John Schindler's Special War is nothing new
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Originally Posted by
jmm99
I read this and, again, did not see anything new. We conducted Special War all over South America in the 70's and 80's. So I don't think that what Schindler discusses is anything new (and you clearly state that he does not claim that).
First, I must say that what is going on the the Crimea is not Special War as defined by Schindler. A key component seems to be deny-ability, something I don't think the Russian's care about. They are playing a different card (or cards). Domestically, this is a mission to protect ethnic Russians with a not so subtle subtext of restoring Russia to its former imperial glory. That card also plays to the Chinese, who did much the same in Tibet. To Westerners, who have a different perspective on legitimacy in international action, they will play the R2P and the "will of the people".
There are two ways to respond. The first the "instant gratification" option - fight fire with fire. Move everything the US has into the area and threaten to start blowing things up unless they withdraw and allow in a UN Peacekeeping Force based on the numerous violations of international law (I always have to giggle when I use that term "international law"). We could probably do that except that, the reality is that we cannot support it logistically without diverting resources from Afghanistan. Luckily, bunch of that supply line is already in place. Politically, we must have the will and the funding to do this. Reality here is that, it would bankrupt us to begin another large scale military operation when when we have yet to pay for the last two and no one is in the mode to raise taxes. Plus, it won't be us who feels the pinch immediately. It will be the EU who will have its Natural Gas cut off. At least we are headed into spring.
The second option is the "slow as steady" option of economic sanctions. They do work, but only over the long haul and only if you are willing to stick to them. They also have to be universal, something we were able to do with Iran but are unlikely to be able to do with Russia.
Where does that leave us ... heck, I don't know. I am thinking it is going to have to be a little of both. Rebuild NATO along with sanctions. I don't think we are going remove the Russians from the Crimea. I do think we can establish the conditions to deal with Putin the next time he acts.
I do agree with Schindler that the US has created an expensive military of limited utility. We can do a big war better than anyone else, but that is of little use when our enemy know that so they avoid big wars. So we end up paying way too much for a military that is not flexible enough to provide what we need.
OK, I have ranted enough. I will return this string back to the professionals.
Power: Russia vs EU-NATO,
with a much smaller US component than the EU-NATO states are used to. None of this should surprise anyone - and I'll posit that no one is too surprised.
From an American standpoint, the wall's been written for the last 2 years - of which, the following are typical:
US will pull two brigades from Europe by end-2014 (AFP; Jan 27, 2012):
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WASHINGTON — The United States plans to complete the withdrawal of two of its four army brigades stationed in Europe in 2014, the Army chief of staff General Ray Odierno said Friday.
"We will decrease our European footprint by two heavy brigade combat teams, with the first one coming out of Europe in 2013" and the second in 2014, Odierno told reporters.
The two units are "heavy brigade combat teams" that will not be re-stationed in the United States, in line with plans announced this week to streamline the number of active duty forces, he said.
...
Each of the heavy brigade combat teams includes 3,800 troops, a spokesman for the army's European command told AFP. In addition to the 7,600 soldiers heading home, nearly 20,000 of their relatives will also be repatriated.
Moving ahead more than a year to Rapid Response Force Relies on Permanent U.S. Base in Europe (by Brian Slattery; October 17, 2013):
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The U.S. Army’s 173rd Airborne Brigade Combat Team (BCT) recently established an Army Contingency Response Force—a rapidly deployable company-size unit—to respond to crises in Europe and Northern Africa within a day.
...
The 173rd BCT is one of a dwindling number of permanently based U.S. brigades in Europe, which the Obama Administration and some in Congress have tried to remove, decrying them as wasteful Cold War relics. Two of the four BCTs have already been deactivated and removed from Europe. The justification given by the Obama Administration is that the BCTs will be replaced by a rotational battalion based in the U.S., a tiny force compared to one BCT, let alone two. This is not a legitimate substitute. ...
and finally from late last month, Army Drawdown and Restructuring: Background and Issues for Congress (CRS, Andrew Feickert, Specialist in Military Ground Forces; February 28, 2014):
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Summary
On January 26, 2012, senior DOD leadership unveiled a new defense strategy based on a review of potential future security challenges, current defense strategy, and budgetary constraints. ...
