of America’s combat involvement, employedan American rifle squad with South Vietnamese militia forces in aCombined Action Platoon. The Marines lived in a selected Vietnamesehamlet for several consecutive months, helping to furnish security andassisting the villagers with medical care and growing rice.31 GeneralWestmoreland deemed the Marine effort inefficient, and directed thatthey abandon the program and join in search and destroy. The Marinesreluctantly complied, ending a chance to conduct the war throughmethods less likely to cause collateral damage than Westmoreland’spreferred approach. Indirect, auxiliary air power, in the form of recon-naissance and airlift, could have proved extremely beneficial to a large-scale employment of Combined Action Platoons. Such an air powerapplication would have supported the goal of winning the villagers’“hearts and minds,” which, in turn, would have helped to achieve thepositive political goal of “an independent, stable, non-communist SouthVietnam.”

For President Johnson and his military and civilian advisors, achievingthe positive goal required the use of military force. Indeed, in the springof 1965, with the Saigon government tottering before Viet Congadvances, American firepower prevented the Southern regime from col-lapsing. The negative objectives that severely limited the direct, indepen-dent application of air power against North Vietnam had minimal effecton limiting the war in the South. There, the direct, auxiliary applicationof air power continued unabated. Free fire zones – hostile areas deemedfree of South Vietnamese civilians – dotted the Southern landscape, andAmerican air power attacked those zones ruthlessly in support of friendlyground forces. More than four million tons of bombs fell on SouthVietnam out of the eight million dropped on all of Indochina byAmerican aircraft, with many of the four million falling in the massiveB-52 campaign known as “Arc Light.”32 Yet because of the asymmetricwar waged by the enemy, that bombing had little beneficial effect.


Regardless of the type of air power application, to succeed in Vietnamduring the period of the Johnson presidency required a focus on the pri-mary enemy, the Viet Cong. The direct, independent application againstNorth Vietnam in Rolling Thunder contributed nil towards eliminatingthe Viet Cong’s capacity and desire to keep fighting. The Viet Cong’sunique approach to combat could not be thwarted by the direct appli-cation of air power – in fact, such measures were likely to strengthen itscapacity to fight by gaining it new recruits. Instead, air power had to helpundercut the Viet Cong’s true support base – the Southern populace –without causing collateral damage. That goal demanded the indirect,auxiliary application to sustain a highly selective use of ground force –such as that provided by the Combined Action Platoons. Yet flawedassumptions about the framework’s key variables led American politicaland military leaders to emphasize the direct application against the sec-ondary enemy.

What insights does the framework provide regarding the use of air poweragainst an asymmetric foe like that encountered in Vietnam? First, thepositive political goal may not be achievable through the direct appli-cation of air power. Any one of the variables may preclude the direct,independent application from achieving success, and the nature of theenemy and the type of war being fought may negate the direct, auxiliaryapplication from producing beneficial results. Second, against the type ofenemy and war that America faced in Vietnam, the indirect, auxiliaryapplication of air power may work best. If the positive political goal is tobe achieved at all in such a conflict – which may be a dubious propo-sition – selectively applied ground power will obtain it, and air powerwill play an auxiliary role. Third, while “asymmetric” may describe theway that an enemy wages war, the term applies more broadly to the waythat an enemy thinks in general.33 Cultural values and beliefs may besignificantly different, as well as the motivations for fighting, which arelikely to cause the desired ends to be asymmetric as well as the meansused to obtain them. Accordingly, most opponents can rightly be viewedas asymmetric, and the importance of the individual variables that affectair power applications is likely to be different in every case. Fourth, thevariables help to determine whether a belligerent will be successful inachieving its war aims, regardless of whether the belligerent uses airpower to achieve them. As such, the variables really form the basis to


evaluate any application of military force, and the framework should beused to assess both sides.

In the final analysis, the effectiveness of air power depends on how wellit supports the positive political goals without risking the achievement ofthe negative ones. The framework offers no guarantee of success orfailure, nor is it a predictor of the future. Yet it does charge those whomight apply air power to think carefully before making that decision.“No one starts a war – or rather, no one in his senses ought to do so –without first being clear in his mind what he intends to achieve by thatwar and how he intends to conduct it,” warns Clausewitz.34 Thatadmonishment, delivered almost two centuries ago to readers who hadfought against Napoleon with muskets and sabers, remains apt in the ageof air warfare.

NOTES

1 For comments and suggestions, both heeded and unheeded, the author gratefully acknowledgesDr. Ilana Kass, Colonel James Callard, Colonel Robert Eskridge, Dr. David MacIsaac, and thestudents of National War College Elective Class 5855, “Air Power and Modern War.” The viewsexpressed are the author’s alone, and do not necessarily reflect those of the National War College,National Defense University, or the Department of Defense.

2 Harold Winton, “A Black Hole in the Wild Blue Yonder: The Need for a Comprehensive Theoryof Air Power,” Air Power History (Winter 1992): 33–34.

3 William Mitchell, Winged Defense (New York: Dover Publications Inc., 1925), p. xii.4 M .J. Armitage and R. A. Mason, Air Power in the Nuclear Age (Champaign: University of

Illinois Press, 1983), p. 2.5 Ibid., p. 3.6 The largely discarded term “Battlefield Air Interdiction” (BAI) describes this auxiliary function.7 John Schlight, The United States Air Force in Southeast Asia: The War in South Vietnam: The

Years of the Offensive 1965–1968 (Washington: Office of Air Force History, 1988), p. 216.8 Other factors may help define the battlefield as well, including the ranges of weapons possessed

by deployed ground or sea forces, or the location of such demarcations as the Forward Line ofTroops (FLOT) and the Fire Support Coordination Line (FSCL). Admiral William Owens, aformer Vice Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, contended that a battlefield would consist of40,000 square miles in a 200 by 200 mile area. While Admiral Owens’s precise delineation maybe appropriate in a conventional war, it may not suit other types of conflict. See Terry L. New,“Where to Draw the Line between Air and Land Battle,” Airpower Journal 10 (Fall, 1996):34–49 on how the battlefield is affected by the relationship between the FLOT and the FSCL;


on Admiral Owens’s notion of the battlefield, see Alan D. Zimm, “Human-Centric Warfare,”Naval Institute Proceedings 125 (May 1999): 28.

9 Air Force Doctrine Document 1, Basic Doctrine, September 1997, p. 46.10 These terms should not be confused with Clausewitz’s concept of positive and negative objec-

tives, which he uses in regards to attacking and defending.11 Joint Pub 1–02, Department of Defense Dictionary of Military and Associated Terms

(Washington: Joint Chiefs of Staff, 10 June 1998), p. 388.12 See Bard E. O’Neill and Ilana Kass, “The Persian Gulf War: A Political-Military Assessment,”

Comparative Strategy 11 (April–June 1992), p. 219, for a thorough discussion of American waraims in the 1991 Persian Gulf War.

13 The Clausewitzian notion of friction also affects air power’s ability to achieve positive (and nega-tive) political goals, but unlike the five variables, friction is a constant that cannot be specifiedbased on assumptions and analysis.

14 Robert F. Futrell, The United States Air Force in Korea 1950–1953 (New York: Duell, Sloan &Pearce, 1961), p. 447; USAF Oral History interview of General O.P. Weyland by Dr. JamesHasdorff and Brigadier General Noel Parrish, San Antonio, Texas, 19 November 1974, Air ForceHistorical Research Agency (AFHRA), Maxwell AFB, Alabama, file number K239.0512–813,pp. 107, 113.

15 “Above all else,” Johnson wrote in his memoirs, “I did not want to lead this nation and the worldinto nuclear war or even the risk of such a war.” See Lyndon B. Johnson, The Vantage Point(New York: Holt, Rinehart & Winston, 1971), p. 153.

16 Doris Kearns, Lyndon Johnson and the American Dream (New York: Signet, 1976), pp.263–264.

17 David C. Humphrey, “Tuesday Lunch at the Johnson White House: A Preliminary Assessment,”Diplomatic History 8 (Winter 1984): 90.

18 U.S. Congress, Senate, Committee on Armed Services, Preparedness Investigating Subcomittee,Air War Against North Vietnam, 90th cong., 1st sess., part 5, 27–29 August 1967, pp. 476–485;interview of Lieutenant Colonel Charles Ferguson by the author, 17 May 1985, Maxwell AFB,Alabama. In 1966, President Johnson approved five multi-week bombing programs, each onelasting from one to four months. See Wayne Thompson, To Hanoi and Back: The U.S. Air Forceand North Vietnam, 1966–1973 (Washington: Smithsonian Institution Press, 2000), p. 24.

19 Johnson quoted in George C. Herring, “‘Cold Blood’: LBJ’s Conduct of Limited War inVietnam,” in Dennis E. Showalter and John G. Albert, eds., An American Dilemma: Vietnam,1964–1973 (Chicago: Imprint Publications, 1993), p. 64.

20 Dean Rusk interview with the author at Athens, Georgia, 15 July 1985.21 “Memorandum, McNamara to the President,” 3 November 1965, National Security Files,

Country File: Vietnam, Folder 2EE, Box 75, Lyndon Johnson Presidential Library, Austin, Texas.22 “Meeting with Foreign Policy Advisors on Vietnam,” 18 August 1967, Meeting Notes File, Box

1, Johnson Presidential Library.23 Truong Nhu Tang, A Viet Cong Memoir (New York: Vintage Books, 1985), pp. 36, 68.24 Edward Doyle and Samuel Lipsman, The Vietnam Experience: America Takes Over, 1965–67

(Boston: Boston Publishing Company, 1982), p. 60.25 Headquarters USAF, Analysis of Effectiveness of Interdiction in Southeast Asia, Second Progress

Report, May 1966, p.7, AFHRA, file number K168.187–21; Senate Preparedness InvestigatingSubcomittee, Air War Against North Vietnam, 25 August 1967, part 4, p. 299; Annex A toJCSM 613–65, 27 August 1965, National Security Files, Country File: Vietnam, Folder 2EE,Box 75, Johnson Presidential Library.


26 Schlight, p. 216. Only three percent of all Air Force sorties flown in South Vietnam through1966 went to close air support, and the Army requested CAS for only one out of every tenengagements with the enemy.

27 Senate Preparedness Investigating Subcomittee, Air War Against North Vietnam, part 5, 27–29August 1967, pp. 476–485. During the southwest monsoon, the Air Force diverted as many asa thousand sorties a month from targets in the North Vietnamese heartland to the area just northof the 17th parallel. See Thompson, p. 28.

28 John Morrocco, Thunder from Above (Boston: Boston Publishing Company, 1984), p. 125; Lt.Col. William H. Greenhalgh (ret.), interview with the author, Maxwell AFB, Alabama, 17 May1985.

29 Statement to the author in July 1989 by a retired Navy pilot who preferred to remain anony-mous.

30 Schlight, pp. 146, 297.31 For a brief discussion of Combined Action Platoons, see Cecil B. Currey, “Marine Combined

Action Platoons,” in Spencer C. Tucker, ed., The Encyclopedia of the Vietnam War: A Political,Social, and Military History (New York: Oxford University Press, 2000), p. 249.

32 Ralph Littauer and Norman Uphoff, eds., The Air War in Indochina (Boston: Beacon Press,1972), pp. 11, 168–172.

33 See Lawrence Freedman, “The Third World War?” Survival 43 (Winter 2001–2002): 70, 80.34 Carl von Clausewitz, On War, edit. and trans. by Michael Howard and Peter Paret (Princeton:

Princeton University Press, 1976), p. 579.


The Evolution of Airpower Theory in theUnited States: From World War I toColonel John Warden’s The Air Campaign

Colonel Peter FaberThe development of American airpower theory has historically occurredin fits and starts, and with each new beginning different influences haveplayed dominant roles. Having stated and acknowledged this truism atthe outset, the fundamental structure of the following article is in theform of a quest – a quest by American airpower thinkers for theories,strategies, and doctrines that they could truly call their own. To supportthis overall theme, the article will first focus on genealogy. It will describethe two dominant “vocabularies” developed by modern military thinkersto analyze and characterize war, while also stressing the distorting effectsthey subsequently had on the thinking of airpower theorists. Thesetheorists, as we shall see, were eager to develop air-centered theories thatreflected – in holistic and comprehensive ways – the unique capabilitiesand properties of aerial warfare. The theorists, however, did not alwaysarticulate their ideas clearly, they changed them over time, or they devel-oped concepts of operation that were readily distinguishable from eachother only at the margins. To help clarify who said what, the second partof the article will therefore provide an analytic tool that not only helpsdifferentiate assorted 20th century airpower theories from each other, butcan also guide the development of new theories for the future. Lastly,with both a historical context and tool for analysis readily at hand, thearticle will turn to the evolution of American airpower theory fromWorld War I through the appearance of John Warden’s seminal The AirCampaign (1988).1 As already suggested, this is a tale of creation, loss,and recovery. It is a tale where the predecessors of the United States AirForce struggled mightily to create a unique theory of air warfare – highaltitude precision daylight bombardment against the key economic andsocietal nodes of modern states. It is a tale where “blue suiters” then

either lost their theoretical/doctrinal bearings in the Cold War or – totake a more charitable view – failed to elaborate and refine them further.Ultimately though, it is a tale of recovery. It is a tale where, beginning inthe mid-1980s, American airmen regained control of their long-lostintellectual destiny, and therefore ushered in a renaissance in aerospacethinking that continues to this day.

Given the above objectives, the necessary first step in this article is toaddress the question of context. No serious airpower historian will arguethat the creation of theories, strategies, or doctrines is a parthenogeneticact. In other words, neither individual theorists nor military establish-ments develop new paradigms of war in intellectual vacuums. Despite thisobvious truth, however, virtually all of the existing texts on airpowertheory focus on the 20th century. They artificially neglect the intellectualpatrimony that airmen have depended and drawn upon in the past. It isa patrimony – for better and worse – that provided air theorists with ready“vocabularies” to develop their own thinking about new ways of war.

Air Theory and its Intellectual ContextWe begin this section with a proposition – Throughout the 20th century,burgeoning concepts of airpower became inescapably entangled with thetwo characterizations of war that have dominated the modern era – i.e.,the “rational” pseudo-scientific approach of Renaissance and Enlighten-ment thinkers, and the “irrational,” 19th century approach of militaryromantics. Both approaches are not totally “reality inclusive,” and becausethey first – and naturally – focused on surface combat, they eventuallytrapped airpower thinkers within a formidable prison house of language.Forward looking airmen then compounded the problem by adopting thevocabulary of the rationalists instead of the more flexible, but lessorganizationally and financially exploitable, language of the romantics.As a result, until the mid- to late-1980s air thinkers overwhelminglyrelied on a characterization of war that not only circumscribed theirthinking, but also included an increasingly inadequate collection ofterms and categories to describe the unique nature of air warfare and itsobjectives, as we shall now see.

In the modern era, the “scientific” language of Western military theory

THE EVOLUTION OF AIRPOWER THEORY IN THE UNITED STATES46

and strategy had its roots in Flavius Vegetius Renatus’ Epitoma rei militari(c.384–389). Vegetius’ treatise was both a plea and a plan to revitalize theEastern Roman army after its disastrous defeat by Fridigern’s Gothichorsemen at the Battle of Adrianople (378 A.D.).2 Unfortunately,Vegetius’ military nostrums were too narrow in scope to save an alreadytottering empire. Nevertheless, De re militari subsequently flourished asa practical and authoritative guide to medieval warfare in Europe.3

(European scribes copied the text so frequently that over 320manuscripts survive even today.) The reason for its popularity was simple– it was a user-friendly compendium of ancient thinking on war. The Dere militari included pithy extracts from the works of 30 largely forgottenmilitary commentators, including Arrian, Frontinus, Polybius, Vitruvius,and others.

As a “how to” guide to war, Vegetius’ compilation proved irresistible tothe French Counts of Anjou and English Plantagenet kings like Henry IIand Richard the Lionhearted. These warriors studied carefully all fivebooks of the De re militari, but they particularly valued the 26 chapterson strategy, tactics, and the principles of war (or military procedure) con-tained in Book III.4 This book then became even more important toItalian students of war after the success of the French king Charles VIIIagainst the Italian city-states in 1494. In particular, the sorry perfor-mance of Italian mercenary armies in what is now generally acknowl-edged as the first military campaign of the modern era, piqued the inter-est of Nicolo Machiavelli, who served as an official of the city-state ofFlorence from 1498-1512.5

Machiavelli used Vegetius as a foundation for his own treatise, The Art ofWar (1521). Not only did the structure of Machiavelli’s work mimic Dere militari, but portions of the latter text, including the principles of warfound at the end of Book III, “were reproduced without modification byMachiavelli.”6 However, the Florentine philosopher was not interested inmerely restating past pieties. Machiavelli sought instead to adapt the oldlaws of Roman warfare to the new realities of 16th century Italy. Heargued this was possible because human history was immutable, and notnecessarily unique. The classical military legacy of Rome represented ahomogenous historical experience that provided infallible and generalrules of war that – if applied properly – reduced the relative impact of

THE EVOLUTION OF AIRPOWER THEORY IN THE UNITED STATES 47

chance.7 In other words, military history was an educational tool; it pro-vided formulaic lessons that inevitably rationalized war.8

Based on the recovered wisdom of the ancients and the updated pre-scriptions of Machiavelli, a rational or neoclassical language of warstarted to coalesce in Europe. It certainly appeared in Raimondo Monte-cuccoli’s On the War Against the Turks in Hungary, now more popularlyknown as Aphorism[s] on the Art of War (1670) and arguably the firstattempt to formulate a comprehensive theory of modern warfare in theWest. (Significantly, the Austrian general drew upon 15 ancient, five late-medieval and Renaissance, and 22 early modern authors.)9

Although Montecuccoli acknowledged the inductive and incalculableelements of organized violence, his prevailing approach was rational. Hesaw that portions of war were becoming increasingly “scientific.”Weapons fire, for example, was a form of ballistics. Siege warfare was asymptom of poliorcetics, i.e., the mathematical assault or defense offortifications. As a result of these trends, Montecuccoli sought to developa universal, proto-scientific paradigm of war and then support it withconstant principles, axioms, and laws. The paradigm, based on JustusLipsius’ Six Books of Politics (1589), firmly put war “within a politicalframework, derived from political motives and directed towards politicalaims.”10 As a tool of nation-states, Montecuccoli argued further, waroccurred within basic parameters, i.e., it was a scientific process that ledto predictable ends. The fundamental requirement for a successful com-mander was to decide when and where a particular axiom applied.

Raimondo Montecuccoli, along with contemporary military engineerslike Sébastien Vauban and Blaise de Pagan, provided a significant linkbetween the loosely prescriptive military theorists that preceded him andthe rigid mechanical-mathematical interpretations of general war thatsubsequently appeared during the Enlightenment. The military rationalistsof that era, including Frederick the Great, Henry Lloyd, Heinrich vonBülow, Antoine-Henri Jomini, and the Auteurs Dogmatiques (theMarquise de Santa Cruz, the Marquise de Feuquières, Marshal Puységur,and others), all embraced the linear thinking of the New Physics or“Natural Philosophy” of the 18th century.11 They categorically rejectedMarshal Maurice de Saxe’s characterization of war as “a science so obscure


and imperfect” that “custom and prejudice, confirmed by ignorance, …[were] its sole foundation and support.”12 Instead, the soldier-scholars ofthe Enlightenment embraced the intelligible, mathematical logic of IsaacNewton and his disciples.13 Like contemporary scientists, men in armsbelieved that reality was “out there.” It was separate and distinct fromthose individuals who dispassionately (and scientifically) contemplatedthe world around them. Consequently, the soldier-philosophes argued, itwas possible to develop an observationally based set of maxims, formal-ized in mathematics, to describe and explain a clockwork universe dom-inated by the Law of Cause and Effect.14 (The law asserted that the sameconditions always produced the same results, and that nature was so pre-cise and harmonious that its laws never varied.)

Further, within a uniform, cause and effect universe, state violence wasalso knowable and predictable. The military philosophes repeatedlyreferred to war as a “machine” or “mechanism.” They agreed with Vegetius,Machiavelli, and Montecuccoli that warfare was reducible, calculable,and subject to universal and immutable principles. The key, however,remained to identify those “statistical regularities” that shaped war.

Henry Lloyd, who coined the term “line of operations,” consequentlythought that two foundations of war were mathematics and geography.Those who understood “tangibles like topological and geographicalmeasurements, march tables, supply needs, and the geometrical relation-ship of supply lines to fighting fronts (or of armies to their bases), wouldbe ‘in a position to initiate military operations with mathematical preci-sion and to keep on waging war without ever being under the necessityof striking a blow.’”15

Heinrich von Bülow, in turn, stressed the quantifiable geometry of warto absurd lengths. He saw all military operations as a triangle with itsapex as the objective. In a campaign or battle, the angle at the apex hadto be less than ninety degrees for the opposing units, operating at theother two ends of the triangle, to attack safely. (Bülow also believed thatall military theorists required a precise, metrics-based language to for-mulate improved theories and strategies in the future.)

However, despite the contemporary prominence of the above soldier-


scholars, it was Antoine-Henri Jomini who spoke and wrote the languageof neoclassical rationalism best. Regardless of attempts by some militaryhistorians to reverse his popular image as a hidebound systematist, at theend of the day Jomini was guilty of the charge.16 He provided a near end-less series of prescriptions on how to succeed in war. How many factorsdefined strategy? Thirteen. How many maxims ensured effective lines ofoperations? Twelve. How many methods were there for effective retreats?Five. Yes, Jomini was not guilty of Bülow’s extreme mathematicalformalism, but his now legendary emphasis on permanent principles ofwar (including mass, surprise, and economy of force), and on the omni-present tactical requirement to concentrate offensive forces against aweaker opponent at a decisive point, clearly identified him as a rationalistshaped by the New Physics of the 18th century.

In multiple editions of his seminal The Art of War, Jomini sought todomesticate warfare by robbing it of its true complexity – i.e., heattempted to reduce it down to its fundamentals. In doing so, his increas-ingly popular writings reassured skittish European elites that Napoleonicwarfare was not a murderous and revolutionary departure from the past.Yes, Napoleonic warfare involved whole nations in large and exhaustingcontinental campaigns, Jomini admitted, but it was not a blind or insen-sate force that threatened the very foundations of European civilizationi.e., elite privileges). Instead, it was part of a continuum; it was part of aworld of predictable change where “pure cerebration” still dominatedover will, force, or luck.

Armed with theory, therefore, those who soberly (and properly) calculat-ed the ends and means of human conflict would not only succeed, theywould continue to refine war as a science. They would reduce the role ofgeneral fiction and chance (and therefore bound the trajectory of futureevents), but only if they formalized “patterns from the past in such a wayas to make them usable in the present as guides to the future.”17 In otherwords, the rationalists practiced Machiavelli’s historical essentialism. A“lessons learned” approach to military history was both legitimate andhelpful. Eternal verities always applied, provided one could identify themproperly in a rational language of war.

In response to the mechanistic approach of the neoclassicists, who agreed


with Lord Grey that discussion without definition was useless, romanticsor anti-rationalists like Gerhard von Scharnhorst, Helmuth von Moltkethe Elder and Carl von Clausewitz developed a competing character-ization of war. Their approach had its roots in the Romantic Rebellion ofthe late 18th and early 19th centuries, and it had a formidable (and seminal)spokesman in Gerhard von Scharnhorst.

The radical lexicon that Scharnhorst used to redefine war had three sig-nificant elements, among others. First, the Great Reformer repudiatedthe neoclassical characterization of war as a comprehensible part of aclockwork universe. Instead, war was a blind, demonic force. It waschangeable, imponderable and immeasurable. It roiled with brutal,spiritual energy, and therefore involved a free play of opaque spiritualforces that defied rigid, one-sided systematization.18 And since abstractformulas could not capture war’s sheer diversity, one could not delimit itin exclusively mathematical (i.e., mechanical) terms.

Second, Scharnhorst dismissed the historical essentialism of the rationalists.As a romantic, and therefore a believer in historicism, Scharnhorstthought that Machiavelli and his neoclassical disciples were wrong – thehistory of war was not homogenous; and the past did not repeat itself.Instead, each epoch of armed violence was unique. It involved an inter-play of “possibilities, probabilities, good luck and bad” that militatedagainst historical cycles or patterns.19 Therefore, those who tried to foistpersonal or absolute schemata on the past were doomed to defeat. (It wasfutile, Carl von Clausewitz argued in the late 1820s, for 19th century war-riors to examine prior wars for hoary “lessons learned.” The similaritiesbetween past and present, he continued, did not extend beyond the Warof the Austrian Succession (1740–1748). Prior to that historical point,there were no fixed military dictums that one could identify, catalog, andadapt to the present or future.)

Third, Scharnhorst and his successors discarded the neoclassical view ofnature (and war) as “out there.” The world was not separate and distinctfrom the observer, and therefore amenable to objective analysis. LikeBerkeley and Hume, Scharnhorst did not believe external forces or prin-ciples wholly defined reality. Human perception itself was a proactive andcreative act; it interacted with the great “out there” to mold and define


reality. Human experience, therefore, was a synthesis of the physical andthe psychological, i.e., the objective world was actually subjective, orScharnhorst believed. As a result, he reached the anti-rationalistic con-clusion that war was a clash of wills or moral forces unfettered by scien-tific laws.

So if war was demonic, unrepeatable, and a lethal blend of the subjectiveand objective, was the neoclassical compulsion to theorize dangerous? Toromantics like Gerhard von Scharnhorst, Helmuth von Moltke the Elder,and Carl von Clausewitz the answer was “yes” – a general theory of war,as a “single conceptual system spanning all time,” was impossible.20 Itwould inevitably focus on the external forms of armed conflict and notcapture the essential “inner nature of circumstances.”21 Further, it wouldsuccumb to the empty essentialism of those who sought the solace ofmaxims and rules.

Moltke the Elder, because he dreaded the above errors, later embracedScharnhorst’s characterization of war. Since human conflict lackedgeneral principles, Moltke argued, successful commanders had to dependon Fingerspitzengefühl (“fingertip sense”). This principle certainly appliedto strategy, which Moltke preferred to define in thoroughly romanticterms – It was both a “free, practical, artistic activity” and a “system ofexpediencies.”22

Carl von Clausewitz shared Scharnhorst’s and Moltke the Elder’s hostili-ty towards compulsive systematizing, but he also muted their absolutistvocabulary. As one of Scharnhorst’s true disciples, Clausewitz recognizedthat war was a creative moral act. He rejected strategies of certainty thatsought “static equilibria, consistent explanations, periodic regularities,and the beauty of symmetry.”23 He agreed that armed conflict was anintrinsically nonlinear phenomenon. He realized that, in addition tochance, the intangibles and dangers of war (i.e., its “fog” and “friction”)were part of its essence, and not mere aberrations one tried to calculateaway. As a result, Clausewitz provided multiple (and metaphorical) defi-nitions of war. War was a continuation of foreign policy by other means,and by a nation-state that spoke with a single voice. (One might now askif this fundamental Clausewitzian belief is still true, given an increasinglyglobalized world where domestic politics have local and international


repercussions?) Additionally, it was a game of cards, a duel, an act ofcommerce, or an act of force designed to impose one’s will. Lastly, it wasa trinity or interplay of 1) primordial violence, hatred, enmity, and blindnatural forces, as embodied in the people; 2) chance, probability, and thecreative spirit, as embodied by the military commander; and 3) policyand reason, as embodied by the state.24 By providing these diverse defi-nitions of war, Clausewitz illustrated to himself and others that there wasan alternative to the “scientific” language of war. As an anti-rationalist, hetreated armed conflict like a prism. By rotating the prism in his hand andobserving the ever shifting shards of light that flashed fleetingly before hiseyes, Clausewitz was able to express war’s complexity with a broadervocabulary than Jomini and his fellow rationalists.

However, Clausewitz did not dismiss the impact of the external, physicaldimensions of war. Unlike Scharnhorst and Moltke the Elder, he con-cluded that they did introduce some broad “statistical regularities” intoarmed conflict. By examining the phenomenon of war itself, and notseeking after empty maxims, principles, or laws, Clausewitz decided hecould identify its essential elements and yet keep theory grounded in fact.As a result, his variety of romanticism kept “theory close to its empiricalroots, not letting the language, logic, and polemics of theoretical dis-course break away from the untidy, multifarious reality of actual war-fare.”25 In short, Clausewitz’s language of war lay between geometry andthe irrational, and thus avoided many of the intellectual traps thatentangled “pure” rationalist and anti-rationalist theorists of war alike.26

As a second, competing characterization of war, military romanticismserved as an antidote to the false universalism and scientism of the ratio-nalists. Where the rationalists aimed at fixed values, the romanticspostulated that everything in war was uncertain, and calculations had tobe made with “variable quantities;” where the rationalists emphasized theimportance of external (i.e., objective) forces in defining human conflict,the romantics highlighted the equal importance of psychological forcesand effects; and where the rationalists focused on the one-sided, unilate-ral nature of war against a passive opponent, the romantics posited thatwar was “a continuous interaction of opposites.”27 Hence, by providinga second, competing characterization of war, military romantics, whether“pure” like Scharnhorst or pragmatic like Clausewitz, restored a necessary


balance to modern theoretical speculations about organized conflicts.They checked the arrogance of the rationalists, who wrongly saw theirpseudo-mathematical and predictive schemata as synonymous withscience. Lastly, they weakened (but did not eliminate) the notion thatrational, predictive concepts of war were somehow more truthful or“normal” than those that emphasized the equal importance of intangibles(irrationality, chance, and probability, for example.)

By the time of Clausewitz’s premature death in 1831, Western militarytheorists had essentially established the framework for subsequenttheoretical debate. As Figure 1 illustrates, they identified with one of twoparadigms of war – (i.e., they were prescriptive or non-prescriptive), orthey sought a middle ground defined by broad and flexible guidelines.

airpower theorists

|

Auteurs dogmatiques Scharnhorst

Bülow | Moltke the Elder

Jomini | Lloyd Mao Du Picq Berenhorst

Venturini | Mahan Corbett Zedong Clausewitz Grandmaison

Rationalists- | Mediators | Anti-rationalists

Neoclassicists | | Romantics

(prescriptive) | | (nonprescriptive)

Figure 1: Dominant Approaches to Modern Strategic Thought

However, the natural division of military strategists into rationalists,mediators, and romantics raises a fundamental question – where do mostairpower theorists fall in the spectrum of modern strategic thought?Which approach, or rough combination of the two, did they first use totry and define a new way of war? Seminal airmen and organizations likeGiulio Douhet, Billy Mitchell, Hugh Trenchard, the “Bomber Mafia” ofthe U.S. Army’s interwar Air Corps Tactical School (ACTS), and WorldWar II targeting organizations like the Committee of OperationsAnalysts (COA) and the Economic Objectives Unit (EOU) all followed


the preexisting example of the neoclassicists – i.e., they promulgateddidactic, rationalist strategies of air warfare.28

The above theorists and planners had more in common with the over-determinism of Jomini and the philosophes than the probabilism ofClausewitz and the romantics. They emphasized, for example, unilateraloffensive action against curiously passive and defenseless enemies.(Unfortunately, airpower theorists up through John Warden have consis-tently minimized the interactive nature of air warfare, primarily becauseof their fixation on the “inherently offensive” nature of air weapons.Until very recently the defense has received short shrift in airpowerthought.) Further, air theorists and planners repeatedly demonstrated aweakness for the architectural elegance and calculability of a theoryrather than for its responsiveness to “real” threats; they inferred that if atheory was “well-balanced” it must be right, despite the inevitable biases,wishful thinking, and predispositions embedded within its structure; andthey deduced theories that – despite their scientific pretensions – werenot always supported by rigorous empirical proof. As a result of thesegeneral weaknesses, three stubborn pathologies have afflicted theevolution of airpower theory from its very beginnings.

As previously suggested, air theorists first sought to develop their own“scientific” approach to air warfare – an approach that would apply atany time and in any place. In the 1930s, for example, U.S. Air Corps tac-tical School’s Bomber Mafia adopted “a Jominian … view of war – a viewof war as a mathematical equation whose variables … [could] be selec-tively manipulated to achieve success.”29 More particularly, specificbomber advocates such as Donald Wilson and Frank Andrews arguedthat any untried theory, including the uniquely American theory of highaltitude precision daylight bombardment against the critical economicnodes of an enemy state, required “no firmer basis than reasoned logicalthinking bolstered by a grasp of the fundamentals of the application ofmilitary force and the reactions of human beings.”30

The theorists suffered from a second pathology as well – they gave freeplay to the rationalist’s fetish for quantification and prediction in war.For example, the American authors of the first exclusively air-centeredwar plan in history, AWPD-1, predicted in August 1941 that an initial


consignment of 6,860 bombers massed against 125 German target setswould produce victory in 6 months (after a necessary build-up period,however). In turn, fighter aircraft advocate Claire Chennault predicted in1942 that he could defeat Japan with 150 fighters and 42 bombers.Lastly, in early 1964 the Air Force and Defense Intelligence Agencydeveloped OPLAN 37–64, which anticipated an American victory overNorth Vietnam in 28 days, provided that the U.S. struck 94 “strategic”targets in the North. All three examples illustrated a propensity to con-fuse “bookkeeping” with analysis, even though the latter should neverbecome a reductionist “firepower equation writ large,” and alwaysinclude an appreciation of context, combat efficiency, and othersignificant intangibles.31

Finally, and in contrast to the “rational” roots of the two previousproblems, air theorists have repeatedly resorted to epistemological short-cuts or sleights of hand to support their theories and doctrines – i.e., theyhave used analogies and metaphors to buttress the “logic” of their argu-ments. Inventor and air theorist Gianni Caproni, for example, expressedhis opposition to battlefield air operations as follows: “It is not by chasingeach bee in a garden that you … get the better of the swarm. You shouldrather destroy the beehive.”32 The ACTS Bomber Mafia, in turn, “sub-stantiated” the frailty of economic systems by comparing them to eithera wispy spider’s web or a tottering house of cards – pluck the right strandor pull the right card and both structures would inevitably collapse.33

Using logic similar to his colleagues, Major General Frank Andrewsfurther observed that modern nations were “as sensitive as a precisioninstrument.” If you damaged a vital part of a watch, for example, thewhole mechanism ceased to function.34 Nino Salvaneschi, an Italianjournalist who actively popularized the ideas of Giulio Douhet, agreed.He characterized the Great War itself as a “gigantic watchmaking factory”that was vulnerable to air attack, as did Count Caproni, who comparedairpower’s possible disruption of Austrian-German war production tobreaking a watch by destroying its gears.35

The above metaphors reflect the predicament that early airmen foundthemselves in. Yes, they parroted the “scientific” language of theEnlightenment with gusto, particularly since it allowed them to instantly“professionalize” themselves, and therefore make aggressive organizational


and budgetary demands. At the same time, they also resorted to linguisticruses and metaphorical turns. They did so in order to transcend theconceptual barriers they confronted when trying to use explanatorysystems rooted in the past. (This understandable but unfortunate trendcontinued well into the 1980s. Air theorist John Warden, for example,adopted a controversial metaphor to clarify his own thinking on leader-ship targeting. He likened this type of targeting to severing the head froma human body – isolate it or “cut it off,” and the societal or military“body” will die. In using this metaphor, however, Warden wrongly sug-gested that modern societies and groups were closed rather than opensystems, and therefore as vulnerable to systemic collapse as self-containedhuman beings.)

If recent paradigms of human conflict are still influenced by therationalist and anti-rationalist schools, which is indeed the case, and ifthe latter still have a distorting effect on individual attempts to developholistic theories, strategies, and doctrines of what is now aerospacepower, where do theorists need to stand today? At a minimum, it wouldbe helpful if they remembered the following three points. First, the anti-rationalists are right – effective theories of aerospace power must neces-sarily demonstrate that armed conflict is a nonlinear, interactive processbedeviled by feedback loops, delays, “trigger effects,” and qualitativechanges.36 Second, theorists must duly acknowledge, with true humility,that “Airpower is the most difficult of all forms of military force tomeasure, or even to express in precise terms.”37 (Successful strategic-leveleffects invariably seem to have a thousand parents, while equally strategicfailures seem to have none.) Finally, and most importantly, airmen mustself-consciously realize that they are still inmates looking out. In otherwords, they remain incarcerated in a prison house of language builtaround our previously described “vocabularies” of war. Yes, the romanticapproach represented by Clausewitz remains more “reality-inclusive”than the vision promulgated by Jomini and other rationalists, but airtheorists today must never forget that the “aeromaniacs” of the past, intheir quest to promote a revolutionary alternative to the futility ofground combat in the Great War, opted for the instantly recognizably,principles-laden “professional” language of the rationalists. Un-fortunately, that option was overwhelmingly surface-centric (as was theromantic option, actually). It inevitably defined airmen and their


medium as mere “parsley” or “garnish” on a plate. They were supple-mentary, secondary, additive – i.e., they merely supported the “Queen ofthe Battlefield,” which would forever remain the focal point of jointwarfighting.

The unprecedented role of aerospace power in the 1990s taught honestmilitary professionals otherwise, but airmen – if they are to consolidatethe tip-of-the-spear legitimacy they earned in Kosovo and Afghanistan –must gently continue to push their joint communities towards a thirdvision of war, as partially developed by the legendary American airmanJohn Boyd, a man who many believe was the most influential militarytheorist of the last 25 years.

Known as “Genghis John,” the “Mad Colonel,” and “That F…ing Boyd”to both admirers and detractors alike, it was Boyd who inspired JohnWarden and other progressives to import and adapt the language of theNew Physics, Chaos Theory, and Complexity Theory in their newapproaches to war.38 According to Boyd, the success or failure of humanconflicts does not necessarily have to depend on death or destruction, asan overwhelming number of rationalists and military romantics arguedin the past. What ultimately matters is “decision cycle dominance” – i.e.,managing the perceptions of others by observing, orienting, deciding,and acting more effectively than them. In part, you accomplish the latterby looping around and repeating the four-part process – now infamouslyknown as the “OODA Loop” – more quickly than your opponents. Ifyou are then on your fifteenth decision cycle and your slower respondingnemeses are on their fifth, you may well expect them – at least in relationto your actions – to become increasingly disoriented, befuddled, andconfused. In turn, their situational awareness or sense of reality may notonly collapse, but also lead to paralyzing mental concussions or strokes.

What the above approach to conflict illustrates, or so Boyd argued, wasthat you can deliberately disrupt or incapacitate an adversary’s abilityto cope with changing events, particularly if you “fast transition” fromone operational state or condition to another. The physics of “fasttransitioning,” in other words, forces your opponents to operate attempos that stress their ability to respond effectively to continuous,unpredictable change. Either their decision cycles remain too slow, or


they become increasingly uncoordinated and/or fragmented. (It’s allabout “dumping and pumping energy,” Boyd famously said.) In eithercase, you increasingly exercise decision cycle dominance over those whoincreasingly suffer the “entropy” expressed in the Second Law ofThermodynamics.

In closing then, it is appropriate to note that Boyd’s concepts and voca-bulary are obviously Sun Tzu-like. And yet, they also exploit – inunprecedented ways – the insights and nomenclature of the NewPhysics. They represent a liberating Third Way that committed “air-heads” can use fully to emancipate both themselves and their surfacebrethren from the hand-me-down rationalist and anti-rationalist“languages” of the past. The key is to build on the merely episodicmomentum this approach has developed over the last 10–15 years, andto convince different joint and surface communities that – as a ThirdWay – it is a “win-win” conceptual and bureaucratic option for all con-cerned.39 (The ultimate implementation of a theory, after all, is neverexclusively based on rational arguments. It additionally involves theinterplay of bureaucratic, organizational, and cultural imperatives aswell.)

Theories of Airpower: A Tool for AnalysisHaving just anchored airpower thinking within two broader philosophictraditions – traditions that introduced very real stresses and challenges tothose who wanted to create new, air-centric “vocabularies” – the next stepin this article is to acknowledge that airpower theory, strategy, and doc-trine has always been a variegated thing. In other words, there have alwaysbeen “true believers” who have sought to develop theories and/or modelsthat reflected – in holistic and comprehensive ways – the uniquecapabilities and properties of aerial warfare. These believers, however, didnot always articulate their ideas clearly, they changed them – overtly orsubtly – over time, or they developed arguments that were at first glanceindistinguishable from each other. Therefore, before this article discussesthe American way of air warfare in any detail, it would be helpful if it pro-vided a user-friendly tool that students of airpower could use not only todifferentiate assorted theories from each other, but also as a guide ortemplate to develop their own hypotheses on how to use aerospace power.


How might one go about distinguishing past air theories from each otherand yet contribute to the development of new hypotheses in the future?One possible option is to use a conceptual model that answers six basicquestions about the conduct of aerial warfare.40 The model is interactiveand works from left to right (from planning to execution) and from rightto left (from execution back to planning). As a result, the process is real-istic; it reflects how things actually work in the use of aerospace power.

Step One: Without exception, a working theorist or planner must firstask, “what outcome(s) do I want from my application of aerospacepower?” In attacking an opposing state, for example, do I seek politicalconcessions, a military defeat, or an actual change in government? If thefirst option, what particular concessions do I want? Will my opponentmake these concessions if put under sufficient duress, or are my politicalgoals unreasonable? If I concentrate on military success, do I want toannihilate my opponents in battle or merely neutralize their capabilities?Lastly, if I want a change in government, just what type of alternative doI want to help create?

All of the above questions are legitimate, but they demonstrate only onetype of outcome calculation. As Dr. Tom Ehrhard rightfully points out,the Doolittle Raid against Japan in 1942 was a successful application ofindependent airpower, but its true goal was to raise domestic morale.41

The Berlin airlift was equally successful, but its goal was to check ratherthan reverse Soviet encirclement. Both examples illustrate that the con-sideration of outcomes in Step One is not merely a narrow, destruction-oriented wartime activity, nor is it just preoccupied with coercing hostilestates to change their errant ways. The desired outcome could beanything, including economic disruption, changes in domestic orinternational opinion, continued compliance with current doctrines orregimes, the promotion of confidence building measures and collectivesecurity practices, and the creation of legal or moral precedents.

To realize so many different end states, however, the theorist or aerospaceplanner should at a minimum raise the questions raised in Figure 2.42

The object of interest (or “receiver”) in the figure can be an internationalorganization, an ad hoc or formal alliance system, a regional block, anation-state, a non-government organization (NGO), a terrorist net-


work, a criminal syndicate and more. In the particular case of a nation-state at war, Clausewitz suggests that you can at least gauge its “strengthand situation,” determine the “character and abilities of its governmentand people,” and “evaluate the political sympathies of other states andthe effect the war may have on them.”43 Without these steps, he notedfurther, the reciprocal nature of war will soon trap you in its inevitable“fog” and “friction.”

➾ Do I seek informal as well as formal outcomes?

➾ Do I seek short-term rather than long-term outcomes?

➾ When I seek an outcome, what interactive impactor changes do I expect:

• domestically,

• on the receiver,

• on a third party/network/system?

➾ What factors can any of the above three categories bring to bear against my desired outcomes?

Figure 2: The Process of End State Determination

Step Two: After establishing preferred outcomes and updating orreplacing them as required by changing circumstances, the next step forthe budding theorist or planners is to 1) gauge the specific politico-military capabilities – i.e., the strengths and limitations – of those on thereceiving end of your desired outcome(s), and 2) to measure the extentof your own abilities to project aerospace power. Given that prior to the1990s air theorists did over-promise on airpower’s ability to fulfill specificoutcomes (at least as initially advertised), the determination of mutualcapabilities remains a vital and necessary step. (Consider, for example,the absence of fighter escorts and effective bombsights in the early phases


of the Combined Bomber Offensive against Germany in World War II.Their absence, along with other limitations, sabotaged the revolutionarypromise of First-Day Warfare characterized by aerial Kesselschlachtsagainst the vital centers of the German State.) However, whenattempting to determine the actual and potential capabilities of oppo-nents in war, the aerospace theorist or planner must always use a liberaldefinition of the word. As Figure 3 illustrates, there are many factors thathelp determine one’s capabilities.

Figure 3: Determinants of Capability

Step Three: According to Dr. Robert Pape and Dr. Pat Pentland, alltheorists and planners must answer a third question, based on the firsttwo, before they actually apply aerospace power. Pape’s specific questionasks the following: should I adopt 1) a punishment strategy, which tries topush a society beyond its economic and psychological breaking point, 2) a risk strategy, which tries to do the same thing but at a graduallyincreasing rate rather than all at once, 3) a denial strategy, which tries toneutralize an opponent’s military ability to wage war, or 4) a decapitationstrategy, which destroys or isolates an opponent’s leadership, nationalcommunications, or other politico-economic centers? (The reader mightnote that punishment and denial strategies try to translate military effectsinto political change, while decapitation strategies, in contrast, do theopposite.)44

Pentland, in turn, asks the working theorist or planner to posit a similarand yet also different question: should I adopt 1) a disabling strategy,


• Policy Directives• Readiness• Targets available• Force structure• Training• Domestic culture• Equipment performance

• Weather• Joint requirements• The Environment• Tactics• Defensive counters• General Friction

which either disrupts an enemy’s capabilities or undermines his resolve,2) a delaying strategy, which uses threats or deterrence to preserve thestatus quo, or 3) an enabling strategy, which tries to create stability whereit is relatively weak or does not exist at all?45 In terms of using airpower,a disabling strategy includes direct attacks against specific targets. It alsoincludes those ancillary functions (aerial refueling and reconnaissance,etc.) that support air attacks. A delaying strategy might involve airpolicing or an air embargo, while an enabling strategy might include air supported military assistance programs.

Pentland certainly understands that as one moves from disruption to sta-bility operations, military options becomes less effective and economic,cultural, and political ones become more so. Additionally, since Pape’sstrategies primarily have a high-stakes, wartime focus that involve recog-nizable political actors, the virtue of Pentland’s last category (his enablingstrategy) is that it accounts for the growing number of non- or quasi-political outcomes that policy makers want aerospace power to fulfillduring peacetime. (Pape’s focus is largely on Force Application, which isonly one of four basic roles and missions air forces accomplish. Onemight argue that they also perform Control and Denial, which involvesshielding a nation and its fighting forces from attack; Force Enhancement,which includes airlift, aerial refueling, electronic warfare, and surveil-lance operations; and Force Support, which includes logistics. The pointhere, as Pentland well understands, is that we need air theorists to grap-pled with all four categories holistically. Instead, they have focused on one-third of one-fourth of the roles and missions performed by modern air forces.It is, as we shall see, within “strategic bombing” – i.e., within a circum-scribed part of the roles and missions spectrum – that one findsgenuinely sophisticated theories of conventional airpower.) Ultimately, afluid, ad hoc mixture of Pape and Pentland’s strategies may best serve theneeds of those seeking future end states.

Step 4: With preferred outcomes now tied to actual capabilities, and withan appropriate strategy (or strategies) now in hand, the theorist or plan-ner must next focus on the all-important target/objective - -mechanismnexus.

Here the questions are obvious. In offensive aerial warfare, what targets


or objectives are the most important? Do they happen to be more “intan-gible” during peacetime than in war? In a high-stakes wartime setting, arethey, as John Warden first argued, enemy leaders, “organic essentials”such as oil, information, and electricity, or – in decreasing order of value– an opponent’s industrial infrastructure, population, or fielded militaryforces? Lastly, are these targets or objectives important individually or incombination? Unfortunately, airmen have traditionally rushed to answerthese specific and critical questions before first resolving three broader,more fundamental issues.

Issue One: What aspects of an enemy’s power should you challenge, eitherindividually or together? As Dr. Pentland points out, theorists or aero-space planners could zero in on 1) the sources of an opponent’s power,which include the military, industrial, or cultural foundations of a state;they could focus on 2) the manifestations of an opponent’s strength,which include the governmental and ideological projection of force; orthey could concentrate on 3) the linkages of an enemy’s assets, whichinclude the “human and material networks” that determine howeffectively a nation organizes and employs its resources.46

Issue Two: After theorists or planners review what aspects of an enemy’spower they want to address, they should then consider what genericstrategy(ies) might work best. They could, for example, adopt a strategythat includes 1) a direct approach, which emphasizes head-on assaultsagainst enemy military capabilities; 2) an indirect approach, whichemphasizes maneuver warfare and the sapping of an enemy’s will to fight;and/or 3) a rapid transition approach, based on John Boyd’s previouslymentioned OODA Loop, which tries to disrupt and eventually paralyzean opponent’s decision-making calculus in relation to your own.47

On the other hand, the theorist or planner might alternatively adopteither an inside out or an outside in approach. In the outside in method,as embodied by John Warden’s Five Rings Model and virtually everyother “strategic” bombing theory of airpower, the attacker strikes vitaltargets deep within enemy territory. Fielded military forces, Wardenmetaphorically argues, cannot operate effectively without a “brain”directing them. If you sever the “brain” (i.e., enemy leadership), you thusincapacitate an opponent from the “inside out.”


An outside in strategy, in contrast, has dominated land warfare for the last5,000 years. It necessarily focuses on the resources that surround andprotect the inner core of an opposing state. By eliminating these protec-tive layers, which can include the general population and the military,the theorist or planner can endanger the fountainhead of enemy power.Dr. Pape’s own theory of aerial coercion, which emphasizes thwarting anenemy’s military strategy, is a recent variation of the traditional outside inapproach.

Issue Three: After determining which generic strategy or strategies toadopt (after all, we may increasingly use “boutique” strategies in thefuture rather than those that are universally applicable), the theorist orair planner might ask, particularly in periods of conflict, “what level ofdestruction, disruption, and/or dislocation do I want?” As KevinWilliams and like-minded others have observed, air targeting inevitablycauses hierarchical effects. A “first-order” effect, for example, involves thephysical or functional destruction of a target within a broader system. Ifaccomplished at a sufficient rate, it yields a “second-order” effect, whichdegrades a system’s overall ability to operate. Opponents will typicallyrespond to this effect by trying to work around it and continuing to sup-port their military strategy. In a “third-order” effect, adversaries can nolonger compensate for the damage they are experiencing, and work-arounds or substitutions no longer work. As a result, they must changetheir military strategy. Finally, a “fourth-order” effect signals victory, i.e.,the imposition of your political will on your opponent. You produce thisoutcome by achieving third-order effects “in a unique and situationallydependent set of target systems.”48 To reach this point, however, air plan-ners must always consider what level of destruction or dislocation theyultimately desire.

With the above three issues properly resolved, one can then determinethe specific target set(s) or objectives to attack. While deciding, however,the prospective attacker might want to rely on six criteria, particularlywhen dealing with tangible infrastructure or military-related targets.49

First, they might consider the military importance of a target. Accordingto Karl Kaysen, this step could include “a rough classification of the valueto enemy military operations of all types of equipment and supplies used


by the enemy forces.”50 (The classification, however, is relative to thestrategic situation, and to the tactics and doctrine of your opponent.)

Second, one might ask: “What proportion of the target is put to directmilitary use?” The higher the proportion, the more important the targetmay be, especially in a short war scenario.

Third, there is the criterion of depth; it measures the military importanceof a target in terms of time. “Average depth,” according to Kaysen, “is atime concept designed to measure the average interval of time elapsingbetween the output of a good or service … and its appearance … in afinished military item in the hands of a tactical unit.”51 Typically, “themeasure of depth is important as an indication of the time available tothe enemy for the organization of substitute consumption, alternate pro-duction, and so forth, before he suffers military damage.”52 Again, inshort war or – increasingly – preemption scenarios, a target with little“depth” may require immediate attention.

Fourth, one should determine the economic vulnerability of a target,which could include the following – substitutability for processes andequipment, substitutability for products or services, process and plantlayout vulnerabilities, an opponent’s recuperability, and ratio of capacityto output.

Fifth, the planner must consider the actual physical properties of a targetset and its vulnerabilities. What type of construction is it? What is itmade of? Does it contain additional machinery, stocks of combustible orexplosive materials, or other significant items?

Finally, one must determine as accurately as possible the location and sizeof a target set.53 Only then is it possible to decide which specific targetsrequire destruction and/or disruption.

Step 5: So, after a theorist or planner has determined 1) what aspects ofan opponent’s strengths or weaknesses to assail, 2) what types ofstrategy(ies) to adopt, 3) what levels of effects to seek, and 4) what actualtarget sets or objectives to assault, he or she still has to answer what usedto be known as the “$64 Dollar Question” – i.e., what “mechanism(s)”


do I expect an aerospace action to trigger? In other words, what changesor outcomes do I expect to occur as a result of my own efforts? Will a particularaction, for example, cause economic dislocations, a loss of moral or legalstanding, a political division among allies, a coup d’état, a militaryretreat, a popular revolt, or a decrease in the number of political risks anenemy is willing to take? Will it isolate ruling elites from their politicalbases, or from fielded military forces, and thus cause operationalparalysis, both politically and militarily? Unfortunately, our ability tolink aerospace means with ends – i.e., to establish an irrefutable causallink between specific targeting choices; 2nd, 3rd, or even further down-stream effects; and the ultimate results they yield – remains iffy at best.Yes, over the last 80 years airmen have become very effective in maxi-mizing first-order effects, but the causal calculus for cascading andindirect effects remains obscure.

One obvious explanation for this predicament is that woven into anytheory of airpower are a priori assumptions about mechanisms. Theseassumptions are not always obvious or necessarily wrong, but they never-theless remain a collection of biases and belief systems rather than empir-ical proofs. As a result, airmen have historically not succeeded at recog-nizing mechanisms for what they are. Therefore, to improve their successrate in the future, they will need to define their assumptions more closelythan before. Second, they will need to continue investing in Air & SpaceOperations Centers (ASOCs) that are broadly multidisciplinary in scopeand include a variety of civilian specialists. Finally, and in order to applythe levers (or mechanisms) of aerospace power properly, they should“move mountains” to identify centers of gravity above and beyond tradi-tional target sets. These COGs, for example, could include political, eco-nomic, social, or cultural beliefs and assumptions. They could also includegovernment philosophies, social structures, special interest groups, ordemographic factors. Only an expanded appreciation of these types ofCOGs, and the assumptions behind them, will enable theorists or plannersto understand the dynamic, Janus-faced relationship between targeting andthe mechanisms they trigger. Until then, understanding the relationshipfully will remain the Holy Grail of aerospace power.

Step 6: In providing an effective tool both to direct and analyze aerospacepower, it is finally appropriate to address the issue of timing. Given the


growing utility of aerospace power in peacetime, and the movement awayfrom theater-level conventional operations towards asymmetric attacksthat focus on disruption and paralysis, the proper timing of an aerospaceaction matters today like never before.

There are three considerations when it comes to timing, however. First,there is the traditional question of when an action should occur? Then,should it be incremental, sequential, cumulative, or simultaneous? Byanswering these questions, air planners determine how to use time andspace to their maximum advantage. The planners, for example, maychoose to conduct a series of measured, escalatory air attacks, particularlyif they subscribe to the views of Thomas Schelling. (Schelling famouslyargued in the 1960s that war is a form of vicious diplomacy, and there-fore always retains a negotiatory character. The deliberate pauses of agradualist campaign permit opponents to assess the growing costs andrisks of a conflict. As a result, they can exchange proposals and counter-proposals, and possibly reverse course before it proves too late.)

On the other hand, air planners could conduct simultaneous assaultsagainst multiple targets at different levels of intensity. With the advent ofadvanced data links and precision guided munitions (PGMs), the abilityof well-stocked air forces to perform these types of simultaneous anddevastating attacks has become commonplace. In fact, their sheer speedmight cause opponents to capitulate, not because of traditional battle-field casualties, but because of the entropy and paralysis experienced byenemy command structures in compressed amounts of time and space.

Finally, one might try to maintain steady-state combat operations overtime. By retaining a Secure Reserve Force and withholding its use untilfirst-strike forces are busy reconstituting themselves, combat com-manders could apply constant pressure against an opponent over the longhaul. As a result, they might avoid the cyclical (i.e., less effective) formsof pressure that still characterize carrier-based operations, for example.

The above six categories … Desired Outcomes / Capabilities / Strategy(ies) /Targeting / Mechanisms / Timing … are not prescriptive. They support areality-inclusive, process-oriented model – i.e., a type of “intellectual scaf-folding” – that budding theorists can use to develop new concepts of


operation in the future. As suggested earlier, however, the model can “killtwo birds with one stone” – i.e., it can help distinguish past air theories fromeach other, and therefore help students of aerospace power avoid a commonconceptual error – fixating on the “how,” “what,” and “where” of air theory,strategy, and even doctrine, rather than on the “why” behind them.

Theories of Airpower: Some Pre-1945 ExamplesWhen it comes to past theories of airpower, it is critically important toremember that from the very beginning, air theorists disagreed on a keyquestion – how do you actually persuade an opponent to abandon keypolitical goals and objectives in wartime, and/or to adopt your own? Thequestion spawned three “strategic”-level schools of thought, as reflectedin the early airpower theories listed below.

First, there were those who promoted the utility of a punishmentstrategy. They thought they could extract either political concessions orchanges in behavior from opposing governments by terrorizing civilians,particularly with massive and indiscriminate attacks from the sky.Members of this group, including the Italian Giulio Douhet, theAmerican William “Billy” Mitchell (late in his airpower ministry), andGreat Britain’s Arthur “Bomber” Harris (also known as “Butch,” i.e.,“butcher,” by Bomber Command air crews), argued that the heart of anenemy’s resistance was its population. If you used thousands of “battle-planes” to break the psychological will of the average citizen in the street,you would invariably break the will of a society at large.

Second, there were those who advocated a risk strategy, which aimed atdepriving an opponent the industrial capacity to wage war.54 Members ofthis group included the already mentioned Gianni Caproni and NinoSalvaneschi, the U.S. Army’s Air Corps Tactical School, and members ofarguably the most prominent Allied targeting groups in World War II, theCommittee of Operations Analysts and the Economic Objectives Unit.

Finally, there were those who advocated a denial strategy, which fixatedon destroying the most immediate threat one faced – an opponent’sfielded military forces. Continental military establishments such as theGerman and Russian General Staffs supported this option, whichnaturally subordinated airpower to the needs of the army.


Theorist(s) Desired Outcome Target Set(s) Mechanism

Caproni/ Military defeat Major munitions DestroySalvaneschi factories equilibrium

in equipment

Douhet Change government Population Revolutionor its behavior (cities)

Mitchell " " " Vital centers Civil Uprising

Trenchard " " " War materiel, Operational(in 1920s) transportation, paralysis

communications

Slessor Military defeat Troops, supplies, Interrupt orproduction destroy equipment

and supplies

ACTS Change government Key econ. nodes Social collapse,or its behavior (industrial web) break popular

will

Harris " " " Population Fear, lost(cities) morale

Wilberg, Military defeat Enemy field army BattlefieldWeber, & the breakthrough,Ger. General army destructionStaff

COA " " " Munitions plants Materielshortages

EOU " " " Oil/transportation Operationalparalysis

Figure 4: Representative Airpower Theories Prior to 1945

As to be expected, the above three schools of thought had very real lim-itations, both collectively and individually. In the case of their generalweaknesses, the theorists/groups harbored a “Newtonian” or “Jominian”attitude towards war, as previously suggested. They believed that warscould be objectively analyzed, that identifiable principles or laws regulated


their conduct, and that airpower could act unilaterally against impotentfoes. Second, the theorists/groups were much too offensively minded.They consistently ignored the defense, and thus underestimated just howimportant a role it could play in aerial warfare (consider the truly lethalintegrated air defense systems of today, for example). Finally, and assuggested earlier, every theorist/group confused combat effectiveness(means) with strategic effectiveness (ends) – i.e., no one could reallyguarantee that destroying a particular target set would trigger a specificreaction that would cause a desired political result. (In other words, theycould not say “if I use X, Y will happen and lead to desired change Z.”)Douhet, therefore, could merely assume that attacking an enemy’s popu-lation would inspire it to revolt, and thus lead a responsive governmentto discontinue its counterproductive policies. By the same token,Caproni, Salveneschi, and the COA could only assume that destroyingmunitions plants would lead to equipment imbalances in the field, whichwould paralyze enemy military operations and eventually lead to changesin political behavior.

In these cases and more, the reality was that targeting was “civilian” innature (as it is today). Douhet and his successors were not necessarilywell-tutored in politics, economics, anthropology, sociology, psychology,and other related fields. As a result, their theories were not suitablyholistic or multidisciplinary; their target(s)-mechanism(s) calculationsultimately depended on trial and error in war, particularly in the sphereof economics.

If our theorists/groups had conceptual problems on the general level,they also had them on the specific level as well. For example, those moralagnostics who advocated punishing populations (Douhet, Harris, attimes Hugh Trenchard, and the later Mitchell) either ignored or mini-mized the following six problems.

1) Psychological effects in conflicts are often only temporary.

2) Civilians typically become passive rather than politically active whenterrorized from the sky – i.e., they do not rise up and revolt againsttheir own government.


3) If civilians feel their leaders are making a good faith effort to protectthem from air attacks, they will not turn their anger towards them,as Douhet, Mitchell, and even Harris expected, but outward againstthe attacker.55

4) Authoritarian regimes are indifferent to popular suffering and willnot readily respond to domestic political pressure.

5) Population attacks ignore – at their peril – the legal and moral pre-cepts now firmly in place to preserve noncombatant immunity.

6) Civilian-centered air campaigns fly in the face of a growing numberof legal-moral restraints on how you use airpower in war.

In the case of those who advocated risk strategies against enemy economies(Caproni, Salvaneschi, the US Army’s Air Corps Tactical School, thewartime Committee of Operations Analysts and the Economic ObjectivesUnit), they ignored or minimized the following four problems.

1) Attackers tend to mirror image – i.e., they wrongly assume that anopponent’s economic/industrial infrastructure reflects their own, andtherefore has the same critical vulnerabilities.

2) Modern economies are not brittle. They typically do not have clearbreaking points – i.e., they do not necessarily “snap” when put underduress. Instead, they may lose their vitality much like a slow leakingballoon, even in an era of Hyperwar or Parallel Warfare (see below).

3) Air attacks against an economy/infrastructure are an indirect way tobreak a people’s will to resist. However, to foot-stomp yet again, thelink between economic deprivation, political alienation, andchanged political behavior, remains difficult to trace.

4) Attackers can have difficulty determining if an economic target isfunctionally destroyed, i.e., if it doesn’t work, as opposed to beingphysically shattered and broken. (In lengthy or gradualist campaigns,the distinction is an important one.)

Lastly, those who advocated a denial strategy against an opponent’sfielded military forces (Wilberg, Slessor, et al.) invariably collided withthe following biases and assumptions held by the “aeromaniacs.” (The


latter assumed that ground commanders did not understand the value oftheater-level air support against targets away from the immediate battle-zone. As a result, they believed that denial strategies would only be mis-interpreted by them, and therefore were ill advised.)

1. Aircraft are omnipotent; they can destroy anyobjective and are invulnerable to any defense.

2. Command of the air is a necessary and sufficientcondition for military victory.

3. The second proposition stems from an Air Force “independent of surface forces and composed of maximum bombing power and the requisite fighting power.”

4. The independent Air Force must be a force-in-being.

5. It should always operate in mass.

6. It must devote all its efforts to the offensive,i.e., it should not divert itself to supportauxiliary aviation.

7. The proper initial target of the independent AirForce is the enemy’s Air Force, especially itsbases and places of production.

8. After achieving command of the air, “targetselection depends on the situation of the momentand requires careful consideration.”

9. Surface forces should have a defensive function;the Air Force performs the major offensive action.

Figure 5: Nine Anti-Army Propositions Regarding Airpower (Pre-1945)


And if rejecting or adapting to the above New Orthodoxy was notenough of a problem for those wedded to denial strategies, they also hadthree legitimate concerns to fret about – 1) who actually controlled airassets in battle, 2) who decided what roles and missions those assetswould perform, and 3) who selected the targets they attacked?

Despite all of the limitations present in the 10 theories or 3 basic schoolsof thought schematized in Figure 4, the table also illustrates that therewas a rich theoretical debate about the uses of airpower prior to 1945,and it lays out this debate in a comprehensive, easily digestible way. Inshort, Dr. Pape’s modified template is both an analytic tool for the pastand a user-friendly template for the future.

Theories of Airpower: Some Post-War Examples (1950s–1970s) The target(s)-mechanism(s) model is equally useful for schematizingpost-1945 theories of airpower, including the period-specific work ofIrving Janis (1950s), Thomas Schelling (1960s), and Ernest May(1970s). Figure 6 depicts their overt and inferred theories, and providesa reference point for the discussion that follows. It also introduces afourth basic school of thought on the proper uses of airpower (or what isnow aerospace power). Not only might airmen direct aerial attacksagainst population, military, and/or economic/infrastructure targets,they should also concentrate on what has become known as leadershiptargeting.

Air War and Emotional Stress (1951) was first a study sponsored by the RANDCorporation and conducted by Dr. Irving Janis, who sought to evaluate thepsychological effects of air warfare on civilian populations. By analyzing theemotional responses, attitudes, and behavior of British, German, and Japanesecivilians subjected to air bombardment in World War II, Janis drew two note-worthy conclusions about the impact of air power on noncombatants.

First, the physical magnitude of an air attack was important to those whoexperienced it firsthand. Heavy bombing raids, in terms of size and ton-nage, temporarily raised political apathy and the distrust of an afflictedpopulation towards its political leaders.56 Such raids, however, were mosteffective if sporadic and unpredictable; they deprived an opponent the


Theorist Political Outcome Target Set(s) Mechanism

Janis Change Policies Leadership Near-Miss or Population Experiences

Schelling Change Policies Population/ Future Costs Military and/ and Risks or Leadership Calculations

May Change Leaders Political Pit FactionsOr Policies Leadership Against Each

Other

Figure 6: Three Theories of Aerial Coercion

opportunity to adapt psychologically even for short periods of time. By disrupting familiar socio-political patterns, Janis concluded, irregular airattacks would discourage an opponent.57


(The above conclusion then leads to a logical population-centeredquestion – is it worthwhile for an air planner to lower an opposinggroup’s ability to adapt via sporadic air attacks, even though it inevitablyraises their anger first and only discourages them later? As suggestedearlier, if active or passive defenses do not exist, or if demands for retali-ation go unheeded, civilians may shift their hostility from the attacker –who is the logical starting point for their resentment – to those domesticleaders or organizations that fail to provide organized support for theirpeople [adequate shelters, integrated air defenses, relief measures, etc.].In other words, since the aggression of a bombed population can be“diffuse and labile,” and potentially directed at all sources of authority,keeping an adversary group “off balance” with irregular bombing may bea viable politico-military option, provided one complements it with adeliberate attempt to blame the downstream consequences on the advers-ary’s own leaders or institutions.)

In addition to stressing the virtues of sporadic air attacks, Janis also con-cluded that near-miss experiences – i.e., direct exposures to danger or itsimmediate effects – heightened fear and lowered morale. In Janis’s opin-ion, morale deteriorated most in those groups that narrowly escaped theeffects of intense air assaults.58 The critical variable here was not theexpected level of bombardment, but the degree of one’s personalinvolvement in an air attack. Remote-miss experiences actually calmedpeople’s fears, while intense, terrorizing near-miss experiences appreciablylowered their emotional ability to adapt.59 In fact, anyone who repeatedlyexperienced narrow escapes, Janis observed, “may become defeatist, hisloyalty to his group may weaken and he may be less willing as a result towork for the achievement of his group’s aims.”60 Additionally, the afflictedperson’s expectations of victory may diminish, and as his confidenceebbed, the morale-crushing impact of bombardment would only growworse.61

There are, however, factors that undermine the utility of heavy and spo-radic near-miss bombardment against civilian populations. Negativepublic attitudes, for example, may not necessarily lead to overt anti-government behavior.62 Severely bombed civilians, for example, cansuffer from the “law of mental inertia” – i.e., they first and foremost focuson personal survival, and therefore cling to the status quo.


But what about opposing forces and leaders? In the first case, Stephen T.Hosmer and Group Captain Andrew Lambert, RAF, combine to arguethat armies are psychologically coercible through near-miss and direct hitoptions if 1) they experience increasingly heavy and frequent bombard-ment that exceeds their expectations, 2) they are pinned-down and iso-lated, 3) they experience maximum discomfort and fatigue, 4) theydevelop a sense of expendability and hopelessness by being unable toretaliate, and 5) you provide them a political or military way out of theirpredicament.63

In the case of leadership, some analysts have argued that ColonelKhaddaffi’s near-miss experience with American bombers in 1986 didprecipitate a significant change in the Libyan leader’s political behavior,at least in the near-term.64 But was the near-miss experience the cause?For those who agree with Janis, the question is moot. Near-miss experi-ences may well be a targeting option worth pursuing, especially becauseof continual improvements in precision munitions, stealth, and real-timeplatform-to-platform communications.

As a working psychologist delving into the emotional responses of bomb-ing victims, Janis’s approach was the opposite of Thomas Schelling’srationalistic vision. The latter was a nuclear strategist in the heady daysof the 1950s and early 1960s, when World War II American strategicbombing theory saw itself transformed into deterrence theory, specificallythrough a division of labor that occurred between civilian elites and theU.S. Air Force (see below). Strategic Air Command increasingly focusedon developing mechanistic targeting plans for nuclear war, while thedevelopment of strategic theory became the responsibility of leadingcivilian strategists like Bernard Brodie, Herman Kahn, WilliamKaufman, Albert Wohlstetter, and Thomas Schelling. Schelling, as Armsand Influence (1966) confirms, was arguably the Clausewitz of nucleartheorists and the Godfather of Flexible Response, a theory the JohnsonAdministration applied unsuccessfully as a politico-military strategyagainst North Vietnam during the Second Indochina War.So what was the allure of Schelling’s theory of armed conflict, as adaptedto the use of conventional airpower? Well, in the case of peacetime, hesensibly begins by arguing that airpower represents “the power to hurt.”It is, in other words, a bargaining chip that is most effective when held in


reserve,65 where it can help mold the thinking and expectations of others,who should typically decide – through proper cost-risk calculations –that it is in their self-interest to forgo political mischief.66

But even if a war does break out, the looming, ever-present shadow ofnuclear weapons almost guarantees it will be limited (again, limited warsby limited means for limited ends). The combatants will commit them-selves to some level of mutual restraint, which allows conflicts to retain anegotiatory character – i.e., they remain “a bargaining process, one inwhich threats and proposals, counterproposals and counterthreats, offersand assurances, concessions and demonstrations, take the forms ofactions rather than words, or actions accompanied by words.”67 Yet,while the bargaining continues, it is appropriate to deliberately manipu-late the tempo of air operations. A gradualist approach, ProfessorSchelling observes, gives your enemies the opportunity to receive andrespond to your signals effectively. Most importantly, it gives them theopportunity to communicate a willingness to quit fighting, which is theultimate point of Schelling’s approach.

The failure of gradualism in Vietnam seemingly invalidated Schelling’svision of warfare as a vicious form of on-going negotiation anddiplomacy. On the other hand, critics of the Rolling Thunder “strategic”bombing campaign and other measured applications of air power haveconveniently ignored a key passage in Arms and Influence: “… it is soimportant to know who is in charge on the other side, what he treasures,what he can do for us and how long it will take him, and why we havethe hard choice between being clear so that he knows what we want orvague so that he does not seem too submissive when he complies.”68

Since the Johnson Administration ultimately failed to gather thisrequired data, or agree on the nature of the data it had, it is reasonableto assert that American policy in Vietnam was nothing more than abastardized version of Schelling’s vision, and therefore did not necessarilyrepresent its failure.

This “blame game” issue aside, Schelling’s problems run deeper than amisplaced faith in gradualism, which interestingly enough has found newappeal in an era of calibrated, centralized command and execution war-fare (see NATO operations in the Balkans in particular). However, if


today’s aerospace power is to succeed as an instrument of vicious diplo-macy and signal sending, as it ultimately did in Kosovo, its proponentsmust readily admit and adapt to the following problems.

1) Large government bureaucracies are not rational, unitary actors.They often lack the necessary subtlety or unity of purpose requiredto bargain violently for a prolonged period of time.

2) Advocates of signal sending cannot assume that messages are alwaysclearly given and received.

3) Diplomacy based on gradualism must account for the adjustments,substitutions, and work-arounds your opponent will be able to per-form.

4) Diplomacy based on gradualism may not convey your reasonablenessand flexibility, but rather a negative impression – i.e., you mayappear to lack resolve and/or be politically weak.

5) Diplomacy based on gradualism not only probes the politicalenvironment for problem solving opportunities, it actually alters it.Therefore, “vicious negotiations” themselves distort the signals sentand received.

6) Diplomacy based on signal sending cannot assume that the actorsinvolved always perform costs-risks calculations that create identifiablebreaking points in events.

7) Vicious diplomacy cannot assume that governments necessarily careabout their people, and that they will change their behavior to sparethem further suffering.

8) Vicious diplomacy tends to emphasize tinkering with the status quo.It does not necessarily involve seeking revolutionary political change.

9) Protractedness, vicious or not, may not be a “natural” diplomatictrait for some nations. In discretionary conflicts especially, wherevital interests are not at stake, they may lack a capacity for prolongedsignal sending.


Finally, there is one more issue to resolve – what is the preferred targetset of a gradualist, signal-sending campaign? In Schelling’s opinion, it isthe enemy population – “Populations may be frightened into bringingpressure on the governments to yield or desist; they may be disorganizedin a way that hampers their government; they may be led to bypass, orto revolt against, their own government to make accommodation withthe attacker.”69 Schelling’s approach, however, assumes that the abovenine challenges will not ultimately undermine mutual comprehensionand clarity. Given the daunting problems they actually represent, onemight ask whether vicious diplomacy should concentrate on more man-ageable populations – i.e., well-defined and homogenous ones such asmilitary and leadership establishments.

Third, there is the implicit airpower theory contained in Ernest May’sLessons of the Past (1976). In Chapter V of the volume, May looks at earlyinstances where governments tried to use aerial bombardment to coerceothers. He identifies three failures (Italian chemical attacks against Ethiopiain the 1930s, Japanese terror attacks against the Chinese during the Sino-Japanese War, and Fascist assaults against Republican troops in the SpanishCivil War), but also two successes – Italy and Japan in World War II.

But why did the air weapon change political behavior in the latter twocases and not in the previous three? The answer, according to May, wasfactionalism; both Italy and Japan were authoritarian, faction-riddenstates. In the Italian case, Mussolini routinely pitted various political andbureaucratic factions against each other in order to retain ultimate power.At the same time, under-secretaries, bureau chiefs, staff officers, andparty functionaries continued to plot against him. They naturallygathered strength while Italy accumulated military defeats. Finally, whenAllied Air Forces bombed railroad centers in Rome (July 1943), two-thirds of the members in the Fascist Grand Council mustered the resolveto rebuke Mussolini. According to Dr. May, the bombing also inspiredKing Victor Emmanuel to unseat Il Duce, replace him with PietroBadoglio and a cabinet of nonfascists, and set the stage for a separatepeace. In short, if Dr. May’s reading of history is accurate, Italy’s foreignpolicy changed because its leadership changed, and it was the bombard-ment of Rome, coupled with the fear of future attacks, that contributedto these changes.70


The same logic applied to Japan. A deified emperor ruled over frag-mented elites. Civil ministries, political parties, segments of the military,aristocrats, and intellectuals all refused to cooperate with each other. Asa result, the key to change was Emperor Hirohito. His decisions to dis-miss General Tojo in July 1944 and surrender in August 1945 were bothlong overdue. Yet those factions that successfully pressured the Emperorto act were similar to those in Italy. According to May, they were con-cerned bureaucrats, military officers who distanced themselves from thepolicies of the past, and politicians working to unseat blameworthyrivals. As was the case in Italy, actual bombardment and the fear of futurebombardment “had some effect” in changing Japanese foreign policy.71

In fairness to Dr. May, he repeatedly claims that his speculations consti-tute more of a thought-piece than a theory. He does conclude, however,that nations with fragmented ruling elites are potentially vulnerable toaerial coercion.72 Strategic air attacks may contribute to the installationof new leaders who have little or no stake in past policies, and thus arewilling to change them. But which groups can assume power and adoptnew policies? If they exist, can aerial bombardment either strengthen orweaken them? On the latter point, May is largely silent. He suggests thatair power is just one factor among many that coalesce under historicallyunique circumstances to trigger a change in an opposing nation’s leader-ship structure. How air power contributes to this change depends on thesituation and the interpretive skills of the air planner.

May is quite clear, however, about which leadership factions are vulner-able to aerial suasion and capable of dislodging others. Given their accessto uncensored information, it is the “pessimists” who best recognize thedangers of a particular policy, and thus can agitate for change. Theyinclude members of foreign ministries, intelligence bureaus, and internalsecurity forces. They include ambassadors, ministers and civil servantsconcerned with domestic affairs, intelligence analysts, and future fore-casters. Lastly, they also include internal security officers, military leadersnot associated with current policies, and politicians eager to secure theirown futures.73

By analyzing the above factions and how they behaved in Italy and Japan,Dr. May ultimately drew three conclusions: 1) to reduce an enemy’s


commitment to a particular policy, multiple levels of a bureaucracy mustbecome pessimistic about its costs; 2) those associated with foreign affairsand intelligence agencies are typically the first to recognize the weak-nesses of a particular policy; and 3) the logical advocates for change arethose who work in four areas – foreign relations, internal security, intel-ligence, and even those who work in the domestic economy.

Keeping these conclusions in mind, can aerial bombardment promotedisaffection between (and among) bureaucrats and ruling elites? Can airpower nudge dissidents to precipitate a leadership (i.e., policy) change?According to a very cautious Dr. May, there is some evidence to suggestthat the threat of bombardment “might contribute to bureaucraticanxiety … and hence enhance in some small degree the chances ofgovernmental change resulting in a change in policy.”74 Therefore, asFigure 6 illustrates, a series of air assaults against an enemy’s leadershipstructure might lead to changes in personnel or policies. The mechanismof change somehow involves promoting factionalism within (andbetween) politico-bureaucratic elites to create conditions that allow “pes-simists” to restructure the government and its policies.

Dr. May’s endorsement of aerial bombardment as an instrument of coer-cion acknowledges that change usually occurs, in the words of AlbertHirschman, “as a result of a unique constellation of highly disparateevents and is therefore amenable to paradigmatic thinking only in a veryspecial sense.”75 However, despite May’s keen awareness of the dangers oftheorization, his provisional model gives us a reason to address threecoercion-related issues here – 1) the relationship between cause and effectin aerial attacks, 2) the distinction between external and internal threatsto a nation or group, and 3) the recent impact of modern technology, toinclude PGMs and stealth systems, on political coercion.

Issue 1: How do aerial attacks, via the unspecified pressures they exert,yield particular political effects? What specific targets do you attack, forexample, to promote factionalism between bureaucratic pessimists andthose who actually dictate policy? How can airpower empower onefaction and yet weaken another? On these questions of cause and effectDr. May is understandably silent. Although he tries to link Italian andJapanese shifts in behavior to aerial assaults, the “how” of the process


remains unclear. Like his predecessors, May ultimately assumes, ratherthan empirically proves, that aerial bombardment facilitated the restruc-turing of enemy leadership elites and their policies. His interpretation ofaerial coercion hearkens back to Jomini and the rationalists – it is elegantand symmetrical, but its historical foundations are suspect. In fact, it issufficiently doubtful that several critics have concluded that air attacksdid not inspire Japanese leaders (i.e., the Army) to reverse course inAugust 1945. Instead, it was Russia’s entry into the war (PaulKecskemeti), the atom bomb (Herbert Feis), or the U.S. naval blockade,coupled with the Soviet invasion of Manchuria (Robert Pape), whichdictated the timing of surrender. These interpretations, although just alimited sample, show that there is no consensus on why it took over ayear to translate Japan’s obvious military defeat into actual war termina-tion. Dr. May’s claim – that newly empowered “moderates” needed overa year to reverse past policies – is only one interpretation among many.Yet, the relationship he establishes between air attack and politicalbehavior depends on it.76

Issue 2: Dr. May appears to believe that external threats to a leader’spower or survival are less credible and less compelling than threats thatcome from within his or her own country. In this respect, he seems toagree with Kenneth Waltz, who warns against confusing external meanswith internal control. According to Waltz, using external force is merely“a means of establishing control over a territory, not of exercising controlwithin it.”77 External force, for example, cannot pacify a nation andestablish internal political rule. These tasks, Waltz argues, involveprocesses that are distinct from those triggered by the external use offorce, including airpower. As a result, those theorists who claim that aspecific external action (air attack) can lead to a particular internal effect(a change in leadership or policy) are doomed to fail.

May tries to avoid this “causality trap,” as defined by Waltz, by estab-lishing a hierarchy between primary internal threats and secondary (orsupporting) external ones. In contrast, those who fall into the trap equatemilitary power with control, and with the ability to coerce others. Andyet, merely equating power with control, as Waltz notes, does not provethat one leads to the other. “To define ‘power’ as ‘cause’ confuses processwith outcome. To identify power with control is to assert that only power


is needed in order to get one’s way.”78 Both assumptions, which infect thethinking of virtually all airpower thinkers, are dangerous. They allegethat an intended act and its results are identical. In any scenario,however, the context of an action, along with an opponent’s reaction, willyield unanticipated political results. Because he believes these factors areimportant, Dr. May decides that faction-driven internal threats are morecredible than external threats, including aerial bombardment. The lattercan only prod, in some ill-defined way, internal groups to act. As a result,it can only have an indirect effect on what leaders value most – personalsurvival and the preservation of individual power.

When all is said and done, however, creating a hierarchy of internal-external threats may be the equivalent of “rearranging the deck chairs”when it comes to the problem of causality. Do air attacks actually moti-vate leadership factions to reverse themselves and reject the status quo, ordo they merely provide a pretext for already disaffected groups to act?More importantly, how does bombardment indirectly increase the influ-ence of one political faction at the expense of another? Unfortunately, byestablishing a simple dichotomy in his factionalism – flexible moderatesagainst inflexible hard-liners – May oversimplifies the relationshipbetween air attacks and political influence. He does not clearly identify(or analyze) those myriad factors that directly shape an opponent’sexternal policies, nor does he relate them to the indirect impact of aerialassaults. In other words, like subsequent advocates of aerial coercion, hedoes not always answer the following required questions.

1) Who actually controls the foreign policy-making process?

2) What are the arguments competing bureaucratic factions use to sup-port their policy prescriptions?

3) How skillful is each faction in promoting its prescriptions?

4) What is the level of adversary understanding of your own policiesand motives?

5) Which interpretation of your motives dominates the factional debate?


6) How do domestic factors influence the tug of war over whether tocompete or cooperate with an external foe?79

Failure to answer these questions is to miss a key point – the indirectimpact of coercive air attacks depends on how enemy elites see their ownpolicies. The attacks may indirectly tumble hard-liners from power, butonly if moderates successfully blame them for the attacks. In this case,the role of aerial coercion is therefore twofold – to cause unacceptablesuffering and to eliminate any doubt over the root cause of the suffering.If hard-liners successfully portray your air attacks as undeserved and anexpression of your ill will, their power will actually grow. The attacks willundercut those who want to change the status quo by making themappear merely ambitious and disloyal. However, if moderate “pessimists”successfully portray the attacks as a reaction to the unnecessarily hostilepolicies promoted by those in power, it may result in political change. Inthis case, the hard-liners are not guiltless victims; their wounds are largelyself-inflicted. Again, the key is how opponents see their own policies andhow air attacks support the manipulation of this self-perception bymoderates.

Issue 3: Writing in the 1970s, Dr. May understandably failed to antici-pate the current revolution in military affairs. Because of superior com-mand and control technologies, precision guided munitions and 4th gen-eration stealth (the F-22), the ability of airpower to cause “bureaucraticanxiety” and strengthen or weaken the power of “pessimistic” enemy fac-tions may have grown exponentially. As a result, Waltz’s “causality trap”may not be as pronounced as it once was. Precise external attacks maynow directly impact the internal political dynamics of an enemy nation(as they perhaps did in the case of “crony targeting” in Operation AlliedForce). If so, practitioners of aerial coercion may want to exploit fac-tionalism in a different way than May suggests.Dr. May’s theory, after all, minimizes an obvious point – a change inleadership or political behavior (or both) may be the consequence ofrelative risk calculations made by a leader who sees internal and externalthreats as equally important and credible. If both types of threats have thesame weight, then one can argue the following: 1) leaders are coerciblewhen the threats against their personal or political survival are greaterfrom external sources than internal sources; 2) leaders are not coercible if


the threat from internal sources is higher than external sources; and 3) leaders are not coercible when the risks of compliance are equal to therisks of noncompliance.80 Obviously, these conclusions clash with Dr.May’s indirect approach. They assume that serious internal challenges toa leader’s power and authority will only stiffen his or her resolve.

If the above is true, air planners should not indirectly aid and abet disaf-fected groups of “pessimists.” Instead, they should attempt to raise theperceived external risks to a leader’s personnel and political survival to ahigher level than the perceived internal risks.81 The logic of this approachis simple – if hostile leaders confront both external and internal threats,they will try to reduce those threats that they have the most control over,including the elimination of opposition groups. Seen from this perspec-tive, internal factions actually inhibit a leader’s willingness to complywith external goals – i.e., external demands “will succeed only when con-ditions are safe for the leader to be coerced, and that means lower relativeinternal risks of compliance.”82 Thus, the external actor must do theopposite of what Dr. May recommends. The actor must not rely onunmanageable internal “pessimists” to coerce an opponent to behaveproperly. Nor should he or she allow the perceived internal threats to anenemy rise to a level equal to or higher than external threats. If they do,calculated intransigence and repression is more likely to occur than achange in leadership or policy.

But if internal opposition within an enemy nation actually impedespolitical change, is there a viable external, leadership-oriented optionavailable instead? In fact, there are two immediate options worth consid-ering, as advocated by George Quester and John Warden (see furtherbelow for Warden).

In the first case, we have George Quester’s “expectancy hypothesis,” asexplored by Martin Fracker.83 The foundations of the hypothesis are asfollows: 1) the expectations of those who experience an air attack aremore important – as psychological variables – than their capacity (andwillingness) to endure pain, and 2) information that comes as a surprisehas greater emotional impact than unsurprising data.84 With these twopropositions firmly established, Quester’s “expectancy hypothesis” sug-gests that if the ferocity of an air attack exceeds the expectations of those


attacked, they might suffer a psychological defeat and abandon futurehostilities.85 Naturally, Quester’s hypothesis raises multiple questions,including a number of which also apply to Dr. May’s provisional theory.What is the threshold that triggers feelings of despair and defeat in anopponent? How much bombardment is too much? Are there otherfactors – cultural values, the nature of the government, political objec-tives, the dynamics of war termination – that raise or lower the thresholdof your opponent’s resolve? Lastly, how long will the shock of exceededexpectations last, and thus possibly impact political behavior?86 Thesequestions confirm that the cross-cultural and psychological impacts of airbombardment are still not totally understood. Nevertheless, to disruptthe psychological expectations of leadership elites may bear fruit, asmight Dr. Janis’s previously highlighted approach.

The discussion in the second part of this article had a dual purpose. Notonly did it provide an analytic tool and points of reference for buddingtheorists to consider when developing their own thinking, it alsoemployed the same tool to schematize 13 previously developed theoriesof airpower (or alternately, four schools of thought). In the latter case, thetext paid particular attention to the possibilities and problems reflectedin the ideas of Irving Janis, Thomas Schelling, and Ernest May. Theseindividuals are noteworthy not only for what they said and when theysaid it, but also for what they represented. They symbolized an evolvingrecognition that airpower was much more than a blunt, destruction-centered instrument of total war. Instead, it had the potential to functionas a tool that deterred, compelled, and coerced others in increasingly dis-criminate ways.

