Tommorrow's Wars

Interesting essay from Victor Davis Hansen:

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Have we not seen, then, in our lifetime the end of the Western way of war?” Two decades ago, I concluded The Western Way of War with that question. Since Western warfare had become so lethal and included the specter of nuclear escalation, I thought it doubtful that two Western states could any longer wage large head-to-head conventional battles. A decade earlier, John Keegan, in his classic The Face of Battle, had similarly suggested that it would be hard for modern European states to engage in infantry slugfests like the Battle of the Somme. “The suspicion grows,” Keegan argued of a new cohort of affluent and leisured European youth—rebellious in spirit and reluctant to give over the good life to mass conscription—“that battle has already abolished itself.”

Events of the last half-century seem to have confirmed the notion that decisive battles between two large, highly trained, sophisticated Westernized armies, whether on land or on sea, have become increasingly rare. Pentagon war planners now talk more about counterinsurgency training, winning the hearts and minds of civilian populations, and “smart” interrogation techniques—and less about old-fashioned, “blow-’em-up” hardware (like, say, the F-22 Raptor) that proves so advantageous in fighting conventional set battles. But does this mean that the big battle is indeed on its way to extinction?

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I don't grow tired of warning that we're in a similar situation to the 1900's.
We had no great power-on-great power war for decades, don't understand the advances of military technology due to a lack of experience and our experiences (in part even force structures) are focused on non-vital small wars on distant continents.

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Originally Posted by Fuchs

I don't grow tired of warning that we're in a similar situation to the 1900's. We had no great power-on-great power war for decades, don't understand the advances of military technology due to a lack of experience and our experiences (in part even force structures) are focused on non-vital small wars on distant continents.

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Fuchs,

Not to overlook the internal political and other pressures within the 'Great Powers'; which had led several of them to being in a pre-revolutionary state, notably France and Russia. The UK was divided by 'Home Rule' for Ireland and socio-economic competition.

IIRC some historians wrote that WW1 avoided internal revolutions in the 'Great Powers' with the arrival of an external crisis and set of enemies. (It is a long time since I read such histories).

Add Fuchs set of factors and these internal issues it is remarkable how similar the global scene is.

Man's inhumanity to man and the arrant and arrogant stupidity of politicians will almost certainly lead to an unexpected major war within the next couple of decades.

I sincerely doubt we're ready for it. :( :mad:

I forgot to repeat what the article said as well; mankind already believed before 1914 that the Great Powers were too well connected economically to wage a Great War.

Also keep in mind that the ground forces arms race prior to WW1 did only really take off in 1912 when the German parliament gave up its resistance to an enlargement of the German army (which had been asked for for years as a response to the French army expansion).
1912-1914 - there was no time for sweeping reform during that expansion/arms race. Those who hadn't done their homework before were unable to compensate for it until 1916.

The Myth of the Short War.

Lots of little conflicts convince the decision-makers of the ease of a decision, then, for unexpected reasons, the situation blows up into something really quite different.

The interesting question today is: Who are the great powers?

For now, China and India are thoroughly preoccupied with defining internal issues while building external connections. But some of their futures involve spheres of zero sum games---where for them to gain, someone else has to lose. That's where the next unexpected conflict is triggered--when some losing party miscalculates, or perceives that its gains will be more than it's losses.

Ken White's inevitable reminder that, while it may be decades away, and probably unexpected, major war never disappears from the realm of human possibilities.

What is always a good idea- agreeing with Ken

State's due to their interdependency in Physical/Economic and Social arenas will of necessity always try to tiptoe in order to avoid miss-steps

But once someones foot gets stepped on- All bets are off

Unfortunately for all of us it will happen again sooner or later

My personal vote is for as much later as possible

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Originally Posted by Ron Humphrey

State's due to their interdependency in Physical/Economic and Social arenas will of necessity always try to tiptoe in order to avoid miss-steps

But once someones foot gets stepped on- All bets are off

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My first thought is from one of my primary sources of pulp philosophy, Bablylon 5...

