Professional Documents
Culture Documents
Edited by
John Andreas Olsen
Publisher:
The Royal Norwegian Air Force Academy
Editor:
John Andreas Olsen
Introduction
Dr. John Andreas Olsen . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5
Prologue
Dr. Nils Naastad . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15
Asymmetric Warfare:
Rediscovering the Essence of Strategy
Lieutenant Colonel Frans Osigna . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 267
Asymmetrical Warfare:
Ends or Means?
Dr. Christopher Coker . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 319
Chechnya:
Russia’s Experience of Asymmetrical Warfare
Mr. Ivan Safranchuk . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 371
Epilogue:
Mr. Øistein Espenes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 409
Biographical Notes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 419
Introduction
This book is a function of the search for terms and concepts on military
operations in the Post Cold War Era. During the Cold War much of the
terminology made sense: one had an understanding of the concept of
war, and then there were operations other than wars (OOTW). With the
last decade’s civil uprisings, air campaigns and humanitarian operations,
the use of armed forces has been diverse, and the need for new terms and
concepts are paramount to thinking clearly about current and future
threats and responses.
Colonel Peter Faber focuses on the quest by American air power thinkers
for theories, strategies, and doctrines that they could truly call their own.
To support this overall theme, the article first focuses on genealogy. It
describes the two dominant “languages” developed by modern military
thinkers to analyse and characterise war, while also stressing the distorting
effects these approaches later had on the thinking of air power theorists.
The theorists, however, did not always articulate their ideas clearly, they
changed them over time, or they developed concepts of operations that
were not readily distinguishable from each other, or at least only at the
margins. To help clarify who said what, the second part of the article pro-
vides an analytic tool that not only helps differentiate fourteen 20th cen-
tury air power theories from each other, but also provides a template for
the development of new theories in the future. Lastly, with both a his-
torical context and tool for analysis readily at hand, Faber turns to the
INTRODUCTION 7
evolution of American air power theory, largely from 1945 through the
appearance of John Warden’s seminal The Air Campaign (1988). Faber
provides as such a tale of creation, loss, and recovery. He suggests it is a
tale where the predecessors of the USAF struggled mightily to create a
unique theory of air warfare – high altitude precision daylight bombard-
ment against the key economic and societal nodes of modern states. It is
a tale where “blue suiters” then either lost their theoretical/doctrinal
bearings in the Cold War, or, to take a more charitable view, failed to
elaborate and refine them further. Ultimately though, it is a tale of
recovery. Faber concludes that, beginning in the mid-1980s, American
airmen regained control of their long-lost intellectual destiny, and there-
fore ushered in a renaissance in aerospace thinking that continues to this
day.
Dr. Karl P. Mueller suggests that for at least the past eighty years, debates
regarding how best to employ air power and other military force for coer-
cion have been dominated by two strategic approaches. One, associated
with strategic bombing advocates and coercion theorists from Giulio
Douhet to Thomas Schelling to John Warden, is based on punishing
civilian populations or their leaders, in order to convince the enemy that
defying the coercer’s demands will be prohibitively expensive. The other,
favoured by Clausewitz and recently promoted by Robert Pape, empha-
sises denying the enemy the prospect of victory through attacks on
military forces or war industry until the inevitability of defeat convinces
the opponent to capitulate. In this essay Mueller explores a third strategic
alternative: attacking the armed forces of an adversary based on their
value to the enemy regime rather than their contribution to victory in the
current confrontation. Mueller suggests that largely as a result of the pre-
cision weapons and sensors revolutions, threatening to destroy military
assets that the enemy values highly now offers a potentially viable coercive
strategy for many situations in which frustrating the enemy’s military
strategy is impractical or irrelevant, without turning to attacks on civilian
targets that are likely to be formally illegal, politically unacceptable, and
ultimately ineffective. However, the author concludes, such “punitive
disarmament” strategies are not appropriate in every case, so this chapter
examines their strengths and weaknesses in order to identify factors that
will make them more or less likely to succeed.
8 INTRODUCTION
Dr. Alan Stephens argues that the nature of homeland defence has
changed as a consequence of 11 September. His paper is concerned with
future military responses, suggesting that one can no longer endorse a
defensive approach, and that one needs to optimise the asymmetric
advantage that reside in having the technological edge. A central part of
Stephens’s thesis is that the relationship between air power and ground
power has changed. During the last three wars – Deliberate Force, Allied
Force and Enduring Freedom – the Western coalitions chose not to use
conventional ground forces. Not only must the armies therefore reassess
the concepts of “mass” and “closing with the enemy”, but the whole
notion of “seizing and holding territory”. Although holding ground may
INTRODUCTION 9
Colonel (ret.) John A. Warden argues that there are sub-theories for air,
ground and naval operations, but on an aggregated level it is all part of a
larger competition theory. Drawing from his own operational experience,
and particularly the Instant Thunder concept, which became the theoret-
ical foundation for the first phase of Operation Desert Storm, Warden
develops a set of imperatives for how to win in the modern world. The
first imperative is to “design the future”, which is about assessing the
environment in which one is operating, defining the end-state, guidance
precepts and measures of merit. The next step is to select the right centres
of gravity, “targeting for success”. It is about adding or removing energy
to the system one wants to effect, acknowledging the interrelations and
workings of that entity. The third step is “campaigning to win”, where
one applies the resources available as effectively as possible. The final step
deals with the ability to finish a campaign at the right moment, termi-
nating while in the lead or at the top. These four imperatives are the
Prometheus Process, which, according to Warden, allows you to succeed in
the modern world, be it in the military or the civilian business.
Lieutenant Colonel Frans Osinga argues that the current debate in the
West on asymmetric warfare focuses on certain threats, weapons and
tactics. The events of 11 September reinvigorated this debate, but also
steered it towards a particular view on what asymmetric means with
terrorism taking centre stage as an asymmetric threat. The result is that
asymmetry means something different to different people, or is dismissed
by some as a hollow concept, because asymmetric warfare is essentially as
old as warfare itself. In this essay Osinga introduces various inter-
pretations and comments, and attempts to shed light on the debate. His
objective is to improve our understanding of asymmetric warfare, rather
than formulate a new definition, and in the process he revisits a classic in
strategic theory: Sun Tzu’s The Art of War. The author argues that
finding, creating and exploiting asymmetries is the essence of strategy,
and that Sun Tzu provides several important insights into the nature of
asymmetric warfare – a notable one being that asymmetric warfare
requires above all a specific mindset and approach to studying war and
making strategy. Osinga stresses that although the debate on asymmetric
warfare contains nothing new, it is far from useless. Rather, in view of the
strategic mistakes of the past decades, and in view of the fact that several
INTRODUCTION 11
authors stressed that the future would witness wars in which nation-
states did not necessarily have a monopoly on war and the line between
civilian and military would become ever less tangible. Although pointing
out that terrorism did not equal fourth generation warfare, Lind specu-
lated that it would be difficult to imagine future conflicts in which ter-
rorism was not a central element. In hindsight it was a glimpse of the
future, and in the second half Lind sets out to use the framework of the
fourth generation to comment on the recent Afghan War. He argues that
the most important aspect in examining the leadership of al-Quaida is
that the centres of gravity in the Afghan War do not reside in Afghanistan
itself, but in Pakistan, Saudi Arabia and Egypt. Drawing on cultural, reli-
gious and ideological factors Lind argues that Washington has misper-
ceived the very nature of the terrorism that it sets out to defeat.
cate their members to cope with the theoretical and practical problems
they might face? The author stresses that there is no place for dogma and
certainty in war and warfare as one enters the Third Millennium.
These days, duels are a thing of the past. Instead we have games, such as
tennis, and to make sure that symmetry is maintained we have referees
or umpires. Games have developed further, some will say degenerated,
into soccer matches as we find them today, but still symmetry is main-
16 PROLOGUE
If we had no referees I submit that rules would break down. The stronger
might resort to force, the weaker might bring a tool to help him etc.
Symmetry would break down because rules were not upheld. The game
could turn nasty, and it would most likely become asymmetrical. Let me
conclude: Games will stay symmetrical because they are governed by a set
of rules. Games are by nature symmetrical.
There are of course borderline cases. Some of you may remember when
an American, Bill Koch, started skating when skiing, or when a Swede
started a new trend in skijumping. They did not break the rules, they
only bent them. The almost unanimous Norwegian reaction merits con-
sideration: We were against these changes. We wanted rules against this
sort of creativity. New ideas will not come from masters of the old trade.
Also, and in contrast to games, there is no time limit to wars. Time there-
fore becomes a commodity in itself. Rules therefore tend to be broken in
this respect too. One of the parts might want to go on fighting while the
PROLOGUE 17
other wants to go home. Again, the one who stays the longest in the field
will carry the day.
What does this amount to? It amounts to a conclusion that wars are not
governed by generally accepted rules. Wars are therefore by nature asym-
metrical. If the underdog fights symmetrically, he does so due to lack of
opitons or lack of creativity. Wars are therefore not deadly games. We
ought to consider this: Military organisations are governed by a set of
rather rigid operating principles; there are doctrines and the like. Wars
however, obeying no rules, are the business of the creative mind. I am not
entirely convinced that our daily bureaucratic business, our operating
principles, encourages creativity.
Examples
Let me round this introduction off by a couple of examples. The mother
of all wars, the First World War, or the Great War as the British will have it,
was at least on the Western Front, symmetrical. It was fought to a stand-
still on the midfield. It ended because the Germans wanted to go home.
Time became the central commodity. Out of W.W.I came Air Power. First
a creation of the imagination, but then, over the years, as a reality.
What was Air Power going to achieve? What was it, the prophets argued,
that was going to be its main contribution? Air Power would lift war out
of the trenches. It would lift war away from the symmetrical battlefield
and onto segments of the enemy population who did not fight back. In
other words: Air Power promised to make war asymmetrical. The Western
Front symmetry resulted in a four year deadlock. Air Power promised to
see to it that this did not happen again, by making a new set of rules.
obstreperous tribes in several areas of Africa. ”The natives and their cattle
were bombed and machinegunned with good effect”, according to the
RAF.
Over the last decade the West has fought several wars, and fought them
mainly by air power. We could of course have met our opponent on equal
terms. We optet not to, and we all know why. Meeting him on his terms
would not be to our advantage. Highly sophisticated air power enables
us to fight asymmetrical wars. On this field air power has kept its
promise: Air Power came of day promising to make wars asymmetrical.
In this respect, at least with regard to the poorer part of the world, we
have succeeded.
Our opponents are well aware of this. They will therefore seek other
kinds of asymmetry. If our Achilles’ heel is our distaste for losses, we
should know what to expect, and to achieve the asymmetry of the under-
dog, our opponents will break the rules. The attackers of September 11th
had overlooked one lesson though – there is hardly any evidence that
bombing the civilian population of a nation will weaken the national
resolve. There is, however, ample evidence of the opposite.
Ladies and gentlemen, Wars have been, are and will remain asymmetric.
The Western way of asymmetry is the kind that technology and money
can buy. We should not however, expect to be allowed to define what
kind of asymmetry that will be practiced.
Summary
Let me summarise this introduction in a few sentences:
statesman who may decide to use air power to achieve political goals, as
well as for the military commander charged with transforming political
goals into military objectives.
Given that conditions in war are never constant, the framework examines
five key variables that affect air power’s ability to achieve success: the
nature of the enemy, the type of war that the enemy wages, the nature of
the combat environment, the magnitude of military controls, and the
nature of the political objectives sought. The individual importance of
these variables will likely change in different situations to yield different
results. Thus, it is essential for those who would employ air power to
understand exactly what the variables are, and how they might blend
together to produce a particular outcome. America’s air war in Vietnam
during the “Rolling Thunder” era of the conflict provides one example of
how the variables can combine with tragic effects to undermine the vari-
ous applications of air power against an asymmetric enemy. That episode,
perhaps better than any other, demonstrates that flawed assumptions and
a failure to consider each variable fully can doom any chance for air
power success. Hopefully, the framework will provide a method for
analyzing air power applications that allows for a thorough dissection of
the variables and how their integration may affect air power’s ability to
achieve the ultimate measure of success – the accomplishment of the
desired political goals.