However, as important a philosophic shift as this belief represented, itwas civilian theorists who were largely responsible for its developmentand popularization. The reason for this predicament was that airmen hadceased to function as theorists in the way we had come to know Douhet,Mitchell, Slessor, and members of the Bomber Mafia as theorists. Theyhad forgotten, for example, that theory provides compact descriptions,clues for explanations, and tools for better work.87 They had forgottenthat it helps trace the different tendencies that potentially exist in a situ-ation; that it points out the different conditions that make it possible forone tendency to prevail over another; and that it helps assess the proba-


bility of one condition or tendency prevailing over another.88 Finally,they had forgotten that theory:

Allows a senior commander to break free from the constrainingbonds of petrified instruction, obsolete doctrine, and slavishadherence to ‘how we fought the last war.’ It helps the warfightershape developing situations; it lets the leader dictate and act, notreact … it determines one’s warfighting style, which in turndrives one’s doctrine. A nation’s doctrine [then] determines thetype, size, and character of its force structure; the nature, quality,discipline, and morale required of its personnel; and the type ofsupport and direction needed from political authority.89

This form of amnesia (and aphasia, for that matter) was certainly true inthe case of United States, where “blue suiters” failed to improve upon,refine, or even evolve beyond the great legacy of the U.S. Army Air CorpsTactical School – high altitude precision daylight bombardment – untilJohn Boyd’s mature work on decision-cycle dominance appeared in the1980s.90 However, Boyd had retired by the time his ideas really took off,and his interests were never exclusively air-centric. The latter distinctionbelongs to John Warden, who as an active duty USAF officer not onlymade major contributions to aerospace power thinking in his own right,but who can also function as a convenient symbol for the quiet revolu-tion that occurred in air and space power thinking in the mid- to late-1980s, thanks to forward-looking airmen such as Generals Mike Dugan,John “Mike” Loh, Perry Smith, and others. It is for these reasons that thisarticle will next focus on Colonel Warden as its representative thinker forthe 1980s and early 1990s. Before discussing his ideas, however, it isabsolutely essential to put them in context – i.e., to tell the story of lossand recovery in post-World War II American airpower theory.

US Airpower Theory During the Cold War – In and Out of the Wilderness During the Cold War, the theoretical foundations of the U.S. Air Forceremained the same as they had during World War II. An additional (andmajor) assumption did appear, however – airpower involved not onlystrategic (and conventional) assaults against an opponent’s economy, italso had a growing role to play in general and tactical nuclear warfare,


general army support, and counterinsurgency operations. This growth inresponsibilities was not a neutral development. Instead, it was a symptomof what would become a severe problem – airmen abandoned their workin theory and doctrine in order to become mere advocates of particularweapon systems. Let us look at how this happened in detail.

Prior to 1960, there were three distinct reasons for the U.S. Air Force’sretreat from further conceptual development: 1) the inability of the ser-vice to develop comprehensive doctrine; 2) the fixation of Curtis LeMayand Strategic Air Command (SAC) on the “how” of targeting rather thanthe “why” of strategy; and 3) the transformation of strategic bombard-ment theory, as first defined by the Air Corps Tactical School, into deter-rence theory.91

In the first case, postwar Air Force leaders shrank from the opportunityto formalize air theory into doctrine, and thus build a bridge between thetwo. Individuals like Major General Charles Chauncey, deputy chief ofthe Air Staff, feared that any attempt to update War Department FieldManual 100–20, Command and Employment of Air Power (1943), wouldalienate the Army and Navy, and thus derail attempts to create a separateair force.92 When in 1947 the Air Force did decide to formalize itsthinking, it confronted three major problems.

First, those assigned to update FM 100–20 claimed they had little tobuild on, despite the legacy of the Air Corps Tactical School. In theiropinion:

The Air Force had been ‘organized and operated as a result ofideas existing in the minds of a very few men’ that had ‘neverbeen well stated’ and had ‘never been brought together andorganized into a complete and logical form’ nor ‘explained insuitable terms bearing the sanction of official approval’.93

The claim was true. Millard F. Harmon, Assistant Commandant of theTactical School from 1938–40, once admitted to General George C.Marshall that “there is so much of what we teach that has never beendocumented …”94


Second, those charged with transforming theory into doctrine lacked theskills necessary for the job. An appalled Muir Fairchild found that his AirUniversity planners were unable to produce draft manuals that werecomprehensive and yet easily understood. The completed manuals were,in the words of Major General John Barker, “stilted, expressionless, andto a considerable extent meaningless.”95

Third, the responsibility of transforming theory into doctrine, althoughinitially performed by Air University, spread to the Air Staff and themajor commands. The latter developed their own “doctrines” and wereloath to relinquish that responsibility. Tactical Air Command, for example,disliked Air University’s emphasis on the indivisibility of airpower and ontheater-level (rather than tactical-level) air forces. It also argued, in theguise of the USAF Air-Ground Operations School, that no organizationshould “surrender its basic doctrine willingly, or shift from a major tosubordinate role, unless it is consulted beforehand and is prepared toaccept as an emergency measure such overriding doctrine.”96 Notsurprisingly, this type of internal bickering led to a serious lack ofstandardization within the Air Force.

The above problems meant that Air Force Manual 1–2, United States AirForce Basic Doctrine, did not appear until April 1953, and then only afterfive painstaking years of effort.97 The manual did not aggressivelyreaffirm the industrial web theory developed by the Air Corps TacticalSchool and its wartime successors. Instead, it stressed broad principles ofairpower employment, to include centralized offensive operations by anindependent air force against strategic “heartland” and “peripheral”targets. These principles, which were really no more than a collection ofworking propositions, reappeared in the 1955 revision of AFM 1–2. Therevised manual claimed that the U.S. Air Force had no equal; that air-power played a vital role throughout the spectrum of internationalconflict, including conflicts other than general war; and that America’sair strength worked best as an instrument of deterrence or political per-suasion.98 Significantly, AFM 1–2 did not make these claims at theexpense of the other military services. The language of the ten-pagemanual was sufficiently ambiguous and joint operations-centered toavoid any complaints. Yet because of its empty prose, and focus on broadprinciples and propositions, AFM 1–2 ultimately failed to transform


theory into doctrine. As a result, the thousands of fliers that entered theAir Force during the 1950s remained largely ignorant of the theoreticaldebates that had preceded them. Instead of grappling with the theoriespreviously listed in Figure 6, and attempting to improve them, they eitherfocused on the immediate tactical problems at hand, first in Korea andthen in Vietnam, or they yielded to the dogmatic vision of Curtis LeMay.

If substandard operations manuals illustrated the growing intellectualpoverty of the U.S. Air Force in the 1950s, so did Curtis LeMay, asupreme pragmatist who claimed that the “Bomber Mafia” of the AirCorps Tactical School had taught him nothing.99 As commander ofStrategic Air Command, LeMay promoted the lethal fiction thattargeting was a synonym for strategy. As a result, a schism developed inthe 1950s between strategic theory and actual planning.100 Strategictheory, as developed by civilian academics like Bernard Brodie, HermanKahn, William Kaufman and Albert Wohlstetter, did influence U.S.policy makers, but it had little impact on SAC, which merely adapted anew way of war (nuclear) to an old doctrine (precision strategicbombardment).101 SAC targeteers largely ignored the civilian theoristsand focused on developing increasingly mechanical (and elaborate)targeting plans for nuclear war. They could do so because SAC had clout.Postwar economic pressures made the nuclear option a politicallyattractive one, and the public did see nuclear weapons as a “magic bullet”solution for thorny political problems. Additionally, SAC was a nearlyautonomous unified military command that controlled the NationalStrategic Target List and major intelligence resources. There was nothingto prevent LeMay and company from confusing bureaucratic self-interestwith national survival, which they readily did.102

The SAC targeteers used intelligence estimates as a weapon to justifyhuge increases in appropriations. More money meant a larger nuclearstockpile. A larger stockpile justified an expanded target list, which thenrequired a larger bomber force. A larger force, in turn, needed morenuclear bombs. The circular logic used to overlay men and machines overa target list thus became a sorry substitute for creative thinking. Theinspired theoreticians of the past (Kenneth Walker, Donald Wilson,Haywood Hansell and others) now yielded to the “techno-twits” of theatomic age, who concentrated on weapons development and the


mechanics of target identification and destruction (two preoccupationsthat often focus on the tactical level – the “how” level – of war).103 As aresult, civilian theories of nuclear warfare dominated Air Force thinkingby 1961.

Lastly, the Air Force of the 1950s lost its theoretical vigor because strate-gic bombardment theory evolved into deterrence theory. The end beganwith the New Look, a policy designed by the Eisenhower administrationto deter a wide variety of Sino-Soviet threats, including nuclear attack.What made the New Look different was that it was a top down policychange promoted by civilian elites. Yet, to Air Force leaders who wereincreasingly unable (or unwilling) to distinguish the concept of strategicair attack from nuclear war, the introduction of the New Look did notpose a threat.

Carl Spaatz, Thomas White, Nathan Twining, Curtis LeMay, and othersbelieved that the American theory of high altitude daylight precisionbombardment had succeeded in World War II, and they saw the NewLook as a mere elaboration and validation of previously developedthinking.104 LeMay, for example, argued into the 1960s that basic AirForce doctrine had remained consistent and generally unchanged sincethe formation of the Army’s semi-independent GHQ Air Force in1935.105 Because of such thinking, the theory of precision strategicbombardment, first developed by the ACTS “Bomber Mafia” in the1930s and subsequently modified for nuclear warfare, remained a corebelief. Yet, if the theory filled an intellectual void it did so at a price.

The transformation of airpower theory into deterrence theory, and theuse of deterrence to justify exceptionally large Air Force budgets in the1950s, did nothing to fix three problems that lingered in the service: 1) the conversion of theory into doctrine, tactics, and concepts ofemployment remained unsteady and of questionable value, particularlyin early doctrinal manuals; 2) the assumption that targeting and strategywere synonyms for each other became dogma, particularly in StrategicAir Command; and 3) Air Force leaders committed themselves to adeterrence-based theory of strategic bombardment that was not compre-hensive enough to address all the ends and means of airpower, as pain-fully illustrated by the air war in Vietnam.106


In the 1960s, the already failing capacity of the Air Force to theorizeabout airpower suffered two additional (and long-term) blows. First, itslong-standing assumptions about independent bombardment wentunchallenged during the Vietnam War, especially since it concentratedonly 6.7% of its missions on “strategic” assaults against a nation that wasneither modern nor industrialized.107 The service’s focus was over-whelmingly tactical; 75% of Air Force missions occurred in SouthVietnam and included a wide variety of tasks – close air support, airliftmissions, search and rescue operations, etc.108 And yet, despite thetactical nature of the air war, American airmen sought to support limitedpolitical ends with a strategy associated with unlimited military means.109

They had few opportunities, and those they had ultimately failed.110

Nevertheless, Air Force leaders like John Vogt, commander of 7th AirForce, continued to believe in past principles, particularly since the“strategic” air war had been episodic and narrow in scope. Rather thanquestion ACTS-inspired dogma (Curtis LeMay once defined it as “let’sclean up the manure pile, [and] not swat the flies”), they fixated onassigning blame. They alternatingly blamed the media, cowardly (i.e.,treasonous) civilian leaders, who failed to use airpower properly,111 orunconventional warfare itself, which was dismissed as an atypical experi-ence in the profession of arms. By playing the blame game, however,Vogt and other air leaders ignored the confusion that existed betweenends and means in the war. They confused efficiency – “sortie rates,number of bombs dropped, supplies airlanded, and how quickly or howeconomically airpower could perform tasks” – with effectiveness, whichwas measurable only in terms of the actual impact airpower had on theenemy’s willingness to fight.112 Stated differently, our air leaders confusednumbers with strength, they confused technical sophistication withmission effectiveness, and they misunderstood the role of human factorsin war. In part, they committed these errors in the name of an ACTS-based theory that became part mythology and part theology after WorldWar II.

If the Vietnam War did not jolt airmen back to the theoretical and doc-trinal drawing board, it did leave the Air Force with a diversity of endsand means. “The end, rather than striking at the heart of the enemy,became striking at the enemy anywhere. The means came to include notjust strategic bombers but tactical fighters as well as military transport,


missile, and space systems.”113 As a result of this newfound diversity, twothings happened.

First, the long-standing assumption that airpower theory and aircraftwere one and the same finally came to an end. Air leaders now had achoice to make – they could focus on concepts of airpower supported bymultiple means, or they could neglect theory and concentrate on pre-serving manned aircraft as the preferred instrument of war. The airmen,according to the late RAND analyst Carl Builder, “revealed – throughtheir decisions more than their words – that their true affection was notfor the theory of airpower, but for the airplane.”114 In other words, themeans became the ends. Airmen did not quarrel over air theory or doc-trine per se; instead, they quarreled over the mechanics of air combat –missiles versus aircraft, manned versus unmanned systems, and spaced-based versus air-breathing platforms. As a result, the institutional AirForce began to “fractionate into factions,” and each faction promoted itsown aircraft, weapon systems, and organizations.115

The breaking apart of the Air Force then contributed to a second prob-lem; the center of power in the service shifted from Strategic AirCommand to Tactical Air Command. From 1960 through 1975, and formultiple reasons, SAC lost approximately 109,000 airmen, 2,480 air-craft, and 37 air bases.116 TAC, in contrast, gained 27,185 men andretained 1,633 aircraft (25 percent more than SAC). Further, by 1975fighter-oriented generals headed 10 of the Air Force’s 15 major com-mands.117 They found a sympathetic leader in General George S. Brown,the Air Force Chief of Staff. Brown’s background paralleled the growingdiversity of Air Force missions. He had first-hand experience in strategicbombardment, air superiority, and close air support (particularly whenhe served as General Creighton Abrams’s Deputy for Air Operations inVietnam). As a result, Brown was more than familiar with tactical airoperations and their growing importance in roles and missions debates.

The consequences of the above trends were real enough. First, they aggra-vated the intellectual drift of an organization now split into “strategic”and “tactical” camps. The Air Force no longer had a sense of communi-ty or an integrated, unifying vision. Second, the major commandsbecame semiautonomous fiefdoms that tied their fortunes to weapon sys-


tems rather than comprehensive theories or doctrines of airpower. (Theynow largely focused on hardware.) Third, fighter-oriented airmen con-tinued to worship at the altar of strategic bombardment, but frequentlywith the detached, empty formality of a nonbeliever. The focus increas-ingly shifted to conventional war in Europe, as illustrated by the 1975version of Air Force Manual 1–1. Like its predecessors, the manual con-tinued to emphasize the deterrence value of strategic airpower in anuclear role, but it also acknowledged the growing importance of tacticalair forces in theater conventional warfare. The emphasis on tactical airforces, in turn, coincided with the introduction of the U.S. Army’sAirLand Battle Doctrine (ALB). According to the Army, if the Air Forcecould not provide itself with a truly comprehensive theory of airpower,then the Army would, even if it refused to recognize conventionalstrategic air attack as a formal mission.

With the introduction of AirLand Battle Doctrine in 1975, Armyinfluence spread, as illustrated by the 1978 version of Tactical AirCommand Manual 2–1. On the one hand, the manual promoted ortho-doxy. It claimed that the primary role of tactical airpower was deterrence,but should deterrence fail, the Air Force had the unilateral ability to winwars. On the other hand, the manual made a major concession to theArmy. It abandoned the hierarchy of tactical air missions first establishedby FM 100–20 in World War II. Instead of arguing that air superioritytook precedence over any other mission, TACM 2–1 now stated that“Success in any armed conflict may require tactical air forces to performcounter air, close air support, and interdiction operations simultaneously …”118 The manual, with caveats, committed the Air Force to sup-port “engaged surface forces” whenever necessary. As a result, TACM 2–1contributed, unwittingly or not, to the growing, fractious influence ofAirLand Battle Doctrine within the Air Force.

Support for ALB also came from other quarters. A significant number ofairmen, shaped by their tactical, fighter-oriented experiences in Vietnam,readily backed the doctrine. They found its mid-1980s emphasis on air-ground cooperation at the theater level persuasive. General CharlesDonnelly, for example, took the first step and agreed that airpower was“a theater-level concept,” and that airmen had to think, plan, and trainfrom a theater-level perspective.119 TAC commander Robert Russ took


the second step and subsequently observed that “Outside of strategic airdefense, everything that tactical air does [in a theater] directly supportsthe airland battle.”120

Given the growing impact of ALB, did the 1979 and 1984 versions ofAir Force Manual 1-1 confront the challenges the doctrine represented?Both versions were actually cautious in their response. In particular, theinfamous “comic book” edition of 1979 contained “generalities, unsub-stantiated assertions and irrelevant quotations” that restated, yet again,familiar themes (airmen must strike enemy industrial centers, etc.).121

Theorization by the Air Force was certainly a thing of the past.122 By themid-1980s, the service had a fundamentally tactical and operationalorientation to airpower, despite its continued strategic nuclear role. Thetactical-operational orientation, however, now depended on a theoreticaland doctrinal framework provided by the U.S. Army. This state of affairscontinued until the 1980s, when a new group of airmen appeared andargued that the Air Force was more than airborne artillery or support forthe Army. In their opinion, the service had lost its way. It had lost its his-torical, theoretical, and doctrinal bearings, unlike the Army, with itsAirLand Battle Doctrine, and even the Navy, with what was then itsMaritime Strategy. What the Air Force needed was a “unifying theme”around which to develop a “suitable strategic calculus.”123 Beginning inthe mid-1980s, Air Force officers like Colonel John Warden began todevelop such a theme.

The New Aerospace Revolution and Colonel John Warden124

America’s defeat in Vietnam did inspire self-criticism in its military,although one could argue that the U.S. Air Force lagged behind the otherservices. Over time, however, some Air Force leaders concluded that theyhad not been Clausewitzian enough in their thinking. They had tried tofight a conventional war, with its emphasis on sortie rates and other mis-measures of merit, against what were largely insurgents. Reciprocally,they had neglected the subtle politico-military dimensions of an overtlypolitical war.125

Like the Marine Corps, therefore, the American Air Force’s reaction toVietnam was “a return to the basics.” For example, seminars on Carl von


Clausewitz appeared in the Air War College curriculum for the first time.In turn, warrior-scholars like Perry Smith, David MacIsaac, ThomasFabyanic, and Alan Gropman, to name just a few, argued that air strategywas actually a “mental tapestry of intentions” frustrated by the unpre-dictability of war. They also concluded that airmen should not subscribeto individual theories of airpower, particularly those that overstressed theimportance of technology. Instead, they should contemplate a variety oftheories, and thus avoid the false certainties that beclouded air plannersin Vietnam. Lastly, the reformers argued that whatever theories airmendid adopt, they should apply them only in a gross fashion. Like Moltkethe Elder, they claimed that each war is unique, that an enemy’s vulner-abilities are culture-specific, and that they are often identifiable only afterthe fact.

By his own admission, John Warden initially succumbed to the abovetrends. He questioned his earlier faith in technology and concentrated onthe psychological and political dimensions of war. However, he increas-ingly became uncomfortable with the mystical, romantic dimensions ofthe “Clausewitz Mafia.” Clausewitz was right when he talked about fog,friction, and morale; he was right, though, in a time when:

… communications were almost non-existent; weapons had littlemore range or accuracy than those of the Roman legions; mostmovement was at a walking pace; battles were won or lostdepending on the outcome of tens of thousands of almost personalencounters between soldiers who could see each other when theyfired; and when war was largely confined to the clash of men orships at a limited point in time and space.126

In Napoleonic warfare it was impossible to separate the physical from theintangible dimensions of war, although the latter was “to the physical asthree is to one.” Warden argued, however, that with the advent of stealthtechnology and precision guided munitions, the equation had changed –the physical and intangible elements of war were now at least co-equal.127

In fact, we could now put the intangibles of war – chance and morale,fog and friction – into a distinct category, separate from the physical.According to Warden:


In today’s world strategic entities, be they industrial state orguerilla [sic] organization, are heavily dependent on physicalmeans. If the physical side of the equation can be driven close tozero, the best morale in the world is not going to produce a highnumber on the outcome side of the equation. Looking at thisequation, we are struck by the fact that the physical side of theenemy is, in theory, perfectly knowable and predictable.Conversely, the moral side – the human side – is beyond therealm of the predictable in a particular situation becausehumans are so different one from another. Our war efforts,therefore, should be directed primarily at the physical side.128

The above quotations illustrate three key points about John Warden’svision of war. First, Warden represents a necessary correction to the post-1975 overemphasis on the psychological and moral dimensions of airwarfare. Put another way, the Clausewitzian revival of the late 1970syielded mixed results. Yes, it revived three-dimensional strategic thinkingin a service littered with “bombs-on-target” pragmatists. On the otherhand, it both promoted and reflected distinct forms of theoreticalnihilism. There were airmen who felt that detailed, systematictheorization was futile, if not outright irrelevant. They argued that airtheory and strategy was not universal, and that it required constantimprovisation on an ad hoc basis. Further, military reformers like JeffRecord, Bill Lind, and others questioned the relative importance of tech-nology in war. They stressed quantity as well as quality in weaponsdevelopment. Technology was important, the reformers argued, but itwas no panacea.

John Warden flirted with the above ideas, but he and like-minded airmenultimately returned to their service’s Positivist and Progressivist roots –i.e. they developed new sets of working propositions (or key assump-tions) that were significantly more optimistic than the gloomy beliefs ofthe post-1975 Clausewitzians. Where as the latter were obvious reincar-nations of 19th century anti-rationalists, Warden and others beganemphasizing the utopian art of the possible. Figures 7 and 8 highlightsome of the optimistic assumptions they developed and activelypromoted about independent and joint airpower.


1. Independent airpower deters, constrains, or eliminates enemy options via surveillance and air-space dominance.

2. It directly attacks enemy strategy(ies) and weaknesses(COGs).

3. It disrupts or destroys hostile operations through pre-cision strikes against an enemy’s instruments of power.

4. It achieves enough attack intensity -- through simulta-neous operations at all levels of war – to limit enemyadaptations or substitutions.

5. It minimizes, in significant ways, collateral damage,casualties, and unintended consequences.

6. It enables friendly forces to operate within an oppo-nent’s decision-making cycle.

8. It denies an opponent’s war aims.

9. It significantly reduces an opponent’s capacity to resistyour will.

Figure 7: Nine Strengths of Independent Airpower

At the same time Warden determined he ought to “fail better” (in SamuelBeckett’s words). He began to stress repeatedly that war is both a mentaland physical activity. He rejected the Clausewitzian dictum that “Nodegree of technical development and scientific calculation will overcomethe human dimension in war.”129 Instead, Warden emphasized anew thatall opponents depend on physical resources to exert their will. If thesephysical resources disappear or are unavailable, moral factors alone cannotcarry the day (as the great advocate of fighting spirit, Ardant Du Picq, dis-


1. Airpower in a joint environment reduces casualties, costs, risks, and follow-on commitments by offeringmore economical substitutes for surface actions.

2. It directly and independently engages an opponent, farand near.

3. It provides a theater-level perspective on campaigns asa whole.

4. It shapes and determines the conditions in which sur-face forces operate.

5. It shapes the course, tempo, and outcome of all oper-ations in a theater.

Figure 8: Five Strengths of Airpower in a Joint Setting

covered when a well-placed artillery shell made short work of him in theFranco-Prussian War). The tangible components of war matter just asmuch as the intangible components, Warden opined, if not more so.

Third, the optimistic, progress-oriented Warden not only emphasizes thephysical nature of war, he also believes that precision guided munitionsmake future wars largely knowable and predictable. Past wars were “prob-ability events” where opponents saturated each other with munitions andhoped to kill enough men to trigger a retreat or surrender. In short,“Probability warfare was chancy at best. It was unpredictable, full of sur-prise, hard to quantify, and governed by accident.”130

With the growing use of precision weapons in Desert Storm, however,war moved into the predictable.131 Strategic airpower can now, in thewords of Edward Luttwak, “paralyze governments, incapacitate armies,and destroy valuable assets at will.”132 And since “all countries look aboutthe same at the strategic and operational level” of war, in the future wewill be able to accurately predict weapons effects and munitions require-ments in any conflict.


Lastly, John Warden’s emphasis on technology and precision directlychallenges the long-standing progressive belief that war is becoming anincreasingly inefficient and outdated political tool. In other words,Warden believes airpower is the quintessentially American form of war,and that it can achieve quick, relatively bloodless victories in wars.133 Inthis vision, air warfare ceases to be an unconscionably blunt instrumentor political aberration. Instead, it becomes a supple way for the UnitedStates to maintain its dominance, and “If the US is to maintain its dom-inance, it must maintain an aura of invincibility. In other words, itshould never lose.”134

In the late 1980s and early 1990s, Warden combined the above beliefsinto a series of working propositions that acted as foundation stones fora modern theory of airpower. The working propositions were as follows:

1) All organizations are fragile at the strategic level. As a result, they aresubject to compellence and coercion.

2) Attacking enemy systems is preferable to attacking their componentparts.

3) It is fatal to lose strategic and operational-level air superiority.

4) Strategic air attack is an important component of modern conflicts;it usually ignores enemy military forces or discounts the utility oftargeting them.

5) Parallel warfare creates devastating effects (i.e., airmen can nowassault a wide variety of targets simultaneously rather than serially.Simultaneity, in turn, compresses combat operations in time andspace. The enemy’s ability to react collapses, and strategic paralysissets in. As a result, entropy is the end point of air attacks.

6) Information at the strategic and operational levels of war is critical(i.e., information dominance is essential in serial and parallel warfare.)

7) Precision weapons are valuable; they minimize or “turn down” theimpact of fog and friction in war.


8) Stealth and precision weaponry have redefined the principles ofmass, maneuver and surprise. A small number of weapons can nowcreate their own mass. Further, mass and maneuver are no longercompeting principles of airpower--each principle now complementsthe other.

9) Airpower can provide the shock effect previously reserved for land-based armor and artillery. (It can, as demonstrated in Kosovo andAfghanistan, provide the “killing stroke”).

10) The application of effective asymmetric force is now viable.

11) Surface forces at the operational level of war are fragile; they requireelaborate and wide-ranging organizational support. They also requirewide-ranging logistics support.

12) The aerial “occupation” of a country is now possible (this assertion,as can be imagined, was one of Warden’s more controversial ones).

13) Americans dislike large casualties on either side of a conflict (espe-cially in limited wars by limited means by limited ends). The valueof stealth and precision guided munitions is that they are “clean” –they help minimize the brutality of war. Further, they typically con-tribute to the strategic paralysis of an opponent rather than his or herdestruction.

14) We are at the beginning of a Military-Technical Revolution (subse-quently renamed the Revolution in Military Affairs); it will perpetuateitself indefinitely. As a result, the U.S. military must stay one mili-tary-technical revolution ahead of its closest competitors (but mostlogically in particular systems).135

The above propositions buttressed up Warden’s Five Rings Model ofstrategic (and operational) air warfare, which he developed in the late1980s and then with his follow-up “System of Systems” concept(1992–1995).

In both approaches, the point of a strategic air attack is twofold – to


cause “such changes to one or more parts of the enemy’s physical systemthat the enemy decides to adopt our objectives,” or to make it physicallyimpossible for anyone to mount effective opposition.136 The target ofsuch an attack, however, is the entire enemy system, and not just militaryforces. “We must think of the enemy as a system composed of numeroussubsystems,” Colonel Warden argued, “and if we address the systemproperly, its military forces will be left as a useless appendage,” unsup-ported by other sources of power.137 In short, both the Five Rings andSystem of Systems Models advocate an “inside out” approach to war.They are updated versions of the classic air theories of the past, whichadvocated leaping over an opponent’s defenses and striking at his or hervital centers.

For John Warden, however, the ultimate COG has never been in doubt,regardless of the permutations in his thinking. Since all strategic systemsrelied on human beings to guide and direct them,

The most critical ring is the command ring because it is theenemy command structure, be it a civilian … or a general …,which is the only element of the enemy which can make conces-sions, that can make the very complex decisions that are neces-sary to keep a country on a particular course, or that can directa country at war.138

Given the importance of leadership, the essence of air warfare is thereforeto apply intolerable pressure against an opponent’s command structure,either civil or military (see Figure 9). The pressure will then lead to achange in enemy leaders, a change in their policies, or the isolation oftheir policy(ies) from the enabling instruments of national power.Airmen can accomplish this objective, Warden argued, by employing adecapitation strategy, which involves, to be quite blunt about it, killingspecific enemy leaders, or isolating them from their political-militarybase.139 Parallel warfare on multiple fronts can enhance this process bycompressing military operations in time and space. The result, if weapply the Second Law of Thermodynamics to warfare, is strategicparalysis. Enemy leaders (or their successors) can either suffer its deva-stating effects, or they can make concessions and/or change their politicalbehavior before entropy sets in.


Theorist Political Outcome Target Set(s) Mechanism

Janis Change Policies Leadership Near-Miss or Population Experiences

Schelling Change Policies Population/ Future Costs Military and/ and Risks or Leadership Calculations

May Change Leaders Political Pit FactionsOr Policies Leadership Against Each

Other

Warden Change or Leadership + Decapitation/Neutralize Leader(s) Four Rings Strategic

Paralysis

Figure 9: Four Theories of Aerial Coercion

Warden’s five rings and system of systems approach naturally leads tosome obvious questions. Is the composite model too mechanistic, forexample? Of course. Is it an example of technological determinism? Yes,but Warden does try to infuse some flexibility into his theory. He admitsthat the individual importance and resiliency of his systems varies fromone society (and one historical period) to another. Second, he agrees thatit is extremely difficult to operate directly and successfully against single-leader states or organizations. Consequently, it is normally necessary toattack an opponent’s inner rings in aggregated ways – leadership, organ-ic essentials, and infrastructure – to induce strategic paralysis and changepolitical behaviors. Lastly, Warden acknowledges that it may not be pos-sible to reach anything more than populations and military forces bymilitary means. For those states that cannot reach an enemy’s inner


strengths or vulnerabilities, the only options they have are indirectattacks via psychological or unconventional means.

The above disclaimers helped to reconcile late 1980s and early 1990stheory with reality, but even in retirement Colonel Warden remainedcommitted to the idea that targeting leadership is of paramount impor-tance in air warfare. He further retained a mid-Victorian faith in tech-nology and a view of nation-states as largely rational and unitary actors.He minimized the role of cultural and religious factors in his theory,despite his balming words to the contrary. He was quietly hostile towardsthe use of airpower in joint operations, and he ignored the fact thatleadership targeting can quickly degenerate from well-conceived policyinto personal vendetta, as was the case with the American government’s“get General Addid” policy in Somalia.

John Warden dismissed these concerns because he has always been partpropagandist, part theologian, part power-of-positive-thinking guru, andpart genuine aerospace power thinker. (Has there ever been a “pure” air-centered theorist, though?) His belief that devastating (and simultan-eous) air attacks against primarily leadership targets will sever a state ororganization from its “brain,” and subsequently induce strategic paralysismay be beside the point. His true value may actually be symbolic – he’sa symbol of the rationalist tradition in modern military thought, and inairpower thinking in particular; he’s a symbol of the rich theoreticalinsights developed by at least 14 airpower thinkers since World War I;and he’s a symbol of the USAF’s recently recovered intellectual destiny.He is, in short, a symbol of the renaissance in aerospace thinking thatcharacterized the 1990s and continues to this day.

NOTES

Author’s Note: The opinions, conclusions, and recommendations expressed or implied in this arti-cle are solely those of the author and do not necessarily represent the views of the U. S. Air Force,the U.S. Department of Defense, or any other U.S. government agency.


1 Given that World War II largely involved the application or rejection of airpower theories anddoctrines developed in the interwar years, this article will skip over this well-documented period.For representative, tip-of-the-iceberg discussions on how U.S. Air Forces applied, modified, andrejected existing concepts of airpower in the European and Pacific Theaters, see Geoffrey Perret,Winged Victory: The Army Air Forces in World War II (New York: Random House, 1993), andKenneth P. Werrell, Blankets of Fire (Washington and London: Smithsonian Institution Press,1996). For a historiographical review of the period, see Peter R. Faber, “The Anglo-AmericanBombing Campaign in Europe,” in World War Two in Europe, Africa, and the Americas, withGeneral Sources, ed. Lloyd Lee (Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1997).

2 For an in-depth analysis of this battle, which most military historians believe established the cav-alry as the dominant arm of European warfare for the next millennium, see J. F. C. Fuller, AMilitary History of the Western World, 3 vols. (New York: Funk and Wagnalls, 1954–1957;reprint, New York: Da Capo, 1987), Vol. 1: From the Earliest Times to the Battle of Lepanto,261–76.

3 See Charles W. Shrader, “The Influence of Vegetius’ De re militari,” Military Affairs 45(December 1981), 167.

4 One of these rules was that military commanders should seldom resort to the “extremity” of bat-tle. Instead, they should rely on “stratagems and finesse” to defeat an opponent in detail.“General actions” only increased the impact of chance in war, which increasingly defied rationalcontrol. The better option, therefore, was to rely on ancillary methods. They included starving,surprising, or terrorizing an opponent into defeat. See Gérard Chaliand, ed., The Art of War inWorld History (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1994), 209, 217.

5 Charles’ army was “not fundamentally different in composition from that which Napoleon was tolead to the same battlefields three hundred years later.” The army included Swiss pikemen, mountedcavalry, a detachment of bronze artillery, and sufficient funds to pay each soldier a regular wage.See Michael Howard, War in European History (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1976), 19.

6 Shrader, “The Influence of Vegetius’ De re militari,” 170.7 See Azar Gat, The Origins of Military Thought: From the Enlightenment to Clausewitz (Oxford:

Clarendon Press, 1989), 8.8 For a revisionist (and arguable) response to this traditional interpretation of Machiavelli’s

thought, see Timothy R. W. Kubik, “Is Machiavelli’s Canon Spiked? Practical Readings inMilitary History,” The Journal of Military History 61 (January 1997), 7-30.

9 Gunther E. Rothenberg, “Maurice of Nassau, Gustavus Adolphus, Raimondo Montecuccoli,and the ‘Military Revolution’ of the Seventeenth Century,” in Makers of Modern Strategy, ed.Peter Paret, with Gordon Craig and Felix Gilbert (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press,1986), 55–57, 62–63.

10 Gat, The Origins of Military Thought, 16.11 See, for example, Frederick the Great, Die Instruktion Friedrichs des Grossen für seine Generale von

1782; Henry Humphrey Evans Lloyd, The History of the Late War in Germany (1766) andMilitary Memoirs (1781); and Dietritch Adam Heinrich von Bülow, Der Geist des neurenKriegssystems (1799).

12 Quoted in Major Edward S. Johnson, “A Science of War,” The Command and General StaffQuarterly XIV (June 1934), 90.

13 To characterize Newton as an irremediably linear and mechanistic scientist is unfair. As BarryWatts rightfully points out, it was overzealous disciples like Roger Boscovich (A Theory of NaturalPhilosophy Reduced to a Law of Actions Existing in Nature, 1758) and Pierre Simon de Laplace(Philosophical Essay on Probabilities, 1814) that linked the idea of linear predictability with 18th


century mathematical physics. Newton did emphasize causality and long-term patterns, but itwas Boscovich, Laplace, and others who popularized the idea that nature was entirely stable,rigidly deterministic, and required no divine intervention to work properly. See Barry D. Watts,Clausewitzian Friction and Future War, Institute for National Strategic Studies McNair Papers,no. 52 (Washington, D.C.: National Defense University, October 1996), 108–12.

14 R. David Smith, “The Inapplicability Principle: What Chaos Means for Social Science,”Behavioral Science 40 (January 1995), 30; see also Michael Howard, Clausewitz (Oxford: OxfordUniversity Press, 1983), 13.

15 Watts, Clausewitzian Friction and Future War, 23. However, it is important to note that Lloyd –as a theorist – was not as hidebound as his contemporaries. In his Military Memories, for exam-ple, he not only defined warfare as a science caught between “geometry and morale,” he alsomused at length about the psychological dimensions of war. (For example, what inspired menand women to fight? Did emotionalism decrease military efficiency?) Given his interests, onecould argue that Lloyd was a precursor of the military romantics that followed in his wake.

16 According to Professor John Shy, Jomini’s low stature among current students of war is unde-served. He was more than a doltish, thick-witted foil to Carl von Clausewitz. He was an astuteanalyst of Napoleonic warfare who warned that his maxims, principles, and prescriptions werenot holy writ. Nevertheless, they did form the irreducible core of what some have perhaps unfair-ly characterized as a “Betty Crocker” approach to war. Readers should further note that Jomini’spious injunctions against “holy writ” usually appeared at the end of his book chapters, thusrepresenting what one could argue were anticipatory defenses against potential criticisms. SeeJohn Shy, “Jomini,” Makers of Modern Strategy, ed. Peter Paret, with Gordon Craig and FelixGilbert (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1986), 143–85.

17 Quoted from John Lewis Gaddis, “International Relations Theory and the End of the ColdWar,” International Security 17 (Winter 1992/93), 6.

18 Johnson quotes Lord Grey in “A Science of War,” 104. For a highly intriguing but very one-sidedportrait of Clausewitz as a proto-chaos theorist who totally rejected the determinism of Jominiand his fellow rationalists, see Alan Beyerchen, “Clausewitz, Nonlinearity, and theUnpredictability of War,” International Security 17 (Winter 1992–93), 59–90. Beyerchen con-veniently ignores how utterly conventional (i.e., 18th century) Clausewitz’s thinking is in themore mechanical middle books of On War.

19 See Clausewitz, On War, 86.20 Quoted in Antulio J. Echevarria, “Moltke and the German Military Tradition: His Theories and

Legacies,” Parameters XXVI (Spring 1996), 96; see also Peter Paret, Clausewitz and the State: TheMan, His Theories, and His Times (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1976); and CharlesEdward White, “The Enlightened Soldier: Scharnhorst and the Militärische Gesellschaft in Berlin,1801–1805,” Ph.D. dissertation, Duke University, 1986.

21 Quoted in Herbert Rosinski, “Scharnhorst to Schlieffen: The Rise and Decline of GermanMilitary Thought,” Naval War College Review XXIX (Summer 1976), 85.

22 See Helmuth von Moltke, “Doctrines of War,” in War, ed. Lawrence Freedman (Oxford: OxfordUniversity Press, 1994), 220-21.

23 Beyerchen, “Clausewitz, Nonlinearity, and War,” 86; see also Clausewitz, On War, 149.24 Clausewitz, On War, 85-87, 89, 148.25 John Shy and Thomas W. Collier, “Revolutionary Warfare,” in Makers of Modern Strategy, ed.

Peter Paret (Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 1986), 843.26 Beyerchen, “Clausewitz, Nonlinearity, and War,” 59. Clausewitz’s thinking, of course, has its

limitations. For example, his paradigm of war does not adequately consider whether human


violence, in addition to being a continuation of politics by other means, was also a cultural orbiological activity. It does not adequately acknowledge whether nations can stage thoroughlyrational wars in service to thoroughly stupid (and ill-conceived) political ends. Further,Clausewitz’s military romanticism gives short shrift to combined operations between land andsea; coalition warfare (the dominant form of war not only in the 20th century, but especially overthe last decade); the technological, economic, and moral dimensions of war (note, for example,that Clausewitz thinks soldiers are expendable in the service of the state); and guerrilla warfare,revolutionary warfare, or military operations other than war.

27 Clausewitz, On War, 136.28 Members of the “Bomber Mafia” included Robert Olds, Kenneth Walker, Harold Lee George,

Donald Wilson, Robert Webster, Laurence Kuter, Haywood Hansell, and Muir Fairchild.Virtually all of them became influential general officers in the U.S. Army Air Forces duringWorld War II. In turn, the COA and EOU were basically a mix of forward-thinking militaryplanners and civilian economists.

29 Colonel Thomas A. Fabyanic, USAF Ret., “War Doctrine, and the Air War College – SomeImplications for the U.S. Air Force,” Air University Review XXXVII (January-February 1986), 12.

30 Lieutenant Colonel Don Wilson, “Long Range Airplane Development,” November 1938, AirForce Historical Research Agency (AFHRA), Maxwell Air Force Base, Alabama, file no.248.211–17, 5–6.

31 The examples appear in James C. Gaston, Planning the American Air War: Four Men and NineDays in 1941 (Washington, D.C.: National Defense University Press, 1982); Rick Atkinson,Crusade: The Untold Story of the Persian Gulf War (New York: Houghton Mifflin Co., 1993); andGeneral William M. Momyer, Air Power in Three Wars (Washington, D.C.: U.S. GovernmentPrinting Office, 1978). The quotations are from Benjamin S. Lambeth, “Pitfalls in ForcePlanning: Structuring America’s Tactical Air Arm,” International Security 10 (Fall 1985), 92.

32 Count Gianni Caproni, Memorandum on “Air War”, 1917, AFHRA file no. 168.66–2, 2.33 ACTS bomber instructor Muir “Santy” Fairchild was typical. He understood the dangers of

metaphors but still subscribed enthusiastically to the “industrial web” theory of strategicbombardment. See Kenneth Schaffel, “Muir S. Fairchild: Philosopher of Air Power,” AerospaceHistorian 33 (Fall 1986), 167.

34 “Address of Major General Frank M. Andrews Before the National AeronauticalAdministration,” January 16, 1939, AFHRA file no. 248.211–20, 8.

35 Nino Salvaneschi, Let Us Kill the War: Let Us Aim at the Heart of the Enemy, 1917, AFHRA fileno. 168.661–129, 31; Caproni, Memorandum on “Air War”, 2. Because Salvaneschi worked hardto popularize both Douhet’s and Caproni’s thinking in World War I, Let Us Kill the War accu-rately reflects their thinking at the time.

36 Beyerchen, “Clausewitz, Nonlinearity, and War,” 63.37 Quoted in Andrew G. B. Vallance, “The Conceptual Structure of Air Power,” in Air Power:

Collected Essays on Doctrine, ed. Vallance (London: Her Majesty’s Stationery Office, 1990), 1.38 Warden denies this influence, but then again, so do others. In the opinion of this author, who

after 5 long years can speak with some authority on how ideas get diffused and repackaged in thehallways of the Pentagon, these individuals fail to acknowledge that Boyd – who was a tirelessbriefer – did indeed make a major contribution to an entirely new Pentagon zeitgeist on the useforce, particularly in the mid- to late-1970s and 1980s. Other thinkers working in “TheBuilding” then harvested intriguing new ideas out of this environment, recombined and synthe-sized them in unique ways, and lastly pronounced them as something “new.” This typeborrowing – either witting or not – was (and remains) rampant in the Pentagon. Therefore, those


who worked there at the time and subsequently made major contributions to airpower thoughtshould admit their overall debt to someone as disturbingly original as Boyd. Their achievementsare no less respect worthy for having acknowledged the debt they owe. For an intellectualbiography of Colonel Boyd, who indeed proved that uniquely talented individuals can push mas-sive bureaucracies toward desired ends, see Grant T. Hammond, The Mind of War: John Boyd andAmerican Security (Washington and London: Smithsonian Institution Press, 2001).

39 Unfortunately, when it came to the role(s) of military aviation, the U.S. Army and its Air Corpsbegan jousting over actual words – in true “win-lose” fashion – as early as the interwar years. Onthe Army side, for example, Major General R. M. Beck, Jr., Assistant Army Chief of Staff,directed the Air Corps to delete all references to “independent air operations” in a draft versionof Field Manual 1–5, Employment of the Aviation of the Army. A suitable substitute, in Beck’sopinion, was “operations beyond the sphere of influence of surface forces.” See Memo for theChief of Staff, March 29, 1939, 2, in AFHRA file no. 167.5-3 (1936–1939).

40 The following model is the creation of Dr. Robert Pape, who attempted to develop a “valueneutral ordering tool” that emphasized process rather than prescription. (Process-oriented modelsof war are always more “reality inclusive” than those based on content-laden rules or principles.)However, the Pape model does have limitations, as then-Major Tom Ehrhard later observed. Itdid not account for the contexts of strategic and doctrinal planning, for example. It focused onthe most severe applications of aerospace power instead of considering broad range of possibleoptions. And finally, it did not consider “the full range of outcomes which strategists seek toachieve or avoid.“ As a result of these limitations, Ehrhard improved upon Dr. Pape’s model, anda number of these improvements appear here. The resulting framework may continue to rule outdifferent courses of action, but as Don Herzog rightfully observes: “Any vocabulary will down-play certain possibilities, [or] will make them elusive or invisible or presumptively unacceptable.”Embedded within any language, however, are “concepts, even ideological concepts, [that] openup new possibilities we wouldn’t notice without them.” See Robert A. Pape, Jr., Bombing to Win:Air Power and Coercion in War (Ithaca, New York: Cornell University Press, 1996); MajorThomas P. Ehrhard, USAF, Making the Connection: An Air Strategy Analysis Framework (MaxwellAir Force Base, Alabama: Air University Press), 38, 50; and Don Herzog, “Interest, Principle,and Beyond: American Understanding of Conflict,” in Behavior, Culture, and Conflict in WorldPolitics, eds. William Zimmerman and Harold K. Jacobson (Ann Arbor: University of MichiganPress, 1993), 234.

41 See Ehrhard, Making the Connection: An Air Strategy Analysis Framework, 19. 42 Ibid., 50, particularly for the third question in the figure.43 Clausewitz, On War, 586.44 For a discussion of each approach, see Robert A. Pape, Jr., “Coercion and Military Strategy: Why

Denial Works and Punishment Doesn’t,” The Journal of Strategic Studies 15 (December 1992),423–475.

45 Pat A. Pentland, Theater Strategy Development, unpublished manuscript in author’s possession,1993–94, 2–5.

46 Ibid., 3.47 See Major David S. Fadock, USAF, John Boyd and John Warden: Air Power’s Quest for Strategic

Paralysis (Maxwell Air Force Base, Alabama: Air University Press, 1995).48 Major Kevin E. Williams, USAF, “In Search of the Missing Link: Relating Destruction to Outcome

in Airpower Applications” (Maxwell Air Force Base, Alabama: Air University Press, 1994), 5–7.49 See Carl Kaysen, Note on Some Historic Principles of Target Selection (Santa Monica, CA: RAND

Corporation, Project RAND Research Memorandum 189 (RM-189), July 15, 1949.


50 Ibid., 2.51 Ibid., 4.52 Ibid., 5.53 Ibid., 5-6.54 Salvaneschi, for example, claimed that the Allies “must aim, not at the army that fights, but at

the factories of Essen.” See Salvaneschi, Let Us Kill the War, 38.55 For a major discussion of this point, see Irving L. Janis, War and Emotional Stress (Westport,

Connecticut: Greenwood Press, 1951).56 Today’s logical equivalent for “tonnage” is most likely “explosive effect.” See Janis, Air War and

Emotional Stress, 87, 140, 143. See also Constantine Fitzgibbon, The Winter of the Bombs (NewYork: Norton, 1957); Hilton P. Goss, Civilian Morale Under Aerial Bombardment 1914–1939, 2vols. (Maxwell AFB, Alabama: Documentary Research Division, Air University Libraries, AirUniversity, 1948); Jack Hirshleifer, Disaster and Recover: A Historical Survey (Santa Monica, CA:RAND Corporation Research Memorandum (RM) 3079, 1963); Charles Ikle, The Social Impactof Bomb Destruction (Norman, Oklahoma: University of Oklahoma Press, 1958); Hans Rumpf,The Bombing of Germany, trans. Edward Fitzgerald (New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston,1963); and Richard M. Titmuss, Problems of Social Policy: History of the Second World War, UnitedKingdom Civil Series (London: Her Majesty’s Stationery Office, 1950).

57 Janis, Air War and Emotional Stress, 118, 127, 130, 135–37, and Alexander George, “EmotionalStress and Air War – A Lecture Given at the Air War College,” November 28, 1951, 19, inAFHRA File No. K239.716251–65. For additional support that irregular bombing worked bestagainst Germany, see K. W. Yarnold, Lessons on Morale to be Drawn From Effects of StrategicBombing on Germany: With Special Reference to Psychological Warfare, Technical Memorandum,ORO-T-2 (Washington, D.C.: Operations Research Office, October 1949).

58 Janis, Air War and Emotional Stress, 98, 103, 106–107, 144.59 Ibid., 100.60 George, “Emotional Stress and Air War,” 12.61 Ibid., 21. The United States Bombing Survey (USSBS), despite the inconsistencies that exist

between its summary volumes and survey reports, largely supports Professor Janis. One USSBSreport concluded that continuous heavy bombing did not produce decreases in morale propor-tional to the amount of bombing accomplished; it also determined that those who directly expe-rienced the effects of air attack had much lower morale than those who experienced themindirectly. See United States Strategic Bombing Survey, The Effects of Strategic Bombing onGerman Morale, Vol. I (Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1947), 33.

62 Janis, Air War and Emotional Stress, 127.63 Stephen T. Hosmer, Psychological Effects of U.S. Air Operations in Four Wars 1941–1991, (Santa

Monica, California: RAND Corporation, 1996), xv-xxiii; and Group Captain A.P.N. Lambert,RAF, “The Psychological Impact of Air Power Based on Case Studies Since the 1940s,” (Master’sthesis, Cambridge University, 1995), 79–91.

64 Major Jerry T. Sink, “Coercive Air Power: The Theory of Leadership Relative Risk,” Maxwell AirForce Base, Alabama: unpublished essay in the author’s possession, April 1993, 7–8; andEhrhard, Making the Connection: An Air Strategy Analysis Framework, 22–25.

65 Schelling defines the essence of bargaining as follows: it is “the communication of intent, the per-ception of intent, the manipulation of expectations about what one will accept or refuse, theissuance of threats, offers, and assurances, the display of resolve and evidence of capabilities, thecommunication of constraints on what one can do, the search for compromise and jointly desir-able exchanges, the creation of sanctions to enforce understandings and agreements, genuine


efforts to persuade and perform, and the creation of hostility, friendliness, mutual respect, orrules of etiquette.” See Thomas C. Schelling, Arms and Influence (New Haven, CT: YaleUniversity Press, 1966), 136. See also 143 on the issue of holding a threat in reserve.

66 To coerce or compel an adversary with airpower-based threats, however, requires several things.First, any bargaining process requires discrete and qualitative boundaries that both sides can rec-ognize as “conspicuous stopping places, conventions and precedents to indicate what is withinbounds and what is out of bounds … Second, all bargaining must be based on actions, actionsand words, but never words alone. Finally, communications must be simple and form recogniz-able patterns, except in those limited instances where you want to send a deliberately ambiguousmessage. If you do not meet these preconditions, Schelling observes, threat-based (or “vicious”)diplomacy will lack the “high fidelity” it needs to succeed. And if you and your opponent do notcommunicate in the same “language” or “currency,” you both may spin into uncontrolled war-fare. Ibid., 134–35, 164, 166.

67 Ibid., 142.68 Ibid., 175.69 Ibid., 180.70 Ernest May, Lessons of the Past (New York: Oxford University Press, 1976), 134.71 Ibid., 137.72 These nations are typically authoritarian ones, where those in power use “divide and conquer”

tactics to keep potential domestic rivals in check.73 Ibid., 132, 134.74 Ibid., 140–42. Thomas Fabyanic repeats Professor May’s conclusions, although more emphatically,

in “Air Power and Conflict Termination,” in Conflict Termination and Military Strategy: Coercion,Persuasion, and War, eds. Stephen J. Cimbala and Keith A. Dunn (Boulder, Colorado: WestviewPress, 1993), 155. According to Fabyanic, air power destroyed, “beyond any doubt,” the will ofthe Italians and the will and ability of the Japanese to wage war. In both instances, the loss of willthen “brought about a change of government and new leaders who were not committed to a con-tinuation of the war.” Significantly, Fabyanic supports these bald assertions by citing The Lessonsof the Past, i.e., he depends upon the authority of another historian to “prove” his point.

75 Hirschman, “The Search for Paradigms as a Hindrance to Understanding,” 339.76 See Leon Sigal, Fighting to a Finish: The Politics of War Termination in the United States and Japan,

1945 (Ithaca, New York: Cornell University Press, 1988), 1–25; and Robert A. Pape, “WhyJapan Surrendered,” International Security 18(Fall 1993), 154–201.

77 Kenneth Waltz, Theory of International Politics (Reading, Massachusetts: Addison-WesleyPublishing Co., 1979), 189 (emphasis added).

78 Ibid., 191.79 See Charles L. Glaser, Analyzing Strategic Nuclear Policy (Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton

University Press, 1990), 81-82. Despite the original nuclear focus of the questions, they bviouslyapply to conventional air operations as well.

80 See Sink, “Coercive Air Power: The Theory of Leadership Relative Risk,” 2.81 Ibid.82 Ibid., 3.83 See Major Martin L. Fracker, “Psychological Effects of Aerial Bombardment,” Airpower Journal

VI (Fall 1992), 56–-67; and George H. Quester, “The Psychological Effects of Bombing onCivilian Populations: Wars of the Past,” in Psychological Dimensions of War, ed. Betty Glad(Newbury Park, California: Sage Press, 1990), 201–14.

84 Fracker, “Psychological Effects of Bombardment,” 55.


85 Ibid., 59, 65. The attack (or campaign) must typically be massive and unrelenting.86 Ibid., 59, 61-62.87 Major General Charles D. Link, USAF, “An Airman’s Perspective,” transcript in the author’s pos-

session of a presentation given in Washington, D.C., January 7, 1997, 112.88 See Hans Morgenthau, Politics Among Nations: The Struggle for Power and Peace, 5th ed., revised

(New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1978), 22.89 See Commander Joseph A. Gattuso, Jr., USN, “Warfare Theory,” Naval War College Review

XLIX (Autumn 1996), 113.90 For discussions of the U.S. Army Air Corps Tactical School and its unique theory of precision

bombardment, see Peter R. Faber, “Interwar US Army Aviation and the Air Corps TacticalSchool: Incubators of American Airpower,” in The Paths of Heaven: The Evolution of AirpowerTheory, ed. Phillip Meilinger (Air University Press, 1997); Robert T. Finney, History of the AirCorps Tactical School, USAF Historical Studies: No. 100 (Maxwell AFB, AL: Research StudiesInstitute, March 1955); and Thomas H. Greer, The Development of Air Doctrine in the Army AirArm 1917–1941 (Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1985).

91 On the last point, see Lieutenant Colonel Phillip S. Meilinger, “The Problem with Our AirForce Doctrine,” Airpower Journal VI (Spring 1992), 24-31. For a general review of U.S. AirForce doctrinal development, see Lieutenant General John W. Pauley, “The Thread ofDoctrine,” Air University Review XXVII (May–June 1976), 2–10.

92 Robert Frank Futrell, Ideas, Concepts, Doctrine: Basic Thinking in the United States Air Force1907–1960, Vol. 1 (Maxwell Air Force Base, Alabama: Air University Press, December 1989),367.

93 Ibid, 369.94 See Millard F. Harmon, Draft Letter, January 30, 1940, p. 2, in AFHRA file no. 245.01–1.95 Futrell, Ideas, Concepts, Doctrine, Vol. 1, 373. Barker became deputy commander of Air

University in 1949. As Commandant of the Air War College, it was his responsibility to codifyAir Force thinking on airpower.

96 Ibid., 389, 392.97 The first official Air Force dictionary also took five years to produce. The publication, with its

30,000 definitions, appeared as Air Force Regulation 5–32, dated June 4, 1956.98 Futrell, Ideas, Concepts, and Doctrine, Vol. 1, 398–400.99 Known ironically as “the diplomat,” LeMay attended the ACTS in 1939–40.100 See Aaron L. Friedberg, “A History of the U.S. Strategic ‘Doctrine’-1945 to 1980,” Journal of

Strategic Studies 3 (December 1980), 37-71; David Alan Rosenberg, “U.S. Nuclear WarPlanning, 1945–1960,” in Strategic Nuclear Targeting, eds. Desmond Ball and Jeffrey Richelson(Ithaca, New York: Cornell University Press, 1986), 35–56; and Scott D. Sagan, Moving Targets:Nuclear Strategy and National Security (Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press,1989).

101 Peter J. Roman, “Curtis LeMay and the Origins of NATO Atomic Targeting,” The Journal ofStrategic Studies 16 (March 1993), 47.

102 For the dangers of institutional self-interest masquerading as national policy, see Graham T.Allison, Essence of Decision: Explaining the Cuban Missile Crisis (New York: Harper CollinsPublishers, 1971). Allison observes that decision making results “from innumerable and oftenconflicting smaller actions by individuals at various levels of bureaucratic organizations in theservice of a variety of only partially compatible conceptions of national goals … and politicalobjectives.” As a “Model II” organization, SAC’s fixation on targeting reflected the influence ofinternal “procedures and programs” in addition to perceived threats. See Allison, 6.


103 The mistaken belief that targeting was the essence of theory is best illustrated by the develop-ment of the Single Integrated Operations Plan (SIOP), which first appeared in 1960–61 andfocused on preplanning a well-choreographed nuclear assault against the Soviet Union. SeePeter Pringle, SIOP, the Secret U.S. Plan for Nuclear War (New York: Norton, 1983).

104 On the historical continuities between interwar strategic bombing theory and postwar nuclearwarfare and deterrence, see Richard H. Kohn and Joseph P. Harahan, eds., Strategic Air Warfare:An Interview with Generals Curtis E. LeMay, Leon W. Johnson, David A. Burchinal, and Jack J.Catton (Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1988); Michael Sherry, The Rise ofAmerican Air Power (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1987); George Quester, Deterrencebefore Hiroshima (New Brunswick, New Jersey: Transaction Books, 1986); R. J. Overy, “AirPower and the Origins of Deterrence Theory Before 1939,” Journal of Strategic Studies 15(March 1992), 73-101; Roman, “Curtis LeMay and the Origins of NATO Atomic Targeting;”and Barry D. Watts, The Foundations of U.S. Air Doctrine: The Problem of Friction in War(Maxwell Air Force Base, Alabama: Air University Press, December 1984), Chapters 6 and 7 inparticular.

105 See Robert F. Futrell, Ideas, Concepts, Doctrine: A History of Basic Thinking in the United StatesAir Force 1907–1964 (Maxwell Air Force Base, Alabama: Air University Press, 1971), 405.

106 For an opposing view, see Pauly, “The Thread of Doctrine.” Pauly skirts the issue of post-ACTStheory and its reliance on a “one-time revelation from on high.” Instead, he asserts that AirForce doctrine “has been responsive to changing times and philosophies while maintaining aconsistent thread of fundamental principles.” That these principles represent a retreat from ahigher level of activity – the building and testing of competing theories of airpower – goesunacknowledged by Pauly. See 3, 9.

107 John Schlight, review of Crosswinds: The Air Force’s Setup in Vietnam, by Earl H. Tilford, TheJournal of Military History 53 (July 1994), 561.

108 Ibid.109 See Colonel Dennis M. Drew, “Two Decades in the Air Power Wilderness – Do We Know

Where We Are?”, Air University Review XXXVII (September-October 1986), 6–7.110 According to Dr. Mark Clodfelter, airpower was effective only during the conventional phases

of the war, and then only at certain times (i.e., Linebacker II in 1972). Against elusive and self-sufficient insurgents in South Vietnam, the interdiction campaign was ineffective. See MarkClodfelter, The Limits of Airpower (New York: Free Press, 1989). See also Earl H. Tilford, Jr.,Crosswinds: The Air Force’s Setup in Vietnam (College Station: Texas A&M University Press,1993), and Donald J. Mrozek, Air Power and the Ground War in Vietnam (Maxwell AFB, AL:Air University Press, January 1988).

111 See Kohn and Harahan, Strategic Air Warfare, 125–26.112 Robert F. Futrell, Ideas, Concepts, Doctrine: Basic Thinking in the United States Air Force 1907-

1960, Vol. II (Maxwell Air Force Base, AL: Air University Press, December 1989), 322.113 “The Icarus Syndrome,” RAND Research Brief, n.d., 2.114 Karl H. Builder, The Icarus Syndrome: The Role of Air Power Theory in the Evolution and Fate of

the U.S. Air Force (New Brunswick, New Jersey: Transaction Publishers, 1994), 35.115 Ibid.116 Major James M. Ford, Air Force Culture and Conventional Strategic Airpower (Maxwell Air Force

Base, Alabama: School of Advanced Airpower Studies, May 1992), 42–47. See also the UnitedStates Air Force Statistical Digest, produced annually by the Comptroller of the Air Force,Directorate of Data Systems and Statistics.

117 Ibid., 45–46.


118 Tactical Air Command Manual 2–1, Tactical Air Operations, 15 April 1978, para. 1–3. Theauthors of the manual thought new command, control, communications, intelligence, andinteroperability technologies would integrate air operations over the battlefield. As a result, air-craft could perform different missions simultaneously and yet function en masse. Clearly,TACM 2–1 prefigured John Warden’s emphasis on Parallel Warfare.

119 General Charles L. Donnelly Jr., USAF, Ret., “A theater-Level View of Airpower,” AirpowerJournal 1 (summer 1987), 3.

120 Robert D. Russ, “The Air Force, the Army and the Battlefield of the 1990s,” Defense 88(July/August 1988), 12–13. Note the absence of offensive strategic operations in Russ’s state-ment.

121 Drew, “Two Decades in the Wilderness,” 12. For a discussion of the orthodox 1984 version ofAFM 1-1, see Colonel Clifford R. Krieger, “USAF Doctrine: An Enduring Challenge,” AirUniversity Review, XXXV, (September-October 1984), 16–25.

122 Not surprisingly, those involved with the development of doctrine at the time see things differ-ently. Major General Perry Smith, for example, remembers “the superb strategic planning sys-tem that was created in the Air Force in the 1970s …” Unfortunately, one could argue thateffective planning is not a synonym for theoretical or doctrinal vitality. Maj Gen Perry M.Smith (ret.), unpublished letter in the author’s possession to Colonel Phillip Meilinger, Schoolof Advanced Airpower Studies, October 2, 1994, 1–2.

123 Drew, “Two Decades in the Wilderness,” 7.124 John Warden graduated from the U.S. Air Force Academy in 1965 and subsequently flew 266

combat missions as a forward air controller in Southeast Asia. After commanding the 36thTactical Fighter Wing, he returned to the Pentagon in 1988 and eventually served as the AirStaff ’s Deputy Director for Warfighting, Directorate of Plans. During this period ColonelWarden and others helped create the Air Force’s new “Global Reach, Global Power” doctrine.He also headed CHECKMATE, the planning cell that devised the strategic air campaign(INSTANT THUNDER) conducted against Iraq. Subsequent to the Gulf War, ColonelWarden served as a special assistant to Vice President Quayle on technology-related issues, andas commandant of the USAF Air Command and Staff College from 1992–1995.

125 See Andrew F. Krepinevich, The Army and Vietnam (Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins UniversityPress, 1986).

126 Colonel John A. Warden III, USAF, “The Enemy as a System,” Airpower Journal IX (September1995), 42.

127 Warden echoes James Spaight, who claimed that “whatever Napoleon may have said, the mate-rial factors are in … [air] warfare at least as important as the moral.” See James M. Spaight, AirPower in the Next War (London: Geoffrey Bles, 1938), 129.

128 Warden, “The Enemy as System,” 43.129 Fleet Marine Force Manual 1 (FMFM-1), Warfighting (Washington, D.C.: Headquarters

United States Marine Corps, 6 March 1989), 10.130 John A. Warden III, “Thinking Across Historical Discontinuities,” The American Warrior, eds.

Chris Morris and Janet Morris (Stamford, Connecticut: Longmeadow Press, 1992), 204.131 Despite the impressions created by popular media, the Vietnam conflict provided a foretaste of

predictability in war. For a description of early laser-guided munitions and their nascent con-tribution to probability warfare, see Lon O. Nordeen, Jr., Air Warfare in the Missile Age(Washington, D.C.: Smithsonian Institution Press, 1985).

132 Edward Luttwak and Stuart Koehl, The Persian Gulf and the Renaissance of StrategicBombardment, unpublished manuscript in the author’s possession, 1991, Chapter V (“The


Future of Strategic Air Power”), 24. This manuscript reflects Dr. Luttwak’s enthusiastic, largelyuncritical acceptance of Colonel Warden’s theories of airpower immediately after the Gulf War.He later tempered his enthusiasm but continued to believe in the efficacy of aerospace power.

133 John A. Warden III, “Employing Air Power in the twenty-first Century,” in The Future of AirPower in the Aftermath of the Gulf War, eds. Richard H. Schultz, Jr. and Robert L. Pfaltzgraff,Jr. (Maxwell Air Force Base, AL: Air University Press, July 1992), 61.

134 John A. Warden III, “Yugoslavia-Opportunity and Risk,” unpublished memorandum inauthor’s possession, 29 November 1992, 4.

135 A less exhaustive but similar list appears in John A. Warden, III, “Air Theory for the TwentyFirst Century,” in Battlefield of the Future: 21st century Warfare Issues, eds. Barry R. Schneiderand Lawrence E. Grinter (Maxwell Air Force Base: Air University Press, September 1998).

136 Warden, “The Enemy as System” 43.137 Ibid., 2, 14.138 Ibid., 15; see also Warden, “Air Power in the Twenty-first Century,” 62–63, 65, 68.139 According to Robert Pape, the U.S. Air Force unsuccessfully tried all three options in the Gulf

War, and yet neither Saddam Hussein nor 42 other top government/military leaders were cap-tured or killed during the conflict.


Threatening What the Enemy Values:Punitive Disarmament as a CoerciveStrategy

Dr. Karl P. Mueller

The Age of Coercive Air PowerIn the last two decades, coercive air power has been the dominantmilitary tool in American statecraft. During two wars in the Balkans andone against Iraq, a number of smaller raids, prolonged maintenance ofthree no-fly zones, and an assortment of confrontations in which airattacks were threatened but not executed, U.S. leaders have turned toland- and sea-based air power as the instrument of choice for changingthe behavior of international adversaries.2 Although the results of theefforts have been mixed – ranging from expectation-surpassing success inthe Gulf War and Bosnia to the fiasco of the 1998 cruise missile attackon Khartoum – even when mis-applied, U.S. air power has performedwell enough to retain its allure as a politically impressive yet compara-tively low-risk response to serious international crises. For better andworse, there is every reason to expect that the prominence of aerial coer-cion in U.S. foreign policy will persist during the coming decades.

As a result both of the demise of the cold war and the evolution of tech-nology, most significantly the development of flexible and reliableprecision-guided munitions, conventional air power is increasingly beingused in situations other than large-scale wars, although many of itsgreatest successes continue to occur in combined-arms operations. Yetmost theoretical discussions of coercive air power continue to focus onthe longstanding debates among strategic bombing theories that werelargely developed before and during the Second World War, particularlythe choice between launching punitive attacks against civilian targets andattacking an enemy’s armed forces and war production in order to deny

it the hope of victory.3 Moreover, essentially the same strategic conceptsdominate discussions of how best to employ other military and non-military coercive instruments. For these reasons, the following discussionwill focus heavily on the coercive use of air power, but it is important tonote that these arguments also apply to other coercive military efforts,whether involving ballistic missiles, naval gunfire, or infantry conductingpeacekeeping operations.

This essay suggests another strategic approach for the coercive use of airpower and other military force: attacking the armed forces of anadversary based on their value to the enemy regime rather than their con-tribution to victory in the current confrontation. Largely as a result of theprecision weapons and sensors revolutions, threatening to destroymilitary assets that the enemy values highly now offers a potentiallyviable coercive strategy for situations in which frustrating the enemy’smilitary strategy is impractical or irrelevant, without turning to attackson civilian targets that are likely to be formally illegal, politicallyunacceptable, and ultimately ineffective. Such “punitive disarmament”strategies are not an optimal or even a suitable approach for dealing withevery opponent. However, this is a strategic alternative that policymakersshould consider, particularly in the sorts of limited-stakes coerciveconfrontations that are likely to increasingly dominate the U.S. securityagenda in coming years.

The Nature of CoercionMilitary force, including air power, can be applied in two ways. The firstis what Thomas Schelling labeled “brute force,” or what we might simplycall “destruction”: attacks intended to reduce an enemy’s ability to fightor to achieve other objectives, or intended purely to destroy things fortheir own sake. The second is coercion, threatening harm in order tocause the enemy to change its behavior. Brute force strikes at theadversary’s capabilities, coercion strikes at its will.4 In open warfare, theline between destruction and coercion tends to blur. Almost all warfareis coercive at the strategic level, unless the enemy’s surrender will not beaccepted even if it is offered. However, efforts to coerce an enemy intonegotiating or surrendering also usually involve attacking its warmakingcapabilities as a means to this end, and some wars end only when one

THREATENING WHAT THE ENEMY VALUES118

combatant has lost the ability, and not just the will, to fight, as in the caseof Germany’s surrender in 1945.

In more limited uses of force, the difference between coercion anddestruction is usually clearer. Israel’s 1981 raid on the Osirak nuclearreactor in Iraq was a classic brute force application of air power, intendedto make the target facility cease to exist rather than to deter Iraq fromfurther efforts to develop nuclear weapons.5 Similarly, OperationEnduring Freedom, in late 2001, was a brute force campaign with thegoal of destroying the Taliban regime in Afghanistan rather thanchanging its behavior. In contrast, the 1986 Operation El DoradoCanyon raid by U.S. forces against Libya was purely coercive, intendedto change Libyan behavior, specifically its support for internationalterrorism; the physical destruction of the raid’s targets was simply intendedto serve this political end, and was not expected to reduce Libya’s physicalability to support terrorism in any significant way. There are even casesin which coercion and brute force may interfere with each other. Forexample, during Operation Desert Storm, in which the United Statesand its allies sought to coerce Saddam Hussein to withdraw his forcesfrom Kuwait, U.S. strategists were concerned that an Iraqi surrendermight happen too quickly, before coalition forces could destroy bruteforce targets such as Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction facilities.6

It is probably in strategic bombing that the two approaches can be mostreadily distinguished, since air power has greater potential for directlyattacking targets other than enemy military forces than does land ornaval power.7 Of the two, the use of air power as brute force is relativelywell understood compared to its use for coercion. Air power scholars andpractitioners have devoted far more energy over the years to advancingthe tactical science of destroying targets than to studying how air attackscan be used strategically to change the behavior of a target state. Eveninterwar air power enthusiasts such as Giulio Douhet, Billy Mitchell, andthe U.S. Army’s Air Corps Tactical School (ACTS), best remembered fortheir visions of how attacks on enemy industrial and population centerscould attack both the enemy’s will to fight and its ability to do so,devoted most of their energies to describing how force should be appliedagainst targets rather than exploring how this would lead in turn tosuccessful strategic coercion.8

THREATENING WHAT THE ENEMY VALUES 119

Modern discussions of the coercive use of air power or other militaryinstruments typically revolve around debates regarding the merits of“punishment” attacks against leadership, civilian infrastructure, andpopulation targets on the one hand and “denial” attacks against enemymilitary capabilities on the other.9 Punishment strategies seek to makethe war too painful for the enemy to sustain by attacking highly valuedtargets. For Douhet and many of the strategic bombing proponents whofollowed him, this meant razing the enemy’s cities; the same was true formost cold war nuclear strategists, including Schelling. Modern punish-ment advocates tend to be gentler, at least in their theories, arguinginstead either for attacking targets that will “bring the war home” to theenemy people by damaging utilities and infrastructure, or else for directlyattacking the enemy leadership, but still with the goal of making theprice of resisting the coercer’s demands too high to be worth paying.Beyond the air power realm, similar strategic arguments lie behind mostterrorist campaigns, and behind counter-terrorist strategies of reprisal.

In contrast with punishment, denial strategies attempt to convince theenemy that defeat is inevitable by weakening its military capabilities, sothat continuing to fight will appear futile and the enemy will surrenderinstead. With air power this may be based on bombing military forcesdirectly, interdicting their logistics, or destroying the industry and infra-structure that support and sustain them. Denial is a traditional military,Clausewitzian approach to coercion, exactly the sort of thing Douhet wasarguing against. Yet it has also emerged in air power theory as the majoralternative to strategies of punitive attacks against civilian targets,particularly in the works of John Slessor, the nuclear warfighting theoristsof the 1980s, and most recently Robert Pape.10 All of these argue thatuntil victory appears to be out of reach, an enemy will be likely to carryon its fight even in the face of high costs, so the coercer’s primary goalshould be to inflict not terror but hopelessness.

Punishment and denial advocates have each identified many of the prob-lems with the other approach. Punishment strategies often fail becausecivilian will frequently proves to be very resilient in the face of militaryattack.11 Even when it is not, this may matter little, for many govern-ments are willing to tolerate considerable harm to their populaces, in partbecause civilian suffering is often most limited for national leaders and


their privileged cronies and greatest for those with the least influence over– and the least responsibility for – national policy. Air campaigns andblockades directed against national economic systems have occasionallysucceeded, but only with considerable difficulty and great weight ofeffort, due to the robustness of advanced economies.12 Punishmentstrategies directed against enemy leaders also have a poor track record:leaders who matter the most are usually hard to threaten or kill, while themost vulnerable leaders, as in democracies, tend to be easily replaced, andtriggering popular uprisings or military coups against embattled nationalgovernments is notoriously difficult.13 Most seriously of all, particularlyfor Western leaders contemplating employing punishment strategies,deliberately harming civilians is a violation of the laws of war, and asweapons become more precise, the amount of suffering that may beinflicted upon a nation’s population without committing a war crime hasplummeted.

The most obvious shortcoming of denial strategies is that while theyoften succeed, they tend to be slow and difficult. Except when thecoercer is far stronger that the target state, reducing the enemy’s militarycapabilities to the point that defeat truly becomes inevitable can be a verytall order. Moreover, even when defeat does become inevitable, leadersare often very slow to accept this reality, for a variety of political andpsychological reasons, allowing the war to drag on while they grasp atdesperately improbable hopes of a reversal of fortune as, for example, inthe case of Japan in the Second World War.14 Thus a denial strategy mayappear likely to be too expensive to be acceptable to the coercer, or it maynot offer the prospect of a rapid enough success, particularly if time is ofthe essence, for example if the goal is to halt an invasion, an ethniccleansing campaign, or some other activity that will become a faitaccompli in relatively short order if not stopped quickly.

There is another problem with the denial approach in certain cases:sometimes the enemy’s prospects of success cannot be denied, for severalpossible reasons. The enemy may be too strong to defeat due to anunfavorable balance of power, the distance separating the enemy fromthe sources of the coercer’s power, or constraints on the force that thecoercer is able to bring to bear, such as having to be prepared to defendagainst an attack by a third party. Alternatively, the enemy’s strategy may


be one that is not vulnerable to the sorts of attacks that the coercer iswilling or able to mount against it, as was the case for U.S. efforts to endthe insurgent war in South Vietnam by interdicting the flow of suppliesfrom North Vietnam to the Viet Cong.15 Finally, in some cases of coercion,there is simply no question of denying the enemy’s strategy, for exampleif one wished to coerce a target state to cease violating the human rightsof an oppressed minority. Victory or defeat on the battlefield is not anissue in cases such as El Dorado Canyon or the 1970 Israeli-EgyptianWar of Attrition, and in limited conflicts such as NATO’s war againstSerbia in 1999 it may be all but impossible to deny the enemy its militaryobjectives without escalating the level of violence beyond its acceptablelimits.

TARGETS

Armed Forces People & National Economy Government

Destruction Pure Warfighting; Preventive War; RegimePreemptive War Genocide Replacement

Denial Classical Denial Strategic Denial; StrategicEconomic Warfare Paralysis

Punishment Punitive Classical RegimeDisarmament Punishment Destabilization

Traditional punishment and denial do not exhaust the range of possiblecoercive strategies, however.16 Another possible approach is coercing anenemy by threatening to destroy its highly valued military assets ratherthan its military capabilities per se, that is, pursuing a punishmentstrategy against a target set usually associated with denial strategies.Under the right conditions, such punitive disarmament strategies mayoffer a more attractive approach for coercion than either punishingcivilians or trying to eliminate an enemy’s ability to fight.


ME

CH

AN

ISM

Punitive DisarmamentThe central proposition of Schelling’s seminal analysis of coercive vio-lence is that in order to coerce, one should threaten what the enemyvalues. “To exploit a capacity for hurting and inflicting damage, oneneeds to know what an adversary treasures and what scares him.”17 LikeDouhet and the ACTS theorists, like many of the air strategists of theSecond World War, like most of his fellow nuclear deterrence theorists,and like most designers of economic sanctions, Schelling assumed thatwhat the enemy valued most would usually be the lives and welfare of itscivilian population, but in fact this need not be the case.

What is valued by the enemy – and by this we mean the relevant enemydecisionmakers, whether an individual despot, a ruling cabal, or an entirenational population – can range from physical objects, to the safety andwell-being of the civilian populace, to intangible objectives like victory inwar, the survival of an ideology, or national honor. Some of these may besusceptible to coercive threats, and some will not, either because theattacker cannot destroy them, or because it is unwilling to do so. Statesoften place widely different values on similar possessions and aspirations,making it dangerous to draw sweeping generalizations about how best tocoerce enemies. However, many – though not all – of them place greatvalue on their armed forces and military equipment, making these intopotentially important targets for punitive coercion.

The Punitive Disarmament StrategyPunitive disarmament strategies seek to change the adversary’s behavior bythreatening to destroy highly valued military assets. This typically involvesactually attacking military targets, and threatening to continue orescalate the campaign unless the adversary complies with the attacker’sdemands. In its execution, a punitive disarmament strategy might welllook much like a traditional denial strategy, but it would differ in severalkey respects. First, a punitive disarmament campaign would attack orthreaten assets that the target state values most, not necessarily those thatcontribute the most to the success of ongoing or imminent military oper-ations. In other words, a punitive disarmament strategy targets what theenemy values, while a denial strategy attacks what the coercer believes tobe militarily important. For example, during Operation Allied Force, a


pure denial strategy would have ignored Yugoslav ground forces deployedfar from Kosovo on the grounds that these could not influence thefighting there and that there would be plenty of time to attack them laterprior to any NATO ground invasion when they might become militarilyrelevant. On the other hand, a pure punitive disarmament strategy wouldhave attacked valuable Yugoslav military forces regardless of their loca-tion, giving no special weight to those in Kosovo unless their locationmade Belgrade value them especially highly.

The other key difference between denial and punitive disarmamentstrategies is that the latter can be executed even in the absence of anongoing armed conflict, when there is no enemy strategy to defeat andthus, by definition, denial is not an option. In fact, as will be discussedbelow, they are likely to be most attractive when coercion occurs in anenvironment short of total war. Although such strategies are highly rele-vant options for air power, they may also be applied under appropriatecircumstances by ground, naval, and special operations forces, as well ascombinations of all four.18

Several mechanisms might lead to the desired strategic outcome in apunitive disarmament strategy. The simplest and most likely would bethat the target government would weigh the losses of military forces,equipment and other assets that it expected to suffer as a result of notcomplying with the coercive demands against the expected costs of com-pliance, conclude that acceding to the coercer’s demands would be theless unpleasant of the two alternatives, and then capitulate in aSchellingesque rational choice to minimize its losses. A variation on thisbaseline would involve the nation’s military leadership (or some otherdomestic actor) that placed a higher value on the endangered militaryassets than the government did bringing pressure to bear on the nationaldecisionmakers, demanding that the country capitulate in order to avertthe expected losses. Finally, it is possible that under the right (albeitunusual) circumstances, the progressive destruction of a country’s armedforces might actually trigger a coup against a recalcitrant government bymilitary leaders determined to surrender in order to avert the annihila-tion of their organizations.19


Precedents for Punitive DisarmamentAlthough punitive disarmament is presented here as a relatively noveltype of coercive military strategy, precedents for such an approach doexist; although not all of them were successful, even those that failed canhelp illustrate the nature of the approach and some of the factors thatmight influence its prospects for success. For example, at the turn of thetwentieth century, Germany’s Admiral Tirpitz advocated building a fleetstrong enough to cripple the Royal Navy in the event of a war with GreatBritain. Although Britain could maintain the lead in a naval arms racewith Germany, needing only to provide itself with a modern navy whileGermany faced major rivals both on land and at sea, Tirpitz insisted thata sufficiently powerful German “risk fleet” would deter the British fromattacking lest the ensuing conflict so damage the Royal Navy that itwould then be vulnerable to defeat by a third party.20

In fact, it is among cases of weaker states seeking to deter stronger onesthat the largest number of precedents for punitive disarmament appear.For example, during World War II neither Sweden nor Switzerland couldhope to defeat a German invasion, but each country was able to threatento exact a relatively high price in blood and time from a substantialGerman invasion force. With every German division at a premium onthe main fronts of the war, this was one of several factors that contributedto these states’ successful deterrence of Germany during the conflict.21 Inthe 1980s, John Mearsheimer persuasively argued that one of the powerfulfactors deterring a Soviet attack against NATO was the high probabilitythat even if the Warsaw Pact forces were able to overrun West Germanyin a conventional war, the Red Army would be horribly mauled in theprocess.22 Other relatively weak actors that have threatened or attackedvaluable military assets include certain terrorist groups, such as thesuicide bombers who crippled the destroyer USS Cole in Aden.

The United States and its allies have also carried out attacks that can beconsidered to be punitive disarmament, at least in the context of largercoercive campaigns, such as the attacks on Iraqi Special RepublicanGuard units during Operation Desert Fox in 1998. Two other, moresuccessful examples suggest something of the potential efficacy ofpunitive disarmament. The first was the destruction of the Iraqi air forceduring the 1991 Gulf War. Although Coalition forces set about


destroying Iraq’s air force simply in order to clear the way for the maincoercive and brute force air effort, the progressive and inexorable annihi-lation of Iraq’s military aircraft ultimately caused a remarkable decisionin Baghdad: to order the surviving aircraft to flee to internment in Iran,Iraq’s longstanding and bitter regional enemy, presumably with the real-ization that they might never be returned (as ultimately they were not)but with the hope that at least in Iranian service they might do more tothreaten the United States than they would as wrecks at home.

The other example occurred during the 1982 Falklands War. As theBritish task force was approaching the Falklands to recapture the islandsfollowing the Argentine invasion, the cruiser General Belgrano, one of thetwo largest ships of the Argentine fleet, was torpedoed and sunk by aBritish attack submarine. Immediately after this loss, the Argentine air-craft carrier Veinticinco de Mayo was ordered to abandon the search forthe British fleet and return to port, where she disembarked her aircraft(which operated from land bases during the ensuing battle). Fearingfurther losses, the Argentine fleet played virtually no role in the remainderof the conflict, and thus was relegated to the political sidelines in theruling junta, in spite of having been the armed service that had mostaggressively promoted the seizure of the Falklands in the first place.23

The Advantages of Punitive Disarmament StrategiesPunitive disarmament strategies offer several potential advantages overeither denial or traditional punishment strategies, although these willvary widely from one case to another. Most importantly, punitivedisarmament may be feasible in situations where denial is not, and it willtypically avoid the legal and many of the moral obstacles involved indirecting punishment attacks against civilian targets.

FeasibilityPunitive disarmament strategies may offer important practical advan-tages over the traditional alternatives. As noted above, punitive attacksdirected against civilian populations, either directly or indirectly, havegenerally been unsuccessful in the past. Coercive air campaigns designedto threaten leaders have a far shorter track record, but they have achievedlittle to date, and there are powerful reasons to doubt their likely effec-


tiveness in the future; many of these relate to the practical problems oftracking and targeting elusive and well-protected individuals. In contrast,military targets tend to be more fragile than either popular will or eco-nomic might, and they are often more vulnerable to attack (and may bemore difficult to replace) than national leaders.

Another advantage of choosing to attack high value military targets isthat it may be possible to do so with limited resources. Expensivemilitary equipment and other assets, especially naval vessels and aircraft,but also armored fighting vehicles, air defense systems, and militaryinstallations of all sorts, tend to be quite vulnerable to attack by modernair forces employing precision-guided munitions under suitable condi-tions; to this list might be added space systems, both satellites in orbitand high value ground systems such as space launch and control facilities.Even a major regional power typically possesses no more than a fewthousand first-line armored vehicles, some hundreds of military aircraft,and several dozen important naval vessels, while most states have farfewer. Moreover, it is often the case that a relatively small minority ofthese assets will be disproportionately valuable to their owners becausethey are the most modern, the most capable, or the most expensive. Thisbecomes increasingly true as many armed forces adjust to the rising costsof state-of-the-art weapons, and the declining availability of military aidfrom the superpowers, by reducing the size of their force structures.

For example, Iran is by far the largest and most powerful of the former“rogue states,” now members of the “Axis of Evil,” that have become thefocus of American defense planning in recent years.24 It has rearmed sig-nificantly since the end of the Iran-Iraq War, and its air power was bols-tered in 1991 by the arrival of some 125 Iraqi aircraft fleeing coalitionattacks. Yet the Iranian air force possesses only about 125 combat aircraftthat can reasonably be described as modern and another 175 obsolescentones,25 while Iran’s principal naval warfare capabilities are concentratedin a mere three submarines, three frigates, and twenty missile-armed fastattack craft. A similar pattern even appears in Iran’s much larger groundforces: only 500 or so of its nominal strength of some 1,500 main battletanks are both serviceable and modern enough to serve in even the leastadvanced NATO army.26 Thus a reasonably limited U.S. air campaigncould destroy a large proportion of Iran’s air and naval power in relatively


short order, and it could also cripple Iran’s armored forces over a longerperiod, assuming the availability of sufficient reconnaissance capabilities;in contrast, actually defeating and occupying Iran in a war would be a farmore difficult and expensive undertaking.27 Much the same is true ofChina, a state so large and heavily armed that the United States canhardly contemplate waging a full-scale conventional war against it. Inspite of the impressive size of the People’s Liberation Army, China pos-sesses only 100 or so significant warships and less than 500 modernmilitary aircraft, even using the most charitable interpretations of thosetwo adjectives.

States fighting wars using light infantry or irregular forces that cannoteasily or economically be attacked from the air usually possess othermilitary assets that are more vulnerable. Recognition of this fact appearsto have shaped U.S. use of air power against Iraq in response to Baghdad’ssuppression of the Kurds, and some of NATO’s planning for attacksagainst Serbia in order to change Belgrade’s policies in Kosovo. In suchcases, aerial denial strategies might well be impractical, but punitive dis-armament strategies could be executed (although the mere fact that thetargets could be bombed does not imply that the strategy wouldnecessarily succeed). The nature of punitive disarmament targets may alsoincrease attackers’ ability to monitor their progress, because it is relativelystraightforward to assess the amount of physical damage inflicted againstmilitary vehicles and facilities, at least compared to strategies designed todegrade enemy morale or to cause other largely intangible effects.

It is important to note, however, that a target set being vulnerable doesnot necessarily imply that it will be easy or inexpensive to attack. In fact,high value military assets are likely to be among the most heavily defendedtargets a country possesses, so an air campaign directed against them mayface great operational difficulties, especially if the attacker seeks to limitits own casualties to a very low level. For this reason, punitive disarma-ment strategies will usually be most appealing to countries that enjoy aconsiderable advantage in military technology over their adversaries.However, even a state fighting at a technological disadvantage might findsuch a strategy attractive if it were able to threaten a very valuable set oftargets.