As part of the Administration’s original proposal, two armored brigade combat teams (ABCTs) in Europe were to be eliminated out of a total of eight BCTs that would be cut from Active Army force structure. The Army had originally stated that it might cut more than eight BCTs from the Army’s current 44 Active BCTs. Army end-strength would go from 570,000 in 2010 to 490,000 by the end of 2017. As part of this reduction, the Army would no longer be sized to conduct large-scale, protracted stability operations but would continue to be a full-spectrum force capable of addressing a wide range of national security challenges. The Army National Guard and Army Reserves were not targeted for significant cuts. ...
The cuts in fact turned out larger, with three brigades scuppered on the Euro front (two down, one to go) says the Pentagon (CRS, pp.11-13):
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On March 1, 2013, DOD announced a series of force structure changes for the U.S. Army in Europe from the period 2013 through 2016. The text of the news release is as follows:
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DOD Announces U.S. Army in Europe Force Structure Changes
The Department of Defense announced today that Germany-based elements of the 173rd Airborne Brigade Combat Team will relocate within Germany and to Italy in summer 2013.
A total of four battalions will be relocated. Two battalions will relocate from Germany to Italy; the brigade’s headquarters and one infantry battalion will relocate from Caserma Ederle in Vicenza, Italy, to the Army’s new facility in Del Din (formerly known as Dal Molin) in Vicenza. The other two battalions will relocate from Schweinfurt and Bamberg, Germany, to Grafenwoehr, Germany.
In addition to the previously announced inactivation of V Corps Headquarters and the 170th and 172nd Infantry Brigades, the disposition of 2,500 enabling forces are provided as follows:
In 2012:
170th Infantry Brigade, Smith Barracks, Baumholder, Germany – Inactivated
...
In 2013:
...
172nd Infantry Brigade, Grafenwoehr, Germany – Inactivates
...
In 2014:
Headquarters, 18th Engineer Brigade, Conn Barracks, Schweinfurt, Germany – Inactivates ... [followed by a list of engineer, signals and military police units].
While part of this RIF belongs to budget deficits, it also belongs to a shift in US foreign policy which spans at least the four last presidencies (Bush I, Clinton, Bush II and Obama). That shift was popularized by the "Pacific Pivot"; but that pivot has been going on for at least a century. One must also take into account that the US has had four major campaigns since WWII (counting Gulf I and OIF as one) - all Asian ground wars. The lack of US success in those efforts suggests that we Yanks should limit our Pacific pivots to sea-air battles and island hopping.
Writing somewhat along these lines, we find Ondrejcsak, The United State´s Strategic Shift Towards the Pacific – Continuity and Change, (in Majer, M. – Ondrejcsak, R. – Tarasovic, V. (eds.): "Panorama of global security environment 2012", Bratislava: CENAA, pp. 25-41; 2012):
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Abstract:
The goal of this paper is to analyze the global-scale trend of American strategic shift towards the Pacific and East Asia. This development will be one of crucial trends of international relations in the foreseeable future which will have a determining effect on the global security environment.
While immediately following the release of new U.S. Strategic Guidance in January 2012 it was referred to in the media and discussions as “something new,” in fact it is quite to the contrary. The most important driving forces and reason of this change started to emerge at least 2-3 decades ago.
The realization in the old continent came late due to “Eurocentric worldview” that was temporarily overwhelmed by events in her neighborhood and by the US engagement in Europe´s conflicts (wars in South-Eastern Europe as a most prominent example), but the rest of the globe realized it a long time ago.
Moreover, Obama administration´s steps toward Pacific and East Asia are to a large extent based on changes initiated or realized by previous administrations, particularly that of G.W. Bush. From that point of view Obama´s “Pacific shift” is a combination of both continuity and new elements based on long-term historical/strategic trends. On the whole, we are witnessing more of an evolution than revolution in US strategic positioning.
...
Historic and strategic trends
The United States possesses simultaneously both an Atlantic and a Pacific vector of its global strategy. The primacy of the Atlantic vector in foreign policy and strategy – with European allies as most important partners in world affairs – was based on “Europe first” tenet made during the WWII. That decision was based on strategic assessment that Germany represents a more serious strategic threat than Japan as well as on United Kingdom´s special relationship as the US most important ally. The emergence of the Soviet center of power, which decisively focused on Europe during the Cold War as well as in the post-War strategic environment, extended that strategic approach. Because of that primacy, the Atlantic vector secured its dominant position for half century in American foreign and security policy and strategies.