Air power’s modes of application – the ways in which it can be used – are
key components of the framework. First, air power poised for use but not
actually engaged in an operation is a latent application – a potential
impact – that corresponds to its deterrent value. In this case, air power is
not directly involved in a contingency; its use is threatened. Examples of
the latent application abound: Adolf Hitler’s references to the Luftwaffe
during the 1936 reoccupation of the Rhineland or the 1938 Munich
crisis; President Harry Truman’s deployment of B-29s to England during
the 1948 Berlin Airlift; President Dwight Eisenhower’s warning of an
atomic air attack against North Korea and Manchuria during the closing
stages of the Korean War; and President John Kennedy’s reliance on
Strategic Air Command’s B-52s and missile force during the 1962 Cuban
Missile Crisis are but a few instances.
Besides being direct or indirect, the use of air power is also either auxili-
ary or independent. Auxiliary air power is that applied to support ground
or sea forces on a specific battlefield, whereas independent air power aims
to achieve objectives apart from those sought by armies or navies at a
specific location. Close air support (CAS) is one example of the auxiliary
use; so too is an air attack against enemy forces on the battlefield who are
not in contact with friendly troops.6 So-called “strategic” bombing – that
aimed at an enemy’s war-making potential before it can be brought to
bear on the battlefield–exemplifies the independent application. Yet the
terms strategic and tactical often overlap and frequently blur. Many air
attacks during the last half-century’s limited wars have not only affected
the ebb and flow of a particular campaign, but also have had significant
“strategic” consequences. For instance, the American air strikes on Iraqi
26 AIR POWER VERSUS ASYMMETRIC ENEMIES
mobile Scud launchers during the 1991 Persian Gulf War aimed to wreck
Iraq’s tactical capability to launch ballistic missiles, as well as to achieve
the strategic goal of placating the Israelis and keeping them out of the
conflict.
Yet what about the air superiority mission? Where does that fit in the
framework? The air control mission is either auxiliary or independent,
depending on the use that will then be made of the airspace. For instance,
AIR POWER VERSUS ASYMMETRIC ENEMIES 27
WAR AIMS
|
GRAND STRATEGY
|
MILITARY STRATEGY
|
MILITARY OBJECTIVES
War aims are the political goals of a nation or organization at war, and
can range from limited to total. Grand strategy blends diplomatic, eco-
nomic, military, and informational instruments together in a concerted
effort to achieve those war aims. Meanwhile, military strategy combines
various components of military force to gain military objectives that
should, in turn, help to achieve the political goals. Achieving the military
objectives may require a mixture of ground, sea, or air operations, and
the forces performing those operations may act in either independent or
auxiliary fashion. These definitions and connections are relatively
straightforward.
These linkages are not, however, the only ones that determine whether
military force – and air power in particular – will be effective in achieving
the desired war aims. Besides being either limited or total, war aims are
also positive or negative.10 Positive goals are those that can be achieved
only by applying military force, while negative goals, in contrast, can be
achieved only by limiting military force. For example, for the United
States, the unconditional surrender of Germany in World War II was a
positive political goal – one that required the destruction of Germany’s
armed forces, government, and the National Socialist way of life – and
the application of military force was essential to achieve it. Few negative
objectives limited America’s use of the military instrument. By comparison,
in Kosovo the United States had the positive objective of removing Serb
forces from the province. Yet, at the same time, America had the negative
objective of preserving the NATO alliance, and that goal restrained the
AIR POWER VERSUS ASYMMETRIC ENEMIES 29
amount of force that the United States could apply. A similar example
comes from the 1991 Persian Gulf War, although there the American aim
of preserving the alliance was both a positive and negative goal –
President George H. Bush had to commit American military force
against Iraqi Scuds to keep the Israelis out of the war, yet if he applied
too much force in the air campaign he risked dissolving the coalition.
While some critics might equate the notion of negative objectives to con-
straints, to do so would be a mistake, for negative objectives are more
significant than that, and in fact are equal in importance to positive
goals. Failure to secure either the positive or the negative goals results in
defeat, and both must be obtained to achieve victory. The United States
could not have achieved success during the 1991 Gulf War or in Kosovo
in 1999 had the coalitions that backed those enterprises collapsed. A key
problem in achieving positive and negative goals, of course, is that they
are contradictory – what helps to achieve a positive objective works
against achieving a negative one. In a limited war, negative objectives will
always exist, and the more limited the war, the greater the number of
negative objectives. As President Lyndon Johnson tragically found out in
Vietnam, his negative objectives eclipsed his positive goals. Once that
occurred, he lost the ability to achieve success with any military force,
especially air power.
The greater the number of negative objectives – and the greater the
significance attached to them by political leaders – the more difficult it
becomes for air power to achieve success in obtaining the positive goals.
This assessment is especially true regarding the direct, independent
application of air power. If the negative objectives outweigh the positive
goals, they are likely to curtail – or perhaps prohibit – air power’s ability
to strike at the heart of an enemy state or organization. Yet before a user
of the framework points to this statement as a basic truth, he or she
should realize that the measuring of positive versus negative objectives is
an inherently subjective activity. Positive and negative goals are typically
not quantifiable, and even when they are, comparing numerical results is
likely to equate to comparing apples and orange juice. Moreover, positive
and negative objectives may be stated explicitly or only implied, which
further muddies the water in terms of evaluating results.
In the case of the Persian Gulf War, the negative objectives of preserving
the coalition, and maintaining American and world public support, did
not prevent air power from helping to remove Iraqi troops from Kuwait.
Likewise, the various applications of air power in the Gulf War did not
stop President George H. Bush from achieving his negative goals, though
the direct, independent application that hit the Al Firdos bunker in
Baghdad, and direct, auxiliary applications that produced friendly fire
deaths in Kuwait, made achieving the negative objectives more difficult.
Ultimately, that is how air power effectiveness must be measured – in
terms of how well it supported the positive goals without jeopardizing
the achievement of the negative objectives.
AIR POWER VERSUS ASYMMETRIC ENEMIES 31
In determining when air power is most likely to help achieve the positive
goals, five main variables come into play.13 These variables are complex
factors that cannot be easily dissected, nor can one variable be considered
in isolation from the others because their effects are often complementary.
Each variable has a series of questions associated with it, and the ques-
tions listed are not all-inclusive – others will certainly come to mind.
Answering the questions differently for one variable may cause the other
variables to assume a greater or lesser importance. No formula deter-
mines which of the variables may be the most important in any particular
situation, or how their combined effect may contribute to – or hinder –
the achievement of the positive goals sought. Yet if all of the five variables
argue against a particular application of air power, that application is
unlikely to be beneficial. As the Vietnam example shows, the assump-
tions made in answering the questions for each variable are of critical
importance. If those assumptions are flawed, the assessment of the vari-
ables is likely to be flawed as well.
The first of the five variables is the nature of the enemy. What military
capabilities does the enemy possess? What is the nature of its military
establishment – a conscript force, a volunteer military, or a blend? Is the
enemy population unified – socially, ethnically, and ideologically? Where
is the bulk of the populace located? Is the populace primarily urban or
agrarian? What type of government, or central leadership apparatus, does
the enemy have? What about the individuals who lead it – are they strong
or weak, supported by the populace or despised, or is the populace
ambivalent? What is their relationship with the military and its com-
manders? How resolute is the political leadership? The military? The
populace? How does the enemy state or organization make its money? Is
it self-sufficient in any area? How important is trade? What allies does the
enemy have, and how much support do they provide? If facing more
than one enemy, these questions should be asked about each, plus a
determination should be made as to which enemy poses the greatest
threat.
Besides the nature of the enemy, the type of war that the enemy fights is a
key variable that affects air power’s ability to achieve a positive political
objective. Is the conflict a conventional war to seize or hold territory? Is
it an unconventional guerrilla struggle? An insurgency supported by a
32 AIR POWER VERSUS ASYMMETRIC ENEMIES
The third variable is the nature of the environment. What are the climate,
weather, terrain, and vegetation in the hostile area? How might they
affect applications of air power? Are adequate bases available? What are
the distances involved in applying air power, and can those distances be
overcome? What type of support is required?
The final variable is often the most important: the nature of the political
objectives sought. Are the positive goals truly achievable through the appli-
cation of military force? Is the application of air power necessary to
obtain the positive objectives? How committed is the leadership applying
air power to achieving the positive goals? How committed is its populace?
Can the positive goals be obtained without preventing the achievement
of the negative objectives? How do the negative objectives limit air
power’s ability to help achieve the positive goals? The direct, independent
application of air power seems to work best for a belligerent with no
negative objectives – provided a suitable type of enemy wages a suitable type
of war in a suitable type of environment free of significant military restric-
tions. For the United States in World War II, the suitable conditions were
present. Few negative objectives or military controls limited the applica-
tion of military force. Americans had a decent understanding of both
enemies, the Germans and the Japanese, who fought as expected in
environments that ultimately proved conducive to the direct, indepen-
dent application of air power. However, since World War II, negative
objectives have played prominent roles in guiding American war efforts,
and for the United States in the foreseeable future, the prospect of a war
without them is remote indeed.
America has also had difficulty understanding many of the enemies it has
faced in its wars after 1945. Those enemies have not always fought as
expected, and the environments have not always been hospitable to air
power. Such asymmetric foes have had notable success in confounding
American air power applications, perhaps none more telling than during
the war in Vietnam. That conflict provides a relevant example for exam-
ining how the framework’s variables can affect air power’s ability to help
achieve political goals against an asymmetric opponent. Lyndon
Johnson’s war provided a strong mix of positive and negative objectives,
and a tenacious enemy fought across a forbidding landscape in a manner
that defied expectations. Military controls further disrupted the
American war effort. The Vietnam analysis may provide useful insights
for applying air power against similarly motivated enemies who both
think and fight asymmetrically – though the way in which the variables
combine to affect air power success in one conflict will never conform
exactly to the way that they blend in another.
34 AIR POWER VERSUS ASYMMETRIC ENEMIES
In his war in Southeast Asia, Johnson sought the positive political goal of
an “independent, stable, non-communist South Vietnam.” Whether
such a goal could actually be achieved through military means – much
less air power – was problematic, but the President and his advisors
nevertheless set out to do so. Several negative objectives limited Johnson’s
ability to pursue his positive goal. First, he aimed to avoid active Chinese
or Soviet involvement in the conflict, which he thought might lead to a
greatly expanded war and possibly World War III.15 Second, the
President wanted to maintain a positive image of the United States on
the world stage, and he could not allow a portrayal of his country as
brutal Goliath wreaking havoc against a hapless North Vietnamese
“David.” Finally, Johnson wanted to keep the American public’s focus on
his Great Society programs for domestic social reform, not on a war
8,000 miles away in a strange land.
