UK military problems & policies

[Bill Moore]

In general I agree with the GEN's assertions, and they differ little from LTG Rupert's assertions in his classic "The Utility of Force."

Rupert argues that our militaries, government institutions, and multinational organizations are still largely designed to facilitate industrial era war, not war amongst the people (or what I prefer to call new wars). They also are increasingly less capable of dealing adversarial state actors like Russia that operate in what is now commonly referred to as the gray zone.

A couple of key points from Rupert's book and subsequent presentations I have heard.

During industrial era wars, military force achieved our strategic objectives directly (WWI, WWI), but now the utility of force is to set conditions that enable other elements of power to achieve the decisive result.

Wars now endure because we attempt to achieve the decisive result with military force, when there is no military solution. This points back to the claim (fact IMO) that our governments are not properly structured to fight and win modern war.

Rupert uses the terms confrontation and conflict to provide a useful model. Confrontation is the war, and conflicts are battles within the context of the confrontation. We are still stuck in the win all the battles and lose the war, because we don't how to use force to set conditions for other element of power to achieve the decisive result.

I like Rupert's theory, but one thing I question is our ability to achieve decisive results with economic aid, government assistance, etc. even if the military, the interagency partners, and multinational partners could work together. This reminds me of a clear eyed view of China's civil war presented the book Wars for Asia (1911-1949), where the author pointed out that our State Department vigorously sought a political agreement (power sharing) between the Chinese nationalists and communists. Both Mao and Chiang knew this was a pipe dream, their political systems were not compatible. Someone had to win and someone had to lose. I think we tend to assume that there is political settlement short of total victory for many of these wars, while the opponents laugh at our naivety. In "some" cases we either need to pick a side, or stay out altogether.