Strategy in the 21st Century

[Bill Moore]

http://smallwarsjournal.com/blog/uni...ring-wrong-war

The United States is Preparing for the Wrong War

My response

Max Boot is partially right, but a more accurate assessment would be our obsession with the war on terror for 15 plus years to no discernible end enabled our strategic competitors to become near-peer or peer competitors militarily. We lost numerous FID missions around the world, and it had little impact on U.S. security and prosperity over time. Losing a war with China or Russia could be devastating. Also Max got Vietnam wrong, but so does the majority of Americans who achieved their education in a liberal university. The U.S. won the small war in Vietnam, the insurgency was soundly defeated. A large and well armed conventional force from North Vietnam defeated South Vietnam, not hybrid warfare. I'm not down playing hybrid warfare, obviously the way the Russians are employing it today presents a strategic threat.

Finally, his point of the Italian elections demonstrate a lack of understanding of what drove the Italian people to this point. The far left in Italy left its economy and security in shambles. The scale of the illegals that have moved into Italy from the Middle East and Africa present an existential threat to their culture, which understandably has generated a right wing backlash. Recent shootings of immigrants alarms me, this can quickly spiral out of control. The EU did little to help Italy with this challenge, even though it is a threat common to most countries in the EU, Italy was left with the bill. Not unlike recent U.S. elections, people had to choose the candidate(s) they disliked the least. Did this benefit Russia? Certainly, but if Max wanted to make a point, it should have been that EU created an opportunity for Russia due to their inability to manage these challenges. This resulted in a right wing backlash in many countries in the EU, and Russia is opportunistic.

[davidbfpo]

Bill,

An attempt to reply to your two posts - before reading the linked articles (terrible I know).

The Middle East has long been a focal point for US strategy, many argue that it has not been very productive when one considers the national resources committed. Plus the irregular comment that one opponent, Iran, has been the main beneficiary. I read the linked article below yesterday, which is the latest comment I've seen and the title 'The Fruits of Iran’s Victory in Syria'.
Link:https://lawfareblog.com/fruits-irans-victory-syria

I do wonder if we (US & UK) look too much at what we have done and not what our opponents have done.

[Bill Moore]

I do wonder if we (US & UK) look too much at what we have done and not what our opponents have done.

David, I tend to think that is a given. Our assessments over the 15 past years for our operations in the Middle East generally indicate we're winning, and every year is the pivotal year that will result in an enduring victory. Of course that has proven to be complete nonsense, and now it is laughable when you hear it. Some assessments are dishonest, but in most cases they're simply focused on what we have done, and if you look at through that lens we're generally making progress. On the other hand, if you conduct a net assessment and compare our gains relative to our adversary's it paints a very different picture. It also paints a different picture if you assess strategic gains versus fleeting operational level gains, all too often disconnected from strategy, because either there is no strategy, or military campaigning no longer effectively achieves strategic ends for various reasons. One can argue, and you may be making this point, that our 15 plus years of tactical and operational success have resulted in a global strategic for us relative our more important strategic competitors, Russia and China. They have invested in developing advanced war fighting capability and made significant progress using so-called gray zone strategies while we're undermining our military readiness and ignoring what is really important because we're mired down in the Middle East. Only now we're beginning to see this, and even if our national leadership understands this we have a military culture that seems dependent upon continued rotations into the Middle East because that defines who we are.

[Bill Moore]

http://www.nationaldefensemagazine.o...d-rules-of-war

Disruptive Technologies to Upend Rules of War

New technologies promise an alternative. Robotics, cyber and space weapons can reduce the size of ground forces needed to wage war. They can withdraw human soldiers from the battlefield while making attacks more precise and deadly. They can allow nations to coerce each other without inflicting the same level of casualties and destruction as in the past. They can reach far beyond borders to pick out terrorists or selectively destroy WMD sites. They can reduce the costs that discourage western nations from stopping humanitarian disasters or civil wars. While armed conflict will continue as a feature of the human condition, it might now come at lower cost, for a shorter time, and with less violence.

Maybe, but I suspect Colin Gray's argument about "Another Bloody Century" is more accurate. As the character of warfare changes based on automation and robotics, which arguably results in smaller military forces, do we really think these weapons will simply be directed against so-called legitimate military targets? It makes little sense, since destroying an adversary's robotic military would do little to compel a state or its population to bend to our will, or vice versa. For an opponent to impose one's will on another through this form of warfare would most likely require applying it against the opposing government and civilian population to force compliance.