In contrast, denial strategies may require more extensive attacks thanpure punitive disarmament strategies, both because a state’s high valuemilitary hardware is often not the most important contributor to itsmilitary power, and because states tend to be very slow to recognize thatthey have been defeated. To return to the earlier example, delivery of athousand precision guided weapons against Iran’s most modern ship,tanks, and aircraft could effectively set its military machine back by thirtyyears, at least until the weapons could be replaced. This would not forceit to surrender in wartime, but might be a very powerful threat withwhich to pursue more limited coercive ends.

Equally significantly, even a much smaller attack could destroy a veryexpensive set of military assets, which illustrates a subtle but importantdistinction between punitive disarmament and denial strategies. Denialstrategies, whether directed against armies, military industrial bases, or(especially) entire national economies, must overcome the slack in theenemy system and stay ahead of adaptive responses and workarounds bythe enemy. At the risk of oversimplifying, destroying the first twenty per-cent of anything usually does little to achieve denial, and it is only whenthe last twenty percent is attacked that the cumulative effects bring thetarget system crashing down.28 This general pattern figures prominentlyin the strategic bombing of Germany and Japan during World War II. Incontrast, in punitive disarmament strategies it is likely to be the firstbombs that do the most damage, not the last. By striking the most valu-able and vulnerable targets first, even a limited attack can inflict greatdamage, while a massive campaign will eventually suffer fromdiminishing returns as the most lucrative targets disappear. Unless a statehas a surplus of high value military assets, which is possible but not com-mon, significant damage will occur from the outset. It follows, however,that if such a strategy does not coerce the enemy into concedingreasonably quickly, it is unlikely ever to succeed.

Legality and MoralitySignificant though the feasibility advantages of punitive disarmamentstrategies may be, their greatest appeal probably lies in their moral, polit-ical, and legal palatability. Military assets are legally legitimate targets, bydefinition, which usually makes attacking them more politically attrac-tive than striking targets such as electric powerplants and telecommuni-


cations facilities that serve both military and civilian purposes. Moreover,high value military assets are not normally co-located with civilianpopulations, so attacking them usually holds relatively little risk ofcausing collateral damage, a consideration that has consistently loomedlarge for American air strategists in recent conflicts. Of course, it isintrinsically difficult by definition to punish civilian targets withoutmaking the population suffer, either during or after the conflict. Denialstrategies can also be hard to execute without doing considerable damageto civilians as well as military personnel. Conversely, if the coercing stateis concerned about gaining or retaining the sympathy of the enemypopulation, either during the confrontation or afterwards, striking militarytargets will be less likely to generate hostility among them than attackingcivilian or dual-use targets. It may also be less likely to cause them to rallyin support of their own government, although this will depend on therelationship between the state’s armed forces and its general population.

It is virtually impossible to overstate the strategic importance of theseconsiderations. Avoiding harm to civilians is not merely politically use-ful, but is an absolute requirement of international law, embraced by thegovernments and armed forces of the United States and its principalallies. As modern sensors and munitions become more accurate, bothpopular and legal expectations about the extent to which attackers willdiscriminate between damage to military and civilian targets increase.Although Western strategists may occasionally lament being victims oftheir own success, because they can attack militarily significant targetswithout inflicting disproportionate damage to civilians, they must do so.Thus, in cases where denial strategies are impractical or irrelevant,punishment strategies directed against military targets may be the onlystrategic alternative.

It is also possible to tailor a punitive disarmament strategy to minimizeeven the military casualties it inflicts by attacking aircraft on the ground,ships in port, and other military targets at times and places where theycan be destroyed with relatively little loss of life if appropriate munitionsare employed. Although the laws of armed conflict do not require statesto minimize harm to enemy military personnel, such a strategy mightnevertheless be attractive in situations where killing even enemy troops ispolitically costly, or where the coercer wishes to injure an adversary


government without harming or alienating those who have little choicebut to serve it.

However, this does not mean that punitive disarmament strategies arelikely to offer the prospect of bloodless victories, and they should not beembraced in the expectation that they will do so. Although continuedadvances in limited-effect and non-lethal weapons will further increasetheir owners’ ability to mount highly discriminate attacks, eliminating allchance of collateral casualties is never possible, no matter how preciseand reliable one’s weapons may be. Moreover, except when attacking vir-tually helpless adversaries, suppressing enemy defenses almost invariablyplaces those manning the defenses at risk.

Secondary EffectsPunitive disarmament strategies also offer other potential benefits,though these are less significant than the acceptability and feasibility con-siderations discussed above. For example, demonstrating the ability toexecute such a strategy successfully might strengthen the coercer’s deter-rence credibility in future confrontations with the same or other adver-saries. The most significant secondary effect of such strategies is likely tobe that even an ultimately unsuccessful punitive disarmament campaignwould reduce the military capabilities of the target state, thus potentiallycontributing to a subsequent denial effort, or simply reducing the threatposed by the adversary’s armed forces until it is able to rearm. In contrast,a punishment strategy directed at civilian targets is not likely to providemuch preparation of the battlefield if it fails to coerce. However, in somecases this may be a problem: if the coercer does not wish to create apower vacuum in the region, weakening the enemy’s ability to defenditself against third party attackers may produce destabilizing effects,which strategists would want to take into account when selecting astrategy.

The Limitations of Punitive DisarmamentAlthough punitive disarmament has a number of attractive features, nocoercive strategy is a panacea that will be appropriate in every case, andthis one is no exception. A strategy of punitive disarmament will bepromising only under certain circumstances, some of which are peculiar


to this approach, while others apply in equal measure to other coercivestrategies.

Target VulnerabilityThe most obvious requirement for such a strategy is that the targetsactually be vulnerable to destruction, which means that the attackersmust be able to locate and identify the targets, penetrate the enemy’sdefenses, and finally destroy the targets, all at an acceptable cost both inlosses among the attackers and in collateral and other undesired damageon the ground. The extent to which these requirements can be met willdepend on a number of factors in addition to the attacker’s reconnais-sance and strike capabilities, such as whether the defenders are taken bysurprise, and whether the forces to be attacked are operationally active orcan be dispersed and concealed.

The last of these considerations can be crucial, as was vividly demon-strated by the problems NATO encountered during Operation AlliedForce over Kosovo in 1999. If valuable military forces can be effectivelycamouflaged, or if they can be dispersed among civilian populations orplaced in other locations where they will be immune from attack, thestrategy will become untenable. In addition to protecting them withhuman shields, targets of a disarmament campaign might be placed outof harm’s way by moving them to other countries or simply out of rangeof the attackers, by locating them within sites of historical or culturalimportance (as when Iraq parked aircraft among Sumerian ruins duringthe Gulf War), or by placing them in locations where attacks upon themmight cause unacceptable environmental consequences. Of course, howeffective such countermeasures will be depends on the technologicalsophistication of the attacker’s sensors and weapons and the skill withwhich they are used, as well as the attacker’s level of tolerance for collat-eral damage.

For this reason, among others, naval vessels are perhaps the most attrac-tive of all targets for a punitive disarmament strategy, being relativelylarge, expensive, few in number, difficult to conceal, and generallyunmovable into civilian neighborhoods. Aircraft share all of thesecharacteristics, though each to a more limited degree, as do some typesof high-value military facilities. Air defense assets such as surface-to-air


missile batteries and early warning radars may also make good counter-value targets because the attacker will probably want to strike them in thecourse of attacking other targets anyway, and because concealing and dis-persing them imposes significant opportunity costs on the target state. Itthus follows that, other things being equal, punitive disarmamentstrategies should be more effective against sea and air powers than againststates that invest little in their navies or air forces.

Value of the Targets and Costs of ComplianceThe second fundamental condition required in order for a punitive dis-armament strategy to be viable is that the enemy must value the militaryassets being threatened with destruction – not what has already beendestroyed – more than it values what the coercer is asking it to concede.Although this seems simplemindedly obvious, it can easily be forgotten,just as it often is when using other coercive approaches such as punitiveeconomic sanctions.29

The value that a state places on a military asset may be based on a varietyof factors. Some of these are intrinsic to the asset: the amount that it isworth to its owner in and of itself, for example because of what it cost toacquire or because of its political symbolism.30 Other elements of value areextrinsic: a function of an asset’s practical utility for gaining or protectingthings that are intrinsically valuable, such as national security (usuallyagainst external threats) or political survival of a regime (particularlyagainst internal enemies).31 Denial strategies consider only the short-term,extrinsic value of military forces: states are assumed to value their armedforces as tools to provide victory or defense in the present conflict, but notas intrinsically valuable assets. Punishment strategists tend to have thesame attitude, seeing attacks on military forces either as a distraction fromor merely a necessary prerequisite to threatening intrinsically valuableassets such as civilian populations and economic capacity. Punitive dis-armament strategies are based instead on the proposition that militaryforces may be so extrinsically and intrinsically valuable that threatening todestroy them can be coercive in its own right.

Value will be influenced by the scarcity of an asset – weapons, otherequipment, facilities, or personnel – and in particular by the difficultyand cost of replacing it if it is destroyed. Consequently, poor states, and


states that depend on arms imports but that have become pariahs, willtend to be better targets for punitive disarmament targeting than willstates with the resources and opportunity to produce or purchase newweapons easily after a confrontation ends. Similarly, other things beingequal, sophisticated systems that few countries can manufacture will tendto be better targets for such a strategy than will facilities and equipmentthat are available from many vendors.32 Armed forces that are deemedessential for regime survival are likely to be valued particularly highly;military regimes may be especially suitable targets for punitive disarma-ment since they rely on military power to provide domestic political con-trol, and also might be expected to be more averse to military losses thancivilian governments due to the high intrinsic value they place on thelives of their fellows.33

Extrinsic value will also be greatly affected by the severity and immediacyof the security threats facing the target state. The less secure a state is, themore disturbing the prospect of having its defenses weakened will be. Inaddition, the value of the various elements of its defense apparatus willbe shaped by the nature of the potential security threats: if the greatestthreat to a regime is domestic unrest, its jet aircraft and naval forces mayseem to be relative luxuries, whereas mainly being concerned by threatsof amphibious invasion would presumably increase the value of theseunits while making counterinsurgency forces something that the enemymight expect to be able to live without. In general, external threats fromtechnologically advanced rivals will tend to make target states moresusceptible to punitive disarmament coercion than will threats frominsurgent or other irregular forces.

In spite of such general principles, however, the value of military forcesin a particular case can be very difficult for the coercion strategist toassess beforehand. As a first approximation, the fact that a state hasheavily invested its resources in specific military forces will suggest that itplaces a high value on them, or at least that some of its decisionmakersdid so at the time of the expenditure, although one should not assumethat assets that were inexpensive to acquire are necessarily valued little asa result. However, the problem of determining how the adversary valuesthe things that one might attack may be complicated by the fact thatvalues are not only subject to change, but may be affected by the attack


itself. For example, sinking some of the ships in a country’s navy is likelyto increase the individual value of the remaining vessels (at least up to thepoint where the surviving fleet ceases to be an effective force), though itmakes the navy as a whole less valuable.34 If this happens, it will facilitatepunitive disarmament, because it will mitigate the problem of “killingthe hostage.” On the other hand, international confrontations tend tostoke the fires of nationalism, making mere physical objects, and even thelives of soldiers and citizens, seem progressively less important whencompared to the value of national honor or survival.

In some cases, assets that do not have great value to the enemy’s nationalleaders may be intrinsically valuable to other actors who can influencepolicy. For example, military leaders might feel greater loss from thedestruction of the forces they command than would a civilian govern-ment with less direct ties to the armed forces. In such a situation, theimpact of threats to destroy those forces might depend on how muchweight the national leadership places on the concerns of its military, andhow confident the government is regarding the military’s loyalty to it.Similarly, a government that value or depends upon the support of thepopulace is more likely to fear the destruction of that which the peoplevalue than would an oligarchic or tyrannical state that cares little for thehappiness of its subjects.

Above all, however – and this point cannot be overemphasized – the firstrule of punitive coercion, regardless of the target set, is that the severityof the threat must exceed the magnitude of the coercer’s demands. Forthis reason, opportunities for successful punitive strategies diminish asthe coercive stakes rise; typically, when values such as national survivaltruly hang in the balance, no punitive strategy is likely to succeed becausesurrender will appear worse than any destructive threat, and only denialstrategies will have a reasonable chance of coercing the enemy.35

Consequently, punitive disarmament strategies will show the greatestpromise in cases of coercion over stakes of limited value to the defender.36

Conditionality of DemandsOne other aspect of the coercer’s demands should also be considered inthis context, though it is not unique to punitive disarmament, or even topunishment strategies more generally. Not only must the target state care


more about the loss of what the coercer threatens to destroy than it caresabout the concessions being demanded, but it must also expect that if itconcedes, the threatened assets will not be destroyed anyway. In otherwords, both the threat of punishment and the promise of restraint inreturn for surrender must be reasonably credible, or else the target statewill have little incentive to comply.

Herein lay the fatal flaw in the threats made against Iraq by the UnitedStates during the weapons inspection crisis of early 1998. Americanleaders suggested that if Baghdad did not comply with Security Councilresolutions requiring complete disclosure of the extent of its programs fordeveloping weapons of mass destruction, they would bomb any facilitiesfrom which UN arms inspectors were barred. Such threats had anintuitively appealing an-eye-for-an-eye quality, seemingly akin to a parent’sthreat to confiscate toys that are not properly put away. However, sincethe purpose of the inspections was to dismantle Iraq’s biological andchemical weapons programs, Washington was essentially threatening todestroy some of Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction unless Iraq allowed itto destroy all of them. It was far from surprising that this coercive threatfailed to change Iraqi behavior. In general terms, punitive disarmamentwill fare best by avoiding not only threats along the lines of “disarm orwe will destroy your army,” but also threats to destroy military assetsuntil or unless the target state makes other concessions that will render itequally vulnerable to attack.

Investing in Punitive Disarmament CapabilitiesDeveloping the capabilities to execute punitive disarmament strategies isfor the most part a straightforward matter. However, it does require morethan the simple ability to strike and destroy whichever categories ofmilitary assets the enemy values, and to do so in the face of whateverdefenses and countermeasures the adversary can place in the way. Theintelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance (ISR) requirements of sucha strategy are likely to be high, especially if resource constraints or otherfactors make it necessary to attack specific weapons or facilities within ageneral category. As Operation Allied Force vividly demonstrated, theUnited States has provided itself with insufficient ISR capabilities todirect and support the very large numbers of strike aircraft in its arsenal,


and many other countries have given even shorter shrift to these andother “enabling” systems in favor of investing in combat aircraft.37

Overcoming such shortfalls will require not just more and better sensorsand other hardware in order to locate and identify targets, but alsogreater emphasis on developing sufficiently deep strategic intelligencepictures of prospective enemies to be able to understand the values thatthey attach to one’s potential targets.

Although punitive disarmament and denial campaigns may have muchin common at the operational and tactical levels, in some respects eventhe armament and doctrine best suited for one may not be ideal for theother. For example, if one seeks to destroy an adversary’s valuable militaryhardware, destruction of enemy air defenses (DEAD) may be much moreimportant than mere suppression of them (SEAD), which would haveimportant implications for the munitions and tactics adopted for thesemissions. Punitive disarmament may also appear at first glance to repre-sent something of a departure from the U.S. Air Force’s current doctrinalenthusiasm for “effects-based operations,” although it should not tothose who fully understand the latter concept.38 Because punitivedisarmament does not seek to degrade enemy capabilities, but to destroyweapons, materiel, and military forces and facilities, it places littleemphasis on the ability to cause transient, synergistic, or cascading effectsother than those that will facilitate the destruction of – or create theperception of destructive threat to – the high-value targets. Instead it isvery much a strategy of attrition, albeit in a form designed to be highlyselective and discriminate.

Finally, investing in such capabilities calls for greater emphasis on well-balanced statecraft. Like other punishment strategies, punitive disarma-ment will not be suitable for achieving extreme coercive objectives, andin some cases suitable targets will not exist or they will not be sufficientlyvulnerable. Even when such strategies make good strategic sense, thereare limits to what they can be expected to deliver: they will usuallyrequire a very substantial application of force, they will usually take timeto work, and they will not eliminate bloodshed or the risk of collateraldamage. As with other approaches to coercion, in order to maximize thechances of success it will be essential to exercise discretion in when, how,against whom, and for what ends these strategies are employed. If they


are ill-used they are likely to fail (and they may fail anyway, given thatwar is an imprecise business), and failure can be expected to weaken thecoercive leverage that similar strategies will provide subsequently.However, if used judiciously, punitive disarmament may provide a moreattractive policy option in certain cases than the traditional alternativesthat have dominated thinking about coercive strategy alternatives in thepast.

NOTES

1 The author is an Associate Political Scientist at RAND in Washington, D.C.. The viewsexpressed in this essay are his own, and do not represent the opinions of RAND or of any agencyof the aUnited States Government. For their invaluable comments on earlier versions of thiswork, the author wishes to thank Scott Douglas, John Mearsheimer, John Mueller, MichelleMueller, John Nagl, Kim Noedskov, John Olsen, Daryl Press, Dan Reiter, Alan Vick, HaroldWinton, Paul Yingling, and the participants in seminars where earlier versions of this projectwere presented at the School of Advanced Airpower Studies, RAND’s Washington and SantaMonica offices, the U.S. National War College, and USAFE/NATO AIRNORTH Head-quarters.

2 Operation Enduring Freedom is not included in this list in spite of being a spectacular opera-tional and strategic success for U.S. air power because it was not coercive in nature, as will bediscussed below.

3 See Robert A. Pape, Bombing to Win: Air Power and Coercion in War (Ithaca: Cornell UniversityPress, 1996); Karl Mueller, “Strategies of Coercion: Denial, Punishment, and the Future of AirPower,” Security Studies, Vol. 7, No. 3 (Spring 1998): 182-228. The recent popularity of airpower theories emphasizing high-tempo operations as a means of dazzling slower-witted enemiesinto bewildered psychological collapse, which has grown out of the theories of John Boyd andJohn Warden and now often appears under labels such as “rapid dominance,” represents anapparent exception to this gross generalization. However, in spite of the modern jargon in whichthey are usually expressed, most of the theoretical content of such strategies would be familiar tothe air theorists of the 1930s.

4 See Thomas C. Schelling, Arms and Influence (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1966), ch. 1;Karl P. Mueller, “The Essence of Coercive Airpower: A Primer for the Military Strategist,” RAFAir Power Review, Vol. 4, No. 3 (Autumn 2001): 45-56.

5 A secondary, coercive goal of the attack may have been to deter other Middle Eastern states frompursuing nuclear weapons development lest they provoke a similar attack by Israel. However, itis highly unlikely that the Israelis believed the Osirak raid would discourage Saddam Husseinfrom continuing to develop weapons of mass destruction, indeed it could reasonably be expectedto encourage him to redouble his efforts.


6 Washington’s secondary but important destructive objectives were also vividly illustrated byGeneral Colin Powell’s statement that he wanted to see burning Iraqi tanks as kilometer markersalong the road from Kuwait to Baghdad.

7 Air power advocates often overstate this distinction, however. Air attacks against an adversary’sheartland do not bypass the enemy’s military forces, for they must still overcome the opposingair defenses.

8 Pape, Bombing to Win; on the other air theorists discussed here, see Phillip S. Meilinger, ed.,Paths of Heaven: The Evolution of Airpower Theory (Maxwell AFB, Ala.: Air University Press,1996).

9 See Pape, Bombing to Win and the ensuing exchange of articles in Security Studies, Vol. 7, No. 2(Winter 1998).

10 J. C. Slessor, Air Power and Armies (London: Oxford University Press, 1936); Karl Mueller,“Strategic Airpower and Nuclear Strategy: New Theory for a Not-Quite-So-New Apocalypse,”in Meilinger, ed., The Paths of Heaven: 279-320; Pape, Bombing to Win. To this list could beadded the ACTS, whose theorists argued that attacking the enemy’s “industrial web” would bothcripple its ability to fight and make its economy and society collapse, thus achieving victorythrough a combination of denial and punishment (though they believed that protecting the wel-fare of the civilian population would be the concern that would ultimately prompt the enemy tosurrender). So could many contemporary suggestions that attacking enemy command and con-trol abilities will produce strategic paralysis and leave the enemy defenseless.

11 See Pape, Bombing to Win, but also C. G. C. Treadway, “More Than Just A Nuisance: WhenAerial Terror Bombing Works” (Maxwell AFB, Ala.: Air University Press, 1997).

12 See Mancur Olson Jr., The Economics of the Wartime Shortage (Durham: Duke University Press,1963); Alfred C. Mierzejewski, The Collapse of the German War Economy, 1944–1945 (ChapelHill: University of North Carolina Press, 1988).

13 Pape, Bombing to Win, 79-86; Stephen T. Hosmer, Operations Against Enemy Leaders MR-1385-AF (Santa Monica: RAND, 2001).

14 For a good discussion, see Pape, Bombing to Win, 32-35.15 Mark Clodfelter, The Limits of Air Power (New York: Free Press, 1989).16 For further discussion, see Mueller, “Strategies of Coercion.”17 Schelling, Arms and Influence, 318 In fact, they may even be relevant to the other major field of coercion: domestic law enforcement.

A relatively little-known U.S. federal law prohibits perpetrators convicted of misdemeanordomestic violence from owning firearms (as is the case for all felons). Although this statute wasenacted primarily to protect domestic violence victims from being shot, the relatively limitedenforcement of the law can be attributed in large part to many police considering loss of the rightto own guns to be a disproportionately punitive response to the crime in question.

19 Although this is a highly theoretical possibility, given the failure of past air campaigns to triggercoups, it is one that should not be discounted altogether.

20 In the end, Britain dealt with the rising German threat by forming alliances with Japan andFrance, allowing it to shift forces from other theaters back to home waters. While the Germannaval threat did not deter British participation in World War I, London did turn out to beremarkably reluctant to risk the loss even of obsolescent capital ships during the conflict, notablyat Gallipoli.

21 Karl P. Mueller, Strategy, Asymmetric Deterrence, and Accommodation: Middle Powers and Securityin Modern Europe, Ph.D. diss., Princeton University, 1991, ch. 8.

22 John J. Mearsheimer, Conventional Deterrence (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1983), ch. 6. In


this case, and even without nuclear weapons, the defender would have stood a good chance ofdefeating an invasion, for reasons that Mearsheimer describes in some detail, though he does notgive much attention to the possibility of deterrence by denial.

23 Max Hastings and Simon Jenkins, The Battle for the Falklands (New York: Norton, 1983): 323.24 On the unsoundness of the rogue state concept, See John Mueller and Karl Mueller,

“Methodology of Mass Destruction,” in Eric Herring, ed., Preventing the Use of Weapons of MassDestruction (London: Frank Cass, 2000), pp. 163-187, also pub. as Journal of Strategic Studies,Vol. 23, No. 1 (March 2000).

25 The former total includes F-14As, MiG-29s, Mirage F-1EQs, Azarakhshs, Su-24s, and P-3s (26Su-27s are also on order), while the latter includes F-6s, F-7Ms, and non-upgraded F-4s and F-5Es. The Iranian air force also operates about 90 transport and tanker aircraft, which it mightvalue even more highly. (Jane’s World Air Forces [Coulsdon, UK: Jane’s Information Group,2002]: 191)

26 Charles Heyman, ed., Jane’s World Armies (Coulsdon, UK: Jane’s Information Group, 2001):351.

27 Actually conducting such a campaign against Iran’s land and air forces would involve significantoperational challenges not addressed here due to the large geographic size of the countryrequiring very long range flights to attack locations such as Tehran from bases in the Persian Gulfor central Turkey, but the same difficulties would be faced by any type of air campaign, andwould in fact increase the appeal of countervalue military targeting relative to more labor-intensive targeting options.

28 This is far less true at the tactical level, where slack and adaptability tend to be in much shortersupply, than at the strategic level. Of course, economies, militaries, and other systems vary widelyin these respects, which is why, for example, bombing the German aircraft industry in WorldWar II accomplished little while attacks on the transportation and liquid fuels sectors were farmore successful. See Mancur Olson Jr., “The Economics of Target Selection for the CombinedBomber Offensive,” RUSI Journal, Vol. 107 (November 1962): 308–314; Mierzejewski, Collapseof the German War Economy.

29 See “The Microfoundations of Economic Sanctions,” Security Studies, Vol. 6, No. 3 (Spring1997): 32-64; David A. Baldwin, “The Sanctions Debate and the Logic of Choice,” InternationalSecurity, Vol. 24, No. 3 (Winter 1999/2000): 80–107.

30 Examples of states’ concern with the intrinsic value of military forces are not uncommon,ranging from Hitler’s decision to rename the pocket battleship Deutschland early in the SecondWorld War in order to minimize the embarrassment that Germany would suffer if it were sunk,to contemporary fears that the high cost of B-2 stealth bombers will make leaders reluctant tosend them into harm’s way.

31 For further discussion of these concepts, see Michael Desch, “The Keys that Lock Up the World:Identifying American Interests in the Periphery,” International Security, Vol. 14, No. 1 (Summer1989): 86–121.

32 It is hardly necessary to provide examples of weapons that are and are not difficult to acquire inthe international marketplace, but it may be worth observing that when facilities for producingweapons of mass destruction are in question, threats to nuclear facilities are likely to be far moreeffective than threats to attack plants for producing chemical or biological weapons.

33 See Stanislaw Andreski, “On the Peaceful Disposition of Military Dictatorships,” Journal ofStrategic Studies, Vol. 3, No. 3 (December 1980): 3–10.

34 However, if the attrition were so severe that the surviving ships were no longer able to fight effec-tively, their extrinsic value might decline rather than rise.


35 This is the central argument of Pape’s Bombing to Win, although Pape submits that threats ofnuclear destruction are sufficiently severe to outweigh even truly vital interests. For further dis-cussion, see Mueller, “Strategies of Coercion.”

36 Even more generally, the higher the stakes in a confrontation, the harder it will be to make anenemy back down regardless of the strategy that is employed. However, denial strategies tend tobe less sensitive to this tendency because it is at least theoretically possible to convince the enemythat success is beyond reach regardless of how appealing success may be.

37 For further discussion, see Karl Mueller, “Flexible Force Projection for a Dynamic World,” inCindy Williams, ed., Holding the Line: U.S. Defense Alternatives for the Early 21st Century(Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 2001).

38 In reality, any sound strategy or concept of operations is by definition based on a logical plan toachieve desired effects. It has become commonplace, however, to associate effects-based opera-tions with concepts such as nodal targeting analysis and “rapid dominance” that promise that theeffects of multiple attacks on well-selected targets can be multiplicative rather than additive, andsome of which emphasize disrupting enemy decision-making processes rather than influencingthem.


Small Nations and Asymmetric Air Power

Wing Commander Shaun Clarke,

Asymmetric Warfare and Small NationsAs the dust settles in the aftermath of ‘9–11’,1 the definitions, goals andstrategies of asymmetric war are under thorough re-examination.Asymmetric warfare has been defined as:

Actions undertaken by state or non-state parties to circumvent ornegate an opponent’s strengths and capitalise on perceived weak-nesses by exploiting dissimilarities (including values, strategies,organisation and capabilities) with a view to achieving dispro-portionate effects and gaining the instigator an advantage,either not attainable through conventional means or more costeffectively.2

Goals and strategies have been variously defined to further mention: thegeneration of strategic, operational and tactical level surprise; achieve-ment of psychological impact; pursuit of the collapse of state-basedauthority structures; use of weapons that differ significantly from theopponent’s mode of operations, and application of innovative means thatan opponent cannot match in kind.3

If any of this is supposed to suggest something sinister, then the problemfor modern, innovative, agile small nation militaries (strategising to com-pensate for lack of size and resources) is that it appears to be quite anattractive notion. Indeed, much in the nature of what is defined abovecan be learned on orthodox command and staff colleges and militaryexercises.

Most nations, large and small, have accepted asymmetric warfare and

even pseudo-terrorist tactics within the context of conventional warfare.The Germans in World War II posted parcel bombs by surface betweenEngland and the US. These were timed to explode mid-Atlantic and sinkships supporting Allied strategic logistics, thereby negating the risk ofdeploying a submarine on the same task. Even suicide bombing is notwithout some large nation conventional warfare precedent in JapaneseKamikaze operations of World War II.

These were tactics that are not only accepted by historians of modernwestern liberal democracies, but celebrated as the more lateral, asymmetricand daring acts of war. These tactics provided a ‘point of difference’ andat least momentarily gave leverage or advantage to the protagonist againstotherwise relatively balanced (symmetrical) forces. Such examples ofasymmetric warfare are an inherent aspect of the manoeuvrist approach.They are to be expected as the sorts of outside-the-box activities that anywarrior might rise to, especially against an ascendant enemy. However, inmodern times, when sub-national groups utilise the same tactics –posting mail bombs and carrying out suicide bombings – they arelabelled ‘terrorists’. The difference surely lies in the targeting.

Targets and tactics are what actually distinguish the ‘terrorist’ from the‘asymmetric warrior’ within the otherwise perfectly acceptable ‘conven-tion’ of asymmetric warfare. These include killing civilians; hostagetaking; disinformation attacks; biological, chemical and radiologicalthreats and so on. It is in these areas that terrorist operations cross, or atleast blur, the boundaries between criminal acts and acts of war.Terrorism generally aims to produce and capitalise ‘terror’ amongstcivilians. Thus, at least in the West, terrorism can be distinguished asinvolving attacks ‘prosecuted with no regard to ethical, legal and moralrestraints as would normally be applied by a liberal western democraticnation’.4

Small western nations choose not to employ terrorist tactics. However,whether to fight ‘asymmetrically’ is not necessarily a matter of choice.There is an unavoidable asymmetry about being small amongst bignations. Asymmetric warfare is a corollary of asymmetric means.Thinking asymmetrically is, at least for small nations, both good andnecessary.

SMALL NATIONS AND ASYMMETRIC AIR POWER144

In essence, terrorism is a subset of asymmetric warfare. To small nations:asymmetric warfare is good; terrorism is bad. The difference lies in thetargeting ethics.

This paper is about seeking asymmetric strategies for the application ofsmall nation air power.

Alternative Air Strategy for Small Nation StrikeWhile the strategic school of air power thought has long championed theindependent use of air power above any supporting role in land- and sea-based manoeuvre and attrition, small nation air power has generally notachieved this aspiration. Militarily subordinated by greater partnerswithin the settings of colonialism, Cold War and/or UN coalition, smallmodern nations have developed offensive air power capabilities forattacking and defending elements of armies, navies and air forces in thefield. Meanwhile, ‘strategic bombing’ against the enemy’s very will andcapacity for war has remained the exclusive franchise of greater nations.

With the modern economic imperatives facing small nations (and allnations for that matter), custodians of air power are challenged to extractmaximum potential out of minimum inventory. The question is raised asto whether the traditional preoccupation with ‘fielded’ forces is the bestmethod for resolving essentially political conflict.

This is especially so in the post-Cold War environment which features alarger number of small nation wars (in contrast to a small number oflarge nation wars), and lacks the unifying ideological issues which onceassured superpower intervention in small nation conflicts. Professionalcuriosity about the fullest air power potential of independent smallnations and small coalitions is now of greater importance.

Power = Capability x Strategy

Air power is the product of aerospace capability and air strategy. The‘capability’ factor is somewhat more a constant than a variable for many

SMALL NATIONS AND ASYMMETRIC AIR POWER 145

small nations. Precision guided munitions, however, do represent a veryimportant exception. By one calculation, what required 9070 bombs(3024 aircraft) in World War II; 1100 bombs (550 aircraft) in Korea; and176 bombs (44 aircraft) in Vietnam, required only one smart bomb andone aircraft in the Gulf War.5 Thus, through growth in affordable preci-sion technology, one of the key capability deficiencies of small nations –mass – is apparently overcome.

Notwithstanding, the greater variable in the equation above is ‘strategy’.The obvious utility of good strategy to small nations contemplating con-flict is that it promises to amplify the value of even modest capability.Where resources are limited, the quest for good strategy is essential.

This paper is about asymmetric warfare strategy for small nation airpower. It is about seeking viable alternatives to conventional air strikestrategy – alternatives within the means of small nations. It is aboutseeking a strategy for the application of air power which might directlyaccess the source of conflict rather than its symptoms. It is about theprospect of small nation strategic bombing.

To what extent is strategic bombing achievable by small modern airpower forces? In what style might small nations carry out strategic strike?The obvious starting points are the superpower and large coalitionmodels for strategic bombing. However, conventional large nation aircampaign doctrine may be of dubious applicability.

Central to the large coalition strike paradigm is the potential of air powerto simply overwhelm at the national level. If there is a single set of con-cepts which dominates current superpower strategic bombing doctrine itis: high mass, high speed, high tech, high tempo and high sustainability;all brought together in parallel to achieve the unconditional surrender ofan enemy through the single-handed application of air power. JohnWarden’s ‘Five Ring’ strategic targeting model of Gulf War fame is a casein point.6 Such approaches pursue ‘strategic paralysis’ – the large-scaledestruction of critical functionality within the enemy nation through thefelling of entire sub-systems.

Superpower and large coalition strategic air strike is highly resource


intensive and well beyond the means of small nations and small coali-tions. More than 2000 combat aircraft took part in the Gulf WarCoalition. Seventy percent of nations currently holding some form of airstrike capability would struggle to muster more than 100 operationalbombers on a good day.7 The bombing rate in large coalition campaignsacross World War II, the Vietnam War and the Gulf War averaged morethan 44 000 tons per month.8 Small air power nations simply cannotwage this kind of air war or hope to ‘strategically paralyse’.

Then what? There is a real paucity of independent thinking on strategiesfor the maximal application of limited air power (outside of surface com-bat force support). This is somewhat surprising given the large numberof small air strike users. There are 129 nations in the world with an airstrike capability of some description.9 Of a total of just over 39 900 plat-forms, approximately 40 percent are operated by China, the USA andRussia. A similar proportion of the total capability is operated by the bot-tom 115 countries in the list. A great many small nations are stakeholdersin the business of air strike. While some have quite significant offensiveair power fleets, none even closely resembles – in size or content – the airfleets of the large nations, by, for and about whom doctrine is pre-dominantly written. A very large number of small nations rely on thedoctrine of a very small number of large nations. The validity of thatdoctrine to small users must be questioned on the basis of differentialmeans.10

The real question for small nations is not how America might wage airwar, but how Peru and Ecuador might better have fought their last, andhow South Africa or Finland might best prepare for their next.11

Is strategic air strike possible for small nations? We should start bydefining what distinguishes strategic air strike from normal air strike?Through history, strategic strike has become popularly synonymous withlarge numbers of aircraft carrying large weapons payloads over largedistances to bomb large targets. One description to be found in the post-World War II United States Bombing Survey states:

Strategic bombing bears the same relationship to tacticalbombing as does the cow to the pail of milk. To deny immediate


aid and comfort to the enemy, tactical considerations dictateupsetting the bucket. To ensure eventual starvation, the strategicmove is to kill the cow.12

In more modern times, perceptions are different. Attempts at a definitionhave variously and erroneously centred on aircraft type and target type.A more refined and useful distinction, however, focuses on the intendedoutcome of such missions – that is, the directness of effect on the actualstrategic objectives over which war is fought.

The multinational Strategic Aerospace Warfare Study Panel has definedthe strategic application of air power as ‘the direct pursuit of primary orultimate political-military objectives through aerospace power’.13 This isa useful definition. It shifts the focus away from operations againstmilitary surface forces and on to those that aim to influence the highestlevel decision-makers at the very centre of any dispute by the most directmeans.

The potential for small nations with limited resources to have such influ-ence is the basic question. This definition of ‘strategic air strike’ will beuseful. There will be no attempt to define ‘small nations’ however – theyknow who they are.

War and the Small Nation PerspectiveBefore we can understand the feasibility of a high order strategic orien-tation to air strike for small nations, we need to understand the smallnation perspective on war. Three propositions follow. They are sugges-tions on how small nations view, or rather should view, conflict and theapplication of offensive air power.

Proposition One: Limited War Need Not Seek Unconditional SurrenderLimited war is fought for limited objectives. It is seldom fought (espe-cially by a defender) for the annihilation of the other party. The sorts oflimited policy objectives that could result in armed conflict for smallnations include:


• displacement of lodgements on sovereign territory;• protection of offshore resources against state sponsored plundering;• interruption of foreign government sponsorship of domestic insur-

gency;• cessation of politically motivated human rights abuses;• erosion of a totalitarian regime having critically destabilising regional

effects;• release of nationals held hostage by a foreign state;• prevention of the regional acquisition of weapons of mass destruc-

tion, and so on.

None of these objectives call for overthrow of the offending nation.Indeed, a captured or destroyed neighbour can be a significant unwantedliability. The objectives actually demand nothing more than a simplechange of policy from the offending nation. This should preferably beachieved by means which allow for the eventual rebuilding of a healthypost-war relationship. There is no benefit in creating a liability, or a per-manent enemy.

The illusion of some greater requirement to completely paralyse theenemy in all situations has been produced by the high profile, highstakes, large nation air campaigns of the last century. The war comics ofour youth would have us believe that war is only concluded when oneside waves the white flag. Up until the Korean War, it was a widely heldconviction in the west that ‘modern war was about the absolutes ofunconditional surrender and of total victory’14 Despite the fact thatattempts were made on the very existence of Japan, of Germany and ofNorth Korea, few modern wars have actually concluded with the totalarrest of sovereignty.

While unconditional surrender may represent one of the highest possibleprizes of war, there are in actuality a variety of conditions which other-wise represent a satisfactory conclusion to hostilities. Figure 1 suggests asimplified hierarchy of war termination states.


Figure 1: Hierarchy of Generic Conflict Termination Conditions

A form of annihilation marked the end of World War II for Germany.There was no surrender – just continued fighting under continuous airbombardment until the country could no longer field coherent militaryoperations and was completely occupied.15

Unconditional surrender or capitulation marked the end of World War IIfor Japan. She bid for conditional surrender by seeking permission toretain her emperor but (while the issue remains controversial) Americamade no such commitment.16

The cessation of hostilities in the Vietnam War was achieved throughconcession and negotiation (albeit after an important reduction inAmerican aims). These culminated in the 1973 Paris Accords. Similarly,the Korean War did not end in surrender, but in a negotiated settlement.

The final solution in the Iran-Iraq war (1980–88) grew out of a hesita-tion or temporary cease-fire. Surrender was not on the agenda for eithernation; but offensive action produced a pause for consideration ofoptions which eventually grew into terms for peace.

While the model at Figure 1 is an oversimplification, it does illustrate a


range of situations under which nations actually achieve war’s end. Itdemonstrates that war is often ultimately fought for limited objectives,that war termination does not necessarily involve forcing of surrenderand that the collapse of the enemy regime need not be aspired to orachieved. The significance of this is that it effectively lowers the threshold ofviability for size-limited strategic air forces.

As Clausewitz points out, there is a whole category of war where defeatingthe enemy is simply unrealistic. When the enemy is formidable, such anobjective may be simply unobtainable, and in fact unnecessary.17 TheArab/Israeli ‘Six Day War’ offers an example of how war can be won bya relatively small nation with sensibly limited and focused objectives.Total enemy surrender was not on the agenda, only the reduction of itsperceived political aims.

To amplify this expectation there are certain natural advantages for smallnations holding purely defensive postures. According to Liddell Hart:

The underlying difference of aim between an aggressor and thosehe attacks offers the latter a potential advantage for economy offorce, and thus for superior power of ‘staying the course’. For himto succeed, he has to conquer. For them to succeed, they have onlyto convince him that he cannot conquer, and that continuedeffort will bring more loss than gain. They are thus able to wagea far less exhausting kind of war. (April 1939)18

Thus, at least in matters of territorial defence, air strategies of smallnations need not be shaped to overthrow the aggressor; only to prohibi-tively raise the cost of his objectives.

Limited means, such as those characteristic of small nations demand lim-ited objectives. As Clausewitz notes, ‘The smaller the penalty youdemand of your opponent, the less you can expect him to try and denyit to you …’.19 Thus the limitation of objectives in a small nation’s warcan be an important compensator for a lack of mass and sustainability.What is required is the ability to apply sufficient force, as directly as pos-sible, to the party who makes the decisions and concessions. This bringsus to the identification of the subject of war.


Proposition Two: The Ultimate Target is the Supreme Decision-Making Body

Supreme excellence consists of breaking the enemy’s resistancewithout fighting.20

Sun Tzu

The mind of the enemy and the will of his leaders is a target offar more importance than the bodies of his troops.21

Student of Mao Tse-tung

The pivotal nature of the psychological contest between leaders in warhas long been recognised. In pre-air power days, with battle confinedprincipally to oceans and fields, the subject minds were those of militarycommanders. There was no choice but to batter down the opposing armybefore the vital organs of the state could be exposed. The key focus wason military decision-makers, often with little attention to the fact thatthese were but means to an end.

Air power removed the fixation with the battlefield and took war towherever it might otherwise be fought. The truly subordinate nature ofmilitary decision-makers to the political decision-maker was realised.‘War is merely the continuation of policy by other means’.22 ‘(W)ar isonly a branch of political activity … it is in no sense autonomous’.23

Surrender of a nation’s military leader was only ever pursued for the con-sequences it held on the resolve of opposing supreme decision makers.

With the advent of air power, and the choice thus presented to overflyrather than overwhelm military forces, the possibility arose that the ulti-mate subject of war could be more directly influenced; not by destroyingthe military, but by destroying other targets which also had great worthto the political leadership. The ultimate strategic target became accessibleby means other than the fate of their representative armies.

The relationship between political and military minds is not always par-ticularly well articulated. Political and military objectives are differentbut not separate.24 There is no discrete switch-over between politicaltargeting and military targeting in terms of strategic outcomes. The


transition is gradual and continuous with any one strike having bothpolitical and military elements to its consequences. Figure 2 illustratesthe point.

Figure 2: Military versus Political Effects of Strategic Air Attack

The pursuit of increased influence over military decision-makers has ledair power to higher orders of strategy. In history, while early applicationswere strictly in service of the battlefield, attacks were later made notdirectly on troops and ships but against logistics, support facilities andreserves with a view to greater strategic effect on the overall campaign.Focus was still on the enemy’s military, but through higher orders ofeffect. Influence on the state was still envisaged through the eventualfailure of its military.

When air power is applied in increasingly higher orders of strategy, how-ever, there comes a point at which its influence on the state as a politicalentity becomes more significant than the influence on the military.Political response is elicited, not by the destruction of enemy militaryforces, but by the prospect of failure or the likely expense of victory.

Political concession is made before military defeat is inevitable. Damageto war-making potential, or anticipated damage to military forces can besufficient to produce an outcome. So in Korea, for example, the fulleffects of attacks on irrigation dams had not hit home before Communistresolve was already being affected at the negotiating table. In the Gulf


War, the Coalition destruction of POL (petroleum, oil and lubricants)infrastructure was sure to have been of significance in Iraq’s overall cal-culation to surrender, yet at the time of surrender the inevitable fuelshortage had not reached the Iraqi front line. In the 1982 Falklands War,if Argentina had succeeded in sinking either of the British Task Force car-riers, Hermes or Invincible, the war may well have been over. The actwould have had both military and political ramifications, but the directmeaning of such a loss to the British government would probably havebeen so dominant as to render military consequences irrelevant.25

The creation of perception in the higher enemy decision-making eche-lons that the objective is no longer worth pursuing is paramount.Strategic air operations, by definition, focus on this perception. InNATO’s Operation Allied Force, while air strikes were simultaneouslywaged against both targets of concern to the political leadership and tothe fielded military, the relative significance of the latter in the final solu-tion is increasingly belittled by post-war analysts. According to GeneralShort, the massive and laborious tank plinking effort in Kosovo was awaste of air power. The aim was to compel Milosevic to accept terms andthe correct focus was against pivotal targets in Belgrade. Short wanted totarget ‘everything that Milosevic held dear, and make it very clear to himthat was exactly what we were doing’.26 This was eventually achieved andNATO prevailed.

At the highest orders, strategic air power has direct access to the politicaloutcome. The process is quintessentially coercive and the actual destruc-tion of enemy forces becomes unnecessary. Real pressure is brought tobear on the authorities who actually create and hold the policy undercontest. The key enemy decision-makers and their perceptions justlybecome the direct focus of operations. In essence, the higher the order ofstrategic strike, the more immediate the political effect and the less rele-vant the military effect.

Recognition of this phenomenon is vital to small nations. Where ‘energy’is at a premium it needs to be well directed. Energy expended on lowstrategic order targets (such as a fielded army unit) represents sub-optimisation when an urban power station is within reach of the sameweapons system. The latter stands to make the greater impression on a


supreme decision-making body’s perception of prospects, calculation ofcosts, and erosion of resolve.

The essential point here is that the supreme decision-making body is theultimate subject of war. Supreme decision-making bodies make thepolicy over which war is fought, and they make the decisions by whichwar is discontinued. Any means which provides access to the supremedecision-making body’s opinion, behaviour or resolve regarding its objec-tives, has the potential to solve crisis (or favourably change its form)without the conventional clash of military on military.

Proposition Three: The Root of Air Power Success is Joint StrategyStrategic air strike need not be judged on its potential to be unilaterallydecisive in war. There is no obligation for small nations to attempt airpower’s solo application, nor to criticise air power when such promise isnot offered.

Air power primacy – whether ‘war can be won by air power alone’27 – isa significant matter of debate in the US, with flow-on effects to the restof the world. After Operation Desert Storm, advocates like GeneralMcPeak claimed that the campaign represented ‘the first time in historythat a field army has been defeated by air power’.28 In contrast, the foyerof the Joint Staff area inside the Pentagon River Entrance carries a largeplaque which states:

… aided by overwhelming support from air and naval forces,and backed by a responsive and sophisticated supply system, thecoalition ground force of Operation Desert Storm won a swiftand complete victory.29

Any argument promoting single service primacy should be viewed withextreme suspicion. Most are based on parochialism or zealotry, or other-wise founded in the fiscal competition of separate services bidding forgovernments’ finite funds. Squabbling over single service primacy sub-verts the real issues. The degree to which strategic air power might besingle-handedly decisive is a distraction to small nations.


Air power does not win wars alone, but in concert it can contribute a sig-nificant influence to the overall outcome. The strategic air offensive maybe contributory or leading in a joint military campaign, but doctrine forthe independence and decisiveness of any one national power element ina conflict denies the true joint nature of influence.

The success of air power for small nations – and arguably for large – isdependent on joint coordination. This is true at two levels: the opera-tional level through joint coordination with other Services, and thestrategic level through joint coordination with other national power ele-ments.

As indicated in Figure 2 above, air strike simultaneously creates pressureat both the political and military levels. In this respect, any one strategicair action serves both a military team effort and a political (or grandstrategic) team effort in varied proportion.

In the military team, air power combines with the efforts of land and seapower to produce a synergistic effect directed at the minds of militarydecision-makers. Even in independent air operations it is recognised ‘thatindependent operations of one service are seldom, and if successful never,irrelevant to the other services’.30 The tactic of coordinating air interdic-tion with land force attack to simultaneously raise the enemy’s logisticsdemands while reducing supply is a good demonstration of joint Servicesynergy. Military pressure is a product of the cumulative effects of allmilitary arms. As Wrigley wrote:

Neither a navy nor an army nor an air force (is) going to win agreat war by (its) own unaided efforts. We must seek out the bestmethods of utilising the special attributes; how best, for instance,to combine the mobility of a navy with the resisting power of anarmy and the striking power of an air force.31

This pursuit of ‘jointery’ in operations is now widely recorded in doc-trine and despite age-old service parochialisms – and ethos, doctrine andequipment clashes – its pursuit is common practice in western militaries.

The greater focus of this paper is on the potential of air strike at the


strategic level where non-military instruments of national power are alsoat play. Applied in concert, air power’s worth is closely affected by theconcurrency of these other measures – diplomatic relations, trade embar-goes, negotiation and concession, third party arbitration, economic sanc-tions, and so on. The political context (often generated behind thescenes) within which air strike takes place can make or break its effect.The coordination of national power elements is essential. As Wrigleyobserved even in the 1920s:

(W)ar is no longer merely the business of the fighting services. Wemust see how to help the statesmen to combine the effect of thethree fighting services with that of propaganda and of economicand financial pressure, towards the final object of breaking thewill power of the enemy nation in the minimum of time.32

The role of strategic air power in the successes of the past campaigns,despite the claims of the zealots, is due to the combined effects at boththe operational and strategic levels of war. In Bosnia, it was the combinedeffects of bombing, the consequent inability to move troops, theincreasing success rate of enemy Croat and Muslim military operationsagainst the Serbs, the enduring effects of the politically orchestratedsupply stoppage, and strong diplomatic pressure which all culminated inthe mind change of Bosnian Serb decision-makers.33

Similarly, the decision by Japanese leaders to surrender in August 1945 isbest viewed as a combination of pressures including the Allied seablockade, the fire bombing of cities, the confidence shattering Sovietdefeat of the Japanese armies in Manchuria, military failures in theSouth-West Pacific, and ultimately the atomic bombing of Hiroshimaand Nagasaki.

In Operation Allied Force, it was factors like oil trade sanctions, the pub-licly waning support from Milosevic’s deputy Vuk Draskovic, the West’sdiplomatic victory in keeping Russia out of the war, and threats ofground invasion by NATO leaders (in particular British Prime MinisterTony Blair) which all cumulatively and critically influenced Milosevic’sthinking.


Plainly, the coercion of decision-makers involves the accumulation andsynergy of various pressure instruments – military and non-military. Airpower succeeded in each case, as a major player in a critical aggregationof conditions. However, it is ultimately the product of pressures on thesupreme decision-making body which bears on its decision-making,rather than the size of the largest single pressure. This small nation per-spective allows for the proper employment of strategic air in the searchfor ‘joint effect’.

In overall summary of the three propositions, small nations have (orought to have) a special perspective on war which dictates the way theyplan and fight. As the bottom line, small nations in pursuit of maximumnational power in time of conflict ought to focus the limited energy oftheir modest military means directly at the key decision-makers of theopposing regime. They ought to limit objectives as specifically aspossible, and they must also direct and coordinate the energy of othernational power elements into the same focus. These are importantconsiderations for the air strategist.

Strategic Strike Methodology and Small NationsAir power, as is often said, is a rather blunt instrument. The trick lies notso much in causing damage itself, but in causing damage which translatesto the desired political effects. How to actually impose one’s will on thewill on the enemy has received a great deal less attention than how toconduct campaigns and destroy things.34 Devising a connection betweentactical military means and political goals is the long-standing dilemmaof strategists. Identification of the mechanism or linkage between causeand effect lies at the heart of air strike strategy.35 It is about first knowingwhat political change is required from the enemy decision-makers; andthen, what situations will influence the decision-makers towards thatchange; what destruction can cause the desired situation; and finally, whattools are best able to create that required destruction. Good strategy isabout setting the context that eventually facilitates and/or necessitatesthe desired enemy response. Understanding what context matters, andhow to achieve it, is fundamental in the building of good strategy.

A great deal of subjective judgement is required in converting air strike’spotential into effect. When one sparring individual slaps the other’s face


in a heated two-person debate, no single outcome is guaranteed.Possibilities will range from an apology, to continued argument, to thephysical withdrawal of one or both parties, to an all-out brawl. Theactual result in any one scenario will be the product of many factors.These will include the intensity of the debate, the personalities of theindividuals, the history of the relationship and the individually perceivedimportance of the issues at stake. The one identical action will have manypossible outcomes. The tremendous variability in the human stimulus-response relationship is relevant at international level.36 It serves to make‘rule-making’ for best practice in high order strategic air operations aconfused and hazardous process. Strategy is not a pure science. Air strikecause and effect planning is a probability game.

Notwithstanding the above, there are models that have a useful level ofuniversality in explaining cause and effect in human issues. In particular‘cost-benefit analysis’ (or ‘decision calculus’) provides a useful basis forplanning. It is the process at the heart of rational human decision-making, even across cultures. Parties tend to do things from which theystand to profit and avoid things which cause loss or pain.37 The mani-pulation of another’s profit and loss considerations can be used, there-fore, to manipulate behaviour. In the peacetime international arena,nations pursue their political objectives for some form of profit (moral,economic, territorial or otherwise). During conflict, in rational cost-benefit terms, the attacker will be expected to relinquish his objectives iftheir pursuit becomes too expensive. As Clausewitz wrote:

Since war is not an act of senseless passion but is controlled by itspolitical object, the value of this object must determine thesacrifices to be made for it in magnitude and also in duration.Once the expenditure of effort exceeds the value of the politicalobject, the object must be renounced and peace must follow.38

This succinctly summarises the task faced by small nations contem-plating war. The essential challenge is to raise the expense of the enemy’sobjectives to the point where the anticipated profit is no longer worth theeffort. The enemy must be convinced that accepting one’s terms will bemore beneficial than resisting them. Such an acceptance may be based on


either the achievement of gains or the avoidance of losses. The decisioncalculus of an enemy can be usefully considered as follows:39

A = Bp(B) - Cp(C)

where:A = value of continued aggressionB = potential benefits of aggressionp(B) = probability of attaining benefits by continued

aggressionC = potential costs of aggressionp(C) = probability of suffering costs

Enemy concessions occur when A < 0.

The relevance of the decision calculus to the question of small nationstrategic air strike lies in the identification of specific ways to raise theenemy’s perception of the size and likelihood of costs, and/or reduce theenemy’s perceived probability of realising benefit. The process of airattack to affect such perceptions is a matter of coercion.

Air Strike and Enemy Cost-Benefit Calculus: Coercion Theory

Defining CoercionIn his 1960s analysis of nuclear ‘power’, Thomas Schelling discussed thediplomacy of violence in a way which also bears great relevance to smallnations in limited conflict. He suggested that ‘(d)iplomacy is bargaining;it seeks outcomes that, though not ideal for either party, are better forboth than some of the alternatives’.40 Force, on the other hand, cancircumvent the need to bargain. By force, parties pursue their individualdesires unilaterally and physically. By force, nations can repel, expel, pen-etrate, occupy, seize, exterminate, disarm, disable, confine, deny, access,and directly frustrate intrusion or attack – and will generally succeed aslong as their military strength is greater than that of the opponent.41


Pure diplomacy and pure force present two distinctive approaches to thehandling of international conflict. Schelling, however, speculated on afunction of military power which combines both force and bargain; bothbullets and words. He recognised the powerful ability of force to hurt asa form of bargaining collateral. Schelling distinguished between ‘bruteforce’ and ‘coercive force’. His ‘brute force’ involved physically preventingcertain behaviour in the opponent, normally by destroying something toremove an option. ‘Coercive force’, by subtle contrast, involved hurtingor punishing an adversary in such a way as to have him change behaviourto avoid further pain.42 ‘Brute force’ corresponds to what is now morecommonly referred to as ‘denial’ – the reduction or elimination of theenemy’s ability to resist.43 ‘Coercion’, on the other hand, centres onpsychological effect. Figure 3 summarises the distinction.

‘Brute force’ or ‘denial’ is not, of course, without its coercive component.The removal or weakening of the enemy’s military options will naturallyerode his confidence and resolve. In such cases, one bombs for militaryeffect but ultimately with the resolve of the political sponsor in mind. Inthis respect, denial itself is often regarded as a form of coercion.

Figure 3: Denial and Coercion

Strategies for CoercionIn essence, coercion seeks to persuade an adversary to act in an agreeableway, or alternatively, to dissuade that adversary from acting in a dis-agreeable way.45 It can compel an enemy to stop an action, or deter himfrom starting one.46 Successful coercion is manifest as new, changed or


arrested behaviours in the enemy regime, which are to the coercer’sadvantage.

There are many strategies for coercion, but most can be accommodatedinto four conceptual categories47: denial, punishment, risk anddecapitation. There is no intention to review those categories in detailhere.48 However, in essence, denial is as detailed above. It is the coercive‘side-effect’ of successful brute force military-on-military operations.Gulf War attacks on fielded armour in Kuwaiti theatre of operations ‘killboxes’ represented a form of denial. It simply amounted to the removalof fighting pieces from the board for Saddam Hussein, but ultimately thehigh rate of attrition would have some bearing on the attitude andresolve of the leader for further conflict.

Punishment strategy centres on the exploitation of pain caused by loss. Itis based on being able to generate sufficient pain by destroying things tohave a government or its supporting population compromise their objec-tives. The traditional targets are the national economy and anythingwhich might cause popular revolt. Operation Allied Force, for example,targeted amongst other things power generation and bridges withGeneral Short reasoning that with ‘no power to the refrigerator and …no way to get to work’, Milosevic’s staunchest supporters would demandjustification for his policies against the cost.49 Alternatively, targets mightinclude anything which an enemy values highly.50 Less conventional (andpotentially asymmetric) considerations might include: the electoralhome-town of the enemy defence minister; the stock exchange; a bank ormajor company in which leaders have private financial interests; thecompanies and interests of industrialists with direct influence on govern-ment; a paramilitary organisation charged with domestic policing for anauthoritarian regime; the family of a prime minister; enemy forcesinvolved in counter-insurgency against anti-government organisations;opium poppy fields used to fund political parties; and so on. Again, theKosovo campaign included some targeting in this style. NATO destroyedtwo of Milosevic’s properties including his villa at Dobanovci (a huntingpreserve amongst forests and lakes about 30 minutes from centralBelgrade). Also destroyed were his daughter’s business (a televisionstation in Belgrade) and symbolic targets like his party headquarters.


Risk strategy can be considered a variation of punishment strategy. Itsinfluence rests not on the damage or cost which has been incurred, buton the prospect of further damage and cost. Its targets would be similar,but it relies on there being enough high-value targets left for the enemyto accept that greater losses are in prospect.51 Pause and negotiation arefeatures of such campaigns. ‘Rolling Thunder’ against North Vietnamfrom 1965 to 1968 offers one example.

Risk strategies offer a great deal of scope for small nation air power. Theypermit, and in fact prefer, the measured rather than continuous andintense use of strike; they can be paced for maximal integration withother instruments of influence and coercion; and they provide for somecontrol over escalation.

Decapitation strategies operate on the assumption that any interferencewith the technical ability of a leadership to direct its nation and militaryin conflict will increase the prospect of its defeat. Where decision-makersare unable to control their military, communicate strategy and passrelevant intelligence, the effectiveness of fielded forces will inevitably bedegraded.52 Thus, targeting for decapitation prefers headquarters andrelated leadership facilities, communications networks, and supportingsystems such as power and transport.

Decapitation is an exceptional category of coercion in that itincludes elements of both punishment and denial. The isolation ofthe elite through the bombing of its assets and command andcontrol apparatus is punishing in itself, but the consequences can beexpected to degrade military effectiveness as well. While the actualeffect in the field is important, coercion principally occurs when theleadership, struggling to maintain coherence in its offensive strategy,considers softer options. Again, the Gulf War demonstrated thisapproach.53

Assassination is a variant of decapitation strategy, but it is marginallylegal and assumes the follow-on leadership will bring a better situation.

Decapitation is an attractive strategic strike option for small nations. Thetarget sets tends to be smaller and limited, easily justified as military



targets, and the strategy is aimed most directly at the psychology of theultimate leader.

The relevance of coercion theory to small nations is clear. It offers aprocess by which a satisfactory outcome to dispute can be pursuedthrough the manipulation of enemy decision-maker cost-benefit analysis,without having to physically crush its military. The strategy centres onresolve of the leadership rather than the capability of its military – atarget more accessible to limited resources cleverly applied.

Towards a New Asymmetric Paradigm

Punching Above Your Weight

There was once a young non-commissioned officer inthe Royal Australian Air Force by the name of NoelCundy. He was famous on two counts: his smallstature and his prowess in the boxing ring. During hiscareer he held a number of amateur boxing titles andwas well known for regularly defeating opponentsmuch larger than himself. He was once asked howsuch a small man was able to consistently beat suchlarge opponents. He replied, ‘by making myself smaller’.

Thinking Outside the Box: Lessons From Revolutionary WarfareIn general, small nations have few air strike assets and tend to preparetheir limited capabilities for surface combat support in pursuit of militaryvictory. Any search for a more ambitious air strategy should necessarilyinclude deeper consideration of asymmetric warfare strategies.

We might, for example, consider the doctrine of revolutionary war (oftenreferred to as guerrilla warfare). After all, that approach has an immenselysuccessful tradition. Richard Simpkin writes that there have been onlytwo cases of organisations employing revolutionary warfare techniques,

in which the protagonists did not at least hold their own; namely, theContras in Nicaragua and the rebels in the Malayan Emergency. In con-trast, applications of unconventional warfare in Korea, Vietnam andNorthern Ireland remain widely heralded as undefeated by the muchmore substantial conventional military forces which have opposed them.One is tempted to conclude that ‘the span of military techniques coveredby the term “revolutionary” warfare may actually represent a more effec-tive way of waging war than operations by organised forces’.54

Richard Simpkin suggests that the various forms of modern land warfare,including revolutionary warfare and manoeuvre warfare can be arrangedon a continuum. At the right of the continuum lie mass armies; at theleft, terrorists. Small-force manoeuvre warfare and guerrilla warfare sitright and left respectively, but adjacent to each other on the same con-tinuum.55

The difference between terrorism and guerrilla warfare doctrine on theone hand, and small nation combat doctrine on the other, lies primarilyin the fact that only the latter tends to comply with the ‘conventions’ oflarge nation war-fighting. Clausewitz’s preoccupation was with theseconventions, emphasising destruction of the enemy’s forces and decreeingthat ‘only great and general engagements will produce great results’.56

Giap, on the other hand, dealt with less conventional struggle. He wroteof North Vietnam: ‘(t)here was no clearly-defined front in this war. It wasthere where the enemy was. The front was nowhere, it was everywhere’.57

The connection between small nation military operations, and revolu-tionary warfare and terrorism at the lower end of the continuum, lies pri-marily in the limitation of means available to the proponent. Terrorismand revolutionary war are both waged by generally small and/or poorlyequipped cooperatives. In this, and the need to make the best of simpleresources, they share a challenge in common with small nation conven-tional war-fighting organisations. This connection warrants a closer smallnation look at non-conventional war-fighting techniques.58

Successes in terrorism demonstrate graphically how small organisationscan generate a vastly disproportionate amount of power and influencethrough non-conventional strategy. It is no ambition of this paper to dig-


nify terrorism. The US counter-terrorist policy of ‘make no deals … treatterrorists as criminals … (and) apply maximum pressure on states thatsponsor and support terrorists’59 is one increasingly subscribed to byother nations in the wake of ‘9–11’, and one certainly supported by theauthor. However, principles of oblique relevance to small air forces doexist.

Terrorists target strategically. Operations create disruption, fear and eco-nomic damage, often before a world-wide audience, in order to interferewith political decision-making processes. The damage may not always bedirectly or obviously linked with specific terrorist demands (where theyexist), but it carries anticipated flow on effects nevertheless intended toculminate in policy change. Decision-makers are usually quick todenounce terrorist actions and state that no concessions will be made.However, from the moment any such official response is given, terroristscan be considered to have engaged political decision-makers publicly onthe issues they pursue. This alone represents a degree of victory otherwiseless attainable through conventional lobbying. Examples include the1996 series of suicide bombings in Tel Aviv and Jerusalem by extremistgroups aiming to destroy the Middle East peace process. The attackskilled 60 civilians and the issues that were raised led to early elections anda change of government in Israel.60

The pattern of success for terrorist organisations lies not in an ability tofight the policy makers on their own terms. Given the difficulties for dis-sident groups to gain access to the decision-makers by conventionalmeans, such groups resort to targeting indirectly for strategic effect. Theyact to manipulate the context within which the political regimes theyoppose struggle to exist. By this mechanism they can achieve remarkableresults with negligible infrastructure and minimal technical skills andequipment.

Some terrorist groups have so skilfully capitalised on the strategic poten-tial of violence that they manoeuvre themselves into permanent positionsof power within the establishment. The Palestine LiberationOrganisation (PLO) is one such organisation. The Irish RepublicanArmy (IRA) has also, more recently, gained a significant foothold in con-ventional politics after a long history of terrorism.


Since forming in 1969 as a clandestine armed wing of the republicanorganisation Sinn Fein, the IRA has been held responsible for a variety ofbombings, assassinations, kidnappings, extortion cases and robberies. Inlate 1994 a cease-fire was brought into effect. However, in February 1996(after just 17 months) it was broken again with IRA bombing operationscontinuing against rail stations and shopping areas on the British main-land. A further truce was coordinated with IRA guerrillas and, as areward, Sinn Fein was offered a seat in multi-party talks on the future ofNorthern Ireland. On 18 January 1998, Gerry Adams (the President ofSinn Fein) had an historic meeting at 10 Downing Street with BritishPrime Minister Tony Blair to discuss the issue of Irish Republicanism. Itwas the first time an Irish republican leader had entered the British PrimeMinister’s residence in 76 years of conflict. Sinn Fein’s new politicalaccess represented a significant victory for the IRA. Subsequent negotia-tions led to the signing of the ‘Good Friday Agreement’ on 10 April1998, and major changes in the political structures and processes ofIreland continue.61

In essence, a terrorist groups effectively achieved high-level politicalaccess to the British government by strategic targeting. They did not haveto muster or employ decisive combat power in a traditional militarysense. Instead, with what meagre military means they did have, theytargeted key sensitivities in a campaign of coercion. To the government,the military and public they presented a long-term constant threat ofviolence, the possible removal of which gave them significant bargainingpower. This was clearly a coercion strategy capitalising the ‘risk’approach.

Short of using violence for political outcomes, any immediate doctrinalconnection between terrorism and small nation strategic air power wouldbe tenuous. However, terrorism does offer proof of concept that relativelyminor powers can directly affect major political outcomes throughstrategic targeting with minimal resources. It shows that persistent,inescapable, low intensity, high impact coercive operations accompanied byconcise demands can beat conventional military mass.

Revolutionary warfare, like terrorism, features a dispersed and spasmodicyet persistent mode of operation based on the maintenance of initiative


and the optimisation of stealth and surprise. The applicability of suchapproaches to small nation air power should not be too quickly dis-carded. There are certain circumstances which could quite gainfullyemploy a less coherent, more dispersed and painfully persistent campaignagainst small and relatively unprotected, yet collectively relevant targets.Such a campaign would have quite distinct advantages for small nationair strike. It would for example be sustainable with limited resources; itwould offer the seizure of the initiative with all the associated advantages;the unpredictability of attacks would assist in the avoidance of attritionfrom air defence; and the impact of the attacks could be regulated toachieve the required harassment without breaching the thresholds forconflict escalation or international wrath. The mechanism for effect, likesome forms of revolutionary war, might be considered one of eventualvictim fatigue. ‘There is in guerrilla warfare no such thing as a decisivebattle …’62 The aim would instead be the progressive breach of theenemy leadership’s tolerance for persistent and accumulating low-levelcost.

Such a strategy may well have applicability where a defending smallnation lacks the resources for conventional military expulsion of a foreignforce lodged on sovereign soil, for example. In looking to coercive oppor-tunities within the aggressor’s homeland, the non-conventional optionsmay present a very humane, non-inflammatory and effective mode ofresponse. The persistent and progressive destruction of certain targets(say, every road and rail bridge in the aggressor nation which can be asso-ciated with communication to the theatre) might add quite significantlyand perhaps even critically to the joint accumulation of political, diplo-matic and economic pressures.

There is a perverse lack of logic in ethics-based objections to this sort ofoperation. The anticipation of enemy raids and harassment activity iscommonplace in the contingency planning of nations like Australia. Yetthe builders of air power strategy seem intent on dealing with such non-conventional forms of assault by strictly conventional means.63 Thisincongruency favours the attacker and disadvantages the small nationdefender. Strong evidence exists for the ineffectiveness of large organisedforces against revolutionary warfare strategies; Vietnam being a clear casein point. Alternative land-based counter-measures are sometimes con-


templated involving Special Forces in clandestine and ‘quasi-guerrilla’modes of operation.64 The same logic, however, seldom seems to beextended to air power. One wonders what could be so objectionableabout replying to state-sponsored guerrilla warfare intrusions of one’sown shores with similar but air power sourced counter-intrusions ofenemy homeland.

When the stakes are high the fixation with convention is even moreuncanny. While the non-conventional methods of warfare are morelegally risky, when the very survival of one’s small nation is at stake, anyobsession with convention must be checked for common sense. Is itbetter to have lost a fair war, or to have won by exploiting all availableoptions including the unconventional if necessary? The guerrillas ofNorth Vietnam, Cuba and Algeria would be quick to provide an answer.

Revolutionary warfare oriented applications of force are surely legitimate.Revolutionary warfare is, after all, one of the four generally recognisedmajor theories on war strategy (along with the maritime, continental andair theories). Its origins can be traced as far back as Sun Tzu.65

Throughout the historical literature reviewing guerrilla warfare, thereseems to be a tacit acceptance of it as an inevitable method of war-fighting for forces too poorly resourced to fully exploit conventionalmethods. It is interesting, and perhaps puzzling, that the use of aero-planes in a guerrilla style offensive (by nation states) is never contem-plated. Revolutionary warfare principles seem tied to the ground.

The use of air power in the style of guerrilla warfare would, of course,demand numerous other considerations. Such risks as similar enemyoperations in reprisal, damage to domestic support and the chance ofadverse third party response would need case-by-case assessment.However, none of these variables should automatically be considered torule out less conventional options. Circumstances, as well as ‘rules’, figurein acceptability. With regards to international opinion, for example, if theinvading nation were one already widely condemned, and already facinginternational sanctions, then the world’s response to a small nation’sunorthodox counter-action may be quite sympathetic. While ‘going non-conventional’ might be expected to attract scorn, it may not so easilydivert it. The victim or underdog seems to enjoy some licence when it


comes to defensive action. International tolerance of Israel’s legally mar-ginal ‘anticipatory self-defence’ (as in the Six Day War and OperationBabylon66) illustrates the point.67

In summary, the quest for alternative strategy for small nation strikeshould include consideration of other asymmetric warfare precedent.This paper does not suggest that revolutionary warfare theory might offera wholesale solution to the quest. No one approach can suit all circum-stances. This paper does suggest that the conventional employment offorce against military targets need not always be considered the onlyoption, especially when the stakes involve defence for national survival.We must ask: ‘Do other options exist?’ and ‘How little adjustment inthinking would be necessary to establish and maintain non-conventionaloptions in reserve?’ Open-minded, small air power strategists shouldallow themselves to be influenced by successful non-conventional example.

Spot BombingAn understanding of the perspectives, constraints and precedents out-lined in this paper – along with a basic understanding of air power doc-trine and history – forms an adequate basis for speculation on possibili-ties for alternative small nation air strike strategy.

A customised small nation approach should prefer strategies employingsmall, high impact, discrete operations. The limited energy should befocused on achieving mind changes for political purposes rather thansystem collapse for military purposes. Coercion-based strategies shouldtherefore feature with the resolve of the supreme decision-makers fore-most in mind. Campaigns should involve the comprehensive orchestra-tion, in joint strategy, of other military and especially non-military func-tions engaging the same decision-makers. The exploitation of surprise,and of affordable precision, stand-off and night technologies might bepursued with the same tactical doctrine as larger nations. However,operations should not aim to overwhelm. They might instead aim to con-tribute to coercive pressure – to appeal to decision-makers and persuade.Such a paradigm could be summarised as Strategic Persuasion OrientedTargeting (SPOT) – or for convenience, ‘spot bombing’. The summarynotion principally involves the opportunity-based employment of small


nation air power for the direct influence of politicians rather thanmilitaries. It would not necessarily replace conventional brute forceapplications. It would merely provide another option in the small nationrepertoire for influence. It would not call for a change in technical capa-bility; just a change in planning orientation. There is no historical pre-cedent to speak of, but Operations Babylon, El Dorado Canyon68 andDeliberate Force69 may offer some guidance.

Spot Bombing and AsymmetryThe dominant feature of the spot bombing notion is its inherently asym-metric nature. One of the great inhibitors of strategic creativity is theinexplicable tendency for humans to respond to the offensive actions ofothers only ‘in kind’. ‘Punishment by reciprocity’ seems to appeal to ahuman emotional construct which associates proportion with justice.While appropriate in our courts, adherence in the handling of hostileenemy acts may be less appropriate. Although writing in a Cold War con-text in the 1960s, Schelling asks a relevant and provocative question:

What is the compulsion to embody coherence and pattern inone’s action, especially against somebody who has just tried toshoot up your destroyers or has violated your airspace with areconnaissance plane? Rules are easy to understand amongcountries that try to get along with each other, that respect eachother, subscribe to a common etiquette and are trying to establisha set of laws to govern their behaviour; but when somebody fliesU-2 spy planes over your missile sites, why not kidnap a few ofhis ballerinas?

Consideration of wartime response must avoid artificial constraint. Smallnations contemplating desperate defensive scenarios must question therationale of proportional or symmetric response. Disadvantaged by size,they need to search more laterally for advantage. Where proportionalresponse is maintained, it should be so as a matter of choice rather thandefault.

A small nation facing an amphibious invasion, for example, wouldbenefit by not limiting its response to a land-based counter manoeuvrewhen the invader’s homeland is within range. To fail here would be to


leave a large aggressor with the initiative, and risk a war of attrition thatsmall nations can least afford.

Avoiding ‘response in kind’ also avoids predictability. Where a threatnation makes a submarine attack, it expects a counterattack on its sub-marine facilities and prepares defences accordingly. Small nations shouldtake their counterattack elsewhere – somewhere unpredictable – seizingthe initiative and in so doing making allowance for its own strengths andweaknesses.70 There should be no provision for etiquette. Effective coer-cion is not about a fair fight.71

Asymmetric warfare and spot bombing are about seeking enemy weaknessrather than strengths. Liddell Hart identifies as the crux of all conflict theneed to:

(p)ick out your opponent’s weak spot and hit him there with allpossible force, whilst at the same time guarding against the riskthat he may knock you out instead.72

Planning of an asymmetric response involves search for the line of leastresistance in undermining of enemy resolve. In the words of the strategicthinker Alan Hinge, ‘Hit him where he aint’.73 This approach calls forgreater effort in searching for and identifying coercive opportunities.Inroads to the thinking of decision-makers will not only exist in theirmilitary but also in their population, their governmental system, andthrough the personal ‘valuables’ which they most cherish or depend onfor their power and well-being. In searching for mechanisms that mightculminate in the desired mind change, no stone should be left unturned.

Non-conventional defensive approaches are not new. In 1986 theAustralian Secretary of the Department of Defence, W.B. Pritchett,spoke in the following terms:

Moreover the strategy of denial allows the enemy to impose hisplan of campaign on us and to force us into disproportionateeffort.74 But two can play at that game. We too can harass andraid and mine; and we can strike at bases and other land targetsexacting penalties and costs. Our defence preparation should not


be such as to rule this out for government or make it too difficultor hazardous a course to adopt.75

While Pritchett was emphasising the ability to strike offensively fromwithin a strictly defensive stance, the concept of conventional forceexecuting non-conventional harassment raids against an enemy govern-ment is nevertheless introduced.

Small nations must target innovatively and (depending on the desperate-ness of the situation) to the limits of moral, legal, domestic and thirdparty acceptability. Symmetrical response as a self-imposed handicapcould be critically undermining.

Spot Bombing and LawLaw is one of the key vulnerabilities to the employment of any asym-metric strategy. Asymmetric response is almost by definition the avoid-ance of convention, and most conventions have a legal basis. Strategic airstrike is constrained by international law of armed conflict (LOAC).

Bombing has evoked moral and legal debate since its earliest applica-tion.76 Yet the 1977 Additional Protocols to the Geneva Conventionsrepresent the first substantial attempt at its control.

The dominant theme in the Protocols is the reduction of harm tocivilians.77 Small nations with a defensive outlook generally sign up tothe Protocols as they stand to be significant beneficiaries of such a lawwell supported. The highly discretionary approach of spot bombing(considering all potential targets rather than just proportional responses)would give ample scope for adherence to the Protocols.

A spot bombing approach would not be immune from producing collat-eral damage, but no bombing approach is – a point acknowledged andprovided for in LOAC. The principle of ‘proportionality’ requires thatthe military commander weigh the anticipated military value of attackagainst the possible harm to protected persons and objects.78 It requiresthat the losses or damage be proportionate to, rather than excessive withrespect to, the military advantage expected from a successful operation.79

Thus the military necessity of an operation is allowed to have some


bearing on whether risk to civilians is acceptable or not. Small nationscontemplating a more strategic approach to strike, but at the same timemaintaining high ideals in the protection of civilians, are adequatelyaccommodated within the law. Spot bombing should offer significant dis-cretion over whether high collateral-risk missions need be undertakenbut, where militarily justified, such actions will be possible without con-travening the international norms.

The second LOAC constraint on spot bombing is the requirement thattargets have a military connection. The law contains that ‘only militaryobjectives are legitimate objects of attack’. However, these objectivesinclude a very wide range of persons, locations and objects. Besides theobvious inclusions of combatants and the facilities and materials theyuse, legitimate objectives include any:

… objects which, by their nature, location, purpose or use makean effective contribution to military action and whose total orpartial destruction, capture or neutralisation, in the circum-stances ruling at the time, offers a definite military advantage.80

Attacks are legitimate against: civilians who take direct part in hostilities;production, storage, transportation and communication facilities withany military utility; economic targets that indirectly support operations;and any object normally dedicated to civilian purposes which is used formilitary purposes.81

The scope is therefore considerable and the majority of targets that asmall attacker might consider most useful in coercion will often comply.Even the bombing of a stock exchange, for example, would seemjustifiable when one realises the fundamental importance of the nationaleconomy to the funding of the enemy’s war effort. However, one must becautious with the excessively liberal interpretation of LOAC. Almost anynon-human target can be justified against the LOAC criteria with anadequate imagination.

If one makes a liberal interpretation of what constitutes ‘definite militaryadvantage’, then attacks affecting the psychological resolve of thesupreme enemy leadership will certainly be considered legitimate. If one


takes a more conservative approach towards LOAC, that ‘definitemilitary advantage’ in no way implies or accommodates ‘definite politicaladvantage’ (albeit aimed at progress towards peace), then motives at thevery core of all strategic bombing and coercion theory would becomelegally questionable.

In fact, strategic targeting (especially for coercion) recognises that sometargets well removed from the actual fight and only distantly connectedto the military effort itself may be at least as significant in bringing aboutthe end of war. Strategic bombing for coercion submits that carefullyplanned ‘surgical’ removal or destruction of well chosen targets (militaryor not), whilst violent in the short term, can actually save lives, property,time and money through the earlier cessation of hostilities. Indeed, thebelief that the destruction of vital targets has a long-term humane effectif it significantly shortens the conflict is recognised by the law of armedconflict.82

Confining attacks to a narrow military focus is specifically what air powerpromised to liberate us from after the Somme and Paschendale, and isparticularly what small nations facing a larger foe need to be liberatedfrom. The whole gist of strategic targeting is to move away from the fix-ation with the fielded military and approach the political problem at itssource – the policy makers. Such pursuits are not always best served bytargets with a clear military connection.

While conscientiously observing the humanitarian ideals of LOAC, spotbombing would function on the selection of targets, not just on their puremilitary value but on their coercive political value. Leadership and eco-nomic targets would be amongst those considered. Many such targetswere attacked in the Operation Desert Storm which was subsequentlyconsidered to have substantially complied with the Protocols.83

The search for better small nation air strike application suggests thatsmall nations must exploit every possible advantage in the application oftheir air power, that small nations must target innovatively and to thelimits of acceptability, and that blind or unquestioning adherence to con-ventions can produce unnecessary handicaps. These directions do notnecessarily challenge LOAC. LOAC is not black and white. It is rather


an attempt to strike general norms (based on humanitarian ideals) for themoderation of an awesome capability. Compliance with LOAC is not amatter of simple obedience. Its rules are hardly specific or exhaustiveenough for all of war’s many facets to be individually covered. The moresophisticated challenge for planners in LOAC is to achieve the missionwhile at the same time complying with the humanitarian ideals thatunderlie the Protocols.84 LOAC is the code of ethics for the profession ofarms85 It is not a checklist but a general moral prescription whichrequires interpretation in each contingency.

The challenge for the spot bombing strategist – for both moral and polit-ical reasons – is to seek targets that appropriately stimulate the desiredcost-benefit calculations and political reactions, without crossing theline. Spot bombing demands lateral thought and risk taking, but ‘(t)heright to adopt means of defeating the enemy is not unlimited’.86

Asymmetry and legality are fundamental aspects of spot bombingdeserving of greater analysis. Other features, however, deserve briefcoverage on the way to understanding the spot bombing approach and itsfeasibility. These include impact, communication and denial.

Spot Bombing and ‘Impact’While high tempo or high intensity strategic operations are outside easyreach for small nations (and outside the demands of spot bombing), highimpact operations are not. High impact is essential to coercion and (likecoercion itself ) is predominantly psychological. It can be considered acombination of shock, damage and visibility.

Impact = Shock x Damage x Visibility

Shock is the sudden and disruptive psychological effect of air power. It isthe product of aircraft noise, the rapidness of onset of attack and thegeneral impression of vulnerability for victims on the ground. Surprise isan amplifier of shock. America’s strike on Libya in 1986 achieved highlevels of both shock and surprise. The attack was launched in complete


radio silence amid heavy electronic countermeasures, and from 200 feetand 540 miles per hour over populated areas in the dead of night.

A credible level of damage is required for impact. Failure in this area riskssending a negative message of vacillation or lack of commitment. InOperation El Dorado Canyon, significant damage was achieved to airdefence (SAM) systems, buildings, runways and aircraft on the ground.Collateral damage did occur but this was minimised through very restric-tive rules of engagement.

Visibility is concerned with the size of both immediate and subsequentaudiences. Generally, the more spectacular the circumstances of thestrike, the more interest it generates. The media serves an important rolein achieving visibility. Again, the Libyan strike was based specifically onvisibility criteria. All the targets were in the highly populated Tripoli andBenghazi regions and included high profile military facilities, TripoliInternational Airport and, most significantly, the principle residence ofQaddafi at Azizia barracks. News of the attack was widely broadcastthrough the media.

Spot bombing, and coercion generally, involve message sending. Impact isabout making the message clear and making it stick. Impact is both fea-sible for small competent air strike forces and naturally occurring in thespot bombing approach. As ‘stand-alone’ attacks, the discrete operationsof spot bombing would naturally tend to be of higher impact than opera-tions embedded in broader conflict.

Achievement of high impact would be a planning requirement for thespot bombing strategist, but it is within means of small forces and is aviable substitute for intensity and tempo in a non-conventionalapproach.

Spot Bombing and CommunicationThe important role of non-military instruments in joint strategy hasalready been stressed. Any coercion strategy capitalising a mix of bulletsand words demands proportional attention to the words. Clever com-munication is vital. It is important for the coercer to make his intentionsclear and unambiguous.87 As Schelling wrote:


War is always a bargaining process, one in which threats andproposals, counterproposals and counterthreats, offers andassurances, concessions and demonstrations, take the form ofactions rather than words, or actions accompanied by words. Itis in the war that we have come to call ‘limited wars’ that thebargaining appears most vividly and is conducted mostconsciously. The critical targets in such a war are in the mind ofthe enemy as much as on the battlefield; the state of the enemy’sexpectations is as important as the state of his troops; the threatof violence in reserve is more important than the commitment offorce in the field.88

While brute force operations tend to speak for themselves, higher ordersof strategy benefit by effective dialogue. Concurrent diplomacy was astrong feature of Operation Deliberate Force. Ongoing talks were also asignificant player in the bombing of North Korea and Vietnam. Indeed,bombing served the aim of the talks more than talking enhanced the suc-cess of the bombing.

The grand strategist must not only produce incentives for concession,but work to dissolve the disincentives. Diplomacy, economics and poli-tics are involved. Parallel high-level functions must be coordinated in theair campaign to complete the coercion formula.

Effective communication is a fundamental feature of spot bombing, andany small nation strategist contemplating this approach must plan for theintegration of dialogue in any campaign.

Spot Bombing and ‘Brute Force’There is one final point which must be made about spot bombing. Thispaper does not criticise the more non-coercive brute force or denialstrategies in the employment of small nation air power. On the contrary,roles such as interdiction and CAS are the current ‘bread and butter’ ofsmall air strike operations. This paper does, however, seek a higher orderstrategic application for small nation air strike, and in so doing has pre-ferred to consider coercion through careful strategic targeting.

Notwithstanding this, there is precedent for a form of high order strategic


air strike which is not coercive in nature but deserves special mention.Operation Babylon demonstrated high order political interventionthrough brute force. It demonstrated the complete removal of a criticalenemy option as opposed to the coercion of the enemy to not exercisethat option. The Iraqi acquisition of nuclear weapons was delayedindefinitely and the context of Middle Eastern politics was altered for atleast the next decade. Political objectives were achieved without war, andwithout deferring to enemy decision-makers.

The direct style of strategic strike illustrated in Operation Babylon is out-side of what is being suggested here as spot bombing. Such an operationmight well be small, discrete and surprise-based, but would not share thefunctional aspects of impact, joint strategy and the erosion of leadershipresolve, which are central to spot bombing. Such action is involved morewith removing choice than influencing choice. The approach is mentionedhere not as a conformer to spot bombing but as a viable exception. It is anadditional methodology by which small nations could expect to applymeagre air strike resources for powerful strategic effect. This fait accom-pli approach might be applied not only to WMD counter-proliferation,but also to any situation where objectionable enemy intent has a physicalmanifestation. Consider, for example, the prevention of another nationfrom building its oil rigs in ones own territorial waters. This strategicapplication of denial would be viable for small nations with strategicallyorientated air strike planners.

There are three other important features of strategic bombing whichsmall nations would capitalise through spot bombing. These are theopportunities for reduction of casualties, seizure of initiative and theachievement of deterrence. These advantages are by no means exclusiveto the spot bombing paradigm, and their doctrine is adequate coveredelsewhere.89 They are advantages of high order strategic air powergenerally, but they are particularly pertinent to small nation needs.

ConclusionThis paper has been about the feasibility of strategic air strike for smallnations. By default – by seeking strategy for small nations of asymmetricmeans with larger foe – it has also been about asymmetric air power. It


has notably not been about countering asymmetric attack. It has beenabout adopting asymmetric attack.

Asymmetric warfare is not some new form of cheating. It is well repre-sented and celebrated throughout conventional warfare history. It is aninherent feature of the manoeuvrist approach and a natural corollary ofany conflict where one side has might or achieves ascendency over theother. When small nations foresee failure against larger opponents usingconventional warfare means, they must seek alternatives.

The challenge this paper puts to small nations is to raise the strategic orderof air strike operations – to prepare not just for the direct and indirectsupport of fielded battle but also for the exploitation of opportunity tomore directly influence the ultimate strategic aims in conflict.