The collapse of the USSR and the diminished strategic rivalry in Europe, as well as the dramatic current self-demilitarization of European allies, compounded with American disappointment with them ‒ are among the most prominent sources of current trends. The financial austerity which has a decisive impact on the US military budget is also putting significant pressure on the prioritization of sources. We also have to take into consideration the non-existing multilateral regional security mechanisms in East Asia, and the inherited instability this causes.
As the central player of current world order, the United States has to react to the ongoing trends if wants to maintain its position. While the relative power of other-than-Western centers is rising, the United States still possesses sufficient capabilities as well as the will of its leaders to remain the main centre of power for decades to come. ... The US will not share the “destiny of the Netherlands” (by Paul Kennedy) – that once was the world´s leading power, and now is a small European state without decisive influence on global affairs – despite the rise of other centers of power.
Once upon a time (when the Pentagon confidently spoke of fighting 2-1/2 major wars), the US could be confidently expected by the EU-NATO states to back up its NATO "obligations" - regardless of its engagements elsewhere (e.g., in Vietnam). Such expectations today are delusional - or perhaps, the mental state could be called "excessive hopefulness".
Regards
Mike
Nuclear Escalatory Ladders and Limited War - Part 1
Kaur:
HT; your link to Morgan, Dancing with the Bear: Managing Escalation in a Conflict with Russia (IFRI Proliferation Papers, No. 40, Winter 2012), is interesting theory. Of course, in the area of nuclear escalation and deterrence, everything is theory because the only practitioner has been the US (a point made more than once by the Soviets during the Cold War) - and, in 1945, Japan was not in a position to escalate !
Morgan (from RAND) sums himself:
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"Escalation", the tendency of belligerents to increase the force or breadth of their attacks to gain advantage or avoid defeat, is not a new phenomenon. Systematic thought about how to manage it, however, did not crystallize until the Cold War and the invention of nuclear weapons. Given the limitations identified in these Cold War approaches to escalation and the profound changes that have affected the strategic environment, a new framework for thinking and managing escalation against nuclear adversaries is needed. It should lead to a deeper understanding of the phenomenon of escalation: its dynamics, forms, and the motives that drive it.
This paper attempts to fill a gap in the current strategic literature, and explores the challenges that NATO would face in managing escalation in a military conflict with a major nuclear power such as the Russian Federation. Escalation management is about keeping wars limited. In a war against Russia, Western leaders would need to weigh their interests in the issue at stake and adjust their war aims and efforts accordingly. They could secure success only if it is defined and pursued in ways that ultimately allow for compromise and do not threaten the survival of the Russian state or its leaders.
Morgan et al did a RAND study, Dangerous Thresholds - Managing Escalation in the 21st Century (2008):
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Escalation is a natural tendency in any form of human competition. When such competition entails military confrontation or war, the pressure to escalate can become intense due to the potential cost of losing contests of deadly force. Cold War–era thinking about escalation focused on the dynamics of bipolar, superpower confrontation and strategies to control it. Today's security environment, however, demands that the United States be prepared for a host of escalatory threats involving not only long-standing nuclear powers, but also new, lesser nuclear powers and irregular adversaries, such as insurgent groups and terrorists.
This examination of escalation dynamics and approaches to escalation management draws on historical examples from World War I to the struggle against global Jihad. It reveals that, to manage the risks of escalatory chain reactions in future conflicts, military and political leaders will need to understand and dampen the mechanisms of deliberate, accidental, and inadvertent escalation.
Informing the analysis are the results of two modified Delphi exercises, which focused on a potential conflict between China and the United States over Taiwan and a potential conflict between states and non-state actors in the event of a collapse of Pakistan's government.
Along the way, Morgan has also considered the "escalation ladder" in hypothetical conflicts with Iran and North Korea. See "Conclusion" to 2012 monograph (pp. 47-50 pdf), bringing all together:
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All of this suggests that effective threshold management will be crucially important in an armed conflict with any of the aforementioned states. Western leaders will need to assess the balance of interests and identify each side’s critical thresholds. They will need to illuminate these thresholds to opponents in ways that deter deliberate escalation and reduce the risks of inadvertent escalation. They will need to manage their forces firmly to avoid escalatory accidents, and they will need to calmly evaluate and respond to the accidents that will inevitably occur over the course of the war. Most of all, they will need to restrain their objectives and settle for limited gains, which will most likely amount to defeating the opponent’s aggression in ways that simply preserve the status quo.
