France, Soviet Union, US?
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Originally Posted by
TROUFION
My question is has something changed? Can an irregular force bring about the defeat of a first rate power, and i mean true defeat, on its own? I do not believe it could not even if they had the perfect IO campaign along with it.
The French, The Soviet, and the US experience in Algeria, Afghanistan, and Afghanistan & Iraq (respectively) are something to reflect upon depending upon how one defines 'true defeat' (failure to achieve strategic objectives).
A Savage War of Peace (ISBN-13 978-1-59017-218-6)
Soldiers of God (ISBN 1-4000-3025-0)
Tactics of the Crescent Moon (ISBN 0-9638695-7-4)
Accept your definition, have some questions about your examples...
Quote:
Originally Posted by
TROUFION
your nation state no longer exists in the manner it once did, having a new government imposed upon it; or ceases to exist in entirety. Byzantium, Rome, Germany/Japan (WWII), South Vietnam, Nationalist China.
The Roman and Ottoman Empires seemed to be more of a death by thousand cuts than what Germany & Japan experienced in WWII. None-the-less I do not believe that militias such as Hezbollah or insurgencies such as the Iraqi/Afghani can directly take down a great power according to your definition of "...your nation state no longer exists..."
The Ottoman Centuries (ISBN 0-688-08093-6) Still chipping away at this one...
Rubicon (ISBN 1-4000-7897-0)
Apples, Pineapples and Potato Pancakes Redux
Mike said:
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"Ken, use of civilian shields is only part of the picture when it comes to concealment warfare. What the legal research is attempting is important in this regard, I think, precisely because of some of the political points that have been made, and because many of the issues they have engendered have been poorly understood, poorly defined, and poorly operationalized."
All true -- but does not negate my point that there are three disparate things being discussed.
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"The reason any of these, which have ample historical precedent, are being revisited now is precisely because: 1) politics has kicked crap out of what's meant by law in/of war; and 2) the shape and conduct of war today is entirely different from what it was when the LOAC were originally designed."
Even more true -- and, again, no contradiction to what I said. The first effect you mention in that quote is very much true and the driver of this sub thread. I realize 'politics' are an ever changing game and the trend is to leftist elements and I further understand that all politics are the art of the possible. The intent of many and of much of that ditzy maeuvering is to eventually outlaw war. I could approve of that with no qualms -- I can also doubt it will happen in any of your lifetimes. In the interim, if war is outlawed, only outlaws will start wars but not only outlaws will be involved in them.
I believe that comment merits some deep thought on the part of the anti-war types...
R.A. said:
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"And a war were Ken served.
""But the AP found in researching declassified Army documents that U.S. commanders also issued standing orders to shoot civilians along the warfront to guard against North Korean soldiers disguised in the white clothes of Korean peasants.""
Were the North Koreans moral or immoral: justified or unjustified?"
All war is immoral; period, end of sentence. Everything everyone does in war is thus immoral and anyone who thinks otherwise is deluding themselves.
While they're all immoral, some are necessary. The degree of validity or necessity can vary depending upon viewpoint. Korea was obviously deemed necessary by most of the players at one time or another for one reason or another.
Neither you nor I are in any position to make judgments on the North Korean decision -- we aren't Koreans and our mores are quite different. I've been there four times over a 25 year period and I cannot judge them; the culture is too different.
I will, however, note that I said ""I know of no western nation or armed force that allows, much less espouses the use of civilians as shields. If anyone here knows of one that does, I'd like to hear about it -- and I am NOT talking about aberrations where some Commander locally gets or got stupid.""(emphasis added /kw) Having fired into crowds of refugees wherein there were NK troops in 1950 (didn't occur later in the war), I was well aware of that -- and they are far from alone in doing things like that, the Chinese and others have as well. That's why I asked if anyone could identify any western nation who had done that sort of thing -- so your attempt at diversion or obfuscation sorta falls flat... ;)
Good try, though
Winning and losing metrics
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I added the bold because I think the statement needs to be evaluated. Defeat is an interesting word, true defeat for Israel means no more Israel, but Global Scout states defeat in the campaign, a much more microcosmic defeat. One that could sow the seeds of true defeat if Israel isn't careful.
Again I will argue those who are blinded by the conventional doctrines of war, where victory/defeat is focused almost totally on red and blue forces, instead of the larger strategic picture. One does not need to destroy a nation's armed forces then occupy to defeat it. If an irregular force can coerce/manipulate another nation to behave a way to its liking, then the irregular force wins.
One could argue that irregular forces defeated Spain because the Madrid bombings resulted in a change of government and Spain withdrawing from Iraq. The same is happening Poland now, due to irregular attacks against Polish forces and their Ambassador in Iraq, and soon they will depart.
S. Vietnam could be argued for days, but I think most of us will agree that the focus of the Viet Cong and NVA was not defeating our military, but rather conveying to the U.S. population that they couldn't be defeated, among other things.
Lenin overthrew the Russian government with irregulars? How? He moblized the population, just as Mao did some 20 plus years later.
It is great that our western militaries can't be defeated by irregulars, but the fact remains is despite our might, the irregulars can still manipulate the superpowers.