The task of devising a realistic approach by which small nations mightattempt such direct influence on ultimate aims demands an understandingof the nature of war in general, and of the small nation perspective onwar in particular. First, small nations do not pursue unconditionalsurrender. History shows that war has been successfully terminated byother means, and sensibly limiting the objectives greatly increases theauthority of limited force. The aim of war is the abandonment of anenemy’s political aims, and this may not necessitate the complete collapseof the enemy nation’s ability to function and support war. Second, thereal focus of war is the psychology of the enemy’s supreme decision-making body. This, after all, is the body which formulates, upholds andpotentially relinquishes the offending policy about which war is fought.Recognising the ultimate focal point of one’s war effort greatly enhancesthe chances of correctly directing one’s limited energy. Third, smallnations do not argue for the unilateral decisiveness of strategic air strike.History suggests that single-handed air power victory is an illusion. Byapproaching air power as one chess piece on a board of many nationalpower elements, its effect can be amplified through collaboration andsynergy. Small nations seek a coordinated contribution from air strike,and not a complete solution.90

Armed with these understandings, and with a full comprehension ofcoercion theory, methodologies for the high order strategic application of


small nation air strike can be contemplated. Small nations cannot realis-tically generate and sustain the mass, tempo and simultaneity in air strikewhich typifies large nation air strike methodologies. In this respect, suchmethodologies and the plethora of doctrine and musings which surroundthem are misleading to small nations.

Given sufficient intelligence, small nations could work to identify coer-cive opportunities against the enemy leadership. Such opportunities need notgel into a comprehensive strategic air campaign. Individual opportunitiesmight be exploited, instead, as ad hoc supplements to a grand strategiccampaign involving other streams of national power (economic, diplo-matic and political) with a similar focus. Discrete offensive strategic airactions might be conducted for their value in directly supplementing andcompounding the existing pressures brought to bear on the enemyleadership (including, if necessary, whatever pressure can be brought tobear by ongoing conventional fielded battle).

Strategic Persuasion Oriented Targeting, or spot bombing, is offered as onealternative approach for the utilisation of existing air strike capabilities.It is an approach which accommodates the constraints of small nation airpower, yet concentrates on affecting the ultimate objectives of the enemy.It borrows from revolutionary warfare theory, exploits ‘impact’ ratherthan ‘tempo’, employs high level communication and tests the laws ofarmed conflict – and as such represents a new paradigm for the use ofsmall nation air power.

It detracts nothing from existing small nation offensive air powerpreoccupations. The ability of small nations to carry out offensive airsupport missions like CAS, AI and maritime strike is uncompromised bythe suggestion that strategic strike options might also exist. Strategic airstrike is promoted simply as an extra dimension to existing air powerapplications, offering choice to the grand strategist – a potent extradevice to variously employ in manoeuvres for peace. The ‘optionality’ isimportant, as coercive opportunities against the enemy leadership maynot always be apparent, and in low level conflict a strategic bombingapproach may not be warranted.

Spot bombing is mooted as a demonstration that strategic bombing


should be considered feasible for small nations. This paper has beenintended to encourage a strategic orientation to air strike in those whohave so far considered its conduct exclusive to superpowers or largenation coalitions.

The added bonus for small nations contemplating strategic air strike isthat the process forces them to also examine their own vulnerabilities toasymmetric operations. One is encouraged to consider factors such as thestrength of one’s own national economy; the identity and likely physicaland psychological accessibility of the supreme decision-making body; thedepth of organic supporting industry; the likely reliability of specificthird parties; the likely resilience and vulnerabilities of the nationalpopulation under stress; and the accessibility of (and redundancy levelsin) financial, communications and other civil infrastructures, to name afew. Such concerns are highly relevant in the context of current eventsregarding the most unethical and illegal branch of asymmetric warfare –terrorism.

The challenge for small nations is to gear up to apply air power where itseffects on the overall conflict are most significant – raising the strategicorder of application. Strategic air power is about improving strategy tomaximise the value of existing capability. While there may be preferredhardware and infrastructural co-requisites, adopting the strategy is not asmuch about capability, as planning orientation. It is about thinkingharder rather than working harder; about treating diseases rather thansymptoms.

The secondary message of this paper is that small nations are not neces-sarily well served by the abundance of large nation air power doctrine.There is a general need for small nations to look critically at such doc-trine and ask more searching questions about their own maximumpotential with modest means. There is too little independent thoughtand original material being generated by small nations attending to theirown particular circumstances.

Creative strategy is required. There is little precedent for small nation airstrike outside of major alliances and coalitions. But air power is young.There is a great deal more to look forward to than back on. Therefore,


with due respect to history, we should make it our servant rather than ourmaster. With a history of larger partners, small nations and small coali-tions have simply not had the need or opportunity to think strategicallyabout air strike. But the post-Cold War world is an uncertain place, char-acterised more by a large number of small nation wars than the smallnumber of large nation wars in our past. This challenge may call for morecreative foresight than historical analysis. It was General HeinzGuderian’s creativity and innovation which led to Blitzkreig,91 not someslavish adherence to historical precedent. It was Colonel John Warden’singeniously fresh combination of ideas which contributed to Gulf Warvictory, not blind reverence to extant doctrine. We celebrate thesestrategic architects for creating precedent, not copying it.

Small nation thinkers need to look beyond the hackneyed conventions oflarge nation air war in the quest for greater leverage from limitedresources. Asymmetric air power is the core business.

NOTES

1 The terrorist attacks of 11 September 2001 in which highjacked airliners were flown into theWorld Trade Centre and the Pentagon in the US.

2 A definition given by Major General Tony Milton, UK, ‘Asymmetric Warfare: The British View’(unpublished), a presentation to ‘New Zealand Defence Force Symposium 2002 – AsymmetricWarfare: Defeating Trans-National Terrorist Campaigns’, Trentham, New Zealand, 14–15 May2002.

3 List derived from excellent analysis by Dr Cathy Downes, ‘Addressing 21st Century AsymmetricConflict’ (unpublished), a presentation to ‘New Zealand Defence Force Symposium 2002’,14–15 May 2002.

4 A definition actually applied to ‘unconventional war’ by Admiral Chris Ritchie, ‘AsymmetricWarfare: The Australian View’ (unpublished), in a presentation to ‘New Zealand Defence ForceSymposium 2002’, 14–15 May 2002. This is written with a clear conscience as an air poweragent from a small nation with no capability or intent for the mass killing of civilians. The authorcannot speak for how the major powers that continue to harbour nuclear weapons (and there-fore abstain from signing the 1977 Additional Protocols to the Geneva Conventions protectingcivilians) rationalise their situations.

5 Richard P. Hallion, Precision Guided Munitions and the New Era of Warfare, APSC Paper No. 53,Air Power Studies Centre, Canberra, April 1997, p. 4.

6 Applied in the Gulf War, the five concentric circles depict a hierarchy of sub-systems within a


national system. The model suggests a means of prioritising targets by identifying generic cen-tres of gravity for an enemy’s sustainment of a national war effort. In priority order these include:leadership, system essentials, infrastructure, population and fielded forces. However, with suffi-cient air power, target sets can be attacked in parallel rather than in series. See Shaun Clarke,Strategy, Air Strike and Small Nations, Air Power Studies Centre, Canberra, 1999, p. 76.

7 Derived from statistics in: ibid., pp. 80-83.8 A figure derived from statistics in Reaching Globally, Reaching Powerfully: The United States Air

Force in the Gulf War, A Department of the Air Force Report, September 1991, p. 29. As citedin Waters, Gulf Lesson One, p. 163.

9 Although the census is somewhat general. These figures include all types of bombers, fighters,anti-shipping and anti-submarine aircraft – any platform with the slightest capability to destroya surface target. See Clarke, Strategy, Air Strike and Small Nations, pp. 187–190.

10 While there is no doubt that air doctrine has a measure of universal applicability at the tacticallevel, the limited means of small nations become critically discriminating at the strategic cam-paign level.

11 With 135 and 122 platforms respectively.12 As cited in Michael Knight, Strategic Offensive Air Operations, Brassey’s (UK) Ltd, 1989, p. 1.13 Strategic Aerospace Warfare Study Panel (SAWS), Aerospace Power for the 21st Century: A Theory

to Fly By, (unpublished), Maxwell Air Force Base, Alabama, 4 October 1996, p. iv.14 M.J. Armitage and R.A. Mason, Air Power in the Nuclear Age: 1945–84, Macmillan Press,

London, 1983, p. 44.15 Robert A. Pape, Bombing to Win, Cornell University Press, New York, 1996, p. 254.16 Leon V. Sigal, Fighting to a Finish: The Politics of War Termination in the United States and Japan,

1945, Cornell University Press, Ithaca, 1988. As cited in Pape, Bombing to Win, p. 88.17 Carl von Clausewitz, On War, translated and edited by Michael Howard and Peter Paret,

Princeton University Press, New Jersey, USA, 1984, p. 91.18 B.H. Liddell Hart, Thoughts on War, Faber & Faber, London, 1944, p. 47.19 Clausewitz, On War, p. 81.20 Sun Tzu, The Art of War, Shambala, Boston, 1988, p. 67.21 As described by a student regarding the target of Mao Tse-tung’s ‘indirect approach’. Brigadier

General S.B. Griffith II in his ‘Introduction’ to Mao Tse-tung and Che Guevara, GuerrillaWarfare, Cassell, London, 1961, p. 20.

22 Clausewitz, On War, p. 87.23 ibid., p. 605.24 B.H. Liddell Hart, Strategy, 2nd rev. edn, Frederick A. Praegar Inc., New York, 1967, p. 351.25 And what is more, through such high strategic order action a relatively small and poorly

resourced force (Argentina) would have prevailed over the much greater one.26 John A. Tirpak, ‘Short’s View of The Air Campaign’, Air Force Magazine, September 1999.27 A claim made by John Keegan regarding Operations Allied Force in ‘Please Mr Blair, Never Take

Such A Risk Again’, Daily Telegraph, 6 June 1999.28 General Merrill A. McPeak, Selected Works 1990–1994, Air University Press, Maxwell Air Force

Base, Alabama, August 1995, p. 18.29 The subtitle of the plaque is ‘Operation Desert Storm: 24–28 February 1991’. Yet this period

acknowledges just five days of a 42-day campaign. In ‘Air Force Basic Doctrine’, a presentationby Lieutenant Colonel Vinnie Farrell, 613th Air Operations Squadron , at the ‘Pacific Rim AirDoctrine Symposium’, Guam, 04–07 April 2000.

30 Sir Charles Webster and Noble Frankland, History of the Second World War: The Strategic Air


Offensive against Germany 1939–1945, Vol II, Her Majesty’s Stationery Office, London, 1961,p. 9.

31 Air Vice-Marshal H.N. Wrigley, The Decisive Factor: Air Power Doctrine, (edited by AlanStephens and Brendan O’Loghlin), Australian Government Publishing Service Press, Canberra,1990. pp. 12–13.

32 ibid., p. 13.33 Andrew Lambert, ‘Coercion and Air Power’, Air Clues, Vol. 50, No. 12, December 1996, p. 449.34 Thomas C. Schelling, Arms and Influence, Yale University Press, New Haven, 1966, p. vi.35 Mechanisms include the likes of popular revolt, the prospect of future loss, leadership change

and battlefield breakthrough. Air strike applied to appropriate targets produces these effects or‘mechanisms’. These in turn translate to desired political level changes. Pape, Bombing to Win, p.328.

36 In World War II, Japan and Germany faced very similar strategic bombing pressure. Japan sur-rendered; Germany did not. Any given air strike campaign will produce different outcomesdependent on the specific context of the application.

37 Even ‘suicide terrorism’ is not irrational in this sense, with sacrifice or martyrdom considered‘profitable’.

38 Clausewitz, On War, p. 92.39 This is an equation from Pape, with a semantic modification that ‘aggression’ replaces ‘resistance’

so as to solely depict the perspective of a small defensive nation under attack. Pape, Bombing toWin, pp. 15–16.

40 Schelling, Arms and Influence, p. 1.41 ibid.42 ibid., pp. 2–6.43 Major Scott Walker, ‘The Unified Field Theory of Coercive Airpower’, Airpower Journal,

Summer 1997, p. 73.44 Lambert, ‘Coercion and Air Power’, p. 445.45 ibid., p. 446.46 Walker, ‘The Unified Field Theory of Coercive Airpower’, p. 71.47 Recently collated into a taxonomy, Pape, Bombing to Win, p. 328.48 For full treatment with specific attention to small nations, see Clarke, Strategy, Air Strike and

Small Nations, pp. 115–134.49 John A. Tirpak, ‘Short’s View of The Air Campaign’, 1999.50 Walker, ‘The Unified Field Theory of Coercive Airpower’, p. 73.51 ibid., p. 74.52 ibid.53 Forty-four leadership and 156 command and control facilities including palaces, command

bunkers and telecommunications nodes were attacked from the air. Pape, Bombing to Win, pp.80, 82. Saddam Hussein is said to have been woefully unaware of the state of his troops for muchof the conflict.

54 Richard E. Simpkin, Race to the Swift: Thoughts on Twenty-First Century Warfare, Brassey’s FutureWarfare Series Volume I, Brassey’s, London, 1985, p. 313.

55 ibid., p. 311.56 Wylie, J.C., Military Strategy: A General Theory of Power Control, Rutgers University Press, New

Brunswick, New Jersey, 1967, p. 63.57 Vo Nguyen Giap, People’s War People’s Army, Foreign Languages Publishing House, Hanoi, 1961,

p. 21. As cited in ibid., p. 61.


58 ‘Non-conventional’ here refers to any method (e.g. guerrilla warfare) that represents an alterna-tive to ‘conventional’ warfare. This group includes the subset of ‘unconventional’ which specifi-cally covers terrorism.

59 Patterns of Global Terrorism 1996, United States Department of State, April 1997, p. iv.60 ibid., p. iii.61 Internet, http://cain.ulst.ac.uk/events/peace/ pp9398.htm, and

http://cain.ulst.ac.uk/events/peace/ pp9899.htm, 17 May 2002.62 Samuel B. Griffith (trans), Mao Tse-Tung on Guerrilla Warfare, Praeger, 1961, p. 52. As cited in

Wylie, Military Strategy, p. 60.63 Ross Babbage, A Coast Too Long: Defending Australia Beyond the 1990s, Allen & Unwin, Sydney,

Australia, 1990, pp. 100–124.64 Simpkin, Race to the Swift, p. 318.65 Wylie, Military Strategy, p. 37.66 Operation Babylon was Israel’s aerial destruction of the Osirak nuclear reactor near Baghdad,

Iraq in 1981. It was a successful mission designed to set back Iraq’s attempts to develop an atom-ic weapon.

67 For brief but useful treatment of the anticipatory self-defence issue see K.A. Kyriakides, ‘AirPower and International Air Law’ in Stuart Peach (ed.), Perspectives on Air Power: Air Power InIts Wider Context, Defence Studies (RAF), Joint Services Command Staff College Bracknell,1998, pp. 117–120.

68 Operation El Dorado Canyon was the 1986 American air strike on Libya in response to allegedstate sponsored terrorism under the rule of the leader, Colonel Qaddafi.

69 Operation Deliberate Force over Bosnia was the successful 11 day NATO air offensive againstBosnian Serbs aimed at stopping attacks on ‘Safe Areas’ occupied mainly by Bosnian Muslims.

70 For example, avoiding high-risk penetration environments where EW, SEAD and self protectionsystems are lacking.

71 Lambert, ‘Coercion and Air Power’, p. 446.72 B.H. Liddell Hart, Thoughts on War, p. 179.73 As cited in Babbage, A Coast Too Long, p. 61.74 ‘Denial’ in this context does not refer to the coercion strategy, but simply refers a national secu-

rity strategy for a protective shield (in contrast to forward defence options) designed to preventan enemy reaching Australia’s shores. Paul Dibb, Review of Australia’s Defence Capabilities, reportto the Minister of Defence, Australian Government Publishing Service, Canberra, 1986, p. 35.

75 W.B. Pritchett, The Dibb Report: Strategy and Force Structure, a paper presented to the AustralianFabian Society Conference on Australian Defence, Melbourne, 2 August 1986, p. 8. As cited inBabbage, A Coast Too Long, p. 123, footnote 27.

76 Even the very first series of raids by the Italian Gavotti in 1911 were condemned by the Turkswho claimed damage to a field hospital. Saundby, R., Air Bombardment: The Story of itsDevelopment, Chatto & Windus, London, 1961, p. 7.

77 For example, the civilian population shall not be the subject of attack; military operations shallonly take place against military objectives. Protocols Additional to the Geneva Conventions of12 August 1949, International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC), Geneva, 1977, art 48 and51(1).

78 That is, non-combatants, civilian and specially protected objects as defined in law of armed con-flict. . Australian Defence Force Publication 37 (ADFP 37): Law of Armed Conflict, first edn, 1996,p. 5–3, para. 509.

79 ibid., p. 2–2, para. 208.


80 ibid., p. xxv. Protocols Additional to the Geneva Conventions, art 52.81 ibid., p. 5–5, para. 527.82 DI(AF) AAP 1000: The Air Power Manual (2nd edn), Air Power Studies Centre, Royal Australian

Air Force, 1994, p. 18.83 Wing Commander E.E. Casagrande, Air Bombardment and the Law of Armed Conflict, Paper No.

10, Air Power Studies Centre, Canberra, February 1993, p. 17.84 ibid., pp. 14–18.85 DI(AF) AAP 1000: The Air Power Manual (2nd edn), p. 17.86 Australian Defence Force Publication 23 (ADFP 23): Targeting, first edn (draft version), 1997,

p. 4–2, para. 410.87 Lambert, ‘Coercion and Air Power’, p. 447.88 Schelling, Arms and Influence, pp. 142–43.89 For some treatment of these factors in the specific context of small nations, see Clarke, Strategy,

Air Strike and Small Nations, pp. 156–163.90 For air power zealots this idea will be somewhat deflating because it steps back from the long

standing but elusive prospect of a ‘knock out’ blow. It sees air power as an independent function,but one inextricably woven into the national power fabric; not a hero but a worker.

91 Blitzkreig: ‘the brilliant combination of fast-moving armour, infantry and strike aircraft whichconstituted one of the genuine war-fighting break-throughs of the 20th century.’ Alan Stephens,‘Changing Technology and Interoperability’ in ANZUS After 45 Years: Seminar Proceedings,11–12 August 1997, Parliament House, Canberra, September 1997, p. 84.


Asymmetric Advantage and Homeland Defence

Dr. Alan StephensThe attack on America on 11th September 2001 was shocking but itshould not have been surprising. Many security analysts had been pre-dicting some kind of devastating terrorist/asymmetric assault on theWest for decades. Now it has happened and it will probably happenagain. Consequently, the nature of homeland defence has changedforever, for all countries, regardless of their size and wealth.

A diverse range of responses to the attacks on the World Trade Centreand the Pentagon, including military, diplomatic, economic and socialmeasures, is already being pursued against the organisation primarilyresponsible, the Al Qaeda network, and its sponsors, and will beextended in the future. This paper is concerned with military responses.

Two aspects of the war against terrorism as demonstrated by theAmerican-led military campaign against Al Qaeda and the Talibandemand the serious attention of responsible officials.

The first is that states can no longer rationally endorse a national defencestrategy predicated on an essentially defensive outlook. That approachnot only concedes the initiative to an aggressor, but also allows him toprepare and grow strong in his own time. ‘Homeland Defence’ will be acredible catch-phrase only when it incorporates the commitment and themilitary capabilities to go out and destroy the enemy, wherever his basesand strength may be. Waiting for something to happen is not an option.That conclusion has clear implications for force-structuring.

The second aspect is that the American-led military campaign inAfghanistan is merely the latest iteration of a warfighting model thatgives advanced nations an overwhelming asymmetric advantage of their

own against any kind of aggressor in any circumstances. Symbolically,the essential form of this 21st century model of warfare is defined at thetop end by stealthy fighters, and at the bottom end by massed armies.The aphorism that generals prepare for the next war by planning for thelast one is writ large for those defence forces that are not workingassiduously right now to maximise their speed, precision, mobility andfirepower, and to minimise their visibility and footprint.

It might seem curious that although this model has become increasinglyobvious over the past ten years, it still has not been fully embraced bymany military professionals and government decision-makers. Taxpayerswhose contributions continue to subsidise outdated defence force struc-tures, systems and ideas have every right to feel aggrieved at the way inwhich their money has been misused and, consequently, their securitycompromised.

The basic problem in most, if not all, Western nations has been poorlyinformed politicians, who decide how defence budgets will be disbursed,and who therefore shape force structures and capabilities, too often forthe worse; and insular single-services which continue to cleave to legacysystems and obsolescent concepts of operations at the expense of 21st

century capabilities.

Even the Americans, whose campaigns in Iraq, the Balkans andAfghanistan in the past decade have provided the template for presentand future warfighting, have succeeded as much by sheer size (which allowsroom within their total force structure for most emerging capabilities andideas) and the determination of a handful of genuine strategic thinkers,as by any inspired, widely-shared organisational vision.1 The moststriking evidence of this is provided by the United States Army which,with the exception of its special forces, has not played a meaningfulwarfighting role in any of America’s last three major campaigns:Deliberate Force in Bosnia in 1995, Allied Force in Kosovo in 1999, andEnduring Freedom in Afghanistan in 2001–2 (and indeed was fullyinvolved in the fighting for only four of the forty-two days of the pre-ceding campaign, against Saddam Hussein in 1991). As one of theArmy’s leading intellectuals, Colonel Douglas Macgregor, has noted, thusfar, his heavy, slow and intellectually diffident service has found the

ASYMMETRIC ADVANTAGE AND HOMELAND DEFENCE190

challenge of adapting to the new defence environment ‘insurmountable’. In Macgregor’s opinion the 21st century environment requires a ‘newoperational paradigm’ based on ‘air, space, missile, and informationpower …’2 (Incidentally, it was disappointing to read in the WashingtonPost shortly after the conclusion of the main air campaign in OperationEnduring Freedom that Colonel MacGregor was ‘shuffled’ by the USArmy into a desk job ‘where he [felt] muzzled’, and that instead ofworking on plans to reform his service he was instead ‘contemplatingretirement’.3)

According to another respected army thinker, retired General Robert L.Scales, his former service’s present doctrinal crisis may be attributable toits near-religious belief in ‘mass’ and ‘closing with the enemy’.4 Whateverthe reason, the US Army should be asking itself why it has not beenneeded for seven years and three wars. Irrelevance is a dangerous condi-tion.

The fact is, ‘mass’ and ‘closing with the enemy’ are obsolete conceptswithin advanced defence organisations, having been replaced by ‘irre-sistible knowledge’, which in turn is translated into lethal force by elusiveplatforms (primarily airborne, and of which stealth is the exemplar) andstand-off precision weapons.

‘Knowledge’ defined as the ability to precisely and discretely target a hos-tile regime has continued to make remarkable progress in recent years.Critics who did not fully understand the implications of emerging tech-nologies and sophisticated targeting strategies conceded after the 1991Gulf War that aerospace-based weapons systems could ‘do’ deserts butasserted they could not do mountains and/or forests. OperationsDeliberate Force and Allied Force in the Former Republic of Yugoslaviain 1995 and 1999 demonstrated otherwise. So then the assertion wasmade that the same systems could not do ‘small’ wars, or guerilla wars,or dug-in tribesmen; this time it has been the air campaign inAfghanistan that has given the lie.5 Urban warfare will be the next test,and there are already signs of significant progress.

The key to dominating any battlespace with aerospace power is the sym-biotic relationship between the weapons that hit the targets and the ideas

ASYMMETRIC ADVANTAGE AND HOMELAND DEFENCE 191

that inform the use of those weapons. Precision-guided munitions,stealth, and all-weather tracking devices have been central to the revolu-tion in offensive air warfare, but unless those tools are directed againstthe critical targets they will be no more than that – tools. It is reassuring,therefore, to note that while the targeting methodology applied in recentcampaigns has basically been the same in each case, the critical targets(the centres of gravity) have varied, having been chosen to meet the par-ticular circumstances.6 The end result, however, has been the same.Subverting the enemy leadership has properly been the objective in eachcase, but aim points have been chosen according to the specific condi-tions and have included such diverse categories as individuals, praetorianguards, the wealth of the ruling elite (their factories, banks, mansions,etc), vital logistics dumps and war reserves, and so on. A previously-absent sensitivity to the prevailing cultural values has been a crucialaddition to the process. In other words, for the first time since offensiveair power began to be used systematically in 1914, campaign plannershave been consistently getting the strategic targeting right.

It is a technological certainty that aerospace capabilities will continue toimprove and, as they migrate into space, become even more potent,notwithstanding the dogmatic refusal of many officials to believe theevidence of their own eyes.

Impressive doctrinal and technical progress has been made in the fiveyears since the USAF’s then-chief of staff General Ronald Foglemanstated that ‘in the near future we will be able to find, fix, track and target– in real-time – anything of consequence that moves or is located on theface of the earth’ (an assessment which was subsequently endorsed by hissuccessor, General Michael E. Ryan).7 A classic illustration of the kind ofcapability Fogleman was identifying occurred during the war againstterrorism in Afghanistan, in an operation that led to the death of Osamabin Laden’s senior military commander, Mohammad Atef.

An enemy convoy fleeing south from Kabul was apparently routinelydetected and tracked by remote airborne sensors.8 Back in US CentralCommand in Florida, where General Tommy Franks was running thewar, staff officers monitoring events in near-real-time were attracted bythe convoy’s extreme (but unsuccessful) attempts to disguise its move-


ments. Concluding that the group probably consisted of Al Qaeda ter-rorists rather than rank-and-file Taliban, Central Command decidedagainst calling-in an air strike immediately, hoping instead that theconvoy would lead them to bigger game. Unseen by the enemy, surveil-lance platforms like Predator UAVs and JSTARS aircraft using electro-optical and infrared sensors, and synthetic aperture radar and groundmoving target indicator systems, tracked the convoy for two days despiteelaborate efforts by the terrorists to avoid detection.

Eventually, just after midnight on the second day, the convoy arrived ata building where a high-level meeting appeared to be in progress.Pictures of a crowded car park and frantic activity were transmitted backto Florida by a Predator circling overhead but unheard. Assessing that thetime was now right, Central Command called in three USAF F-15sarmed with 1200 kg PGMs. The fighters each dropped one 1200-kglaser-guided bomb onto the building, scoring direct hits; simultaneously,the Predator fired two Hellfire missiles into the car park. MohammadAtef was among the 100 or so dead, and General Fogleman’s credibilitywas enhanced.

Remote all-weather, 24-hour warfighting capabilities will become evenmore powerful when, for example, a constellation of satellites fitted withsynthetic aperture radar is placed into orbit. Yet after Fogleman made hiscomment he was derided by US Marine Corps Lieutenant General Paul Van Riper, who told a Congressional subcommittee hearing that ‘… these [Fogleman’s] assertions … represent a considerable ignorance ofwar and a certain arrogance’.9

The difficulty of presenting new ideas that challenge rigid mindsetsshould never be underestimated. Opposition to the new is much strongerwhen it is not just traditional weapons but institutions that are endan-gered. Horse cavalry disappeared from the armies of the great powersonly after the Germans’ successful blitzkrieg campaigns through Polandand France. The British and French armies grossly misused their tanks in1940 because they insisted on absorbing them into the infantry andcavalry, instead of creating new tank-centred formations like theGermans had. Edward Luttwak summed up the problem neatly when heobserved that equipment does not innovate, men do, which is why the


successive military revolutions that have changed the course of warfareover the centuries have always resulted from major institutional reformsimposed by determined leaders, rather than from the spontaneous effectof new weapons or new circumstances.10

At least the British Army seems to have grasped the new calculus.Addressing a symposium on indirect battlefield effects in January, theassistant chief of the general staff, Major General Richard Dannatt, tolddelegates, ‘One must always be wary of absolutes, but perhaps airmaneuver really does offer the most exciting development in emergingmilitary capability since 1945 … The land component must thereforemove swiftly to understand how the entire battlespace – not just theground environment – can be exploited; it must become second nature’.11

As technology continues to apply its relentless authority, there are alsosigns of progress in the United States, where demands reportedly arebeing made for the development of a new ground combat system whichwould replace tanks and other armoured vehicles with manned androbotic land cruisers, directed energy weapons and UAVs, all connectedby advanced intelligence sensors and data networks.12

A caveat is needed at this stage. This paper is not arguing that anoffensive aerospace campaign will invariably be the best military responseto every defence contingency. It will not. But for developed nationsgenerally it will, and the circumstances under which such campaigns canbe exploited are continually growing. Surveillance systems that providehigh-resolution, 24-hours-a-day, all-weather, real-time information areclose to reality, and the weapons systems needed to prosecute theresultant knowledge already exist and will continue to become even moreeffective.

To repeat a point made above, in most circumstances those kinds ofcapabilities will represent an overwhelming asymmetric advantage foradvanced nations.

Notwithstanding the obsolescence of traditional (land force) mass andthe experience of the campaigns of the past decade, armies still have a


central role to play in advanced warfighting. The issues here concern‘proxy’ ground forces, urban warfare, and the increasing use of specialforces. Peace operations also warrant discussion, even though they do notstrictly come under the heading of either advanced warfighting or asym-metric advantage.

It would be ingenuous to suggest that there is not or never would be aplace for old-style mass on the modern battlefield. On the contrary,traditionally-structured land forces have been an integral part of all of theWest’s recent major campaigns. However, those massed forces have notbeen provided by the advanced nations which in each case intervened forthe greater good, but which at the same time would not accept the riskof high casualties in circumstances that did not threaten their nationalsurvival. Thus, in Bosnia in 1995 Nato air power was supplemented byBosnian Croat and Muslim armies, and in Kosovo in 1999 by theKosovo Liberation Army; while in Afghanistan in 2001–2 American airpower was supplemented by numerous local armies, notably the UnitedFront (popularly known as the Northern Alliance) in the north and anumber of predominantly Pashtun tribes in the south.

While the indigenous armies played a minor, albeit necessary, role in theBalkans, they were critical in Afghanistan. The question was one of howto kill or force the surrender of substantial numbers of seeminglyintractable Taliban and Al Qaeda terrorists. Frequently the Americanswere confronted by besieged fortress-cities (Mazar-i-Sharif, Herat,Kabul, Kunduz, Kandahar) whose enemy garrisons could have beendestroyed either by bombing, which would have caused the death ofnon-combatants at the hands of Western air power, or by massed warfarebetween the local armies, which was highly likely to involve heavy casu-alties, massacres and war crimes. In the event precision bombing wasmore effective against urban targets than perhaps ever before, but onmost occasions indigenous ground forces were required to clean-uppockets of resistance.

The subject is nothing if not sensitive, raising the dreadful moral ques-tion of the relative weighting placed on indigenous and (in this case)American lives. On the other hand, the moral question would be no lesschallenging if a society which possessed the means to fight with an over-


whelming advantage chose not to do so and therefore placed the lives ofits young men and women needlessly in harm’s way. And at the risk ofbeing politically incorrect, it is noteworthy that in many of the world’smost volatile regions (Iraq, Korea, Israel, Iran, Taiwan, Pakistan, theSudan) large indigenous land forces would be ready and willing to facil-itate the application of externally-provided incontestable air power.

Which leads to the question of the employment of armies in 21st centurywarfare.

There is no reason why effects-based planning and execution, informa-tion operations, network-centric approaches, and precision engagementshould be the exclusive purview of any one of the military services. It isin that context that special forces operating behind enemy lines inAfghanistan provided a prototype for future operations for advancedarmies.

Reportedly ‘given an unrestricted license to kill’ during the crucial stagesof the war, somewhere between 800 and 2000 American and alliedmarines, commandos and Special Air Service soldiers displayed all of thecharacteristics associated with contemporary air power – knowledgedominance, speed, precision, deadly force, a fleeting footprint (stealth),and high mobility – as they appeared unexpectedly to create havocamongst the Taliban and their Al Qaeda accomplices.13 They apparentlyambushed and killed ‘hundreds’ of enemy soldiers, cleaned-up pockets ofresistance, destroyed scores of vehicles, cut-off retreats, found hideouts,designated targets, and called-in air strikes. Materialising suddenly out ofthe night in fast, light combat vehicles, these special forces would eitherdo the job themselves or, depending on the circumstances, summon aprecision strike from nearby missile-armed helicopters or orbitingbombers.

Target designation was an especially noteworthy mission, combining asit did the matchless asset of the man-on-the-ground with the de factomass of irresistible air-delivered precision firepower. Ground-based for-ward air controllers have been a feature of air/land warfare since WorldWar I but the effectiveness of the technique reached new heights inAfghanistan. According to the commander of the air war, USAF General


Charles F. Wald, the rapid advance of Northern Alliance troops in earlyNovember after weeks of inaction was largely made possible by thetargeting provided by ‘three or four [special forces] guys’ on the groundwho used high-technology communications and navigation systems toguide B-52 strikes onto Taliban troop concentrations.14 US Secretary ofDefence Donald Rumsfeld took the argument further, stating that theturning point in the war came a month after the start when specialoperations target-spotters began to call-in ‘precise and devastating’ B-52raids on Taliban frontlines. Mazar-i-Sharif fell within ten days, quicklyfollowed by Herat and Kabul. ‘Each place [the deployment of groundspotters] happened, the results got very good, very quickly’, Rumsfeldnoted.15 In President George W. Bush’s words, ‘There is no substitute forgood intelligence officers, for people on the ground. These are the peoplewho find the targets [and who] follow our enemies’.16

A text-book illustration of the technique involving moving or so-called‘flexible’ targets was provided on 18 November near the regional centreof Tarin Kot, a place regarded by the leader of Afghanistan’s interimgovernment, Hamid Karzai, as ‘the heart of the Taliban’, and therefore asthe alliance’s primary military target.17 In what Karzai apparentlybelieved was ‘the decisive battle in the … war’, US fighter jets guided byspecial forces decimated a convoy of about 1000 Taliban soldierstravelling in some 100 vehicles. Devastated by their helplessness, thoseTaliban who survived simply ‘fled’ the battlefield, having reportedlycome to realise that they ‘should not fight with America’, a message theypresumably later relayed to their colleagues.

Once the Taliban’s and Al Qaeda’s formal organisations in Afghanistanhad been broken, allied special forces were given a new task that seemslikely to be long-term, namely, waging independent, sometimes secret,battles to exterminate terrorism throughout the country.18 Only eliteland forces are suitable for this demanding and highly dangerous task.

As detection and targeting systems become even more pervasive, discreteand precise, and as advanced defence forces continue to redefine mass,the kinds of land battles fought by indigenous armies in Afghanistan willbecome increasingly obsolescent – for those who have the technologyand the doctrine.


Urban warfare represents the last major frontier for the application ofdecisive aerospace power, and even there important progress has beenmade since the Russians’ reprehensible and inept misuse of firepowerduring their air assault on the city of Grozny in the late-1990s.Significant developments include the exploitation by land forces of tech-nologies that look around corners and through walls, and the use of sol-diers to designate targets for strike aircraft. Given the emphasis nowplaced on directly targeting an enemy regime’s leadership – their assets,their interests, their values, their lives – the Israeli Air Force’s employ-ment of attack helicopters and fast jets in urban environments is note-worthy.19 So too is the example of the American air offensive against theTaliban stronghold of Kandahar, which fell following two months of dis-crete strikes against pin-point targets, including Mullah MohammadOmar’s palace and other residences used by the Taliban hierarchy.According to an eyewitness report, ‘a trip around the city … indicatedthat, for the most part, the bombs hit their targets and there wererelatively few civilian injuries’.20 The death of the Taliban’s once-fearedintelligence chief Qari Ahmadullah, killed when a house in which he washiding was singled-out by American jets in late December, providedanother compelling demonstration.21

Perhaps the main obstacle to the full development of new era warfare isthe dogmatic attachment of many soldiers to the mantra of ‘seize andhold ground’, a doctrine which has been an article of faith in armies forthousands of years. There is no doubt that the imperative to taketerritory almost as an end in itself was valid for the majority of pre-21st

century conflicts, and the concept retains considerable force today. But itis no longer necessarily the key to success. Two issues are paramount.

First, modern warfare is concerned more with acceptable political out-comes than with seizing and holding ground. And second, while seizingand holding ground might still be a primary objective of many militaryactions, it is no longer the primary means for achieving that objective.Therefore, neither should it any longer be regarded as the primary task ofsurface forces. The issue is the relationship between land and aerospacepower in joint warfare. Whereas historically air strikes have been used tosupport large-scale land manoeuvre forces, now ‘it is the ground forces


that are supporting the air operation by revealing the location of theenemy or forcing it into the open’, a development acknowledged byGeneral Scales as representing ‘a tectonic shift in the nature of howground forces fight’.22

As Scales argues, the imperative to fight at a distance should ‘induce anevolutionary shift’ in the approach to warfighting of armies in generaland infantry in particular.23 Instead of seeking to close with and destroythe enemy, armies should instead act as ‘finding and fixing’ forces whosemain purpose is to determine the size and nature of the enemyformation, and then to hold it in place while stand-off precision fire-power is brought to bear ‘to do the killing with efficiency, discretion anddispatch’. That fundamental shift in an army’s role can be summarised asfollows:

The main task of surface forces in 21st century warfare is tofacilitate the application of overwhelming aerospace power.

Thus, among other things, armies should be vigorously pursuing tech-nologies and concepts of operations that complement aerospace powercapabilities. The single greatest challenge here is not the technology,which is either largely available or rapidly emerging, but rather theculture and attitude within armies. Even though aerospace-basedcapabilities increasingly are the focus of contemporary army force-structuring, the place of high technology air weapons within land forceconcepts of operations remains problematical.24 During the debate inearly-2000 over the future of the US Army (which turned essentially onwhether the army should become much lighter and more mobile),Lieutenant General Johnny Riggs, the then-commanding general of theUS 1st Army and one of his service’s leading aviators, stated that littlethought was being given to aviation in the new Army vision, to theextent that the branch was in ‘crisis’. (Incidentally, arguments over theUS Army’s need for major reform to accommodate new era warfare arenot new, having been in progress for at least twenty years.)25

An equally revealing insight into culture and attitude comes from theAustralian Army, widely regarded as being among the best in the world.Although purpose-designed attack helicopters have existed for over thirty


years, none has yet found its way into that army’s order of battle. Andwhen the Eurocopter Tigers now on order eventually arrive in around2004 they will be known as ‘armed reconnaissance helicopters’, eventhough some army specialists consider them to be potentially the single‘most potent capability’ their service will have operated in its 100-yearhistory.26 The official description, however, suggests that the Tigers willbe regarded primarily as a supporting capability within a concept ofoperations based on the traditional mass of infantry and armour.

The final aspect of land forces and 21st century homeland defence thatrequires comment is peace operations, an activity which has assumed anincreasingly high profile in the past twenty years.

Peace operations clearly contribute to national security defined in a broadsense, and because of their manpower-intensive nature they are domi-nated by armies. They do not, however, constitute warfighting, and theytherefore should not be used as a primary force-structure determinant.Furthermore, successful peace operations almost invariably rely on thecooperation of the organisation whose unacceptable behaviour madethem necessary in the first place, a precondition that reveals aninteresting relationship between compellence and cooperation.

The relatively successful peace operations mounted in Bosnia andKosovo in the 1990s, for instance, were both preceded by air campaignswhich punished the ruling Serbs sufficiently to make them decide thatintervention by an international peacekeeping force was preferable to thealternative of more air attacks. The occupation of East Timor by a UnitedNations force in 1999 discloses an equally instructive associationbetween military means and peace operations ends. While there wasalmost no fighting between the aggressor West Timorese militia and theirpatrons from the Indonesian Army on the one hand, and United Nationsforces (who initially consisted primarily of members of the AustralianDefence Force) on the other hand, the weapon of deterrence was plainlyevident. The entire UN intervention in East Timor was underwritten,firstly, by the deployment to northern Australia (that is, to within rangeof Timor) of ADF F-111 bombers and F-18 fighters; and secondly, bybehind-the-scenes pressure from the United States. In the event the


ADF’s air strike forces were not needed, but there should be no doubtthat the implied threat was well-understood.

The peace operations in Bosnia, Kosovo and East Timor provide a starkcontrast to America’s salutary experience in Somalia in October 1993,when the US Army special forces that were put ashore without any pre-ceding application of overwhelming air power suffered politically unac-ceptable losses at the hands of recalcitrant local warlords and were com-pelled to make a humiliating withdrawal.

Presently only the United States can fully apply the form of advancedmilitary power described in this paper, and very few countries possess theskills, qualities and resources to develop the necessary capabilities withinthe next twenty years. But for those that do the goal is now more achiev-able than ever before.

The essential ingredients are a highly-educated workforce, a strongindigenous technological base (including defence research and develop-ment), a resilient economy, a close security relationship with the UnitedStates, and a robust air power tradition. (It has been suggested that onlyliberal democracies enjoy the social conditions needed to develop and toproperly exploit advanced aerospace power, a proposition which seems tobe validated by the history of air warfare.)27 In the near-term the handfulof nations that satisfy those criteria should benefit from tremendousadvances in at least the following technologies: miniaturisation, whichreduces costs and increases payloads of aeroplanes, unmanned aerialvehicles, missiles, and satellites; low observability; communications(including real-time data sharing); information collection; and know-ledge dissemination. Those kinds of developments will make therequired architecture both more accessible and cheaper. That is, thefundamentals of a 21st century defence force based on asymmetricaerospace power will be affordable as long as budgets are not diverted tolegacy capabilities.

For those nations other than the US that wish to transform their defenceforce there are two issues of superseding importance, one related tohomeland defence and the other to technology.


As noted above, the events of September 11 have redefined the bound-aries of ‘homeland’, which now effectively must encompass the entireglobe. At the same time, domestic political imperatives will ensure thatprotecting people inside the national borders will remain the priority.There need not, however, be a conflict between the dual responsibilitiesof deploying overseas to defeat a threat and staying at home to defend thenation’s shores. The key is to realise maximum flexibility within thoseforce element groups that more than any others define 21st centurymilitary power, namely, those that deliver control of the air and precisionstrike. As a medium-sized nation with an advanced defence force,Australia provides a useful case-study.

Official Australian defence policy properly recognises control of the airas the ‘most important single capability for the defence of Australia,because control of the air over our territory and maritime approaches iscritical to all other types of operation …’28 (That same strategic assess-ment, incidentally, was seen in practice in the US after September 11,when fighter aircraft and other elements of the national air defencesystem provided a continuous protective screen over selected cities.)Protection from threats thus is the necessary start point. But it is only thestart point. September 11 showed that if threats are to be defeated it islikely they will have to be attacked at their source, and it is here that aircontrol and air strike come together.

To reiterate, it is incontestable aerospace power that constitutes thedeveloped world’s greatest asymmetric advantage, and it is incontestableaerospace power that has underwritten extraordinary military success ina series of campaigns fought against allegedly insuperable enemies indramatically contrasting geographical settings. From the Gulf to Bosnia,Kosovo and Afghanistan, control of the air was the necessary precondi-tion, decisive bombing was the sufficient war-winner.

Just as massed armies provide the symbolism for 20th century warfare, sostealthy strike/fighters symbolise 21st century warfare. Stealth is notunstoppable, but it does confer an enormous tactical advantage. Oneauthoritative independent report has concluded that the greatly reducedradar cross-section of stealthy aircraft is so difficult to counter that ‘aslong as jet aircraft offer the most reliable option for air superiority and


air attack, stealth will be indispensable’.29 Wartime experience has thusfar vindicated that judgment. Moreover, investment in stealth implies acommitment to the technological supremacy that is one of the pillars ofmodern warfighting.

Currently only two genuinely stealthy manned aircraft are either in or areabout to enter production, the US’s F-22 Raptor and F-35 Joint StrikeFighter. The F-22 will be the world’s outstanding air superiority fighterfor the next twenty-five years, far surpassing any of its rivals; while theJSF will be at least the equal of the rest, in addition to being the pre-dominant all-purpose surface attack platform. With an indicative cost ofUS$100 million, perhaps more, the F-22 is likely to be banished frommost acquisition programs. The JSF’s prospects will be discussed shortly. As one of the handful of nations with the potential to leverage 21st cen-tury air power, Australia serves as a useful case-study for small- tomedium-sized defence forces and the defining roles of air combat andprecision strike, both deployed and home-based.

It is almost inconceivable that Australia (or any other country capable ofconstructing a 21st century defence force) would deploy to a major over-seas campaign other than as part of an American-led coalition. The US,therefore, could reasonably be expected to provide the control of the airand the global knowledge architecture an advanced air campaigndemands. Within that setting, allies equipped with, say, JSFs or fourth-generation strike/fighters such as Rafale, Gripen, Eurofighter/Typhoon,and F-18E/F would in the first instance leave the USAF’s F-22s toestablish control of the air before making their contribution, probably inthe precision strike role. Interoperability would be crucial, especially theability to link-up with American information systems (satellites,AEW&C, JSTARS, UAVs, other combat platforms, command centres,and so on).

For operations conducted from home or not as part of a coalition, it hasto be assumed that the indigenous air force would conduct control of theair and precision strike without external combat assistance, at the sametime noting that the US historically has been very generous with logisticsand information support for its allies in such circumstances (the YomKippur War, the Falklands War, the UN intervention in East Timor).


Australia has already established the foundations of an excellent regionalsurveillance and reconnaissance (that is, knowledge) system in the formof very long-range over-the-horizon radar, micro-wave radars, on-orderAEW&C systems, advanced electronic intelligence aircraft, access tosatellite data and, most importantly, an advanced command and controlsystem to pull everything together. Global Hawk surveillance UAVs mayalso be acquired.30

As far as a piloted platform to do the fighting is concerned, currentthinking favours a single type to replace the F-111 bombers and F/A-18fighters now in RAAF service. Taking in to account all of the issues raisedso far in this paper, the short takeoff and vertical landing (Stovl) JSFseems to offer a potentially powerful strategic option.31

JSF’s superior stealth, state-of-the-art systems, and unquestioned com-patibility with US weapons and facilities should make it at least compa-rable with any fighter except the F-22, and the prospect of the RAAFhaving to confront F-22s in combat is so remote as to be unrealistic.Should strike rather than air combat be the priority, the JSF’s ability topenetrate defences with minimal support (derived from its superiorstealth) would be critical. Also critical will be the development of thesmall diameter bomb, a precision-guided munition expected to appear inthe US’s inventory in about 2009, and which because of its reduced sizewill dramatically boost the capacity of small air fleets to prosecute pun-ishing strikes.32

Stovl would provide unequalled operational flexibility for both air com-bat and strike. Fixed bases have been air power’s Achilles’ heel sinceWorld War I, firstly because they identify the places from which opera-tions can be mounted and the distances aircraft can penetrate; andsecondly because they are large, easily-found, high-value targets. Andmore recently the Afghanistan campaign highlighted another trouble-some dimension, related to the age of intervention, namely, the sensi-tivities associated with any requirement to establish large, fixed, highly-visible bases in politically uncertain states. Some thirteen such baseswere constructed to support Operation Enduring Freedom, almost all incountries where a Western military presence can cause violent resent-ment.33 Air-to-air refuelling provides an answer to part of the first prob-


lem but brings with it more expense and complexity and newvulnerabilities. The capacity Stovl offers for operations from a vast rangeof localities and platforms, including ships if necessary, redefines thenotion of flexibility.

The introduction of a Stovl strike/fighter might also encourage greaterflexibility in meeting the always-challenging task of logistical support,with perhaps more use being made of short-takeoff and landing fixed-wing airlifters capable of operating from unsealed surfaces (for example,the C-130, C-27, CASA-235), heavy-lift helicopters, and airdrops.Similarly, the Expeditionary Combat Support Squadrons introduced bythe RAAF several years ago to sustain deployments in Australia and over-seas, from primitive locations if necessary, would be complementary.

Should the imperatives of homeland defence require deployment abroadas part of a coalition, Stovl would provide a solution to a problem whichhas affected most recent allied deployments, namely, finding suitable air-fields convenient to targets. Remote basing placed major demands ontanking, carrier aviation and, not least, crews, during Desert Storm,Deliberate Force and Allied Force, and if anything the burden was evengreater for Enduring Freedom. The BBC’s Jonathan Marcus reportedthat while US Navy crews and aircraft performed well during the strikeson Afghanistan they did so at a ‘massive cost’ in terms of support,especially tankers; similarly, Marcus pointed to the relatively minor roleplayed by USAF land-based short-range aircraft such as the F-15 and F-16.34

Indeed, the great majority of weapons were dropped by USAF heavybombers (B-52s, B-1s, B-2s) which had to transit thousands ofkilometres to reach the theatre.35 As a direct consequence of the forcedreliance on distant bases, debate over whether the B-2 production lineshould be reopened has once again flared-up in America.36 B-2 bombers(or B-1s or B-52s) supported by an armada of air-to-air tankers are not,of course, an option for anyone else, but Stovl strike/fighters deployed tonumerous potential sites on the perimeter of a theatre of operations are.

Stovl does come at a cost, namely, a reduced payload of fuel and weaponsto offset the increased demand for engine power made by short/and or


vertical takeoffs and landings. And because the F-35 will utilise aforward-mounted shaft-driven lift-fan to supplement the traditionalthrust-vectoring from the engine’s rear nozzle, it will carry around 1500kilograms of additional weight at all times. The lift-fan will, however,reportedly provide significant additional thrust for Stovl manoeuvres.Wing-mounted ducts which are used for lateral control will alsocontribute some thrust.

Special reference should also be made to the Boeing X-45 stealthyunmanned combat air vehicle, not so much for its particular capabilitiesbut more for the broad potential it represents. Until recently the X-45was expected to enter limited operational service with the USAF in 2008,but such is the interest it is creating that the defence budget request for 2003 has proposed fast tracking the project with the objective ofdeploying fourteen aircraft in that year.37 The initial X-45 will be capableof striking fixed, pre-programmed targets at a radius of around 1600kilometres, with follow-on models being capable of ranging further andresponding inflight to pursue time-critical targets of opportunity.38 Aconventional weapons load might consist of either two 450-kilogramJdams or twelve small diameter bombs in two weapons bays which,interestingly, will be the same dimension as those of the F-35. The X-45’sprice, however, is claimed to be one-third of the F-35’s. Current conceptsof operations envisage formations of X-45s undertaking the high-riskmission of clearing a path through hostile air defence systems, thusenabling trailing piloted aircraft to exploit their superior flexibility toattack key targets. The combination of capabilities likely to be inherentin a fleet of X-45s and F-35s holds enormous promise for small- tomedium-sized air forces.

For ten years now asymmetric aerospace power has been the key tovictory in a succession of theatre-level campaigns which, when measuredagainst the sweep of history, have been extraordinarily quick, decisive,and low-casualty. Those victories have been achieved against apparentlypowerful conventionally-arrayed armies (Saddam Hussein), ruthless warcriminals (Milosevic), and allegedly insuperable guerillas (the Taliban).And they have been fought day and night, in all weather, in deserts,mountains, dense forests, caves and cities. Those facts indicate that what


has been happening is neither an aberration nor a trend, but a provenmodel. Surface forces have an essential role to play in that model, butonly surface forces of a fundamentally different shape and outlook fromthose favoured by traditional army doctrine.

Symbolised by fifth-generation strike/fighter aircraft, 21st century war-fare will be accessible only to a handful of nations. It is a strategically rareopportunity.

NOTES

1 Among the more significant of these thinkers are Colonel John Warden, Colonel John Boyd,General David Deptula, Colonel Douglas Macgregor, General Robert Scales, and Vice AdmiralArthur Cebrowski.

2 Douglas A. Macgregor, ‘Resurrecting Transformation for the Post-Industrial Era’, in DefenseHorizons, September 2001, pp. 2, 8. See also Thomas E. Ricks, ‘Bull’s-Eye War: PinpointBombing Shifts Role of GI Joe’, in The Washington Post, 3 December 2001, p. A01; VernonLoeb, ‘Marines’ Mission Stirs Army Debate’, in The Washington Post, December 9, 2001, p. A32;and Steven Lee Myers, ‘Marines Dig In but They Find Little to Battle’, in The New York Times,December 1, 2001.

3 ‘A Test for Bush’s Military Reform Pledge? Some Decry Transfer of Reform Advocate to ArmyStaff Job’, in The Washington Post, February 20, 2002, p. 13.

4 Robert L. Scales, ‘Checkmate by Operational Maneuver’, in Armed Forces Journal International,October 2001, pp. 38–42.

5 The contrast between the US’s largely unsuccessful bombing attacks against Viet Cong tunnelsand the destruction of Taliban caves, which for many terrorists have become tombs, couldscarcely be more striking. See William M. Arkin, ‘In 21st Century War, 2 Cavemen Stand Out’,in the Los Angeles Times, December 8, 2001; and ‘Battle leaves caves mute and bloodied’, in TheAustralian, December 13, 2001, p. 9.

6 For authoritative accounts which include detailed targeting analyses see: for the Gulf War,Richard P. Hallion, Storm over Iraq (Smithsonian Institution, Washington, 1992); for Bosnia,Robert C. Owen, Deliberate Force: A Case Study in Effective Air Campaigning (AU Press, MaxwellAFB, 2000); and for Allied Force, Benjamin S. Lambeth, Nato’s Air War for Kosovo (Rand, SantaMonica, 2001).

7 General Ronald Fogleman, Address to the Strategic Air Warfare Study Panel, Maxwell Air ForceBase, February 1996; and General Michael E. Ryan, ‘New World Vistas: USAF Air and SpacePower for the 21st Century’ in Shaun Clarke (ed.), Testing the Limits, Air Power Studies Centre,Fairbairn, 1998, p. 14.


8 See ‘Iron fist reaches out from the other side of the globe’, in The Australian, November 19,2001, pp. 1, 8. The precise means of detecting and tracking hostile (and indeed friendly) forcesin Afghanistan is classified. For one insight into the technologies and broad approach seeWilliam B. Scott, ‘Improved Milspace Key to Antiterrorism War’, in Aviation Week & SpaceTechnology, December 10, 2001, pp. 36–7.

9 United States and Nato Military Operations Against the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia, HearingBefore the Committee on Armed Services House of Representatives, April 28, 1999.

10 Edward N. Luttwak, Book Review, ‘Lifting the Fog of War by Bill Owens with Ed Offley’, NewYork Times Book Review, January 21, 2001, p. 21.

11 Quoted in ‘Apache underbid threatens Air Maneuver’, in Jane’s International Defense Review,March 01, 2002.

12 The Washington Post, February 25, 2002, p. 21.13 ‘Special forces act on orders to kill’, in The Australian, November 26, 2001, p. 9.14 Cited in Thomas E. Ricks, ‘Bull’s-Eye War: Pinpoint Bombing Shifts Role of GI Joe’, in The

Washington Post, 3 December 2001, p. A01. See also Michael R. Gordon, ‘New U.S. War:Commandos, Airstrikes and Allies on the Ground’, in The New York Times, December 29, 2001.

15 Cited in Thomas E. Ricks, ‘Rumsfeld’s Hands-On War’, in The Washington Post, December 9,2001, p. A01.

16 Quoted in the Los Angeles Times, December 12, 2001, p. 1.17 ‘In a Desert Outpost, Afghan War Was Won: U.S. Firepower Decimated Taliban at Tarin Kot’,

in The Washington Post, December 31, 2001, p. 1. For detail on the evolution of ‘flex targeting’during the Kosovo air campaign, see Benjamin S. Lambeth, Nato’s Air War for Kosovo (Rand,Santa Monica, 2001), pp. 120–136.

18 ‘How Special Ops Forces are Hunting Al Qaeda’, in U.S. News and World Report, February 25, 2002.19 Mark Hewish, ‘David versus Goliath’, in Jane’s International Defense Review, November 2001,

pp. 24-36; Barbara Opell-Rome, ‘Israeli Gunship Crews Train for Assassination Missions’, inDefense News, November 26-December 2, 2001, p. 30.

20 John Pomfret, ‘Kandahar Bombs Hit Their Marks: Few Civilian Deaths Evident’, in TheWashington Post, December 12, 2001, p. A01.

21 ‘Taliban Intelligence Chief Killed in Attacks’, in The New York Times, January 2, 2002.22 Major General Robert L. Scales, quoted in ‘US programmes likely to receive increased invest-

ment because of proven roles in Afghanistan’, in Jane’s Defence Weekly, January 2, 2002.23 Major General Robert L. Scales, ‘Checkmate by Operational Maneuver’, in Armed Forces Journal

International, October 2001, p. 42. 24 Daniel G. Dupont, ‘Skeptics and Believers: Aviation has little visibility in the new Army vision’,

in Armed Forces Journal International, March 2000, pp. 28-34.25 See Christopher Lawson, ‘Shinseki Wants Larger, More Flexible U.S. Army’, in Defense News,

July 19, 1999, p. 18; and in the same issue Dov Zakheim, ‘20 Years Later, Commanders StillSeek Lighter U.S. Army’, p. 15.

26 Colonel Trevor Jones, quoted in Max Hawkins, ‘Army Beefs Up its Most “Potent Capability”’,in The Australian, Defence Update, November 20, 1998, p. 2.

27 For an examination of this proposition see Lieutenant Colonel Charles M. Westenhoff, ‘AirPower and Political Culture’, Air Power Studies Centre Working Paper No. 42, Air Power StudiesCentre, Fairbairn, 1996.

28 Defence 2000 – Our Future Defence, Department of Defence, Canberra, 2000, par. 8.37.29 Rebecca Grant, The Radar Game: Understanding Stealth and Aircraft Survivability, IRIS

Independent Research, Arlington, 1998, p. 50.


30 A more developed example of the emerging Australian aerospace-power model can be seen inIsrael, a country which views military defence with a life-or-death seriousness. In response to thenew security calculus the Israelis are emphasising asymmetric air and space systems across theboard. Those systems will (or already) include: the Arrow anti-ballistic missile defence system;the Python 5 enhanced short-range air-to-air missile; a beyond-visual-range air-to-air missile; avery long-range, precise, high-speed air-to-surface missile; a long-endurance, high altitude UAVarmed with those missiles and which can loiter over a threat area for about sixty hours; a secondlong-endurance, high-altitude UAV, this time low observable and with an information gatheringfunction; AWACS systems; manned JSTARS and Sigint systems; and a space program includingIsraeli-owned and -operated satellites. David A. Fulghum and John D. Morrocco, ‘Israel AirForce to Grow in Size, Power and Range’, in Aviation Week & Space Technology, April 10, 2000,pp. 62-5; and Barbara Opall-Rome, ‘IAI Completes Ofeq Spy Satellite, Begins Launcher Work’,in DefenseNews, December 17–23, 2001, p. 18.

31 The author has no connection with Lockheed Martin and used only publicly-available sourcesto prepare this article.

32 Two variants of the SDB are planned, one guided by GPS for use against fixed and stationarytargets, and another with a terminal-seeker and an automatic target-recognition system for useagainst mobile targets. As an illustration of the effect SDB could have on campaign planning andtarget prosecution, the B-2, which can carry 16 joint direct attack munitions, may carry 324SDBs.

33 William M. Arkin, ‘U.S. Air Bases Forge Double-Edged Sword’, in the Los Angeles Times, January6, 2002.

34 Jonathan Marcus, BBC News, ‘Analysis: The military lessons’, 15 December 2001.35 Early information indicates that heavy bombers flying primarily from Diego Garcia – a round-

trip of 6500 kilometres – dropped about 70% of all weapons. See ‘Afghan War Will Shape FutureU.S. Military Structure’, Stratfor Strategic Forecasting, PRIVATE HREF=»» MACROBUT-TON HtmlResAnchor http://www.stratfor.com.home/0110232100.htm, viewed October 26,2001.

36 James Dao and Eric Schmitt, ‘New Pentagon Debate Over Stealth Plane’, in The New York Times,December 11, 2001.

37 Robert Wall, ‘Air Force UCAV Design Reworked’, in Aviation Week & Space Technology, February25, 2002, pp. 28–30.

38 Michael Sirak, ‘UCAV programme nears first flight’, in Jane’s Defence Weekly, 6 March 2002, p.9; Robert A. Wall and David A. Fulghum, ‘UAVs Spotlighted as Defense Priority’, in AviationWeek & Space Technology, February 11, 2002, p. 26.


Modern Competitiveness Theory

Colonel (ret.) John A. Warden III[Editor’s note: Transcript of oral presentation.] Good morning all! It isalways a pleasure to be back on the Air Command and Staff College(ACSC) stage, where I have spent quite some time. It is nice to see someold friends and associates, and likewise, it is nice to see some people thatI have not yet met, but with whom I hope to have a conversation as wemove through the morning.

I want to talk about air power theory and winning in the twenty-firstcentury. We have to think about what theory really is, and particularlywhat air theory is. It has occurred to me that in a certain sense there isneither air theory, ground theory nor sea theory, but there is competitiontheory. There is strategy for achieving something. There is strategy forwinning, and whether you are using air, land or sea components, whatyou primarily want to do is make sure that you are successful. You wantto know that you are going to win. The kind of business that we are inis the kind of business where winning is what counts. Coming in seconddoes not count. So what I have been trying to do over a fairly extensiveperiod of time is to put together a series of ideas that will allow you to besuccessful. These ideas will allow you to win regardless of what competi-tion you are in, but I will provide an obvious focus on the military side.Given that overarching concept, theory or strategy, you start thinkingabout the tools that are most suitable for allowing you to make thingshappen in order to win. At that point you have a sub-theory: air sub-theory, ground sub-theory or sea sub-theory. So that is the thrust of whatI want to talk about today. Now, as we are going through this, if anybodyhas something they want to say, because they think it is wrong or theyhave a comment, please do not hesitate to stop me.

I think one of the useful things to do before we get into this, is to talk alittle bit about my background in order to provide you with some

additional insight into where my ideas come from. I want you to beaware of what drove me, because frequently when you understand whysomebody has come up with something, that helps you with theevaluation. It may prejudge your evaluation, but in any event knowing alittle bit about the background is useful.

There are several things that were significant in my life. I primarily flewF-4s, OV-10s and F-15s at various times and places. There were somethings that were part of my early career that really got me thinking in aparticular way and the first one was my experience in Vietnam. I servedin Vietnam in 1969-1970, with more than 250 combat missions. I washit a few times. Not personally, I was kind of lucky, but my airplane washit. A couple of times I was on the verge of bailing out into territory thatwas not particularly attractive, but fortunately I did not have to do that.At the end of my year in Vietnam, where I spent half of the time workingwith the 1st Air Cavalry in South Vietnam, and the other half flying overthe Ho Chi Minh trail, I started looking around. I had lost friends fromboth the ground side and from the air side, and at the end of my year inVietnam the situation and progress was about the same as when I arrivedthere. I did not like this at all. The idea of making this kind of effortwithout winning does not make any sense. My resolution at that timewas that I was never going to be part of anything as senseless as this everagain. We ought to plan to win, and if we are not going to win we shouldnot be playing at all. It is easy to make a resolution, but what you doabout it is entirely different. Of course, it was only five years later thatthe North Vietnamese flag went up over Saigon, and we lost for sure.

Now, when you start thinking about it in more depth, however, some-thing interesting strikes you, because for all practical purposes we won allthe battles. If there was one thousand battles in total between theAmericans and the North Vietnamese, whether they were Vietcong orregular troops, we probably won 995, and the five we did not win wereutterly inconsequential and would be inconsequential in any other war.How could it be that you win all these darn battles and lose the war? Theanswer becomes pretty clear, at least to me – the other guy obviously hada significantly better strategy. The flip side of that is also quite interesting.It says that you can succeed in war even if you fail in battle. You cansucceed in war even if you are tactically inferior – as long as you have the

MODERN COMPETITIVENESS THEORY212

right strategy. So you begin thinking about the real importance ofstrategy and what you are going to do with it. This is sort of eventnumber one for me.

Event number two is that I found myself reporting to the Pentagon forthe first time in the mid-seventies. I was rapidly getting involved in geo-politics and war-planning among other things. I had more than a littlebit of involvement at that particular time with working on Americanwar-plans in the event of a conventional conflict with the Soviet Unionin Europe. As I am looking at these war plans it becomes obvious to methat the way that they are laid out is very similar to the way we laid it outin Vietnam. There was simply the expectation that we are going up head-to-head with the Soviets. It is assumed that we are going to fight themman-to-man, airplane-to-airplane and tank-to-tank, and because we aresuperior we are going to win. In other words, we were planning to fightan attrition war against an opponent who had more to attrit and hadshown an ability to be careless about losses in World War Two. This doesnot make a lot of sense, and as you start reflecting upon military historyyou realize that in an attrition kind of a war, predicting who the winneris going to be is very difficult. I believe, in fact, that it is a matter ofchance. It is almost pure chance for a lot of reasons. So that again droveme to say that there has to be a better way of thinking about these things.

Of course, like all of you in your careers right now, you do not have a lotof time to sit down and write books. But I finally had the opportunitywhen I went to the National War College in the mid-eighties to focus onair power and to actually write a book – The Air Campaign. I wanted tolook into the fact that there are some better ways to employ existingassets, not future assets, but existing assets. There had to be a better wayto employ them in order to come up with a significantly higherprobability of winning and to take some of the chance out of war.Obviously, what we want to do whether we are in a business operationor in a war operation is to reduce chance as much as possible. Now, wecan get into an interesting philosophical discussion about Carl vonClausewitz, but I think that to say that war is a crapshoot is simplyirresponsible. You want to load the dice as much as you possibly can, andthat is the name of the game.

MODERN COMPETITIVENESS THEORY 213

I found that the ideas in The Air Campaign had a good deal ofapplicability even at a wing level. I was the Vice Commander and nextthe Wing Commander in Bitburg, Germany, and I began to apply someof the concepts in The Air Campaign and found that they worked prettywell even at a wing level. I next went back to Washington and thePentagon. Not too long after that I was asked by Lieutenant GeneralMichael Dugan, who was then the Deputy Chief of Staff for Plans andOperations, whether there was some way that we could take some of theideas articulated in The Air Campaign and elevate them to a higher level,in order to make them Air-Force-wide. I said we could start working onit, and in that process we began to develop the Five Rings concept. Webegan to move the whole idea of The Air Campaign up to another level.

Then, as you all know, we had the opportunity right after the Iraqiinvasion of Kuwait, to present a set of ideas to General NormanSchwarzkopf and General Colin Powell. They accepted the concept, andfinally a few months later it was tested pretty much the way it had beenlaid out. It was obviously expanded, but pretty much the way it had beenlaid out, and the Gulf War worked pretty well. I say pretty well, becauseif we could go back and do it over again now, I think we could do it sig-nificantly faster. There was no reason that it had to take forty-two days,no reason why we had to lose over one hundred of our own people, andno reason why it had to end quite the way it did. There are a lot of thingsthat we could do better, but nevertheless, it worked reasonably well,especially in contrast to my experience in Vietnam.

The next part of my career was the opportunity to go to the WhiteHouse. As you know, something that happens to us frequently in uni-form or in government in one way or the other is that regardless of whatyour background or your qualifications are there is a strong likelihoodthat you are going to be assigned to something for which you have nobackground and no qualification. That was my experience in the WhiteHouse, where my job was to work on American competitiveness. Howcan we make the United States more competitive in the world, and notfrom a military standpoint, but from a business, commercial and eco-nomic standpoint? I found that I could apply some of the same theories,and some of the same concepts that were put together and used in theGulf War. I began to apply some of the ideas in the political environment


in the White House, and it worked out reasonably well. Unfortunatelythe majority of them were never put into serious practice, because thatwas the end of the George Bush Senior administration.

So I came down here to the ACSC, and again used many of the same setsof ideas as kind of guidelines to put together a new curriculum, and thething that was sort of a start for what you are all into now. That was themilitary career. After the military career in 1995, when I left the USAF,I thought that there was a pretty high probability that business competi-tion was not very different from military competition. Why could we notjust take the same sets of ideas, and apply them in the business world?That is what we decided to do. Take for example the market capitaliza-tion of Texas Instruments. Market capitalization, in very simple terms, ismerely a multiplication of the total number of shares of stockoutstanding in a company times the share price. If you look at TexasInstruments you see that over a fifteen-year period the share price did notgo anywhere. In other words, the company was not doing very much.The company, in 1994 and 1995, made an internal decision that theirproblem was not their inability to make good computers and good chips,but their problem was one of strategy. They had a bad strategy so theystarted to think about strategy. We had the opportunity to come in andstart working with them with many of the same sets of ideas in early1996. Their strategic focus, augmented with what I was able to teachthem, allowed them to increase their value to themselves and their share-holders significantly in a pretty short period of time, according to thecurrent Chairman and CEO, and that is the power of strategy.

There are a couple of reasons for me saying this. First, the concepts thatwe are going to lay out are things that we had a chance of working within several different environments, and that has given me the confidencethat in fact they have a fairly good set of applications. The other reasonis that when we are talking to business audiences we are using a lot of thesame terms that we use in the military world. We use a lot of examplesfrom the Gulf War and some other military operations in history in orderto illustrate how these concepts are put into effect. What we have foundis that when you present to a business audience a set of ideas that arefrom another world, a military world, it gives them a different lensthrough which to examine their own operations. Frequently when you


can back-off and look at yourself from a different perspective you getsome insights and understanding that are difficult to get when you arelooking introspectively. So what I am going to do today is kind of theopposite, and that is to use some of the business ideas, not very many butsome of the business illustrations, to provide a lens through which toview this whole concept of strategy.

First I want to make a point that is already made, but I want to re-emphasize it. One of the things that struck me, certainly in the early partof my flying career, was the idea that winning was a matter of flying theairplanes better and dropping the bombs better, and if you can get reallygood at that you were certain to win. But it is already said that in factthat does not seem to happen in the real world and there are a couple ofexamples here. The North Vietnamese beat the United States with in-ferior tactics, inferior capabilities and by losing all the battles. If weswitch that into the business world, and go back twenty years, we recallthat Apple Computer had the first really great solution to what we nowthink of as PCs. Apple was a really nice computer, probably technicallysuperior to the IBM PC, but because Apple Computer had an old worldproprietary strategy and IBM had a new world open architecture strategy,the PC, even though an inferior box and an inferior piece of equipmentsimply destroyed Apple. It simply marginalized Apple over a period oftime. It did not make any difference that the Apple computer was in factbetter. The strategy was bad so things did not work out particularly well.So, if the strategy is bad then you have a serious problem. The wholeconcept of theory, and of competition theory, is to give you the ability todevelop the kind of strategies that will lead to success.

What can we think of in evaluating strategies? First of all, militarytheories are only useful in the context of an overall geopolitical theory,because we do not execute military operations for their own sake – we dothem in order to reach some geopolitical end. Useful theories, or goodtheories, have to take you from one state of peace through conflict to abetter state of peace. If they do not do that then they are only partialtheories and they are not particularly effective. Good theories have to beworkable, and the models on which they are based must be founded inthe real world. It does not make any difference how elegant they are ifthey do not reflect the real world. Finally, good theories produce


reasonably replicable good results in a wide variety of circumstances. Soit seems to me that these are the kind of things we always ought to bethinking about when we are evaluating, whether it is a new investmentconcept, a new military theory or a political plan. The structure andessence is represented in the four-phased “Prometheus Process”.

Here is very simply what we believe the outlines for good strategy needto be and what the outlines are for the theory that we have tried to workwith and develop over a long period of time. The words that we use arethe words that we are using in the business world. I am going to gothrough them very briefly, then expand this and finally talk in somedetail about each of the component parts.

Number one, we believe that any theory or strategy must start with a veryaccurate definition of what you want the future to be. The very first stepis that you design the future. In other words, you design the peace thatis going to follow the war. That becomes the thing from which all else isderived. Number two, you always have a limited number of assets,whether they are airplanes, money, guns or whatever they may happen tobe. You have a limited number of assets. There are on the other hand apotentially infinite number of targets, and you can think of targets asanything from a tank to a president. You have an infinite number oftargets, but a limited number of assets. If you apply the assets to thewrong targets, then you are not going to succeed. So the second part ofthe concept is that you target for success, which in other words means


that you spend a lot of time to make sure that you get the targets right.The third step is campaigning to win, which simply means that you aregoing to create the organization, and you are going to orchestrate theresources that you have available to you, so that you get the future youhave decided that you are going to create. Then the fourth step is the onethat we typically ignore in business and in the military. In the businessworld we talk about it as finishing with finesse. It is war termination orthe idea that all wars end and everything ends. If you do not end it well,then you have not done your job. So all four of these things need to gotogether and we think of these as the four imperatives. There are otherparts obviously, that are connected with this. There are sets of generalrules that flow across all aspects of the planning and the execution, andunderneath each one of these are a variety of additional ideas. We arenow going into these.

Design the FutureUnder design the future we have four sets of notions that are important.The first one is the concept of understanding the general environment inwhich you are working. The macro environment, the technical and cul-tural aspects for example. Number two is painting a very solid and veryreal picture of the future that you are going to try to create. Numberthree is developing a set of guiding presets, the rules that you are goingto follow as you go forward in your operations. The last thing is identi-fying the strategic measures of merit that tell you when you haveachieved your future picture. Let us explore these four areas.

I think when we are talking about the macro environment in which wefind ourselves, we can in a broad sense relate it to the very concept ofprecision. Now, you are of course aware of what has happened inprecision, so I am not going to belabor it, but I want to review it veryquickly. Compare the number of bombs that needed to be dropped inthe Second World War to have a 90% probability of putting a singlebomb on a target about half the size of this auditorium, with the numberof bombs required in the Gulf War, and the war in Serbia subsequently.In World War Two as we all know, 90% percent probability required9,000 bombs, 1,000 B-17 and 10,000 men flying directly over thetargets. So the chances of any given bomb hitting anything was very


small. It is important to realize, however, that this was not a situationthat was unique to bombs. This was exactly the same thing that appliedto rocks, arrows, spears, sword-trusts, bullets and machineguns. Since thevery advent of war, the overwhelming majority of weapons have missed,and that was simply what we had to live with until recently.

What happened recently was something that changed matters dramati-cally. Rather than the majority of things missing, almost everything hits.Take a look at a photo of an Iraqi airfield complex. What do you not seethat you have seen in every combat photo since the birth of combatphotography? In the Gulf War there were few craters, and craters representmisses. With the aircraft shelters in 1991 there are very few misses. Youcould now deliver things with precision. We have in other words gonefrom a world in which almost everything misses to a world in whichalmost everything hits. Now think about that a little bit. All of ourmilitary experience for thousands and thousands of years, all of ourorganizations, the principles of war and everything else have all beendesigned to manage misses. You get a lot of people together so that oneor two of the rocks or the bullets you throw may hit the right person, orthe right set of things on the other side. Everything we have done hasbeen built around the management of misses. Over night we shift to aproblem which is not managing misses, but managing hits. This is acompletely different mindset, a completely different set of problems thanthe problems we have lived with for thousands of years. I do not thinkany of us in the military or the business environment have really yetcome to grips with what this means and what the profound impact is onvirtually everything we do. So, that is idea number one – we have tounderstand the environment in which we find ourselves.

Now idea number two is a little bit different. Idea number two has to dowith how do you manage planning and operations in a world that is verycomplex and moving very quickly, in which information movesinstantly? CNN, NBC and other news channels are right there with theright information ready to go. Now, we believe that it is pretty straight-forward, that everything you do really has to be done in the open. Let meelaborate. On 6 August 1990 I pulled together a handful of people tostart putting a war-plan together for the Gulf operation. We did not haveany idea on how we were going to sell it, but we thought we would figure


it out later, so our immediate concern was not about how we were goingto sell it. Well, as we know, two days later General Norman Schwarzkopfcalled General Michael Dugan, now the USAF Chief of Staff, to discussan air option. He got hold of General Michael Loh instead, becauseDugan was out of town, and General Loh told him that we had somepeople working on an option, and that we would be happy to comedown to tell him how to win the war on 10 August. GeneralSchwarzkopf did not believe we could come up with an option in twodays, but was of course very interested. Right after that General Lohcalled me and told me that he had told Schwartzkopf that I would godown to Tampa in two days to tell him how to win the war. He said, “doyou have any problems with that”!

Well, the war-plans against the Soviets that I mentioned earlier had goneon for the previous twenty years, and by the time that our opponentwent away it was still in my view not ready to be executed. So, in 48hours we were going to present something that was different from thirtyyears of planning! The question is, how do you go about actually doingthat sort of planning? Well obviously one option is to grab a couple ofyour really smart people – individuals that you really trust. Then you gointo a closet someplace, you put up some compartment and no accesssigns so that you are not disturbed. Then you can come up with thisperfect plan, but in the real world, and this struck me as I am walkingdown the hall on my way back to the basement of the Pentagon, it is sucha complex operation requiring so many different ideas that the isolatedapproach would be fatal.

I had recalled seeing some instances in my previous tour of the Pentagon,where a Chief of Staff of the Air Force and later a Chairman of the JointChiefs, had sort of a mania of doing things in secrecy, pulling togethersmall groups of people. I saw time after time that the result, no matterhow smart the people were, was that they missed things that wereimportant and in fact ended up being fatal in a couple of instances. Sorather than trying to do small planning we were going to bring a lot ofpeople together and we were going to open the doors. We basicallyopened the doors down in Checkmate. We basically said that if you havean American uniform on and have some ideas, then we want you to takepart in this planning operation. Needless to say, the security people were


strongly opposed to this. They said we could not do that, arguing that wehave to control this, but in fact we cannot plan a war unless we havemany people involved. I believe, considering the environment we are in,that this is the only way you can do good planning for a couple ofreasons. One, because you need an awful lot of ideas if you are going toget the right ideas put together quickly. Number two, if people are notinvolved in the planning, when they have to go out and execute at anoperational level, the chances of them doing what the little group ofplanners in Washington, or the 9th Air Force had put together, are verysmall. Basically because people miss all the nuances on all the importantthings if they are not actually part of the planning. So in my view thisbecomes then absolutely critical and is really a part of the environmentin which we live. We can no longer afford to do the secret compartmentplanning. You have to get it out in the open and you win not by secrets,but by exploiting information ideas and concepts faster than anybodyelse.

The future picture has to include a compelling measurable objective pic-ture of the post-conflict situation. One of the driving concepts that weput together very rapidly for the Gulf War planning was that we wantedthe Middle East to be more stable after the war than it was before. In verysimple terms, what that meant was that Iraq, which pre-conflict was aregional superpower and had made everything unstable, needed to bedriven down sufficiently so that it could not be a strategic threat to itsenemies. But on the other hand, because you want more stability, youcannot drive it down to zero, which will lead to all kinds of problems onthe opposite end of the spectrum. So the fact that you are determined todrive Iraq down then becomes the things that determines what thetargets are. You have to have that picture in front of you. When you areplanning, whether it is business planning or war planning, and do nothave a hard measurable picture you have a serious problem. If you aregiven the job of working on something without that picture, then youhave a serious problem and you have to fix it. You cannot plan if you donot know the future you are trying to create.

You need guiding presets. You have to have some things that are going toguide your strategic and operational behavior. In the Gulf War there werefour basic things that we laid out for General Schwarzkopf, and he agreed


to them. One was that the war was going to be focused against SaddamHussein – not as a single target, but against Saddam Hussein and hispolicies rather than the Iraqi people. Number two was that we would doeverything possible to keep Iraqi civilian casualties and property damageto an absolute minimum. Number three was that we would do every-thing possible to keep our own casualties to an absolute minimum, andnumber four was that we would at all times fight the war asymmetrically.In other words, we would always avoid the head-to-head kind ofoperations, which was likely to drag us into an attrition kind of war.

Finally, the strategic measures of merit become extremely difficultbecause we are not used to thinking in these terms. We have a tendencyto say that we are going to measure the success of our operations by howmany sorties we flew, how many bombs we dropped, and how manytargets we hit. These are the things we did in Vietnam. Those are notstrategic measures of merit, so you have to get these things up at the rightlevel if you are going to be successful. That is sort of a quick run-downof the first part of the strategic concept, which we term designing thefuture.

Target for SuccessThe second part has to do with this whole business of how you go aboutfinding the right kind of targets. It is absolutely imperative in business,war and politics that you think about targets in terms of systems. Youhave to see your opponent as a system and you have to see yourself as asystem. Once you have identified the systems, then you have the abilityto note what the centers of gravity are. I need to emphasize centers ofgravity, not center. After you have identified the centers of gravity, thenyou need to decide what should happen to them. Not how you are goingto make it happen, but what it is that needs to happen to them to changethe systems so that they correspond to the future that you have defined.Let us go into some details.

First of all let us think about an opponent as having some fairly signifi-cant amount of energy. There was for example a pre-hostility level ofenergy available to Iraq. Obviously there was a lot, because it had done apretty nice job with Kuwait and clearly it had the ability to do some


other things. Our objective is, in one sense or another, to identify theminimum amount of what the opponent needs in order to do certainthings. Once you have identified the level of energy, which the enemysystem needs in order to succeed with his aggression, then your processbecomes fairly straightforward, because you then need to reduce thesystem energy of your opponent down below the level that is required forhim to succeed. By dealing with the level of energy you are changing thesystem.

We put this in slightly different terms when using the Five Rings Modelas a general analogy for a system. Any system has a degree of energy andwith a military opponent our problem is to change that energy level byparallel operation in order to drive it down to a point that is acceptableto you. You can drive it down to zero if you want to, and every once ina while this is the case, although it is pretty rare. Probably the classicexample of driving it down to zero is of course what the Romans did withCarthage in the Third Punic War, which simply meant that Carthage wasgone forever as it was utterly and completely destroyed. If we are lookingat this from a business standpoint we do not focus our energy on ouropponents, but we focus our energy on the market that we want tochange, and we apply our assets in such a way as to increase the energylevel of a market so that we can make some money from it, so that the


market moves in the direction that we want it to move. It is still the samething: positive energy and negative energy. We normally think of war asa negative energy event, but there are probably some positive things thatought to be going on at the same time. In business as a general rule it isalmost all positive.

You are all familiar with the concept of the Five Rings and you have hada lot of discussions on it, so I would just like to make a couple of points.First of all, I believe that what the Five Rings really does is describe howthe real world is organized. It does not make any difference whether it isa company, a squadron, a market, a country or anything else. Everysystem has these components. Every system has something that providesleadership; has something that converts energy from one form toanother; has an infrastructure to hold it together; has population; and hassome kind of forces or agents. There is absolutely no exception to this.We can put it into this form for a couple of reasons. First, when we putthe whole country or the whole market or the whole company togetherin one place, we then know that we have the focus on changing the wholething. That is our objective. We also begin to get some general ideasabout where relative priorities lie. We know that, in general, if you canget the leadership of a country, a company or a market to be going in aparticular direction, then there is a tendency that the country, companyor market starts going in the direction which you prefer. Sometimes thatis all you need. On the other hand, if you put an enormous amount ofeffort on the outer ring, the fielded forces ring, then it is unlikely to havemuch impact on the overall system.

For example, during the planning part of the Gulf War there was a num-ber of people who said, for a variety of reasons, that what we ought to dois focus strictly and solely on the Iraqi army in Kuwait. Let us make theassumption that we destroy the Iraqi army in Kuwait. 500,000 people arekilled or captured. A couple of thousand tanks are destroyed etc. Thoselosses would probably have been a little bit less than what the Iraqis hadsuffered in the war with Iran, during which time Iraq had become sig-nificantly stronger, significantly more powerful and a significantly biggerthreat in the region. In other words, the things that are in the outer ring,whether they are armies, air forces, navies, sale forces or a variety of otherthings, they are in the periphery. It is not that they are not important,


but they are not the core part of the system. What we are really trying todo, therefore, is to use this model to choose the centers of gravity, whichis the targets that will allow us to change the system in the way that weneed to change it. Our objective is to change the whole system in such away as to get where we want to go. Now there are a couple of other pointsI would like to make about this.

We need to understand that the efficiency of the system is a function ofits leadership times some functions of the key production processes timessome function of the infrastructure and the population and the fieldedforces. I think we would all agree on that. How these things are weightedis obviously going to vary somewhat from situation to situation, butnevertheless that is the way the real world works. Given that, we thenbegin to select the targets in such a way that our limited assets, and theyare always very limited, are going to make the system change as rapidlyas possible.

I want to make one other point here as we are talking about systems. Ourprobability of success against an opponent is a combination of twothings: the physical capability of this system, and if you will, the moraleof this system. Let us think about this for a second. If we can drive eitherone of these to zero, then the probability of them being successful goesdown to zero. We can be the strongest people in the world, but if we haveno will to do anything, then it does not make any difference. There is noquestion about that. Likewise, we can have the most will in the world butif we have zero physical capability, in other words if we are dead, it doesnot make any difference how much will we have. So, in accepting that,where does our focus go? Well we could focus on morale, but nobodyquite knows how to do it. On the other hand, what we do know is whatthe physical components are of any system. We know who the leadersare, we know who the people are and we know what the infrastructure isetc. What is it on the other hand that has an impact on morale? Well,basically what has impact on morale is the people’s appreciation of whattheir physical prospects are. Do I have a gun to fight with? Is there some-body back home? Is there a road over which I can travel and a wholevariety of other things? So all we are saying here is not that the moralebusiness is not important, but in fact that it is impossible to do anythingabout the morale other than focusing on some physical aspect of it.


Maybe directly against a person, maybe more generally, but in the finalanalysis the only place in which you can put your efforts is against some-thing physical. So, this reasonably describes the physical state of anopponent, and thereby the model becomes useful. We will see now in acouple of instances of business that it does allow us fairly rapidly at aworking level to understand how a system works, which again allows usto choose the right targets and then make something happen to it.

Campaign to WinLet us next move into the campaign to win aspect. I want to address acouple of things here. Obviously what we are talking about doing in thecampaign stage, is creating a master attack plan, because the chances thatwe can attack all those centers of gravity at the same time are probablyfairly small. We want to take a cross section that will allow us to beginmoving this system in the direction, in which we want it to move. Thenwe need to create an organization that is designed specifically to accom-plish the objectives that we have made for ourselves. The last aspect isbringing this whole system under parallel attack in order to generate asquick a movement as possible. I would like at this point to just focus ona couple of these aspects. The first one is organization. We make the pointthat you have new objectives, new technology and new situations, so froman organizational standpoint you have two choices. You can either try tomake the old organization work, or you can make a new organization.Now in general it is sort of interesting that the people in business or warwho have tried to make the old organizations work have not done verywell. Conversely, the people who have created new organizations havetended to do fairly well. Consider the French and the Germans 1930.Both of them developed new technology, new airplanes and new tanks.The French decision was basically to put these new technologies into theorganization created three hundred years previously by Louis XIV. TheGermans, on the other hand, decided to apply the new technology in tankarmies and air armies. I suppose there are some real experts in here on thissituation, but I would argue that probably as much as fifty per cent of thereason of the rapid German success starting in May 1940 against theFrench was not because the French were not good fighters or that they didnot have good equipment, but because of an organizational superiority onthe part of the Germans. So that organization, although quite imperfect,


was still able to overcome the organization of the French. If we look at theorganization that we generally have in the military today it is not muchdifferent from the organization that Frederick the Great had some 250years ago. If we in fact have new technology and different sets of ideas etc.,then it is a fairly good chance that this is no longer the right kind oforganization. In fact, rather than being in this organization it needs to bewhat we think of as an organization on demand, where you have a lot ofdifferent little groups that are doing things that are all strategicallyaligned, because they have all been part of this planning process. Then oneor the other simply assumes a greater degree of importance. This is prettymuch the situation that we had of the organization when Iraq invadedKuwait. One of these things was Checkmate, which sent out tentacles orcommunication lines depending on how you like to think about it, inorder to bring a lot of these things together in Washington and a lot ofother places, in order to develop sufficient energy to be able to plan andexecute a different kind of war in a different amount of time.