"...if you take too many hits, stumble a lot, you start to look at your feet all the time, thinking that this will prevent further stumbles. But, by looking at your feet all the time, you don't see things coming and end up stumbling even more..."

I think this is where we are at the moment not just looking down at our feet but totally fixated on the now problems of AFG and the takfir jihadists and possibly forgetting that there are other kids on the block who may pick a fight in other ways...maybe Germany will again seek to promote the 'U' in EU, possibly Putin might take the Red Army to France for the summer holidays, or China will decide that Russia doesn't really need Siberia...

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Originally Posted by SJPONeill

My first thought is from one of my primary sources of pulp philosophy, Bablylon 5...

"...if you take too many hits, stumble a lot, you start to look at your feet all the time, thinking that this will prevent further stumbles. But, by looking at your feet all the time, you don't see things coming and end up stumbling even more..."

I think this is where we are at the moment not just looking down at our feet but totally fixated on the now problems of AFG and the takfir jihadists and possibly forgetting that there are other kids on the block who may pick a fight in other ways...maybe Germany will again seek to promote the 'U' in EU, possibly Putin might take the Red Army to France for the summer holidays, or China will decide that Russia doesn't really need Siberia...

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That said same goes for spending too much time watching the horizon looking for the Iceberg. You could still end up hitting the one beneath the surface. Or watching for boulders, stumbling on the pebbles, etc

All result in at minimum annoyance and at worst major damage. In the end its all about balance.

And Chance- Try the best you can to avoid em all just don't be surprised when occasionally you stumble anyways- Thats Life:wry:

… Hansen conflates Battles/Engagements with Wars using them often synonymously. Battles are fought as part of campaigns themselves part of theatre strategy itself determined largely by national /grand strategy (“politics is the womb of war” as Clausewitz said). As an Antiquarian I can understand his confusion given that the historical structure of Antiquity lent itself to sporadic fighting. But I am left scratching my head over just exactly what he means by “decisive battles”, “engagements” or the like. Yes, in Greek Antiquity, given the political structure available at the time war and battles were often synonymous (Van Creveld notes this in his Command and War) but that analytical framework fails beyond that region. Rome was at war in many different theatres and fought many battles only a few of which were “decisive”. The Battle of Zama may have been “decisive” during the 2nd Punic War but only because of the Battles of Baecula and Ilipa that preceded it and the part they played in the wider theatre campaign conceived by Scipio Africanus (i.e., destroying Hannibal’s resource base, his political will, his capability to raise allies, etc) and determined by the political objectives of the Roman Senate (pithily, though perhaps somewhat hysterically, summed up in Cato the elder’s phrase “Carthago Delenda Est”/”Carthage must be destroyed”). Indeed, Rome combined major Warfighting and COIN rather well the odd setback notwithstanding (i.e., at the Tuetoberger Wald) although, by modern standards, not very politically correctly or humanely (i.e., at Masada AD 70).

I also doubt the veracity of his historical observations, he may be an expert on Greek Antiquity, but when it comes to the Nineteenth century and his following statement, that the Age of Battles ...

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ended with the agreements following the Congress of Vienna, which (along with military deterrence) kept a general peace in Europe for nearly a century. Set battles were common only in colonial theaters (Tel el Kebir, Omdurman), in Asia (Tsushima), and in the Americas (the decisive battles of the Mexican, Spanish-American, and American civil wars).

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…he seems not to have noticed either the Austro-Prussian or Franco-Prussian War which Bismarck managed to wage without largely disrupting the Congress system (though he may have weakened it in the medium term).

Or when he states that…

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few battles of the last seven decades resembled the Battle of the Bulge

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… he obviously never heard of the Iran-Iraq War (for one). Yet he later states that…

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We still do not know all the gory details of the Iran-Iraq war (1980–89), in which more than 1 million combatants and civilians perished. But despite the carnage that characterized that war, set engagements, out in the open, between two massed armies were not a major part of the conflict, so far as we know.