In the end, Johnson failed to achieve his positive goal and most of the
negative ones, with the exception of keeping the Soviets and Chinese
from active intervention. The preponderance of negative goals emaciated
the application of direct, independent air power against targets in North
Vietnam, and assured that the effort had a minimal effect on achieving a
stable, independent, non-communist South.
and lasted for three and a half years. Because of his fears that American
military chiefs might design a campaign that prevented him from
achieving his negative goals, Johnson severely limited their inputs to the
air war over the North. Army General Earle Wheeler, the Chairman of
the Joint Chiefs of Staff, could submit targeting proposals to Secretary of
Defense Robert S. McNamara, but Wheeler could not – until October
1967 – participate in the actual target selection process, which typically
occurred on Tuesday afternoons in the White House following lunch.17
A small number of Johnson’s key advisors, including McNamara,
Secretary of State Dean Rusk, National Security Advisor McGeorge
Bundy (until his replacement by Walt Rostow), and White House Press
Secretary Bill Moyers were regulars; Johnson would occasionally allow
trusted friends such as Clark Clifford to participate as well. The advisors
had no requirement to endorse the proposals that McNamara brought
with him from Wheeler, and they often made other choices. President
Johnson usually approved targets for attack in only two-week increments,
with a specified number of sorties designed to achieve an 80 percent rate
of destruction. Until accomplishing that amount of damage, aircrews
repeatedly attacked the same targets during the two-week period. The
President then removed the targets from “approved” list, with no
guarantee that he would add them back later. Any sorties that remained
to be flown were lost.18
To the President and his advisors, North Vietnam was the main enemy
responsible for the war in the South. While they realized that the Viet
Cong guerrillas were indigenous to South Vietnam, and formed the vast
bulk of the enemy forces there, Johnson and his advisors believed that the
Viet Cong were incapable of fighting without the support and direction
of Ho Chi Minh’s North. This notion became Rolling Thunder’s funda-
36 AIR POWER VERSUS ASYMMETRIC ENEMIES
mental premise. Johnson and his advisors deemed the hardware and
supplies that Ho gleaned from China and the Soviet Union, and in turn
transferred down his namesake trail along with North Vietnamese
troops, essential to the Viet Cong war effort. The President and his
advisors also believed that leadership cadres from the North were the key
components of Viet Cong resistance. They viewed Northern tenacity as
the spark that kept the insurgency going, yet neither the President nor
his advisors thought that Northern will could prevail against American
resolve and resources. In the aftermath of the Cuban Missile Crisis – in
which the latent application of American air power had made America’s
mightiest enemy back down – Johnson and his principals could not
imagine that “a raggedy-ass little fourth-rate country” like North
Vietnam could win.19 As a result, they discounted the depth of North
Vietnamese commitment to a unified Vietnam. Secretary of State Rusk
later recalled: “I thought that the North Vietnamese would reach a point,
like the Chinese and North Koreans in Korea, and Stalin during the
Berlin airlift, when they would finally give in.”20
American leaders also misjudged the tenacity of the Viet Cong, and the
Viet Cong, not the North Vietnamese, were the primary enemy. At the
end of July 1965, only 7500 NVA troops served in South Vietnam,21 and
that total had risen to just 55,000 out of a 300,000-man enemy force on
the eve of the January 1968 Tet Offensive.22 American political and mili-
tary leaders focused on the NVA, as well as on Hanoi’s ability and desire
to perpetuate the war, although the 245,000 Viet Cong were the essence
of the enemy war effort. Most of those troops fought not because of their
ardor for Ho Chi Minh’s brand of communism, but because of the despi-
cable, corrupt nature of the Saigon government. South Vietnamese lead-
ers had made stealing land an art form and were completely out of touch
with the peasantry who comprised their country. Even the religious back-
grounds were incongruent – the Southern leaders were Catholics in a
land that was overwhelmingly Buddhist. “I would have been able to
accept almost any regime that could achieve real independence and had
the welfare of the people at heart,” lamented Truong Nhu Tang, a
member of the Southern aristocracy who recanted his privileged position
to become Viet Cong Minister of Justice. “The Southern revolution was
generated of itself, out of the emotions, conscience, and aspirations of the
Southern people.”23
AIR POWER VERSUS ASYMMETRIC ENEMIES 37
Johnson and his advisors misread their enemy, and they compounded
their mistake by misreading the type of war that their enemy fought.
Despite frequently stating that the communist army conducted guerrilla
warfare, American civilian and military leaders assumed that the destruc-
tion of resources necessary for conventional conflict would weaken the
enemy’s capability and will to fight unconventionally. It did not, because
the supplies were not essential to the asymmetric manner in which the
Viet Cong – and their North Vietnamese allies – waged war. The number
of North Vietnamese troops in South Vietnam never eclipsed the
number of Viet Cong during the Johnson presidency, and the Viet Cong
usually fought autonomously. During the years 1967–1968, a time of
“peak” combat activity relative to other periods in the war, the com-
munist army actually fought very little. Only one percent of American
combat patrols that sought the enemy on “search and destroy” missions
during that two-year span made contact. When South Vietnamese com-
bat patrols are added to that total, the number drops to one-tenth of one
percent!24 Simply put, the Viet Cong and North Vietnamese avoided
fighting unless they had a distinct advantage. Together, they fought an
average of one day out of 30 – a single day out of each month. This com-
bat infrequency produced supply needs of only 34 tons a day from
sources outside of South Vietnam – a total that could be carried by just
seven two-and-a-half ton trucks.25 Against an enemy that fought so dif-
ferently from American expectations, the direct, independent application of
air power against North Vietnamese transportation lines was a wasted effort.
Besides a failure to understand the enemy and his conduct of the war, a
lack of appreciation for the environment limited air power’s ability to
achieve President Johnson’s positive political goal. Triple-canopy jungle,
constant heat and humidity, and unforgiving monsoons combined to
undercut air power effectiveness regardless of the type of application.
Monsoon weather in particular limited Rolling Thunder’s direct,
independent application of air power. President Johnson’s targeting pro-
cedure allowed air commanders only two weeks to destroy most targets
in North Vietnam. Because of that restriction, many air commanders felt
compelled to attack the targets throughout the two-week span. Some of
those strikes occurred in marginal weather, which significantly limited
their probability of success. “Obviously, if you do not fly [the allocated
sorties], you can make a case that you did not really need them anyway,”
Major General Gilbert L. Meyers, 7th Air Force Deputy Commander,
explained. “We wanted to be sure there would be no loss of future sorties
on the basis that we had not flown them in the past period.”27
General Meyers’ attitude reflected the frustration felt by many air com-
manders in Vietnam, and that frustration produced military controls
that severely limited air power applications. Perhaps the most memorable
of those constraints was the development of the “Route Package” system
that dissected the airspace over North Vietnam. In 1966, Pacific
Command Headquarters divided North Vietnamese airspace into seven
bombing zones, or Route Packages, and assigned three zones to the Air
Force and four to the Navy. Originally developed to separate Air Force
and Navy aircraft flying over the North, the system soon became the
basis of a competition between the services to determine which one
could fly the most sorties in enemy airspace, which became the services’
warped measure of success. As a result of that emphasis, aircraft attacked
Northern targets with less than a full load of bombs, which in turn
endangered additional flyers.28 One Navy A-4 pilot admitted that he
attacked the Thanh Hoa Bridge, one of the North’s most heavily
defended targets, with no bombs at all but was told simply to strafe the
structure with 20mm cannon fire.29
AIR POWER VERSUS ASYMMETRIC ENEMIES 39
Johnson’s negative objectives, the nature of the enemy and the type of
war that he fought, the nature of the combat environment, and the mag-
nitude of military controls combined to negate any chance that the
direct, independent application of air power had to achieve the
President’s positive political goal. In reality, any one of those variables
could have precluded that application of air power from obtaining suc-
cess; the fact that all five indicated failure guaranteed that result. Yet what
about the auxiliary application of air power? Even without the military
controls, the direct, auxiliary application offered minimum prospects for
success, given the type of conflict faced – an infrequent guerrilla war
fought to gain the support of the Southern populace against a corrupt
regime. The indirect, auxiliary application, on the other hand, might
have fared better, had it received greater emphasis and had American
ground commanders changed their basic approach to the war. The
essence of that approach was “search and destroy,” a strategy geared to
finding the elusive enemy and then using massive quantities of firepower
40 AIR POWER VERSUS ASYMMETRIC ENEMIES
to kill as many enemy troops as possible. That strategy did little to endear
itself to South Vietnamese civilians, and probably did more to bolster the
Viet Cong’s ranks than it did to reduce them.
For President Johnson and his military and civilian advisors, achieving
the positive goal required the use of military force. Indeed, in the spring
of 1965, with the Saigon government tottering before Viet Cong
advances, American firepower prevented the Southern regime from col-
lapsing. The negative objectives that severely limited the direct, indepen-
dent application of air power against North Vietnam had minimal effect
on limiting the war in the South. There, the direct, auxiliary application
of air power continued unabated. Free fire zones – hostile areas deemed
free of South Vietnamese civilians – dotted the Southern landscape, and
American air power attacked those zones ruthlessly in support of friendly
ground forces. More than four million tons of bombs fell on South
Vietnam out of the eight million dropped on all of Indochina by
American aircraft, with many of the four million falling in the massive
B-52 campaign known as “Arc Light.”32 Yet because of the asymmetric
war waged by the enemy, that bombing had little beneficial effect.
AIR POWER VERSUS ASYMMETRIC ENEMIES 41
What insights does the framework provide regarding the use of air power
against an asymmetric foe like that encountered in Vietnam? First, the
positive political goal may not be achievable through the direct appli-
cation of air power. Any one of the variables may preclude the direct,
independent application from achieving success, and the nature of the
enemy and the type of war being fought may negate the direct, auxiliary
application from producing beneficial results. Second, against the type of
enemy and war that America faced in Vietnam, the indirect, auxiliary
application of air power may work best. If the positive political goal is to
be achieved at all in such a conflict – which may be a dubious propo-
sition – selectively applied ground power will obtain it, and air power
will play an auxiliary role. Third, while “asymmetric” may describe the
way that an enemy wages war, the term applies more broadly to the way
that an enemy thinks in general.33 Cultural values and beliefs may be
significantly different, as well as the motivations for fighting, which are
likely to cause the desired ends to be asymmetric as well as the means
used to obtain them. Accordingly, most opponents can rightly be viewed
as asymmetric, and the importance of the individual variables that affect
air power applications is likely to be different in every case. Fourth, the
variables help to determine whether a belligerent will be successful in
achieving its war aims, regardless of whether the belligerent uses air
power to achieve them. As such, the variables really form the basis to
42 AIR POWER VERSUS ASYMMETRIC ENEMIES
In the final analysis, the effectiveness of air power depends on how well
it supports the positive political goals without risking the achievement of
the negative ones. The framework offers no guarantee of success or
failure, nor is it a predictor of the future. Yet it does charge those who
might apply air power to think carefully before making that decision.
“No one starts a war – or rather, no one in his senses ought to do so –
without first being clear in his mind what he intends to achieve by that
war and how he intends to conduct it,” warns Clausewitz.34 That
admonishment, delivered almost two centuries ago to readers who had
fought against Napoleon with muskets and sabers, remains apt in the age
of air warfare.
NOTES
1 For comments and suggestions, both heeded and unheeded, the author gratefully acknowledges
Dr. Ilana Kass, Colonel James Callard, Colonel Robert Eskridge, Dr. David MacIsaac, and the
students of National War College Elective Class 5855, “Air Power and Modern War.” The views
expressed are the author’s alone, and do not necessarily reflect those of the National War College,
National Defense University, or the Department of Defense.
2 Harold Winton, “A Black Hole in the Wild Blue Yonder: The Need for a Comprehensive Theory
of Air Power,” Air Power History (Winter 1992): 33–34.
3 William Mitchell, Winged Defense (New York: Dover Publications Inc., 1925), p. xii.
4 M .J. Armitage and R. A. Mason, Air Power in the Nuclear Age (Champaign: University of
Illinois Press, 1983), p. 2.
5 Ibid., p. 3.
6 The largely discarded term “Battlefield Air Interdiction” (BAI) describes this auxiliary function.
7 John Schlight, The United States Air Force in Southeast Asia: The War in South Vietnam: The
Years of the Offensive 1965–1968 (Washington: Office of Air Force History, 1988), p. 216.