Thankfully, the world has never witnessed a major conventional war between nuclear-armed adversaries, much less one in which nuclear weapons were exchanged. Studies late in the Cold War raised serious doubts whether the latter could be kept limited, or even prosecuted in a coherent manner, given the massive disruptions in communications and physical, mental, and emotional dislocations that would occur at multiple levels of command once nuclear weapons began detonating on each side. Although a handful of analysts continued to lobby for counterforce, nuclear war-fighting strategies to the very end of the era, the ranks of those who accepted Kahn’s thesis that nuclear wars could be fought and won had by then grown exceedingly thin in the West and were substantially diminished in the East. The near consensus was that any nuclear war would likely be uncontrollable, resulting in consequences so tragic that victory, however defined, would be pyrrhic.
The implication of such a conclusion is that for any escalation management framework to be viable, it must inform strategy making while the conflict is well below the nuclear threshold. Further, it must face up to the uncertainties inherent in war – the lack of perfect information and perfect control; the subjectivity of perception; the inevitable miscalculations that result from incompetence, fear, and fatigue; and the general unpredictability of human behavior – and offer realistic approaches for managing these factors to the extent they are manageable. Cold War-era approaches to escalation management failed to meet those criteria. As a result, decision makers on both sides of the East-West divide abandoned them and relied instead on conflict avoidance.
- to be cont. -
Nuclear Escalatory Ladders and Limited War - Part 2
All that (in Part 1) recalls the differing viewpoints of Herman Kahn and Hugh Everett. Kahn popularized his "escalation ladder" and other thermonuclear war concepts in a number of books. See John Wohlstetter's Herman Kahn: Public Nuclear Strategy 50 Years Later - A Compendium of Highlights from Herman Kahn’s Works on Nuclear Strategy (Hudson Institute, September 2010), a brief survey (29 pp.) of four of Kahn's books:
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On Thermonuclear War (1960) ...
Thinking About the Unthinkable (1962) ...
On Escalation: Metaphors and Scenarios (1965) ...
Thinking About the Unthinkable in the 1980s (1984, posth.)
and Herman Kahn: Applying His Nuclear Strategy Precepts Today (Hudson Institute, October 2010, 17pp.).
Hugh Everett was far more pessimistic than Kahn; and wrote very little (most still classified) about his involvement in WSEG (which, via WSEG Staff Study No. 46, informed the 1961 Kennedy-McNamara Flexible Response Policy) - from Everett's Wiki:
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... Everett was invited to join the Pentagon's newly-forming Weapons Systems Evaluation Group (WSEG), managed by the Institute for Defense Analyses. ... In 1957, he became director of the WSEG's Department of Physical and Mathematical Sciences. After a brief intermission ..., Everett returned to WSEG and recommenced his research, much of which, but by no means all, remains classified. He worked on various studies ... [e.g., Hugh Everett III and George E. Pugh, "The Distribution and Effects of Fallout in Large Nuclear-Weapon Campaigns", in Biological and Environment Effects of Nuclear War, Hearings Before the Special Sub-Committee on Radiation of the Joint Congressional Committee on Atomic Energy, June 22–26, 1959, Washington, D.C., U.S. Government Printing Office, 1959.
...
Of those studies, Linus Pauling said: [They] permit us to make an estimate of the casualties of such a war. This estimate is that sixty days after the day on which the war was waged, 720 million of the 800 million people in these countries would be dead, sixty million would be alive but severely injured, and there would be twenty million other survivors. The fate of the living is suggested by the following statement ...: 'Finally, it must be pointed out that the total casualties at sixty days may not be indicative of the ultimate casualties. Such delayed effects as the disorganization of society, disruption of communications, extinction of livestock, genetic damage, and the slow development of radiation poisoning from the ingestion of radioactive materials may significantly increase the ultimate toll.' ..."
Regardless of whether one leans toward Kahn or Everett, one finds no certainty in the "nuclear escalatory ladder". Kahn himself recognized that and more (from Wohlstetter, Oct 2010):
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NUCLEAR TABOO
Allied powers in the West have long stressed the “firebreak” between conventional and nuclear use. Some emerging powers show no signs of recognizing this. Kahn did, and warned that consequences of crossing the nuclear line again and thus ending the taboo carry unpredictable, potentially horrific dangers.
