The future can be characterized by unconventional warfare and the requirement to be able to counter unconventional warfare. From Al Qaeda to the Iran Action Network (see the recent CNAS report) to Syria to the Taliban (in Pakistan and Afghanistan) and many more, all these conflicts can be characterized by elements and organizations
Can the U.S. Fight the Wars of the Future?
This week, the four U.S. military service chiefs marched to Capitol Hill and testified about the impending doom that a deepening sequestration would do to our capabilities. Only one service chief, Commandant of the Marine Corps General James Amos, testified that his service could handle one major theater operation* if sequestration sticks. But is this too much doom and gloom?
Are the threats of the future the same as the threats of the past and thus necessitating similar, but better, capabilities? Or does the maintenance of those overwhelming conventional capabilities cause a form of lockout dissuading other major and minor powers to not try to compete with such capabilities, but try to compete in different ways?
Over at The XX Committee, John R. Schindler, a professor of national security affairs at the Naval War College, has an interesting post up today entitled "The Coming Age of Special War," where he argues that the United States today is being schooled in "what Eastern intelligence services term ‘special war,' an amalgam of espionage, subversion, even forms of terrorism to attain political ends without actually going to war in any conventional sense." (This also includes, in large part, the extensive use of other forms of political warfare which I discussed here back in August.) Exhibit A for this is how Russian President Vladimir Putin has handled the Syrian crisis.
According to Schindler:
The post-modern American war of warfare, which very few if any countries could hope to match in complexity and cost, is now so expensive that even Americans can no longer afford it. The strategic impact of this realization promises to be vast and far-reaching.Conflict, though, shows no signs of evaporating. We can expect a gradual move away from the high-intensity warfare that the U.S. has perfected in the tactical-operational realm. Which may be just as well, given the current state of the U.S. military, particularly our ground forces, which are tired after 12 years of counterinsurgency in CENTCOM. Although the possibility of force-on-force conflict with China seems plausible, particularly given rising tensions in East Asian waters, the rest of the world appears uninterested in fighting the United States the way the U.S. likes to fight.This, paradoxically, may not actually be good news in the long run, as the United States is seriously unready for other forms of conflict. Worse, the U.S. Government has persuaded itself that it is more ready for lower-intensity forms of conflict than it actually is. To be fair, in recent years the Pentagon, in collaboration with the Intelligence Community, has made UAVs a serious threat to terrorists around the world, while DoD's Special Operations Forces [SOF] – as large as the entire militaries of many Western countries – are the envy of the world in terms of their size, budgets, and capabilities. Yet all these are really just somewhat more subtle forms of traditional military applications of force.
These realities are pushing both our adversaries and ourselves toward "special war," but this will be difficult for the U.S. because:
Special war is the default setting for countries that are unable or unwilling to fight major wars, but there are prerequisites, above all a degree of cunning and a willingness to accept operational risk to achieve strategic aims. I'm afraid the U.S. Government falls quite short in those two departments.The apparently total inability of the U.S. Government to keep secrets these days indicates a basic unreadiness for special war. Just as serious an obstacle is the mindset of most U.S. warfighters, which remains vividly conventional and unimaginative. No less, the risk aversion that characterizes too many American military and intelligence operations, caused by having lawyers oversee everything the Pentagon and the [intelligence community] do, will have to be dispensed with if America wants to develop any real capabilities in special war.…Special war works when competently handled. It's very cheap compared to any conventional military operations, and if executed properly it offers states a degree of plausible deniability while achieving state interests without fighting. The United States at present is not ready – organizationally, legally, politically, or culturally – to compete in special war. But getting proficient in special war will soon not be a choice, but a necessity. We're already losing at it, whether we realize it or not, and the current trajectory is worrying. Over 2,500 years ago Sun Tzu, an early advocate of special war, argued that the acme of skill is not winning battles, rather subduing your enemy without actually fighting. It's about time the Pentagon caught on.
This tracks very closely with comments made by the military anthropologist Anna Simons in her monograph "21st Century Cultures of War: Advantage Them." She argues that the United States has difficulty in the conduct of such operations because foreign cultures have increasingly become much more aware about us than we have of them and that we do not specifically screen and recruit individuals for wile. In her words wile:
(Continued at the link below)
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