8 Other factors may help define the battlefield as well, including the ranges of weapons possessed
by deployed ground or sea forces, or the location of such demarcations as the Forward Line of
Troops (FLOT) and the Fire Support Coordination Line (FSCL). Admiral William Owens, a
former Vice Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, contended that a battlefield would consist of
40,000 square miles in a 200 by 200 mile area. While Admiral Owens’s precise delineation may
be appropriate in a conventional war, it may not suit other types of conflict. See Terry L. New,
“Where to Draw the Line between Air and Land Battle,” Airpower Journal 10 (Fall, 1996):
34–49 on how the battlefield is affected by the relationship between the FLOT and the FSCL;
AIR POWER VERSUS ASYMMETRIC ENEMIES 43
on Admiral Owens’s notion of the battlefield, see Alan D. Zimm, “Human-Centric Warfare,”
Naval Institute Proceedings 125 (May 1999): 28.
9 Air Force Doctrine Document 1, Basic Doctrine, September 1997, p. 46.
10 These terms should not be confused with Clausewitz’s concept of positive and negative objec-
tives, which he uses in regards to attacking and defending.
11 Joint Pub 1–02, Department of Defense Dictionary of Military and Associated Terms
(Washington: Joint Chiefs of Staff, 10 June 1998), p. 388.
12 See Bard E. O’Neill and Ilana Kass, “The Persian Gulf War: A Political-Military Assessment,”
Comparative Strategy 11 (April–June 1992), p. 219, for a thorough discussion of American war
aims in the 1991 Persian Gulf War.
13 The Clausewitzian notion of friction also affects air power’s ability to achieve positive (and nega-
tive) political goals, but unlike the five variables, friction is a constant that cannot be specified
based on assumptions and analysis.
14 Robert F. Futrell, The United States Air Force in Korea 1950–1953 (New York: Duell, Sloan &
Pearce, 1961), p. 447; USAF Oral History interview of General O.P. Weyland by Dr. James
Hasdorff and Brigadier General Noel Parrish, San Antonio, Texas, 19 November 1974, Air Force
Historical Research Agency (AFHRA), Maxwell AFB, Alabama, file number K239.0512–813,
pp. 107, 113.
15 “Above all else,” Johnson wrote in his memoirs, “I did not want to lead this nation and the world
into nuclear war or even the risk of such a war.” See Lyndon B. Johnson, The Vantage Point
(New York: Holt, Rinehart & Winston, 1971), p. 153.
16 Doris Kearns, Lyndon Johnson and the American Dream (New York: Signet, 1976), pp.
263–264.
17 David C. Humphrey, “Tuesday Lunch at the Johnson White House: A Preliminary Assessment,”
Diplomatic History 8 (Winter 1984): 90.
18 U.S. Congress, Senate, Committee on Armed Services, Preparedness Investigating Subcomittee,
Air War Against North Vietnam, 90th cong., 1st sess., part 5, 27–29 August 1967, pp. 476–485;
interview of Lieutenant Colonel Charles Ferguson by the author, 17 May 1985, Maxwell AFB,
Alabama. In 1966, President Johnson approved five multi-week bombing programs, each one
lasting from one to four months. See Wayne Thompson, To Hanoi and Back: The U.S. Air Force
and North Vietnam, 1966–1973 (Washington: Smithsonian Institution Press, 2000), p. 24.
19 Johnson quoted in George C. Herring, “‘Cold Blood’: LBJ’s Conduct of Limited War in
Vietnam,” in Dennis E. Showalter and John G. Albert, eds., An American Dilemma: Vietnam,
1964–1973 (Chicago: Imprint Publications, 1993), p. 64.
20 Dean Rusk interview with the author at Athens, Georgia, 15 July 1985.
21 “Memorandum, McNamara to the President,” 3 November 1965, National Security Files,
Country File: Vietnam, Folder 2EE, Box 75, Lyndon Johnson Presidential Library, Austin, Texas.
22 “Meeting with Foreign Policy Advisors on Vietnam,” 18 August 1967, Meeting Notes File, Box
1, Johnson Presidential Library.
23 Truong Nhu Tang, A Viet Cong Memoir (New York: Vintage Books, 1985), pp. 36, 68.
24 Edward Doyle and Samuel Lipsman, The Vietnam Experience: America Takes Over, 1965–67
(Boston: Boston Publishing Company, 1982), p. 60.
25 Headquarters USAF, Analysis of Effectiveness of Interdiction in Southeast Asia, Second Progress
Report, May 1966, p.7, AFHRA, file number K168.187–21; Senate Preparedness Investigating
Subcomittee, Air War Against North Vietnam, 25 August 1967, part 4, p. 299; Annex A to
JCSM 613–65, 27 August 1965, National Security Files, Country File: Vietnam, Folder 2EE,
Box 75, Johnson Presidential Library.
44 AIR POWER VERSUS ASYMMETRIC ENEMIES
26 Schlight, p. 216. Only three percent of all Air Force sorties flown in South Vietnam through
1966 went to close air support, and the Army requested CAS for only one out of every ten
engagements with the enemy.
27 Senate Preparedness Investigating Subcomittee, Air War Against North Vietnam, part 5, 27–29
August 1967, pp. 476–485. During the southwest monsoon, the Air Force diverted as many as
a thousand sorties a month from targets in the North Vietnamese heartland to the area just north
of the 17th parallel. See Thompson, p. 28.
28 John Morrocco, Thunder from Above (Boston: Boston Publishing Company, 1984), p. 125; Lt.
Col. William H. Greenhalgh (ret.), interview with the author, Maxwell AFB, Alabama, 17 May
1985.
29 Statement to the author in July 1989 by a retired Navy pilot who preferred to remain anony-
mous.
30 Schlight, pp. 146, 297.
31 For a brief discussion of Combined Action Platoons, see Cecil B. Currey, “Marine Combined
Action Platoons,” in Spencer C. Tucker, ed., The Encyclopedia of the Vietnam War: A Political,
Social, and Military History (New York: Oxford University Press, 2000), p. 249.
32 Ralph Littauer and Norman Uphoff, eds., The Air War in Indochina (Boston: Beacon Press,
1972), pp. 11, 168–172.
33 See Lawrence Freedman, “The Third World War?” Survival 43 (Winter 2001–2002): 70, 80.
34 Carl von Clausewitz, On War, edit. and trans. by Michael Howard and Peter Paret (Princeton:
Princeton University Press, 1976), p. 579.
The Evolution of Airpower Theory in the
United States: From World War I to
Colonel John Warden’s The Air Campaign
Given the above objectives, the necessary first step in this article is to
address the question of context. No serious airpower historian will argue
that the creation of theories, strategies, or doctrines is a parthenogenetic
act. In other words, neither individual theorists nor military establish-
ments develop new paradigms of war in intellectual vacuums. Despite this
obvious truth, however, virtually all of the existing texts on airpower
theory focus on the 20th century. They artificially neglect the intellectual
patrimony that airmen have depended and drawn upon in the past. It is
a patrimony – for better and worse – that provided air theorists with ready
“vocabularies” to develop their own thinking about new ways of war.
and strategy had its roots in Flavius Vegetius Renatus’ Epitoma rei militari
(c.384–389). Vegetius’ treatise was both a plea and a plan to revitalize the
Eastern Roman army after its disastrous defeat by Fridigern’s Gothic
horsemen at the Battle of Adrianople (378 A.D.).2 Unfortunately,
Vegetius’ military nostrums were too narrow in scope to save an already
tottering empire. Nevertheless, De re militari subsequently flourished as
a practical and authoritative guide to medieval warfare in Europe.3
(European scribes copied the text so frequently that over 320
manuscripts survive even today.) The reason for its popularity was simple
– it was a user-friendly compendium of ancient thinking on war. The De
re militari included pithy extracts from the works of 30 largely forgotten
military commentators, including Arrian, Frontinus, Polybius, Vitruvius,
and others.
Machiavelli used Vegetius as a foundation for his own treatise, The Art of
War (1521). Not only did the structure of Machiavelli’s work mimic De
re militari, but portions of the latter text, including the principles of war
found at the end of Book III, “were reproduced without modification by
Machiavelli.”6 However, the Florentine philosopher was not interested in
merely restating past pieties. Machiavelli sought instead to adapt the old
laws of Roman warfare to the new realities of 16th century Italy. He
argued this was possible because human history was immutable, and not
necessarily unique. The classical military legacy of Rome represented a
homogenous historical experience that provided infallible and general
rules of war that – if applied properly – reduced the relative impact of
48 THE EVOLUTION OF AIRPOWER THEORY IN THE UNITED STATES
Based on the recovered wisdom of the ancients and the updated pre-
scriptions of Machiavelli, a rational or neoclassical language of war
started to coalesce in Europe. It certainly appeared in Raimondo Monte-
cuccoli’s On the War Against the Turks in Hungary, now more popularly
known as Aphorism[s] on the Art of War (1670) and arguably the first
attempt to formulate a comprehensive theory of modern warfare in the
West. (Significantly, the Austrian general drew upon 15 ancient, five late-
medieval and Renaissance, and 22 early modern authors.)9
Further, within a uniform, cause and effect universe, state violence was
also knowable and predictable. The military philosophes repeatedly
referred to war as a “machine” or “mechanism.” They agreed with Vegetius,
Machiavelli, and Montecuccoli that warfare was reducible, calculable,
and subject to universal and immutable principles. The key, however,
remained to identify those “statistical regularities” that shaped war.
scholars, it was Antoine-Henri Jomini who spoke and wrote the language
of neoclassical rationalism best. Regardless of attempts by some military
historians to reverse his popular image as a hidebound systematist, at the
end of the day Jomini was guilty of the charge.16 He provided a near end-
less series of prescriptions on how to succeed in war. How many factors
defined strategy? Thirteen. How many maxims ensured effective lines of
operations? Twelve. How many methods were there for effective retreats?
Five. Yes, Jomini was not guilty of Bülow’s extreme mathematical
formalism, but his now legendary emphasis on permanent principles of
war (including mass, surprise, and economy of force), and on the omni-
present tactical requirement to concentrate offensive forces against a
weaker opponent at a decisive point, clearly identified him as a rationalist
shaped by the New Physics of the 18th century.
Armed with theory, therefore, those who soberly (and properly) calculat-
ed the ends and means of human conflict would not only succeed, they
would continue to refine war as a science. They would reduce the role of
general fiction and chance (and therefore bound the trajectory of future
events), but only if they formalized “patterns from the past in such a way
as to make them usable in the present as guides to the future.”17 In other
words, the rationalists practiced Machiavelli’s historical essentialism. A
“lessons learned” approach to military history was both legitimate and
helpful. Eternal verities always applied, provided one could identify them
properly in a rational language of war.
with Lord Grey that discussion without definition was useless, romantics
or anti-rationalists like Gerhard von Scharnhorst, Helmuth von Moltke
the Elder and Carl von Clausewitz developed a competing character-
ization of war. Their approach had its roots in the Romantic Rebellion of
the late 18th and early 19th centuries, and it had a formidable (and seminal)
spokesman in Gerhard von Scharnhorst.
The radical lexicon that Scharnhorst used to redefine war had three sig-
nificant elements, among others. First, the Great Reformer repudiated
the neoclassical characterization of war as a comprehensible part of a
clockwork universe. Instead, war was a blind, demonic force. It was
changeable, imponderable and immeasurable. It roiled with brutal,
spiritual energy, and therefore involved a free play of opaque spiritual
forces that defied rigid, one-sided systematization.18 And since abstract
formulas could not capture war’s sheer diversity, one could not delimit it
in exclusively mathematical (i.e., mechanical) terms.
