Deterrence of Irregular Threats

[TheCurmudgeon]

The old adage is that Democracies do not go to war with each other. This is because democracies are slow and stupid – I mean it is because they value what they have and are reluctant to risk their hard fought gains. I don’t believe that is true, I believe that Democracies will go to war with each other, but WHAT they will fight over will be different from what monarchies went to war over. In any case, the democratic or quasi-democratic governments do not easily engage in direct action. Similarly, small states with inadequate militaries will not engage in direct action since they will be easily defeated.

But tensions still exist, and as another person here pointed out, if you squeeze a balloon it just bulges elsewhere. Since states won’t act or won’t act directly, others will. The result is that conflict moves from the realm of direct state-on-state engagement to state surrogates and non-state actors. Where a state surrogate exists it may still be possible to threaten direct action against the state, but probably not because of the collateral effect on the state’s population may make any direct threat counterproductive. The tools of deterrence therefore start to move away from direct military action (although never far away) to attacking the root causes of the tensions. You must preempt you’re enemy by directly addressing their issues, taking away their power over the people.

That is a F*&#ing tall order, particularly if your enemy is an ideological zealot. I don’t claim to have the answer to it. I think the Theater Security Cooperation Programs the COCOMs have is a start, but it needs to be more focused and tied into not only USAID but other international players. The farther you separate the population from the ideology of the zealot the more likely you are to remove the power base the zealot gains his resources from. In effect, you are cutting his supply lines, either by traditional deterrance targeted at the state sponsor or by removing the support of the local population. The latter requires an understanding of the indigenous population in a fashion probably only traditional SF forces are capable of. Therefore, you would have to have a two pronged approach, a carrot and a stick. (Guess which one is the stick)

All this seems a lot more like statecraft than military actions. Maybe it is. Maybe it is just recognition that we are part of Clausewitz’s trilogy just as our potential adversary is.

Anyway, thought I would throw in my 2-cents. All this may seem very basic, but sometimes I think the basics get lost in the minutia.

In case you were wondering, I am not a peacenik. I cringe every time I get a Christmas card that reads “Peace on Earth” as that would put me out of a job.