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What exactly does that mean? AFAIK the Iran-Iraq war was like a modern replay of WWI with cities being bombarded and huge trench-lines supported by heavy artillery being used to mow down massed Iranian infantry charges. Therein lies the rub. What is a decisive battle/engagement and how does it relate to war as such? Perhaps more troubling is his use of the Battle of the Bulge as an exemplar of a “decisive battle” (it was hardly a “set engagement, out in the open, between two massed armies”). The Ardennes campaign was the last gasp of a sick mind (excuse the mixed metaphors) and was, in terms of the Second World War as a whole, hardly decisive (but could have been, which see article in Armour Magazine attached above). A single “decisive battle” does not a war make though its relationship to victory may be more complex. Was the Battle of France, for instance, “decisive”? And in what way? WWI wasn’t ended with a decisive battle but a coordinated Alliance strategy that steadily and progressively eroded German war-making capabilities (we were also aided by not having to prop up two allies – Turkey and Austro-Hungary in WWI and Italy in WWII). In fact both sides were angling for peace in 1916 yet the war continued. Waterloo, as Hansen and Oman before him argue, may have been “decisive” but the cards were stacked against Napoleon long before he escaped from Elba. But that’s nitpicking on my part.

Furthermore, when he states that…

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The political landscape certainly explains much

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..in Hansen’s hands it doesn’t explain enough. The reduction in warlike activity is, indeed, in large part about the export of state structures, the pacification of the domestic realm by authority structures and the geometry of polarity in the international state-system but it also has to do with international organisations like the UN (which, as an undergraduate, I often derided) which, in the words of Evan Luard, transform the struggle for the “balance of power” into the “balance of interest”. Indeed, instead of the Vico-esque corsi-e-ricorsi of theories like Gilpin’s hegemonic stability theory, the frequency of major wars between Great Powers has decreased as much as the intensity and destruction has increased largely to do with the globalised multi-ordinate character of globalization which Hansen see’s a purely technological.

Yet the financial costs restraining the incidence of major wars (and the battles that come with them) …

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renders big battles more unlikely. To wage a single decisive battle between tens of thousands of combatants along the lines of a Gaugamela or a Verdun would cost hundreds of billions of dollars, a figure far beyond the resources of most belligerents.

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… didn’t stop the European Powers in World War I as Hansen, who quotes Angell’s Great Illusion, well knows. Indeed, it may even be the case (historically the jury is out) that WWII actually helped get America out of recession both before, during and after (i.e., Marshall plan) though perhaps getting the Allies to dismantle their Empires (and imperial tariff blocs) helped too!

The notion of “changing mores” certainly has interesting implications, especially in terms of what Luttwak called a “post-heroic” age, yet if Argentina were to try to take the Falklands a second time I can well imagine that British public opinion would demand satisfaction even whilst doubting our role in Afghanistan. Public opinion regarding vital national interest is relatively secure and unchanging (and that includes things like “fear and honour”) it is with regards to non-vital interests (or the perception of them) that public opinion can be seen to wax and wane. Yet, when humanitarian intervention of the more muscular variety is called for it is often the public not the government that leads the charge (i.e., Somalia 1994). Citing war-weariness on the part of Israeli citizens, as others have done, merely begs the question is it war or the policies behind and which it serves that people are cynical of? (For that matter are the operations in Gaza OOTW- there in lying the rub- and how are they compared to the Arab-Israeli wars of yester year?)

I get the broad outlines of what Hansen is attempting to say and, with respect to his observation that history hasn’t ended and neither has war (“The history if the word is war” as Churchill said), actually agree with him and I respect Hansen’s work but had I submitted this article as an undergraduate essay my lecturers would have shot it to pieces. His piece, elegantly argued though it may seem on the surface poses more questions upon deeper inspection. And those questions irk me no end…

As long humans exist there will be conflicts and politik. As long there are conflicts and politik there will be also organized violence aka war, limited to a lesser or greater degree.

Firn