Moltke the Elder, because he dreaded the above errors, later embraced
Scharnhorst’s characterization of war. Since human conflict lacked
general principles, Moltke argued, successful commanders had to depend
on Fingerspitzengefühl (“fingertip sense”). This principle certainly applied
to strategy, which Moltke preferred to define in thoroughly romantic
terms – It was both a “free, practical, artistic activity” and a “system of
expediencies.”22
Carl von Clausewitz shared Scharnhorst’s and Moltke the Elder’s hostili-
ty towards compulsive systematizing, but he also muted their absolutist
vocabulary. As one of Scharnhorst’s true disciples, Clausewitz recognized
that war was a creative moral act. He rejected strategies of certainty that
sought “static equilibria, consistent explanations, periodic regularities,
and the beauty of symmetry.”23 He agreed that armed conflict was an
intrinsically nonlinear phenomenon. He realized that, in addition to
chance, the intangibles and dangers of war (i.e., its “fog” and “friction”)
were part of its essence, and not mere aberrations one tried to calculate
away. As a result, Clausewitz provided multiple (and metaphorical) defi-
nitions of war. War was a continuation of foreign policy by other means,
and by a nation-state that spoke with a single voice. (One might now ask
if this fundamental Clausewitzian belief is still true, given an increasingly
globalized world where domestic politics have local and international
THE EVOLUTION OF AIRPOWER THEORY IN THE UNITED STATES 53
However, Clausewitz did not dismiss the impact of the external, physical
dimensions of war. Unlike Scharnhorst and Moltke the Elder, he con-
cluded that they did introduce some broad “statistical regularities” into
armed conflict. By examining the phenomenon of war itself, and not
seeking after empty maxims, principles, or laws, Clausewitz decided he
could identify its essential elements and yet keep theory grounded in fact.
As a result, his variety of romanticism kept “theory close to its empirical
roots, not letting the language, logic, and polemics of theoretical dis-
course break away from the untidy, multifarious reality of actual war-
fare.”25 In short, Clausewitz’s language of war lay between geometry and
the irrational, and thus avoided many of the intellectual traps that
entangled “pure” rationalist and anti-rationalist theorists of war alike.26
airpower theorists
|
Auteurs dogmatiques Scharnhorst
Bülow | Moltke the Elder
Jomini | Lloyd Mao Du Picq Berenhorst
Venturini | Mahan Corbett Zedong Clausewitz Grandmaison
The above theorists and planners had more in common with the over-
determinism of Jomini and the philosophes than the probabilism of
Clausewitz and the romantics. They emphasized, for example, unilateral
offensive action against curiously passive and defenseless enemies.
(Unfortunately, airpower theorists up through John Warden have consis-
tently minimized the interactive nature of air warfare, primarily because
of their fixation on the “inherently offensive” nature of air weapons.
Until very recently the defense has received short shrift in airpower
thought.) Further, air theorists and planners repeatedly demonstrated a
weakness for the architectural elegance and calculability of a theory
rather than for its responsiveness to “real” threats; they inferred that if a
theory was “well-balanced” it must be right, despite the inevitable biases,
wishful thinking, and predispositions embedded within its structure; and
they deduced theories that – despite their scientific pretensions – were
not always supported by rigorous empirical proof. As a result of these
general weaknesses, three stubborn pathologies have afflicted the
evolution of airpower theory from its very beginnings.
The theorists suffered from a second pathology as well – they gave free
play to the rationalist’s fetish for quantification and prediction in war.
For example, the American authors of the first exclusively air-centered
war plan in history, AWPD-1, predicted in August 1941 that an initial
56 THE EVOLUTION OF AIRPOWER THEORY IN THE UNITED STATES
The above metaphors reflect the predicament that early airmen found
themselves in. Yes, they parroted the “scientific” language of the
Enlightenment with gusto, particularly since it allowed them to instantly
“professionalize” themselves, and therefore make aggressive organizational
THE EVOLUTION OF AIRPOWER THEORY IN THE UNITED STATES 57
and budgetary demands. At the same time, they also resorted to linguistic
ruses and metaphorical turns. They did so in order to transcend the
conceptual barriers they confronted when trying to use explanatory
systems rooted in the past. (This understandable but unfortunate trend
continued well into the 1980s. Air theorist John Warden, for example,
adopted a controversial metaphor to clarify his own thinking on leader-
ship targeting. He likened this type of targeting to severing the head from
a human body – isolate it or “cut it off,” and the societal or military
“body” will die. In using this metaphor, however, Warden wrongly sug-
gested that modern societies and groups were closed rather than open
systems, and therefore as vulnerable to systemic collapse as self-contained
human beings.)
Known as “Genghis John,” the “Mad Colonel,” and “That F…ing Boyd”
to both admirers and detractors alike, it was Boyd who inspired John
Warden and other progressives to import and adapt the language of the
New Physics, Chaos Theory, and Complexity Theory in their new
approaches to war.38 According to Boyd, the success or failure of human
conflicts does not necessarily have to depend on death or destruction, as
an overwhelming number of rationalists and military romantics argued
in the past. What ultimately matters is “decision cycle dominance” – i.e.,
managing the perceptions of others by observing, orienting, deciding,
and acting more effectively than them. In part, you accomplish the latter
by looping around and repeating the four-part process – now infamously
known as the “OODA Loop” – more quickly than your opponents. If
you are then on your fifteenth decision cycle and your slower responding
nemeses are on their fifth, you may well expect them – at least in relation
to your actions – to become increasingly disoriented, befuddled, and
confused. In turn, their situational awareness or sense of reality may not
only collapse, but also lead to paralyzing mental concussions or strokes.
How might one go about distinguishing past air theories from each other
and yet contribute to the development of new hypotheses in the future?
One possible option is to use a conceptual model that answers six basic
questions about the conduct of aerial warfare.40 The model is interactive
and works from left to right (from planning to execution) and from right
to left (from execution back to planning). As a result, the process is real-
istic; it reflects how things actually work in the use of aerospace power.
All of the above questions are legitimate, but they demonstrate only one
type of outcome calculation. As Dr. Tom Ehrhard rightfully points out,
the Doolittle Raid against Japan in 1942 was a successful application of
independent airpower, but its true goal was to raise domestic morale.41
The Berlin airlift was equally successful, but its goal was to check rather
than reverse Soviet encirclement. Both examples illustrate that the con-
sideration of outcomes in Step One is not merely a narrow, destruction-
oriented wartime activity, nor is it just preoccupied with coercing hostile
states to change their errant ways. The desired outcome could be
anything, including economic disruption, changes in domestic or
international opinion, continued compliance with current doctrines or
regimes, the promotion of confidence building measures and collective
security practices, and the creation of legal or moral precedents.
• domestically,
• on the receiver,
• on a third party/network/system?
Step Three: According to Dr. Robert Pape and Dr. Pat Pentland, all
theorists and planners must answer a third question, based on the first
two, before they actually apply aerospace power. Pape’s specific question
asks the following: should I adopt 1) a punishment strategy, which tries to
push a society beyond its economic and psychological breaking point,
2) a risk strategy, which tries to do the same thing but at a gradually
increasing rate rather than all at once, 3) a denial strategy, which tries to
neutralize an opponent’s military ability to wage war, or 4) a decapitation
strategy, which destroys or isolates an opponent’s leadership, national
communications, or other politico-economic centers? (The reader might
note that punishment and denial strategies try to translate military effects
into political change, while decapitation strategies, in contrast, do the
opposite.)44
Step 4: With preferred outcomes now tied to actual capabilities, and with
an appropriate strategy (or strategies) now in hand, the theorist or plan-
ner must next focus on the all-important target/objective - -mechanism
nexus.
Here the questions are obvious. In offensive aerial warfare, what targets
64 THE EVOLUTION OF AIRPOWER THEORY IN THE UNITED STATES
Issue One: What aspects of an enemy’s power should you challenge, either
individually or together? As Dr. Pentland points out, theorists or aero-
space planners could zero in on 1) the sources of an opponent’s power,
which include the military, industrial, or cultural foundations of a state;
they could focus on 2) the manifestations of an opponent’s strength,
which include the governmental and ideological projection of force; or
they could concentrate on 3) the linkages of an enemy’s assets, which
include the “human and material networks” that determine how
effectively a nation organizes and employs its resources.46
An outside in strategy, in contrast, has dominated land warfare for the last
5,000 years. It necessarily focuses on the resources that surround and
protect the inner core of an opposing state. By eliminating these protec-
tive layers, which can include the general population and the military,
the theorist or planner can endanger the fountainhead of enemy power.
Dr. Pape’s own theory of aerial coercion, which emphasizes thwarting an
enemy’s military strategy, is a recent variation of the traditional outside in
approach.
With the above three issues properly resolved, one can then determine
the specific target set(s) or objectives to attack. While deciding, however,
the prospective attacker might want to rely on six criteria, particularly
when dealing with tangible infrastructure or military-related targets.49
Second, one might ask: “What proportion of the target is put to direct
military use?” The higher the proportion, the more important the target
may be, especially in a short war scenario.
Fifth, the planner must consider the actual physical properties of a target
set and its vulnerabilities. What type of construction is it? What is it
made of? Does it contain additional machinery, stocks of combustible or
explosive materials, or other significant items?
Finally, one must determine as accurately as possible the location and size
of a target set.53 Only then is it possible to decide which specific targets
require destruction and/or disruption.
One obvious explanation for this predicament is that woven into any
theory of airpower are a priori assumptions about mechanisms. These
assumptions are not always obvious or necessarily wrong, but they never-
theless remain a collection of biases and belief systems rather than empir-
ical proofs. As a result, airmen have historically not succeeded at recog-
nizing mechanisms for what they are. Therefore, to improve their success
rate in the future, they will need to define their assumptions more closely
than before. Second, they will need to continue investing in Air & Space
Operations Centers (ASOCs) that are broadly multidisciplinary in scope
and include a variety of civilian specialists. Finally, and in order to apply
the levers (or mechanisms) of aerospace power properly, they should
“move mountains” to identify centers of gravity above and beyond tradi-
tional target sets. These COGs, for example, could include political, eco-
nomic, social, or cultural beliefs and assumptions. They could also include
government philosophies, social structures, special interest groups, or
demographic factors. Only an expanded appreciation of these types of
COGs, and the assumptions behind them, will enable theorists or planners
to understand the dynamic, Janus-faced relationship between targeting and
the mechanisms they trigger. Until then, understanding the relationship
fully will remain the Holy Grail of aerospace power.
operation in the future. As suggested earlier, however, the model can “kill
two birds with one stone” – i.e., it can help distinguish past air theories from
each other, and therefore help students of aerospace power avoid a common
conceptual error – fixating on the “how,” “what,” and “where” of air theory,
strategy, and even doctrine, rather than on the “why” behind them.
Second, there were those who advocated a risk strategy, which aimed at
depriving an opponent the industrial capacity to wage war.54 Members of
this group included the already mentioned Gianni Caproni and Nino
Salvaneschi, the U.S. Army’s Air Corps Tactical School, and members of
arguably the most prominent Allied targeting groups in World War II, the
Committee of Operations Analysts and the Economic Objectives Unit.
Finally, there were those who advocated a denial strategy, which fixated
on destroying the most immediate threat one faced – an opponent’s
fielded military forces. Continental military establishments such as the
German and Russian General Staffs supported this option, which
naturally subordinated airpower to the needs of the army.
70 THE EVOLUTION OF AIRPOWER THEORY IN THE UNITED STATES
As to be expected, the above three schools of thought had very real lim-
itations, both collectively and individually. In the case of their general
weaknesses, the theorists/groups harbored a “Newtonian” or “Jominian”
attitude towards war, as previously suggested. They believed that wars
could be objectively analyzed, that identifiable principles or laws regulated
THE EVOLUTION OF AIRPOWER THEORY IN THE UNITED STATES 71
their conduct, and that airpower could act unilaterally against impotent
foes. Second, the theorists/groups were much too offensively minded.