This brings me to parallel attack. Regarding Iraq, in the old world wewould have approached this problem serially. An awful lot of peoplewanted to do this serially. This is the problem. You identify target setswithin the Iraqi army in Kuwait, focusing on that aspect and spend a littlebit of time on local air superiority and then sometime on interdiction.Then, maybe, we would get into the Iraqi homeland at some point. Asyou are doing things serially, very interesting things happen. As you areapplying all your effort down in the theatre, the whole remainder of thecountry is able to function in order to respond, reinforce and conductcounter offences, including world diplomatic offences of all kinds. So theserial operation depends on you getting a whole variety of steps right, andthe chances that you are going to get those right are always far less thanone. If you have to string a lot of them together, the multiplication ofprobabilities is very bad as you multiply a lot of probabilities that are lessthan one. Pretty soon you get down to that your probability of success isless than fifty per cent. Now fifty per cent is not bad if you like to gamble,and if you like to go to Las Vegas and put it on the red and black on theroulette, but if you are in the business of war then fifty-fifty is not a verygood deal. It s too darn expensive, because you cannot afford those sort ofodds. So what we were looking for in the Iraqi case was to approach itfrom a different direction. Rather than doing the target set thing, we


thought of Iraq as a system with some centers of gravity and then we putthese things under parallel attack in such a way that we significantlyreduced the system energy of Iraq. Once that is done, the fact that themilitary ground forces are out there does not make much difference any-more, because you have addressed the problem from a system approach asopposed to dealing with it from an individual serial approach. Thedifference is extraordinary. In the serial world if you do not succeed withyour first target set, you generally cannot move on to the second target set,so you have to get all the things right. If you approach things from asystem perspective you can afford to get a lot of the targets wrong, you canafford to miss a lot, because your measure of merit is not hitting aparticular target, but your measure of merit is having a system impact.

Take the operations against the electrical systems. I could not begin totell you now, and I am not even sure that I knew at the time either, whatpercentage of the electrical targets we hit in the first twenty minutes ofthe war. But we did not care, and the reason that we did not care isbecause five minutes into the war the lights went out in Baghdad, andthey did not come back on. So we have this system, where that part ofthe energy was simply not operating, and in a certain sense it did noteven make a difference whether the Iraqis had simply turned off theirentire electrical grid. It did not matter. The lights were out, and thereforethe Iraqis did not have this benefit. Thus, we had this mini-system effectand that is what we are looking for. So it is a completely different mind-set again. I do not care whether we hit that particular target. What we arelooking for is a system-effect and we want to do these things in parallelin such a way as to create a very rapid collapse, which, incidentally, youcan do with very few things being hit. It does not take much energy todo this if you take the right things. The system collapses and basicallynow you are in a significantly better situation than what would otherwisehave been the case. System collapse is what you want. You want the lightsto go out in Baghdad.

Finishing with FinesseNow let us go into the last step. Under finishing with finesse there are basi-cally three sets of ideas. The main idea is obviously that if you are going tofight a war, or do business operations, you make darn sure that we are


happy with the ending and that the transition into the next phase makessense. This means we have to define the exit points. We frequently thinkabout exit points as failure exit points, but they can be both positive andnegative. What do we want the good exit points to be? How are we goingto make sure they happen? In the event that things do not happen the waywe thought they would, how are we going to get ourselves out? If you donot think about the things back here you have a serious problem. We seethis in business all the time, where people get so wedded to a particularproduct or a particular business methodology that even when it startsgoing down the backside of its lifecycle they are emotionally, culturally andmentally unable to appreciate that it has served its purpose and it is timeto get out. If, on the other hand, you have made the decision early on, thenwhen things starts to go to the backside or they go the way you do not wantthem to go, it is much easier to say we have already talked about this. Wehave discussed this and it is not a failure, it simply did not work out so itis time to move on to something else. You have to make this part of theplanning and it has to take place at the time you do the rest of the plan.You need exit points. Exit points then obviously need to have a termina-tion plan of some sort. Obviously that was one of the major things we didnot do as well as we should have done with the Gulf War. Likewise, asso-ciated with this, a war may end but that does not mean that you areentering a perpetual state of peace, and that everyone is going to live withthe results. So, one part of the finish with finesse imperative is that you at


the beginning start to think about how you are going to reconstitute yourresources so that you are ready to go again and make the things happenthat may need to happen in the next conflict. Or it may be a case of sim-ply keeping the war you have just finished under control.

Those are basically the four imperatives. We can wrap these together witha couple of sets of ideas.

What we are always looking for in war or business is a high probabilityof success. I believe that almost incontrovertibly this is the case, becausewe can almost demonstrate mathematically and physically that if youbring the right centers of gravity under attack pretty rapidly, you thenbring about system collapse, or system expansion if you are talking abouta business situation. You have a very high probability of being successfulif you make those things happen in a very short period of time. If on theother hand you take a long period of time your probability of successdrops. It drops because you move from the parallel world to the serialworld which has always been a world of low probability. It has alwaysbeen so, whether it was for Napoleon or Frederick the Great. This is alittle counter-intuitive, because it does not say that if you have a lowprobability fighting a long war then it means that the other guy has ahigh probability. This applies to both sides, because both sides have setsof centers of gravity that they need to attack and if they do not bringthem under attack quickly their probability of success just goes down.Now, what that says then, is that we want things to happen, assimultaneously as we can, preclude enemy action, create system changeand system decline very rapidly. There is another side to this, which isinteresting, again both in business and in war. As time passes in any waror any business operation – product interdiction or whatever it happensto be – the cost goes up significantly, whether the cost is measured inblood, in lost equipment, in political damage and all kinds of otherthings. So we have a very interesting situation: the lowest cost for fightinga war or a business operation is early on, which paradoxically is in theperiod that gives you the highest probability for success. The place thatyou know is going to cost you the most is if you know you are going tobe in a long conflict and paradoxically, that gives you the lowestprobability of success. So it becomes imperative, regardless of what weare doing, to consider this element of timing.


I believe it is essential to understand that we simply have to act. In today’sworld where things are moving quickly, if you goof around a long timetrying to make the plan perfect and get everyone to agree etc., then thechances are high that you are not going to do very well. So good enoughplans violently executed are far superior to perfect plans with a longdelay. Additionally, when we put a plan together, we really want it towork. Now the best plan is the one that seizes the initiative and neverever lets it go. The worst plan is the one which deliberately gives away theinitiative and turns it over to the market or your opponent or whateverit may happen to be. This is so obvious that you presume that nobodywould ever create this kind of plan. The fact is, however, that these areby far the most common plans in the military and business worlds alike.We just saw this in the Serbian operation. I had a rather interesting con-versation with a friend of mine, who had dinner with the Secretary ofState the night before the Serbian war started. There were two interestingthings that came out of this conversation. One was a question for theSecretary of State: What is your objective? The answer was that theywanted to get Slobodan Milosevic back to the bargaining table. That isfine, but what happens next? Getting him back to the bargaining tabledoes not provide for a clear and absolute hard picture of what wassupposed to happen after all of this had been done. It is merely anotherserial step. Well, suppose he does not agree then. I think we just have tofigure out something else. Then the next thing: What are we going to dotomorrow morning? We know that we are going to drop some bombs onthis guy Milosevic. The Secretary of State says she knows Milosevic, andall we have to do is drop some bombs on him, and he will fold. So thatis what we are going to do. So we drop some bombs on him and mostlywe drop them in places that you know is annoying, but it did not touchthe presidential palace. So the next morning he looks around and says“this is uncomfortable, but it is not that bad. I can live with this”. Nowwe have basically turned our planning over to Milosevic, and what doyou want to do now Mr. Milosevic. Please tell us. We do not want to dothat kind of operation, and in fact it is those things that allow those warsto last for a long time. It means that a lot of things happens, like in thisparticular case an awfully lot of people get displaced and driven out ofKosovo etc. We pay an enormous price for turning over our planning toMilosevic rather than impose our will on the system that we are trying tochange.


Take another case. What we put forward to General Schwarzkopf wasfundamentally different. We wanted to win the war and the peace. It wasInstant Thunder and not Vietnam. In other words we were going to per-form parallel operations. We were going to concentrate on the wholeIraqi system going for quick paralyzes. We imposed our plan on Iraq andthere was nothing that the Iraqis could do to keep us from beingsuccessful. We were going to preempt their responses. In this particularcase we are looking at the thing that is going to give us the most bang forthe buck, and that is to be coming from the third dimension. We aregoing to accompany the bombing operation with strategic psychologicalwarfare, which actually did not happen, and I do not think that we areprepared to do it still. It is a lesson that is still not learned. We are goingto get in and get out. We leave the area better than it was. We didreasonably well. It could have been done significantly better. We shouldhave written the cease-fire terms right before the war begun. I did notspend nearly as much time on this during the fall of 1990 as I shouldhave in retrospect, and although we did some of it we did not put in theeffort to sell it. We did not put half the effort into the back-end of thewar as we did to the front-end, and we paid for it. It is as simple as that,and to me it is a compelling lesson.

There were problems for sure. We had no strategic psychologicaloperation campaign. Everybody said, including General Schwarzkopf,that we needed to have it. Let us briefly look at the essence of such acampaign. Some commentators that have said that what we had was adecapitation plan. It was simply not so. What we had was a plan toreduce the overall energy level, the nasty negative energy level of Iraq, tothe point where it was necessary. One of the things that would contributeto that was to take out Saddam Hussein, so we make every effort to takeout Saddam Hussein, but you never ever build war-plans on things whereyou can give yourselves single point failures. Because if you do not getSaddam Hussein, and that is all your operations are about, then you arelost. So this is in fact where the system thinking comes in. You are notgoing after Saddam Hussein only, but you are also going to have effecton the other parts of the Iraqi leadership. You are going to reduce itscommunication, its power availability, electricity etc. You are going totake away its nuclear, biological, and chemical research and developmentproduction storage as much as you can. You are going to have some


impact on the infrastructure and with the strategic psychologicalcampaign the idea was to get at least some of the Iraqi population to be,if at the minimum only, a little bit less energetic and supportive of thewar than they otherwise might have been. That was the minimum. Atthe maximum you are hoping that the strategically psychologicaloperation campaign would lead the army or the air force or some otherset of people in Iraq to say we have had enough of Saddam do somethingabout it. You do not depending on that, however, because it is notpredictable. You do not know for sure that you are going to to be able todo it, but because you are going after system effects then you can actuallyafford to miss this completely. We missed somethings one hundred percent and still we were generally successful, because you are settingyourself at the system and you are not setting yourselves up for singlepoint failure. Now the reasons why there was no strategic psychologicalcampaign are complex, but what they really come down to is that therewas no organization within the United States government that waswilling to take on that responsibility, which required coordinating acrossa variety of different agencies and doing a lot of things which a lot ofpeople thought might be somewhat risky. Adding to that, obviously, wasthe termination of the war. I do not mean the President saying we willend this war right now and the Republican Guard getting away. That wasno big deal. What was a big deal, however, was having GeneralSchwarzkopf go to Safwan to meet with the Iraqi high command with nocompetent instructions from Washington. He is basically sent there withthe instructions to conclude a cease-fire. If Washington had done its job,me included, then he would have gone to Safwan with a very clear under-standing of what the downstream Iraq was supposed to be. The demandsthat he would have made on the Iraqi high command would have beensignificantly different than the ones that he made. We could probablyhave demanded whatever we wanted, because the high command hadlittle or no choice, but we had not thought it through. I find that GeneralSchwarzkof is literally a great guy, but if he did not have the right set ofinstructions, then there was not very much that he could do.

The last problem was the problem of measuring progress, and this goesback in some sense to this business of the transition from managingmisses to managing hits. The one set of ideas was that progress was goingto be measured by the number of sorties that were flown in particular


sectors and particular areas. The other set of measuring success waswhether the lights were out or not. Those two are so diametricallyopposed that they did not come together during the course of the war.There was a constant conflict, and as far as I know that kind of conflictis not yet entirely resolved, although you would have a much better feelfor that than I do.

Now, a quick thought here. Suppose you are an Iraqi or a Serbian andyou are presented with the problem that you are going to accomplishsomething. What do you do? You need to be very careful about yourevaluation of your own objectives. In other words, if the Iraqis had gonethrough this theoretical process that we have just been through, then Ithink that they in fact could have achieved virtually anything that theywanted to achieve. You need to take great care in choosing your enemy.It is a really big mistake to get the meanest guy around mad at you, andsince there are ways to avoid getting the biggest guy around mad at youthey needed to think that one out very clearly. They needed to thinkabout their enemy’s centers of gravity even if they allowed us to beenemies. Then they needed to think about the real centers of gravity, andwhat they needed to do to affect them. From a military standpoint thereis probably nothing that they could do. From a psychological, politicaland economical standpoint there was probably a lot that they could do ifthey had thought about it in broader terms as opposed to really limitingthemselves to the military aspect of the invasion of Kuwait. They neededto think asymmetrically, obviously, because once the war commencesthey will have a problem, even if we do not fight it very well.

We need to be very agile. One of the things which was interesting in ourinitial discussion with General Schwarzkopf, was that he agreed that wewere going to go after Saddam, but asked what we were going to do if hedecided after the first morning of bombing to raise the white flag? Theanalogy that I used was as follows. You remember Lord Nelson, theEnglish sea captain who sailed into Copenhagen to attack the enemyfleet. His flag-lieutenant tapped him on the shoulder and said theadmiral was signaling us to break off the action and return. So Nelsonasked for the telescope, which he picked up and held to his patched eyeand said, “I see no signal. Proceed”! That was what he did and he wasvery successful. So I told General Schwarzkopf that we could do the


same. We are going to make darn sure that we are not going to be ableto see any white flag. Now, that is an anecdote, an interesting anecdote,but the real point here is that if Saddam Hussein had been a very agileguy, and there are not very many agile people that are in command ofbusiness operations or military operations, then he could have said thathe made a mistake on the first morning of the war and declared a with-drawal from Kuwait. We would have had to stop the war right then, andthe thing that has happened to Iraq that drove the energy level down andgave us control fairly simply would not have taken place, and Iraq wouldhave remained a very dangerous and a very capable country that had onlysuffered a minor setback. You simply have to do risk-reward exercises.

Lastly something that we have not talked about specifically is using a RedTeam. One of the things we did when using this open planning inCheckmate was to have a group of people in Long Range PlanningDivision playing the Red Team. They would participate and listen to allof the planning that is going on at a daily basis. Then they would comein and tell me what they would have done if they were the smartest andmost asset-rich Iraqis in the world. How would you beat this plan thatyou know perfectly? They would lie out things and we looked at it anddiscussed it and if we concluded that they could do something we wouldsuggest a countermove in advance that would prevent them fromsucceeding. So you have a Red Team that keeps you from getting into agroup-thinking mode. It is institutionally charged with criticizing you. IfSaddam had a Red Team he may have received some additional ideas asopposed to a whole group of people saying “Yes Saddam. Yes Saddam”.Now we can laugh at that a little bit, but how many times, when a four-star general or a president says we all ought to do something then we allsay “Yes Sir. Yes Sir”. The Red Team gives you an institutional way towork around that kind of a problem.

SummaryIn summing up, the theory that we have discussed seems to have workedreasonably well. It seems to be scaleable, it seems to be adaptable and wehave applied it to several different places. So it seems to work. Second,territory in itself is generally not a center of gravity and you do not needto worry particularly about that. Parallel attack is very hard to counter.


In fact I do not know any way to counter parallel attack once it is under-way. The combination of stealth and precision really has redefined massand concentration. I guess at this point I would go a little bit further andsay that I suspect it is time to throw away, at least on a hypothetical basis,all of the existing principles of war and rethink where we are now. Thenthere is information. It is a very fast moving world, so everybody needsto know what is going on and why it is happening. So when we keepsecrets that means that people that are out there do not know what it isthat they are supposed to do, and because they are good and smart peoplethey will end up making perfectly logical decisions that may have adangerous strategic impact. People have to know and we simply can nolonger afford to live with compartmentalization and the kinds of secretsthat we have lived with. Every bomb counts in today’s world and everybomb is a political bomb. It is political in the sense that if it goes off inthe wrong place it will have political repercussions, and if it goes in theright place it will lead to desirable political impacts. Moreover, we canhave the best technology in the world with airplanes and tanks, but ifthey are not applied smartly with an approach that makes sense andcomes to the problem from the right direction, then being technicallysuperior does not give you any particular good value. The last point Iwould make is that we are pretty darn good with precision of impact. Wecan drop a bomb ninety-nine times out of one hundred in the middle ofthis auditorium, but we sure cannot control the damage that is done onceit comes in. If our objective is to take out this computer, because this isthe key to this operation with bombs, then we cannot do that. We candrop a bomb on it, but we are also going to destroy the rest of thebuilding. That becomes more and more of a problem for us, so we needto have precision of effect where bombs only take out computers or theyonly take out that seat.


Part II

Perspectives on Military Theory

Centers of Gravity and Asymmetrical Warfare

Colonel (ret.) Richard Szafranski

IntroductionAll good strategists are paranoid.1 They also are control freaks. Greatstrategists are paranoid, too, but unlike the merely “good” strategists,great strategists are not control freaks. Great strategists are opportunityfreaks. That is, a great strategist knows the objective and seeks to meet itby capitalizing on whatever opportunities the environment presents,asserting control effectively wherever and whenever control is possible,even in spite of resistance. Good strategists understand centers of gravity.Great strategists understand asymmetric operations and how to exploitthem. Centers of gravity and asymmetrical operations are complexmatters. Although they smack of lofty “strategy” and “strategic thinking,”they often degenerate into rehashing history on the one hand or bizarretheoretical meanderings on the other. Rarely do either of these twoantipodes rise to the level of the useful.

I aim to give you something useful. My thesis is that understanding cen-ters of gravity and appreciating the logic of asymmetric operations helpsprevent the unsatisfactory outcomes that often follow rude surprisesduring an era of great change, that things are changing, and that we arelikely to be victimized by rude surprises unless we strive to become greatstrategists. Rude surprises can cause difficulties in an industry, ruin abusiness, cause the loss of a battle, or demoralize or ruin a nation. Thebursting of the “dot-com” bubble was a rude surprise to some. Defaulton a loan can be a rude surprise to others. A coalition of right-thinkingpeople visited a series of rude surprises on Iraq’s armed forces during theGulf War. The Taliban and Al-Qaeda fielded forces in Afghanistanexperienced many surprises. None of these were strategic surprises,although any might have been.

All of us must be wary of the possibility for rude surprises ahead, hencethis symposium. The right knowledge and the will to act on it can helpprevent one from being caught unawares. In competitive activities,especially those where the stakes are high, a key element, perhaps the keyelement of knowledge is the understanding of the relationship of centersof gravity to balance. Those unbalanced entities can be put on road toruin. Given that knowledge – a rich awareness of centers of gravity andtheir significance and an appreciation of the logic of asymmetricoperations – one cannot be easily unbalanced, even if one is taken bysurprise. Where the stakes are so high that they involve the survival of thestate, or mortal risks and consequences, it is negligence to be ignorant ofthese matters. So that there is no doubt as to the importance of thisknowledge let me assert that only amateurs are ever surprised, and – inwarfare – only fools are unbalanced. We have been visited by what shouldnot have been a rude surprise, but those who sought to unbalance us arefools because they did not. The one thing I hope to attain in thisdiscussion is awareness so deep that they – those fools – cannot in thefuture.

Moving Toward the CenterLet me begin by advancing some ideas regarding centers of gravity;keeping in mind that understanding centers of gravity is essential toperceiving the logic of asymmetric operations. Usually such examinationsof the center or the centers of gravity are journeys into points and peoplefrom the past and near present. Such journeys that take us to variousdeceased Prussians and Germans and cause us to wend our way throughHart and Dupuy for soldiers, and, for airmen, Douhet and “The FiveRings.” Along the way we find constructs like “the correlation of forces,”“effects-based operations,” and “network-centric warfare.” We also findairpower paradigms like “Rapid Decisive Operations” or “Rapid Halt.”Homey constructs like “kick down the door” are unavoidable additionalwaypoints.

Territory Creates WealthThis time let’s take a different route toward the center. Let’s take ajourney into the future by surveying across the sweep of time, the wavesof change. Waves radiate from some center point and our quest is to

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understand “the” center. At the center, to me, is the way people createwealth. Alvin and Heidi Toffler’s book, Creating a New Civilization: ThePolitics of the Third Wave, discusses what they call the “wave theory ofconflict.”2 The Tofflers explain that the sweep of history is the sweep ofwaves of civilization, arising, spreading, coexisting, and colliding. TheFirst Wave of civilization “was and still is inescapably attached to theland.”3 It was the product of the agricultural revolution and began when-ever humankind changed from nomadic hunting and gathering to themore pastoral and sedentary life of flocks and farming. The land yieldedits sustenance, wealth, and bounty according to the rhythm and tempoof the seasons. The flock, the herd, planting and the harvest framed lifeand living. Warfare in the First Wave usually was seasonal, so of coursethe belligerents planned warfare, battles, and wars around the need tosow and reap. The ancients describe this eloquently, but even as late asour own Civil War, soldiers deserted to return to their land for planting.War was about the land, the source of subsistence and wealth. Thehistorian Robert L. O’Connell writes, “agriculture would dictate that waramong the settled would be essentially about territory, both on thebattlefield and in a larger political sense.”4 The way we make war, theTofflers tell us, is the way we make wealth – keep this point in mind –and the wealth of First Wave societies is embedded in their land.

And what did soldiers and armies seek to know in the First Wave? Theysought first to master the weapons of warfare that were not surprisinglythe weapons of the hunt and the farm. Leaders, generals, and armiessought to know the geographical boundaries of territory, the limits of theland of families and clans, where the “not us” were, their numbers andarms, when they would approach, and what they might want. Each ofthese potentially was knowable, and “meaning” was derived from seeingthe objects or behavior that transformed the unknown into the known.They – the enemy – wanted land, the bounty of the land, living space,or the means of producing people, crops, and herds. Scouts could countthem. We could use our spies and their traitors to try to learn of theirintentions. Yet, even in the First Wave there are mysteries, things that oneclan or group cannot easily understand about another clan or group.Because Waves include social forms, everything in a society is affectedand circumscribed by the Wave. Many of these First Wave mysteries areand were religious in the sense that they pivoted on tribal totems or

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taboos. Some, such as the effects of killing the chieftain or capturing themonarch, affected fighting. Other mysteries did not affect fighting. Thetrick, we are told, is not being “knowable,” even in the First Wave. TheT’ai Kung tells us:

Strategic power is exercised in accord with the enemy’s move-ments. Changes stem from the confrontation between twoarmies. Unorthodox [ch’i] and orthodox [cheng] tactics areproduced from the inexhaustible resources of the mind … Inmovement nothing is more important than the unexpected. Inplanning nothing is more important than not being knowable.5

What human qualities are and were treasured in the First Wave? The late-Carl Builder, drawing heavily on the Tofflers’ works, suggests that fami-lies and clans of First Wave societies value animal strength and cunning.6

Strength overpowered enemies and the cunning of the likes of T’ai Kung,or Sun Tzu, or Wu Tzu, or Machiavelli introduced additional mysteryand deception to amplify the effects of physical power. The knowledgeneeded about the enemy essentially was intention, time, location, andnumbers. From these simple bits of data, centers of power and strengthcould be discerned. No small chore, but not as difficult as the challengeswe face today. Even while we still have First Wave societies (andthinking), the Second Wave emerged.

Production Capacity Creates WealthThe Second Wave, depending on your point of view, either simplifiedor complicated society and life. The Tofflers observe that:

Industrial civilization, the product of the great Second Wave ofchange, took root most rapidly on the northern shores of the greatAtlantic Basin. As the Atlantic Powers industrialized, theyneeded markets and cheap raw materials from distant regions.The advanced Second Wave powers thus waged wars of colonialconquest and came to dominate the remaining First Wave statesand tribal units all over Asia and Africa.

It was the master conflict again – Second Wave industrialpowers versus First Wave agrarian powers – but this time on a


global rather than domestic scale, and it was this struggle thatbasically determined the shape of the world until recent times. Itset the frame within which most wars took place.7

The Second Wave created “mass societies that reflected and required massproduction.”8 The late-Carl Builder accordingly noted that Second Wavesocieties valued “organization and discipline,” simply because planningfor mass production (to increase wealth) and producing mass warfare (tosteal or protect wealth) required those values.9 When humans organizefor mass production, then standardization, rationalization, mass trans-portation, and all kinds of engineering become important. Successfullywaging war in the Second Wave required a massive war economy –money still and forever constituting Cicero’s “sinews of war” – the levéeen masse, military engineers, and a mass of killing appliances andmachines.10

The dimensions of time, space, and matter mattered to Second Wavemilitary strategists and “concentrating mass,” that very Second Wavenotion, continues to appeal to those who treasure mass for the talismanic“decisiveness” that some believe it can produce. Armies, tied to the landas they are, remain very much oriented between the First Wave and theSecond Wave. But air forces and navies also are affected by such vestigialthinking. “Winning” is rendering enemy mass ineffective using “stuff.”Hence, to Second Wave states and groups there also is a large incentivefor out-producing competitors in masses of lethality: we need more andbetter “stuff ” than the enemy. The Second Wave battlefield, even whenmanned aircraft and missiles enter it, remains a linear battlefield definedby land, sea, air, and, to some degree, near-earth space. The FEBA (for-ward edge of the battle area), the FSCL (fire support coordination line),and the high, deep, and rear battle may all be products or vestiges of thisSecond Wave thinking. The same thinking that gave us the notion ofmilitary “control”: sea control; airspace control, and space control.11

Time, space, and matter still define the prime space, but borders now lessand less frequently circumscribe these. Although the geographicallydefined “theater” or “area of responsibility” is aging thinking, to SecondWave thinkers the territoriality of “theater” or “area of responsibility” isprime.12 Why? Because we must be organized, they think, to operate ingeographical space to not interfere with one another. Once a space is


assigned, we can “roll” and make tough choices as befit the commanders-in-chief. We can decide about the antipodes of concentration anddispersion, the choice of massing or de-massing, vexed only by the needto “concentrate mass” at the decisive point and time and knowing thatmassing presents a like-minded enemy with very economical targets.13

Even to the great Clausewitz, however, there were some mysteries in theSecond Wave: friction and chance. The Second Wave’s military theoristssearched for the secrets governing the role of chance and friction in theclockwork universe of warfare. They hoped to unravel the mysteries ofchaos. All here know that “things happen” on both sides when we let slipthe dogs of war, but few can anticipate “why.” Second Wave warfarebecomes much easier to prosecute when we use Third Wave implementsand capabilities. We can use computers and software to make con-nections, discern patterns, model action and reaction, stimulus andresponse, measures and countermeasures. We can simulate fights. Usingthis knowledge we believe we can then use “dominant battlespace know-ledge” to create the initial condition, and it is our adversary, not us, whois victimized by confusion and chaos.14 Thus, the Third Wave is criticallyimportant to Second Wave warfare forms.

Knowledge Creates WealthBut what is this Third Wave? The Third Wave is the Wave sweeping overadvanced societies today. In the words of the Tofflers:

…We are speeding toward a totally different structure of powerthat will create not a world cut in two but sharply divided intothree contrasting and competing civilizations – the first stillsymbolized by the hoe; the second by the assembly line; and thethird by the computer.

In this trisected world the First Wave sector supplies agriculturaland mineral resources, the Second Wave sector provides cheaplabor and does the mass production, and a rapidly expandingThird Wave sector rises to dominance based on the new ways inwhich it creates and exploits knowledge.


Third Wave nations sell information and innovation, manage-ment, culture and pop culture, advanced technology, software,education, training, medical care, and financial and otherservices to the world.15

What human qualities does it take to flourish and make wealth in theThird Wave? It takes knowledge, intelligence, initiative, creativity andinnovation. The vestiges of old forms – processes, structures, organiza-tions, etc. – remain, but are altered. But there may be, as the Tofflersobserve, some surprising parallels between the greatly demassified andhighly individualized First Wave and the greatly demassified and cus-tomized Third Wave. As one example, are not the knowledge, intelli-gence, and creativity of the Third Wave closely akin to the “cunning” ofthe First Wave? Another example might be the nature of work in theThird Wave. In the First Wave, work occurred in and around the home.Children stayed close to parents. In a world of increasing telecommuni-cations capabilities, might not more work occur in the home? Might notmore parents find it possible to work and attend to their children in thehome? As a third example, consider that the First Wave citizen-soldierbrought the scythe from the field or the squirrel gun from the farm tofight in First Wave wars. Can we not envision the Third Wave citizen-soldier bringing the computer, the software, the business innovation, andthe advanced technology of the Third Wave to the militia and to thefights of tomorrow? And yet, we see Second Wave thinking seducing usinto overlooking such similarities. How are such oversights possible?

Confusion is possible because we have been in the Third Wave know-ledge-based economy for a fraction of time and very few people seem tounderstand its essential features well. The Third Wave is as different fromthe Second Wave as the Second Wave is from the First Wave. Our genescome from well before the First Wave and many of our memes onlyappear to be Second Wave ones.16 A lot will change before human natureand our genetic makeup changes.17 Confusion also is possible in thearmed forces because the armed forces are each organized as an authori-tarian hierarchy.

Confusion in hierarchies, if it exists, can be imposed from the topdown.18 If knowledge, intelligence, initiative, creativity and innovation


are the keys to success in the Third Wave, then ought not our armedforces – indeed all the state’s governing bodies – be organized in waysattending to liberating and using those traits? But, mostly, the armedforces are separate from the other instruments of power the state pos-sesses and remain organized into separate hierarchies with, some argue,variety and texture provided by a lot of “stovepipes.”19 More importantly,David Ronfeldt tells us that where “knowledge” is the commodity beingtransacted in the Third Wave, the best way to make that transaction isthrough a network, not a hierarchy.20 Yet, that great oxymoron “MilitaryIntelligence” is organized in hierarchical forms even today.21 For example,“network-centric” warfare, an attempt to understand how warfare hasand will change, focuses more on the “network” than on the struggle.

Lastly, confusion is likely because we must strive to understand three verydifferent forms of society that now co-exist on our trisected planet. Evenas the “rapidly expanding Third Wave sector rises to dominance,” theFirst and Second Wave still demarcate large societies and billions ofpeople on the planet. Moreover, Third Wave societies may have withinthem Second Wave sectors, just as Second Wave societies can have ThirdWave sectors within them. The First and Second Wave have not dis-appeared. Rather the world is dangerously “trisected.” There are other“waves,” too. Harry S. Dent, Jr. suggests that birth “waves” driveeconomic waves and economic revolutions.22 A wave of births is followedby a wave of innovation. The wave of innovation is followed by a waveof spending, and the wave of spending is followed by a wave of power.The wave of power exhausts itself and the waves pulsate on. A messagein all of this may be that innovation is power, and power is wealth.

So What?Why we should care? We should care because notions of centers ofgravity must change to prevent being surprised and then unbalanced byasymmetric operations. With economic security underpinning nationalsecurity we have entered an era where our old Second Wave thinking andorganizational forms, built solidly around the requirements for success inthe industrial age, no longer suit us. Rather than replace them, reorganizeourselves, or take entirely fresh approaches to the problems that we face,new problems, we limp along applying one band-aid after another andmissing the fundamental realization that things have changed. The


problem today is not that we do not possess an abundance of the physicalmilitary power to apply our brute force solutions to the problems thaterupt. We have plenty of brute force. The problem is that we lack thebrain force to cope with the changes. Hence we face the likelihood ofrude surprises.

What does this have to do with “centers of gravity”? Let’s go to anunlikely place – the US Civil War – and an unlikely strategist, GeneralUlysses S. Grant. Grant was not a professional military theorist orstrategist by disposition. He was unsuccessful in every endeavor heattempted, except warfare. In his book, Campaigning With Grant, Grant’swartime aide-de-camp, Horace Porter, describes Grant as a general who“talked less and thought more than anyone in the service.”23 Grant alsowas obsessed with studying charts. So immersed would Grant become inhis maps, that on one occasion he stayed fixated even while random firebombarded his camp. What was Grant, the pragmatist, searching for inthese charts?

He was searching, his aide recalls, for vulnerabilities in the disposition ofhis forces, especially his forces on the move. The US Civil War repre-sented an interval of significant changes in warfare, at all levels. Grantcarried few theoretical prejudices. He had to noodle his way into theory,by being a good practitioner of warfare in the environment in which hefound himself and his forces. I submit that in all his immersion in hischarts he was seeking to understand his center of gravity and how itmight be changing, moment by moment.

Grant knew that an army has multiple points of vulnerability, because itcannot be strong everywhere, and that any single vulnerability, ifexploited, could change the initial condition and cause the cascadingcollapse of the line or the front. Unlike other Union Civil War generals,Grant never worried too much about the opposing Confederate general-in-chief, Robert E. Lee, or what Lee might be doing. Grant worriedabout destroying Lee’s army – whether Lee cooperated or not – andpreventing any of the inevitable weaknesses his own lines or his ownmovement had created from being exploited, especially as he closed onLee. Grant’s job, as seen by Grant, was to “whip” the enemy.24 Whippingthe enemy meant husbanding the strength of the Union forces as he


exhausted them consuming the enemy. Grant knew his own operationalcenter of gravity and worked to protect it. Grant’s boss, AbrahamLincoln, knew the Union’s strategic center of gravity – the will to end thewar with the South’s unconditional surrender and return to the Union –and worked to protect it. This case, and other evidence and experience,convinces me, and leads me to try to persuade you, that the way to thinkabout a center of gravity is to understand a center of gravity as that whichwe or our adversary can least afford to have badly hurt at any givenmoment.

Enter “Information” and “Value”This “understanding” of vulnerability is derived from “information.” I accept the definition that asserts, “Information is data endowed withrelevance and purpose.”25 Relevance data are data on the key variables of“things” in the prime space and data on their movement or change. Dataon purpose are data that reveal value preferences – choices made –regarding the employment of “things” in the prime space and data ontheir movement or change. Value and “utility” are not the same. Utilityor usefulness is resident in things and their change or movement. Valueis ascribed to things based on some hierarchy of preference. We willreturn to this idea later, when we examine asymmetry, but for now itmerely is important to note that what we judge we can least afford tohave hurt is that which defines our center of gravity, whether the com-petitive enterprise is selling software solutions or whipping a militaryadversary. What the adversary values most, apart from its utility in thecompetition, helps define the enemy’s center of gravity.

In former times, the key Clausewitzian variables of time, space, and massdominated.26 Military science then (like today) lagged or was no betterthan the science of the age. Time was the measurement of change. Itoften was as seasonal, as epochal as campaigns. Space was not understoodas the separation between bodies, it was understood better as the roomto maneuver on the ground. And mass was understood fundamentally asbeing the proxy term for “the army.” Today, the significance of the vari-ables, and indeed the variables themselves, may be different. Althoughmilitary science today still trails “real science” by decades, we are eachwell aware – the protestations of soldiers notwithstanding – that warfare


is changing.27 Why? Warfare is changing because today the key variablesbounding the prime space may still be time, space, and matter, but a newvariable – information28 – exerts a more powerful effect on the otherthree. Yes, the enemy is a complex “system.” Yes, there are “networks” and“netwars.” These are interesting, but derivative of larger changes.

The larger changes result from the disproportionate effects that informa-tion and value now assert, and will continue to assert in the future.Having data on time, space, and matter and knowing the relationshipsbetween time, space, and matter – information – affects each of the othervariables and the system as a whole. Information – data endowed withrelevance and purpose – has thus become a “commodity” or a “basicresource” in business parlance. This commodity now affects time, space,and matter configurations in ways that create complexity and admit nov-elty on a scale impossible in former times. Information on consumptionrates or consumer preferences, for example, can substitute for“inventory” in retail or manufacturing. Substituting information forinventory originally was novel, but the purpose of introducing thisnovelty was not so much for its usefulness (although novelty can beespecially useful in warfare), as it was for satisfying some higher orderpreference or value. The value was wealth creation. The usefulness ofarmed force derives not from winning battles, inducing “paralysis” on theenemy system, or destroying the center of any of “the five rings,” ratherarmed forces derive value from their ability to contribute to what theirstakeholders value: the ability to satisfy their owners’ preferences bysubduing actions and will hostile to those preferences.

Thus, changes in the effectiveness of matter, the tempo of operations,and the expansiveness of space (up to and including cislunar space) createlevels of potential differentiation and complexity onerous enough toconfound strategists of all kinds. In former times a lot of matter wasrequired to create “energetic effects” and damage. Today a small amountof nuclear material or a few microscopic spores can wreck havoc. In theold days it took weeks to suppress enemy defenses. Today stealth obviatesmany defenses and audacity allows raids into an enemy’s camps. In thepast, great “distance” translated into a great amount of “time.” Rockets,missiles, photons, and lines of code have broken the barrier of greatdistances.


When notions of information and value are added it becomes unwise todefine the center of gravity as the singular point upon which all powerand movement depends, except at the highest strategic level. Beneath thestrategic level the facts have rendered this formulation approximatelycorrect, but precisely wrong. It is approximately correct because a pivotalcenter may be apparent in any nano-second slice of time, but it is pre-cisely wrong because both action and inaction can change it and bothaction and inaction can mask it, all in a matter of seconds. Fluid dynam-ics, aerodynamics, thermodynamics, or quantum physics are the frame-works we should better appreciate, not the mechanical engineeringmodels described in Clausewitz. Hence, we should begin by consideringthat the potential complexity of military operations has created thepossibility for multiple and rapidly shifting centers of balance. Time-space-matter relationship can change or be changed and, when theychange, that which our adversary or we can least afford to have badlyhurt at any given moment changes. The center of gravity one momentago has been demoted, in army jargon, to a “decisive point” and anotherpoint may have become a, or even “the” center of gravity.

Besting the ChallengeThe complexity described poses no small set of challenges. Time, space,and matter each have dimensions. Information on each of these and onall of these – and what they signify in terms of what an adversary values– is necessary to cope. Subtle, rapid, or massive changes in any of thedimensions can change that which our adversary or we can least afford tohave badly hurt at any given moment. Worse, there are axiological,aesthetic, and cultural variations that complicate the matter. Take “time.”

For the future, the American military’s simple view of thetemporal dimensions of strategy leaves it vulnerable to adversarieswho may place different measures and different values on time.In the physical world, scientists are unsure of time’s consistency,and Albert Einstein’s theory of relativity rests on time’s elasticity.In the political world, cultures use discrepant measures of time.Western societies tend to mark time by constant velocity instandard ways: minute, hour, day, month, and year; this is apattern especially true of colder-climate societies with large


populations and prominent urbanization. However, societieselsewhere may reference time not to clocks but to events; in thisworldview, time is less discrete and more variant. Certainlanguages, moreover, contain no functional analogue to theword time, and the conjugation of verb tense is not universal.Surveying the variety of time, one keen observer notes that ‘someMediterranean and Arab cultures define only three sets of time:no time at all, now (which is of varying duration), and forever(too long).’ Clearly, different cultures approach time withdifferent attitudes.29

The differentiations and potential complexity make it as unwise toenvision one, slowly changing center of gravity as it is unwise to reduceadversaries to an equivalence of values. If “time” is different to differentgroups, we must presume that “value” also might be different. Thus, thechallenge appears to be discerning the value an enemy ascribes to time,space, and matter configurations based on data transformed into infor-mation. More complex still is the notion of enemy or adversary. In anygiven disagreement or contest, precisely “who” are we talking about? Intheir discussion of the future of power, Empire, Michael Hardt andAntonio Negri write:

Throughout the years of the cold war there was both a multipli-cation of international organisms capable of producing rightand a reduction of the resistance to their functioning….theproliferation of these different international organisms and theirconsolidation in a set of symbiotic relationships – as if the oneasked the other for its own legitimation – pushed beyond aconception of international right based in contract ornegotiation, and alluded instead to a central authority, alegitimate supranational motor of juridical action.30

Thus, the wronged parties in a dispute can include states, groups, non-governmental organizations, corporations, and even individuals.Depending on where one stands, the “enemy” could be any one of these.Each may have their view of the rightness of their grievance. Each mayhave the wherewithal to hurt another. Each may have different values


and different information. Some may disagree and, for whatever reason,reduce the enemy to an equivalence of values:

Enemies, whether they be states, criminal organizations, orindividuals, all do the same thing; they almost always act ordon’t act based on some kind of cost-benefit ratio. The enemymay not assess a situation the way we do, and we may disagreewith his assessment, but assessments are part and parcel of everydecision. From an airpower standpoint, it is our job todetermine what price (positive or negative) it will take to inducean enemy to accept our conditions.31

The convolutions I see and am trying to illuminate make such glib state-ments difficult for me to comprehend. A center of gravity exists in time,can be positioned in space – even if the space is cyberspace – and musthave some material manifestation. Even “computational” power ismanifest in computing machines and the availability of electrical power.There are many ways to appreciate and understand “time,” as Hughespointed out in “The Cult of the Quick.” “Space” is even more complex,especially as we learn more about quantum mechanics. “Matter” in anage of both tangible and intangible value is more complex still.

Matter, military matter – forces or equipment – have discernible character-istics, if we consider the exclusively military sphere. That is, they createsome kind of signature, they have some amount of lethality, and theyhave some degree of mobility. One might place them, based on ananalysis of their characteristics, into one of three categories: agile engage-ment forces, control forces, and enabling forces.32 For each of these forceelements and each configuration in time and space we need data infusedwith meaning and purpose regarding the rival’s or the rivals’ (and evenspectators’) objectives and values based on the preferences their behaviorreveals. From all of this we can begin to postulate that which ouradversary or we can least afford to have badly hurt at any given moment:the military center or centers of gravity. But this is naïve.

We are stuck in Second Wave thinking, trotting out the old, deadGermans and Prussians with authority. Thinking about these tacticalcenters of gravity and how they are objectified or reified in forces may


provides focus – center of gravity thinking – as long as we appreciate thecomplexity and enormity of the task in the present environment. A prob-lem is that we have not followed Clausewitz’s Rule Number One –understanding the nature and the character of the war in which we findourselves – or Sun Tzu’s Rule Number One: war is a matter of the sur-vival of the state. The “state,” the governing body, and not the armedforces, must survive. Military power is derivative of a larger power. To thestate or the governing body, there is no choice but to treat forces andequipment as expendable. In warfare “human capital” is liquidated, butonly so that the governing body can survive. But if this is so, then whydo we focus our attention on such small things as military operationswhen we contemplate centers of gravity? As one commentator noted:

One way to achieve … focus is the concept of the ‘center ofgravity’ – defined in the U.S. military as ‘those characteristics,capabilities, or localities from which a military force derives itsfreedom of action, physical strength, or will to fight.’ Specifically,American joint doctrine suggests that ‘the centers of gravityconcept is useful as an analytical tool, while designing campaignsand operations, to assist commanders and staffs in analyzingfriendly and enemy sources of strength as well as weaknesses andvulnerabilities.’ 33

The utility of such thinking is dependent on a like amount of thinkingdevoted to answering the question, “What is that which our adversarycan least afford to have badly hurt at any given moment?” and its com-panion, “What is that which we can least afford to have badly hurt at anygiven moment?” The answer to both questions pivots on the amount andquality of information the sides possess and what the sides value at thehighest level. There can be imbalances in information34 and there can beother asymmetries. But it is the complex nexus of interests and activitiesof the governing body – state and non-state alike – that should commandour attention. The United States has no equal on the planet in its abilityto project military power and conclude a military action. The UnitedStates has the right people and, in many dimensions, those people havethe right stuff. That assertion cannot be contested by any data, using anymeasures of merit. But we, and others who care about national security,are fools-in-waiting if we concentrate just on “military” forces or


“military” sources of strength, weaknesses, or vulnerabilities. Like it ornot, we must move from the complex to the realm of brain-hurtinganalysis, and the analysis begins by thinking in time.

Asymmetries For the decade after the Cold War’s end, many analysts and pundits strug-gled to perceive the outlines and underlying dynamics of a new worldorder. Most analysts talked of “asymmetrical” warfare. In fact, some of theexperts talked so slickly of asymmetrical warfare that it was clear theyfailed to appreciate that the aim of all warfare is to create asymmetries tobest an enemy. Asymmetric operations are not only the aim of all militaryoperations, they also are the aim of every competitive operation. They aimto offset an attacker’s weakness by striking at a center of mass that shocks,disorients, and unbalances an adversary. Asymmetric operations intend tocreate “rude surprises.” The target is that which the attacker perceives willsurprise, unbalance, disorient and leave the target susceptible to acascading collapse of power structures. Asymmetric operations do notattack utility as much as they attack what the holder values.

On September 11th, 2001, a terrible surprise was visited on us asthousands of innocent Americans were attacked and murdered. Theenemy ripped instruments of American global aerospace power – long-range airliners – from the hands of their crews and used our own fuel-and passenger-laden commercial aircraft against us with hateful andperhaps strategic effect. Four months after the attack the US Presidentacknowledged: “Time and distance from the events of September the11th will not make us safer unless we act on its lessons. America is nolonger protected by vast oceans. We are protected from attack only byvigorous action abroad and increased vigilance at home.”35

Why were we surprised? In 1993 the book War and Anti-War gavewarning of an asymmetric attack, ironically against US economic centers:

Imagine … the World Trade Towers or the Wall Street district.The ensuing financial chaos – with bank transfer networks,stock and bond markets, commodity trading systems, credit cardnetworks, telephone and data transmission lines, Quotron


machines, and general commercial communications disrupted ordestroyed – would have sent a financial shock wave across theworld. Nor does one need such sophisticated weaponry toaccomplish a similar effect.36

The majority of people in the US were shocked and surprised by theattacks on September 11th, but the Chinese colonels Qiao Liang andWang Xiangsui must not have been taken aback. In 1999 they haddaringly outlined over a score of forms of unrestricted, or, as they calledit, “beyond limits” warfare. And, just as Qiao Liang and Wang Xiangsuianticipated, the aerial attackers in New York City took the war “down-town.” The target of the attack, Qiao Liang and Wang Xiangsui wrote, isalways a place that will result in a huge psychological shock to theadversary. Asymmetry as a principle is described as a fulcrum forunbalancing the normal rules. Understanding asymmetry allows anadversary to find and exploit an enemy’s soft spots, especially those spotswhere the adversary does not expect to be hit.37

Asymmetry can indeed manifest itself in every aspect of warfare, everyarena of competition. We have already shown the likelihood of asym-metries in time, space, and matter. We have already shown that “it’s thegoverning body, stupid.” The attacks on the World Trade Centerevidenced using asymmetries of all kinds, including stunning asym-metries in information38 and in the asymmetric values of the attackersand the victims. Yet some begin with an accounting ledger approach toasymmetries, although concluding near the right place.

The terms ‘asymmetry,’ ‘asymmetric warfare,’ ‘asymmetricapproaches’ and ‘asymmetric options’ are popular sound bitesfound in many military journals today. Asymmetric-relatedterms are commonly associated with a potential opponent’soperations or actions against US interests or forces. The attacksare commonly described as chemical, biological, nuclear,terrorist or information attacks, or attacks against weak points.Arguably, these attacks are not asymmetric. In fact, except for theterrorist example, these are symmetrical attacks. The UnitedStates has chemical, biological, nuclear and information means;therefore, such attacks cannot be asymmetric.


The asymmetric aspect of a chemical, nuclear, information ortraditional attack actually relates to asymmetries in capabilities,reliance, vulnerabilities and values. The capabilities of certainforces – some information systems can shut down command andcontrol systems and prevent nuclear systems from launching –constitute one variable. A nation’s reliance on a particularsystem is another. For example, both sides can have informationweapons, but one side may rely more on them than the other.The vulnerability of a system or platform’s performanceparameters, operating principles or situational context is anotherasymmetric opening, the one most often associated with weakspots. Finally, cultural values determine whether a nation willor will not use one of these methods.39

Of these aspects, we have expanded the field beyond “states” andemphasized the importance of information and the importance of values.Values are preferences ascribed by humans. The thing that differentiatesthe “system” that is a belligerent nation or militarily aggressive group isthat these are human organizations. The philosopher-historians Will andAriel Durant go so far as to say that

Our states, being ourselves multiplied, are what we are; theywrite our natures in bolder type, and do our good and evil onan elephantine scale. We are acquisitive, greedy, and pugnaciousbecause our blood remembers millenniums through which ourforebears had to chase and fight and kill in order to survive, andhad to eat to their gastric capacity for fear they should not sooncapture another feast. War is a nation’s way of eating.40

States are complex human organizations. Moreover, states are not theonly complex human organizations with the capacity to do harm, witnessAl-Qaeda, the Taliban, and genocidal ethnic factions. States must insurethat the people have the necessities for life, among which are food, water,and perhaps even gainful employment. To fulfill these basic requirementsfor life, states must have some territory, some place to grow food, somewealth, and a more or less secure environment in which the people live.A state must provide its citizens protection from other states, just as theTalibanic state was obligated to afford its members and the people of


Afghanistan protection – albeit failing most miserably. Although provid-ing necessities is the government’s role, or at least providing the environ-ment in which the people can secure necessities, hostile groups and statescan threaten even this.

Thus, states and groups attend to their defense. When they attend totheir defense they produce “things” that they believe are useful tools fordefense. If they do not understand the threats they face as a group anddo not produce the right tools, their group can be surprised, can becomeunbalanced, and render their people defenseless. At the strategic level,there may be but one center of gravity. In the Third Wave knowledge-based economy that center may be, crudely, money. Economic powerunderpins the power of any state or group.41 To destroy a state or agroup, destroy its economy, its finances, and its wealth-producingsystems. A poor – or sometimes even a “poorer” – nation cannot easilyproduce the stuff for warfare, as we knew warfare in the past. Animpoverished nation can ill defend itself. Belligerent actions, surpriseattacks, are easier to mount. Very little wealth is required for some ofthese military-type operations, even if the operations are aimed atproducing strategic effects. Strategic effects are effects that, as we assertedearlier, we can least afford to bear at any given moment. They hit ourstrategic center and hurt us badly. They hurt that which we most value.In advanced nations, these operations strike at ability to be whole. Andour ability to be whole is underpinned by the satisfaction of many lesserneeds. These needs are fulfilled because of our wealth. Our wealth,because of all that it makes possible, is the source of all power and move-ment in an advanced nation or group. Abraham Maslow attempted toclassify needs, and hence values, relevant to individuals and toorganizational behavior. What can teach us about asymmetries?42

Enter Maslow and Values as a Center of GravityMaslow’s “hierarchy of needs” formulation suggests that we have a ladderof needs; that is, some needs are assumed more important or potent thanothers, and those that are the most important must be satisfied before theother needs can serve as motivators.


This hierarchy suggests that values are a legitimate framing device forknowing the information we must acquire about ourselves or anadversary and understanding that which our adversary or we can leastafford to have badly hurt at any given moment. We should test this.

Asymmetric Warfare in ActionThe attacks of September 11th may offer proof. Let us hypothesize thatthe aim of the attacks was to use whatever means were available to Al-Qaeda – the weaker side – to mount an attack that would drive citizensof the US several rungs down on their ladder of values: to ensure that formillions of us it would be difficult to meet higher order needs. In oneattack, thousands were murdered and scores of millions were movedfrom the pinnacle of “self-realization and fulfillment” to needing to havetheir unmet “safety and security” needs satisfied.

If we doubt this is so, it may be useful to map remarks made by thePresident of the United States in the January 2002, “State of the Union”address to an ascent up Maslow’s ladder. President Bush summonedAmericans to rise on the ladder to meet loftier needs than the needs


Americans pursued prior to September 11th. The remarks indicate thatthe “if it feels good, do it” form of self-realization and fulfillment hadyielded to or must become a “new culture of responsibility.” “Goals largerthan self ” would become a means of restoring our esteem and status andcreate new ways to gain fulfillment. A “new USA Freedom Corps”focusing on “responding in case of crisis at home, rebuilding our com-munities, and extending American compassion throughout the world”would enhance esteem and be a new form of belonging and socialactivity. “Jobs,” and for each American “a good job,” ensured basic needscould be satisfied. Most telling perhaps is the emphasis on safety andsecurity. The attacks and the threat of more attacks had at least atransitory strategic effect.

If that is so, the attacks must have been directed against a center ofgravity. For the targets or victims to constitute a center or centers ofgravity, the attackers would have had to understand our values based oninformation. The attackers’ values would have to be incompatible withours; ours would have to be intolerable to them. The enemy then would


Georg W. Bush, “President Bush’s State of the Union Address,”The Washington Post, Jan 30, 2002; p. A16

select an asymmetric configuration of force orchestrating time, space,and matter as best he could.

By his admission, Bin-Laden’s target was the US economy.43 Bin-Ladencalculated the existing asymmetries in US and Al-Qaeda capabilities,reliance, vulnerabilities, and cultural values. The attackers’ leaders didwhat they could to configure (including piracy) the matter they had (orcould steal) in time and space and strike how, where, and when theyjudged us vulnerable. They struck violently at the US economy. Someeffects were transitory, but some will be more durable. We weresurprised, but have not yet been unbalanced. We assembled a no-non-sense coalition and, taking the lead because we were the most aggrievedof parties, quickly went after Al-Qaeda’s globally deployed armed forces.Simultaneously, we stopped money flowing to the enemy through anumber of sham enterprises. Then, in the finest tradition of U.S. Grant,we took the fight to the field and began the unceasing process ofwhipping this enemy, committed to whipping all who would engage interrorism. We put entire nations on notice. We analyzed our vulnerabilities,bolstered our defenses, and continue – and will continue – to putremedies in place. We used our wealth to do this. It will be a protractedwar and one with risks. As the US Secretary of Defense said, “You can’tdefend at every place at every time against every technique. You just can’tdo it, because they just keep changing techniques, times, and you haveto go after ‘em.”44

We can, of course, draw many lessons from this. One lesson, offered byDouhet, is, “To bend the enemy’s will, one must put him in intolerablecircumstances; and the best way to do that is to attack directly thedefenseless population of his cities and great industrial centers. It is assure as fate that, as long as such a direct method of attack exists, it willbe used.”45 Al-Qaeda used that method, employing unconventionalmeans. Another lesson is that an asymmetric attack that is not exploitedby follow-on attacks, may fail to unbalance the attacked party. A thirdlesson is that the US has the means to put any adversary state or groupin intolerable circumstances and, after September 11th, 2001, we have thewill.


ConclusionWe are engaged in a protracted struggle, precipitated by an asymmetricattack against our center of gravity. How will it turn out? I agree with thisassessment: “There’s no doubt that terrorists will cause another majordisaster some time in the next couple of years … But while that will bedreadful, like the IRA and similar groups, the current lot have no chanceof ultimately ‘defeating’ the USA and the rest of the Western coalition.”46

They will not defeat us because we’re tenacious, we’re learners, and we’reinnovators. We now sense or know what our center of gravity is, what arecenters are, and we will protect it and them vigilantly from the rudesurprises that the weak may hope to visit on us. We’ve learned from therude surprise and are innovating solutions to problems we have notencountered yet. We know that asymmetric operations can aim at whatwe value. Thus a new target set emerges.

In sum, understanding centers of gravity and appreciating the logic ofasymmetric operations helps prevents the unsatisfactory outcomes thatoften follow rude surprises during an era of great change. Centers ofgravity are those things that our adversary or we can least afford to have


Adapted from Abraham Maslow, Motivation and Personality(New York: Harper and Row, 1954)

badly hurt at any given moment. We find them by searching, momentby moment, for what an adversary values. We look for asymmetries. Weconfigure the matter we have in time and space and affect those thingsthat our adversary can least afford to have badly hurt at any givenmoment. We constantly research and develop better matter. We protectourselves. We must become expert in these matters or we will besurprised. Some surprises could unbalance us. We – you and me – sharean obligation to prevent that. And so we will.

NOTES

1 The views expressed here are my own. They do not necessarily reflect the views of Alvin or HeidiToffler, Toffler Associates, or any of Toffler Associates’ customers.

2 Alvin and Heidi Toffler, with a Foreword by Newt Gingrich, Creating a New Civilization: The Politics of the Third Wave (Washington DC: The Progress and Freedom Foundation,1994).

3 The Tofflers do not use “civilization” in the very narrow and largely “religious” sense that SamuelHuntington uses it. Rather, they use it in the sense of “super-civilization”: bigger than a specificculture, religion, or set of institutions. See Samuel P. Huntington, “The Clash of Civilizations?”Foreign Affairs 3 (Summer 1993), pp. 22–49.

4 Robert L. O’Connell, Ride of the Second Horseman: The Birth and Death of War (New York:Oxford University Press, 1995), pp. 82–83. In a conversation at Carlisle Barracks, O’Connellexplained that his subsistence taxonomy is another way of looking at Waves. See also Robert L.O’Connell, Of Arms and Men: A History of War, Weapons, and Aggression (New York: OxfordUniversity Press, 1989).

5 Ralph D. Sawyer, translator and commentator, with Mei-chun Sawyer, “T’ai Kung’s Six SecretTeachings,” The Seven Military Classics of Ancient China [Wu ching ch’i shu], (Boulder: WestviewPress, 1993), pp. 68–69.

6 Carl H. Builder, “Peering Into the Future: Trying to Get the Enterprise Right,” unpublished andunclassified lecture to the National Reconnaissance Office, March 11, 1997.

7 Alvin and Heidi Toffler, Creating a New Civilization, p. 12.8 Alvin and Heidi Toffler, Creating a New Civilization, p. 13.9 Carl H. Builder, “Peering Into the Future.”

10 One need only to scan Frederick, Jomini, Clausewitz, von Moltke, Schlieffen, and Schlichtingto recognize that the machinery of warfare extended to the mechanical way in which massedarmies were formed, trained, and employed. The motto of the German Fuhurüngsakadamie derBundeswehr is “The mind moves the mass,” but students there assert that the mass moves thecurriculum. See Daniel J. Hughes, ed., translated by Daniel J. Hughes and Harry Bell, Moltkeon the Art of War: Selected Writings (Novato, CA: Presidio Press, 1993).


11 Second Wave thinking includes holding the belief that all systems are closed systems. See ErichJantsch, The Self-Organizing Universe (Oxford: Pergamon Press, 1980), p. 7 quoted in MargaretJ. Wheatley, Leadership and the New Science: Learning about Organization from an OrderlyUniverse (San Francisco: Berrett-Koehler Publishers, Inc., 1992), p. 18.

12 “New Unified Command Plan Ensures Every Nation Is Covered,” Inside The Pentagon, January24, 2002, p. 4.

13 Airmen often criticize soldiers for their obsession with “mass,” but the airman’s mass raid or“gorilla package” show a closer bond than usually admitted.

14 See: Ilya Prigogine and Isabelle Stengers, Order Out of Chaos: Man’s New Dialogue with Nature(Boulder: New Science Library, 1984), pp. 171–6, 297–313; James Gleick, Chaos: Making aNew Science (New York: Penguin Books, 1987); and John R. Boyd, “Creation and Destruction,”in “A Discourse on Winning and Losing,” August 1987.

15 Alvin and Heidi Toffler, War and Anti-War: Survival at the Dawn of the Twenty-first Century(Boston: Little, Brown and Company, 1993), pp. 21–23.

16 Richard Brodie, A Virus of the Mind: The New Science of the Meme (Seattle: Integral Press, 1996).17 Desmond Morris, The Naked Ape: A Zoologist’s Study of the Human Animal, (New York:

McGraw-Hill Book Company, 1967). See also Will and Ariel Durant, The Lessons of History(New York: Simon and Schuster, 1968), who assert that states behave like humans writ large.

18 If Joint Vision 2020 is wrong, for example, and it is authoritative, then it is wrong for many.19 Carl Builder The Icarus Syndrome: The Role of Air Power Theory in the Evolution and Fate of US

Air Force (New Brunswick NJ: Transaction Publishers, 1993).20 David Ronfeldt, Tribes, Institutions, Markets, Networks: A Framework About Societal Evolution

(Santa Monica: RAND Report P-7967, 1996). The chart on p. 17 is instructive. See also JohnArquilla and David Ronfeldt, The Advent of Netwar (Santa Monica: RAND, 1996). See also JohnArguilla and David Ronfeldt, Networks and Netwars: The Future of Terror, Crime, and Militancy(Santa Monica CA: RAND, 2001).

21 Many Second Wave mass-production forms seem evident in the ways in which the “intelligencecommunity” is organized. One could argue that this community is organized around the separatehuman senses(eyes or ears(with the necessary integration of the senses a bureaucratic function.

22 Harry S. Dent, Jr., The Roaring 2000s (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1998).23 Horace Porter, Campaigning With Grant (New York: Bantam Books, 1991), pp.174–6. This is

an abridged reprint of a book published originally in 1897. 24 Porter, Campaigning With Grant, p. 212, reports:

In speaking of his visit to the Middle Military Division, General Grant said: ‘I ordered Sheridanto move out and whip Early [Confederate Major General Jubal Early].’ An officer present ven-tured the remark: ‘I presume the actual form of the order was to move out and attack him.’ ‘No,’answered the general; I mean just what I say: I gave the order to whip him.

25 Peter F. Drucker, “The Coming of the New Organization,” Harvard Business Review onKnowledge Management (Boston: Harvard Business School Publishing, 1998), p. 5.

26 The plural suggests that there is more than the strategic level center of gravity, even toClausewitz. John Osgood, “A Study of Clausewitz’s Concept of the Military Center of Gravity,”http://pw1.netcom.com/~jrosgood/wc4.htm, writes:Clausewitz’s discussion of the issue suggests that at the operational level the center of gravity is‘always found where the mass is concentrated most densely.’ He believed that at the operationallevel a commander must understand the dynamics of space, mass, and time. Space was the the-ater of operations, mass was the army and time was the campaign. Enemy vulnerabilities or deci-sive points were not to be confused with center of gravity.


27 Armies are huge enterprises. To govern them, one needs doctrine. Doctrine does not changequickly in armies.

28 More than one year before he died, John Boyd, wondered aloud to me if there were only three“things that matter” in the universe: time, space, and matter, all of which were “held together”by “information.” He wondered aloud that, since “space” was the separation between bits of matter,perhaps there was only time, space, and information. We will test the discernment that gives us.

29 Thomas Hughes, “The Cult of the Quick,” Aerospace Power Journal, Vol. XI No. 4, Winter 2001,p. 64.

30 Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri, Empire (Cambridge MA: Harvard University Press, 2000),p. 181.

31 John A. Warden III, “Air Theory for the Twenty-first Century,” in Barry R. Schneider andLawrence E. Grinter, Battlefield of the Future: 21st Century Warfare Issues (Maxwell AFB AL: AirUniversity Press, 1995), p. 106.

32 Adapted from Frank B. Strickland Jr., “It’s Not About Mousetraps: Measuring the Value ofKnowledge for Operators,” Joint Forces Quarterly, Autumn 1996, http://www.dtic.mil/doc-trine/jel/jfq_pubs/1913.pdf

33 Jeffrey A. Harley, “Information, Technology, and the Center of Gravity,” Naval war CollegeReview, Winter 1997 at http://www.nwc.navy.mil/press/Review/1997/winter/art4wi97.htm.

34 Information on who really is an adversary and who really is an ally is becoming more difficultto come by, for example.

35 George W. Bush, “President Bush’s State of the Union Address,” The Washington Post,(eMediaMillWorks), January 30, 2002; p. A16.

36 Alvin and Heidi Toffler, War and Anti-War: Survival at the Dawn of the 21st Century (New York:Little, Brown and Company, 1993), p. 149.

37 Qiao Liang and Wang Xiangsui, “Unrestricted Warfare: Assumptions on War and Tactics in theAge of Globalization” (Beijing: PLA Literature and Arts Publishing House, 1999), p.149. Notethe emphasis on the “weaker side.”

38 “2 Panels To Probe Spying Failures,” Washington Times, January 30, 2002, p. 9.39 Timothy L. Thomas, “Deciphering Asymmetry’s Word Game,” Military Review, July–August

2001 at http://www-cgsc.army.mil/milrev/English/JulAug01/thomas.htm. 40 Will and Ariel Durant, The Lessons of History, (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1968), p. 19.41 Paul Kennedy, The Rise and Fall of the Great Powers: Economic Change and Military Conflict from

1500 to 2000 ((New York: Random House, 1987).42 Abraham H. Maslow, “A Theory of Human Motivation,” Psychological Review Volume 50, 1943,

pp. 370–396 and Motivation and Personality, (New York: Harper and Row, 1954). He postulat-ed there are five categories. At the basic level are the physiological needs, such as thirst, hungerand sex drives. To satisfy this level of needs makes us hunt for food, breed cattle, grow crops, digwells and look for mates. When these basic needs have been satisfied, the next higher levelbecomes a more important motivator; the level of safety and security needs, which is representedby freedom from fear of external harm, climatic extremes, or criminal activity. To satisfy thislevel, we build tents, huts and houses, we organize ourselves in tribes, villages, cities, states, weestablish policing forces and armies, and we formulate rules and laws. The next higher level cor-responds with belonging and social activity or affiliation needs. This level motivates us to under-take action in exchange for support, affection, and friendship. The fourth level represents ourdrive for esteem and status; it makes us strive for status and respect, adopt behavior to get accessto and be accepted by those we admire. At last, when all previous levels of needs have been ful-filled to our satisfaction, we strive for self-actualization, for self-realization and fulfillment.


43 BBC, “Osama Bin Laden urges targeting US economy,” December 27, 2001, 19:57 GMT,Transcript: Bin Laden video excerpts, athttp://news.bbc.co.uk/hi/english/world/middle_east/newsid_1729000/1729882.stm

44 Dan Balz and Bob Woodward, “Bush Awaits History’s Judgment: President’s Scorecard ShowsMuch Left to Do,” The Washington Post, February 3, 2002; p. A15.

45 Guilio Douhet, Dino Ferrari trans … The Command of the Air (New York: Coward-McCann,Inc., 1942), p. 282.

46 Email from my friend, the RAAF Historian, and noted airpower thinker, Dr. Alan Stephens,January 29, 2002.


Asymmetric Warfare: Rediscovering the Essence of Strategy

Lieutenant Colonel Frans Osinga

Clear and Present Danger or Hollow Concept: The Debate on Asymmetric WarAsymmetric warfare has become a buzzword; it is the term du jour,1 andasymmetrical threat is the new military watchword.2 In the past fewyears, more than a hundred articles have been published on this topic.3

The attacks on the US on September 11 have reinvigorated the study ofasymmetric warfare and influence the debate on future warfare. The ter-rorist attacks are considered a sure sign that the main challenge of thefuture will be asymmetric warfare, with an opponent waging war withchemical, nuclear or biological weapons as the worst kind.4 The term isnot new. It has been a common term in strategic literature since theVietnam War, and has resurfaced in particular after the stunning successof the demonstrated Western style of warfare in Desert Storm.5 But inthe latter half of the nineties the term has been elevated to a conceptinforming and shaping security and defence policy in various countries,most notably in the US, where this term has been incorporated in variouslong term visions about the future of the US military. Its meaning hasalso evolved in that process.

Now, asymmetry seems to have become the icon for every form of war-fare that does not conform to the favored Western way. It may arise frominformation warfare, terrorist attacks, the employment of ‘dirty nuclearbombs’, attacks against domestic infrastructure, and any other ‘unfair’method of fighting.6 The awareness of the rise (or danger) of complexterrorism and the highly publicized vulnerability of open modern(Western) societies feed the ‘spread’ of asymmetric warfare.7 Theproblem with buzzwords is that they tend to be underspecified, over-employed and badly understood. In fact, the concept has gradually been

deprived of useful meaning.8 An overview of the development of thenotion in the past few years bears this out, leading one analyst to dismissthe entire concept as hollow.9 To shed light on the debate, this chapterexamines the nature of asymmetric warfare by going back to Sun Tzu’sfamous classic The Art of War. But first a few words on the debate andperception of the meaning of asymmetric warfare.

In a 1995 US Joint Doctrine Publication listed asymmetric engagementsas clashes occurring between elements of dissimilar forces, specifically airversus land, air versus sea, etc. The 1995 US National Military Strategyapproached the issue somewhat more broadly, listing terrorism, the useor threatened use of weapons of mass destruction, and information war-fare as asymmetric challenges. In 1997, the concept of asymmetric threatbegan to receive greater attention. The Quadrennial Defense Review(QDR) stated that ‘US dominance in the conventional military arenamay encourage adversaries to use asymmetric means to attack ourinterests overseas and Americans at home’.10

The National Defense Panel, a senior level group working as advisors tothe US congress, elaborated on this dialectic nature of warfare. It statedthat

we can assume that our enemies and future adversaries havelearned from the Gulf War. They are unlikely to confront usconventionally with mass armor formations, air superiorityforces and deep-water naval fleets of their own, all areas of over-whelming US strength today. Instead, they may find new waysto attack our interests, our forces, and our citizens. They willlook for ways to match their strength against our weaknesses.11

In a somewhat similar vein, the US 1999 Joint Strategy Review definedasymmetric approaches as those that attempted to ‘circumvent or under-mine US strengths while exploiting US weaknesses using methods thatdiffer significantly from the United States expected method of operations’.But this review adds a short and useful description. It states that asym-metric approaches generally

seek a major psychological impact, such as shock or confusion

ASYMMETRIC WARFARE268

that affects an opponent’s initiative, freedom of action or will.Asymmetric methods require an appreciation of an opponent’svulnerabilities. Asymmetric approaches often employ innovative,nontraditional tactics, weapons or technologies, and can beapplied to all levels of warfare and across the spectrum ofmilitary operations.12

In a widely announced comprehensive analysis preceding the thenupcoming 2001 Quadrennial Defense Review, the impression that‘asymmetric’ refers to anything that is different from the western style ofwarfare was reinforced. In a chapter specifically addressing asymmetricthreats, asymmetric warfare is defined as ‘leveraging inferior tactical oroperational strength against the vulnerabilities of a superior opponent toachieve disproportionate effect with the aim of undermining the oppo-nent’s will in order to achieve the asymmetric actor’s strategic objec-tives’.13 Attention to this form of warfare is necessary because ‘hostilenations and groups will inevitably seek ways to undermine U.S. strengthby attacking its vulnerabilities’.14 The analysis follows with a discussion ofasymmetric threats which are listed as Nuclear, Chemical, and BiologicalWeapons, Information Operations, High-Altitude Electromagnetic Pulse,Alternative Operational Concepts and Terrorism.15

Subsequently, two reflections inform this study. First, the most currentWestern definitions about asymmetry offer only a limited view on thenature of asymmetric warfare and are Western or US oriented. It is con-sidered to be something that other people ‘do’ against Western nationsand their armed forces.16 This is obviously a fallacy. It is not only directedagainst US or Western interests nor is it not only offensive. It may not bea deliberate policy or doctrine. It may be purely reactive and oppor-tunistic, or a way of fighting opted for by default. It may occur due tothe West’s own interventionist policy whereby Western countries bringtroops or actions to bear on a locally raging conflict.17 Western actionexecuted according to the reigning Western style of warfare, that is dom-inated by long range observation and standoff precision attacks, isthoroughly asymmetric to anyone on the receiving end on these attacks,as the Taliban in Afghanistan will attest to. One commentator rightlysaid that the United States is the world’s most asymmetric militaryforce.18

ASYMMETRIC WARFARE 269

An additional striking feature of the discussions in Western literature isthe focus on a specific threat or weapon, which serves as the embodimentof asymmetric warfare. The concept of asymmetric warfare is employedto argue that a certain threat ‘niche’, such as the threat of rogue stateowned ballistic missiles carrying WMD or bioterrorism, has not been‘covered’ sufficiently. It follows that this niche threat warrants attention,countermeasures and investments in weapon programs, disregarding thefact that Western countries, the US in particular, also hold similarweapons in their arsenal, making an exchange of such weapons academ-ically symmetric.19 Thus asymmetric war is regarded as an argument indefence policy. The official treatment of the concept of asymmetry indi-cates the extent to which it has come to reflect more a domestic debateon (US) vulnerabilities than an analysis of the plan and intentions ofpotential adversaries.20

Second, asymmetric war should not be considered novel, unique andcontemporary nor fuzzy, vague or a feature of Western forces meetingnon-Western forces. Experiences from the Second World War, Korea andVietnam should have alerted the West to the presence of adaptiveenemies, as Robert Scales labeled them. In those conflicts, the enemyknew how to mitigate the significance of the technological and tacticalsuperiority of a foe through: Clever organization; variation in styles ofoperation; the creation of redundancy and dispersion in and of its log-istical facilities; the reduction of sensitivity through hardening, con-cealment and camouflage; the employment of decoys; superiormotivation and endurance; and finally through sophisticated media play.Developments in Yugoslavia and Iraq in the past decade show that suchmethods have not lost their relevance. ‘Air denial’ tactics had beenrefined, alliance cohesion was targeted, and Western casualty sensitivitywas a key area to be exploited.21

But asymmetric war has not been confined to struggles where Westernforces meet those of non-Western countries. The Russian experience inAfghanistan in the eighties and Chechnya in the nineties may be con-sidered a very unwelcome and costly encounter with asymmetric war-fare, with the urban battles for Grozny as an exponent of it,22 andseveral authors have proposed that what is now considered ‘asymmet-ric’ is actually the norm in quite a few conflicts in the ‘third world’.


These conflicts can be labeled as intrastate, civil wars, ethnic wars,religious wars or just clashes of armed mobs. Uniting these conflicts arethe methods employed in the struggle. Holsti cites Martin van Creveld:‘There are no fronts, no campaigns, no bases, no uniforms, no publiclydisplayed honors, and no respect for the territorial limits of states’.Further on he notes ‘in wars between communities as opposed toarmies, everyone is automatically labeled a combatant merely by virtueof their identity. In wars of the third kind, the deadly game is playedin every home, church, government office, school, highway andvillage’.23

The protected status of cultural and religious objects, granted by theHague and Geneva Conventions, is deliberately violated in these NewWars, as Mary Kaldor has labeled them, for these are targets of high valuedue to their symbolic nature. Kaldor also points to the influence ofguerilla and counter-insurgency doctrines in which violence is oftendirected at innocent civilians. Conventional armed combat is mostlyavoided. The strategic aim is the acquisition of territory through politicalpower, not military force, and political power is achieved throughdeliberate ethnic cleansing, rape, and assassination of key opponents,spreading fear and causing terror. Bribery, extortion and torture completethe list of distinctly asymmetric methods.24

The participants in an asymmetric conflict are as unconventional as themethods they employ. Instead of traditional armed forces and distinguish-able combatants, ‘combat’ actions and sporadic gunfights are conductedby irregular armed gangs, terrorist factions and criminal organizations.‘This is a new age of warlordism’ posits Ralph Peters: ‘paramilitarywarriors – thugs whose talent for violence blossoms in civil war – defylegitimate governments and increasingly end up leading the governmentsthey have overturned’.25

These observations of trends were also noted in a wave of publications on‘fourth generation warfare’, that commenced with the publication of awidely debated article in 1989 bearing that title. This article may actuallybe regarded as the forerunner of the current debate on asymmetricwarfare. The fourth generation encompassed the methods Holsti, vanCreveld and others described, while the potential of dual use technology


for military purposes, was added. In fourth generation war, the methodsof internal conflicts would be turned against the US.26

Asymmetric warfare is endemic, it seems, if the current interpretation(anything that differs from the Western style of warfare) is followed. Butwhat the Western discussion on asymmetry during the nineties reallyreveals, is a struggle to come to grips with non-Clausewitzian warfare. Inthe West, Clausewitzian warfare – interstate war with war being aninstrument of policy, fought by the state operated military – has becomea paradigmatic and normative framework for studying, planning andconducting war. This is not a critique on this state of affairs, or on theacknowledged brilliance of Clausewitz, who indeed wrote perhaps theonly truly great book on war.27 But in the West, war is regarded properand justified (if possible) if it accords with this particular model of stateversus state warfare waged by conventional armies that employ techno-logically very sophisticated weapon systems to bring the war to a rapidend by achieving political objectives fully in accordance with establishedconventions, rules and high moral expectations with a minimum ofbloodshed (on both sides) and collateral damage.28

And as van Creveld, Holsti and Kaldor are at pains to point out, the con-flicts and combat methods they describe cannot be explained, studied orresolved by conforming to the Clausewitzian model. They are funda-mentally different from interstate wars. As van Creveld notes ‘War as aninstrument of state policy is a relatively new form of organized violence… the main purpose of the use of force in Europe for the past 350 yearshas been to advance and/or protect the interests of the state. War hasbeen political’. But ‘war as a continuation of politics by other means’ isno longer applicable here:

when the stakes are highest and a community strains every sinewin a life and death struggle that the ordinary strategicterminology fails […] to say that war is ‘an instrument’ servingthe ‘policy’of the community that ‘wages’ it, is to stretch all threeterms to the point of meaninglessness. Where the distinctionbetween ends and means breaks down, even the idea of warfought ‘for’ something is only barely applicable. […] war of thistype […] merges with policy, becomes policy, is policy.29


The argument that there is a non-Clausewitzian realm out there is animportant point to make, and awareness of the merits and limits of one’sparadigms in strategic affairs seems indispensable.30 However, the term‘asymmetric’ must not be considered synonymous with specific threats orweapons, and the debate on asymmetric warfare must not be confusedwith the debate on the merits of the Clausewitzian dictum. Asymmetryoccurs within Clausewitzian and non-Clausewitzian models of warfare,as well as in the clash between these two warforms, a useful term theTofflers have suggested to indicate a specific style of warfare, such as theClausewitzian and non-Clausewitzian warform.31 Asymmetry thus strad-dles warforms.

Towards Understanding the Nature of Asymmetric WarfareIn order to understand asymmetric warfare, and avoid contributing tothe confusion concerning the concept, two things are in order. First, amore rigorous definition is required, as well as some more commonsense. Freedman suggests that the weak have to employ asymmetricalmethods against the strong, and the methods chosen will depend on theweak party’s analysis of the vulnerabilities of the stronger party’.32

Charles Dunlap suggests that in the broadest sense, the concept of asym-metry in conflict describes ‘warfare that seeks to avoid an opponent’sstrengths;…an approach that tries to focus on whatever may be one side’scomparative advantages against an enemy’s relative weaknesses’.33

Although these descriptions are obviously not false, they are not veryinformative nor very distinctive. Another definition recently suggested issomewhat more useful because it points to the different dimensions inwhich war can be waged and in which asymmetries may be found andexploited: ‘Through the application of military, political, economic andtechnological leverage, asymmetric strategies may successfully underminean opponent’s strengths. Although one contestant may not be able to winon a traditionally framed battlefield, the strategies employed may nullifythe adversary’s conventional advantages, erode his will to fight, disrupthis ability to operate effectively, or deter him from action entirely’ com-mented one author recently.34

Newman provides a welcome additional taxonomy by listing three dif-


ferent asymmetric approaches that span the various dimensions. He dis-tinguishes Configuration Asymmetry (employing different warforms),asymmetry resulting from differences in Legal Compliance, and asym-metries due to differences among the contestants of issues that are atstake in a conflict.35 In a similar vein RAND published the followingdefinition:

Asymmetric strategies attack vulnerabilities not appreciated bythe ‘target’ (victim) or capitalize on the victim’s limitedpreparation against the threat. These strategies rely on [conceptsof operations] that are fundamentally different from the victim’sand/or from those of recent history. They often employ new ordifferent weapons. Additionally, they can serve political orstrategic objectives that are not the same as those the victimpursues.36

Steven Metz and Douglas Johnson have suggested a more general andcomplete definition of (strategic) asymmetry as ‘acting, organizing, andthinking differently than opponents in order to maximize one’s ownadvantages, exploit an opponent’s weaknesses, attain initiative, or gaingreater freedom of action’. This is the working definition employed here. Itoffers insight into the fundamental dialectic nature of war – asymmetricwar is an activity that all sides (states or other types of actors) can andwill engage in – and it avoids the trap of thinking in terms of threats orweapons or a certain ‘warform’. Instead, it shows that it is the result ofactions, organizational choices and the cognitive domain of the inter-acting contestants.

This definition also brings attention to the fact that asymmetric war is farfrom a contemporary phenomenon. Freedman may disagree with thisdefinition because it ‘is hard to see how asymmetric warfare defined sobroadly is that different from all other types of strategic thought’. I findthat however a particular strength.37 As Metz records in another discus-sion on the meaning of asymmetry,

while the word ‘asymmetry’ only recently entered Americanstrategic lexicon, the idea is not new. From Sun Tzu’s contentionthat all warfare is based on deception through B.H. Liddell


Hart’s advocacy of the indirect approach to Edward Luttwak’s‘paradoxical logic of strategy’, strategic thinkers have alwaysdeclared the wisdom of avoiding the enemy’s strength andprobing for his weakness […] It is the core logic of allcompetitive endeavors, whether sports, business, or war.38

Metz’ observation leads to the second suggestion. In order to truly under-stand what asymmetric means, and in order to avoid the pitfalls dis-cussing it within the reigning paradigm, we could do worse than refer topre-Clausewitzian strategic thinkers, such as Sun Tzu. Metz’s remarks arepertinent in this context, but not conclusive. For although he makes asignificant observation, he falls short of the mark. I agree with him thatasymmetric warfare and asymmetric strategy are concepts as old as war-fare itself. But the really important argument is that asymmetric warfare– finding, creating and exploiting asymmetries – is the essence of strategy.And if Metz does not misread the master, at least he does not do Sun Tzujustice. Deception is indeed important in Sun Tzu, but Sun Tzu shouldnot be read solely for that insight. Indeed, for the discussion on asym-metric warfare, a proper understanding of Sun Tzu’s military thought,one that goes beyond the sound bite quotations, is very enlightening, asSun Tzu’s work can be justly regarded as a treatise on asymmetric warfare.

Contrary to the current debate, his work goes far beyond tactics, tech-nology and weapon programs. As will be argued below, reading the clas-sics to illuminate today’s strategic problems is very educational. Sun Tzu’swork is very comprehensive and it points to the various dimensions inwhich asymmetric war can and should be waged and through whichmethods. Reading Sun Tzu deflates the hype surrounding the concept ofasymmetric warfare while underpinning its significance and establishingthe real nature of it. And the identification of the principle characteristicsof asymmetry is probably more fruitful to better understand asymmetricthreats than attempting to establish a perfect definition, as Gray notedafter a survey of the ongoing debate.39

To substantiate this assertion, I will condense the already short book byconcentrating on its core concepts that combine to provide a coherentguide for the art of strategy and operation.40 These core concepts are notprecisely and coherently dealt with in one or two chapters but must be


distilled through reading the whole text. Thus I will draw statements,notions and ideas together from several chapters. This exercise will showhow the ideas across the chapters are related. The picture that emergesstrongly suggests that one can indeed discern several core concepts thattogether form a coherent, consistent and logically constructed strategicapproach that is holistic in nature and that constitutes an approach towaging war in which multidimensional asymmetry is key.

A look into the philosophical, historical and cultural background of TheArt of War will provide the basis for a proper understanding of the logicof ideas, concepts, and notions. Following that discussion, I will addressa few core ideas that serve as guidelines for any leader at the grand andmilitary strategic level. Next I will distill 10 interrelated concepts thatserve as guidelines for waging war, in particular at the strategic andtactical level. I will conclude with a summary in which I endeavor to layout the essence of The Art of War and show the relevance of this discussionfor the discussion surrounding asymmetric warfare.41

Illuminating Tomorrow’s Wars: Reading Sun TzuInterpreting The Art of War. Like the Bible, Sun Tzu’s famous work The Art of War is open to multipleinterpretations. There are always problems with understanding any workthat was written in the 5th century BC, and the fact that the workemanates from a non-Western culture does not help. First of all, lack ofknowledge of the Chinese language blunts a scholar’s full appreciation ofThe Art of War. The Chinese language consists of characters that havemultiple meanings depending on the context in which a certain characteris used. This difference in meaning may be indicated by nothing morethan a certain shape of the slant in a character. The language is further-more one of nuance, words are emblematic and thoughts are put forwardin metaphors and images. This is a major problem in The Art of War,which contains quasi-poetic passages. The text is suggestive and full ofambiguity. And this vagueness and indirectness are at odds with thewestern urge for precise definitions and clarity in expression.

This leads to the second problem of the gap between cultures and therole of the translator. Even when he is conscious of the particular socio-


cultural lens through which he analyses and interprets Sun Tzu, he hasno other tools to explain Sun Tzu and translations are therefore likely togive a narrower meaning than Sun Tzu intended. The meaning andconcept of time can serve as an example. Ancient Chinese time ischaracterized in the following way: Time and space are integrated, timeis cyclical, time is made up of discrete but very large units, and time isheterogeneous and discontinuous. The western concept that time isfleeting, unidirectional and divided into measurable and equally longintervals does not exist. This has implications for writing history becausewhen thinking in cyclical time, there is no particular difference betweenwhat happened 300 years ago or just yesterday which means tomorrowwill not be that different and that lessons from 300 years ago are perfectlyvalid 100 years from now.

However, there must be no doubt about the status of Sun Tzu in theChinese strategic literature or about the fact that there actually was sucha person as Sun Tzu (Tzu means master, by the way, so his name really isjust Sun). Sun lived in the Warring States period, a period in which thekingdoms of the Chinese realm frequently fought each other. Sun madehis mark as a military commander in some battles and was appropriatelynamed Sun Wu, Sun the Warrior. Sun offered his services to King Ho Luof Wu (514-496 B.C.), a small state at the mouth of the Yangtze river.After impressing the King with his earnestness by executing two of theking’s concubines who failed to follow orders, Sun Tzu was made ageneral in the army of Wu which he led to victories against largerarmies.42 These victories gave Sun credibility in writing his lessons.

For that is what they are. The Art of War is an instruction addressed tothe King on how to conduct the most serious affair of the state; war. Asmuch as it is descriptive it also is prescriptive and normative. The wis-dom of his lessons was widely recognized throughout the Chinese king-doms for centuries. Various commentators interpreted the text43 and in1082, a compilation was ordered of the most important military texts toserve as a basis for improving the performance of the Sung armies. Thiscompilation, called The Seven Military Classics, centered on Sun Tzu’stext.

In the 19th century Sun Tzu was translated into French. Sun Tzu has


become almost a household name within military circles after LiddellHart referred to him in his most widely read work ‘Strategy: The IndirectApproach’. The victory of Mao and the defeat of the USA in Vietnamalso established Sun Tzu’s name, deservedly or not. In the seventies andeighties, Sun Tzu’s unique approach to war and war-fighting was incor-porated by John Boyd in his extensive set of briefings called ‘A Discourseon Winning and Losing’ which gave rise to the now familiar OODAloop and the ideas on outthinking one’s enemy.44 Apparently then, wehave before us an important text that is real and written by a real author,but handed down to the western reader in a rather dilapidated form.Keeping in mind that our comprehension of this old, but important textwill always remain somewhat ambiguous and open for debate, I willendeavor to distill the essence of it.

The Warring States Period, ‘All Under One Heaven’ and TaoSome knowledge about Chinese philosophy and the historical context ofthe period helps with regards to clarifying some ideas, because under-standing Sun Tzu begins with some insight into the concepts of ‘Allunder One Heaven’, the Tao and Harmony. So before we turn to the textof The Art of War and the strategic and operational level concepts, we willtake a short journey into the wider context of the book. The setting isprimarily one of autocratic kingdoms in agrarian societies with the tradebusiness at a rise and in the Warring States period, the ‘All Under OneHeaven’ concept was established in a period of turbulence and dis-harmony. ‘All Under One Heaven’ means that everybody and everythingis in the same boat and peoples, kings, events, plans and strategies cannotbe seen in isolation. So although one may be at war with one people, theyand we are all Under One Heaven and what we do to them is connectedto other dimensions besides the opponent. It indicates that everything isconnected in the Realm, as we may describe the area and peoples livingin the warring States. In one sense it makes us aware of the fact that thepeoples and kingdoms at war belonged to the same ethnic people; theChin people, and we are basically witnessing a large scale civil war. It alsobrings up the point that war cannot be separated from other state affairs.