Here are some questions in regard to Israel's escapade into Lebanon:
1. Do the people in Lebanon support the Hezbollah more or less after the conflict? The fact is it was the Hezbollah who are seen as the heros of the conflict, and even those who didn't support the Hezbollah previously tended to favor them after Israel started destroying Beirut's infrastruture.
2. Who became more isolated in the international community, Hezbollah or Israel? While most the international community will never support Hezbollah, they effectively provoked Israel to take actions that further isolated them internationally, which limits their ability to undertake similiar actions in the future.
Irregular warfare is not about defeating your adversary's military force, that is checkers. It is an attempt to asymmetrically corner him and force him to change his behavior, this is called chess.
Winning and losing can be defined many ways. Ultimately there are forces that would like to see Israel go away, that would be probably be a total victory for them, and I agree I don't think that is feasible in one fatal swoop, but over time Israel can be degraded by these activities, and so can we, Europe and other nations. The answer is not to simply send our military forces in to crush them unless we're willing to break international law and wage total war on a population.
The answer remains elusive, if it was simple we would have implemented it already.
A few somewhat disparate thoughts.
Following this thread, I'm starting to find myself a little overwhelmed by some of the different points being made, and their implications. Responding to these with a few somewhat disjointed thoughts of my own, I'll start off by saying that Hizbullah is, in some ways, the archetypal la bete noire of contemporary warfare: it is likely to outlive Al-Qaeda, already has a "state" of its own, effectively, and also unlike AQ, has demonstrated a more or less consistent ability to achieve victory at the Strategic level, against all comers, regular or irregular. Hizbullah rarely, if ever, takes its eyes off the political objective, which of couse is what it's all about. As long as they stick to that, and Israel stumbles a few times at critical moments, ultimate victory may well pass to Hizbullah - whether it is in possession of potent regular forces by then or not.
There is a "recent" precedent for irregular forces utterly defeating and disposing of a regular opponent and state, and an opponent that was a true master of irregular warfare itself at that - Rhodesia. Zanu-PF and the like may have lost the war, may even have lost the free and fair election that immediately followed the end of the war in 1980, but it never took its eyes off the political prize, and in the finest Sunzian tradition, shaped, manipulated, and rode the international and regional political situation, forces, and trends to its own supreme advantage. All they otherwise had to do was to continue to maintain a military/paramilitary threat in being - however ineffective tactically or operationally that was in and of itself.
Hizbullah enjoys many of the same advantages as Zanu-PF did, and for many of the same sorts of reasons - Israel can take little comfort in comparing her own position to that of Rhodesia's. That said, Rhodesia's own military performance, generally superlative as it was, though incapable of winning the war by itself, would have been indispensible to victory in any case even had it been coupled to a successful political strategy. Israel so far has has been able to avoid the international ostracism that doomed Rhodesia, and ultimately, South Africa. But when you are on the strategic defensive as Rhodesia found itself and as Israel finds itself, and the enemy is not only on the strategic offensive, but is principally an irregular enemy at that, there is no substitute for superlative leadership and training at the individual, sub-unit, and minor-unit levels.
Rhodesia found Pseudo-Operations to be particularly effective against its irregular enemies, and much the same sort of approach, provided there was a sustained political will to persevere in their use, might go some way to not only wearing down Hizbullah's military strength, but even eroding its political position as well. Hizbullah has no shortage of other enemies, who might not hesitate to pounce at signs of weakness. Not least the Lebanese Government itself.
Pseudo-Operations have rather about as much in common with espionage as they do with "warfare" per se. I doubt that they are covered under the Geneva Conventions - except by the same provisions regarding spying, and they certainly blur the Law of Armed Conflict, probably beyond usefulness. That is a problem for lawyers and the like however; soldiers do not get too concerned, considering the enemies they fight often do not to observe the Geneva Conventions anyway. Where this becomes a problem is when the civil authorities oppose, equivocate, or lose heart in support of such operations; where there is solid support, such legal niceties may become meaningless. War is like pornography; you may not be able to fully and cleary define it in theory, but you recognize it when you see it. War is war, and an enemy is an enemy, and if you can maintain basic morality whilst engaging in such operations, you're okay; if you run into serious problems there, then you're probably engaging in something that you shouldn't be undertaking in the first place. And that usually goes back to decisions made at the political level, and subsequently the soldiers find themselves in the impossible position of being required to carry out.
The old Colonial Wars observed few, and recognized even fewer, if any, of the legal definitions that existed even then, let alone now. There was little to no distinction made between soldiers performing a deliberate company attack on a guerrilla hideout, or sending a capable individual or small party behind the lines to infiltrate the enemy's territory and spy away, or destroy some hideout, or raid some enemy caravan. Those were operations directed towards the same political end; nowadays we tend to try to formalize, create technical language and categories, make artificial or inappropriate distinctions where they shouldn't exist or at least should not be so hard, and generally get too abstract and ignore the organic nature of these things. Hizbullah doesn't.