They consistently ignored the defense, and thus underestimated just how
important a role it could play in aerial warfare (consider the truly lethal
integrated air defense systems of today, for example). Finally, and as
suggested earlier, every theorist/group confused combat effectiveness
(means) with strategic effectiveness (ends) – i.e., no one could really
guarantee that destroying a particular target set would trigger a specific
reaction that would cause a desired political result. (In other words, they
could not say “if I use X, Y will happen and lead to desired change Z.”)
Douhet, therefore, could merely assume that attacking an enemy’s popu-
lation would inspire it to revolt, and thus lead a responsive government
to discontinue its counterproductive policies. By the same token,
Caproni, Salveneschi, and the COA could only assume that destroying
munitions plants would lead to equipment imbalances in the field, which
would paralyze enemy military operations and eventually lead to changes
in political behavior.
In these cases and more, the reality was that targeting was “civilian” in
nature (as it is today). Douhet and his successors were not necessarily
well-tutored in politics, economics, anthropology, sociology, psychology,
and other related fields. As a result, their theories were not suitably
holistic or multidisciplinary; their target(s)-mechanism(s) calculations
ultimately depended on trial and error in war, particularly in the sphere
of economics.
3) If civilians feel their leaders are making a good faith effort to protect
them from air attacks, they will not turn their anger towards them,
as Douhet, Mitchell, and even Harris expected, but outward against
the attacker.55
4) Authoritarian regimes are indifferent to popular suffering and will
not readily respond to domestic political pressure.
5) Population attacks ignore – at their peril – the legal and moral pre-
cepts now firmly in place to preserve noncombatant immunity.
6) Civilian-centered air campaigns fly in the face of a growing number
of legal-moral restraints on how you use airpower in war.
In the case of those who advocated risk strategies against enemy economies
(Caproni, Salvaneschi, the US Army’s Air Corps Tactical School, the
wartime Committee of Operations Analysts and the Economic Objectives
Unit), they ignored or minimized the following four problems.
latter assumed that ground commanders did not understand the value of
theater-level air support against targets away from the immediate battle-
zone. As a result, they believed that denial strategies would only be mis-
interpreted by them, and therefore were ill advised.)
Air War and Emotional Stress (1951) was first a study sponsored by the RAND
Corporation and conducted by Dr. Irving Janis, who sought to evaluate the
psychological effects of air warfare on civilian populations. By analyzing the
emotional responses, attitudes, and behavior of British, German, and Japanese
civilians subjected to air bombardment in World War II, Janis drew two note-
worthy conclusions about the impact of air power on noncombatants.
First, the physical magnitude of an air attack was important to those who
experienced it firsthand. Heavy bombing raids, in terms of size and ton-
nage, temporarily raised political apathy and the distrust of an afflicted
population towards its political leaders.56 Such raids, however, were most
effective if sporadic and unpredictable; they deprived an opponent the
THE EVOLUTION OF AIRPOWER THEORY IN THE UNITED STATES 75
In addition to stressing the virtues of sporadic air attacks, Janis also con-
cluded that near-miss experiences – i.e., direct exposures to danger or its
immediate effects – heightened fear and lowered morale. In Janis’s opin-
ion, morale deteriorated most in those groups that narrowly escaped the
effects of intense air assaults.58 The critical variable here was not the
expected level of bombardment, but the degree of one’s personal
involvement in an air attack. Remote-miss experiences actually calmed
people’s fears, while intense, terrorizing near-miss experiences appreciably
lowered their emotional ability to adapt.59 In fact, anyone who repeatedly
experienced narrow escapes, Janis observed, “may become defeatist, his
loyalty to his group may weaken and he may be less willing as a result to
work for the achievement of his group’s aims.”60 Additionally, the afflicted
person’s expectations of victory may diminish, and as his confidence
ebbed, the morale-crushing impact of bombardment would only grow
worse.61
There are, however, factors that undermine the utility of heavy and spo-
radic near-miss bombardment against civilian populations. Negative
public attitudes, for example, may not necessarily lead to overt anti-
government behavior.62 Severely bombed civilians, for example, can
suffer from the “law of mental inertia” – i.e., they first and foremost focus
on personal survival, and therefore cling to the status quo.
THE EVOLUTION OF AIRPOWER THEORY IN THE UNITED STATES 77
But what about opposing forces and leaders? In the first case, Stephen T.
Hosmer and Group Captain Andrew Lambert, RAF, combine to argue
that armies are psychologically coercible through near-miss and direct hit
options if 1) they experience increasingly heavy and frequent bombard-
ment that exceeds their expectations, 2) they are pinned-down and iso-
lated, 3) they experience maximum discomfort and fatigue, 4) they
develop a sense of expendability and hopelessness by being unable to
retaliate, and 5) you provide them a political or military way out of their
predicament.63
reserve,65 where it can help mold the thinking and expectations of others,
who should typically decide – through proper cost-risk calculations –
that it is in their self-interest to forgo political mischief.66
But even if a war does break out, the looming, ever-present shadow of
nuclear weapons almost guarantees it will be limited (again, limited wars
by limited means for limited ends). The combatants will commit them-
selves to some level of mutual restraint, which allows conflicts to retain a
negotiatory character – i.e., they remain “a bargaining process, one in
which threats and proposals, counterproposals and counterthreats, offers
and assurances, concessions and demonstrations, take the forms of
actions rather than words, or actions accompanied by words.”67 Yet,
while the bargaining continues, it is appropriate to deliberately manipu-
late the tempo of air operations. A gradualist approach, Professor
Schelling observes, gives your enemies the opportunity to receive and
respond to your signals effectively. Most importantly, it gives them the
opportunity to communicate a willingness to quit fighting, which is the
ultimate point of Schelling’s approach.
This “blame game” issue aside, Schelling’s problems run deeper than a
misplaced faith in gradualism, which interestingly enough has found new
appeal in an era of calibrated, centralized command and execution war-
fare (see NATO operations in the Balkans in particular). However, if
THE EVOLUTION OF AIRPOWER THEORY IN THE UNITED STATES 79
Finally, there is one more issue to resolve – what is the preferred target
set of a gradualist, signal-sending campaign? In Schelling’s opinion, it is
the enemy population – “Populations may be frightened into bringing
pressure on the governments to yield or desist; they may be disorganized
in a way that hampers their government; they may be led to bypass, or
to revolt against, their own government to make accommodation with
the attacker.”69 Schelling’s approach, however, assumes that the above
nine challenges will not ultimately undermine mutual comprehension
and clarity. Given the daunting problems they actually represent, one
might ask whether vicious diplomacy should concentrate on more man-
ageable populations – i.e., well-defined and homogenous ones such as
military and leadership establishments.
But why did the air weapon change political behavior in the latter two
cases and not in the previous three? The answer, according to May, was
factionalism; both Italy and Japan were authoritarian, faction-ridden
states. In the Italian case, Mussolini routinely pitted various political and
bureaucratic factions against each other in order to retain ultimate power.
At the same time, under-secretaries, bureau chiefs, staff officers, and
party functionaries continued to plot against him. They naturally
gathered strength while Italy accumulated military defeats. Finally, when
Allied Air Forces bombed railroad centers in Rome (July 1943), two-
thirds of the members in the Fascist Grand Council mustered the resolve
to rebuke Mussolini. According to Dr. May, the bombing also inspired
King Victor Emmanuel to unseat Il Duce, replace him with Pietro
Badoglio and a cabinet of nonfascists, and set the stage for a separate
peace. In short, if Dr. May’s reading of history is accurate, Italy’s foreign
policy changed because its leadership changed, and it was the bombard-
ment of Rome, coupled with the fear of future attacks, that contributed
to these changes.70
THE EVOLUTION OF AIRPOWER THEORY IN THE UNITED STATES 81
The same logic applied to Japan. A deified emperor ruled over frag-
mented elites. Civil ministries, political parties, segments of the military,
aristocrats, and intellectuals all refused to cooperate with each other. As
a result, the key to change was Emperor Hirohito. His decisions to dis-
miss General Tojo in July 1944 and surrender in August 1945 were both
long overdue. Yet those factions that successfully pressured the Emperor
to act were similar to those in Italy. According to May, they were con-
cerned bureaucrats, military officers who distanced themselves from the
policies of the past, and politicians working to unseat blameworthy
rivals. As was the case in Italy, actual bombardment and the fear of future
bombardment “had some effect” in changing Japanese foreign policy.71
May is quite clear, however, about which leadership factions are vulner-
able to aerial suasion and capable of dislodging others. Given their access
to uncensored information, it is the “pessimists” who best recognize the
dangers of a particular policy, and thus can agitate for change. They
include members of foreign ministries, intelligence bureaus, and internal
security forces. They include ambassadors, ministers and civil servants
concerned with domestic affairs, intelligence analysts, and future fore-
casters. Lastly, they also include internal security officers, military leaders
not associated with current policies, and politicians eager to secure their
own futures.73
By analyzing the above factions and how they behaved in Italy and Japan,
Dr. May ultimately drew three conclusions: 1) to reduce an enemy’s
82 THE EVOLUTION OF AIRPOWER THEORY IN THE UNITED STATES
Issue 1: How do aerial attacks, via the unspecified pressures they exert,
yield particular political effects? What specific targets do you attack, for
example, to promote factionalism between bureaucratic pessimists and
those who actually dictate policy? How can airpower empower one
faction and yet weaken another? On these questions of cause and effect
Dr. May is understandably silent. Although he tries to link Italian and
Japanese shifts in behavior to aerial assaults, the “how” of the process
THE EVOLUTION OF AIRPOWER THEORY IN THE UNITED STATES 83
is needed in order to get one’s way.”78 Both assumptions, which infect the
thinking of virtually all airpower thinkers, are dangerous. They allege
that an intended act and its results are identical. In any scenario,
however, the context of an action, along with an opponent’s reaction, will
yield unanticipated political results. Because he believes these factors are
important, Dr. May decides that faction-driven internal threats are more
credible than external threats, including aerial bombardment. The latter
can only prod, in some ill-defined way, internal groups to act. As a result,
it can only have an indirect effect on what leaders value most – personal
survival and the preservation of individual power.
the threat from internal sources is higher than external sources; and
3) leaders are not coercible when the risks of compliance are equal to the
risks of noncompliance.80 Obviously, these conclusions clash with Dr.
May’s indirect approach. They assume that serious internal challenges to
a leader’s power and authority will only stiffen his or her resolve.
If the above is true, air planners should not indirectly aid and abet disaf-
fected groups of “pessimists.” Instead, they should attempt to raise the
perceived external risks to a leader’s personnel and political survival to a
higher level than the perceived internal risks.81 The logic of this approach
is simple – if hostile leaders confront both external and internal threats,
they will try to reduce those threats that they have the most control over,
including the elimination of opposition groups. Seen from this perspec-
tive, internal factions actually inhibit a leader’s willingness to comply
with external goals – i.e., external demands “will succeed only when con-
ditions are safe for the leader to be coerced, and that means lower relative
internal risks of compliance.”82 Thus, the external actor must do the
opposite of what Dr. May recommends. The actor must not rely on
unmanageable internal “pessimists” to coerce an opponent to behave
properly. Nor should he or she allow the perceived internal threats to an
enemy rise to a level equal to or higher than external threats. If they do,
calculated intransigence and repression is more likely to occur than a
change in leadership or policy.