Kahn stressed the value of the nuclear taboo:
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That other “easily recognizable limitations” exist is clear; but it remains true that once war has started no other line of demarcation is at once so clear, so sanctified by convention, so ratified by emotion, so low on the scale of violence, and—perhaps most important of all—so easily defined and understood as the line between not using and using nuclear weapons.[32]
On weakening the nuclear threshold:
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Nevertheless, I believe that two or three uses of nuclear weapons would weaken the nuclear threshold, at least to a degree where it would no longer be a strong barrier to additional uses of nuclear weapons in intense or vital disputes. There would ensue a gradual or precipitate erosion of the current belief—or sentiment—that the use of nuclear weapons is exceptional or immoral. The feared uncontrolled escalation would be rather more likely to occur at the second, third or later use of nuclear weapons than as a consequence of first use.[33]
...
On the difficulty of restoring the tradition and custom of nonuse after nuclear use:
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More important, in a world in which there is no legislature to set new rules, and the only method of changing rules is through a complex and unreliable systems-bargaining process, each side should—other things being equal—be anxious to preserve whatever thresholds there are. This is a counsel of prudence, but a serious one: it is not often possible to restore traditions, customs or conventions that have been shattered. Once they are gone, or weakened, the world may be “permanently” worse off.[35]
32 OE, p. 95.
33 OE, p. 98. Strategists call “first‐strike” starting nuclear war from scratch; “first-use” escalates an ongoing conventional conflict, as America did in 1945.
...
35 OE, p. 133.
OE = Kahn, On Escalation: Metaphors and Scenarios (1965)
That brings us back to the topics of "Special War" and "Limited War". Morgan cites Strachan, Are European Armed Forces Only Able to Wage Limited War? (2011), in one of his footnotes:
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Abstract: For a long time, Western armies were organized to fight total war. Since the end of the Cold War, they have been reduced, but have been engaged in conflicts requiring large deployments. European societies no longer know what type of war they have to conduct. Indeed the very concept of limited war and its instruments need to be rethought.
...
If the Cold War in Europe had become hot, it would not have been limited except in one respect: it would have been short. Armies became smaller because they were not expected to sustain resistance for more than a few weeks. Germany in particular ... wanted to keep the ladder of escalation to nuclear release short and steep. North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) war games tended to end with a nuclear exchange within days.
Those less close to the inner German border, and particularly the United States, wanted the ladder to be longer and the process of ascent more gradual. Their interpretation of the strategy of "flexible responseʺ, adopted by NATO in 1967, stressed the initial use of conventional military capabilities as much as the final sanction of nuclear release.
...
With the end of the Cold War, and the removal of the immediate threat of a major war of self-defence within Europe, that hope – implicitly at least – has become even more fervent. ... They cannot command the man-power for ʺtotal war". The question that is more pressing is whether they can command the manpower for long wars of lower intensity.
...
At the heart of Europe’s problem is the lack of a unifying conception of war – a conception which can tie the armies of Europe and their parent societies into a common narrative. ... The European folk memory of war is still shaped by the Second World War, by "total warʺ. Two consequences follow.
The first is that armies exist only for purposes of direct national self-defence in what the English language no longer calls ʺtotal war", but "major warʺ or increasingly ʺexistential war". The corollary of a war for national survival should be an expectation that in such a war armies should be both conscripted and large, reflective of their parent societies in terms of their social composition and even more in values.
The second is the obverse of that position. Given the destructiveness for Europe of modern war, and particularly of the two world wars, war is not in fact a continuation of policy by other means. War represents the failure of policy, and so has no political utility.
Today Europe’s armies are designed less to fight and more for diplomatic leverage. Small contingents are a means by which a state pays its dues to the international community and to the multilateral organisations, principally the European Union, NATO and the United Nations, in which most modern, westernised and democratic nations invest their hopes of a stable international order.
This "tokenismʺ can extend to bilateral relations, particularly given the possible long-term need to call in aid from the United States. The real military strength of NATO lies with America, and by sending forces to Afghanistan other states are investing in a favour bank with the US if their security is threatened in the future. Alliances help keep armies small and serve to constrain the circumstances in which they may be used.
The question for NATO's future is exactly what account balance is now on deposit in the US "favour bank". Unless that account is very large (in relation to other "favour bank" accounts), EU-NATO should probably be planning on relying on its own resources to do whatever jobs it believes must be done.
Both sides of the pond might elect, re: "Special-Limited War", to learn how to eat soup with a knife; or how to make toothpicks with a shovel. The latter seems to me a more practical skill, but what do I know about practicality. ;)
Regards
Mike