Korea and the American way of war
Steve:
David Halbertsam's new book The Coldest Winter offers some good insights with recent research. So does Clay Blairs The Forgotten War. Both are more detailed than Fehrenbach's classic that Global Scout recommends -- as do I -- This Kind of War. If you want some interesting reading, Ed Evanhoe's Dark Moon talks about US special operations and behind the lines efforts in Korea.
Don't know much about Hezbollah but will send you one document if you'll PM me with an e-mail. BTW, not at all sure I agree with the conclusions in the article you linked. Most of that is IMO biased and speculative.
Global Scout:
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"...but I now wonder if that was the turning point in our history where we jettisoned our knowledge of irregular warfare and focused almost entirely on conventional warfare? To me that seems to the event that shaped our Army's leadership almost more than any other, and I would bet it influenced GEN Westmoreland's views in Vietnam. I recall a quote by a senior Army officer in Vietnam (I'm sorry I can't cite the source off the top of my head), who said we're not going to destroy our Army for this miserable little war. I think he meant were not going to devolve into irregular warfare tactics and risk another TF Smith in the event we had to fight a "real" war. Just a thought, but I would definitely like to this council's ideas on it."
Having been around before Korea, I'm in strong disagreement with that conjecture. World War I was the turning point. The Army got on the global stage and liked it. There were no irregular warfare commitments by the Army after WW I.
Then along came WW II and the 'big war' syndrome got firmly implanted. Further, since the bulk of the Army served in NW Europe; those that had served there got an extra share of promotions -- to the detriment of those who served in Italy and the Pacific. That was a terrible shame because those who had been in the latter two theaters were used to fighting outnumbered, used to being isolated and developed some innovative tactics -- whereas in NW Europe it became "High Diddle Diddle Right Down the Middle" with MASS -- no tactics to it other than kill 'em all and let god sort 'em out.
The NW Europe Generals with few exceptions led the Army into the big war syndrome and have endeavored to keep it there; their logical heirs, the Heavy Division fans of the Cold War kept the Army there. Even though their attempt with the Weinberger / Powell "doctrines" to force the Nation to do it their way failed miserably, I have little doubt they'll try again -- are trying now, in fact. In my view, that is very short sighted. Dumb, even...
That NW Europe mentality was shown in Korea by Walker and most of the Division Commanders. Couple with MacArthur's pathetic staff, they screwed up Korea. It took Ridgeway (NW Europe but from a very different tradition than the Armor folks) to turn it around and then Van Fleet, a NW Europe guy, who had other experience in Greece, to keep it going.
Edited to add: Korea, BTW, was viewed by the senior leadership of the Army in just as poor a light was later was Viet Nam. Most of 'em hated Korea, Truman and everything to do with it. The majority of the Army commanders there misused heir Armor because they tried to fight a European war in the hills and paddies of NE Asia. We made a lot of mistakes there.
In Viet Nam, Harkins set the course early on; Westmoreland was not an innovator so he just followed Harkins lead. Both were NW Europe alumni. So we tried to fight a land war in Europe in the paddies of SEA. Stupid. Sad thing is, most of the units who were there in 1965-66 knew how to do COIN but were directed to do the search and destroy foolishness instead. Seven long years of dumb tactics. We made a lot of mistakes there, too...
Bruce Palmer Jr. was DepComUSMACV, a Pacific veteran and an innovative thinker -- he was the architect of the the plan Abrams adopted and that led to the success of CORDS. After seven years, we started doing it righ but it was too late politically -- all because the Army blew it going in...
When the Army designed the Pentomic structure in the mid-50s, all the Airborne, Pacific and Italian veterans not only coped with but supported the structure -- the NW Europe types screamed about it -- they weren't flexible enough to adapt. They outnumbered the others so the concept was scrapped in less than ten years. When the entire Army (outside Europe...) started COIN training in 1962, they took to it pretty well and most units got good at it. Those folks went to Viet Nam in 1965-66 and knew what needed to be done. When the Second Team came in in 1967, guess where most of the replacements for Commanders came from...
Nah, Korea didn't do that -- the damage was done long before then and Eurocentric thinking is the culprit.
Whose strategy in Lebanon
Iran and to some extent Syria supplied Hezballah with beau coup rockets for a purpose beyond responding to a Israeli attack on on Lebanon. Iran wanted the rockets to act as a strategic deterrent against an Israeli attack on Iran's nuclear facilities. In that regard the war was a spectacular failure for Iran, because the missiles were so ineffective that Israel would have no difficulty making the decision to wipe out the nukes because they are potentially much more dangerous to Israel.
Another remarkable aspect of the Hezballah rocket attacks is that they only hit IDF forces by accident if at all. In other words the rockets were completely ineffective on military targets and were not that effective in hitting population centers that were the likely targets.
Hezballah's defenses in Southern Lebanon were somewhat effective in slowing an Israeli advance, but would have been ineffective against a determined invasion. Israel also demonstrated the ability to operate behind enemy lines and disrupt operations.
Israel's biggest failure was in using combined arms operations. They had an air war and a ground war, but they did little to tie the two together. They would have been much more effective if the ground forces had been used to "fix" enemy hard spots to be knocked out by the IAF.
While Hezballah may claim it won with a draw, Iran should have a different perspective. The IAF attacks in Syria should also have Iran worried.