The discussion in the second part of this article had a dual purpose. Not
only did it provide an analytic tool and points of reference for budding
theorists to consider when developing their own thinking, it also
employed the same tool to schematize 13 previously developed theories
of airpower (or alternately, four schools of thought). In the latter case, the
text paid particular attention to the possibilities and problems reflected
in the ideas of Irving Janis, Thomas Schelling, and Ernest May. These
individuals are noteworthy not only for what they said and when they
said it, but also for what they represented. They symbolized an evolving
recognition that airpower was much more than a blunt, destruction-
centered instrument of total war. Instead, it had the potential to function
as a tool that deterred, compelled, and coerced others in increasingly dis-
criminate ways.
This form of amnesia (and aphasia, for that matter) was certainly true in
the case of United States, where “blue suiters” failed to improve upon,
refine, or even evolve beyond the great legacy of the U.S. Army Air Corps
Tactical School – high altitude precision daylight bombardment – until
John Boyd’s mature work on decision-cycle dominance appeared in the
1980s.90 However, Boyd had retired by the time his ideas really took off,
and his interests were never exclusively air-centric. The latter distinction
belongs to John Warden, who as an active duty USAF officer not only
made major contributions to aerospace power thinking in his own right,
but who can also function as a convenient symbol for the quiet revolu-
tion that occurred in air and space power thinking in the mid- to late-
1980s, thanks to forward-looking airmen such as Generals Mike Dugan,
John “Mike” Loh, Perry Smith, and others. It is for these reasons that this
article will next focus on Colonel Warden as its representative thinker for
the 1980s and early 1990s. Before discussing his ideas, however, it is
absolutely essential to put them in context – i.e., to tell the story of loss
and recovery in post-World War II American airpower theory.
Second, those charged with transforming theory into doctrine lacked the
skills necessary for the job. An appalled Muir Fairchild found that his Air
University planners were unable to produce draft manuals that were
comprehensive and yet easily understood. The completed manuals were,
in the words of Major General John Barker, “stilted, expressionless, and
to a considerable extent meaningless.”95
The above problems meant that Air Force Manual 1–2, United States Air
Force Basic Doctrine, did not appear until April 1953, and then only after
five painstaking years of effort.97 The manual did not aggressively
reaffirm the industrial web theory developed by the Air Corps Tactical
School and its wartime successors. Instead, it stressed broad principles of
airpower employment, to include centralized offensive operations by an
independent air force against strategic “heartland” and “peripheral”
targets. These principles, which were really no more than a collection of
working propositions, reappeared in the 1955 revision of AFM 1–2. The
revised manual claimed that the U.S. Air Force had no equal; that air-
power played a vital role throughout the spectrum of international
conflict, including conflicts other than general war; and that America’s
air strength worked best as an instrument of deterrence or political per-
suasion.98 Significantly, AFM 1–2 did not make these claims at the
expense of the other military services. The language of the ten-page
manual was sufficiently ambiguous and joint operations-centered to
avoid any complaints. Yet because of its empty prose, and focus on broad
principles and propositions, AFM 1–2 ultimately failed to transform
THE EVOLUTION OF AIRPOWER THEORY IN THE UNITED STATES 91
theory into doctrine. As a result, the thousands of fliers that entered the
Air Force during the 1950s remained largely ignorant of the theoretical
debates that had preceded them. Instead of grappling with the theories
previously listed in Figure 6, and attempting to improve them, they either
focused on the immediate tactical problems at hand, first in Korea and
then in Vietnam, or they yielded to the dogmatic vision of Curtis LeMay.
Lastly, the Air Force of the 1950s lost its theoretical vigor because strate-
gic bombardment theory evolved into deterrence theory. The end began
with the New Look, a policy designed by the Eisenhower administration
to deter a wide variety of Sino-Soviet threats, including nuclear attack.
What made the New Look different was that it was a top down policy
change promoted by civilian elites. Yet, to Air Force leaders who were
increasingly unable (or unwilling) to distinguish the concept of strategic
air attack from nuclear war, the introduction of the New Look did not
pose a threat.
Carl Spaatz, Thomas White, Nathan Twining, Curtis LeMay, and others
believed that the American theory of high altitude daylight precision
bombardment had succeeded in World War II, and they saw the New
Look as a mere elaboration and validation of previously developed
thinking.104 LeMay, for example, argued into the 1960s that basic Air
Force doctrine had remained consistent and generally unchanged since
the formation of the Army’s semi-independent GHQ Air Force in
1935.105 Because of such thinking, the theory of precision strategic
bombardment, first developed by the ACTS “Bomber Mafia” in the
1930s and subsequently modified for nuclear warfare, remained a core
belief. Yet, if the theory filled an intellectual void it did so at a price.
In the 1960s, the already failing capacity of the Air Force to theorize
about airpower suffered two additional (and long-term) blows. First, its
long-standing assumptions about independent bombardment went
unchallenged during the Vietnam War, especially since it concentrated
only 6.7% of its missions on “strategic” assaults against a nation that was
neither modern nor industrialized.107 The service’s focus was over-
whelmingly tactical; 75% of Air Force missions occurred in South
Vietnam and included a wide variety of tasks – close air support, airlift
missions, search and rescue operations, etc.108 And yet, despite the
tactical nature of the air war, American airmen sought to support limited
political ends with a strategy associated with unlimited military means.109
They had few opportunities, and those they had ultimately failed.110
Nevertheless, Air Force leaders like John Vogt, commander of 7th Air
Force, continued to believe in past principles, particularly since the
“strategic” air war had been episodic and narrow in scope. Rather than
question ACTS-inspired dogma (Curtis LeMay once defined it as “let’s
clean up the manure pile, [and] not swat the flies”), they fixated on
assigning blame. They alternatingly blamed the media, cowardly (i.e.,
treasonous) civilian leaders, who failed to use airpower properly,111 or
unconventional warfare itself, which was dismissed as an atypical experi-
ence in the profession of arms. By playing the blame game, however,
Vogt and other air leaders ignored the confusion that existed between
ends and means in the war. They confused efficiency – “sortie rates,
number of bombs dropped, supplies airlanded, and how quickly or how
economically airpower could perform tasks” – with effectiveness, which
was measurable only in terms of the actual impact airpower had on the
enemy’s willingness to fight.112 Stated differently, our air leaders confused
numbers with strength, they confused technical sophistication with
mission effectiveness, and they misunderstood the role of human factors
in war. In part, they committed these errors in the name of an ACTS-
based theory that became part mythology and part theology after World
War II.
If the Vietnam War did not jolt airmen back to the theoretical and doc-
trinal drawing board, it did leave the Air Force with a diversity of ends
and means. “The end, rather than striking at the heart of the enemy,
became striking at the enemy anywhere. The means came to include not
just strategic bombers but tactical fighters as well as military transport,
94 THE EVOLUTION OF AIRPOWER THEORY IN THE UNITED STATES
The breaking apart of the Air Force then contributed to a second prob-
lem; the center of power in the service shifted from Strategic Air
Command to Tactical Air Command. From 1960 through 1975, and for
multiple reasons, SAC lost approximately 109,000 airmen, 2,480 air-
craft, and 37 air bases.116 TAC, in contrast, gained 27,185 men and
retained 1,633 aircraft (25 percent more than SAC). Further, by 1975
fighter-oriented generals headed 10 of the Air Force’s 15 major com-
mands.117 They found a sympathetic leader in General George S. Brown,
the Air Force Chief of Staff. Brown’s background paralleled the growing
diversity of Air Force missions. He had first-hand experience in strategic
bombardment, air superiority, and close air support (particularly when
he served as General Creighton Abrams’s Deputy for Air Operations in
Vietnam). As a result, Brown was more than familiar with tactical air
operations and their growing importance in roles and missions debates.
The consequences of the above trends were real enough. First, they aggra-
vated the intellectual drift of an organization now split into “strategic”
and “tactical” camps. The Air Force no longer had a sense of communi-
ty or an integrated, unifying vision. Second, the major commands
became semiautonomous fiefdoms that tied their fortunes to weapon sys-
THE EVOLUTION OF AIRPOWER THEORY IN THE UNITED STATES 95
Support for ALB also came from other quarters. A significant number of
airmen, shaped by their tactical, fighter-oriented experiences in Vietnam,
readily backed the doctrine. They found its mid-1980s emphasis on air-
ground cooperation at the theater level persuasive. General Charles
Donnelly, for example, took the first step and agreed that airpower was
“a theater-level concept,” and that airmen had to think, plan, and train
from a theater-level perspective.119 TAC commander Robert Russ took
96 THE EVOLUTION OF AIRPOWER THEORY IN THE UNITED STATES
the second step and subsequently observed that “Outside of strategic air
defense, everything that tactical air does [in a theater] directly supports
the airland battle.”120
Given the growing impact of ALB, did the 1979 and 1984 versions of
Air Force Manual 1-1 confront the challenges the doctrine represented?
Both versions were actually cautious in their response. In particular, the
infamous “comic book” edition of 1979 contained “generalities, unsub-
stantiated assertions and irrelevant quotations” that restated, yet again,
familiar themes (airmen must strike enemy industrial centers, etc.).121
Theorization by the Air Force was certainly a thing of the past.122 By the
mid-1980s, the service had a fundamentally tactical and operational
orientation to airpower, despite its continued strategic nuclear role. The
tactical-operational orientation, however, now depended on a theoretical
and doctrinal framework provided by the U.S. Army. This state of affairs
continued until the 1980s, when a new group of airmen appeared and
argued that the Air Force was more than airborne artillery or support for
the Army. In their opinion, the service had lost its way. It had lost its his-
torical, theoretical, and doctrinal bearings, unlike the Army, with its
AirLand Battle Doctrine, and even the Navy, with what was then its
Maritime Strategy. What the Air Force needed was a “unifying theme”
around which to develop a “suitable strategic calculus.”123 Beginning in
the mid-1980s, Air Force officers like Colonel John Warden began to
develop such a theme.
Like the Marine Corps, therefore, the American Air Force’s reaction to
Vietnam was “a return to the basics.” For example, seminars on Carl von
THE EVOLUTION OF AIRPOWER THEORY IN THE UNITED STATES 97
Clausewitz appeared in the Air War College curriculum for the first time.
In turn, warrior-scholars like Perry Smith, David MacIsaac, Thomas
Fabyanic, and Alan Gropman, to name just a few, argued that air strategy
was actually a “mental tapestry of intentions” frustrated by the unpre-
dictability of war. They also concluded that airmen should not subscribe
to individual theories of airpower, particularly those that overstressed the
importance of technology. Instead, they should contemplate a variety of
theories, and thus avoid the false certainties that beclouded air planners
in Vietnam. Lastly, the reformers argued that whatever theories airmen
did adopt, they should apply them only in a gross fashion. Like Moltke
the Elder, they claimed that each war is unique, that an enemy’s vulner-
abilities are culture-specific, and that they are often identifiable only after
the fact.
The above quotations illustrate three key points about John Warden’s
vision of war. First, Warden represents a necessary correction to the post-
1975 overemphasis on the psychological and moral dimensions of air
warfare. Put another way, the Clausewitzian revival of the late 1970s
yielded mixed results. Yes, it revived three-dimensional strategic thinking
in a service littered with “bombs-on-target” pragmatists. On the other
hand, it both promoted and reflected distinct forms of theoretical
nihilism. There were airmen who felt that detailed, systematic
theorization was futile, if not outright irrelevant. They argued that air
theory and strategy was not universal, and that it required constant
improvisation on an ad hoc basis. Further, military reformers like Jeff
Record, Bill Lind, and others questioned the relative importance of tech-
nology in war. They stressed quantity as well as quality in weapons
development. Technology was important, the reformers argued, but it
was no panacea.