There seems to be a line of thinking in the high tech world that if my robot can beat our robot we win. I don't see how this form of warfare would result in achieving political ends with military power. It may serve as a deterrent, but most understand winning wars requires more than winning battles.

[Bill Moore]

https://nationalinterest.org/feature...rregular-29672

The Future of Warfare is Irregular
These realities suggest that competition between the United States and its main adversaries will likely be irregular—not conventional.
by Seth Jones

America’s adversaries are unlikely to compete with the United States directly in a series of set-piece battles. Instead, they will likely continue to engage in cyber, proxy and information campaigns. Thus far, the United States has failed to compete effectively in this field, except for some efforts by U.S. special operations forces. Washington has been far too reactive, defensive, and cautious—not to mention discordant among multiple U.S. government agencies. Russia, China, Iran and North Korea have embraced irregular warfare. But the United States has not. It isn’t too late to adjust course.

It has been awhile since I provided an update to this, and Seth Jones’ recent article provides an opportunity to reopen the discussion. Jones argues our adversaries / competitors will likely continue to resort to irregular or more accurately non-conventional strategies to pursue their strategic aims, while our current focus on building a superior conventional and nuclear capability fails to address the gaps in our ability to protect our interests in competition short of traditional armed conflict, also known as the gray zone. He is not opposed to a conventional force build up and modernizing our nuclear forces, but correctly points out our adversaries can still defeat us (undermine our strategic interests) if we fail to address their use of what we call irregular warfare.

While Jones did a good job of advocating for the U.S. to enhance its irregular warfare (IW) capabilities throughout the military (especially SOF), the CIA, and other government agencies, he fails to identify how these capabilities would be used to achieve desired ends. He clearly is talking about a much more comprehensive form of IW, than the narrow view of conceived in response to our protracted conflicts in Iraq, Afghanistan, and elsewhere. He is focused on the full range of irregular or unconventional activities (what Kenan calls political warfare) that can be executed unilaterally and through proxies. Unfortunately, he fails to describe how these capabilities and ways would be employed to achieve strategic ends. While old time SOF operators would say it is obvious, the articles is focused on convincing conventional military leadership on the need to ramp up our IW capabilities, not downsize them.

He recommendations include the need to educate our public on how our adversaries use irregular warfare. Presumably this will enhance our resilience and generate the political will to counter it once it is recognized as a strategic threat. Second, professional education at military schools need to add more irregular warfare topics to the curriculum. In my view, most military education in this area is tied to faulty strategic approaches for counterterrorism and counterinsurgency. One is focused on the non-strategic tactical approach of find, fix, finish to defeat terrorism, where we have 17 plus years of tactical success and strategic failure, and the other naively assumes the center of gravity is always the local populace to defeat an insurgency. That view was questionable during Cold War, and even more so now when various external actors can continue to leverage proxies strategically regardless of the populace’s leanings. For great power competition, the educational curriculum needs to address unconventional warfare, foreign internal defense, cyber, and other topics at the strategic level, which was actually his third recommendation (reduce the focus on counterterrorism).

It is a good article, but one that I hope he follows up on with an article on how the U.S. government and military would employ irregular warfare to achieve strategic ends in the 21st Century. We can’t repeat the Cold War, the strategic environment has changed too much. We’re now in a multipolar world that is increasingly interdependent economically, which results in more limitations, but perhaps also more opportunities.

[Bill Moore]

https://www.defenseone.com/ideas/201...seone_today_nl

This short article is the most concise, yet comprehensive description of the gray zone or competition short of armed conflict that I have seen.

augmenting their substantial political, economic, military, and commercial capabilities, Beijing and Moscow are mastering the “weaponization of everything” to achieve exploitable hypercompetitive advantages vis-à-vis the United States. Their “hammers” range from political coercion, predatory economics and strategic extortion, to information warfare and subversion, covert action, and overt disregard for international norms.

We need to expand our view of multi-domain warfare to address other domains beyond the doctrinal ones and compete in those domains short of armed conflict. These strategies are hardly new in the historical sense, but the U.S. has become an astrategic nation. As the article states, we have failed to adapt to a post U.S. primacy world. I would add we subconsciously cling to the "End of History" myth and over emphasize the value of soft power as a means and way to an end.