The concept of ‘All Under One Heaven’ is crucial in order to understandSun Tzu and other Chinese strategic works and it is closely related to thecentral concepts of Tao and Harmony.45 In the dominant view of classical


China there exists a continuous concrete world that is the source andlocus of all of our experience. Order is ‘imminent’; things belong to eachother and are inherently connected. Order and regularity are not derivedor imposed upon the world by some independent power but are inherentparts of the world. Change and continuity are equal. The world isdynamic, autogenerative and self-organizing.

Put slightly more metaphysical, this world is constituted as a sea of ch’i,psychophysical energy that disposes itself in various concentrations, con-figurations and perturbations. The pattern that connects phenomena andexplains them, the truth in things and events, the wisdom coming fromcorrectly recognizing the world and knowing the ways of it is expressedas Tao (pronounced as dao). It is the pathway that can be traced out tomake one’s place and one’s context coherent. Tao, ‘the way’, is at anygiven time both what the world is and how it is. In this tradition, thereis no final distinction between an independent source of order and whatit orders. The world and its order at any particular time are self-causing.There is no beginning or teleological end. There is also no objectivity asthere is no place outside the world for it is the only one there is (indeed,we talking about quite a holistic perspective here). And each one of us isinvariably experiencing the world as one within the context of many.46

Without objectivity, objects are not static but are snapshots in a processof change and change occurs along a continuum, both ends of which arenormally indicated with Yin (sunny side) and Yang (the shady side). Theproperty of an object is expressed as a point on a continuum relative tothe point of another objective on that continuum. Things are categorizedas relative to each other. So nothing is black unless there is somethingwhite or at least something less black (gray comes to mind) to contrast itwith. There are no formal, absolute and unique properties but shades,nuances, analogies and cross referencing. A thing is associated withanother by virtue of the contrastive and hierarchical relations that sets itoff from other things. This evokes that and one evokes many.

Coherence in this world, then, is not so much analytic or formallyabstract. Rather it tends to be synthetic and constitutive. Its relations andassociations with other objects define the character of an object. Thevocabulary of opposites also reflects the assumption that any situation


definable on a continuum can be manipulated into its polar opposite.Order can be teased out of disorder, victory can be lifted out of defeat,and weakness can be turned into strength. Tao perceives the shape, spiritand character of things in relation to each other correctly. Intuition, theClausewitzian concept of ‘coup d’euil’, and John Boyd’s emphasis onOrientation in his OODA loop model as the vital element in one’s decisionmaking process conform to this view of the nature of knowledge.

Knowledge and OrderThe Chinese concept of ‘Knowledge’ is strongly connected to thecentrality of order. To know also means to comprehend. Knowledgeinvolves comprehension. All conditions interrelate and collaborate ingreater or lesser degree to constitute a particular event as a confluence ofexperiences. As there is no distinction between cause and effect, know-ledge, explanations and prescriptions are the results of the ability to traceand manipulate those conditions far and near that will come to affect theshifting configurations of one’s own place.

Knowledge discerns the pattern of things, and makes us able to anticipatewhat will ensue from them when we are fully aware of the changingshapes and conditions of all things. Knowing is tracing, both in the senseof etching a pattern and of following it. To know is to realize, to make.Knowing becomes reality and gains a prescriptive, normative quality.Because this is the pattern, one should behave accordingly. The path isnot given but is made in the treading of it. Thus one’s own actions arealways a significant factor in shaping the world which in turn shapesone’s actions.

A person then is not a fixed identity but is shaped by the physical,psychological and social dispositions that are present at any given time.These dispositions are determined by the environment, and these shapeone’s perceptions of the environment and this in turn shapes one’s actionswithin that environment thus shaping the environment. The purpose ofone’s existence is to try to create and maintain a state of harmony amongall the factors that shape one’s environment in order to make the most ofone’s position at a particular time. Another objective is to coordinate thevarious ingredients that constitute one’s particular contemporary worldand to negotiate these in order to create productive harmony. But not all


the methods of creating harmony are equally successful and some dis-positions are more fruitfully creative than others. It is the capacity toanticipate the patterned flow of circumstance, to encourage those dis-positions most conductive to a productive harmony and ultimately toparticipate in negotiating a world order that will make the most of itscreative possibilities.

Harmony is attained through the art of contextualizing, and anyone whosucceeds at that is capable of imposing order on others so there will alsobe harmony in the hierarchical structure of society. The leader is at the cen-ter carrying the order of the whole and from this emanates his authority.Authority is constituted as other centers are drawn up into one encom-passing center and suspended within it through patterns of deference.Authority involves a position in a hierarchy, relations between membersin the hierarchy as well as norms and cultural traditions definingappropriate behavior. A leader is a leader because he must have greatercapacity to discern order and impose it, otherwise someone else would beleader. Therefore, this leader deserves allegiance.

In social and political life there are several layers of order, and these arecombined by lateral and hierarchical relations to form some sort ofharmony. The quality of these relations defines the character of theharmony. Harmony, then, is the creation of order between things and asharmony involves the art of contextualizing, constantly changing theproperties of things, order is not static but rather dynamic. To maintainorder is to maintain a balance among the changing properties, tocorrectly discern the pattern of change.

Order is an emergent property; it begins with the coordination of specificdetails and expands to include more and more dimensions, events andconnections. To conclude this bit of Chinese philosophy, the cultivationof harmony is at the core of the classical Chinese worldview. And turningtowards the subject of war, harmony or the lack of it permeates theattitude towards war, the functions of it and the concept of victory.

War as a Disturbance of OrderWar is the most important issue a state should concern itself with,according to Sun Tzu. It is a matter of life and death and will determine


the fate of a state. A state should be able to wage war effectively. A stateshould therefore always be prepared for war, be vigilant and possess aready, capable force for deterrence as well as for fighting. This should notbe taken as a state of enthusiasm with respect to waging war. On thecontrary, war is to be avoided as much and as long as possible becauseinherent in war is the chance of catastrophe for the state. Besides, war isa very costly affair for everyone involved. To solve crisis a state should useregular diplomatic means, as well as irregular, what we would perhapsconsider devious and illegitimate means, such as assassination of theenemy’s leader or his generals, bribing key figures among the leader’s staffand persuading his allies to change sides. This view on statecraft is con-sistent with the ancient view on war, which is fundamentally one of dis-turbance of order.

As all things are normally in a state of order, when there is war, the causemust be a disturbance of the order. War can only be waged for the pur-pose of restoring order47. This is the legitimizing factor. What makes anymilitary action appropriate as opposed to self-seeking is the claim that itserves the quality of the socio-political order as a whole rather than anyparticular interest group within it. As in the socio-political order, allorders are interdependent and mutually entailing, the system has withinit a mechanism for reordering. There is no right or wrong in waging war.It is in favor of the social order or against it, as the latter can never bejustified. That is, unless a leader has forfeited his authority by squanderinghis integrity or is abusing his people, because leadership also means tobehave in accord with one’s people; the Tao of the leader is that whichcauses the people to be in harmony with their leaders. So the harmonywithin a state between the leader and those ruled over extends to a senseof harmony in the whole system.

War then not only means restoring order in the whole system but also ina state and as such involves a sense of punishment against the leader ofthe state. As a matter of fact, there is a deep and abiding association inthe Chinese world between the execution of punishment and warfare. Inboth instances the central authority is acting in the interest of the wholeto define the sociopolitical order at its boundaries. Also ‘to order’, ‘to gov-ern’ and ‘to dispatch a punitive expedition’ are expressed with the samecharacter ‘cheng’. And ‘to shape’ is expressed with the same character as


the one used for punishment (hsing), which is perversely interesting ifone knows that punishments generally took on the form of mutilations,amputations and other forms of disfigurement, thus in a sense reshapingsomeone. War then is an attempt to redefine sociopolitical order.48

This view on war and its function also shape the attitude towards it.There is a fundamental distaste for war as it means that something hasalready been lost and war will cost resources and lives, thereby alsocreating a danger for instability within the states that wage war to restoreorder. War always constitutes loss. This outlook provides the context forproperly understanding the following statements from The Art of War:

to win a hundred victories in a hundred battles is not thepinnacle of excellence. Subjugating the enemy’s army withoutfighting is the true pinnacle of excellence’.49 ‘Warfare is thegreatest affair of state, the basis of life and death, the Tao tosurvival or extinction. It must be thoroughly pondered andanalyzed.50 ‘Thus one who excels at employing the militarysubjugates other people’s armies without engaging in battle,captures other people’s fortified cities without attacking them anddestroys other people’s states without prolonged fighting. He mustfight under Heaven with the paramount aim of preservation.51

And here we come across a crucial point. War is only justifiable when allpossible alternatives have been exhausted and must be entertained withthe utmost seriousness and restraint. The commander must be in pursuitof quick termination and preservation of life and resources, not onlyone’s own but also those of the opponent. If war must be fought, it mustbe fought at minimum cost.52 As the fighting is conducted by peoplewho belong to All Under One Heaven and who were good neighborsyesterday and perhaps will be again tomorrow, the war should basicallyaim at removing the sore from the rebellious state, and that sore is mostlikely the leader. War must be fought while constantly keeping in mindthe need to be able to resume normal life and relations after hostilities.In an agrarian society, which cannot rapidly replenish lost crops and lostlabor force, serious losses had serious repercussions. Preservation meansmaintaining the capability to achieve harmony.


Preservation then becomes the guiding word in order to understand therest of Sun Tzu’s text: Preservation of the state system, the state, the army,the people, the enemy:

In general, the method for employing the military is this:Preserving the enemy’s state capital is best, destroying their statecapital second best. Preserving their army is best, destroying theirarmy second best’ and so it goes all the way down to squads.53

It also provides suggestions for asymmetric war. Instead of going after thearmed forces in full battle, other methods must be employed in differentdimensions in order to prevent actual combat or to win the war at a lessercost. Disrupting the alliance, or threatening and besieging cities couldundermine the will to continue fighting.Preservation also underlies the quest for intelligence before embarking onwar and before going into battle. This is the reason for striving for quickvictories and it underlies the schemes for gaining easy victories by puttingthe enemy off balance before joining battle with him. As Sun Tzu states

[when] employing them in battle, a victory that is long in comingwill blunt their weapons and dampen their ardor. If you attackcities, their (your own soldiers) strength will be exhausted. If youexpose the army to prolonged campaign, the state’s resources will beinadequate…No country has ever profited from protractedwarfare…Therefore, a general who understands warfare is amaster of fate for the people, ruler of the state’s security orendangerment.54

As we shall see, preservation of one’s own harmony and disrupting theopponent’s capability to preserve his harmony is the art of war.Preservation of harmony means guarding the factors that affect cohesion,such as morale, commanders being fair and strict, it entails keeping planssecret and keeping the initiative. And it all starts with the state beingprepared and the leader having foreknowledge.

Three Core ConceptsNow we have entered The Art of War proper. I indicated how The Art ofWar evidences the dominant Chinese views on warfare as a disturbance


of order. The previous section has indicated the mindset with which SunTzu approaches problems in general and I will now turn to theseproblems. This section starts with a description of some core concepts atthe grand strategic level and it will subsequently discuss lower levels ofwar. We will see that at each level we come across more or less the samecore concepts, although at each level the concept may have a slightlydifferent meaning or impact. Alternatively, a concept may materialize indifferent ways at different levels of war. There is, however, a strongcontinuity across the levels. The concepts, which describe strategicbehavior, are scalable, to speak in modern complexity theory terms.

Grand strategy and Shih. Throughout the book, Sun Tzu mandates care-ful planning and the formulation of an overall strategy before the com-mencement of a campaign. The focus of all planning in grand strategyand military operations must be the development and maintenance of aprosperous, contented populace whose willing allegiance to their leaderis unquestioned. Thereafter, diplomatic initiatives can be put into effect,but military preparations should never be neglected, a theme that alsopermeates Seven MilitaryClassics. Preservation informs the preference ofthe tools of statecraft:

The highest realization of warfare is to attack the enemy plans;next is to attack their alliances; next to attack their army andthe lowest to attack their fortified cities.55

Whenever possible, ‘victory’ should be achieved through diplomaticcoercion, thwarting the enemy’s plans and alliances and frustrating hisstrategy. These are all recurring themes in the other six military classicsof Chinese strategy. Only when a state is threatened with military actionby an enemy or otherwise refuses to give in to demands, should thegovernment resort to armed conflict.

But this attitude does not prescribe passiveness. In order to safeguard againstconstant intrusions, to deter and wield power in the diplomatic sphere,constant vigilance and a ready, well trained and disciplined army wasnecessary. The Chinese equivalent of ‘si vis pacem, para bellum’ lies in: ‘donot depend on the enemy not coming, depend rather on being ready forhim’.56 It is not suggested, however, that the other tools of statecraft cease to


be of value when war is embarked upon. War happens within the totality ofa changing context and this context will have a continuous influence on thewar. A good leader will attempt to shape the environment to further hisinterest and thus create conditions for a quick decision in war.

This brings us to the importance of shis. A crucial activity for a leader isto keep a constant eye on one’s relative position of power or what wewould perhaps call the state of national security. The Chinese term thatis associated with this is shih. Shih is an ambiguous concept and is usedat all levels, not just the grand strategic level.57 It has a cluster ofmeanings such as situation, circumstances, outward shape, force,influence, authority, latent energy, tactical power, positional advantageand strategic advantage.58 The shih constantly shifts according to what ishappening in the internal and external environment of the state. At anytime the shih is formed by intangible factors such as morale, opportunity,timing, psychology and logistics. A suitable term for it is strategic con-figurations of power. A leader needs to be constantly scanning hisenvironment and shih indicates that war does not occur as someindependent and isolated event, but rather unfolds within the broaderfield of unique natural, social and political conditions. These conditionsand relations among them are constantly changing.

Again, this pattern of change can be discerned if one knows the Tao andit can be manipulated to further one’s interest. Here again we see that theenvironment shapes the perceptions but also that perception shapes theenvironment and lead to actions. One’s disposition and any change in itis a factor in the environment of any neighboring state and will also exertinfluence on the total state of harmony. Shih is a continuum and one’sposition on it can be discerned and influenced. We will come back to shihwhen we talk about the military concept for victory. It is mentioned hereto indicate the importance of constant vigilance and the need to observechanges in one’s environment, because this fuels the need for fore-knowledge.

Foreknowledge. Like shih, the gathering of knowledge about the entireenvironment is required at all levels of activity and, unlike Clausewitz’sbelief, it is possible to have complete knowledge. This is the mark of agood commander and besides it is in complete accord with the Chinese


mental outlook, which stresses comprehensiveness as the basis ofknowledge.59 A leader needs knowledge in order to be able to form acorrect estimate of one’s shih. Sun Tzu is quite specific in the first chap-ter regarding the relevant factors one needs to be aware of and also whatcertain signs may indicate. Detailed calculations were made, becomingmore specific when battle was imminent. In Chapter 1, aptly titled‘Initial Estimations’ Sun Tzu states:

Thus when making a comparative evaluation through estimations,seeking out its true nature, ask: Which ruler has the Tao?60

Which general has greater ability? Who has gained theadvantages of heaven and earth? Whose laws and orders are morethoroughly implemented? Whose forces are stronger? Whoseofficers and men are better trained? Whose rewards and punish-ments are clearer? From these I will know victory and defeat.61

In ‘Military Dispositions’, chapter 4, he becomes more specific:

Terrain gives birth to measurement, measurements produceestimations (of forces). Estimations give rise to calculation (thenumber of men). Calculation gives rise to weighing (strength).Weighing gives birth to victory.62

Across several chapters, Sun Tzu develops a variety of dimensions (ofcontinuums) with which to measure an opponent before committing tothe engagement. The point of the exercise is to avoid throwing the armyinto battle too lightly and to prevent the unnecessary mobilization of anarmy.63 At both the strategic and tactical level, the advice is avoidengaging the enemy when you are not ready or when you are out-numbered or find yourself in a disadvantageous position or:

The victorious army first realizes the conditions for victory, andthen seeks to engage in battle.64 Only when victory is assuredshould one start a campaign for ‘the victorious army first realizesthe conditions for victory and then seeks to engage in battle’.65

When an offensive is impossible, one should assume a solid defense.66

Chapter 12 concludes with


If objectives cannot be attained, do not employ the army. Unlessendangered do not engage in warfare … a vanquished statecannot be revived, the dead not be brought back to life. Thus theenlightened ruler is cautious about it, the good general respectfulof it. This is the Tao for bringing security to the state andpreserving the army intact.

Knowledge is essential for security. Taking that into account, the perhapsexcessive emphasize on and optimism about obtaining information isunderstandable. The quest for information, however, is not an absolutemeasure, it must be understood in two senses. First, one needs betterunderstanding than the opponent, hence one’s efforts to conceal one’splans and positions. Secondly, we need to understand foreknowledge inthe same sense as the Chinese concept of general knowledge. Thisconcept comes from being able to discern patterns and relations and it isholistic in the sense that an object can only be understood in light of itscontext. It is a penetrating form of comprehension67 about changes andtheir implications. Chapter 9 states that perfect information is of novalue, unless one has a penetrating understanding of its meaning and isable to see the emerging patterns. Information must be coupled to judg-ment. In the chapter devoted to the use of spies for the purpose ofgaining information and disseminating false information, Sun Tzu againwarns us that:

Unless someone has the wisdom of the sage, he cannot usespies;…unless he is subtle and perspicacious, he cannot perceivethe substance in intelligence reports’.68

Now this wonderful word, perspicacious, encompasses the words per-ceptive, discerning, clear sighted, penetrating, sensitive, observant andincisive. So it is not necessarily the one with more information who willbe victorious, it is the one with better judgment, the one who is better atdiscerning patterns.

One might interpret the emphasize on information and foreknowledgeas a manifestation that in the Chinese view, the course of events can bepredicted as long as one has enough information and foreknowledge.There appears to be no friction. This is incorrect for three reasons. First


of all, information is only as valuable as the commander’s wisdom and hiscapacity to discern patterns from this information. This implies thatalthough information is important, the man in the loop determines whatwill happen because of this information and the opponent has the samepredicament. Foreknowledge does not equate absolute certainty. Fore-knowledge is a relational concept in that it gives advantage to the sidethat is better able to form proper judgements on the basis of the facts andthat knows what to look for among the facts.

Second, although we find reference to shih in page 1 of Chapter 1, thisis an initial estimate, a broad-brush look, which gives an indicationwhether war should be embarked upon at all, and what the strategic pos-sibilities are. To speak in systems terms, it gives an impression of thedecision space, the range and quality of options the leader and his opponenthave. All Sun Tzu says is that one who excels at warfare can tell when asituation will offer possibilities of victory or defeat, realizing that thisparticular impression of shih is a snapshot from a distance at a particulartime. The closer in time and space war and battles approach, the finerbecomes the detail of Sun Tzu’s investigations, all the way down toindicators of the actions of an army setting up camp and the order offlags in tactical formations.

With this comes the third reason to dismiss any sense of determinism inChinese thought. As we will see in the next section, Sun Tzu stresses theimportance of constant adaptation to the enemy. This concept of‘according with the enemy’ fundamentally denies the possibility of exactlong-term predictions and deterministic thinking. The commander mustconstantly make estimates about the context at hand and this is in aconstant state of change so his plans must change accordingly. This isreflected in the following statement: ‘One should not fix a time and placefor battle in advance’. The same notion is also stated in the concludingline on page 2 of Chapter 1 in the basic outline of the mechanism fordefeating an opponent: ‘They cannot be spoken of in advance’.

In other words, as the campaign and battles progress, one needs to adjust.Knowledge, Order, Preservation of harmony, preservation of the stateand the army, shih and foreknowledge are thus logically intertwined andthe one who wins is the one who understands the world better, who


knows the patterns and order and can shape the world accordingly. Andthis also applies when we look to the situation when war and operationsare actually planned in advance. And here we enter the field of strategyand tactics.

Strategy and Tactics: Using Harmony to Create Disorder, Discord and ChaosIn chapters 1 and 3, Sun Tzu reveals his ideas of how to conduct a cam-paign once the estimate of shih has indicated that it is both necessary andfeasible to embark upon war. First he returns to shih:

After estimating the advantages in accord with what you haveheard, put it into effect with strategic power, supplemented byfield tactics that respond to external factors. As for strategicpower, (it is) controlling the tactical imbalance of power inaccord with the gains to be realized’.

Then he follows with the famous statement that is often quoted out ofcontext:

Warfare is the Tao of deception. Thus although you are capable,display incapability to them. When committed to employingyour forces, feign inactivity. When your objective is nearby, makeit appear as if distant; when far away, create the illusion of beingnearby. Display profits to entice him. Create disorder (in theirforces) and take them69.

If they are substantial, prepare for them; if they are strong, avoidthem. If they are angry, perturb them; be deferential to fostertheir arrogance. If they are rested, force them to exert themselves.If they are united, cause them to be separated. Attack where theyare unprepared. Go forth where they will not expect it. These arethe ways military strategists are victorious. They cannot bespoken of in advance.70

Several concepts from this short section of the book are further developedlater. These all derive from the basic concept that strategy is about putting the


enemy off balance, about creating disharmony and chaos. And, so the lastsentence tells us, there is no way of exactly knowing in advance how thiscan or will be accomplished, for it depends on a myriad of contextualfactors, the prime one being the need to shape one’s actions inaccordance with the opponent’s actions and reactions. That is themechanism for victory. Sun Tzu thus focuses upon manipulation,thereby shaping the enemy and creating an opportunity for an easy (as inless costly) victory by applying maximum power at the appropriate timeand place(s).

To this end, Sun Tzu explores the possibilities offered by certain types ofterrain and indicates what type of terrain should be avoided and whattype of terrain is best suited for the various forms of operation. Theadvantage of possessing better judgment of terrain must be exploited. Heproposes tactics for probing, manipulating and weakening the opponent.To this end, one needs to know the opponent’s plans, positions andfuture moves. A commander should try to divide the opponent’s forces,weaken the bonds that tie the troops into a cohesive mass, weaken mutu-al trust between men, units, officers, troops and allies:

In, antiquity those who were referred to as excelling in theemployment of the army, were able to keep the enemy’s forwardand rear forces from connecting, the many and the few fromrelying on each other; the noble and lowly from coming to eachother’s rescue; the upper and lower ranks from trusting eachother; the troops to be separated, unable to reassemble, or whenassembled, not to be well ordered.71

A commander should also know about the five dangerous personalitytraits of his opponent so as to exploit his weaknesses.72 The enemy mustbe lured into untenable positions with prospects of gain, which meansthat one must know what the opponent values.73 Troops must be ener-vated by being wearied and exhausted before the attack and penetratedby forces that are suddenly concentrated at vulnerable points.74 Moreconcisely, the opponent should be left unsure of one’s actions, plans andpositions. He should be confused. To that end, he should be deceivedand confronted with a rapidly changing and unanticipated sequence ofevents.75 And even if he is not confused, he should be denied the option


of reacting adequately with his troops. To this end, units need to beseparated and generally dislocated. They must be exhausted throughbeing forced to be constantly on their guard and on the move. Their trustin their leaders and that between units must be corroded. Finally theymust be inspired by fear.

Thus, the enemy will be weakened through confusion about our position,through the subsequent dislocation of his forces and the state of disorder.All these strategic and tactical factors, which span the mental, the moraland the physical dimensions,76 together with the grand strategic factorssuch as the quality of the alliances of the opponent, combine to put theenemy off balance. The aim is to get the opponent in a position againstwhich the shih and hsing, all the potential energy of one’s army, can bereleased with the maximum effect, against a disorganized and locallyinferior force. The basic idea is to go forth where they do not expect it andattack where they are not prepared.77 Battle must be avoided until one iscertain that a favorable balance of power (not just in terms of numbers)has been created. Several statements relate to this mechanism:

Those that excelled in warfare first made themselves uncon-querable in order to await (the moment) the enemy could beconquered. Being unconquerable lies with yourself; beingconquerable lies with the enemy. Those …referred to as excellingat warfare conquered those who were easy to defeat… Theirvictories were free of errors. One who is free from error directs hismeasures towards certain victory, conquering those who arealready conquered. Thus the one who excels at warfare firstestablishes himself in a position where he cannot be defeatedwhile not losing any opportunity to defeat the enemy. For thisreason, the victorious army first realizes the conditions forvictory and then seeks to engage in battle.78

The one who excels at moving the enemy deploys in a con-figuration to which the enemy must respond. He offers somethingthe enemy must seize. With profit he moves them, withfoundation he awaits them. Thus, one who excels at warfareseeks victory through the strategic configurations of power, notfrom reliance on men.


When all that is accomplished and the conditions for victory have beenestablished, all the preserved latent energy will be released:

Thus the victorious army is like a ton compared with an ounce,while the defeated army is like an ounce weighed against a ton.The combat of the victorious is like the sudden release of a pent-up torrent down a thousand-fathom gorge. This is thestrategic disposition of force (hsing).79

So, this is what is really behind the familiar statements:

One who knows when he can fight, and when he cannot fight,will be victorious’,80 and ‘one who knows the enemy and knowshimself will not be endangered in a hundred engagements.81

Lastly, the familiar but often misunderstood statement ‘Subjugating theenemy’s army without fighting is the true pinnacle of excellence’’82 is thus putwithin a logical context of the aim for preservation and the aim offighting an enemy who is completely off balance and about to collapse.

Concepts for WinningSun Tzu’s mechanism for victory is a subtle one. Building on the foun-dation explained above, it relies on the cumulative effect of adhering tothe following concepts, which can be considered as modes of behavior,or desired effects.

Accordance with the enemy Formlessness & being UnfathomableForeknowledge High SpeedCohesion Variety & FlexibilitySurprise Orthodox & UnorthodoxDeception & Deceit Vacuous & Substantial

In order to get a clear understanding of the above concepts, we need totake a look at them separately. His mechanism starts with the assumptionthat one can shape an opponent through the principle of ‘accordance withthe enemy’. This concept underlies the whole idea of putting the enemyoff balance. The assumption is that one can shape the opponent byaccording to his actions, plans etc. After a short description of this


concept, I will address two requirements for the whole scheme to work,namely foreknowledge and cohesion. Together, these three concepts girdthe scheme of putting the opponent off balance by the use of surprisethrough deception and deceit, and the methods Sun Tzu proposes toachieve surprise: The idea of formlessness and being unfathomable, main-taining high speed, ensuring variety and flexibility in actions, the idea ofusing the unorthodox and orthodox, and finally of knowing how to discernthe vacuous and substantial. These ten concepts are valuable for operationsat all levels of war, although they are most frequently used when Sun Tzudiscusses those activities at what we would call the operational andtactical level. Most of these have not been mentioned before, but nowthat we know what Sun Tzu proposes as the basic mechanism, we caneasily see what they mean and how and where they fit in.

‘Accordance with the enemy’. This concept intellectually forms the basis ofthe whole idea. It is the assumption that one can shape the opponent andfor that one should act in accordance with the opponent’s actions. Thisis an essential idea in Chinese philosophy and it is expressed as yin. Everysituation has its advantages and disadvantages and can be turned into anopportunity. Yin involves responsiveness to one’s context, to adapt one-self to a situation in such a manner as to take full advantage of thedefining circumstances, and to avail oneself of the possibilities of thesituation in order to achieve one’s own purposes. Shape and adapt, attackwhat they love first. ‘Do not fix any time for battle, assess and react tothe enemy in order to determine the strategy for battle’.83 Yin requiressensitivity and adaptability. Sensitivity is necessary to register the fullrange of forces that define one’s situation, and on the basis of thisawareness, to anticipate the various possibilities that may ensue from thesituation. Adaptability refers to the conscious fluidity of one’s own dis-position. One can only turn prevailing circumstances to account if onemaintains an attitude of readiness and flexibility. One must adapt oneselfto the enemy’s changing posture as naturally and as effortlessly as flowingwater winding down a hillside:84

The army’s disposition of force (hsing) is like water. Water’sconfiguration avoids heights and races downward. The army’sdisposition of force avoids the substantial and strikes thevacuous. Water configures its flow in accordance with the


terrain; the army controls its victory in accordance with theenemy. Thus, the army does not maintain a constant strategicconfiguration of power (shih), water has no constant shape.Anyone who is able to change and transform in accordance withthe enemy and wrest victory, is termed spiritual.85

Yin means shifting your position so adroitly and imperceptibly that,from the enemy’s perspective, you are inscrutable.86 To act in accordancewith the opponent, one needs to know the opponent’s aims, plans andposition of forces as well as the character of the commander. And thisleads us to a second look at foreknowledge, this time specifically for thestrategic and tactical level as opposed to the grand strategic level we havedealt with before.

Foreknowledge. As we already have seen above, this is essential for thegrand strategic level, but it permeates the whole body of thought: ‘Theprosecution of military affairs depends upon acting in accordance withthe enemy and learning in detail about his intentions’.87 It is easy torecognize in The Art of War that foreknowledge means somethingdifferent at each level of war. Sun Tzu specifies the different answers ageneral would want to know at a certain level. For each level, there aredifferent issues to address on different levels of detail. At the grandstrategic level, Sun Tzu states that we should be concerned aboutalliances, the internal political cohesion and the support a leader is likelyto get for his endeavors. At the tactical levels, a general needs to know thenumber of campfires in the enemy camp and the sounds that emanatefrom it. Gaining foreknowledge can be done through the employment ofspies and through knowing the telltale signs of armies on the move asSun Tzu indicates in ch 9:

If large numbers of trees move, they are approaching. If the armyis turbulent, the general lacks severity, if they kill their horsesand eat the meat, the army lacks grain. One whose troopsrepeatedly congregate in small groups here and there, whisperingtogether, has lost the masses .88

Furthermore, he states that


for this reason, one who does not know the plans of the feudallords cannot forge preparatory alliances. One who does not knowthe topography of mountains and forests, ravines and defiles,wetlands and marshes cannot maneuver the army. One who doesnot employ local guides will not secure advantages of terrain.One who does not know one of these four or five cannotcommand the army89 [and] The means by which enlightenedleaders and sagacious generals moved and conquered others, thattheir achievements surpassed the masses, was advance knowledge.Advance knowledge… must be gained from men, for this is theknowledge of the enemy’s true situation’90.

Foreknowledge and knowledge in general make possible the otherconcepts we will discuss later, such as deception, being fathomless andformless, attacking the vacuous, the use of orthodox and the unorthodox.

Cohesion. Maintaining cohesion in one’s own army is another importantprerequisite for creating and exploiting disorder through the concepts ofdeception, rapid movement etc. There are many references to the methodsavailable to a commander in order for him to maintain cohesion among histroops. Generally, it depends on the commander taking well care of histroops, preserving them, handing out praise as well as punishment whereand when it is due, but being fair, disciplined and strict. We have alreadylearned that it was important to know which commander had clearerrewards and punishments.

If you impose punishment on the troops before they have becomeattached, they will not be submissive. If they are not submissivethey will be difficult to employ. If you do not impose punishmentafter the troops have become attached, they cannot be used.Command them with the civil and unify them through themartial, this is what is referred to as to take them. If orders areconsistently implemented to instruct the people, then the peoplewill submit… One whose orders are consistently carried out hasestablished a mutual relationship with the people.91

The corollary of attacking when the ch’i, or spirit, of the enemy troops islow, is that one should guard one’s own so as to ‘with the rested await the


fatigued, with the sated await the hungry’.92 Elsewhere Sun Tzu says thatthe troops should be looked upon as beloved children.93

Maintaining cohesion also involves paying attention to the use of flags,gongs, drums, banners and other objects that can be seen and recognizedin the heat of battle.94 These can be used to give orders to units and assymbols for units to gather around. It also extends to dividing loot fairlyamong the troops. Other motivating and unifying factors are the deeppenetration into enemy terrain and the shared exposure to risk by thecommander, officers and troops. The bottom line is that the commandermust be able to direct his troops as though commanding one man95 and‘one whose upper and lower ranks have the same desires (and will thusbe victorious)96 so he can ‘in order await the disordered’.97 As Sun Tzunotes: Control gives birth to (simulated) chaos. Thus harmony, order andcohesion are used to create disorder.

Surprise. From these concepts we can now turn to the basic mechanismof attacking where the enemy does not expect it, and the ensuingachievement of surprise. Without surprise at some stage in the encounterwith the opponent, it will be difficult to mass superior force. Surprise isachieved through the interaction of several methods applied simultane-ously. Sun Tzu’s military thought has frequently been erroneouslyidentified solely with deceit and deception. These two terms, however,connect ideas that ultimately need to produce surprise. Only twice dodeception and deceit appear explicitly in the book. The most famous oneis found in Chapter 1, where it is stated that ‘warfare is the Tao ofdeception. Thus although you are capable, display incapability to them.When committed to employing your forces, feign inactivity. When yourobjective is nearby, make it appear as if distant; when far away, create theillusion of being nearby’. The second one appears in Chapter 7 and statesthat ‘thus the army is established by deceit, moves for advantage, andchanges through segmenting and reuniting’.

Deception and Deceit. Deception and deceit are achieved by moving sepa-rately and keeping the opponent guessing where one will unite. If one isalready united, one can disperse again in the hope that the opponent hasunited and thereby committed his forces. Troop deployments or theimage thereof are used together with misinformation from (expendable)


spies, as well as the feigning of certain activities that serve as indicators ofupcoming operations to the trained eye of the opposing commander. Allthe above means are used to deceive the opponent. Of course, all effortsto deceive must be matched by making sure one’s real intentions andmovements are shrouded in secrecy, and with this we arrive at the conceptof being unfathomable.

Being Formless and Unfathomable. Sun Tzu stresses the need for a com-mander to be unfathomable and obscure, never revealing his plans orintentions even to his own troops.98 Being unfathomable throughdeception and deceit will cause the opposing commander to be confusedor forced to respond in a way that is not in accordance with his initialplan. He is forced to react, especially when he suddenly discovers that weare moving towards an object that he needs to defend. Thus he is shaped.We recognize these notions in the following statement: One who excelsat moving the enemy deploys in a configuration to which the enemymust respond. He offers something that the enemy must seize. Withprofit he moves them, with foundation he awaits them.99

Related to deception and being unfathomable is the idea of being form-less. Whenever the army deploys onto the battlefield, its immediatelyapparent configuration will evoke a reaction (he too is in accordance withthe enemy) in the enemy. Whether the enemy will then modify his orig-inal anticipations, vary his tactics or view the events as confirming a pre-conceived battle plan, depends upon his evaluation of the unfoldingsituation. Now by being formless, that is without having a recognizableconfiguration, this evaluation becomes rather difficult. Thus being form-less also implies being unfathomable. False appearances kept secret inturn help being unfathomable. Here we see how these notions interact.

The concept of formless may also mean that one lacks an identifiablemass, which means that the enemy cannot discern a pattern or a mainbody, perhaps due to the true physical dispersion of our forces or throughbeing unfathomable, employing deceit and being successful in deceptionactivities. He must disperse his forces in order to defend what hetreasures and to cover the possible routes we can take, as he is not awareof our position.


This we see mirrored in:

If I determine the enemy’s disposition of forces while I have noperceptible form, I can concentrate my forces while the enemy isfragmented. If we are concentrated into a single force while he isfragmented into ten, then we can attack him with ten times hisstrength. Thus we are many and the enemy is few. If we attackhis few with our many, those whom we engage in battle will beseverely constrained.

And furthermore in:

They must not know the location where we will engage the enemy.If it is not known, then the positions that they must prepare todefend are numerous. If the positions the enemy prepares to defendare numerous, then the forces we engage will be few.100

Speed and Rapidity. So all these terms aim at getting the opponent dislo-cated and confused. And to enhance the creation of confusion and beingunfathomable, one should use superior speed. Rapidity of movementand attacks help shaping the opponent and will wear him down:

It is the nature of the army to stress speed, to take advantage ofthe enemy’s absence…101 Whoever occupies the battleground firstand awaits the enemy is at ease; whoever occupies the battle-ground afterward and must race to the conflict will be fatigued.Thus one who excels at warfare compels men and is notcompelled by other men.

Variety and Flexibility. The use of variety and flexibility in response aswell as never being predictable are additional tools that help you beingunfathomable. This is reflected in

It is essential for a general to be tranquil and obscure, uprightand self disciplined, and able to stupefy the eyes and ears ofofficers and troops, keeping them ignorant. He alters hismanagement of affairs and changes his strategies to keep otherpeople from recognizing them. He shifts his positions and


traverses indirect routes to keep other people from being able toanticipate him,102 [and also in:] ‘Men all know the dispositionby which we attain victory, but no one knows the configurationthrough which we control the victory. Thus a victorious battle(strategy) is not repeated, the configurations of response to theenemy are inexhaustible.103

The Orthodox (cheng) and the Unorthodox (ch’i). There is one set of polaropposites whose multitude of variations is inexhaustible and which leads tothe enemy being completely wrong footed. This is the concept of using theorthodox (cheng) and the unorthodox (ch’i). This is an important set of polaropposites. They can be translated as the straightforward method and thecrafty method or the direct method and the indirect method. Ch’i andCheng must be understood in the widest sense as meaning energy, strategy,ideas, forces (moral, mental and physical). The point is that one can useforce (and not forces as in specific types of units) in conventional,traditional or imaginative unconventional ways in dealing with anopponent. Nothing in itself is straightforward or crafty, direct or indirect.The concept is characterized by the notion that the unorthodox can becomethe orthodox, which is typical of the Chinese use of polar opposites.Whether it is one or the other depends on what one thinks the opponentwill expect in the particular circumstances of the battle in question.

The concept of ch’i and cheng is about conceptualizing, characterizing,and manipulating forces, and by exploiting an enemy’s matrix of expec-tations. When a frontal attack is expected, a conclusion derived fromone’s previous strategy and tactics and one’s disposition of forces at thatparticular moment is the orthodox method and an enveloping move-ment will be the unorthodox method. The concept also refers to thefunctions of forces; to fix the opponent is the orthodox but the coup thegrace will be delivered by the unorthodox in a flanking attack. The extra-ordinary forces are used to take the enemy by surprise, or, as Sun Tzu states:

Generally in battle one engages with the orthodox and gains victorythrough the unorthodox […] the changes of the unorthodox andorthodox can never be completely exhausted. The unorthodox andthe orthodox mutually produce each other, just like an endless cycle.Who can exhaust them?.104


Indeed, what is unorthodox and orthodox, expected or strange, direct orindirect, regular or irregular, extraordinary or normal (to name a fewimplications of cheng and ch’i) is dependent on the opponent, so theactions of both sides mutually influence each other. This is again aconcept that aims at putting the opponent off balance, this time usingthe expectations of the opponent’s commander and employing forces inways, times, places, movements and formations he does not expect. It isimportant to note that Sun Tzu does not advocate one above the other,neither the indirect nor the direct, but stresses the novel combination ofboth.105 It is from the interaction of the unorthodox and the orthodoxthat the enemy is confused, demoralized, disorganized, dislocated, lookingin the wrong direction etc. As we have seen before, variation and novelcombinations of types of forces, maneuvers and methods of deceptionand deceit are important.

Emptiness (hsu) and Fullness, or Solidity (shih). Understanding the enemy’sdispositions (hsing) and potential power (shih) and knowing how toapply the concept of the orthodox and unorthodox is not enough. Onedoes not possess complete comprehension unless one knows how totarget one’s forces against the enemy’s disposition and power. The com-mander must have an appreciation of the concept of the polar oppositesemptiness (hsu) and fullness, or solidity (shih), or the vacuous andsubstantial. Hsu means empty or weak in a sense that goes beyond thephysical. To be empty in the Hsu sense may indicate a poorly defendedposition or a well-defended position burdened with feeble leadership, alack of legitimate purpose or weak morale. Hsu indicates the crevices inan opponent’s defenses that allow penetration. Conversely, shih can be astrongly defended position or a capable force that has every positivequality. It has high morale, strong leadership and its actions are inaccordance with its moral code. The problem is that no position of forceis permanently solid (or empty for that matter) and Sun Tzu sees this asa way of providing the opponent with the dilemma we have alreadyhappened upon: What to defend and what to attack.106

The correct use of the concept of emptiness and solidity combined withthe effects of previous concepts, create a situation where one will be ableto find and attack a weak spot in the enemy’s defenses. By being form-less, unfathomable and quick, we force the opponent to disperse, as we


have seen, and by attacking or moving towards objects he values wedisrupt his plans and disperse his units even further. Thus we create asituation where the opponent does indeed have identifiable strong pointsand weaknesses, which we can subsequently exploit by suddenlyconcentrating our force which must be superior in mental, moral andphysical power.

Interconnected and Mutually Reinforcing ConceptsThe connection between the ideas of foreknowledge, preservation, accor-dance with the enemy, shih, shaping, variety, the formless and unfath-omable, the emptiness and fullness, etc, show in this concluding part ofChapter 6:

Thus if I determine the enemy’s disposition of forces while I haveno perceptible form, I can concentrate while the enemy isdispersed […] thus we are many and the enemy is few. If weattack his few with our many those who we engage in battle willbe severely constrained. The location where we will engage theenemy must not become known to them. If it is not known, thenthe positions they must prepare to defend will be numerous. Ifthe positions…are numerous, the forces we will engage will befew. If there is no position left undefended there will be no placewith more than a few… Thus critically analyze them to knowthe estimations for gain and loss. Stimulate them to know thepatterns of their movement and stopping. Determine theirdisposition of force to know the tenable and fatal terrain. Probethem to know where they have excess, and where they have insuf-ficiency. Thus the pinnacle of military deployment approachesthe formless…In accordance with the enemy’s disposition weimpose measures on the masses that produce victory…but no oneknows the configurations through which we control the victory.Thus a victorious battle strategy is not repeated… now thearmies disposition of force is like water…the armies dispositionof force avoids the substantial and strikes the vacuous. Waterconfigures its flow in accord with the terrain; the army controlsits victory in accord with the enemy. Thus the army does notmaintain any constant strategic configuration of power, waterhas no constant shape. One who is able to change and transform


in accordance with the enemy and wrest victory is termed spiri-tual. Thus none of the five phases constantly dominates; the fourseasons do not have constant positions; the sun shines for longerand shorter periods; and the moon wanes and waxes.107

From the Essence of The Art of War to the Essence of Asymmetric WarIt is obvious that The Art of War is informative in order to understand themeaning of asymmetric warfare. For Sun Tzu, the creation of asymmetriesis the key to victory. The Art of War can be seen as the embodiment ofasymmetric warfare or at least as a very good example of it. The firstpoint Sun Tzu makes clear is that asymmetries can be found and created invarious domains and dimensions. Sun Tzu points out a variety of potentialleverage points with which to achieve an asymmetric situation, at thetactical, operational, strategic and political level, in the physical, temporal,spatial and, importantly, the cognitive and moral domain. For Sun Tzu,war is a multi-level and multidimensional contest, where militaryoperations and actual fighting are an important, but not the only part.Sun Tzu has a keen eye for statecraft and the different dimensions inwhich war is waged. The political, diplomatic, economic and moraldimensions are not omitted, in fact, he warns against a singular exclusivefocus on the military dimension. Therefore, he addresses alliances,national infrastructure, the economy, political leadership and militaryleadership. He focuses on the moral dimension. Alliance cohesion, unitcohesion, trust among political and military leaders, trust amongmilitary leaders and their troops, and the morale of the troops arediscussed. All the above notions can be affected through physical actions,threats, misinformation, lack of information, and bribery; military andnon-military methods. Numerical, organizational, positional and temporaladvantages can be created and exploited. Surprising novel and varyingcombinations of weapons and methods are advocated, and not all ofthem are military in nature, nor do they all involve combat.

Similar leverage points were also identified by Metz and Johnson and var-ious other authors. They argue that

asymmetry can be political-strategic, military-strategic,operational or a combination of these. It can entail methods,


technologies, values, organizations, time perspectives, or somecombination of these. It can be short term or long term,deliberate or by default. It can be discrete or pursued inconjunction with symmetric approaches. Finally, it can haveboth psychological and physical dimensions.108

Second, although The Art of War offers a useful encyclopedia of potentialasymmetries, forcing one to think beyond the military dimension, it’svalue for the understanding of asymmetric warfare is rooted in more fun-damental views about the nature of war, the appropriate way to wage itand the formulation of strategy. The Art of War points to the requirementsfor waging war and formulating strategies, and both are normatively asym-metric. And this starts with the basic approach to studying war. WhileMetz and Johnson stated that asymmetric warfare is acting, organizingand thinking differently, this order should be reversed. UnderstandingSun Tzu and asymmetric warfare begins with the understanding that adifferent frame of thought is the core concept. What is striking aboutThe Art Of War, is the fact that it covers such a wide array of issues, thatit addresses all levels of war, and that Sun Tzu had a keen eye for themulti-dimensional character of war and the way several dimensions mayhave an impact on the outcome of war. With some justification, ColinGray labels The Art of War as a general theory of war.109 In fact, an essen-tial feature of The Art of War is that Sun Tzu advocates a holistic approachwhen studying or pondering war and in formulating strategies. A holisticapproach regards war as a multidimensional and multi-domain contest,with the military dimension just one of many. Understanding and wagingasymmetric warfare requires a holistic approach.

The fact that Sun Tzu favors a holistic approach is not surprising, asChinese thought is distinctly holistic and contextual. It stresses context,connections, change and the recognition of patterns as prime factors forcognition. This outlook permeates Sun Tzu’s work and is most obviouslypresent in the idea that order can be discerned and accordingly the worldcan be shaped. It is the one who possesses the superior ability to discernorder who is able to impose harmony between himself and the environ-ment, thereby shaping the opponent’s environment and making itdifficult for the him to do the same. This applies to all the levels weencounter in The Art of War, and leads to an additional important insight


provided by Sun Tzu on the nature of asymmetric war, an element thatis absent or not emphasized in the current debate on asymmetry. Thiselement may also explain some of the surprises the West has encounteredin operations during the nineties. Fundamentally, asymmetric war is notabout certain technologies, weapons or threats. It is about recognizing the fun-damental dialectic, the contextual and interactive nature of war. Asymmetryis relationally defined and constituted. The ability to wage asymmetric war-fare starts with a mindset that is able to understand this nature. War andstrategy revolve around the mind – one’s own and the opponent’s mind.

According to Sun Tzu, victory depends on informational advantage, ormore accurately, better judgement, coupled with an attitude and capa-bility of infinite flexibility and adaptability. ‘Know thine enemy’ is not anempty slogan. The West has often interpreted this as a requirement forinformation dominance. However, as the discussion of Sun Tzu abovedemonstrates, it should not be equated with information per se, but withstudy, a keen awareness of the dynamics of war, of the motives, habits,experiences, doctrines, interests, character, strengths and weaknesses ofan opponent. It relates to judgement, perception and recognition of pat-terns. The mind of the opponent is the prime target, the basis on whichto form one’s own strategy. Combat and is secondary and follows fromthat. This must not be construed as an unwillingness to engage incombat. The ancient Chinese strategic concept of ‘not fighting and sub-duing the enemy’ must not be interpreted as a preference for avoidingwar at all cost. Instead, it forces one to think in different dimensionsbefore and beyond actual combat in order to shape events, actions andintentions so as to facilitate combat if it occurs, while during combat, itmakes one concentrate on the mind of the opponent and the impact ofones actions’, instead of the tactical engagements themselves.

A holistic approach and the idea that ‘everything’ is connected within alarger context also affect the basic view on the preferable strategy: Nonein particular and all stratagems together in varying combinations andsequences. The highly contextual nature of war forces one to an approachbased on flexibility. This notion resides in organizational flexibility andadaptability, and in conceptual flexibility, which allows one to choosefrom a varied and wide repertoire of options when approaching theopponent. We see the tenets of a holistic approach, flexibility and adapt-


ability, in the dimensions and domains covered by the methods usedwhen approaching an opponent. None is exclusively aimed at one par-ticular domain, be it the physical, mental or moral one. For Sun Tzu, anyfavorable outcome of a conflict is the result of multiple methods appliedsimultaneously at several levels, reinforcing one another and shapingconditions for others to be effective.

At the grand strategic level this is manifest in the list of available strategieswhich include diplomatic, economic and military methods. At theoperational, tactical and military strategic levels, we see it in the inter-actions of the supporting concepts which all aim to put the enemy offbalance, to isolate sections of the opponent’s forces at differentaggregation levels of his system and thereby shaping him. Military dis-advantages can for instance be mitigated through waging war in non-military domains. Alternatively, military parity can be turned intoadvantage through the disruption of the opponent’s alliance. In otherwords, Sun Tzu describes methods that affect the whole, in that heregards the environment as a whole which includes the enemy.

This leads to another essential ingredient of asymmetric warfare. Wagingwar successfully requires a superior capability to adapt while affecting theopponent’s capability to adapt.110 The prime concept that reflects this, isthe idea that one should be in accordance with the enemy (which of courseis in line with notion of the contextual, dialectic and relational characterof asymmetric warfare). It reflects the understanding that the opponentbehaves unpredictably and in a non-linear fashion, and one’s effortsshould be to constantly monitor the state of the opponent and hisoptions and attempt to shape these options and limit their range andvariety. This drives one’s actions and the whole idea is about the need toconstantly adapt. Adapting means taking into account the opponent’sresponses, which are reflections of his attempts to adapt.

The corollary of building upon flexibility and adaptability is to deviseways of degrading the opponent’s ability to adapt and to decrease hismeasure of flexibility, to shrink his ‘decision space’ and his range ofoptions. The disruption of harmony between people and units featuresprominently in The Art of War. In fact, the first page of the first chapterdeals with the important aspect of harmony, in this case the importance


of always maintaining harmony on one’s own side. Sun Tzu aims at dis-rupting connections (moral, informational, spatial, ideational, and logis-tical). In The Art of War, Sun Tzu addresses relations between the leaderand his people; between the commander and his troops, and betweenunits. Sun Tzu states in various passages that these connections can bemanipulated or destroyed by: physically separating them; isolating them;dislocating them; by morally disrupting cohesion through creating dis-trust; through decreasing support for the leader by thwarting his plansand taking away his army; by spreading false information; by bribingofficials:111 through diplomatic pressure; through disrupting his alliances;and generally chipping away at the greatness of the leader and the legiti-macy and integrity of his actions.

The political goals of warfare could be achieved by creating a state ofchaos in the enemy’s society, which in the days of Sun Tzu meant thedestruction of the psychological, social and political order, which was theideal of classical Chinese society. Sun Tzu believed the goal of warfare wasto destroy the conditions of prosperity and order that formed the linkbetween the leader and his people. If the link was broken, then theleader’s claim for legitimacy was forfeited. The creation of a state of chaosmeant the moral failure of a leader and the shift of moral leadership tothe opposition, namely a rebel, usurper or invader.112

Sun Tzu also lists disorganization, distrust, ruin, collapse, flight andinsubordination as factors that can undermine an army, factors thatinduce chaos and lead the commander away from a state of harmony.Through the combination of the above factors and unanticipatedphysical movement, Sun Tzu aims to confuse (mental sphere) the enemyand work on his morale. Through the use of secrecy, rapid movementsand attacks, by attacking where not expected, by the combined use oforthodox and unorthodox methods the enemy will be dislocated, con-fused and numerically inferior, which affects the morale of the troops.The simultaneous employment of multiple (and varying) methods affectsmoral, mental and physical aspects at all levels of the enemy’s system. Thewhole idea of preservation of harmony at all levels, of inducing chaos atall levels of the enemy camp, of acquiring information and being form-less, fathomless and of maintaining secrecy, etc, is about the need tomaintain and affect the capability to adapt. The aim is to take action in


the various domains where he cannot react or does not know how torespond. In fact, when flexibility is degraded, so is his capability to adapt.

Asymmetric warfare is thus as old as warfare itself, and asymmetricstrategy is the proper way to wage it. Sun Tzu points out that finding,creating and exploiting asymmetries is the essence of strategy and showswhich elements are required in order to be successful at it. This discus-sion of the essence of The Art of War reveals what ‘acting, organizing andthinking differently’ in the definition of Metz and Johnson really means.This study of Sun Tzu’s thoughts reveals that asymmetric warfare is notabout weapons, threats or tactics, although they are inherently part of it.New types of weapons, new combinations and varying deployment pat-ters can create asymmetry, albeit perhaps briefly. But asymmetric warfareis definitely not confined to the military dimension. The political, moral,informational, spatial, temporal and cognitive dimensions offer potentialleverage points for more devastating asymmetries. Above all, this analysisshows that asymmetric warfare is about a mindset that is holistic, thatvalues flexibility and adaptability and that recognizes the contextual anddialectic nature of war. Colin Gray hits the mark when he states in a listof the various ways asymmetric threats ‘work’, that ‘asymmetric threatswork by defeating our strategic imagination’.113

Concluding RemarksThe essence of strategy and the argument that asymmetry is as old aswarfare itself may seem to be rather trivial issues, and as irrelevant as theentire debate on asymmetric war. Colin Gray has been very sceptical with respect to the concern and debate on asymmetric warfare,describing asymmetry as a hollow concept precisely because ‘defense andwar planning always have significant asymmetrical dimension’.114 Thereis, of course, some merit to his position. However, three reasons underpinthe significance of coming to grips with the concept and understandingthe nature of it, even if it means restating old truths about war andstrategy.

The first reason lies in the fact that in this era, when the West has shown aparticular appetite for military interventions, the chance of encounteringasymmetric responses (in the sense of non-Western methods and rules)


increases. The second reason lies in the West’s constant surprise when anopponent does not rapidly give in to the obvious demonstrations ofWestern military power.115 Stating that asymmetric warfare is about themind is not trite or trivial. Luttwak, Gooch and Cohen and scores ofothers have pointed out that failure to react, learn and anticipate willbring failure to armies and nations.116 Others state that, despite theexperiences in Vietnam, Somalia, Bosnia and Kosovo, the essence ofstrategy apparently eludes political and military leaders in the West.There appears to be little or no recognition and application of thestrategic-level lessons of the Vietnam War and the hundreds of other,smaller conflicts that have taken place over the past several years. Thiswas recently stated in a study on asymmetric warfare by an expert onstrategy and ‘small wars’.117 Revisiting a classic in strategic theory appearswarranted if it results in a better comprehension of a (perceived) policyproblem, no matter how hollow it may be.

The final reason is the obvious fact that various countries deliberatelyexamine the current Western style of warfare to form asymmetricresponses. The Serbs learned about patterns of Western air operationsfrom the Iraqis and incorporated these lessons in their air defense systemduring Allied Force. The concern for the WMD capacity of Iraq andNorth – Korea is reinforced by the deliberate attempts by these countriesto bury and harden their research, production and storage facilitiesexpressly in response to Western air ordnance capabilities and limitations.

For some countries, asymmetry is apparently shifting from a reactive anddefensive doctrine to a deliberate feature of defence planning. In a recentbook called Unrestricted Warfare, two serving Chinese colonels declaredthat since it cannot possibly win a conventional conflict with the UnitedStates, it needs to devise a different form of warfare, one which does notadhere to the rules of war that are set by the West. Although arguing thatachieving some form of asymmetry is the essence of strategy is perhapsstating the obvious, this is not an academic exercise. This Chinese bookhas caused quite a furor in the West because it demonstrates what is reallybehind the ‘not fighting’ concept. The authors, Chinese servingColonels, unveiled their view on how to counter the Western style ofwarfare. It begins with a thorough examination of the way the West, and inparticular the US, has fought wars in the past decade. They recognize the


pattern. In response, their approach is multi-dimensional and deliberatelynot confined to the military dimension. In the following table are listed thedomains in which war can be waged according to the authors.118

Military War Beyond Military War Nonmilitary WarNuclear Diplomatic FinancialConventional Internet TradeBio-Chemical Information Ops Natural ResourceEcological Psychological Economic AidSpace High Tech Law and RegulationsElectronic Smuggling SanctionsGuerilla Drug MediaTerrorism Deterrence Ideological

They advocate nonmilitary means, for instance Information Warfare andrelated concepts, such as the use of hackers, the mass media and financialinformation terrorism. Rules and conventions, such as the Laws ofArmed Combat are not adhered to, while the West’s political, moral andmilitary restraints are fully exploited. The key is the unique alignmentand integration of psychological and diplomatic resources and other war-fare techniques. Weapons and combat methods are not necessarilyrelated to military hardware or organizations.

More philosophically, the authors turn the West’s perception concerningthe nature, the meaning and the purpose of war against itself. War is notviolent military clashes, instead it must be understood as a constant con-test or struggle. The authors deliberately redefine the meaning of war andstretch it far beyond what most political leaders consider to be the cur-rent meaning of war. Thus academically they open the possibility ofbeing engaged in a war, employing non-military methods to achieve theiraim, while the West would not recognize that it was actually engaged inone. The book is a demonstration of the mindset that Sun Tzu favors. Itis the holistic and dialectic mind in action. It also demonstrates the prac-tice of a concept called quan bian, or absolute flexibility, that is related tothe idea of ‘according with the enemy’. This concept can be described as‘to respond flexibly and create conditions for victory’.119

This is obviously not official Chinese security or defense policy.


However, it shows that the West’s experiences with surprising andunnerving political and military countermoves by adaptive enemies, werenot exceptional events, and did not happen by chance or default.Asymmetric warfare, in the sense of ‘according with the enemy’, is for anincreasing number of states, armed forces and warlords a deliberatelyadopted approach. This reinforces the conclusion that, whereas the Westdiscusses ‘asymmetric’ as the deviation from the norm, asymmetric war-fare is in fact the norm in warfare. And Sun Tzu points the ways, or Tao,to wage it. We are indeed rediscovering the essence of strategy. The cur-rent concept of asymmetric warfare may be hollow, and the debate a mis-guided hype, but the re-educational side-effects may have a tremendouslyadvantageous effect by creating an awareness of the boundaries of one’sown thinking and practices. In light of the strategic mistakes made in thepast two centuries, nobody can deny that that in itself is very importantindeed. As Colin Gray remarked so beautifully, ‘an important argumentis not necessarily original […] because old truths can be forgotten, mis-laid, misapplied, ignored, or even explicitly defied, their periodic repeti-tion or even rediscovery is useful’.120

NOTES

1 Vincent J. Goulding, Jr., ‘Back to the Future with Asymmetric Warfare’, Parameters, Winter,2000–2001, p. 21.

2 ‘Asymmetrical Threats New Military Watchword’, Aviation Week & Space Technology, April 27,1998, p. 55. In this article this refers to ‘weapons and tactics that relatively weak enemies coulduse to foil or circumvent the West’s technological supremacy’.

3 See for instance the bibliography of asymmetric warfare of the US National Defense Universityat www.ndu.edu/library/pubs/warfare.html, which listed in August 2001 104 articles, books andreports, most of which were published after 1995.

4 Lawrence Freedman, ‘The Third World War?’, in Survival, Vol. 43, no.4,Winter 2001–02, p. 73. 5 Several authors have noted this. See for instance in ibid, p. 70., Freedman observes that ‘the very

success of Operation Desert Storm made it less likely that future enemies would fight in a waythat so conformed to American preferences’.

6 Ibid. A 1998 report from the National Defense University defined asymmetry as ‘not fightingfair’. This can be found in chapter eleven of the NDU/INSS publication Strategic Assessment1998,which is titled ‘Asymmetric Threats’. See www.ndu.edu/inss/sa98/sa98ch11.html.

7 Thomas Homer Dixon, ‘The Rise of Complex Terrorism’, Foreign Policy, January-February2002, pp. 52–63; Alvin and Heidi Toffler, War and Anti-War, Survival at the Dawn of the 21st


Century, Little, Brown and Company, London, 1993; and several chapters in John Arquilla andDavid Ronfledt, In Athena’s Camp, RAND, Santa Monica, 1997, in particular chapter 12, ‘TheAdvent of Netwar’.

8 Freedman, p. 71.9 Colin Gray, ‘Thinking Asymmetrically in Times of Terror’, Parameters, Spring 2002, p. 5.

10 Secretary of Defense William S. Cohen, Report of the Quadrennial Defense Review, Washington,D.C., Department of Defense, May 1997, Section II.

11 Transforming Defense: National Security in the 21st Century, Report of the National DefensePanel, Washington, D.C. December 1997, p. 11.

12 US Joint Chiefs of Staff, Joint Strategy Review 1999, Washington, D.C. p. 2.13 Kenneth F. McKenzie, Jr, ‘The Rise of Asymmetric Threats: Priorities for Defense Planning’,

Michele A. Flournoy (ed), ,QDR 2001, Strategy Driven Choices for America’s Security, NationalDefense University Press, Washington, D.C. 2001, p. 76.

14 Ibid, p. 7515 Ibid, pp.78-90. This approach to the meaning of asymmetry has not only been typical of military

or defence reports. See for instance the Spring 2000 article in Orbis by Winn Schwartau titled‘Asymmetric Adversaries’.

16 The already mentioned strategic assessment falls into this category, as do various other articles,for instance an article that summarized the proceedings of a conference debating the questionemanating from Joint Vision 2010, whether ‘this nation [ the US] be defeated by asymmetricmeans that strike at known Achilles heels of the Armed Forces as well as key nodes in a largelyunprotected civil infrastructure?’ See Robert David Steele, ‘The Asymmetric Threat: Listening tothe Debate’, Joint Forces Quarterly, Autumn-Winter 1998–99, pp. 78.

17 See for instance Nicholas Newman, Asymmetric Threats to British Military InterventionOperations, RUSI, Whitehall Paper Series, no. 49, London, 2000.

18 Timothy L. Thomas, ‘Deciphering Asymmetry’s Word Game’, Military Review, July–August2001, p. 33.

19 For instance the US planning document Joint Vision 2020 addresses asymmetric threats usingthe threat of long-range ballistic missiles as a key example; Department of Defense, Joint Vision2020, Washington, D.C., The Joint Staff, 2000, p.5.

20 See Freedman for this somewhat cynical, but nevertheless pertinent remark. Freedman, pp.71–72.

21 During the Second World War, the Germans displayed surprising adaptability in dispersing theirwar production facilities, delaying the materialization of the full effect of the Allied strategic airoffensive. See for instance Richard Overy, The Air War 1939–1945, Stein and Day, New York,1980, or Why The Allies Won, W.W. Norton & Company, New York, 1995. For the variousKorean countermeasures, see for instance Robert Futrell, The United States A ir Force in Korea1950–1953, Revised Edition, Office of Air Force History, United States Air Force, Washington,D.C., 1983. The interdiction campaigns in Vietnam are well documented. Insightful and wellknown are the analyses offered by Mark Clodfelter, The Limits of Air Power, The Free Press, NewYork, 1989, and by Robert Pape, Bombing to Win, Cornell University Press, Ithaca, 1996, in par-ticular chapter 6. For analyses of these tactics in recent operations, see for instance BenjaminLambeth, NATO’s Air War for Kosovo, A Strategic and Operational Assessment, RAND, SantaMonica, 2001; B.R. Posen, ‘The War for Kosovo; Serbia’s Political-Military Strategy’,International Security, 26, 1, pp. 93–128; Daniel Byman and Matthew Waxman, ‘Defeating USCoercion’, Survival, vol. 41, no.2, Summer 1999, pp. 107-20; D. Byman, K. Polak & M.Waxman, ‘Coercing Saddam Hussein: Lessons from the Past’, Survival, 40, 3, pp. 127–51;


Robert Scales, ‘Adaptive Enemies, Dealing with the Strategic Threat After 2010’, StrategicReview, Winter 1999, vol. 27, no. 1, pp. 5–14.

22 See for this argument for instance Goulding.23 K.J. Holsti, The State, War and the State of War, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 1996,

pp. 36–39.24 Mary Kaldor, ‘Introduction’, Global Insecurity, Restructuring the GlobalMilitary Sector, Volume III,

Pinter, New York, 2000, p. 6. In this chapter she summarizes key arguments from her insightfulbook New & Old Wars, Organized violence in a Global Era, Polity Press, London, 1999.

25 Ralph Peters, ‘The New Warrior Class’, Parameters, Summer 1994, p. 16.26 See William Lind, et al, ‘The Changing Face of War: Into the Fourth Generation’, Marine Corps

Gazette, October 1989; Thomas X. Hammes, ‘The Evolution of War: The Fourth Generation’,Marine Corps Gazette, September 1994, and William Lind, et al, ‘Fourth Generation Warfare:Another Look’, Marine Corps Gazette, December 1994.

27 As Colin Gray argues, not without reason, in chapters 3 and 4 in Modern Strategy, OxfordUniversity Press, Oxford, 1999.

28 Various authors besides van Creveld. Kaldor and Holsti have made this point,. See for instanceFreedman, p. 61, which is a repetition of a point he made earlier in The Revolution in StrategicAffairs, Adelphi Paper 318, Oxford University Press for IISS, London, 1998; Edward Luttwak,‘Towards Post-Heroic Warfare’, Foreign Affairs, 74.3 (May–June 1995) or Byman and Waxman,p. 108. The same observation is often made by authors debating the revolution in militaryaffairs, the literature about which is vast. An early influential paper arguing that an RMA wasunderway, appeared not long after Desert Storm: Eliot Cohen, ‘A Revolution in Warfare’, ForeignAffairs, no. 73, 1994, pp. 109–124. A useful short summary and discussion has been producedby Colin Gray, Weapons for Strategic Effect, Occasional Paper No. 21, Center for Strategy andTechnology, Air War College, Air University, Maxwell AFB, Alabama, January 2001. Mostrecently Gray discussed this topic in ‘The RMA and Intervention: A Sceptical View’,Contemporary Security Policy, vol. 22, no. 3, December 2001, pp. 52–65. Here he explicitlymakes the connection with asymmetric war. Other useful discussions that go beyond the slogansinclude Craig A. Snyder and J. Mohan Malik, ‘Developments in Modern Warfare’ and AndrewLatham, ‘Re-Imagining Warfare: The Revolution in Military Affairs’, both in Craig Snyder (ed),Contemporary Security and Strategy, MacMillan Press, London, 1999.

29 Martin van Creveld, The Transformation of War, New York, 1991, p. 142–143, also cited inHolsti, p. 38

30 Quite a few experts have contributed to this debate, for instance John Keegan, ChristopherBassford, Colin Gray, Robert Bunker.

31 The Tofflers discern first, second and third wave wars, and clashes of warforms. See War andAnti-War.

32 Freedman, p. 71.33 Charles Dunlap, ‘Asymmetric Warfare and the Western Mindset’, in Matthews, L.J. (ed),

Challenging the United States Symetrically and Asymetrically: Can America be Defended?, US ArmyWar College Strategic Studies Institute, 1998, p. 1, cited in Newman, p. 7.

34 Kristin S. Kolet, ‘Asymmetric Threats to the United States’, Comparative Strategy, 20, 2001, p.277.

35 Newman, pp. 2–4, 92.36 Bennett, B.W. , Twomey, C.P., Treverton, G.F., What are Asymmetric Strategies?, RAND, 1999,

p. 3.37 Freedman, p. 84.


38 Steven Metz, Armed Conflict in the 21st Century: The Information Revolution and Post-ModernWarfare, Strategic Studies Institute, U.S. Army War College, Carlisle Barracks, April 2000, p. 22.Basil Liddell Hart summarized his thoughts in an eight point advise in Strategy, Preager , NewYork, 1967, in particular chapter XX. Interestingly, this edition includes a two -page introduc-tion with citations from Sun Tzu’s The Art of War. Edward Luttwak basically argued that preciselybecause a certain strategy, doctrine, weapon, or method has proved its value in combat, it willnot be successful the next time because the opponent, and third parties observing the events, willlearn, respond and will attempt to nullify the advantage by taking countermeasures or byadopting the successful practices. See Edward Luttwak, Strategy, The Logic of War and Peace,Harvard University Press, Cambridge, Ma, 1987. Charles Dunlap has illustrated how techno-logical superiority, as demonstrated by the West in the nineties, creates its own counteractions,problems and dilemmas; Charles Dunlap, ‘Technology: Complicating moral life for the nation’sdefenders’, Parameters, vol. 29, no. 3, 1999, pp. 24–53.

39 Colin Gray, ‘Thinking Asymmetrically in Times of Terror’, p. 5.40 Several excellent interpretations have been published in the past decade. I rely in particular on

Ralph D. Sawyer’s new translation The Art of War, Bopulder, Co, 1994, with an extensive intro-duction for reference to the text. Additionally, I refer to Roger Ames, Sun Tzu, The Art of War,Balantine Books, New York, 1993, for additional explanation of some concepts, Ames being par-ticularly valuable for the intellectual context of The Art of War.

41 There are some pitfalls when interpreting Sun Tzu. Through analyzing Sun Tzu, one destroysstructures which may have a particular value or purpose. One may see what seems like relations,connections and continuities, but only after ripping apart the original setting of parts of the text.However, keeping in mind that what we know of The Art of War is to some extent fragmentaryanyway, there can’t be much harm in fragmenting it slightly further, if for no other purpose thanto see if one is able to increase one’s understanding or perhaps reveal new insights, as long as werealize that it is a mental exercise taking place in the 21th century in which meaning andlanguage may be differently connected than when The Art of War was written.

42 O’Dowd and Waldron, ‘Sun Tzu for Strategists’, Comparative Strategy, Volume 10, p. 25.43 For the sake of readability I have avoided enumerating all the Chinese names of the Chinese

commentators and translators, anyone interested in them should take a look at O’Dowd andWaldron, p. 26.

44 This is a very rough and unbalanced description of Boyd’s rich body of thought.45 This section about some fundamentals of Chinese thinking comes from Ames, pp. 43–66.46 This is not easily digestible material. However, anyone familiar with the ideas of modernity in

sociology will recognize similarities between this section and the concept of reflexivity. See forinstance Anthony Giddens, The Conseqences of Modernity, Blackwells, Oxford, 1990, p.36

47 In ancient China , righteous wars were of three types. The first and primary form of war was apunitive expedition carried out by the central authority against a local feudal leader for offences.The second form was revolutionary war or rebellion, which was justifiable only when the kingor emperor seriously deviated from the publicly accepted deeds of a leader and subsequentlyinflicted extreme hardship on the people. The third form of war was a war started by a feudalleader of a state against the leader of another state. This was considered an extraordinary phe-nomenon. See Chen-Ya Tien, Chinese Military Theory, Ancient and Modern, Mosaic Press,Oakville, 1992, p.31.

48 See Ames, pp. 68–7049 Sawyer, Ch 3, p. 177.50 Ibid, Ch 1, p. 167.


51 Ibid, Ch 3, p. 177.52 Which is not saying that the battles in the Warring States period were bloodless. During the

Warring States period, the scale of conflict surged phenomenally, sustained by the increasingagricultural productivity and expanding material prosperity. Weaker states could easily fieldarmies of 100.000 men and there are reports of armies being mobilized to a total of 600.000men. Numerical strength has become crucial. Casualty figures read like reports from the FirstWorld War: 100.000 casualties in the battle of Ma-ling in 341 B.C., a number growing to450.000 men being slaughtered in a single battle in 260 B.C. This also gives a glimpse into therequired level of sophisticated planning and coordination. See Sawyer, introduction, pp. 53–57.

53 Ibid, ch 3, p. 177.54 Ibid, ch 2, 173–174.55 Ibid, Ch 3, p. 177. 56 Ibid, Ch 8, p. 203–204.57 Although in the classical Chinese philosophical framework, our common division into grand

strategic, strategic, operational and tactical levels does not make any sense as they are interwoven.58 For some additional meanings see Ames. p. 73.59 In that respect I do not agree with Micheal Handel who, in his comparison of Sun Tzu,

Clasuewitz and Jomini, states that Sun Tzu is merely overoptimistic about the possibility ofgaining total knowledge and of shaping the environment. Handel also states that the differencesbetween Sun Tzu and Clasuewitz are definitely not due to different cultural outlooks. I think Idemonstrated that Sun Tzu’s emphasize on gaining information to shape the environment canbe perfectly understood within the framework of Chinese philosophy. It is completely consistentwith it. See Michael Handel, Masters of War.

60 The Tao causes the people to be in accordance with the leader, ch 1, p. 167.61 Sawyer, ch 1, p. 167.Note that the first, the fourth and the seventh are about factors that affect

cohesion in various levels of the system. The second takes into account the personal traits andqualities of the commander, qualities that are elsewhere defined in terms of discipline, wisdom,fairness, experience, righteousness and in character traits such as vanity and greed which may beexploited (see Sawyer, p. 133). The third is about the extent to which the season and the terrainare favorable for a campaign. Here the fact that we are dealing with an agrarian society is impor-tant, for soldiers needed food and the harvest needed to be secured so the men could only in cer-tain periods be gone from the state. The fifth is about quantity of the forces and the sixth aboutthe quality of those forces. So Sun Tzu makes sure that the most relevant factors are taken intoaccount.

62 Ibid, ch 4, p. 184.63 Ibid, ch 12, p. 228.64 Ibid, ch 4, p. 184.65 Ibid, ch 4, p. 18366 Ibid, ‘one who cannot be victorious assumes a defensive posture, one who can be victorious

attacks’, ch 4, p. 183. Here too preservations are paramount to exploiting opportunities later inthe campaign.

67 Ibid, ch 9, p. 203. Here is a crucial part for understanding the meaning of Sun Tzu’s quest forinformation. ‘Thus the general who has penetrating understanding of the advantages of the ninechanges knows how to employ the army. If a general does not have a penetrating understandingof the nine changes, even though he is familiar with the topography, he will not be able to realizethe advantages of terrain … even though he is familiar with the five advantages, he will not beable to control men.


68 Ibid, ch 9, p. 232, my emphasis.69 The idea that order and disorder are important notions in The Art of War is further substanti-

ated in ch 7p, 198–199, ‘in order await the disordered’ and do not intercept well ordered flags,do not attack well regulated formations; do not attack animated troops.

70 This comes from Sawyer, ch. 1, p. 168. 71 Ibid, ch. 11, p. 220.72 Ibid, ch. 8, p. 204.73 Ibid, p. 134.74 See for instance Sawyer, ch. 7, p. 198: The ch’i (spirit, morale) … can be snatched away; the

commanding general’s mind can be seized … in the morning their ch’i is ardent; during the daytheir ch’i becomes indolent; at dusk their ch’i is exhausted. Thus one who excels at employingthe army avoids their ardent ch’i and strikes when ch’i is indolent or exhausted. This is the wayto manipulate ch’i.

75 Thus one’s army is established by deceit, moves to gain advantage, and changes through seg-menting and reuniting. Thus it’s speed is like the wind, its slowness like the forest; its invasionlike a fire; unmoving it is like the mountain. It is as difficult to know as the darkness; in move-ment it is like thunder’, Sawyer, ch .7, p. 198.

76 Although it may seem that confusion is all that matters to Sun Tzu, numbers and physicalaspects frequently appear in his deliberations. In Ch 3 he brings the relative strength of oppo-nents in relations to possible actions such as ‘if your strength is ten times theirs, surround them;if five then attack him, if double, then divide your force…if outmatched, you can avoid him.Thus a small enemy that acts inflexibly will become the captives of a large enemy.

77 Sawyer, ch 6, p. 191.78 Ibid, ch. 4, p. 183–184.79 Ibid.80 Ibid, ch. 3, p. 178.81 Ibid, ch. 1, p. 179.82 Ibid, ch. 3, p. 177.83 Ibid, ch. 11, p. 224.84 Ames, p. 84.85 Sawyer, ch 7, p. 193.86 Ames, p. 84.87 Sawyer, ch. 11, p. 224.88 Ibid, ch 9, 208-209.89 Ibid, ch. 11, p. 223.90 Ibid, ch. 13, p. 231.91 Ibid, ch. 9, p. 210.92 Ibid, ch. 7, p. 199.93 Ibid, ch. 10, p. 21594 Ibid, ch. 7, p. 198.95 Ibid, ch. 11, p. 224.96 Ibid, ch. 3, p. 178.97 Ibid, ch. 7, p. 199.98 Ibid, ch. 11, p. 22299 Ibid, ch. 5, p. 188.

100 Ibid, ch. 6, p. 192.101 Ibid, ch. 11, p. 220.


102 Ibid, ch. 11, p. 222103 Ibid, ch. 6, p. 193.104 Ibid, ch. 5, p. 187.105 Saywer has a good discussion on this on pp. 147–150, but see also Hamlett, pp. 13–15 and

O’Dowd and Waldon p. 30.106 The source for this section is O’Dowd and Waldron, p. 31–32.107 Ibid, ch. 6, p. 193108 Metz and Johnson, pp. 5–6.109 Colin Gray, Modern Strategy, Oxford, 1999, pp. 124–126. Gray accords Sun Tzu a similar acco-

lade, but earlier in the book ( p.84) he dismisses Sun Tzu as a general theorist of war becauseSun Tzu ‘provides cook-book guidance for statecraft, rather than a comprehensive theory ofwar’. If the discussion of The Art of War in this chapter is not too far off the mark, I suggestthat this impression needs at least to be somewhat amended in favor of Sun Tzu .

110 Metz and Johnson stay very close to Sun Tzu when they stated that maximum conceptual andorganizational adaptability is the key for waging asymmetric warfare.

111 Although not covered here, anyone interested in subverting a government from within should takea look at the T’ai K’ung’s Six Secret Teachings in The Seven Military Classics of Ancient China.

112 O’Dowd and Waldron, p. 27.113 Gray, ‘Thinking Asymmetrically in Times of Terror’, p. 8.114 Ibid, p. 14.115 During Allied Force, NATO was surprised to notice how Milosovic did not adhere to the

NATO assessment that he would give in after three days of light bombing. Another surprisewas how he managed to counter NATO actions through a media offensive that bolstered Serbmorale while undermining the public perception of the legitimacy of the NATO operations,through cunning tactical countermeasures that mitigated NATO’s the air advantage, and vari-ous other moves. The latest of such a surprise was voiced by Pentagon’s spokesman Vice-Admiral Stoofflebeam when the Taliban ignored the fact that was already defeated andcontinued fighting. Saddam Hussein also employs a variety of measures. See Byman, Polak andWaxman. Additionally see, Gary C. Webb, ‘A New Twist in Unconventional War;Undermining Airpower’, Joint Forces Quarterly, Spring/Summer 2001, pp. 88–93.

116 Eliot Cohen and John Gooch, Military Misfortunes: The Anatomy of Military Failures, NewYork, 1990.

117 Max G. Manwaring, Internal Wars: Rethinking Problem and Response, US Army War College,Strategic Studies Institute, September 2001, p.1. This is the second publication of SSI of aseries dedicated to Studies in Asymmetry.

118 This is derived from a lecture by Prof. George Stein at the Netherlands Defence College,January 2000.

119 Timothy Thomas, ‘Human Network Attacks’, Military Review, September-October 1999, p. 26.

120 Colin Gray, Explorations in Strategy, Greenwood Press, Westport, Connecticut, 1996, p. 235.


Asymmetrical Warfare: Ends or Means?

Dr. Christopher CokerAsymmetrical warfare is one of the most widely used terms of art in theUS military. For an example of asymmetry at work we need look nofurther than the September 11 World Trade Center attack: a low-techattack on a high-tech society; an attack on a state by a non-state actor; anact of terror rather than a conventional use of force. And it is this lastfactor that should be most worrying for the West. For the Western worldis engaged in managing insecurity against a range of threats of whichterrorism is just one. In its use of force, however, it is attempting to makewar both more humane and less ‘risk averse’. Its enemies, by comparison,are trying to do the opposite: to make it more inhumane and make itmore unpredictable. In a word, the West is now particularly vulnerableto asymmetrical strategies.

The end set by other societies is not to impose its will on the West (ourway of understanding war) but to prevent countries like the UnitedStates from imposing its will on them. The means is to turn the West’sstrengths against it. As William Perry remarked in 1998: “our enemieswill follow Sun Tzu and turn our strengths against us”. Sun Tzu tells usthat “one gains victory through the unorthodox”. And the means to dothat, he also tells us, is to know the enemy: “the general who knows hisenemy will not be endangered in a hundred engagements”. What hemeant by ‘knows’ does not mean merely intelligence about enemy plansor formations; knowledge goes beyond the simple acquisition of infor-mation to include an understanding of the thought processes and valuesystems of an enemy leadership as well as an enemy population.

That understanding has never been greater when it comes to a non-Western understanding of the Western world today. Last year 72% of allprogrammes and films on TV worldwide were American in origin. The

United States is being watched every day yet America is remarkablyillinformed about the rest of the world. Its ignorance may cost it dear.

Why Asymmetrical Warfare is FashionableThere are three reasons why asymmetrical warfare has become the vogueterm invoked in military academies and institutes across the Westernworld. The first, as the Gulf War showed, is that no non-Western societycan challenge the United States in a conventional war. American militarysuperiority is greater today than ever. It enjoys organisation, technology,education and capital to engage non-Western societies on terms of itsown choosing. If they are to have any hope of success they have to changethe rules.

The second reason is the West is only planning to fight non-Westernsocieties in future. All Western forces have been reconfigured to becomeexpeditionary forces, fighting disengaged conflicts, projecting force farafield.

Thirdly, asymmetric warfare is as old as war itself but the way the Westnow fights its wars makes it especially vulnerable to asymmetricstrategies. It expects a decisive victory; it abhors casualties; it is lesswarlike than at any time in its history. Once the resort of the strong,writes Michael Mandelbaum, war is now the resort of the weak. Westernsocieties use war as a means of last resort; weaker societies use it as ameans of first, in part, because the weak have much less to lose.

Faced with the reality of Western military power (the dismantling ofanother country like Afghanistan in two months); faced with the realityof American hegemony in the early twenty-first century (the 200,000 airsorties flown near Iraq alone in the 1990s); faced with the renewed con-fidence and self-assertiveness as a result of the September 11 attack whatdo non-Western societies do? They look at the West’s vulnerability andchoose their means accordingly. The end is to prevent the West fromturning war into crisis management. The means is to prevent it frombeing fought humanely and in a risk-averse fashion. It is to make it asbloody as possible, and as unpredictable as one can.

ASYMMETRICAL WARFARE320

Humane WarfareWhen using the term ‘humane’ one is looking at three factors. First, theattempt to minimise casualties on one’s own side, to reduce risk to one’sown men. The second is to fight one’s enemies humanely: with theminimum of collateral damage to citizens and non-belligerents alike. Thethird is to be seen to be acting in a humanitarian fashion. Indeed Westernsoldiers are increasingly encouraged to see themselves as humanitarians.

Some research suggests that the body bag syndrome is exaggerated. IfAmerican public opinion does not like incurring casualties it does notinsist either on bloodless wars. In Kosovo the American people stood byas their country applied the decisive use of force. The air war may nothave won the campaign but it represented an enormous commitment ofmilitary power. The United States deployed two thirds as many planes asit would now envisage in another war against Iraq and flew a third asmany sorties as it did in ‘Desert Storm’. When governments deploy forcedecisively they indicate that operations are important and by implicationsuggest that a military reverse might actually matter.

It seems to me that such arguments, though well taken, miss the pointon a number of counts. First, ‘zero tolerance’ is real enough in the mindsof those who advise policy makers including the military. Whether theperception of casualty aversion is accurate or not it seems to shape cur-rent American military planning as well as long term force development.In a society which is structured around the avoidance of risks in all walksof life the military will also be encouraged to see risk aversion as itsprincipal mission. ‘Force protection has become the air force’s highestpriority’ writes Brigadier-Gen. Richard Coleman, the Director of USAFsecurity forces, ‘conducting that mission is now as important asprojecting our combat power’.

The second problem is that many of the West’s adversaries are fully awarethat societies they may have to fight are risk averse. America’s adversariesare watching it closely. Its withdrawal from Somalia was a disaster for itsstanding in the Islamic world where a willingness to die for one’s belieftends to be seen as a sign of moral conviction. Interviewed on ABC newsthe terrorist leader Osama bin Laden made the following observation:

ASYMMETRICAL WARFARE 321

We have seen in the last decade the decline of the AmericanGovernment and the weakness of the American soldier who isready to wage cold wars and unprepared to fight long wars. Thiswas proven in Beirut when the Marines fled after twoexplosions. It also proves they can run in less than 24 hours andthat was also repeated in Somalia.

A few years later he drove home the point by unleashing an attack onNew York.

His dismissive attitude was shared by other political factions in theMiddle East. A few years earlier the Commander of Iran’s RevolutionaryGuard told a CNN anchorman that he expected the Americans to balknot only at war related deaths but soldiers taken prisoner in battle. If Iranwere to be invaded he expected to take 20,000 prisoners but he alsothought that Washington would be at the negotiating table after losingonly a thousand. Islamic fundamentalists (or for that matter anyone else)can hardly be blamed for arriving at the opinion when our unqualifiedrespect for individual life is making it increasingly difficult to hazard lifein battle. What else are they to conclude when they see the US flying 500sorties in 1995 (about a third of the British sorties flown during the entireKosovo conflict) to rescue one downed air pilot, Capt Scot O’Grady.

Concern for excessive force protection is expressed by America’s allies aswell. Many are worried that the low tolerance of casualties has become thebenchmark of expectation of success in war. They are critical for thePentagon’s enthusiasm for ‘disengaged conflict’ – the ability to use stand-off weapons where possible to avoid committing ground troops. Andwhen troops are deployed on the ground the situation is often no better.Conservative operation procedures created problems at senior NATOlevels when the Americans were sent to Bosnia. Once there their troopswere safely ensconced in their base camps they became ‘ninja turtles’ inthe eyes of the locals. Some described them as ‘prisoners of peace’, lockedaway like POWs behind the safety of their barbed wire fences. In Somaliathe insistence of the Americans on wearing their helmets and bodyarmour on patrol (they were called ‘human tanks’ by the locals), and theirreluctance to mount street patrols without combat support from heli-copter gun ships overhead, produced a fatal combination. They both


inspired fear and appeared to be fearful, a paradox which was an importantfactor in provoking a hostile response on the part of the local population.

Zero tolerance of casualties may be an example of our respect for humanlife but it is also a reflection of something more profound and disturbing,our belief that a life lost is a waste. Hence the popular euphemism forkilling, not taking life but ‘wasting’ it. One of the principal reasons wecannot justify casualties any longer is that we can no longer make senseof the waste of life in the complex situations that demand the use offorce. Our soldiers have lost a sense of tragedy they inherited from theGreeks and which was such a central feature of western humanism.

“It was a watershed”, one State Department official observed of theSomalia fiasco, a watershed for the naïve belief “that good, decent, inno-cent people were being opposed by evil, thuggish leaders”. Like many ofthe soldiers this particular official could not comprehend a society inwhich people claimed to want peace but were not prepared to share itwith other clans in order to attain it.

People in these countries – Bosnia is a more recent example –don’t want peace. They want victory. They want power …Somalia was the experience that taught us that people in theseplaces bear much of the responsibility for things being the waythey are. The hatred and the killing continues because they wantit to. Because they don’t want peace enough to stop it.

It is an opinion that reflects an idea of history defined in starkly etchedcolours and contrasts, rather than history’s true colour: the hue of grey.

It is only our sense of the tragic that tells us that there are not always solu-tions in life because no resolution is ever final, and few causes are evertotally just. Tragedy usually involves, not the clash of good versus bad buttwo half truths – the fact that they are half true is what makes life tragic.

But then the United States is no longer a society that is in touch withtragedy as a way of understanding life. Some years ago the militaryhistorian, Williamson Murray, took an informal poll of 65 students onhis military history courses in three different universities and found only


five had been exposed at high school or university to a single Greek tragedy.The academic world, he warns, is producing a generation of Americanswho are incapable of understanding the nature of the tragic through themedium of books. One day they may find themselves disadvantaged whenthey find themselves fighting people beyond their comprehension.

There is not a problem that confronted the Greeks. The great virtue ofreading Euripides’ Trojan War plays (the most savage indictment of thecruelty of war to be found anywhere in the Western canon) is thatarguments are never resolved by scholarly argument. The counter propo-sition would have been incomprehensible to the Greeks. And it isprecisely because their tragedies grew out of a chaotic world in whichviolence was often random and ever present that what they had to sayabout it should still be of interest to us. For the great tragedies convey theimage of a radically plural world in which there is no ultimate principleand no ultimate judge to reconcile all differences. Differences have toresolve themselves.

The American philosopher, Richard Rorty, describes himself as ‘a tragicliberal’ for that reason. Alisdair MacIntyre, though eschewing thatdescription himself, comes up with a similar diagnosis. He agrees withRorty that we have lost the point of reference that allows us to judge, thatis why the work of Sophocles and Euripides is so vital for the world theyportray has no common reference point either. That life could be the siteof an agon (conflict) between opposing sides, each believing itself to bejustified was obvious to both playwrights. It sufficed that religion gavelittle explicit instruction how to overcome such conflicts, let alone resolvethem, but instead made apparent that conflict was a normal part of life.One relied on one’s own arguments (not the truth) and continued thefight as long as one’s argument was coherent. The force of that logic onthe battlefield is what gave war its humanistic colouring.

Is the problem the medium rather than the message? In a world in whichthe cinema to a very large extent determines our perception of the world,the sense of the tragic is also largely absent. Most of the Hollywood fareoffered on our cinema and TV screens is not in itself necessarily self-limiting but its life-enhancing themes, usually describing triumph overadversity, do not always describe the world as it is.


The issue, writes Mark Le Fanu, hinges on the notion of seriousness, andtaking seriousness seriously. “A measure of bleakness is part of the humancondition and it used to be possible to reflect this in art”. It seems impos-sible to do so any longer. If we take a defining event: the war in Bosniawhich claimed over 250,000 lives in the first half of the 1990s, the warpassed almost without comment in Hollywood. Those films that didemerge from the conflict had an energy and inventiveness which put themin a different league. But how many were seen in the West? Emir Kusturica’sdiptych about the war, ‘Underground’ (1995) and ‘Black Cat, White Cat’(1998) found few takers at the box office in the West. And filmmakerswould have had to have been astute indeed to catch the other great filmsabout the war: Goran Paskaljevic’s ‘The Powder Keg’, Srdjan Dragojevic’s‘Pretty Village, Pretty Flame’, Stole Popov’s ‘Gypsy Magic’ and, mostmemorably, Ademir Kenovic’s melancholy masterpiece ‘The Perfect Circle’.Each of them in their different ways were compelling works of art, imbuedwith a concept of tragedy that would have helped decode the conflict for aWestern audience had there been one of any significant size.

Without a sense of the tragic it is difficult to justify casualties. The extentto which the West has turned its back on its own tragic heritage is confir-mation perhaps that its humanism now runs skin deep. It is, of course, nota specific American problem. It is inherent in all power and perhaps, theUnited States, more powerful now than ever before, merely reflects thatfact more than any other country. Power, after all, is often associated withthe privilege of not having to learn. MacIntyre quotes the Australian JohnAnderson who urges us “not to ask of the social institution: ‘what end orpurpose does it serve?’” but rather, “of what conflicts is it the scene?” Itwas the Greeks’ unique insight that it is through conflict and sometimesonly through conflict that the warrior learns what his own ends andpurposes are. It is that understanding that makes him a true moral agent.

Let me turn to a second dilemma. For not only are western societiesunwilling to demand too much of their own soldiers; they are alsoincreasingly reluctant to appear insensitive to human suffering. Insteadthey are expected to experience humanity in both senses of the word.During the Kosovo war, for example, the Director of InformationStrategy and News of the British Ministry of Defence, when asked toname the Ministry’s greatest success, had no hesitation. Every time the


alliance was criticised for collateral damage, accidental attacks on refugeeconvoys and later the death of civilians incurred in raids on Belgrade, itwas able “to get the message back on line” – to the plight of refugees onwhose behalf they were at war with Milosevic. They were able toconcentrate public opinion on the humanitarian disaster that wasunfolding on the ground. NATO remained ‘on message’ until the end ofthe crisis. As the refugees were seen streaming across the frontier to bepenned in over-crowded refugee camps, the West was able to wrap itsactions in a humanitarian discourse.

But that is the problem. The humanity of our soldiers has to be seen on tele-vision if the media itself is not to become an ‘asymmetric asset’. And todaythe media scrutiny of war is unprecedented and exerts a strong influence onthe way Western democracies fight. Learning from its experience inVietnam the US imposed strict controls on the mass media. Few gruesomepictures were shown during the Gulf War. Of the 1,104 ‘Desert Storm’photographs which appeared in the nation’s three major news magazines,only 38 showed actual combat, while 249 were ‘catalogue’ style photo-graphs of military hardware. In the end, General Powell terminated combatoperations before they fulfilled the objective of destroying Iraq’s eliteRepublican Guard. The media had obtained footage of carnage on the roadto Basra which they were quick to name emotively “the highway of death”.They also began running stories of pilots who had expressed misgivingsabout shooting up Iraqi troops who were powerless to defend themselves.

Real time broadcasting was also a problem in Somalia. In February 1995the US Marines could have used non-lethal weapons: in this case stickyfoam to enhance barbed wire and other barriers. But they were deterredfrom doing so, even though weapons were not lethal, because of theirfear of Somali youths getting stuck and then injuring themselves strug-gling to break free. As one Marine officer put it at the time:

If the sticky foam had been used to cover unattended portions ofbarbed wire during the night, in the morning we would havefound a dozen Somali youths stuck to the wire, entangled in abloody trap. Removing the trespassers from the wire would bedifficult and not play well on CNN.


When it comes to the news media, and especially the cable channels andnetworks proliferating within the Western world, the West, of course, is notentirely on the defensive. It would be wrong to exaggerate the extent towhich a transparent media environment is a necessary handicap for militaryoperations. Recent Chinese writing on the Revolution in Military Affairsdisplays a fascination with the West’s ability to determine reality not onlyfor itself but the world. In the Gulf the West was able to use news reportsfrom over 100 on site reporters, exaggerating the success of the Patriotmissiles to keep Israel out of the war and to hold the alliance together. Andit made effective use of TV news releases and radio broadcasts and real timetransmission to make the war appear more bloodless than it was.

The West is also well placed to fight media wars for another reason, evenmore important. It owns most of the real time cable news networks. Andthe latter tend to frame the debate in Western terms, in the vernacular ofa democratic discourse. If an Arab company (rather than CNN) had beenpresent when Iraq invaded Kuwait in 1990 it might have framed the event,not as an act of aggression, but an attempt to reverse over a century ofcolonial humiliation. And the gradual allied build up during ‘DesertShield’ produced such an imbalance of forces between the coalition andIraq that an Arab news agency might have chosen to frame the debate interms of the humiliation of a fellow Arab nation. Indeed this is whathappened when the network Al-Jazeera covered President Bush’s first ‘warof the twenty-first century’, the war against terrorism. The newscastersshowed not so much a war against Islam but the humiliation of yet anotherMoslem society, this time Afghanistan, a theme which had much greaterresonance in the Arab world.

Thirdly, Western institutions are still seen as transparent and thereforecredible. In an information age credibility is a crucial resource and“asymmetrical credibility is a key source of power”. To establishcredibility you need to develop a reputation for providing correctinformation even when it may reflect badly on your own side. After all,it is the perceived impartiality of Western reporters that makes credibletheir reports. In an age when legitimacy matters more than strict legalityWestern governments can treat this credulity as a crucial resource. Giventhe abundance of information in the world, the ability to determine theinterpretation of facts is extremely important. Political struggles, we are


told, now focus less on control over the ability to transmit informationthan over the creation and destruction of credibility.

And that is especially important not only for world opinion, but publicopinion at home. For western democracies too are becoming more inter-ested in legitimacy than strict legality. While the rule of law is a centralcharacteristic of a democratic state, its belief in the legitimacy of an inter-national norm and observance of that norm does not imply the state islaw abiding or submissive to authority. As Ian Hird points out, often theopposite is true: “A normative conviction about legitimacy might lead tonon-compliance with law when laws are considered in conflict with thatconviction”. Arguably that was the case with NATO and Kosovo.

But while the West certainly has an advantage when it comes to thetransmission and dissemination of news, it suffers from several disadvan-tages as well which allow non-western actors to maximise its own senseof unease. The fact that the global media channels are Western promotes“virtual convergence”. It makes the world into a single cognitive space, avariation of the global village. The non-Western world knows muchmore about the United States than the United States knows about it. AsMartin Libicki warns, small states may be able to use “the globalisationof perception” to cast themselves as victims even in the eyes ofAmericans. Reading the psyche of the American people is considerablyeasier than reading that of the Chinese.

In fact, many non western societies have proved adept at exploiting USsensibilities. There are many examples – the use made of women andchildren as human shields by Somali warlords or Saddam Hussein’sdecision to ring his palaces with civilians to deter American air strikes in1998, or the decision by groups of Belgrade Serbs wearing ‘target patches’who lined the main bridges to forestall NATO air strikes in the 1999 war.And the very fact that Western societies now seem to care more forlegitimacy than legality is problematic. To be legitimate these days youmust be humane. You must avoid the pain and suffering that Nietzsche(speaking for the Greeks) recognised is what makes life subjective: theneed to experience it and make sense of suffering, not conjure it away.

Today, the strict enforcement of international law must be seen to be upheld


whatever the cost in casualties. By contrast the enforcement of a legitimatenorm demands a different set of rules. The contest in Kosovo, writesMichael Ignatieff, was so unequal, and seen as such on TV, that NATOcould only occupy the moral high ground by observing especially strict rulesof engagement. Even earlier, the rules of engagement (ROEs) for OperationDeliberate Force (1995) had posed a problem. Special instructions wereissued to pilots who were involved in attacking bridges. They were expectedto make a dry run over the target and attack on an axis perpendicular to it,releasing one bomb per pass. Those responsible for suppressing enemy airdefence were not permitted to conduct pre-emptive reactive strikes againstsurface to air missile sites, except under strict conditions.

Fear of producing casualties also involves troops on the ground. In Somaliathe Tenth Mountain Division was trained to work in combined armsterms, usually with tanks, and infantry fighting vehicles attached toinfantry units. But it was not allowed to use its artillery to blast throughdoors or windows that might be booby trapped. AC-130s, the gunshipvariant of the C130 turboprop transport, were also not available onOctober 3 because their previous employment had resulted in an un-acceptable level of collateral damage. As Colin Powell put it at the time: “theywrecked a few buildings and it was not the greatest imagery on CNN”.

But it seems to me that the problems of appearing ‘humane’ run muchdeeper. The modern soldier is the product of a purely visual culture. Hehas spent his childhood watching films, and playing computer games. Asa result he is a creature of an age which has made violence largely ‘virtual’and war an entertainment which raises few questions, moral or political.And the civilians who send him to battle the enemies of humanitarianismare creatures of the age too. For while televised images of humansuffering may impel them to act, they do not provide any insight intoanything that approaches irony, conflict or dilemma – the dilemma, forexample, of having to act cruelly in the name of humanity or human-itarianism, or at the very least accept the need for a human cost.

The third dilemma western armies face is rather different. Our soldiersare being asked to confront a ‘post-modern humanism’ which allows usto recognise in others our own complex selves, making the stranger forthe first time fully accessible and imaginable. As Julia Kristeva claims


“strangely the foreigner lives within us: he is the hidden face of ouridentity, the space that wrecks our abode, the time in which under-standing and affinity found us. By recognising him within ourselves, weare spared detesting him in himself ”.

As a result we are grounding our moral commitment to war no longer onabstract metaphysical principles but on a biological commitment toavoid inflicting pain on others, and to punish those who inflict pain ontheir own citizens. Tzestvan Todorov is right to attribute this largely tothe West. By contrast with other cultures this is Western humanismtaken further. Todorov, incidentally, is not claiming any superiority forWestern civilisation, he is merely making an observation. It is only theWest which has changed its own behaviour in dialogue with others. Itshuman rights agenda and its interest in humanitarian wars is largely aproduct of the lessons learned from the anti-colonial, anti-apartheid, andother struggles which marked the western retreat from empire.

All this may appear rather remote from the practical concerns of soldiering.But there are many people who would like to see the military empathiseeven more with others. Some analysts would like to see the military moreactively involved in vaccination programmes; the management of foodcentres; the distribution of relief items. They would like to see the lastvestige of the warrior ethos disappear altogether. The problem with this isthat the military is becoming divided between those who still see them-selves as warriors and those who see themselves as humanitarians. It is adanger that has been analyses by two American sociologists of the militarywho take as their case study, American involvement in Somalia.

We must be careful, of course, about using Somalia as our only casestudy. It was not a war. It was described from the start as a humanitarianmission. Most of the soldiers interviewed claimed they had been toldthey were coming to rescue the Somalis and that they would largely beinvolved in relief work similar to that which had been undertaken after‘Hurricane Andrew’ in Florida the previous summer. And so in a sensethey were, though most of the relief work was undertaken by engineersworking in rural areas, clearing land mines and building roads. By con-trast, the marines in Mogadishu soon found themselves instead in themiddle of a civil war.


Soon afterwards the cultural fault lines running through the militarybegan to be exposed. Black soldiers were especially vulnerable. They hadbeen drawn to the conflict by the fact that it was one of the firstAmerican military missions in Africa, offering them a once in a lifetimeopportunity to discover their African roots. But they were soon singledout as the main object of hatred and scorn. The Somalis expected themto be able to speak their language and when they discovered they couldn’ttook it as a personal affront. They were also racially different. Becausethey were not Semitic Somali children frequently abused them on patrolby calling them ‘adorn’, the Somali word for slave. Black women soldierswere especially singled out and accused of being ‘whores’ for not coveringtheir heads while out on patrol.

The Americans themselves repaid the compliment. Many soldiers any-way had a low opinion of the Somalis whom they found lazy andanarchistic and excessively prone to argument and violence. Unusually,they didn’t invent a pejorative word for the Somalis as they had for theVietnamese (gooks). As one soldier commented, the word ‘Somali’ wasbad enough. But despite the abuse they suffered black soldiers, especiallywomen, were prepared to give the Somalis the benefit of the doubt.Many found the attitudes of their own white colleagues to be racist.

There is much more in the study I have just quoted about internaldivisions within the military, between whites and blacks and men andwomen. But one of the key ones was between those who saw themselvesas warriors (bitterly critical of the restraining orders preventing themfrom dealing as harshly with the Somalis as other contingents wereallowed to) and those who saw themselves as humanitarians, who put apremium on being humane.

What is even more striking, however, is that few of the soldiers whothought of themselves as ‘humanitarians’ seem to have been aware of howthey were seen by the Somalis themselves. There was much respect fortheir humanitarian mission but not for humanitarian soldiers. And thiswas not just because a warrior culture despised a post-modern military.Even the Somalis who originally welcomed the American interventionfound themselves at odds with the American mission. They particularlydisliked the Rangers and their use of Black Hawks (helicopter transports)


which flew over the city continuously, swooping down so low that theydestroyed whole neighbourhoods, blowing down market stalls and ter-rorising cattle. The helicopters would create havoc on the streets leavingthe crowds below choking on dust and exhaust. Often women walkingdown the streets would have their robes blown off. Some had childrentorn from their arms by the powerful up-draught made by the helicoptersas they hovered overhead. In a word, many Somalis felt brutalised.

In an account of the famous fire fight on October 18 which left 18Rangers dead, the journalist Mark Bowden tells one story, that of ayoung man who had been educated in South Carolina and knew andliked Americans but found their actions increasingly offensive.

The helicopters had become an evil presence over the city. Yusufremembered lying in bed one night with his wife who waspregnant when Black Hawks had come. One hovered directlyover their house. The walls shook and the noise was deafeningand he was afraid his roof, like others in the village, would besucked off. In the racket his wife reached over and placed hishand on her belly: ‘Can you feel it’, she asked. He felt his sonkicking in her womb, as if thrashing with fright.

As a lawyer who spoke fluent English, Yusuf had led a group ofhis villagers to the UN compound to complain. They were toldnothing could be done about the Rangers. They were not underUN command. Soon every death associated with the fightingwas blamed on the Rangers. Somalis joked bitterly that theUnited States had come to feed them just to fatten them up forthe slaughter.

In short, the operation in Somalia was not a true inter-subjectiveexperience for the Americans because they never understood theirenemies, or tried very hard to. In the end, the US military was deeplydemoralised in Mogadishu, particularly as a result of finding that the otherside wouldn’t allow it to be humane and even more finding that its tech-nology did not always allow it to fight humanely. That is the fate, however,of the purely instrumental warrior. He – or she – has great difficulty infinding war life enhancing; and that goes for humanitarian soldiers too.


Risk AversionIf you go on one of the war games or exercises conducted in the UnitedStates you find the US military is turning increasingly to comic booksand films to come up with striking names for its new enemies. In theMojave Desert, ‘Hamchuks’ and ‘Samarians’ run about in their greenjumpsuits and black berets. In Orange County, San Francisco, ‘Boolean’refugees present a new security challenge. If you ask commanders for thereal country or real name you get the same reply: “we don’t do countries,we do uncertainties”.

Uncertainty, declared Tom Ridge, the US Homeland Defense Chief afterSeptember 11, is now the name of the game. Non-Western societies ormovements are likely to play on Western anxieties, specially the fear ofrisk. Our societies are risk-averse because they are so anxious about theside-effects of technology, the fall-out effects of change, the unintendedconsequences of their own actions. A society factored around risk willbreed a risk-averse military culture and a risk-averse culture is open tothree asymmetric tactics which rely on making war more risky than ever.

DeterrenceWhen discussing deterrence we face the problem that much of the liter-ature emerged from the context of the nuclear stand-off which charac-terised the Cold War. The concept of deterrence – convincing an opponentthat the risks of a particular course of action (such as military inter-vention) outweigh any possible gains are not new, but in consulting theexisting literature we find the requirements for deterrence revolve aroundthe idea of perfect rationality and are usually centred around Westernmodels of cost-benefit analysis or economic utility. The factor thatgenerally complicates deterrence operationally (ie that make it difficult todeter countries from behaving in a particular way) are largely cultural.Subjective and cultural differences between the actors involved such asobjectives, means, commitment and so on do not always apply.

Even then, much of the discussion of deterrence today looks at how theWest might deter a leader like Saddam Hussein from invading Kuwait orMilosovic, Kosovo. There is remarkably little discussion of how bothmight deter the United States from intervening against them.


The fact is, deterrence works both ways. The West sees war as an alter-native to bargaining; many non-Western societies see it as a process ofbargaining. The power to hurt rather than military strength representstheir most impressive military capability, and it is pain and violence, notforce in the traditional sense, which is characteristic of that capability.

The fact that military victory on the battlefield may be out of reach is notthe issue. Deterrence is not threatening to defeat an adversary if it crossesa line, but hurt him. Deterrence in these circumstances is the science ofintimidation (rather than coercion).

Just before the Kuwait crisis began, just a week before the invasion,Saddam told April Gillespie, the US Ambassador in Iraq, “that yours is asociety which cannot accept 10,000 dead in one battle”. Similarly,Milosovic told the German Foreign Minister, Josckar Fischer, before theKosovo War, “I can stand death… lots of it, but you can’t”. Both wereintending to intimidate their enemies. Unlike nuclear deterrence,asymmetrical deterrence is not especially rational. It is also a bluff thatcan be called, and was on both occasions. But that does not necessarilymean it will not succeed in the future.

DisruptionThe next best thing when deterrence fails is to disrupt an enemy’soperations, especially in the build-up phase which can take some time.This option was certainly open to Saddam Hussein. It is generallyconceded by military experts that at least during the first four weeks ofAugust 1990 he could have launched an attack on Saudi Arabia andcaptured the ports of Jubayl, Damman and Dhahran, through whichmost of the coalition supplies were later routed.

The only unit that was in any condition to defend the ports was the 82nd

Airborne Division. But its firepower was much too light, and its tacticalmobility too restricted, to have defeated a major attack. In default, writesGeoffrey Record, the coalition would have been forced to use theoperationally remote ports of Jiddah and Yambu on the Red Sea – on theopposite side of the theatre of operations, in a confined body of watercrowded with commercial traffic and controlled geographically at oneend by the Yemen, one of Iraq’s few allies.


Alternatively Iraq could have made greater use of terrorism. After all,Saddam promised a terrorist attack on the West but never delivered it. Onereason is that many terrorism movements were sponsored by coalitionmembers such as Syria. Another was simply lack of time and planning;another may have been a belief that the West would engage in moreeffective counter-terrorist measures than it had in the past. Also the veryshort period between the time the crisis erupted and the war beganprobably left most of the region’s principal terrorist groups unprepared forthe kind of operations which they might have launched with support fromBaghdad.

Finally, Iraq did not have the capabilities to threaten the most vulnerablepart of a force which is engaged in a military build-up: the means ofpower projection: aircraft carriers, maritime transport, often unprotectedmerchant ships, and strategic airlift. Iraq didn’t have anti-ship cruise missiles,though he did have mines which were not an inconsiderable feature indissuading the United States once war began from launching anamphibious attack on Kuwait. Low levels of attrition may have minimaloperational impact (the loss of an aircraft carrier apart) but there againclandestine operations against airbases and ports might have causedsignificant virtual attrition and certainly undermined the coalition’s resolve.

Cyberspace too offers a tempting target. A society so anxious abouttechnology failure that it spent $139bn against an unproven millenniumbug, the Y2K, is a society likely to be particularly anxious about cyber-terrorism. It has been used, as far as we know, only once, in 1996 whenthe Pentagon computers were hacked into by an unknown source(possibly Iraq) with the result that US troop movements to the Gulf weredelayed by a couple of months.

The potential, in theory, is enormous. Take the DoD exercise ‘EligibleReceiver’ in 1997 which employed a team of 95 ‘North Koreans’ toattack 1900 sites from the US energy grid to Pacific Command inHonolulu. Over 38,000 attacks were launched. What is disturbing is thatonly 4% of the victims realised they were under attack; and only one in150 reported an intrusion to a higher authority.


DefeatGiven that the chances of defeating the West are more remote than deter-ring it or setting back its plans, other societies are more likely to pose adifferent question: not whether they can defeat the West but whetherthey can prevent themselves from being defeated. The two questions arevery different. They can assure, for example, that their defeat is pro-visional, and the result incomplete. As General Charles Boyd admitted inthe summer of 1995, speaking of operations in Bosnia, “at the end of theday the US must face the reality that it cannot produce an enduringsolution of military force (or on the ground) – only one that lasts untilit departs”.

Indeed, one of the extraordinary features of the Middle East and one ofthe most difficult for the West to grasp is that political regimes survivedefeat fairly easily. Nasser, after all, remained in power until he dieddespite the humiliating loss of the Sinai Peninsular in 1967. Sadatsurvived an ‘inconclusive victory’ in 1973 which was no victory at all.Saddam Hussein survived two ruinously costly wars that were both totalfailures. Quadaffi survived the humiliation of a US air strike in 1986. Inmost other societies governments would not have survived such defeats –witness the fall of the generals in Argentina in 1982.

What explains their persistence in power? The Islamic world has seenmany changes since Napoleon arrived in Egypt in 1798 and inauguratedwhat a contemporary historian called ‘the great rupture’. But though ithas come to terms with modernity and capitalism and the nation stateand even the old dichotomy between men and women as more and morewomen enter the workplace, what is striking is that so much that isancient has survived. The central importance of Islam as a source of iden-tity and hope; the fatalism of life (which accurately reflects its continuedprecariousness in the region, the result of entrenched and endemicunderdevelopment); and the legitimacy still attached to personal power.

If the political order of the Middle East has failed to produce genuinepower-sharing or accountability or parliamentary institutions, the continuedfatalism of its people, their dread of anarchy, and the precariousness oftheir lives, tends to lead to the admiration of a strong, capable ruler.Elsewhere in societies such as Afghanistan, the Taliban may lack popular


appeal, but beneath the universal faith of Islam the intermediatestructures of state and civil society are viewed by the pious as corrupt, oras the arena for personal aggrandisement by the impious and the strong.Civil society of a kind has emerged in villages and regions, but once thestate is introduced into the equation, civic responsibility frequently breaksdown. Arabs and Iranians cherish personal freedom but have no sense ofwider citizenship. And what gives them confidence that they do not needa political framework or a strong political institution, is their faith inIslam. There is a Pukhtun proverb: “Even the bravest will not go to waragainst custom”. And while leaders such as Saddam Hussein in Iraq areruthless in quelling rebellions and unrest, they tend to observe the pro-hibitions of Islam and rely on the legitimacy it confers to retain power.

Their rule very rarely penetrates down into society or challenges age-oldcustoms or beliefs. That makes them so difficult to take on successfully.The warrior is he who defends the faith against the unfaithful or non-believer. It is in the battle itself that victory lies, not its issue which is whyIraq could describe its defeat in the Gulf War as “the prelude for thevictory of the faithful”.

For that very reason it is important to consider the contingent role ofconcepts in history, specifically the impact of strategic cultures for these affectboth the choice of opponent and the purpose and nature of war-making.

There is little point in discussing why one side won a war unless thequestion of ‘what did victory mean’ is addressed. Looked at differentlymilitary capability is a matter of fitness for purpose but this purpose isculturally constructed. In surviving against the allied coalition SaddamHussein triumphed.

As he told a group of French parliamentarians as early as January 3 1991,a few days before the Coalition began bombing him, he knew that hecould not win but he also added that as he found himself confronting 30countries, merely political survival alone would constitute victory. As aresult, what is left of the Coalition (the United States and Britain) hasbeen engaged for the past few years in a long and inconclusive siege –occasionally launching cruise missile strikes (many more than used inDesert Storm) against his palaces, and against strategic and economic


targets in Iraq – all to no avail. In doing so they have engaged not in awar but a siege, and sieges can be broken.

In 1991 Saddam secured his survival by the way he chose to fight – thusdenying the Alliance any chance to go on to Baghdad and remove him.By launching SCUDS only against Israel (who the US successfullydeterred from retaliating) and by not using the chemical and biologicalweapons he had in his possession, he signalled his willingness to play ‘bythe rules’. By showing restraint he signalled that the retention of Kuwaitwas a national interest but not a matter of national survival. UnlikeNapoleon at the Congress of Vienna he avoided being described as aninternational outlaw and thus made it difficult, if not impossible, for himto be removed physically from power. Only by doing so could the UnitedStates have won an unconditional victory. He gambled, successfully, thatthe US and the world would be deterred from going further andremoving him from power.

Hizbollah is the archetypal new movement and what makes it formidableis that it is a thoroughly post-modern one. It succeeded in ten yearswhere the PLO failed. The PLO was and remains an old-fashioned,Western-style, modern, largely secular, formerly Soviet supportedorganisation. Hizbollah is a new, networked, ‘post-modern’, largelyreligious and independent organisation. And it is highly adaptive.

Hizbollah was not able to match Israeli airpower in Southern Lebanon soit used Stinger missiles forcing the Israelis to conserve the lives of theirpilots by employing more Unmanned Aerial Vehicles which in thiscontext were especially effective. Then they responded to the Israeli dom-inance of the air with a horizontal terrorist strategy, a retaliating againstair-strikes at home through acts of terror as far afield as Buenos Aires.The bomb against the Jewish Cultural Centre there in 1996 deterred theIsraelis from targeting the Hizbollah leadership in the Lebanon itself.

But the object of asymmetry is not so much the defeat of superior force asto ensure that its victory is conditional. Sometimes the victory only lasts aslong as the forces remain in the ground (thereby tying them down to anendless presence, witness the NATO semi-protectorates in Bosnia andKosovo). At other times, a power can rely on its enemies to lose their


cohesion. As the English historian A J P Taylor wrote “victory in war lastsonly as long as the coalition that produces it remains intact”. He wasdescribing the collapse of the Allied coalition against Russia that hadimposed terms on the country in 1856. With France out of the equationafter its defeat in the Franco-Prussian War, Russia was able to tear up theterms of the Treaty of Paris and restore the status ante. Similarly, thecoalition which defeated Saddam Hussein in 1991 soon dissolved leavingonly Britain and the United States to face down the dictator. Saddamsurvived and the frustration engendered by a present administration whichincludes the first Bush government in 1991 explains its desire to get rid ofhim.

This question of conditional defeat in victory illustrates how the endsand means equation I have been asked to address cannot be separated.For the chief asymmetry is between the non-Western way of warfare (away of thinking about war and conceptualising it) and the Western wayof planning and practising it.

Let me illustrate this with three examples.

(1) The importance of the decisive engagement (vital to the way the Westhas seen war since the Greeks engaged the Persians at Marathon) cannotbe overstated. Bringing the enemy to the fight, to a make or break engage-ment that will determine all in an afternoon has been a traditionalWestern way of practising war for two millennia. Many non-Westernsocieties, by comparison, have chosen to avoid battle, to out-manoeuvretheir enemies, to keep their forces in being, prolong the war until theenemy gets demoralised or gives up. This was Sun Tzu’s advice to asuccessful general and it has been the Chinese way of practising war eversince.

(2) The West has also invested an enormous amount in technology. It hasused it to impose its will on the enemy quickly and decisively. Otherarmies have often only been interested in preventing their enemies fromimposing their will on them, technology has been less important. Theyhave chosen to use their technologies for indirect rather than directpurposes and sometimes not even that. And time and time again theyhave succeeded: the Mujahadin rebels facing a high-tech Soviet army


with its tanks and helicopter gunships; Islamic militants chasing out ofthe Lebanon the world’s most heavily armed power.

(3) Finally, the importance of what Thucydides called the ‘sinews of war’or capital resources, the use of wealth to equip and kit out an army in thefield, has been a way by which Western societies have prevailed on thebattlefield. Other communities, however, have chosen to use war to makemoney and to prolong it enough to make serious money at that.

Of course, some of these strategies will be dismissed as ‘strategems’ andthought unworthy of militaries that study the philosophies and principlesand maxims of Sun Tzu. We would be unwise to deny them the term of‘strategy’. For they embody more than just the principles of war: theyembody the philosophies of an entire society. And they go back a long way.Many of them are to be found in the military classics of ancient China.

So I conclude by stating that the purpose or end of fighting is in itselfoften asymmetrical. It is not to win but to avoid defeat. It is to ensurethat a victory is conditional, or too costly. It is to ensure above all thatone survives, if necessary to fight another day. William Perry is right. Thecountry with the military superiority enjoyed by the United States (witha lead time of its nearest competitors of probably 15-20 years) mustexpect its enemies to target its strengths, not its weaknesses, and turnthem against it. Whether they have the imagination to do so is anotherquestion. For the greatest Western strength has been to learn from defeat(as in Vietnam); to improvise as many American soldiers did in the GulfWar, where the technology initially did not work; and to find new waysto fight (which, arguably, is the decisive lesson learned in Afghanistan, inthe first campaign, at least, of the ‘war against terrorism’).


The Changing Face of War: Into the Fourth Generation

Mr. William S. Lind[Editor’s note: According to Abu Ubeid al-Qurashi, a writer for theLondon based Arabic newspaper al-Quds al-Arabi, the organisation of al-Quida acknowledged that it carried out the 11 September attacks.1

Moreover, it argued that its combat doctrine was in part based on the“fourth generation of warfare”, published by William S. Lind et al. in theMarine Corps Gazette (October 1989).2 A reprint of the article ispresented here, followed by some observations, which Lind committedto paper on 22 January 2002.]

The Fourth Generation of WarfareThe peacetime soldier’s principal task is to prepare effectively for the nextwar. In order to do so, he must anticipate what the next war will be like.This is a difficult task that gets continuously more difficult. German GenFranz Uhle-Wettler writes:

At an earlier time, a commander could be certain that a futurewar would resemble past and present ones. This enabled him toanalyze appropriate tactics from past and present. The troopcommander of today no longer has this possibility. He knowsonly that whoever fails to adapt the experiences of the last warwill surely lose the next one.

The Central Question If we look at the development of warfare in the modern era, we see threedistinct generations. In the United States, the Army and the MarineCorps are now coming to grips with the change to the third generation.This transition is entirely for the good. However, third generation war-

fare was conceptually developed by the German offensive in the spring of1918. It is now more than 70 years old. This suggests some interestingquestions: Is it not about time for a fourth generation to appear? If so,what might it look like? These questions are of central importance.Whoever is first to recognize, understand, and implement a generationalchange can gain a decisive advantage. Conversely, a nation that is slow toadapt to generational change opens itself to catastrophic defeat.

Our purpose here is less to answer these questions than to pose them.Nonetheless, we will offer some tentative answers. To begin to see whatthese might be, we need to put the questions into historical context.

Three Generations of WarfareWhile military development is generally a continuous evolutionaryprocess, the modern era has witnessed three watersheds in which changehas been dialectically qualitative. Consequently, modern militarydevelopment comprises three distinct generations.

First generation warfare reflects tactics of the era of the smoothboremusket, the tactics of line and column. These tactics were developedpartially in response to technological factors – the line maximized fire-power, rigid drill was necessary to generate a high rate of fire, etc. – andpartially in response to social conditions and ideas, e.g., the columns ofthe French revolutionary armies reflected both the élan of the revolutionand the low training levels of conscripted troops. Although renderedobsolete with the replacement of the smoothbore by the rifled musket,vestiges of first generation tactics survive today, especially in a frequentlyencountered desire for linearity on the battlefield. Operational art in thefirst generation did not exist as a concept although it was practiced byindividual commanders, most prominently Napoleon.

Second generation warfare was a response to the rifled musket,breechloaders, barbed wire, the machinegun, and indirect fire. Tacticswere based on fire and movement, and they remained essentially linear.The defense still attempted to prevent all penetrations, and in the attacka laterally dispersed line advanced by rushes in small groups. Perhaps theprincipal change from first generation tactics was heavy reliance on

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indirect fire; second generation tactics were summed up in the Frenchmaxim, “the artillery conquers, the infantry occupies.” Massed firepowerreplaced massed manpower. Second generation tactics remained the basisof U.S. doctrine until the 1980s, and they are still practiced by mostAmerican units in the field.

While ideas played a role in the development of second generation tactics(particularly the idea of lateral dispersion), technology was the principaldriver of change. Technology manifested itself both qualitatively, in suchthings as heavier artillery and bombing aircraft, and quantitatively, in theability of an industrialized economy to fight a battle of materiel(Materialschlacht).

The second generation saw the formal recognition and adoption of theoperational art, initially by the Prussian army. Again, both ideas andtechnology drove the change. The ideas sprang largely from Prussianstudies of Napoleon’s campaigns. Technological factors included vonMoltke’s realization that modern tactical firepower mandated battles ofencirclement and the desire to exploit the capabilities of the railway andthe telegraph. Third generation warfare was also a response to theincrease in battlefield firepower. However, the driving force was primarilyideas. Aware they could not prevail in a contest of materiel because oftheir weaker industrial base in World War I, the Germans developedradically new tactics. Based on maneuver rather than attrition, thirdgeneration tactics were the first truly nonlinear tactics. The attack reliedon infiltration to bypass and collapse the enemy’s combat forces ratherthan seeking to close with and destroy them. The defense was in depthand often invited penetration, which set the enemy up for a counter-attack.

While the basic concepts of third generation tactics were in place by theend of 1918, the addition of a new technological element-tanks –brought about a major shift at the operational level in World War II.That shift was blitzkrieg. In the blitzkrieg, the basis of the operational artshifted from place (as in Liddell-Hart’s indirect approach) to time. Thisshift was explicitly recognized only recently in the work of retired AirForce Colonel John Boyd and his “OODA (observation-orientation-decision-action) theory”. Thus we see two major catalysts for change in

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previous generational shifts: technology and ideas. What perspective dowe gain from these earlier shifts as we look toward a potential fourth gen-eration of warfare?

Elements That Carry Over Earlier generational shifts, especially the shift from the second to thethird generation, were marked by growing emphasis on several centralideas. Four of these seem likely to carry over into the fourth generation,and indeed to expand their influence. The first is mission orders. Eachgenerational change has been marked by greater dispersion on thebattlefield. The fourth generation battlefield is likely to include the wholeof the enemy’s society. Such dispersion, coupled with what seems likelyto be increased importance for actions by very small groups of combatants,will require even the lowest level to operate flexibly on the basis of thecommander’s intent. Second is decreasing dependence on centralizedlogistics. Dispersion, coupled with increased value placed on tempo, willrequire a high degree of ability to live off the land and the enemy. Thirdis more emphasis on maneuver. Mass, of men or fire power, will nolonger be an overwhelming factor. In fact, mass may become a dis-advantage as it will be easy to target. Small, highly maneuverable, agileforces will tend to dominate. Fourth is a goal of collapsing the enemyinternally rather than physically destroying him. Targets will includesuch things as the population’s support for the war and the enemy’sculture. Correct identification of enemy strategic centers of gravity willbe highly important.

In broad terms, fourth generation warfare seems likely to be widely dis-persed and largely undefined; the distinction between war and peace willbe blurred to the vanishing point. It will be nonlinear, possibly to thepoint of having no definable battlefields or fronts. The distinctionbetween “civilian” and “military” may disappear. Actions will occur con-currently throughout all participants’ depth, including their society as acultural, not just a physical, entity. Major military facilities, such as air-fields, fixed communications sites, and large headquarters will becomerarities because of their vulnerability; the same may be true of civilianequivalents, such as seats of government, power plants, and industrialsites (including knowledge as well as manufacturing industries). Success


will depend heavily on effectiveness in joint operations as lines betweenresponsibility and mission become very blurred. Again, all these elementsare present in third generation warfare; fourth generation will merelyaccentuate them.

A Potential Technology-Driven Fourth Generation If we combine the above general characteristics of fourth generation war-fare with new technology, we see one possible outline of the newgeneration. For example, directed energy may permit small elements todestroy targets they could not attack with conventional energy weapons.Directed energy may permit the achievement of EMP (electromagneticpulse) effects without a nuclear blast. Research in superconductivity sug-gests the possibility of storing and using large quantities of energy in verysmall packages. Technologically, it is possible that a very few soldierscould have the same battlefield effect as a current brigade.

The growth of robotics, remotely piloted vehicles, low probability ofintercept communications, and artificial intelligence may offer apotential for radically altered tactics. In turn, growing dependence onsuch technology may open the door to new vulnerabilities, such as thevulnerability to computer viruses.

Small, highly mobile elements composed of very intelligent soldiersarmed with high technology weapons may range over wide areas seekingcritical targets. Targets may be more in the civilian than the militarysector. Front-rear terms will be replaced with targeted-untargeted. Thismay in turn radically alter the way in which military Services areorganized and structured.

Units will combine reconnaissance and strike functions. Remote, “smart”assets with preprogrammed artificial intelligence may play a key role.Concurrently, the greatest defensive strengths may be the ability to hidefrom and spoof these assets.

The tactical and strategic levels will blend as the opponent’s politicalinfrastructure and civilian society become battlefield targets. It will becritically important to isolate the enemy from one’s own homeland


because a small number of people will be able to render great damage ina very short time.

Leaders will have to be masters of both the art of war and technology, adifficult combination as two different mindsets are involved. Primarychallenges facing commanders at all levels will include target selection(which will be a political and cultural, not just a military, decision), theability to concentrate suddenly from very wide dispersion, and selectionof subordinates who can manage the challenge of minimal or no super-vision in a rapidly changing environment. A major challenge will behandling the tremendous potential information overload without losingsight of the operational and strategic objectives.

Psychological operations may become the dominant operational andstrategic weapon in the form of media/information intervention. Logicbombs and computer viruses, including latent viruses, may be used todisrupt civilian as well as military operations. Fourth generation adver-saries will be adept at manipulating the media to alter domestic andworld opinion to the point where skillful use of psychological operationswill sometimes preclude the commitment of combat forces. A majortarget will be the enemy population’s support of its government and thewar. Television news may become a more powerful operational weaponthan armored divisions.

This kind of high-technology fourth generation warfare may carry in itthe seeds of nuclear destruction. Its effectiveness could rapidly eliminatethe ability of a nuclear-armed opponent to wage war conventionally.Destruction or disruption of vital industrial capacities, political infra-structure, and social fabric, coupled with sudden shifts in the balance ofpower and concomitant emotions, could easily lead to escalation tonuclear weapons. This risk may deter fourth generation warfare amongnuclear armed powers just as it deters major conventional warfare amongthem today.

A major caveat must be placed on the possibility of a technologicallydriven fourth generation, at least in the American context Even if thetechnological state of the art permits a high-technology fourthgeneration and this is not clearly the case – the technology itself must be


translated into weapons that are effective in actual combat. At present,our research, development, and procurement process has great difficultymaking this transition. It often produces weapons that incorporate hightechnology irrelevant in combat or too complex to work in the chaos ofcombat. Too many so-called “smart” weapons provide examples; incombat they are easy to counter, fail of their own complexity, or makeimpossible demands on their operators. The current American research,development, and procurement process may simply not be able to makethe transition to a militarily effective fourth generation of weapons.

A Potential Idea-Driven Fourth Generation Technology was the primary driver of the second generation of warfare;ideas were the primary driver of the third. An idea-based fourthgeneration is also conceivable. For about the last 500 years, the West hasdefined warfare. For a military to be effective it generally had to followWestern models. Because the West’s strength is technology, it may tendto conceive of a fourth generation in technological terms.

However, the West no longer dominates the world. A fourth generationmay emerge from non-Western cultural traditions, such as Islamic orAsiatic traditions. The fact that some non-Western areas, such as theIslamic world, are not strong in technology may lead them to develop afourth generation through ideas rather than technology. The genesis ofan idea-based fourth generation may be visible in terrorism. This is notto say that terrorism is fourth generation warfare, but rather that ele-ments of it may be signs pointing toward a fourth generation.

Some elements in terrorism appear to reflect the previously noted “carry-overs” from third generation warfare. The more successful terroristsappear to operate on broad mission orders that carry down to the level ofthe individual terrorist. The ‘battlefield” is highly dispersed and includesthe whole of the enemy’s society. The terrorist lives almost completely offthe land and the enemy. Terrorism is very much a matter of maneuver: theterrorist’s firepower is small, and where and when he applies it is critical.

Two additional carryovers must be noted as they may be useful “sign-posts” pointing toward the fourth generation. The first is a component


of collapsing the enemy. It is a shift in focus from the enemy’s front tohis rear. Terrorism must seek to collapse the enemy from within as it haslittle capability (at least at present) to inflict widespread destruction. Firstgeneration warfare focused tactically and operationally (whenoperational art was practiced) on the enemy’s front, his combat forces.Second generation warfare remained frontal tactically, but at least inPrussian practice it focused operationally on the enemy’s rear through theemphasis on encirclement The third generation shifted the tactical aswell as the operational focus to the enemy’s rear. Terrorism takes this amajor step further. It attempts to bypass the enemy’s military entirely andstrike directly at his homeland at civilian targets. Ideally, the enemy’smilitary is simply irrelevant to the terrorist.

The second signpost is the way terrorism seeks to use the enemy’sstrength against him This “judo” concept of warfare begins to manifestitself in the second generation, in the campaign and battle of encircle-ment. The enemy’s fortresses, such as Metz and Sedan, became fataltraps. It was pushed further in the third generation where, on the defen-sive, one side often tries to let the other penetrate so his own momentummakes him less able to turn and deal with a counterstroke.

Terrorists use a free society’s freedom and openness, its greatest strengths,against it. They can move freely within our society while actively workingto subvert it. They use our democratic rights not only to penetrate butalso to defend themselves. If we treat them within our laws, they gainmany protections; if we simply shoot them down, the television news caneasily make them appear to be the victims. Terrorists can effectively wagetheir form of warfare while being protected by the society they areattacking. If we are forced to set aside our own system of legal protectionsto deal with terrorists, the terrorists win another sort of victory.

Terrorism also appears to represent a solution to a problem that has beengenerated by previous generational changes but not really addressed byany of them. It is the contradiction between the nature of the modernbattlefield and the traditional military culture. That culture, embodied inranks, saluting uniforms, drill, etc., is largely a product of first generationwarfare. It is a culture of order. At the time it evolved it was consistentwith the battlefield, which was itself dominated by order. The ideal army


was a perfectly oiled machine, and that was what the military culture oforder sought to produce.

However, each new generation has brought a major shift toward a battle-field of disorder. The military culture, which has remained a culture oforder, has become contradictory to the battlefield. Even in the thirdgeneration warfare, the contradiction has not been insoluble; theWehrmacht bridged it effectively, outwardly maintaining the traditionalculture of order while in combat demonstrating the adaptability andfluidity a disorderly battlefield demands. But other militaries, such as theBritish, have been less successful at dealing with the contradiction. Theyhave often attempted to carry the culture of order over onto the battle-field with disastrous results. At Biddulphsberg, in the Boer War, forexample, a handful of Boers defeated two British Guards battalions thatfought as if on parade.

The contradiction between the military culture and the nature of modernwar confronts a traditional military Service with a dilemma. Terroristsresolve the dilemma by eliminating the culture of order. Terrorists do nothave uniforms, drill, saluting or, for the most part, ranks. Potentially,they have or could develop a military culture that is consistent with thedisorderly nature of modern war. The fact that their broader culture maybe non-Western may facilitate this development.

Even in equipment, terrorism may point toward signs of a change ingenerations. Typically, an older generation requires much greaterresources to achieve a given end than does its successor. Today, theUnited States is spending $500 million apiece for stealth bombers. A ter-rorist stealth bomber is a car with a bomb in the trunk – a car that lookslike every other car.

Terrorism, Technology, and Beyond Again, we are not suggesting terrorism is the fourth generation. It is nota new phenomenon, and so far it has proven largely ineffective. However,what do we see if we combine terrorism with some of the new technologywe have discussed? For example, that effectiveness might the terroristhave if his car bomb were a product of genetic engineering rather than


high explosives? To draw our potential fourth generation out still further,what if we combined terrorism, high technology, and the followingadditional elements?

1) A non-national or transnational base, such as an ideology or religion.Our national security capabilities are designed to operate within anation-state framework. Outside that framework, they have greatdifficulties. The drug war provides an example. Because the drugtraffic has no nation-state base, it is very difficult to attack. Thenation-state shields the drug lords but cannot control them. We can-not attack them without violating the sovereignty of a friendlynation. A fourth-generation attacker could well operate in a similarmanner, as some Middle Eastern terrorists already do.

2) A direct attack on the enemy’s culture. Such an attack works fromwithin as well as from without. It can bypass not only the enemy’smilitary but the state itself. The United States is already sufferingheavily from such a cultural attack in the form of the drug traffic.Drugs directly attack our culture. They have the support of apowerful “fifth column,” the drug buyers. They bypass the entirestate apparatus despite our best efforts. Some ideological elements inSouth America see drugs as a weapon; they call them the “poor man’sintercontinental ballistic missile.” They prize the drug traffic notonly for the money it brings in through which we finance the waragainst ourselves – but also for the damage it does to the hated NorthAmericans.

3) Highly sophisticated psychological warfare, especially throughmanipulation of the media, particularly television news. Someterrorists already know how to play this game. More broadly, hostileforces could easily take advantage of a significant product of tele-vision reporting – the fact that on television the enemy’s casualtiescan be almost as devastating on the home front as are friendlycasualties. If we bomb an enemy city, the pictures of enemy civiliandead brought into every living room in the country on the eveningnews can easily turn what may have been a military success (assumingwe also hit the military target) into a serious defeat.


All of these elements already exist. They are not the product of “futur-ism,” of gazing into a crystal ball. We are simply asking what would weface if they were all combined? Would such a combination constitute atleast the beginnings of a fourth generation of warfare? One thought thatsuggests they might is that third (not to speak of second) generationmilitaries would seem to have little capability against such a synthesis.This is typical of generational shifts.

The purpose of this paper is to pose a question, not to answer it. Thepartial answers suggested here may in fact prove to be false leads. But inview of the fact that third generation warfare is now over 70 years old,we should be asking ourselves the question, what will the fourthgeneration be?

*

Some Thoughts on the Current State of the War in AfghanistanThe initial campaign in America’s first Afghan War appears to be over.We find ourselves now in a temporary pause, where such Americanmilitary activity as continues is largely an exercise in public relations. Wemay or may not eventually kill or capture Mullah Omar or Osama binLaden; it matters little either way. It is an appropriate time to stop andreflect on what has passed thus far and what still awaits us.

As always, an important caution is that the information currently at ourdisposal is of uncertain quality. Much is still claims, and claims almostalways prove exaggerated, often absurdly so. There is much we simplydon’t know; it was several years after the end of the Gulf War before wefound out that the Iraqi Republican Guard had escaped largely intact.Any conclusions we reach at this point must be considered tentative. Yetit is still worthwhile to reflect.

The official line in Washington is that the world’s only superpower haswon yet another glorious victory, more stellar, if that were possible, thaneven its triumphs in Grenada and Panama (Saddam’s survival hasknocked a bit of the tinsel off the Gulf War, Lebanon is best forgotten,and we seem to be moving to get our revenge for the unfortunate affairin Somalia). As Olivares said of Nordlingen, it is the greatest victory of


the age. More, we have successfully reduced war to little more thanairstrikes, called in by a few intrepid Green Berets on the ground. Theonly risks are taken by whatever local allies we can rent for the occasion.As General Nivelle put it, “we have the formula,” and we can apply itanywhere. Iraq appears to be the next likely laboratory.

Unfortunately, there is less to all this than meets the eye. WhileWashington attributes the Taliban’s (possibly temporary) collapse toAmerican actions, particularly air attacks, there were others factors inplay. As a Pashtun-based movement, it was never strong in non-Pashtunparts of Afghanistan; before the first bomb fell, Mullah Omar said thatthe Taliban would lose Kabul and the government. The NorthernAlliance’s new Russian-supplied tanks and other heavy weapons mayhave had Russian crews as well. Money – perhaps the most powerfulweapon in this sort of war – undoubtedly played a role in the side-switching.

The surprise of the campaign was the rapid collapse of the Taliban in itsown Pashtun region. Here, however, the decisive factor was not what wedid right but what they had done wrong. The Taliban had broken thefirst rule of all politics: it had alienated its own base (the Arabs of AlQuaeda did the same by alienating most of the Afghans). By ignoringtribal rulers and tribal customs, playing the bully and simply not meetingaverage Afghans’ basic needs, the Taliban had cut the ground out fromunder itself. It only took a small push to make it fall.

That small push American airpower and American Special Forces,operating in the role for which they have trained, assisting local allies,were able to supply. But it only worked because the Taliban itself hadalready created the conditions for it to work. That is not likely to be trueelsewhere, and it may not remain true in Afghanistan. As chaos spreadsthere (and it is spreading), the Taliban may start looking pretty good inretrospect.

And now we come to an interesting if carefully overlooked fact: TheTaliban is almost all still there. When the Taliban had a state, we wereable to fight it. But its essence was never being a state, much less having“facilities” we could blow up with missiles. The Taliban was a movement,


a non-state actor made up of people with a shared world-view, a world-view for which they were willing to fight. Those people have not beenkilled, nor taken prisoner (with a very few exceptions), nor driven out.They are in Afghanistan, waiting. Today, they say they are not Taliban.Tomorrow, they can be Taliban again, or something similar with a newmullah and a new name. And, now that the Taliban is not a state, we can-not fight it. The Taliban or its successor and our Second Generationarmed forces are ships passing in the night.

What of Al Quaeda? It seems to be the big loser thus far. While itscasualties have probably been small, it has lost its base in Afghanistan,possibly for good (again, a base it had alienated).

But is that how Al Quaeda sees the strategic picture? Possibly not. Fromits perspective, it may have effectively applied the old lesson fromfighting the Crusaders. When the Western knights put on theirimpenetrable plate armor, mount their massive, powerful horses andcharge, you scatter. At the end of the day, they hold the battlefield, butnothing more. You survive, and when they return to their camp,dismount, and take off their armor, you sneak up and shoot in somearrows. They win most of the battles, but in the end, you win the war.

More, the leadership of Al Quaeda may understand the most importantpoint that Washington does not: the centers of gravity of this AfghanWar are not and never have been in Afghanistan itself. The centers ofgravity are, first, Pakistan, and secondly Saudi Arabia and Egypt. If theTaliban is utterly destroyed, Al Quaeda driven out, Mullah Omar andOsama bin Laden killed, etc., but we have the Islamic Emirate ofPakistan (with nukes) or Saudi Arabia (with the oil for America’s SUVs)or Egypt (keystone of the Mediterranean), America will have suffered astrategic defeat and militant Islam won a great victory.

Here we see the consequence of Washington thinking of this conflict asa “war against terrorism” instead of the vastly larger phenomenon we callFourth Generation Warfare. The essence of Fourth Generation war is auniversal crisis of legitimacy of the state. The central strategic question istherefore whether events and America’s actions thus far havestrengthened or weakened the legitimacy of the pro-American regimes in


Pakistan, Saudi Arabia and Egypt. While the answer is yet unclear, it maywell be that those regimes’ legitimacy, already shaky, has been furtherweakened. Indeed, by forcing them to publicly line up with Americaagainst “terrorism” and bin Laden – and thus also against large segmentsof their own populations – we may have pushed them closer to a fall. Ifjust one of them does fall – not to mention two or three going – binLaden will have good reason to think himself the victor, even if he isdoing so in Hell.

Of the three centers of gravity, the most critical is Pakistan, because it hasnuclear weapons and the most competent conventional forces in theIslamic world (our aircraft carriers will be out of the region very quicklyif Pakistani subs start hunting them). It may also be the country wherethe regime’s legitimacy is most fragile. It is difficult to think that thecourse of the Afghan war thus far has made its legitimacy stronger. Thepro-American Pakistani government has:

• Seen the fall of the Afghan Taliban government it created, indeedbeen compelled to assist in its replacement;

• Watched American bombs kill Pakistanis who went to fight for theTaliban, while American aircraft operated from Pakistani bases;

• Been helpless as the new government in Kabul openly allied withIndia;

• Been forced to turn against the forces of Islam within Pakistan,arresting mullahs, closing schools and agreeing that the guerillas ithas long supported in Kashmir are now “terrorists.”

Events are now moving toward the next and possibly final act in the fallof the regime in Pakistan. If war does break out between India andPakistan – and having spent this much money on mobilization, India ismore likely to fight than not – Pakistan is likely to be defeated. Its onlyalternative appears to be public humiliation by agreeing to India’s termsand ending its support for the Islamic guerillas in Kashmir. Either eventmakes it probable that General Musharraf ’s head will be the ball in aninformal if enthusiastic game of soccer, and Pakistan will find itself witha Taliban-like government. America’s position in Afghanistan, as well asin-the entire region, will be untenable, and our “glorious victory”through airpower will have turned to ashes in our mouth.


What of our situation in Afghanistan if the current Pakistani governmentsomehow does manage to hang on? Even then, the American tide hasprobably reached its culminating point and will begin to recede. In thecurrent drole de guerre, the remnants of the Taliban and warlords notbought off or brought into the current Kabul regime are catching theirbreath. They are digesting the lessons of the recent campaign and deve-loping new techniques for confronting the latest foreign invader. Sooneror later, they will go on the offensive, and Americans will start to die. Thespreading chaos will make Taliban rule seem like the “good old days.”The Quisling government in Kabul – a classic government of exiles, wholike the Bourbons will have forgotten nothing and learned nothing –may buy some time by spreading foreign money around, but thepopulation is not likely to see much of it. Its authority is not likely to runbeyond the boundaries of Kabul in any case. Month by month, theAmerican and other foreign troops will find’ the population growingmore hostile, “incidents” increasing, and airpower more and moreirrelevant. In the end, we will be driven out, as every invader ofAfghanistan is driven out, only too thankful to be gone.

What is to be done? First, we should get out of Afghanistan now, while thegetting is good. Contrary to the beliefs of the Wilsonians, who think thatif we can just teach them to make cookoo clocks and cheese with holes init, the Afghans will become Swiss, the best state we can hope for inAfghanistan is a permanent, low-level civil war. That applies the Afghans’fighting spirits where they are applied best, to each other. Unfortunately,the momentum in Washington is now toward another exercise in “nationbuilding,” which means we are likely to stay, and pay for it.

Second, focus all our energies on preventing another war between Indiaand Pakistan. Washington is beginning to wake up to this, but it remainsmesmerized by day-to-day events in Afghanistan, and India and Pakistanget a second-best effort. While General Musharraf may not survive evenwithout a defeat by India, he is virtually certain to go down if Pakistan isbeaten. If he goes, so do we.

Third, get out of Saudi Arabia. Whatever military advantages we gain bybeing there are far outweighed by the fact that our presence continuallyundermines the legitimacy of the current pro-American al Saud govern-


ment. Some recent press reports suggest the Saudis themselves may askus to leave; we should pray those reports are correct.

Finally, we must understand once and for all that the problem we arefacing is not merely “terrorism.” It is Fourth Generation Warfare, and itis the biggest change in war since the Peace of Westphalia in 1648. Theentire American national security establishment needs to bend its effortsto understanding what a Fourth Generation world is likely to be like.Regrettably, since this task requires ideas, not more “programs” with vastbudgets, it is presently not receiving any attention in Washington. Intoday’s Pentagon, the program is the product.

The Soviet Union’s defeat in Afghanistan eventually led to the fall of theSoviet regime itself. Of course, we know the same thing could neverhappen here.

NOTES

1 Chuck Spinney, correspondence with William S. Lind, transcript, 11 February 2002.2 William S. Lind, Colonel Keith Nightengale (USA), Captain John F. Schmitt (USMC), Colonel

Joseph W. Sutton (USA), and Lieutenant Colonel Gary I. Wilson (USMCR). “The ChangingFace of War: Into the Fourth Generation”, Marine Corps Gazette, October 1989.


Some Thoughts on Warfare in 21st Century

Group Captain Ian MacFarling

With a host of furious fancies Whereof I am commander, With a burning spear, & a horse of air, To the wilderness I wander. By a knight of ghosts & shadows, I summon’d am to a tourneyTen leagues beyond the wide world’s end: Me thinks ‘tis no journey

Tom O’Bedlam’s SongAnon1

IntroductionThe brilliant anonymous English poem Tom O’Bedlam’s Song is about thephysical and mental wanderings of a highly intelligent madman four cen-turies ago. However, the final stanza set out above could well be a usefuldescription of modern warfare – particularly information operations. Itcontains all the issues we should be thinking about in war, such as forcestructure and capability, psychological warfare, modified weapons andplatforms, uncertainty, shadowy opponents, and the confidence, perhapssometimes misplaced, that we will be able to fight whenever and wher-ever the battle takes us.

The title of the book of essays for which this paper was originally writ-ten includes the word ‘asymmetric’ as it applies to warfare.2 Two pointsneed clarification here. There is a difference between war and warfare.War is the condition; warfare is the fighting and its associated processesthat we undertake while at war with another party. Secondly, the term‘asymmetric warfare’ is tautological. It has been used frequently to imply

that only the weak use ‘asymmetric warfare’ because the strength of alarge opponent leaves them no alternative. This is wrong. All wars areasymmetric. They must be by definition because both sides will be seeking the other’s weak points while masking and protecting theirvulnerabilities.

The antithesis of this is attrition warfare; a term which implies that bothsides are so closely balanced that neither has an advantage, andconsequently they must bludgeon it out on the field of battle until oneof them sues for peace. In this case the winning side will also be soexhausted that it is unlikely to be able to take advantage of its pseudo-victory. The major historical example of this was the trench warfare onthe Western Front between 1914 and 1918. Nowadays, any nationalleader who allowed himself to be drawn into such folly would have topossess the two dominating personality traits of persistence andaggressive stupidity, which are endearing in young pet animals, butinappropriate in politicians and senior military officers at the start of the21st Century.

War is an affair of states. If the parties fighting one another are not statesthen it is not a war. If we use the term war in describing non-stateviolence then we give the protagonists more rights and a level of socialacknowledgment than if we had used another term. The British, who forhalf a century faced revolts and insurgencies in former colonies fromMalaya to Kenya and Cyprus, always defined such violent confrontationsas ‘emergencies’. This ensured that their opponents rarely, if ever, enjoyedthe luxury of legal recognition or particular status – such as prisoner-of-war – where that status afforded certain undeserved benefits3.

If neither side involved in a violent confrontation is a state then, howeverlethal it may be, it is merely a brawl or a gangland fight for power. Evenif the winning side gathers enough power to form a state in what waspreviously unoccupied territory that was up for grabs, the originaldispute was not a war. There was no law that governed the behaviour ofthe participants or set out the sanctions they would face if they com-mitted crimes.

If only one side is a state then the conflict could be a rebellion, an

SOME THOUGHTS ON WARFARE IN 21ST CENTURY358

insurgency, or police operations in the pursuit of major crime. In all ofthese one imagines armed forces playing an ancillary role while the policeshoulder the main burden of bringing the criminals to justice. There mayhowever be times when the criminals possess such armed might that thepolice are unable to meet their challenge and military forces have to beused instead. This brings some problems to the fore, particularly the issueof a constabulary role for military forces and level of force that isacceptable in bringing a conflict to an enduring close.

This paper will consider the issues of war and warfare in 21st Centuryand offer comment on how we can prevent such disasters. The method-ology will be to use Tom O’Bedlam’s list of issues – though not perhapsin the order his creator set them out.

Defence Capabilities and Military Force Structure Creating a military force structure and defining its capability implies thatwe already have a context. Is there one? If not then how have we struc-tured the force we currently have? Is it a legacy of history? Is it still valid?Having a force that cannot undertake the operations required by govern-ment is a completely ineffective way of defending the state from externalaggression. Perhaps it is better to consider the capabilities we need todefend the state, then work out the tasks needed to fulfil those capabilityrequirements, and finally define the roles and subordinate mission setsrequired to meet the tasks. Only then should we try to match militaryforces and their equipment to the roles and missions.

Capabilities can be quite broad. They essentially relate to the variousphysical environments, that is: space, air, land, and sea, and try to expressthe level of control we feel we should have in each. Some will be impos-sible to achieve, for example: control of space, while most of the otherswill only be practicable in a very small geographical area. It is – forexample – unrealistic to expect that an air force can have unchallengedcontrol of the air in any large battlespace. Control seems to be inverselyproportional to the size of the area involved.

There is a problem in structuring a force based on threats. A threat iscomprised of capability, motive and intent. If one of those elements is

SOME THOUGHTS ON WARFARE IN 21ST CENTURY 359

missing then there is no threat. However, they can all change rapidly and– given the anarchic nature of the international community – enemiescan turn into allies and old friends can become bitter antagonists. TheBritish and French fought as allies in the First World War but they cameclose to fighting each other in 1923 over French demands for reparationsfrom their former mutual enemy Germany. This merely illustrates thepoint that in international relations the only factor that guides the policyof every nation on the planet is national interest.

It is more logical to base a force structure on vulnerabilities, but logic isnot necessarily helpful in this instance. Threats are externally generatedand subject to rapid change, while vulnerabilities are internal and tend tobe semi-permanent. Vulnerabilities are rarely military in nature but theymust be an essential element in any military plan to defend the nation.They thus present a conundrum for most defence planners because thereis seldom a purely military answer for their removal – though many solu-tions to the problems they cause will require a military input. Do vul-nerabilities provide us with a context with which to develop force struc-ture? The answer is an unhelpful ‘maybe’. They will only be useful if anadversary defines our vulnerabilities as our centres of gravity that willthen be his target set. Will we know this in peacetime? It is highly unlikely.If we develop a catalogue of our own vulnerabilities do we make thatcatalogue highly classified? This will be difficult because, as mentionedearlier, most of the weak points in a society are seldom military in nature.In these days of information being readily available from a host of sourceshow do you classify – and thereafter protect – knowledge about a powergrid that the whole nation uses, a telephone network that relies on aforeign-owned satellite constellation, or conceal that you only have onlyone railway line into an area of significant strategic importance? What isessential is to classify – perhaps very highly – what you intend to do toprotect these vulnerabilities, all the while knowing that it should not betoo difficult for any potential enemy to develop a thorough knowledgeof your country and then link your force structure to the defence of themost vital elements. It may well be that he will know long before you thatyou have made a complete mess of developing your forces and that whatyou have created will not really defend you from a well considered attack.

The other issue that affects the nature of both threats and vulnerabilities


is perception. This is multi-dimensional and probably one of the unsungproblems of information operations. The Oracle at Delphi had it rightwhen she said ‘know thyself ’, but there is an additional factor which wetend to overlook. We not only need to know ourselves, we need to knowour enemy as well as possible. The latter requirement includes the almostimpossible task of trying to determine how both our enemies and ourallies perceive us. It would be extremely valuable if we could understandhow outsiders defined our motives for doing something, because historyshows that they (and we) seldom get it right and usually make the con-sequent vital decisions on the basis of theory and supposition rather thanfact. An example was the United States’ decision to send a carrier battlegroup into the Taiwan Straits in 1996 when, following statements aboutTaiwanese sovereignty during a political campaign in Taiwan, theChinese held manoeuvres that culminated in missiles being fired out tosea near Taiwan. The Chinese did not mind the US battle group beingthere. They appear to have expected such a move. The issue for them wasthat the US sent the USS Independence carrier battle group. It seemsthat the American reason for sending it was because it was the closest tothe scene of action, but the Chinese ascribed a more sophisticated motivefor the action, believing that the US was using the aircraft carrier’s nameto make a implicit policy statement that deliberately challenged China’slong-stated policy of integrating Taiwan into the People’s Republic ofChina at some future date.

Psychological WarfarePsychological warfare is all about convincing your adversary that youhave a hidden capability and in fact can do more than your capabilitiessuggest. Commanding a ‘host of furious fancies’ – even if they are onlyin your head – is actually quite useful if you can convince the knight ofghosts and shadows that they do exist and are capable of defeating him.Hitler was extremely successful in convincing the European powers ofGerman might in the late 1930s – to the consternation of his owngenerals4 – long before the Wehrmacht was actually able to do what heclaimed.

Shadowy opponents are always more of a concern than those who arewell defined. We are frightened by our own lack of knowledge about


them. What if they have the capacity to do something unexpected usingmethods for which we are unprepared? The irony in the 21st Century isthat in war, where states by definition are involved on both sides, we gen-erally have a reasonable idea of the potential adversaries’ force structureand their equipment. Where we fall down is in human issues and historyshows we seem to be pathologically incapable of getting this right. TheWestern Allies underestimated the Japanese in 1941 and paid a heavyprice, while 40 years later the British were taken completely by surpriseby the Argentinian invasion of the Falklands and South Georgia.

Shadowy opponents also make it essential to have keen grasp on realityso that you avoid believing your own propaganda. Stanley Baldwin, theBritish Prime Minister in the early 1930s, was so convinced of theeffectiveness of aerial attack against civilians that he handed the politicalinitiative to the Germans even though they never did develop an effectivelong-range bomber throughout the short life of the Third Reich. In fact,no major power had the capacity to conduct the sort of air attack thatworried Baldwin until 1943. His personal conviction and consequentinfluence, however, were so overwhelming that large segments of theBritish population were issued with gas masks before World War Two toprotect them against a German air attack that – following Douhet – wasfully expected to include gas.

The problem of poorly defined enemies gets worse when the adversary isa terrorist. Secret societies have long been the bane of state leaders5.Osama bin Laden and al Qu’ida are no different, they are just more wide-spread and thus threaten a larger number of societies. Terrorists are sodifficult to pin down that we tend to credit them with more power thanthey really have. We must remember that their form of violence is the cryof the weak and they will use any method to make their mark. Theirgeneral ploy is to exploit vulnerabilities not match the capabilities of thestates they are trying to bring down. Their concepts will frequently besubtle, but we must not confuse subtlety of conception with subtlety ofexecution. There is little doubt that some would use weapons of massdestruction if they could acquire them, though to date – with theexception of the Aum Shinrikyo sarin nerve gas attack on the Tokyo sub-way in March 1995 – they have used either conventional weapons, com-mercial explosives, or civil airliners in the guise of missiles to great effect.


These successes have reinforced the popular myths of their invincibility,and now they only have to whisper that they might be going to do some-thing violent and we all feel the need to respond immediately. They haverediscovered a very inexpensive way of conducting a campaign. Fear hasits own lexicon, which may not include the actual use of force.

Modern WeaponsFor most of recorded history it was the mark of a great commander thathe husbanded his forces and used only the minimum necessary to com-plete the task. Lesser commanders used what they had and then either lostthe battle or retreated to within reach of their logistics system for hastyreplenishment. The advent of weapons of mass destruction (WMD) has– for the last fifty years – provided even mediocre commanders with somuch firepower that only the insane or the desperate would contemplateusing it. WMD are so dangerous that they require absolute politicalcontrol and are the ultimate reason for the existence of states and theirunchallenged prerogative for making war. WMD in the hands of non-state actors are a recipe for the destruction of civilisation and a retreat tothe dark ages. In short, such a situation must be prevented at all costs.

New technologies have increased the effectiveness of conventionalweapons to a level hitherto unimaginable. A single B-1B Lancer bomberarmed with its maximum load of JDAMs6 is singularly effective. Eachweapon is capable of destroying its designated target, which is a remark-able feat, but we should leave it at that. As Shakespeare’s idiot constableDogberry might have said comparisons are odorous, and to compare a B-1B sortie against a range of targets across Afghanistan in 2002 with aLancaster raid during World War Two is to misunderstand what com-parative analysis and evaluation mean. The essential element in bothinstances is the context in which such weapons were used. Lancasterswere dispatched to wreak havoc on the German population in order todestroy its morale and undermine the Nazi leadership. At the time it didnot matter that the definition of their targets was limited to the name ofa city. The poor accuracy of delivery and the German countermeasuressometimes meant that the attacking force missed even a target as large asthat – and even that did not matter too much to the Allies. In 1942 aerialbombardment of the German homeland was seen as the only way of


striking back and creating a virtual second front that took some pressureoff the Soviet Union, which was fighting for its very survival.

War, as it is practiced by the United States and its allies at the turn of theThird Millennium, is influenced by a range of factors. These include theLaw of Armed Conflict, and the general belief that war should be precise.This last element is another error and demonstrates the folly of sloppylanguage. (As Sir Ernest Gower noted so cogently in his Complete PlainWords the two alternatives in what appears to be the poor use of languageare that the writer is either expressing a clear idea poorly or describing awoolly concept with great clarity.7) In the case of war studies manywriters are guilty of both, but it is usually sloppy language that is theirmajor crime. The conduct of war should be accurate and, given thelethality of modern weapons, warfare should be as accurate as possible.The term accuracy defines how close a result comes to the true value. Ifa person fires several bullets at the bullseye of a target and all of theirshots as a group are centred on the bullseye then their firing can be saidto be accurate. If another person fires at the bullseye and all of their shotsare clustered in a very tight group - but not centred on the target – thentheir firing can be said to be precise. If we combine these two terms as ananalytical tool we can say that something that is both accurate andprecise is exact. We would be living in a fool’s paradise to expect that war-fare will ever be exact – but it is something for which we should strivebecause it implies that we trying to have as much control as is humanlypossible over the conduct of the war.

Small but far-reaching tragedies such as the destruction of the ChineseEmbassy in Belgrade demonstrate that even today we are still long onprecision and short on accuracy. The key to targeting is intelligence8 and– as I have noted elsewhere – this has two meanings. All the good intel-ligence is worthless unless you have the intelligence to use it properly9.And this need for practical intelligence and common sense is not limitedto air commanders, combat crews and planners. In modern warpoliticians should be the people responsible for defining what outcomesthey want from the war they are prosecuting. They too must develop theskills that enable them to understand what armed forces can and –equally importantly – cannot do.


Modern warfare also requires all parties to use discrimination and pro-portionality. Discrimination means that we must never wittingly targetthe innocent so – yet again – we must ensure that we have good intelli-gence to be able to discern who exactly it is that is attacking us. This willoften be difficult if we face an opponent who uses proxies or ensures theirattacks are disavowable. It will be harder still if do not understand thereasons why we are being attacked. When we do respond it is importantthat we do so with the greatest of skill. Such skill is essential in themilitary staff officers who specify weapon performance parameters, theweapon designer who creates the weapon in accordance with the specifi-cation, the constructor, the technician on the flight line, and the aircrewwho launch the weapon. Modern weapons have to have a level oflethality that ensures that the target is obliterated, but at the same timethey must be sophisticated enough to ensure that their effects do notharm innocent bystanders who happen to be nearby.

Proportionality is harder to achieve. A grenade that targets a largenumber of women and children in a market place is an outrage, but theresponse should never be a concentrated attack on the refugee camp thathouses the probable culprits by modern strike aircraft using precisionguided munitions. Such a reaction is not only immoral, it is also illegalbecause it is out of all proportion to the original attack and has thepotential to start the well-known cycle of revenge where each side ups theante and hatred becomes a way of life. A grenade attack is at the lowerend of the spectrum of conflict. It is a crime rather than an act of war andthe appropriate response is a police raid and subsequent legal action thatsees the culprits gaoled for an extended period. In the police action andany support that might be given by air forces the weapons used must beappropriate and at a level that does not increase the tempo of the con-flict.

This leads to the question of popular expectations about the roles ofarmed forces – particularly air forces. Armed forces have always been thesole arbiter of violence in defence of the nation state and its allies. Theyare the tools of last resort when all other avenues have failed. But since1945 they have been asked to take on a wide range of additional tasks –usually in international peace-making and enforcement coalitions – thatare still frequently violent in nature but less than war. On many occasions


military personnel have become what Michael Ignatieff elegantly calls‘the people who make the misery of others their business’10. This is to beexpected. With the demise of European colonialism after World WarTwo and the bitter ethnic disputes in what were previously colonialempires, and the expanding nature of the battlefield the casualties of warhave changed. At the start of the 20th Century eight soldiers died forevery civilian who was killed in war. At the end of that Century eightcivilians died for every member of the armed forces who was killed onactive service11.

The question is whether armed forces are the appropriate people for thetask. It can be argued that military personnel have an unlimited liabilityclause in their contracts and therefore they are expected to perform what-ever task they are given by the government of the day. In giving themthese roles their government must be aware that the skills required forfighting in a war are different from those needed to enforce peace in abitterly divided country where the culture and societal mores are entirelydifferent from those in the country supplying the peace keepers.Furthermore, some cultural practices in those places where peacekeepingis necessary will be abhorrent to those maintaining or enforcing thepeace.

The term ‘constabulary’ shows the dilemma faced by military forces. Inwar they are expected to engage the enemy and kill or capture them. Ina peace operation where they may be operating in a constabulary rolethey will be expected to behave like police who never take life except asa last resort. The change of mindset is difficult to accommodate –particularly in the Western world where the Judeo-Christian ethic hascommandments that forbid killing. Discipline demands that you do asyou are told, while your conscience - that reflects the standards of yoursociety - tells you that killing is wrong. It may well be that the word con-stabulary should disappear from the military lexicon, not to lessen therestraint on killing that all humans should feel, but to limit the roles ofarmed forces. If operations other than war (OOTW) are to become themain task of most armed services then maybe we should consider otherforce structures where the warfighting element moves in to stabilise the situation and, when that is complete, hands over the task ofreconstruction to another element. This could be comprised of older


people – perhaps mainly women – who could help the victims, who willstatistically be women and children, in ways that warfighters might notbe able to do. Some cultures will only allow women to talk to otherwomen on certain issues. This concept, while only in embryonic formhere, has other advantages given the number of conflicts in the world andthe paucity of highly trained warfighters to undertake the necessarilyviolent elements of OOTW.

Air forces have an additional problem in OOTW. It is what JonathanGlover calls ‘cold violence’12 and reflects the unique nature of air power.Air power relies on sophisticated technology and it is lethal13 in ways thatland power generally is not. The main issue is that air power provides uswith the capacity to launch attacks at a significant distance from thetarget. This allows us to husband our forces, protect our people, andengage the enemy in a way that should convince him that we have theadvantage and it is in his interests to surrender. There is however asignificant downside. As Jonathan Glover notes ‘technology has createdforms of cold violence which should disturb us far more than the beastof rage in man. The great military atrocities now use bombs or missiles.The decisions are taken coldly, far away’14. It is possible to disagree withGlover here. He uses the present tense, which is incorrect. There were –to be sure – terrible atrocities conducted using air power during the 20th

Century from the Japanese raids in China in the 1930s, the attack onGuernica in April 1937, the Italian operations in Abyssinia, and in manyof the German and Allied raids through to the end of the Second WorldWar. However, since the end of the Cold War most of the shockingcrimes perpetrated by mankind have been with other – much lesssophisticated – weapons. The genocide in Rwanda in the late 1990s wasconducted using machetes.

The message Glover wants to get across however is still valid. Distancefrom the target must not be allowed to reduce the responsibilities ofthose selecting the aim point and firing the weapons at it. In all acts ofwar there must be humans in the control loop of the weapons being used– and those people must be military for a variety of reasons – and theymust be highly trained in a range of skills. But such training is still notenough. Training is about functional skills that enable us to performpractical tasks successfully. The essential element in the development of


military officers is a broad education. This should include philosophy,politics, history, and culture. It does not include management studiesand accountancy. These two subjects are best seen as advanced trainingbecause of their practical, functional nature and also the pragmatism thatis associated with commercial business administration. Such advancedtraining is important to the success of certain lower echelon militaryfunctions, but it has been given too much attention – and the practi-tioners have been accorded too much power in a field where their skillsshould be seen as subordinate to military activity in the battlespace.What is needed now are senior military personnel who have a clearunderstanding of the reasons why they are doing what they are doing.There is no place now for King Henry V’s ‘dogs of war’, who only havea knowledge of how and when things should be done, and are unleashedat the supposedly right time and place by those who control them. Thedevelopment of educated and thoughtful senior military officers can onlybe achieved by a long exposure to all aspects of war and warfare and thekind of education mentioned above. For all his faults and limitationsClausewitz was right on this point – ‘analysis, and observation, theoryand experience must never disdain or exclude each other; on the contrarythey support each other.15’

An area where commercial pragmatism could cause significant problemsis the operation of uncrewed aerial vehicles (UAVs) during conflict. It hasbeen chosen here because it flies in the face of Clausewitz’s aphorism setout above. The apparently benign capabilities of UAVs and the fact thatmuch of their flight regime is automated mean that they could be seen asa prime candidate for operation by commercial contractors who – soconventional wisdom holds – are significantly cheaper than Service per-sonnel. The problem could arise if such civilian commercial operation ofUAVs was extended to uncrewed combat aerial vehicles (UCAVs) –perhaps operating at distances over thousands of nautical miles fromtheir home base to attack the enemy. The combination of cold violence,the use of non-military personnel to fire the weapons in combat, andbusiness-style imperatives of profit and efficiency have the potential tolead to disaster. It does not accord with the spirit of international law. Itwould contradict many constitutions because these usually declare thatthe armed forces of the nation defined by that constitution have the soleright to wield violence in the defence of their state. It disavows the basic


tenets of military professionalism, and displays a singular lack of trust onthe part of the government towards its armed services. In short it wouldexpose the lack of thought being displayed by national leaders whoperhaps have an ideological disposition to market efficiency rather thanmilitary effectiveness in the face of danger.

In essence such a scenario would mean we have returned to the age ofcondottieri with all of the problems that an amoral gun-for-hire bringswith him. Such people were around fighting in the 30 Years War whenTom O’Bedlam’s Song was first published. That war ended with the Treatyof Westphalia that heralded the rise of the modern nation-state andstarted the demise of the mercenary calling in most of the civilised world.The challenges to the state system, the increase in power of non-stateactors, and the potential for the use of cold violence as a matter of policyin the settlement of disputes should be a cause for concern at the start ofthe 21st Century.

NOTES

1 This is the final stanza of the anonymous poem that first appeared in print in 1620. Some crit-ics suggest this may have been a poem by Shakespeare from an unpublished play. The versioncited here is in Harold Bloom: How to Read and Why. HarperCollinsPublishers, London, 2001,p. 110.

2 Note of Thanks. I would like to thank the staff and fellows of the Aerospace Centre at RAAFFairbairn in Canberra, Australia for reading the original manuscript and making valuable com-ment on its content. The errors that remain are mine. Disclaimer. The content of this essay setsout the personal thoughts of the author. It in no way reflects the policy of the Australian FederalGovernment, the Australian Defence Organisation, the Royal Australian Air Force or theAerospace Centre.

3 For a persuasive argument on this subject see Sir Michael Howard’s address Mistake to declare thisa ‘war’ to the Royal United Services Institute in London in October 2001. Reported byAssociated Newspapers Ltd., 31 October 2001 on http://www.thisislondon.c…/story.html?in_review_id+470295&in_review_text_id=42415.

4 Ernest R May. Strange Victory: Hitler’s Conquest of France. I B Tauris, London, 2000, pp. 40-52.5 For a useful description of some of the odd thinking that accompanies terrorism see Carl Sagan,

The Demon- Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark, Headline Book Publishing,London, 1997, pp. 19-20.


6 The Joint Direct Attack Munition (JDAM) is a guidance tail kit that converts existing unguidedfree-fall bombs into accurate, adverse weather “smart” munitions. With the addition of a new tailsection that contains an inertial navigational system and a global positioning system guidancecontrol unit, JDAM improves the accuracy of unguided, general purpose bombs in any weathercondition.

JDAM is a guided air-to-surface weapon that uses either the 2,000-pound BLU-109/MK 84 orthe 1,000-pound BLU-110/MK 83 warheads as the payload. JDAM enables employment ofaccurate air-to-surface weapons against high priority fixed and relocatable targets from fighterand bomber aircraft. Guidance is facilitated through a tail control system and a GPS-aided INS.The navigation system is initialised by transfer alignment from the aircraft that provides positionand velocity vectors from the aircraft systems.

Once released from the aircraft, the JDAM autonomously navigates to the designated targetcoordinates. Target coordinates can be loaded into the aircraft before takeoff, manually alteredby the aircrew before weapon release, and automatically entered through target designation withonboard aircraft sensors. In its most accurate mode, the JDAM system will provide a weaponcircular error probable of 13 meters or less during free flight when GPS data is available. If GPSdata is denied, the JDAM will achieve a 30-meter CEP or less for free flight times up to 100 sec-onds with a GPS quality hand-off from the aircraft.

JDAM can be launched from very low to very high altitudes in a dive, toss and loft or in straightand level flight with an on-axis or off-axis delivery. JDAM enables multiple weapons to be direct-ed against single or multiple targets on a single pass. (dated 22 April 2002).

7 Sir Ernest Gowers, The Complete Plain Words – Third Edition. Crown Copyright, London, 1986,p. 38.

8 This is a maxim developed by the noted American air power theorist and historian Dr PhillipMeilinger. See Phillip S Meilinger. 10 Propositions Regarding Air Power. Air Force History &Museums Program, Washington, 1995, p. 20.

9 ‘Asymmetric Warfare: Myth or Reality’ in Future Warfare – Proceedings of Australian Chief ofArmy’s Conference Proceedings. Alan Ryan [ed.], Allen & Unwin Pty. Ltd, Sydney, 2002, p. 187.

10 Michael Ignatieff, The Warrior’s Honor, Vintage, London, 1999, p. 60.11 Mary Kaldor, New and Old Wars. Polity Press, London, 1999, p. 8.12 Jonathan Glover, Humanity: A Moral History of the 20th Century. Yale University Press, New

Haven, 2000, p. 64.13 In discussing these issues with the staff at the RAAF’s Aerospace Centre it was pointed out to me

that air forces have generally been tardy in developing non-lethal weapons.14 Glover, Humanity p. 64.15 Carl von Clausewitz, On War. translated by Michael Howard and Peter Paret. Princeton

University Press, Princeton, NJ, 1976m p. 61.


Chechnya: Russia’s Experience ofAsymmetrical Warfare

Mr. Ivan Safranchuk

Introduction The issue of the Chechen conflict is extremely complicated andcontroversial.1 Researchers’ attempts to present an objective and compre-hensive picture of Russia’s experience in the conflict are challengingbecause of the strict procedures regarding the formatting or dosing ofinformation. This leads to numerous tales about the situation in theconflict zone. Like every conflict this one has social and human aspects,as well as military and military industry components. The varioushumanitarian aspects of the conflict have already become the subject forclose scrutiny by many Russian and foreign researchers as well as inter-national organizations. This paper will mostly, if not exclusively, focus onthe military experience of Russia facing nontraditional, guerilla type ofconflict, which may be defined as asymmetrical warfare. Politicalquestions are also covered, but only where they are inseparable frommilitary elements. The topic is therefore Russia’s experience in operatingasymmetrical warfare.

The Problematical Definition of “Asymmetrical Warfare”The definition of “asymmetrical” is still a matter for discussion. Thisbecomes particularly evident as one tries to move from theoretical dis-cussions on “asymmetry” in modern warfare to an analysis of concreteexamples of such conflicts.

What is the place of asymmetrical warfare in the generation gradation ofwarfare? With the notion that any conflict may be asymmetrical and thatasymmetry has always existed in wars we must admit that “asymmetry”does not coincide with generation gradation: second-, third- and fourth-

generation conflicts2 can all be asymmetrical in a sense. Some authorssuggest that asymmetrical warfare is “threatening or actually attackingcivilian population or infrastructure”.3 This does not, however, seem tofully reflect the practice of asymmetrical warfare.

So the asymmetry phenomenon fits neither generation gradation nor themaneuver concept of warfare: “Fourth-generation warfare, while indeedhighly “asymmetric”, is not the same as “asymmetric warfare”, sincemaneuver warfare is also “asymmetric” and calls for creating andexploiting enemy weaknesses, rather than engaging and trying to reducehis formations and fortified positions directly”.4 However, the sameauthor also assumes that “fourth-generation warfare is in a sense an“asymmetric” conflict pushed to its limits”.5

The author fails to give a comprehensive definition of the term “asym-metrical warfare”. I do not consider any one of the existing definitions tobe completely satisfactory, and this is also the case regarding theChechnya example. However, the major characteristics of “asymmetricalwarfare” (based on the Chechnya case, but not limited to it, unlessotherwise specified) are the following:

• The enemy is a quasi state in formation.• The enemy army consists of a combination of regular units and

militiamen. • The enemy is not adhering to the traditional rules of war.• The enemy is supported or is at least not internally opposed by the

indigenous population. • The enemy quasi state (regime) has better knowledge of local tradi-

tions, area, roots etc. than its enemy.• The enemy has international contacts and some international sup-

port. • The enemy is familiar with your tactics, unit structures, training and

equipment conditions (this is a unique characteristic of the Chechenconflict).6

A pure case of asymmetrical warfare is when you have the advantage withregards to traditional military factors such as equipment, combatants etc,but the enemy is using tactics and means that do not give you the

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opportunity to exploit this advantage. The military action is probablyalso taking place on enemy-friendly territory.

Limitations on Russia’s Experience as a General Example of Asymmetrical Warfare Russia’s experience in Chechnya is not a very good example of how toface an asymmetrical challenge. Or maybe, particularly in the beginningof the first war in 1994, it is a good example of how not to deal with anasymmetrical challenge. Nonetheless, a negative result is also a result, andnegative experience is also experience. But the combat losses suffered bythe Russian people are a high price to pay in an asymmetrical conflict.