Our adversaries decisively and deliberately maneuver and compete in domains beyond maritime, land, space, air, and cyber to achieve their policy aims over time (extended battles that require strategic patience). In contrast, the U.S. military national defense strategy narrowly focuses on improving lethality in the doctrinal domains, while our adversaries execute sophisticated whole of society campaigns to achieve their ends that largely neutralize our conventional military power.

The article accurately points out we are not even on the defense, much less the offense. However, once we wake up to the growing threat presented by these competitors to our way of life and internal stability, I believe we have the ability to prevail in this competition, yet time is not on our side.

As warlike behavior migrates into new competitive spaces – strategic influence, commerce, culture, domestic politics, cyberspace, space, and the electromagnetic spectrum — the U.S. government and private sector must recognize the far-reaching and growing hazards of hypercompetition and rival gray-zone strategies. The boundaries between war and peace, battlefield and market, and adversary and competitor are dissolving. If the United States is to effectively compete for position and influence in this turbulent and dangerous environment, it requires an urgent meeting of the minds to bring a more collaborative stance to hypercompetitive great-power rivalry.

[davidbfpo]

This is an article by Professor Anatol Lieven, Kings War Studies, which appeared in my electronic reading list today, but was published pre-Xmas in The National Interest, so some may have read this before.
The sub-title says:

In their enthusiasm for a new cold war against China and Russia, the western establishments of today are making a mistake comparable to that of their forbears of 1914.

He opens with:

This year saw the 100th anniversary of the end of the First World War, in which some 16 million Europeans died, two great European countries were destroyed, and others crippled. This year may also be seen by future historians as the last year of the period between the cold wars, when after 29 years of relative quiet, the world's major powers once again moved into positions of deep and structural mutual hostility.

Link:https://www.opendemocracy.net/can-europe-make-it/anatol-lieven/can-we-please-learn-from-history? or The National Interest:https://nationalinterest.org/feature...522?page=0%2C1

[Bill Moore]

This is an article by Professor Anatol Lieven, Kings War Studies, which appeared in my electronic reading list today, but was published pre-Xmas in The National Interest, so some may have read this before.
The sub-title says:
He opens with:
Link:https://www.opendemocracy.net/can-europe-make-it/anatol-lieven/can-we-please-learn-from-history? or The National Interest:https://nationalinterest.org/feature...522?page=0%2C1

David,

I read this guy's bio and it is impressive, but his article is a bunch of hyperbole that suggests we bury our heads in the sand. The U.S. has no enthusiasm for a new Cold War, and I suspect Western Europe would prefer to avoid one also. In fact, both the U.S. and Western Europe went out of their way to accommodate China. The Russia situation is more complex, but the U.S. extended multiple olive branches. Based on Xi's increasing aggression, and Russia's military aggression and increasing gray zone interference in the internal affairs of western nations, we had to respond. To do otherwise would be to repeat the same mistake Chamberlain made prior to WWII.

We are waging a competition as a distraction from our internal troubles, and the one thing Anatol got right is we have a lot of internal troubles that have resulted in significant economic, social, and cultural insecurity leading to a higher death rate and addictions. This is exactly the reason we don't desire a new Cold War, they're expensive and distract from the work we need to do at home. If it was a distraction it certainly failed, because both Americans pay little attention to this competition. Many American college kids can't identify where the U.S. is on a globe, but they'll tell you white males destroyed the world, yet be unable to defend their position in a debate.

Here are some of his hyperbole comments:

Murderous Filipino populists? I suspect many Filipinos would take issue with this broad characterization. The Philippines has had insurgencies and high crime for the past 150 years, but they have also made significant progress and the vast majority of the population are good people.

Apparently according to the author, India is ruled by Hindu Fascists. I'm amazed that India exists as a country at all with 13 official languages and its various ethnic groups, insurgencies, separatists groups, economic disparity, etc., the fact that it does is admirable.

Millions of people from Central America fleeing to the U.S., millions? Really?

Unfortunate, but not surprising that another academic is polluting our youth's minds with with anti-Western, anti-democratic, and the West is always wrong diatribe.