A serious drawback with regards to Russia’ experience is the lack of analysisof the military aspects of the conflict. This is mostly due to a limitedamount of information, as well as the non-declared taboo regardingexpert debates on the issue. A few examples of memoir-style descriptionsof the conflict cannot substitute expert, by-partisan analysis of this war-fighting tactics, based on relevant and sufficient information and data.The latter is a significant problem: Most of the information and dataconcerning the conflict is either classified or simply unavailable. Availablefigures are basically fragmentary, and sometimes conflicting and con-fus-ing. A glaring example is the puzzling official figures on losses in the firstChechen conflict (1994–1996). General Lebed, who was then Secretaryof the Security Council, gave these figures: 3826 – dead, 17892 –wounded, 1906 – missing;7 Joint Command of Federal Forces inChechnya: 4103 – dead, 19794 – wounded, 1231 – missing;8 Ministryof Defense: 2941 – dead; General Staff: 1233 – missing; the staff of JointCommand of Federal Forces in Chechnya: 2846 – dead, 13280 –wounded, 858 – missing.

Not surprisingly, the official analysis of the Chechen conflict appearseven slower than expert reflections. Four major doctrinal documentsadapted after the beginning of the first Chechen conflict do not referdirectly to the Chechen experience, namely “The Presidential Address onNational Security” (1996), “The Concept of National Security” (1997),“The Concept of National Security” (2000), “Military Doctrine” (2000).The Concept of National Security and Military Doctrine was revised in

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early 2000. These revisions did not, however, concentrate on theChechen conflict.

For instance, the military doctrine revision, which was completed inearly 2000, did not reflect the Chechen experience. This is true for boththe military doctrine draft that appeared in October 1999 as well as forthe final document that was officially approved by the president in April2000. The need for a new military doctrine was not motivated by theChechen experience. The official reason for revising the documents wasthe NATO war against Yugoslavia.9 However, the first Chechen war thatended in 1996 gave a good reason for reconsideration of doctrinal linesin the temporary military doctrine adapted in November 1993. Thesecond Chechen conflict that broke out in August 1999 coincided withdecisive stages of completing the draft (September–October) and thefinal (December–February) versions of the document.

There does exist some evidence of Chechen influence, however. Thisinfluence may be of an indirect nature, but is strongly related to the issueof “asymmetrical warfare”. In the doctrinal documents adapted in 2000,the sections on terrorism were expanded. In the military doctrine the listof internal threats (they are considered to prevail over external threats)focuses on terrorism – five out of six named threats are related toterrorism.10 Incidentally the list of external threats also includes diversionand terrorism. In the last Concept of National Security terrorism isconsidered to be one of the major threats to Russian security.11 Moreoverthe Concept concentrates not only on internal terrorism, which has itsroots mostly in criminal activity, but also on transnational (international)terrorism that is a challenge to Russian integrity. Taking into accountthat Moscow insisted on regarding the second Chechen conflict (fromAugust 1999) as an example of international terrorism, the phraseologyof the doctrinal documents adapted in 2000 seems to cover the Chechencase (albeit in a vague and indirect form) and to refer to Russia’sexperience of asymmetrical warfare.

So the Chechen experience is analyzed, but quite slowly. At the sametime the two Chechen conflicts revealed a lot of problems in the Russianarmy: Many of the current tactics and force structures proved not to beefficient enough in the conflict.12 It also brought to light terminology

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problems as well as PR and propaganda weaknesses regarding how thestory of the conflict was presented to the general public. For examplepolitical leaders and military establishments are in constant turmoil withregards to the labeling and development of the conflict.13 Officially it isdefined as a“counter-terrorism operation”, emphasizing strongly that thisis not a war, but rather a “special force action” (the primary goal being tobring order, not to defeat the enemy). Nonetheless, even officials cannothelp the occasional slip of the tongue, calling it “war”. In nonofficiallanguage the label “first and second Chechen wars” prevail in mostdebates on the issue.

The major problem with Russia’s experience is that this conflict cannot becalled a pure case of asymmetrical warfare, defined above, as long as a statehas full dominance in hardware and software – in second-generationmilitary factors. The problem is that due to poor funding, corruption anddisintegration, the Russian army was far from being fully equipped andtrained.

In November 1994 General Grachev, at that time Russian minister ofdefense, prepared a classified document (_ _-0010), where he aimed toprove that the Russian army was completely disabled.14 The Chechenoperation was initiated just 10 days after the formal approval of this doc-ument.15

However, even taking into account the poor conditions, the Russianarmy was still vastly superior with respect to traditional military factors– heavy armaments and on the army level. In the author’s view, all theselimitations regarding the Chechen experience do not undermine it as anexample of asymmetrical warfare.

Russian and Chechen Forces: ComparisonThe comparison of Chechen and Russian powers is summarized in Table1.16

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Individual Level Unit Level Army Level Regime Level

Chechen Better training* Better Better Sympathy fromAdvantages motivation motivation many countries (average and groupscombatant)

Better equipped Better means of Better means of Direct support fromcommunication** communication some international

organizations

Better fed Better night More maneuver- Indirect support vision able (mobile) from someequipment** governments

Better skilled More maneuver-able (mobile)**

Better motivation Better supply of food and medical staff

Better knowledge Better knowledge of the area of the area

(in most cases)

Can always expect Can expect help help from local from local population population (accommoda- (accommoda-tion, food). tion, food).

Russian 1) None Heavy equipment More equipment, 1) None (in the advantages heavy armaments first war)

2) Exception – Full superiority Full superiority 2) Internal state special forces with respect to with respect consensus (particularly units airpower. Com- to airpower**** (in the second war)of the General Staff plete control of themilitary intelligence, airs pace through-GRU)*** out the conflict****

Superiority with Superiority withrespect to fire respect to fire support***** support*****

Comparable Unit training****** Support from (Balance) the population

Supply of munitions (recently Russia is possibly taking some advantage)

Knowledge of the area

Supply of foodand medical staff

Coordination

Table 1

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* One should keep in mind that Chechens have an ingrained “rifle culture” which meansthat the male population admire weapons, small arms are regarded as symbols of powerand prosperity etc. This “love” of weapons is an important factor with respect toindividual training and arms maintenance.

** Three factors, namely means of communication, night vision equipment and maneuver-ability (mobility) proved to be of great importance with regards to the relative efficiencyof the ground troops. The superior side with respect to these components had a hugeadvantage over the other side.

*** The second Chechen conflict is characterized by a more active involvement by specialforces from different branches of the military and police structures (Ministry of Defense,General Staff, Police, Ministry of Internal Affairs, Ministry of Justice, Federal Service ofSecurity).

**** Air superiority did not become a decisive factor in the Chechen conflict. One may arguethat without Russian air superiority the situation would have been even morecomplicated, and this is probably true. However, as the important issue in the twoChechen conflicts was to effectively use airpower against mostly dispersed small enemyformations, air superiority in itself was not of great importance.17 But even if a gatheringof enemy forces, which is a good target for air attack, is detected, this usually happenswithin or close to villages, with a high number of civilian losses as the consequence ofeffective engagement of air power. Nonetheless it proved to be efficient with regards to thedestroying and blocking of enemy fortifications and camps in the mountain areas.However, as these areas are frequently exposed to unfavorable weather conditions(mountain fog), the efficiency of air power is decreased.

***** Skilful use of fire support, in particular long range artillery, gave the opportunity to min-imize Russian combat losses in the second Chechen conflict.18

****** Although unit level training is mostly comparable, small Chechen units are by some para-meters better than Russian ones, due to better individual training. For instance, a unit of7/8 Chechens is usually able to provide more fire density than a comparable Russian unit.

Table 1 displays the shift in military capacities depending on level (indi-vidual, unit, and army). By moving through this gradation from indi-vidual to army level, one can see that the number of advantages shiftsfrom the Chechen to the Russian side.

Table 2 concludes the comparison of Chechen and Russian forces:

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Individual Level Chechens are better by all parameters.

Unit Level The balance could be comparable, but the Chechens have advantages with respect tothree key factors (communications, night vision equipment, mobility).

Army Level On this level, the sides are mostly equal, with the Russian forces having a slightadvantage (on this level communication, mobility and night vision equipment areless important components and are compensated by superiority in heavy arma-ments). But the comparison (balance) between armies is not important. There are notraditional big scale operations.

Regime Level Internal support of regimes is comparable, the international situation is more favor-able for the Chechen side.

Table 2

Components of Asymmetrical Warfare: Chechen Conflict ExperienceBased on the Chechen experience, asymmetrical warfare can be dividedinto military, security and political components and has the structuregiven in Table 3.

Military: Field OperationOn level ground: Except in the early stages of the first Chechen conflictthere were no major problems. The problems that existed were attributednot to the specifics of asymmetric warfare, but to the internal armyproblems with respect to the training of soldiers and officers, operationplanning, lack of air and fire support and lack of fuel and munitions.Field operations against big and medium-size enemy units (20-100combatants) are relatively easy tasks. The most effective tactics is tosurround the enemy unit and prevent it from maneuvering and movingaway by means of accurate fire and air support. This will also lead todisorder and loss within the blocked unit.19 Airborne troops will thenfollow to finish the work on the ground.20

In the mountains. Field offensive operations are difficult. The key factorsfor a successful operation are air and fire support.21 Artillery fire supportis more efficient against mobile targets, as it provides a more rapid

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Component Mission Goal

Military Field operations To defeat enemy units

Control of To bring disorder and infrastructure interrupt supply of munitions

Control of territory(area) To prevent enemy maneuvers

Security Home defense To prevent terrorist activitiesaway from the conflict area

Conflict To prevent terrorist activities Area against indigenous Security collaborators

To develop necessary condi-tions for a peaceful life

To guarantee and respect thehuman rights of the local population

Political In the conflict Search for indigenous To raise local supportarea collaborators

Internal Public support raising To improve motivation of military units

To maintain sustainable course in the conflict

International International support To prevent the military being raising limited by international pub-

lic opinion, which in most cases decreases efficiency

Table 3

reaction to enemy maneuvers, but artillery must have a wide enough anglefor hill operations. Tactical aviation is more efficient against fixed targets.

Attacks from small enemy groups. Enemy forces will usually seek to avoidopen warfare against big and medium-size units. They prefer to carry outsurprise attacks and then either disperse or retreat to hidden positions.

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Rocket/artillery fire as well as small arms fire are more effective than air-craft fire in reaction to such attacks.

Detection and defeat of small enemy groups in towns (villages). This typeof action is extremely unpopular amongst the local population. Themajor problem is that enemy combatants may represent only 1–2 percent of the village population. The most effective way to execute such anoperation is to establish a full blockade of the town and evacuate thepopulation while passport control is carried out and detected enemycombatants are arrested. With regards to human rights it is a brutaloperation, but there are no other ways to minimize the risk of com-batants escaping and to prevent them from free access to housing, food,water etc. in the villages. The locals are not necessarily more friendly torebels, but they are prepared to provide whatever support they need,because they have to keep in mind that “Russians come and leave, but wehave to live here”. This means that the local people are usually willing tohelp the rebels, as they are afraid of them, not necessarily because theyare friendlier toward them. This makes for an urgent need to createconditions for a peaceful life and provide order and security guaranteesfor civilians.

Search for small enemy groups. The detection and defeat of small enemyunits became the most important type of operation. This task can beeffectively implemented with small groups that are mobile, wellequipped and in possession of good means of communication. Thesegroups search enemy units autonomously for up to a week, relying onagent information, reconnaissance, and interceptions of rebel radiotransmits.

Reconnaissance and agent information. These are useful tools for asuccessful defeat of the enemy, in particular for the effective use of air-power.

Snipers. Both sides considered the snipers to be extremely efficientduring the conflict. Chechen snipers practice autonomous patrolling forup to several weeks (winter and summer). Chechen sniper tactics isextremely efficient since they try to eliminate all low-rank officers, thuscompletely disrupting the chain of command.22

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Permanent command and control. Interrupted command chains on unitlevel (in an operation with more than one unit) is a hazard in maneuverwarfare, and rebels try to take advantage of this fact by invading com-mand and control schemes, through simulating orders, interfering witharmy radio frequencies etc. All this was extremely useful in the firstChechen conflict when the regular army was unprepared for such acomplicated resistance. Later on, Russian forces minimized theirvulnerability to such tricks, but there are still two major problems withrespect to maintaining continuous command and control: The Russianarmy has to make use of outdated communication equipment and theysuffer from a lack of low-ranking officers on the battlefield due to theachievements of enemy snipers’ or just lack of order.

Military: Control of InfrastructureObservation points and control posts. These measures cause disorder, butare not in itself enough to interrupt supply routes.

Local authorities and collaborators. Due to their knowledge of the areaand the support they get from the population, the local authorities andtheir collaborators are able to efficiently disrupt enemy supply routes.

Corruption within the army. Corrupt officers are an asset with regards tothe organizing and maintaining of enemy supply routes, but corruptionalso exists within the ranks of the rebel forces. This is not necessarilybased on money, but on a complicated mixture of prestige, status andfinancial motivation. Corruption may, however, be used to turn the localpopulation into collaborators and thereby control the local infra-structure.

Border blockade. The Russian inability to secure the mountain border toGeorgia provided the rebels with backup relief,23 and helped the enemyto secure their supply routes. A blockade is even more important in orderto cut off international contacts, which provide the rebels with anopportunity to obtain support, manpower and advice from internationalgroups.24

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Military: Control of TerritoryObservation points and control posts. This does not solve the problem.

Local authorities and collaborators. This is the only sustainable way tomaintain territorial control.

Security: Home Defense This is an extremely important task, as the enemy tries to reach cities andeven the capital.

There are some controversies with regards to the issue of home defense.On the one hand, terrorist attacks are considered by the enemy to be asuccess. On the other hand, they contribute to raise internal public sup-port and army motivation, which helps the troops on the battlefield. Adefeated enemy will be motivated to commit acts of terror, but at thesame time, the enemy’s defeat will create the basis for a switch to politicalmeasures of conflict resolution on acceptable terms. Thus prevention ofterrorist action is the best way to shift toward political means as soon aspossible, since acts of terror are very likely to destroy any endeavors forpeaceful crisis management by alienating the public opinion. The generalpublic will expect retaliation, and is not likely to easily accept peace afterterror.

Security: Conflict Area Security This component is essential for shifting toward political means ofconflict resolution. It is very important to observe human rights and localtraditions. The local population will only show sympathy if theconditions for order, safety and a peaceful life are present. Understandingthis, the rebels use various tricks to nurture indigenous disbelief andconcern and to convert these feelings into hatred toward the Russiantroops. These tricks include the practice of “ghosts”: Rebel forces wearRussian uniforms and commit violent actions. This appears to beextremely efficient in the “macho-culture” atmosphere that exists in theChechen society, as it leads to upheavals of revenge. Rebels are takingadvantage of this motivation, using women and children for groundreconnaissance and the supply of medical stuff and foodm,25 particularlyin preparation for counter-assault attacks. Any attempts to secure theconflict area by restricting movement and imposing individual searches

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for ordinary people (usually women and children) lead to confrontationswith the local population.

Political ComponentPolitical measures are the only way to ensure long-term conflict resolu-tion.

Table 4 provides the conclusion of the analysis on the means used for thedifferent components of the Chechen conflict.26

Russia’s Experience of Asymmetrical Warfare in the Chechen ConflictThe following are some conclusions drawn from the analysis of theChechen conflict experience divided into military, security and politicalrealms. Most of these conclusions are not exclusive for this particularconflict, and may be applicable to other asymmetrical wars.

Military Realm• Military means are essential, but reach only a limited number of

conflict resolution goals.• Communication and mobility are essential notions.• Unit coordination is vital.• Initiative is important. It is easier to prevent an enemy from

attacking (making use of control posts and permanent search/detection operations), than to defend and react once attacked. It isparticularly important not to give the enemy initiative at night.

• Military activities should be limited in time. After a rapid defeat ofmajor enemy forces, the military should demonstrate power throughpresence, thus proving to be the essence of deterrence and stability.The problem is that the military acts of retaliation, and counter-retaliation lead to an accumulation of public discomfort and revengemotivation.

• The record of using “professionals” (not conscripts, but so calledcontractors and officers) is mostly negative in the Chechen conflict.This is a unique Russian experience not applicable to other asym-metrical wars. The problem is that Russian “professionals” tend totake the war too personally in that they are heavily motivated by theloss of friends etc., sometimes even more so than by the belief in the

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Component Mission Goal Means

Military Field operations To combat Military*enemy units

Control of infra- To bring disorder Mixture of military structure and interrupt and nonmilitary

supply of measures, the latter munitions are more sustainable

and efficient.

Territorial control To prevent Nonmilitary meansenemy are more effectivemaneuvers

Security Home defense To prevent Responsibility terrorist activities of the police and far from the special agencies conflict area

Conflict To prevent Responsibility of the Area terrorist activities police and special Security against indigenous agencies. They can be

collaborators effectively imple-mented only throughthe assistance of local support and reliable collaborators life

To createconditions for apeaceful life

To provide maximum respect for the human rights of the local population

Political In the Search for To raise local support Political meansconflict area indigenous

collaborators

Internal Raising of public To improve the support motivation of

military units

To maintain a sustainable course

International Raising of To prevent the military international support from being limited by

the international public opinion, which in most cases decreases their efficiency

Table 4

* The use of police forces in field operations proved to be inefficient, so these forces should ratherbe used to guarantee territorial control.27

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rightness of command and mission.28 To prevent this sort of problems,one has to be morally prepared for a mission, in particularly if it islikely to become a long one.

Security RealmSecurity forces consisting of local people are less efficient and reliablethan the external police force, and the former are not necessarily morefriendly to the indigenous population. The problem is that in a societylike the Chechen one, the clan structure is just as strong and importantas ethnic orientation. The former even prevails as soon as the direct out-side threat diminishes.29 So police and security forces consisting of localpeople may cross the lines of the traditional division of power among theclans. However these forces can be really useful if they operate within alimited area where the population is friendly to them (or their clans).

Political Realm• It is better to bring a local collaborator (indigenous, but living out-

side the conflict area), than to choose someone from the ranks of theenemy to cooperate with. In this situation, the problem of localpublic support will become apparent, but this is better solvedthrough creating conditions for a peaceful life, rather than throughrelying on a popular local figure.

• International criticism is a very important negative factor. Withinternational pressure to stop the conflict, efficient military actionsare next to impossible, as collateral damage cannot be completelyavoided.

• Internal political support is an important positive factor.

It is important to choose the right time for the shift toward a peacefulconflict resolution. The major problem is that in traditional societies, likethe Chechen one, with unclear, but powerful clan divisions it is not dif-ficult to conclude a peace accord with selected clans, but it is really achallenge to make this accord comprehensive and extend it to themajority of rebels. The problem is partly cultural. Chechens are obsessedwith status and prestige (money is just an element of this, usually noteven the dominant element). Thus they are ready to make an accord, butthis accord must contribute to improving their position versus other

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clans: Every single warlord wants better conditions than the others.30 Solocal leaders do not observe the principle of universality, thus makingwhatever agreement fragmentary and temporary.

NOTES

1 Based on the speech “Russia’s experience of asymmetrical warfare: battle against separatism andterrorism” of 6 February 2002 at the 2002 Royal Norwegian Air Force’s Air Power Symposium,5–7 February 2002.

2 Second-generation (or Industrial Age) warfare: “This style of war-fighting tends to be linear andslow moving, relying on masses of men and material to physically crush (albeit not necessarilythrough frontal assaults) or threaten to crush an opponent”. Third-generation: This type of war-fighting “breaks battlefield linearity by seeking and exploiting a combination of “spaces and tim-ing” vis-à-vis an enemy (…), anticipating the actions of the opponent and preempting his inten-tions via unexpected thrusts and parries by highly agile, dispersed friendly forces broughttogether quickly for the mission and just as quickly dispersed when the action is finished. Thistype of warfare also may free forces from the ponderous support structure characteristic ofIndustrial Age warfare”. Fourth generation: “This primarily involves land forces (although tar-gets can be naval vessels and air assets) – irregular or guerilla warfare carried out by groups moti-vated by ideology, revenge, lust for power, ethnicity, religion or some other unifying bond”. (Col.Daniel Smith (ret.), Marcus Corbin, Christopher Hellman. Reforging the Sword. Forces for A21st Century Security Strategy (Condensed Report). Center for Defense Information,September 2001. pp. 20–21)

3 Col. Daniel Smith (ret.), Marcus Corbin, Christopher Hellman. Reforging the Sword. Forces forA 21st Century Security Strategy (Condensed Report). Center for Defense Information,September 2001. p. 21

4 Chester W. Richards. A Swift, Elusive Sword. What If Sun Tzu and John Boyd Did A NationalDefense Review? Center for Defense Information, May 2001. p. 23.

5 Chester W. Richards. A Swift, Elusive Sword. What If Sun Tzu and John Boyd Did A NationalDefense Review? Center for Defense Information, May 2001. p. 47.

6 A lot of Chechen “generals” were officers in the Soviet Army: Dgohar Dudaev (the self-declaredpresident and supreme commander of Chechen rebels before his death in 1996) was a general inthe Soviet Army, Aslan Mashadov (the current president and supreme commander) was acolonel, etc. Most of the ordinary rebels were serving in the Soviet Army as conscripts. All thisgave rebel forces perfect knowledge of hardware, software and nonmaterial conditions of the cen-tral Moscow armed forces.

7 Interfax, 2 October 1996 (with reference to Lebed’s speech in the Russian State Duma).8 Moskovskiy Komsomolets (a popular Moscow newspaper), 14 January 1997 (figures valid for 13

October 1996).9 Of course the war against Yugoslavia may also be regarded as a worthy reason for updating doc-

trines with regards to new military operations. However in referring to the Yugoslavian conflict,the Russian political leaders and military establishment were covering not warfare practices, but

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issues of international politics. Marshall Sergeev (then Russian minister of defense) stated in May1999 that the NATO action in Yugoslavia “makes Russia conceptually revise its military doc-trine”. He further explained that the president had already issued the directive authorizing sucha revision. Minyaem Voennuu Doktrinu (Change of Military Doctrine). Rossiyskay Gazeta(Russia’s Newspaper), 15 May 1999.

10 Voennay Doktrina Rossiyskoy Federatsii (The Military Doctrine of the Russian Federation).Rossiyskay Gazeta (Russia’s Newspaper), 25 April 2000.

11 Konseptia Natsionalnoy Besobasnosti (The Concept of National Security). Krasnay Zvezda (RedStar Newspaper), 20 January 2000. In Autumn 1999, the then Deputy Secretary of the SecurityCouncil (this body was responsible for developing the Concept) stated (but in a slightly vagueway) that the need to extend sections on terrorism was justified by the events in Dagestan (whichsignalled the beginning of the second Chechen conflict) and terrorist actions inside Russia. NaSoveshanii Chlenov Sovbeza V Kremle Prinyata Novayz Kontseptsiyz NatsionalynoyBezopasnosti Rossii (The New Concept of National Security is adapted at the Security CouncilMeeting in Kremlin). Interfax, 05 October 1999). This seems to be the only officially voiced cor-relation between doctrinal document revision and Chechen conflict experience. However, evenin this statement, the Chechen issue was mentioned after the reference to the NATO actions inYugoslavia as the reason for changing the Concept.

12 Report by the Chief of the Main Directorate of the Ground Forces of the Russian Armed Forces,Gen.-Col. Bukreev, dated 14 December 2000. This report is available (in Russian) at the web-site www.grani.ru (http://www.grani.ru/chechenya_mil/facts/lessons1).

13 Salavat Suleymenov. Chechnay: vse ge voina, a ne spetsoperatsia … (Chechnya: A war, ratherthen a special force operation … ). Nezavisimoe Voennoe Obozrenie (Independent MilitaryReview), 01 February 2002.

14 Moskovskiy Komsomolets (a popular Moscow newspaper), 26 January 1995.15 This apparent contradiction may be explained by the hypothesis that in fact Moscow did not

intend to fight: The assumption was that a demonstration of massive power would be enough toput Dudaev on his knees.

16 The table gives Chechen and Russian advantages on individual combatant, unit, army andregime levels. The table presents only advantages, with the assumption that one’s advantage is theother’s disadvantage (weakness).

17 General Dudaev was preparing his Air Forces and Air Defense Forces, relying on 426 aircraft(including 5 fighters) and 2 helicopters, as well as 27 air defense systems (including someportable). Gen. Dudaev organized the training of about 100 pilots and sent another 40 peopleto train as pilots in Turkey. His army had about 40 trained pilots. However at the very outbreakof the conflict in November/ December 1994, the Russian army destroyed all Dudaev’s aircraft,including his personal one. In this connection, Dudaev sent a telegram to the commander of theRussian Air Forces, Petr Deinekin, which said “I congratulate you with full air superiority, butwe will meet on the ground”. (Novichkov N.N., Snegovskiy V.Y., Sokolov A.G., Shvarev V.U.Rossiiskie voorugenniye siliy v chechenskom konflikte: analiz, itogi, viyvodiy. (Russian armedforces in the Chechen conflict: Analysis, results, conclusions). Moscow 1995, pp. 14, 15, 108, 112)

18 Report by the Chief of artillery and rocket forces of the Russian Army, Gen.-Col. Karatuev,dated 14 December 2000. This report is available (in Russian) at the website www.grani.ru(http://www.grani.ru/chechenya_mil/facts/lessons2).


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20 If an enemy unit escapes from surrounding enemies, it may be traced for several days, partly dueto the Chechen tradition of removing the dead and wounded from the battlefield. They will vio-late this tradition in the most desperate and difficult cases, however.


22 This sniper tactics played its tragic part in the New Year 1994–95 assault on Grozny (the capi-tal of Chechnya). By early January there were practically no officers left on the levels of platoonand company, according to some estimates made by the troops that took part in this assault.(Novichkov N.N., Snegovskiy V.Y., Sokolov A.G., Shvarev V.U. Rossiiskie voorugenniye siliy vchechenskom konflikte: analiz, itogi, viyvodiy. (Russian armed forces in the Chechen conflict:Analysis, results, conclusions). Moscow 1995, p. 42).

23 A possible assumption is that in the beginning of the second Chechen conflict in 1999, Russiapurposefully left this loophole open, keeping in mind that rebels escaping to Georgia wouldrelieve the situation in Chechnya and create a lever to influence the Georgian leadership.

24 Russian authorities are continuously insisting that there are existing links between Chechenrebels and an international terrorist network, namely the Al-Qaida. Matthew McAllester. TapeBacks Claim. Video Supports Russia on al-Qaida role in Chechenya. New York Newsday, 20January 2002.

25 Vyacheslav Mironov. Ya Biyl Na Etoy Voyene. Chechnya 1995 (I was at this war. Chechnya,1995). Moscow 2001, pp. 402–405.

26 This is table 3 plus the column “means”.27 Report by the Chief of the Main Directorate of the Ground Forces of the Russian Armed Forces,

Gen.-Col. Bukreev, dated 14 December 2000. This report is available (in Russian) at the web-site www.grani.ru (http://www.grani.ru/chechenya_mil/facts/lessons1).

28 On the contrary, professionals are expressing mistrust in political leadership, high-rank com-manders, the mission itself etc. Vyacheslav Mironov. Ya Biyl Na Etoy Voyene. Chechnya 1995 (I was at this war. Chechnya, 1995). Moscow 2001, pp. 289–329.

29 For example in the period between the two Chechen conflicts in 1996-1999 Chechen com-manders were engaged in a bloody struggle among their own people, organizing raids andassaults against each other.

30 The head of the pro-Moscow Chechen Administration, Ahmad Kadiyrov, said in this regard: “Ifthe Russian troops stay there will be no war. If they leave, every area (clan) will have its own law.That’s why power (leadership) must be elected and rely on force. Currently, this force must beRussian”. Argumenty i Factiy (a popular Russian newspaper), 09 February 2000.

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Another Gathering Darkness: The Pessimist’s Guide to the Future

Dr. H. P. WillmottIf I were one of the celestial bodies I would look with completedetachment upon this miserable ball of dust and dirt… I wouldshine upon the good and evil alike… But I am a man… As longas I breathe, I shall fight for the future, the radiant future inwhich man,1 strong and beautiful, will become master of thedrifting stream of his history and will direct it toward theboundless horizon of beauty, joy and happiness…

The nineteenth century has in many ways satisfied and has ineven more ways deceived the hopes of the optimist … It hascompelled him to transfer most of his hopes to the twentiethcentury… And now that century has come! What has it broughtwith it at the outset? In France – the poisonous foam of racialhatred; in Austria – nationalist strife … in South Africa – theagony of a tiny people, which is being murdered by a colossus; onthe “free” island itself – triumphant hymns to the victoriousgreed of jingoist jobbers; dramatic “complications” in the east;rebellions of starving popular masses in Italy, Bulgaria,Romania … Hatred and murder, famine and blood …

It seems as if the new century, this gigantic newcomer, were bentat the very moment of its appearance to drive the optimist intoabsolute pessimism and nirvana.– Death to Utopia! Death to faith! Death to love! Death to hope!thunders the twentieth century in salvoes of fire and in therumbling of guns.– Surrender, you pathetic dreamer. Here I am, your long awaitedtwentieth century, your “future.”

– No, replies the unhumbled optimist: You – you are only thepresent.

The twentieth century would seem to draw to its chronological closehaving profoundly disappointed such optimism. The most violentcentury in Man’s history – perhaps only the third century B.C. and thethirteenth century compare in terms of destruction and death in war –ends with the irony of its having confirmed not the confidence and hopeexpressed, perhaps surprisingly, by Trotsky2 but the pessimism of Acton.The latter’s two-part belief that advances in science and technologywould bestow upon twentieth-century man an unprecedented ability toinflict suffering upon himself and that this facility would be used in fullmeasure would seem to have been proven by events.

It is somewhat ironic that rationalism is generally pessimistic, at least interms of the present and short-term future: its view of the better futurerepresents faith and belief, not reason. It is even more ironic that at theend of what had been, for good and ill, the American century, the UnitedStates approaches the new millennium pessimistically and with uncer-tainty, though given the nature of the presidency and congress and theirpresent incumbents perhaps this is not altogether surprising. But afterhaving been among the victors in two of the greatest wars in History andthen having presided over the defeat and disintegration of the only othersuperpower, the United States, with a constitution that more than anyother single document embodies the concept of hope but burdened withthe responsibilities of leadership in a landscape largely devoid of familiarlandmarks, heads an international system confronted by upheaval andstrife and by a bewildering, quickening pace of change.

Bronowski wrote that “the future will say of (the Industrial Revolution)that in the ascent of man it is a step, a stride, as powerful as the Renais-sance. The Renaissance established the dignity of man. The IndustrialRevolution established the unity of nature.”3 If this assertion is correct,it may well be that this same future will regard the changes of thetwentieth century as responsible for the destruction of these achieve-ments, if not for a reason that is immediately identifiable. These changeswould vie with one another in any consideration of the factors that havealtered society, transformed the world from the way in which individuals

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live to the nature of the international order. These factors are many, asmany as there are dates that may be considered to be “the definingmoment” of twentieth century history. 6 August 1945, the date of theattack on Hiroshima, is perhaps the most obvious of these: 21 July 1969and the first lunar walk is perhaps another not simply because of Man’sreaching beyond his own planet but because of its real-time transmission.It was perhaps the first global “event,” and perhaps also the last. By themid-Seventies, and after such unprecedented successes as the Indianimmunisation programmes, television began to surrender its collectivistidentity and social function under the pressure of an ever more blatantcommercialism and a so-called entertainment industry. But in terms ofsociety and the international order, the collapse of an Eurocentric world,the rise of two non-European states as the most powerful and importantcountries in the world, the shift of industrial and financial power awayfrom western Europe, and indeed even away from North America, intothe Pacific rim represent massive changes. Arguably such developmentsas the Green Revolution, the medical revolution that was heralded by theadvent of such drugs as salvarsan and penicillin, and the populationexplosion have been no less important. At the present time the attentionpaid to such matters as the information super-highway and third-generation Information Revolution developments has served to obscurethe significance of developments that formed the basis of these advance-ments and other related matters, such as the impact upon everyday lifeof electrification, though perhaps the most far-reaching development ofthe twentieth century has been the internal combustion engine. Thoughneither electrification nor the internal combustion engine were twentiethcentury inventions their application belongs to this century, and theirimportance in changing the way we live needs little in the way ofelaboration. Likewise the communications revolution of the present timeserves to conceal the change that photography has come to represent inthe course of the twentieth century as any casual perusal of serious news-papers around the turn of the century will reveal, and it is too easy to for-get that this same century is the first century of mass literacy throughoutthe world even though in China alone 400,000,000 people, or one-thirdof the population or more than the population of western Europe,remain illiterate.

But any serious consideration of twentieth century history returns to war

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and its impact, but even if John Lukacs was correct in seeing the twoworld wars as defining the landscape of twentieth century history,perhaps the defining moment that separates the nineteenth andtwentieth centuries were the events of 28 October 1929. This statement,of course, does not accord with the view that the Second World War wasthe last war of the nineteenth century and that in historical terms thepresent century dates from 15 August 1945, but this particular argumentcannot be dismissed lightly. The Great Depression that followed in thewake of the Wall Street Crash, besides inflicting possibly unprecedentedhardship and suffering on a global scale, marked the end of nineteenthcentury ideas of progress. The Great Depression shattered the illusion ofcompetence on the part of the capitalist system. It, the Great Depression,revealed a brittleness of an economic system that had been largely for-gotten as a result of three decades without major and prolongedrecession. It proved that the capitalist economic system and the greatpowers of the day had not been given guarantees that had been deniedprevious civilizations. But war, specifically in the shape of two globalconflicts, has shaped the history of the twentieth century in a mannerthat no other phenomenon can equal. The Russian and Chineserevolutions, the impetus given to struggles for national self-determination on the part of colonial territories, first the League andthen the United Nations, the Manhattan project and a host of scientific,technological and medical developments flowed directly from the twoworld wars, in whole or in very large measure. Preparation for war in theperiod after 1945 ensured that the military remained the leader oftechnological development, and if in the last ten or fifteen years thisprimacy has been overtaken, specifically in the field of informationtechnology, the fact remains that whatever economic prosperity wascommanded in western societies in the third quarter of the century wasunderpinned in no small measure by military spending. While defenceindustries in a number of countries remain very important in terms ofemployment and foreign earnings, the critical importance of theseindustries in terms of their effect upon their national economies andresearch and development has passed. But war remains very much withus, its place in the (mis)conduct of human affairs assured, despite theevidence of the twentieth century of the ineffectiveness of war and theuse of force in the realization of national objectives.


It is quite possible to regard the changes that are being brought about bythe Information Revolution and in the wake of the collapse of the Sovietsystem optimistically. The last six or seven years have been years ofunprecedented optimism in terms of the collapse of Soviet communism,the triumph of liberal democracy and the casual assumption that thelatter – and specifically the American version – represents the future.One has as much confidence in such notions as one retains in such assur-ances that battle has become so terrible that it is certain to abolish itself,4

though one point of optimism that has flowed from the collapse of theSoviet Union and Warsaw Pact cannot be denied: the prospect of globalnuclear war has receded. But the collapse of the Soviet Union brought anend to a period of stability within Europe and it did not bring peace. Theprocess of Soviet disintegration spawned a series of conflicts that addedto those already being fought around the world. It has been estimatedthat in 1992 there were more than sixty wars being fought and the mostserious of these were ones that had flowed from the collapse of the SovietUnion and Yugoslavia. In the long term the consequences of the passingof the Soviet Union may well be profoundly disruptive in two quite dif-ferent but related spheres – nuclear proliferation and organized crime.The significance of former Soviet central Asia replacing Afghanistan,Burma and Thailand as the major centres of opium production hasprovoked fears that the Russian Mafiya, with control of the heroin trade,could register an achievement – the undermining of the integrity of thewestern banking system – that proved beyond the Soviet Union,5 whilethe latter’s passing may well be a source of regret with respect to herhaving been a major obstacle to nuclear proliferation. The little-knownIndo-Pakistani crisis of May 1990, which was only defused because ofthe American ability to confront both parties with the reality and likelyconsequences of their own actions but which many Washington insidersregarded at the time as the most dangerous international crisis sinceCuba, represents a salutary warning of the dangers that will attend crisesbetween regional powers that have strategic weapons in their arsenals.The likelihood of proliferation in the aftermath of the collapse of theSoviet Union may and has to be assumed with all the potential forinstability thus entailed, most obviously in the Middle East, on theIndian sub-continent and on and around the Korean peninsula. Hereinmay be the real tragedy of the last fifty years, that the Cold War wasmerely the period of nuclear initiation, that proliferation cannot be con-


tained, that the rest of the world will follow the example of powersirresponsible enough to vest their security in the threat of annihilation.

If the passing of the Soviet Union and empire brought to an end thedanger of one form of war, we can be assured that liberal democracy willhave little change to show from a future series of conflicts that are certainto follow the basic fault line of twentieth century history. Much, most,of twentieth century strife has concerned itself with the struggle ofidentity. At the start of this century virtually the whole of humanity out-side the western hemisphere belonged to some twelve or thirteenempires, either as citizens or subjects. The First World War was foughtabout, or at least the treaties that ended that conflict tried to base them-selves upon, the principle of national self-determination within Europe.The Second World War and its aftermath saw that same principle extenditself to colonial empires. With the collapse of the Soviet system and thepassing of time that has placed independence from colonial rule at thedistance of at least one generation, the search for identity has taken onnew dimensions that have given rise to a new “frontiersmanship” at theexpense of previously-existing national and state characteristics asdifferent groups have sought to establish and confirm their individualand separate singularity, whether within or across existing boundaries.

In various parts of the world this breakdown of consensus and re-assertion of traditional loyalties and identities held in check by someform of ancien regime has been accompanied by a savagery and ferocitythat suggests a new barbarism. In different parts of Africa a relapse intotribalism has been accompanied by a re-primitivization of warfare interms of weaponry and practice, and international disinterestedness. Insuch places as Bosnia-Herzogovina knowledge of the crucifixion andquartering of children and the burning alive of whole communities –atrocities which were repaid in kind by the Serbs on the Moslems andCroats when opportunity permitted – proved to be the basis of inactionon the part of the international community, and the latter’s final involve-ment in this particular crisis was surprising in its tardiness. It is possibleto see in such developments as the passing of the apartheid regime inSouth Africa and the repatriation of Hutu refugees and attempts ofreconciliation in Rwanda as the base for a certain cautious, very guardedoptimism. But it is possible to see in parallel and more frequent events of


recent years, specifically the upsurge in armed conflict, as merely the firststage in a process that lends itself to portrayal in apocalyptical terms.

In the last years of the second millennium we stand on the brink of threemajor and obvious crises which, when they break, will present themselvesin their most virulent form in the developing countries. At the presenttime some 80% of humanity has access to about 20% of the world’sresources. The vast majority of the world’s population – which hasdoubled in the last two generations and which experienced a three-foldincrease between 1945 and 1995 – does not have access or has only verylimited access to proper shelter and decent clothing, while a quarter ofhumanity does not have access clean water. One in five people indeveloping countries, some 840,000,000 souls, suffer serious hunger,and if 200,000,000 children between the ages of seven and eleven yearsare obliged to work for most of the hours of daylight, three in ten of alladults that form the world’s employable population lack work and themeans to sustain themselves and their dependents. Given continuedpopulation growth, in part the result of the continued importance of thefamily in terms of generating income and security, this situation can onlyworsen, obviously in terms of pressure on resources but no lessimportantly because of changing work patterns. At the present timeKenya devotes 23% of its total state expenditure on education, half ofthis total on primary education, but in 1989 the total number of childrenin state secondary education numbered but 30,000. With the populationof 27,000,000 in 1993 expected to rise to 35,000,000 in 2000, the factis that Kenya and other states in the Third World will be obliged todevote increased resources for longer periods in order to provide theskilled base for future production, and with two obvious riders. Suchresources are not and will not become available, and at least in relativeterms, the human base for future production is ever-shrinking.

But lurking over the horizon are the food and fuel crises. In October1994 an article in the International Herald Tribune posed the question ofwhether China could survive beyond the year 2034, by which timeChina would require the total surplus food requirement of the world.The question was meaningless. The food crisis, given the depletion of theresources of the sea and the fact that in the next decade a quarter of allarable land in the United States will go out of production, is going to


explode long before 2034, and in any case the China crisis will presentitself in the next decade. Between 1994 and 2004 China must create250,000,000 new jobs in the agrarian sector of the economy alonemerely to maintain present levels of employment and prosperity. Since itwould appear that this could only be achieved by a diversification of lightengineering and consumer production, the resultant energy requirementwill be equal to the present level of world surplus energy capacity. Allother considerations being equal, China’s requirements can be met atleast in the short-term, but seemingly only at the expense of a majorincrease in energy prices at a time when alternative food sources must bedeveloped, and none need reminding of the disastrous consequences ofthe 1974 and 1978 oil price increases for the countries of the ThirdWorld. Whether the United States and Europe will accept continuingtrade arrangements that favour China and which alone would provideher with the means of paying for these needs is quite another matter.

In light of these developing crises of food, fuel and employment it seemsunlikely that western-style democracy will have little if anything to offerthe greater part of humanity in years to come, and this leaves aside thefact that what we in the West understand to be the basis of liberaldemocracy – the rule of law, consent, compromise, the concept ofopposition and the denial of the right of any individual issue to justifysystemic resistance – are not well founded in Third World countries.Indeed, even in the western world such values are under an attackunprecedented in the last fifty years. Yet the real point is that the westerncapitalist system, which has imposed itself upon the world, since the timeof Locke and Smith has been based upon a double premise in terms ofthe stability of expansion and an acceptance of labour dislocation as theshort-term cost inherent in long-term growth and advancing prosperity.We have been assured that “technology makes possible the limitlessaccumulation of wealth” and that liberal principles in economics – the“free market” – has spread, and have succeeded in producingunprecedented levels of material prosperity, both in industriallydeveloped countries and in countries that had been, at the close of WorldWar II, part of the impoverished Third World,6 but one remains less thanconvinced – not merely on account of the deprivation in such countriesas Bangladesh where per capita income totals £3 per week and two-thirdsof all children suffer from malnourishment, but because both elements


of the double premise that have underpinned the capitalist system wouldseem to be dead. Leaving aside the fact that we have no guarantee thatthe trough is not finite, that at the end of such a process as the limitlessaccumulation of wealth one would not be forced back on the definitivereality of food resources as the basis of real wealth, the real social problemthat is likely to emerge is the reality of permanent labour dislocation. Theimpact of the Information Revolution has been to reduce the wealth-producing base within society in real terms, while the pattern ofeducation and social development of the last fifty years means that thosewho fall outside this base are unlikely ever to regain a position within itand that the greater part of society will remain outside it. The long-termimplications of an ever greater concentration of wealth in relatively fewerhands and the existence of political expectation created in a previous agecan hardly be missed. One suspects that even as a new generationemerges with lower levels of expectation in the first couple of decades ofthe coming century the greatest source of tension in western society willbe the clash of interests of a shrinking class of producers and the demandsof a growing class of consumers, most members of the latter certainlylacking the means and perhaps even the inclination to join the ranks ofthe other.

Moreover, the tendency toward a global levelling of income over the lastthree decades promises no relief for western societies, quite the reversesince it has partially involved the loss of traditional manufacturingindustries.7 But it also carries massively disruptive implications for thedeveloping countries because the same manifestations of socialdivisiveness so apparent in western societies relative to persistently highlevels of unemployment and growing income inequality within nationaleconomies has attended their development. The tendency toward alevelling of income has not been more evenly spread in Third Worldcountries any more than it has been evenly spread in western society, butit has taken place even at a time when the terms of trade, specifically interms of earnings from food and primary products, have worsenedmassively for these countries.8 No process of industrialization has evertaken place without massive upheaval and social strife. The shift ofindustry into the Third World represents a movement into areas that aregenerally unstable, and industrialization likely only to aggravate thisinstability because the immediate impact is certain to depress living


standards. The living conditions of the majority of the population ofSouth Korea equate to those of Victorian Britain, and realisticallyconditions cannot be expected to be better in other countries. Events inSouth Korea at the end of 1996 point very clearly to the profoundpolitical problems that have associated themselves with “democracyKorean-style,” a euphemism for dictatorship, backed by the military andwhich has ruled without respect to the rule of law and increasingly forthe benefit of a corrupt establishment elite for decades, though the basisof this crisis is economic. Having undercut western industries, evenJapan, South Korea has been presented with their problems in its turn,and all the Pacific rim “Tiger Economies” face the long-term problemsassociated with industrialization – the breakdown of the nuclear familyand under- or lack of insurance – that form the down-side of theirimpressive economic performances of the last three decades. In addition,the events of July-August 1997 with respect to the enforced devaluationof the currencies of southeast Asia demonstrated the weaknesses andvulnerabilities of the Tiger Economies despite – and in some ways – as aresult of economic growth: dependence on foreign capital, trade deficits,ingrained corruption and the burden of change falling upon those leastable to bear it.9 And none of this takes any account of the impact of eco-logical degradation, climatic changes and continuing desiccation, theperversity of existing borders and enforced mass movement ofpopulations. In terms of the search for identity, one can only presumethat the changes presently in hand cannot work in favour of permanenceand accord. Herein may be repetition. Rationalism, in the form of theprimacy of the Left, did not survive its post-war success, and after sevendecades in which the idea of the centrally planned economy provedwanting in terms of the creation of wealth and ensuring decent livingstandards, economic liberalism, laissez-faire capitalism, may not surviveits victory.

If, at one end of the spectrum, the future of warfare is to be dominatedby advanced technology, it would appear very likely that at the other endsome form of guerrilla warfare remains undiminished in potency andrelevance. The Soviet Union may have passed from the scene and with itspassing, and the subsequent loss of patronage and support forrevolutionary struggle, other forms of political struggle may emerge asalternatives to revolutionary warfare. But the balance of probability must


be that revolutionary warfare remains undiminished in its relevancegiven the poverty that will continue to embrace so much of humanity.Indeed it is possible to see revolutionary warfare having enhancedrelevance as a result of considerations of rising cost affecting the abilityof states to conduct protracted war. But if such a situation is predictableenough in terms of Third World countries, the relevance of armedstruggle within advanced western societies may well have been enhancedas a result of one of the less notable aspects of the InformationRevolution, namely the erosion of the basis of social consensus as it hasevolved over time. Satellite television will ensure the importing of out-side values, perhaps anti-values would be a better word in some cases,while the movement away from mass programming to individualpayment of television cannot have any effect other than to weaken thedegree of social cohesion which broadcasting has provided for mostsocieties over the last three generations. The days when everyone watchedthe same few programmes or read the same few newspapers is over, andwith it, perhaps, the basis of social consensus, not least because of tele-vision’s capacity to import the expectations of other societies and itsgearing of advertising to levels of wealth deliberately denied a permanentpart of society that is outside the economic and political system. Theemergence of a permanent underclass – with all the associated problemsof family breakdown, poor health and worse living conditions in innercity areas,10 racial tensions and inadequacy of educational facilities – thatconsists of individuals stranded at the bottom of the qualifications leagueand therefore wholly unappealing to any potential employer has alreadyresulted in depressed city centres, a rise of drug-related criminal violencein these same areas, and a mass refusal to participate in the politicalsystem – a deliberate self-disenfranchisement on the part of an alienatedpart of society that has equipped itself with its own mores and culture.

While western Europe has yet to experience anything like the EighteenthStreet phenomenon in the United States, the example of the currentstruggle in Algeria with its progressive weakening of the state in directrelationship to its manifest inability to protect its citizens from suchorganizations as the Armed Islamic Group and the increase ofracketeering, prostitution, drug dealing and revenge killings in the urbanareas, point to the dangers presented by urban-based militants even in asociety where the state and the military possess the determination to


sustain themselves. The possible implication of such developments foradvanced western states, specifically those states where there has been adeliberate repudiation of the concept of society on the part of govern-ment11 intent on the shedding of powers and responsibilities that havebeen gathered for most of this century, are self-evident, though notnecessarily for reasons that are self-obvious. The last twenty years havewitnessed western societies grapple with intractable economic problems,and the persistence of a depression that has existed for two decadeswithout formal acknowledgement. In one very obvious sense politics inthis time, perhaps politics in any time, has concerned itself with themanagement of illusions, and illusions of prosperity have beenmaintained by deliberately divisive social policies and the marginalisationof impact through the deliberate infliction of the cost of these problemsupon the powerless underclass. In Britain this burden has fallen upon theunemployed and in the United States the black community, and in thelatter case this has had the impact of maintaining racial segregation andsetting aside most of the achievements registered in the civil rightsmovement of the Sixties: the black share of national wealth in 1994 wassmaller than it was in 1968. It is somewhat ironic to question in theaftermath of the collapse of the Soviet system whether in westerncountries or in developing economies, Engels’ The Condition of theWorking Classes in England has a relevance in the 1990s that it lost in theperiod 1945–1975. Between 1967 and 1986 the percentage of workingpopulation involved in manufacture in the United States fell by a third,but the massaging of the employment figures was disguised by theenforced movement of the otherwise unemployed into the lowest paidranks of the service industries. One is reminded of the cartoon depictingan American senator, at a dinner, claiming responsibility for the creationof so many million new jobs, and in the background a waiter thinking tohimself that he had three of them. The cartoon would be amusing butfor its uncomfortable brush with truth: as it is, in 1997 Britain had moreactors than miners.

In any event the state has been weakened over the last two decades, butin ways that extend beyond a failing police control over deprived innercity areas. The real weakening of the state exists in the erosion of power,authority and will, specifically in terms of the use of power in an anti-cipatory manner. Moreover, anticipatory demands are increasing and,


because of the impact of television and the Information Revolution, thetime available to meet such demands has lessened. In western society wemay be witness to the enfeebled politics of increasing poverty and else-where enfeebled authoritarianism may well become the norm, the latterbeing accompanied in many parts of the world by the spin-off from themany conflicts that have erupted over the last decade. A permanent low-grade militarization of society in many Third World countries12 and thedevelopment of the politics of grievance in advanced western societiesmay well be the constants of political life in future. Arguably, already inthe west we have seen both. The rise of the militias in the United Statesand the emergence of what has been dubbed sub-political activity –protest and the rise of the politics of grievance – would seem to bepermanent, irreducible features of national life, and armed militancy maywell follow in their wake. Most certainly militancy has underpinnedreligious fundamentalism – whether Christian, Hindu, Islamic or Jewish– in the last decade in a response to the stresses of modern society, mostobviously in dealing with non-believers.

Such could be the basis of struggle in the years to come: increasinglypolarized societies, the rise of the politics of anxiety and the emergenceof what has been described as “the anxious classes” or more recently “theanxious middle;” increasingly dismissive attitudes on the part of thosewho own and work the means of wealth toward the underclass, be itforeign or domestic; a growing portion of society permanent alienatedfrom prevailing institutions and values, and a resultant increase ofunpolitical and anti-political protest; and over the last twenty yearsperhaps as much as one-fifth of adults of working age have beenmarginalised in the advanced western societies; increasing poverty anddesperation; a weakening state the tax basis of which has been massivelyimpaired not least because of the massive shift of balance betweenproductive and non-productive elements of society.13 And a technologythat may well provide the militantly disaffected with unprecedentedmeans of disruption – the revolutionary hacker, given the extensive useof the notice board by various militant organizations from Mexico toNorthern Ireland for propaganda and the critical preparation phase,cannot be long delayed, if, indeed, the phenomenon has not manifesteditself. The claim that the United States could be paralysed by two capablehackers and a billion dollars certainly cannot be dismissed lightly, and


presumably has been entertained since 1991 by such countries as Iraq.14

The Virtual Nation is with us, and quite possibly military operations aswe presently understand that term are upon the point of passing intohistory because other, more efficient forms of warfare are or will be tohand. Among the more powerful states information and economicwarfare present the attraction of use of superiority, minimal casualtiesand maximum returns in the form of control of resources withoutcommensurate responsibilities. For lesser states and societies the lesson of1991, and perhaps even more relevantly of Mogadishu, must be to wagewar in cities where enemy – i.e. in general western but specificallyAmerican – advantages would be at a discount. The lesson of the Gulfcampaign must be never to fight the United States in the field but byother means, and herein the example of Groznyy and the U.S. MarineCorps’ experience in Exercise Urban Warrior and in autumn 1996 inExercise Sea Dragon must be salutary. Perhaps, and as with everythingthat has been placed before you in this essay, perhaps not. One is veryaware that historically similar such prognostications have not been borneout by events that were even-handed in their effects. The 1590s was aperiod of acute uncertainties and severe economic disruption andprivation, of severe disorder and unrest, and if the first half of theseventeenth century more than amply justified worst fears the secondhalf more than exceeded hopes. The scenario that has been recountedtends toward the apocalyptic, and perhaps unrealistically so, but onewonders on four points with respect to the future of war and thechanging nature of political argument, and another matter does impingeupon deliberations. Every generation has its Cassandra and its Jeremiahand Lamentations, but at some stage or another they will be proved rightby events, though there will be no prizes for correctly predicting the endof the world.

At the conventional level one ponders the implications of the 1991campaign in terms of the new technology having restored the power ofdecision to war that was denied by deterrence and the Cold War. Onewonders whether this will affect the willingness of states to engage in warwith an anticipation of success that did not previously exist. In terms ofthe conduct of future war one wonders the impact of new weaponssystems that will come into service in the next two decades. Automatedand networked tanks, robotic infantry – six-legged automatons capable


of lifting weights of one ton – and laser weapons already exist and arecertain to enter service. In the next generation will change both thebattlefield and the basic structure of armies as a result of the reduction of“teeth” in order to increase “tail” and to accommodate the networking offormations. Radiators are certain to blur the distinction between theconventional and the strategic. New camouflage-suits that can makeindividual soldiers all but disappear and netting that can render tanksundetectable even by infra-red surveillance point to the “empty battle-field” being superseded by either the automated or the invisiblebattlefield, perhaps both. One prefers not to think of the real alternativebattlefield that might become reality with the deployment and use ofgenetic weapons – the biotech revolution – presently in the process ofbeing developed. One wonders, too, the future in terms of a worlddirectorate that still consists primarily of western countries that owedtheir claims on positions of privilege to rights that are no longer unique,and one wonders, in the long term, of the constancy of links between theUnited States and western Europe. One wonders, for example, what willbe the consequences of the American contempt for her various allies andassociates as displayed by the Helms-Burton Act and the decision to setaside the World Trade Organization ruling on its legality. One wonderswhat the impact of the U.N. Agenda for Change might be in terms of acommitment to “permanent revolution” at the very time when westerncountries must decide whether the United Nations exists as theinstrument of change or as the means of trying to preserve what is. Onewonders, too, whether a re-alignment of loyalties will not follow thedisappearance of the Soviet Union in the sense that historically a singlegreat power has invariably raised an association of lesser powers againstherself. At the level of society and civil war one wonders if one stands onthe brink of a new brutalization of attitudes,15 a public indifference toviolence – an unconcern on the part of those with money and over-familiarity on the part of those without – and a collapse of the sharedvalues that have provided the basis of social existence.

Lest this be considered over-drawn, the massive changes of politicalargument and civic culture that have taken place in the last generationhardly provide cause for re-assurance. The political debate in the Eightiesoverwhelming concerned the state and its role: the political debate in theNineties primarily concerns how states and societies respond to


influences beyond their control. The global market, and particularly theglobal money market in which an estimated 95% of finance is speculativeand adds nothing to the production of real wealth, has provedprofoundly disruptive of employment patterns and social securityexpenditure. If the immediate impact has been registered in terms of lackof training programmes and wage freezes for the lowest-paid members ofsociety, the longer-term impact upon conventional political wisdoms iscertain to be very divisive. The Right, for example, dominated thepolitical debate in the Eighties, but in the Nineties has been bitterlydivided between the new protectionists of the Buchanan and Perot breed,the ultra-monetarists and the rump conservatives who went along withthe new creed of the previous decade but who should really be liberals.In the political centre the division between pragmatism and “one-nationconservatism” or devolved “localism” has served to rob liberalism of itsopportunity to assimilate part of the discarded Right, while on the Leftthe divisions between modernists, progressives and stakeholders, whilenot always obvious, has sapped traditional social democrat organizationsof credibility and unity. When the fragmentation of existing politicalorders, and the accompanying widespread public perception ofcorruption, complacency and incompetence on the part of governmentis added to the scales, the fact that so many aspects of state policy havebeen rendered irreconcilable by forces over which the state has no controlpoints to the fact that a basic redefinition of the state, society and civicculture is in hand. And this leaves aside those elements of society that,for one reason or another, has been and is excluded from what it sees asan “establishment” process. In addition, that process has never beenunder such strain than at the present. Over the last five years Britain,Canada, France, Italy, Japan and the United States, and India, havewitnessed the repudiation of governing parties by electorates on a scaleand with a degree of comprehensiveness without precedence. It may verywell be that in such countries as Britain, Canada, Italy and the UnitedStates there has been the first major re-alignment of political loyaltiessince the Second World War and the election results of these years reflectthe wider changes that have taken place in those five decades. It may alsobe the scale of the disasters that have overwhelmed incumbent regimesreflect a electoral volatility that is more recent in origins in terms ofunprecedented anticipation, and which will become a permanent featureof political existence. History does not provide assurance that this process


of fragmentation and re-alignment should not be accomplished withoutviolence: one cannot be unaware of a comment that may well summarizethe next decades – new orders will emerge from chaos but there must bechaos first.16 What is certain is that global integration is changing bothstates and business and what they attempt to do, and that consequentlyneither the conventional economic wisdom of the Left and the Right northe traditional political agenda of existing parties can be expected toprovide solutions to problems or the basis of identity for the dis-advantaged. What is equally certain is that the destruction of the broadconsensus that favoured equity and social justice, which underpinned themodern industrial state in the decades following the end of the SecondWorld War in 1945, was deliberate, with nothing put into its place otherthan privilege and “the quiet, and perhaps not so quiet, war between thecomfortable amd the underclass.”17

As a professional historian one is instinctively wary of searching for “thelessons to be learnt” from History, and no less wary of the conformitythat all societies seek to impose upon their members. But with theapproach of the new millennium we have opportunity to look afresh atthe event of this century, and overwhelming reason to do so. Society atany time stands on the edge of a brave new world, but we stand on theedge of a new world in which national consensus as we have experiencedthat concept over the last fifty years will be destroyed. The InformationRevolution has eroded the common base of societies as developed overpast decades, and one suspects that the effect will be the lowering anddegradation of standards, not their raising. The danger that presents itselfmay already be here: we may well have seen the last book-readinggeneration: one knows from one’s own students the lack of familiaritywith these events and, even worse, their lack of knowledge about how torectify their ignorance. But the Information Revolution will forcehistorians to make a choice, between History and a pandering to aruthless entertainment industry that feeds upon what people want tobelieve and cannot question. We owe future generations the right choice.In a hundred years from now people who will be almost as far fromWorld War II as we are from Waterloo perhaps will look to what we havewritten about the twentieth century as the basis of their understandingof their own time. How will we describe it? I do not know, but amidstthe move away from the ideological politics that developed in the


aftermath of the First World War, the changing role of the state andperhaps even the movement toward – God help us – “Shock and Awe,”I trust that individually and collectively we make the right choices, anddevelop dissenting views simply in order to frustrate those who wouldcontrol us, as we seek new perspectives and a real understanding of war,the state, society and the history of the twentieth century.

“Segui il tuo corso, e lascia dir le genti.”18

NOTES

1 No doubt some militant and hideous harpies will protest about the use of this word, but as faras this author is concerned bugger political correctness: the real objection to this word lies withthe question of singulars and plurals.

2 Leon Trotsky, “On Optimism and Pessimism, on the Twentieth Century, and on Many OtherThings,” quoted in Isaac Deutscher, The Prophet Armed, Trotsky, 1879–1921, pp. 54–55.

3 Bronowski, The Ascent of Man, p. 286.4 Keegan, The Face of Battle, p. 325–336.5 See the article “Global Gangsters” in The Observer of 15 December 1996 and specifically the

references to Transnational Organized Crime and Operation Mercury.6 Francis Fukuyama, The End of History and The Last Man, pp. xiii-xiv.7 The changing patterns of industry and trade of recent years invites the following observation:

The need of a constantly expanding market … extends over the whole surface of the globe …and through its exploitation of the world market has given a cosmopolitan character to produc-tion and consumption in every country … It has drawn from under the feet of industry thenational ground on which it stood. All old-established national industries have been destroyedor are daily being destroyed. They are destroyed by new industries … that no longer depend onindigenous resources but resources drawn from every quarter of the globe. In place of old wants,satisfied by domestic production, we find new wants, requiring for their satisfaction the productsof distant countries … Instead of old local and national exclusiveness and self-sufficiency, wehave diversity and universal inter-dependence of nations. And the process does not merelyinvolve materiel: intellectual creation is common property and from national and local literatureshas arisen a new world literature.The comment was provided by Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels in the first section of TheManifesto of the Communist Party, 1848.

8 For example, in terms of real purchasing power the value of tea has declined by 97% in thecourse of the twentieth century and, perhaps surprisingly, in March 1998, and after a year inwhich its price declined by a third, oil is cheaper than it was in 1948. In this latter case, the con-


sequences for such countries as Saudi Arabia are very serious but for such countries as Nigeriaand Indonesia the consequences are disastrous.

9 The fact that these economies have managed to ensure their present and future control ofproduction because of a price competitiveness that North American and European economiescannot match may offset this problem. If “positive non-intervention” and authoritarian govern-ment, with very restricted demands in terms of taxation continue to provide advancing livingstandards for youth and those in employment – and Singapore and Hong Kong have the higheststandards of living in the world other than in the United States – then their economies may wellbe able to afford an ageing underclass.

10 The rise of homelessness and diseases that had been all but eradicated in the generation after theSecond World War have been features of the Eighties and Nineties, and it is perhaps worthnoting that whereas the life expectancy of the homeless in London in 1990 was 47 years by 1996this had fallen to 42 years, which was male life expectancy in Britain in 1900. In very largemeasure the phenomenon of increasing homelessness in Britain was the result of deliberateabolition of welfare provisions in the Eighties: the problem of disease stems from the fact thatantibiotics, which have saved millions of lives since World War Two, were in danger of becomingpowerless to fight off new strains of super-resistant bacteria. In hospitals throughout the West,one strain – staphylococcus aureus – has already become legendary for its ability to collectresistance traits against antibacterial agents. In such cases, doctors have been able to turn to the“last resort” antibiotic called vancomycin – until recently. Another bacterium – enterococcusfaecium, which causes wound and urinary tract infections – has been discovered in a formcompletely resistant to vancomycin. Doctors have also found that some strains of enterococcuscannot be killed by any antibiotic. In the last thirty years forty diseases have been identified forwhich there is no known cure. See speech of Professor Alexander Tomasz, of New York’sRockefeller University, the American Association for the Advancement of Science, San Francisco,19 February 1994.

11 Margaret Thatcher, “There is no such thing as society. There are individual men and women,and there are families.” Woman’s Own magazine article, 1987.

12 And permanent, endemic warfare as has occurred in such countries as El Salvador, where theFarabundo Marti National Liberation Front has been active since 1979, and Guatemala, wherethe American intervention in 1954 against a democratically elected government paved the wayfor intermittent warfare over some four decades.

13 In Britain in 1970 the balance between productive and non-productive families – the latter beingdefined as families in which no member was in receipt of payment for work and which thereforeincludes retired people – was 5:1. In 1990 the balance had changed to 3:1 and it is projected thatby 2010 the balance will be 2:1.

14 Captain J. Welch, RN, “The International Money Market: A Weapon in Waiting?” Royal UnitedServices Institute Journal, April 1996. Walter Laqueur, “Postmodern Terrorism,” Foreign Affairs,September–October 1996.

15 An Amnesty International report in June 1997 indicated that in the previous reporting year tor-ture and maltreatment resulted in deaths of people in custody in no fewer than 46 countries,while a total of 150 countries were found to have acted questionably with respect to individualsheld in custody.

16 Friedrich Nietzsche, Thus Spake Zarathustra.17 From John Kenneth Galbraith, A Journey Through Economic Time, and the review of the same by

Richard J. Barnet that appeared in Book World, 19 June 1994.18 Alighieri Dante, “Follow your own course and let people speak.”


Epilogue: The Transformation of theNorwegian Security and Defence Policy

Mr. Øistein Espenes (RNoAF Academy)

National Defence or International Contribution The bizarre occurrence on 11 September and the American leadership’spolitical and military reactions to the event has caused “asymmetric war-fare” to become a common term in most languages. Such attacks, whichare carried out by extremists, belong to the “crime” category, but the term“war” is used in so many circumstances that the attacks against New Yorkand Washington are also justifiably referred to as “war”. The struggle ofnations to fight drug traffic and international crime is often referred toas “war” because such activities are undermining economical, social andpolitical stability, thus constituting a threat against state security. Awarning is in order, however, against designating all kind of organisedviolence “wars”, at least because war both as a condition and an activityis defined and regulated by international law. In a juridical context, onecould easily in some respects legalise terror by calling it an act of war.

For Norway, the Nato decision to activate Article 5, showing solidaritywith the USA, implied that Nato’s collective defence had reached aninteresting consequence: Americans were, ever since Nato’s inauguration,expected to reinforce Norway when necessary – the other way aroundwas unthinkable throughout the Cold War period. For Norway the raisond’être for Article 5 turned 180 degrees within the decade. Norway wasnow expected to “export” security, as opposed to the old notion ofexclusively “importing” security by receiving military reinforcement.Indeed, as late as 1998 a White Paper stated that defence against aterritorial invasion should guide the structure and organisation of theNorwegian armed forces.1 More specifically: The Norwegian Defenceshould provide “holding time” – avoid defeat prior to Nato reinforce-ments.

The Norwegian military tradition remained focused on defending thenation’s territory. Although Norway gave large contributions to UNPeacekeeping missions, this was in military circles thought of as “militarytourism”, and insignificant for the real purpose, namely the defence of Norwegian soil. There was a painful and slow process towardsrecognising that the security environment, as well as the military para-digm, had changed. When this fact had finally been recognised, bothpolitically and militarily, the transformation process ended up with agovernmental proposal, which provoked critics to describe the new forcestructure as exclusively designed for international operations. In manyways this process has an historical parallel, although this is mostly for-gotten.

Historical ParallelsIn 1263, the Norwegian King, Haakon Haakonson, mobilised theNorwegian fleet to defend and maintain Norwegian control of the north-western fringes of Scotland. The Norwegian fleet, which consisted of 160longships, was totally ineffective as long as the Scottish King, AlexanderIII, refused to engage the Norwegians in a naval battle. The Norwegians,in turn, refused to engage the Scottish cavalry in a land battle. Thiscompletely asymmetric situation led to a stalemate, but it alsocontributed to the mutual understanding that negotiation would be thebest line of action. This is actually one of the few examples of anasymmetric situation leading to a sensible decision by both parties.

The lack of Norwegian success was explained by the fact that theNorwegian soldiers were reluctant to fight and complaining that theirduty was confined by the law, which stated that they should not gobeyond the Norwegian border. King Haakon’s successor, his son Magnus,codified in 1273 that Norwegian mobilisation forces were obligated toact in support of the King’s interests abroad, in order to establish acapacity for operations in other countries.2

This is our first parallel. When Nato in 1991 revised the strategic conceptand Norway was obliged to establish Reaction Forces, the law had to bechanged before the Norwegian government could order officers on dutyoutside Norwegian territory. During the Cold War such duty had beenvoluntary and confined to UN peacekeeping missions. Officers were

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committed to defend Norway and nothing else. Given Norway’s assumedstrategic significance as an all-important neighbour of the Soviet Union,such tasks also contributed to Nato's benefit. The changes weresignificant however, and came rather sudden, which brings us to thesecond historical parallel.

In 1299, 22 years after Magnus’ new law was implemented, theNorwegian envoy, Audun Hugleikson, pledged the participation of 300longships and 50 000 “selected soldiers” to the French King’s disposalagainst England. This was far beyond Norwegian assets, but was acceptedby the French King for a rather large fee.3 Whether this explains thehanging of Audun in Bergen seven years later cannot be confirmed, butone cannot help speculate. Although the establishment of a Norwegianexpeditionary force for international operations some 700 years later wasinitially difficult, the Norwegian government in 1999 presented a WhitePaper defining a joint navy, army and air force contribution of 3.500 sol-diers in total for operations led by Nato and the EU.4 This was far lessthan what Audun proposed in 1299, but still regarded by critics as a forcethat exceeded Norwegian assets. However, when the White Paper waspresented, Norwegian fighter aircraft had already participated inOperation Allied Force and the Norwegian obligations to Europeansecurity were largely accepted. At the turn of the millennium, however,few were able to imagine that Norwegian soldiers were to fight inAfghanistan less than two years later. Nor was the No Fly Zone over Osloduring the Nobel Peace ceremony in December 2002 imaginable.

The present problem is whether there is a reasonable balance betweenour national security interests and the consequences of our internationalmilitary engagement given its recent character. Furthermore: WillNorway’s Armed Forces be able to fulfil the Parliament’s goals for the taskforces, and at the same time be able to fulfil its national obligations? Orare we witnessing a parallel to the Norwegian overbid of 1299?

The Norwegian Grand Strategic EstimateLet us deal with these overarching issues. First, the Norwegian securityestimate assumes that a contribution to international operations pro-motes international security in general, thus improving the security for

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small countries such as Norway. Secondly, there exists a conception thatNorwegian military contributions compensate for the lack of realpolitical influence in Europe and Nato in the post Cold War Era.Thirdly, it is believed that such offers represent a deposit in a “securityaccount”, which Norway supposedly can draw on in the form of alliedsupport if needed.5 This estimate however, contains a few uncertainpremises, and it is necessary to examine this argumentation closer.

That the western world’s countries have common security interests hasbeen clearly demonstrated in the 20th Century through the two WorldWars, the Cold War, and the latest wars in the Balkans. War betweensome states will most certainly affect the others. Asymmetrical attacks, inthe form of terrorism, make no exemptions. This does not mean, how-ever, that the foreign interests of one Nato – country will always coincidewith the interests of other Nato-members. For instance, the British andFrench colonial interests in the fifties were not identical to Norwegianinterests. This is the reason why Norway opposed Nato operations “outof area” during the Cold War, and Norwegian contributions to theAmerican war in Vietnam were inconceivable.

Such reservations do not seem to be a part of Norwegian policy anymore, but this cannot merely be explained by merging foreign policyinterests of Norway and her allies. Norway’s increasing will to offermilitary forces to Nato and the EU must be seen as a means to bridgewhat has been perceived as a growing gap between Norwegian interestson the one hand, and interests of the EU and other Nato members onthe other.

Norwegian interests in relation to the EU are primarily fish, oil and gas.The referendum in 1994 proved that the majority of the Norwegianpeople did not want to join the EU, and this must be seen in connectionwith the different interests regarding how to manage these in accordancewith Norway’s vital resources. On the other hand, the government fullyrecognises that not being a member of the EU is marginalising Norway’spolitical position, given the development of a common security anddefence policy within the EU. The purpose of the Norwegian militarycontributions to the EU, therefore, is to compensate for this outsiderposition. The concern regarding the lack of influence in the EU is

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primarily due to the fact that this reduces the Norwegian influencewithin Nato as well. The Norwegian ability to fight for the preservationof Article 5 as the core of the alliance is thus reduced.

Moreover, Norway has been fully aware of the fact that US military rein-forcement is not, and has never been, intended to defend neitherNorwegian cod quotas in the Barents Sea nor the disputed Norwegianclaims in the waters surrounding the archipelago of Svalbard. Hence, thedisappearance of the Russian threat against Norway proper, which deter-mined US presence in the High North, has to be compensated somehow.Political and military support of the US may help to preserve as much aspossible of the American military guarantees given to Norway during theCold War. This explains why Norway politically supported the US in thewar against al-Qa’ida, and why there are Norwegian soldiers in Afghani-stan and Kirgisistan.

The Norwegian Defence is therefore given the task to bridge the gapbetween Norwegian national preferences on the one side, and allies’motivation to stand by their military obligations towards Norway on theother. Military integration shall therefore compensate for a politicallyscreened position.6 The fact that self-interest is motivating Norwegianmilitary contributions in international operations can hardly be charac-terised as sensational. A more reasonable question is whether this policyreduces threats against Norway, and enables Norway to handle possiblethreats more effectively.

Possible Threats against Norway and Political ApproachesThe security of Norway faces at least two different challenges that canmaterialise into threats, and both are of an asymmetric nature. One isdirectly connected to Norway’s close proximity to Russia and representsin many ways an exclusively Norwegian problem. Both the quantitativeand socio-political differences between the two countries constitute anasymmetric relation. The other issue is of an indirect nature and is linkedto the Norwegian international engagement. Norway’s participation inthe war that sealed the destiny of the Kosovo-Albanians created both anasymmetrical threat to Norway, and a tense relation with Russia.

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The Russian challenge is about disagreements with respect to thedividing of resources in the northern waters, including Svalbard. Thisbilateral problem possesses a permanent challenge regardless of theRussian regime’s character. Norway must therefore possess a militarycapacity that is able to demonstrate a will to support Norwegianinterests, thus signalling that a significant force is needed to defyNorwegian interests. Our traditional ally’s point of view in such conflictsis hard to predict. Norway’s management of the resources is founded onan interpretation of international law not fully shared by her allies.Hence, it is not likely that Norway in all circumstances will be able tomobilise political, let alone military, assistance in a dispute with Russiaon resource debacles.

The indirect threat is connected to conflicts in the European periphery.Such conflicts are challenging because they contain an inherent risk ofdiversification and are a threat to the overall European stability. Hence,Norway has a self-interest in terminating such conflicts, but just asimportant, according to the former Defence Committee in theNorwegian Parliament, the Norwegian contributions in Peace SupportOperations would:“… enhance our allies' motivation in supportingNorwegian security”.7 The Committee further argues that the capability ofNorwegian Forces to operate jointly with Americans and other allies willbe a precondition for maintaining the Norwegian – American bilateralreinforcement agreements. The Committee thus uses the Norwegianneed for reinforcements as an argument for participation in operationsfar from Norwegian soil.8

Norway’s efforts to consolidate allied obligation with respect to securingNorway’s traditional interests in the High North by loyal commitmentsto the USA are likely to provoke a new threat against Norway. One mustassume that Norway is included on the agenda of international terrorism.Hence, the Norwegian Minister of Justice urged people to obtain foodand other necessary items in order to survive a potential crisis in the daysfollowing 11 September.

This paradoxical situation is explained by the fact that Norway tries tocombine two different perceptions on international security. The strictlynational and traditional problem is defined in a triangle of power politics

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surrounding Norway, with Russia as the possible challenge and Norwaygradually marginalised in relation to the other corners of the trianglebetween the EU, the USA and Nato. This potential challenge isregarded as sufficient to maintain Norway’s dependence on alliedreinforcements.

The Norwegian problem is that a different approach to security has dom-inated the policy of other Nato-members after the Cold War. This policyis based on the recognition that the rich western world constitutes a corewhere order and prosperity exist.9 The western world has its very owninterest in bringing peace to a more or less chaotic periphery, therebycreating a breakthrough for western financial and political ideas. It islikely that future operations will have such aims, not least as a part of theeffort to contain terrorism. The development throughout the ninetieswithin Nato and the EU reflected this comprehension of the inter-national system.

Conclusive RemarksThe answer to the question whether this policy really fulfils its objectivesdepends on how valid the inherent political assumptions are. The USA isstill regarded vital for Norwegian security. The problem is the decliningUS self-interests in Norway for strategic reasons. Norwegian policy thushas to enhance the link to the USA by other means. One result of thisprocess is Norway’s reluctance to criticise US foreign policy and herwillingness to synchronise Norwegian positions to the American ones.Furthermore, Norway’s willingness to offer military support to the USAin the fight against terrorism must be regarded not only as an act ofsolidarity, but as a reminder of mutual obligations. If such remindersfulfil the Norwegian expectation of reciprocal support depends on thecase in question. There might be situations where political and militarysupport to Norway is subordinated other American interests. It istherefore good reasons for questioning the Norwegian strategic estimateas valid for the nation’s security.

Nevertheless, it is obvious that the Norwegian armed forces will face thefollowing challenges: Capability to guard Norwegian interests in thenorthern waters, capability to participate adequately in joint UN, Nato

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or US-led operations, and finally, capability to defend Norwegianterritory against asymmetric attacks.

This brings us to the question whether the future Norwegian force struc-ture is capable of handling these tasks? The reduction in size is moreobvious than the change in military components and structure. Theinheritance of the past seems to have determined the result to a greaterextent than the changed security environment and the new militaryparadigm. The doctrinal alterations in the last decade are neither basedon the new asymmetrical threat nor on peace support operations. TheNorwegian manoeuvre warfare concept is retrospective rather than futureoriented. However, the most important factor is perhaps the readjust-ments the armed forces have been forced to undergo. This process hassupported and encouraged a more flexible way of understanding thecomplex nature of warfare, and such understanding is necessary for theability to respond adequately in an uncertain environment. History hasshown us that the tailoring of armed forces for one expected scenario hasoften been unsuccessful.

A flexible military mindset does however not eliminate the problem thatarises when the tasks exceed the capacity. The imbalance between the taskportfolio given to the Norwegian Defence and the resources placed at itsdisposal, is an enduring problem. It is thus tempting to recall the destinyof the previously mentioned Audun Hugleiksson. He was executedexactly 700 years ago.

NOTES

1 St meld nr 22 Hovedretningslinjer for Forsvarets utvikling i tiden 1999–20022 Bjørgo/Rian/Kaartvedt, ”Selvstendighet og union” Bind 1 i Norsk utenrikspolitikks historie, Oslo

1995, p. 773 Olav Riste, Norway’s Foreign Relations – A history. Oslo 2001, p. 244 St meld nr 38 (1998–1999)5 Ibid p. 106 The Norwegian Nato policy during the Cold War has been described as a combination of inte-

gration and screening. The Norwegian Nato membership included Norway in the Western

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Hemisphere, but on the other hand Norway screened herself militarily from Nato by her basespolicy and other self-imposed restrains on allied military presence and activity in Norway.Norway thus remained a fragment of her previous neutrality.

7 Innst. S.nr. 342 (2000–2002) Innstilling fra forsvarskomiteen om omlegging av Forsvaret i perioden2002–2005., p. 21

8 Ibid.9 Goldeiger and McFaul, “A tale of two worlds: Core and Periphery in the Post – Cold War Era”,

International organization, vol 46. 1992.

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Biographical Notes

Dr. Mark Clodfelter is a Professor of Military History at the NationalWar College in Washington, DC. A former Air Force officer, he servedas a radar officer in South Carolina and Korea before beginning a careerdevoted largely to teaching. He twice taught history at the USAFAcademy, and ultimately served as the Academy’s director of militaryhistory. From 1991–1994, he taught at Air University’s School ofAdvanced Airpower Studies (SAAS) as a Professor of Airpower History.He next became Professor of Aerospace Studies and Commander of theAir Force ROTC detachment at the University of North Carolina, wherehe also served as an adjunct professor of history. He began teaching at theNational War College in 1997. He is the author of The Limits of AirPower: The American Bombing of North Vietnam, which Air Force Chiefof Staff General Ronald Fogleman selected for the Chief ’s intermediatereading list.

Colonel Peter Faber served as a professor of air power history at SAASfrom 1992–1994. After completing his undergraduate work at UCLA in1976, he went on to receive 5 graduate degrees from Yale University, theUS Naval War College, the University of Alabama and the University ofArkansas. He is the author of numerous articles on air power history andtheory. Most recently, he served as Chief, Strategy and Policy Division,Directorate of Strategic Planning, Headquarters USAF. He is currentlyserving as the USAF’s representative to the NATO Defense College, Rome,Italy.

Dr. Karl Mueller (B.A., Univ. of Chicago; Ph.D., Princeton) is a politicalscientist and defense policy analyst at RAND in Arlington, Virginia.From 1994 to 2001 he taught international relations and air powerstrategy at the School of Advanced Airpower Studies (SAAS), the USAF’selite graduate school for future strategists. He has written and lectured on

a wide variety of national security topics, including the coercive use ofmilitary force, economic sanctions, nuclear strategy, the role of air powerin future conflict, and moral considerations in U.S. foreign policy. He iscurrently working on projects dealing with space weaponization,counter-terrorism strategies, and the security policies of European smalland middle powers.

Wing Commander Shaun Clarke enlisted in the Royal New Zealand AirForce (RNZAF) in 1981, completed a Bachelor of Science (BSc) degreeat Canterbury University and graduated from Pilots Course in 1984. Hehas completed various flying tours, was Aide-de-Camp to the GovernorGeneral of New Zealand in 1987, became a Qualified Flying Instructor(QFI) in 1988 and flew in the Middle East in support of the UnitedNations Iran-Iraq Military Observer Group in 1990. In 1996 he attendedthe Royal Australian Air Force (RAAF) Staff College, completing No. 49Command and Staff Course and topping the course with awardsincluding the Chief of Staff ’s Prize. He has been Director of the RNZAFAir Power Development Centre (1998-2000) and in 2001 he served forsix months as a Senior Military Liaison Officer for the United NationsInterim Mission in Kosovo (UNMIK). Since the inception of the newHeadquarters Joint Force New Zealand in July 2001, Wing CommanderClarke has been Director of Current Operations.

Dr. Alan Stephens lectures in the history and strategy of aerospace powerat University College, Australian Defence Force Academy, Canberra. Hehas been the RAAF Historian, based with the Air Power Studies Centre,Canberra. Before joining the APSC he was a principal research officer inthe Federal parliament, specialising in foreign affairs and defence; whileprior to that he was an RAAF pilot, where his postings included thecommand of No. 2 Squadron from 1980-1981. He is the author ofnumerous books and articles on defence, air power and military history.His most recent books are High Fliers: Leaders of the RAAF and The RoyalAustralian Air Force. He is a graduate of the RAAF Staff College, theUniversity of New England, the Australian National University, and theUniversity of New South Wales.

Colonel (ret.) John A. Warden III (BSc, Colorado Springs; MSc: TexasTech University) is a former fighter pilot, his service having included over

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250 combat missions, and a distinguished author, strategist and airpower theorist. He has served as Commander, 36th Tactical FighterWing, Deputy Director for Strategy, Doctrine and Warfighting at HQUSAF, Special Assistant to the Vice President of the USA andCommandant of the Air Command and Staff College. He is best knownfor his seminal work on air power, The Air Campaign, and for his role asone of the architects of the Persian Gulf air war. He has given lectures allover the world, and his most recent book is Winning in FastTime. He iscurrently the Chairman and CEO of Venturist, Inc.

Colonel (ret.) Richard Szafranski (BA cum laude, Florida StateUniversity; MA Central Michigan University) is the Managing Directorof and a Partner in Toffler Associates. He retired from active service inthe USAF as a colonel in July 1996. In his last assignment he was theNational Military Strategy Chair at the Air War College, Maxwell AFB,Alabama and the study director for Air Force 2025. While serving, hisduties included staff positions in the headquarters of Strategic AirCommand, United States Space Command, North American AerospaceDefense Command, and Air Force Space Command. He commanded B-52 units at the squadron and wing level, including assignment as com-mander of the 7th Bomb Wing, Carswell AFB, Texas, from 1991 to1993. He was also the base commander of Peterson AFB, Colorado.Szafranski was designated a Joint Speciality Officer in 1989. He is agraduate of Air Command and Staff College and was the top graduate ofhis Air War College class.

Lieutenant Colonel Frans Osinga is a serving officer of the RoyalNetherlands Air Force. After several years as an operational fighter pilotand instructor pilot he served at the Air Staff in various offices. He wasa lecturer at the Netherlands Defence College on air power doctrinebefore he attended a yearlong post graduate programme on strategy andair power at the School of Advanced Airpower Studies at the AirUniversity, Maxwell AFB, Alabama, USA. He subsequently was directorof the Strategy, Doctrine and Airpower Department of the NetherlandsDefence College. He is a graduate of the Advanced Staff Course. He iscurrently seconded to the Clingendael Institute of InternationalRelations in The Hague as a senior research fellow.

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Dr. Christopher Coker is Reader in International Relations at theLondon School of Economics. He was a NATO Fellow in 1981. Untilrecently he was a member of the Council of the Royal United ServicesInstitute, and is a serving member of the Washington Strategy Seminarand the Institute for Foreign Policy Analysis (Cambridge, Mass). He is aformer editor of “The Atlantic Quarterly”, has advised severalConservative Party think-tanks including the Institute for EuropeanDefence and Strategic Studies and the Centre for Policy Studies, andhelped to draw up the Party’s defence platform in the last EuropeanParliamentary Elections. He is the author of a number of booksincluding War and Illiberal Conscience, Twilight of the West, and War andthe Twentieth Century: A Study of War and Modern Consciousness.

Mr. William S. Lind is the Director of the Center for CulturalConservatism, at the Free Congress Research and EducationalFoundation. He has previously been an advisor on military affairs to USSenator Gary Hart, president of the Military Reform Institute, and aResident Scholar at the Institute for Government and Politics of the FreeCongress Foundation. He is one of the founding fathers of the AirLandBattle doctrine, having lectured expensively for the US Marine Corps.He is the author of Maneuver Warfare Handbook, which is standardreading at most military academies.

Group Captain Ian MacFarling joined the RAAF in March 1977 afterserving for 12 years in the Royal New Zealand Air Force. In the RNZAFhe flew as a navigator on Canberra B(I)12 bombers (1966–69),Sunderland Mk 5 flying boats (for a very brief detachment in 1966),Bristol Freighters (1970–72 in Southeast Asia), and P3B Orions(1973–77). In the RAAF he flew as a tactical co-ordinator on P3BOrions in 11 Sqn, and his last flying duties were at RAAF’s AircraftResearch & Development Unit, where he completed the tour as flightcommander [flight testing of slow speed aircraft]. He has a total of 5650flying hours as a navigator. He is currently the Director of the RAAFAerospace Centre in Canberra where he is responsible for the productionof strategic level air and aerospace power doctrine, supervision of theeducation of both RAAF and foreign fellows, and education in air powerhistory and theory. He also participates regularly as the interpreter inbilateral Ministerial-level meeting between Australia and Indonesia.

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Mr. Ivan Safranchuk has been the head of the Moscow office of theCenter for Defense Information (CDI) since July 2001. He graduatedfrom the Moscow State Institute for International Relations (MGIMO).In 1997–2000 he was a researcher at the PIR-Center and the director ofthe Nuclear Arms Control project. He is the author of a number ofresearch articles and reports on nuclear policy, nuclear disarmament,Weapons of Mass Destruction (WMD) non-proliferation and Russianforeign policy.

Dr. H.P. Willmott is now a freelance writer. He was a senior lecturer inthe Department of War Studies at the Royal Military AcademySandhurst, Camberley and senior research fellow with the Institute forthe Study of War and Society, De Montfort University. He has beenvisiting professor at Temple University (1989) and University ofMemphis (1989–1990), and held the Chair of Naval History with theDepartment of Military Strategy and Operations, National War College,Washington DC, between 1992 and 1994. He was educated at theUniversities of Liverpool and London and the National DefenseUniversity, respectively obtaining a masters degree in 1971 in History,doctorate in 1991 in War Studies and a second masters degree (M.Sc.) inNational Security Strategy in 1994. He served for six years in the reservewith special forces.

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asymmetric warfare 23933a

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