John Warden flirted with the above ideas, but he and like-minded airmen
ultimately returned to their service’s Positivist and Progressivist roots –
i.e. they developed new sets of working propositions (or key assump-
tions) that were significantly more optimistic than the gloomy beliefs of
the post-1975 Clausewitzians. Where as the latter were obvious reincar-
nations of 19th century anti-rationalists, Warden and others began
emphasizing the utopian art of the possible. Figures 7 and 8 highlight
some of the optimistic assumptions they developed and actively
promoted about independent and joint airpower.
THE EVOLUTION OF AIRPOWER THEORY IN THE UNITED STATES 99
At the same time Warden determined he ought to “fail better” (in Samuel
Beckett’s words). He began to stress repeatedly that war is both a mental
and physical activity. He rejected the Clausewitzian dictum that “No
degree of technical development and scientific calculation will overcome
the human dimension in war.”129 Instead, Warden emphasized anew that
all opponents depend on physical resources to exert their will. If these
physical resources disappear or are unavailable, moral factors alone cannot
carry the day (as the great advocate of fighting spirit, Ardant Du Picq, dis-
100 THE EVOLUTION OF AIRPOWER THEORY IN THE UNITED STATES
covered when a well-placed artillery shell made short work of him in the
Franco-Prussian War). The tangible components of war matter just as
much as the intangible components, Warden opined, if not more so.
In the late 1980s and early 1990s, Warden combined the above beliefs
into a series of working propositions that acted as foundation stones for
a modern theory of airpower. The working propositions were as follows:
1) All organizations are fragile at the strategic level. As a result, they are
subject to compellence and coercion.
9) Airpower can provide the shock effect previously reserved for land-
based armor and artillery. (It can, as demonstrated in Kosovo and
Afghanistan, provide the “killing stroke”).
11) Surface forces at the operational level of war are fragile; they require
elaborate and wide-ranging organizational support. They also require
wide-ranging logistics support.
cause “such changes to one or more parts of the enemy’s physical system
that the enemy decides to adopt our objectives,” or to make it physically
impossible for anyone to mount effective opposition.136 The target of
such an attack, however, is the entire enemy system, and not just military
forces. “We must think of the enemy as a system composed of numerous
subsystems,” Colonel Warden argued, “and if we address the system
properly, its military forces will be left as a useless appendage,” unsup-
ported by other sources of power.137 In short, both the Five Rings and
System of Systems Models advocate an “inside out” approach to war.
They are updated versions of the classic air theories of the past, which
advocated leaping over an opponent’s defenses and striking at his or her
vital centers.
For John Warden, however, the ultimate COG has never been in doubt,
regardless of the permutations in his thinking. Since all strategic systems
relied on human beings to guide and direct them,
The above disclaimers helped to reconcile late 1980s and early 1990s
theory with reality, but even in retirement Colonel Warden remained
committed to the idea that targeting leadership is of paramount impor-
tance in air warfare. He further retained a mid-Victorian faith in tech-
nology and a view of nation-states as largely rational and unitary actors.
He minimized the role of cultural and religious factors in his theory,
despite his balming words to the contrary. He was quietly hostile towards
the use of airpower in joint operations, and he ignored the fact that
leadership targeting can quickly degenerate from well-conceived policy
into personal vendetta, as was the case with the American government’s
“get General Addid” policy in Somalia.
John Warden dismissed these concerns because he has always been part
propagandist, part theologian, part power-of-positive-thinking guru, and
part genuine aerospace power thinker. (Has there ever been a “pure” air-
centered theorist, though?) His belief that devastating (and simultan-
eous) air attacks against primarily leadership targets will sever a state or
organization from its “brain,” and subsequently induce strategic paralysis
may be beside the point. His true value may actually be symbolic – he’s
a symbol of the rationalist tradition in modern military thought, and in
airpower thinking in particular; he’s a symbol of the rich theoretical
insights developed by at least 14 airpower thinkers since World War I;
and he’s a symbol of the USAF’s recently recovered intellectual destiny.
He is, in short, a symbol of the renaissance in aerospace thinking that
characterized the 1990s and continues to this day.
NOTES
Author’s Note: The opinions, conclusions, and recommendations expressed or implied in this arti-
cle are solely those of the author and do not necessarily represent the views of the U. S. Air Force,
the U.S. Department of Defense, or any other U.S. government agency.
106 THE EVOLUTION OF AIRPOWER THEORY IN THE UNITED STATES
1 Given that World War II largely involved the application or rejection of airpower theories and
doctrines developed in the interwar years, this article will skip over this well-documented period.
For representative, tip-of-the-iceberg discussions on how U.S. Air Forces applied, modified, and
rejected existing concepts of airpower in the European and Pacific Theaters, see Geoffrey Perret,
Winged Victory: The Army Air Forces in World War II (New York: Random House, 1993), and
Kenneth P. Werrell, Blankets of Fire (Washington and London: Smithsonian Institution Press,
1996). For a historiographical review of the period, see Peter R. Faber, “The Anglo-American
Bombing Campaign in Europe,” in World War Two in Europe, Africa, and the Americas, with
General Sources, ed. Lloyd Lee (Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1997).
2 For an in-depth analysis of this battle, which most military historians believe established the cav-
alry as the dominant arm of European warfare for the next millennium, see J. F. C. Fuller, A
Military History of the Western World, 3 vols. (New York: Funk and Wagnalls, 1954–1957;
reprint, New York: Da Capo, 1987), Vol. 1: From the Earliest Times to the Battle of Lepanto,
261–76.
3 See Charles W. Shrader, “The Influence of Vegetius’ De re militari,” Military Affairs 45
(December 1981), 167.
4 One of these rules was that military commanders should seldom resort to the “extremity” of bat-
tle. Instead, they should rely on “stratagems and finesse” to defeat an opponent in detail.
“General actions” only increased the impact of chance in war, which increasingly defied rational
control. The better option, therefore, was to rely on ancillary methods. They included starving,
surprising, or terrorizing an opponent into defeat. See Gérard Chaliand, ed., The Art of War in
World History (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1994), 209, 217.
5 Charles’ army was “not fundamentally different in composition from that which Napoleon was to
lead to the same battlefields three hundred years later.” The army included Swiss pikemen, mounted
cavalry, a detachment of bronze artillery, and sufficient funds to pay each soldier a regular wage.
See Michael Howard, War in European History (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1976), 19.
6 Shrader, “The Influence of Vegetius’ De re militari,” 170.
7 See Azar Gat, The Origins of Military Thought: From the Enlightenment to Clausewitz (Oxford:
Clarendon Press, 1989), 8.
8 For a revisionist (and arguable) response to this traditional interpretation of Machiavelli’s
thought, see Timothy R. W. Kubik, “Is Machiavelli’s Canon Spiked? Practical Readings in
Military History,” The Journal of Military History 61 (January 1997), 7-30.
9 Gunther E. Rothenberg, “Maurice of Nassau, Gustavus Adolphus, Raimondo Montecuccoli,
and the ‘Military Revolution’ of the Seventeenth Century,” in Makers of Modern Strategy, ed.
Peter Paret, with Gordon Craig and Felix Gilbert (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press,
1986), 55–57, 62–63.
10 Gat, The Origins of Military Thought, 16.
11 See, for example, Frederick the Great, Die Instruktion Friedrichs des Grossen für seine Generale von
1782; Henry Humphrey Evans Lloyd, The History of the Late War in Germany (1766) and
Military Memoirs (1781); and Dietritch Adam Heinrich von Bülow, Der Geist des neuren
Kriegssystems (1799).
12 Quoted in Major Edward S. Johnson, “A Science of War,” The Command and General Staff
Quarterly XIV (June 1934), 90.
13 To characterize Newton as an irremediably linear and mechanistic scientist is unfair. As Barry
Watts rightfully points out, it was overzealous disciples like Roger Boscovich (A Theory of Natural
Philosophy Reduced to a Law of Actions Existing in Nature, 1758) and Pierre Simon de Laplace
(Philosophical Essay on Probabilities, 1814) that linked the idea of linear predictability with 18th
THE EVOLUTION OF AIRPOWER THEORY IN THE UNITED STATES 107
century mathematical physics. Newton did emphasize causality and long-term patterns, but it
was Boscovich, Laplace, and others who popularized the idea that nature was entirely stable,
rigidly deterministic, and required no divine intervention to work properly. See Barry D. Watts,
Clausewitzian Friction and Future War, Institute for National Strategic Studies McNair Papers,
no. 52 (Washington, D.C.: National Defense University, October 1996), 108–12.
14 R. David Smith, “The Inapplicability Principle: What Chaos Means for Social Science,”
Behavioral Science 40 (January 1995), 30; see also Michael Howard, Clausewitz (Oxford: Oxford
University Press, 1983), 13.
15 Watts, Clausewitzian Friction and Future War, 23. However, it is important to note that Lloyd –
as a theorist – was not as hidebound as his contemporaries. In his Military Memories, for exam-
ple, he not only defined warfare as a science caught between “geometry and morale,” he also
mused at length about the psychological dimensions of war. (For example, what inspired men
and women to fight? Did emotionalism decrease military efficiency?) Given his interests, one
could argue that Lloyd was a precursor of the military romantics that followed in his wake.
16 According to Professor John Shy, Jomini’s low stature among current students of war is unde-
served. He was more than a doltish, thick-witted foil to Carl von Clausewitz. He was an astute
analyst of Napoleonic warfare who warned that his maxims, principles, and prescriptions were
not holy writ. Nevertheless, they did form the irreducible core of what some have perhaps unfair-
ly characterized as a “Betty Crocker” approach to war. Readers should further note that Jomini’s
pious injunctions against “holy writ” usually appeared at the end of his book chapters, thus
representing what one could argue were anticipatory defenses against potential criticisms. See
John Shy, “Jomini,” Makers of Modern Strategy, ed. Peter Paret, with Gordon Craig and Felix
Gilbert (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1986), 143–85.
17 Quoted from John Lewis Gaddis, “International Relations Theory and the End of the Cold
War,” International Security 17 (Winter 1992/93), 6.
18 Johnson quotes Lord Grey in “A Science of War,” 104. For a highly intriguing but very one-sided
portrait of Clausewitz as a proto-chaos theorist who totally rejected the determinism of Jomini
and his fellow rationalists, see Alan Beyerchen, “Clausewitz, Nonlinearity, and the
Unpredictability of War,” International Security 17 (Winter 1992–93), 59–90. Beyerchen con-
veniently ignores how utterly conventional (i.e., 18th century) Clausewitz’s thinking is in the
more mechanical middle books of On War.
19 See Clausewitz, On War, 86.
20 Quoted in Antulio J. Echevarria, “Moltke and the German Military Tradition: His Theories and
Legacies,” Parameters XXVI (Spring 1996), 96; see also Peter Paret, Clausewitz and the State: The
Man, His Theories, and His Times (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1976); and Charles
Edward White, “The Enlightened Soldier: Scharnhorst and the Militärische Gesellschaft in Berlin,
1801–1805,” Ph.D. dissertation, Duke University, 1986.
21 Quoted in Herbert Rosinski, “Scharnhorst to Schlieffen: The Rise and Decline of German
Military Thought,” Naval War College Review XXIX (Summer 1976), 85.
22 See Helmuth von Moltke, “Doctrines of War,” in War, ed. Lawrence Freedman (Oxford: Oxford
University Press, 1994), 220-21.
23 Beyerchen, “Clausewitz, Nonlinearity, and War,” 86; see also Clausewitz, On War, 149.
24 Clausewitz, On War, 85-87, 89, 148.
25 John Shy and Thomas W. Collier, “Revolutionary Warfare,” in Makers of Modern Strategy, ed.
Peter Paret (Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 1986), 843.
26 Beyerchen, “Clausewitz, Nonlinearity, and War,” 59. Clausewitz’s thinking, of course, has its
limitations. For example, his paradigm of war does not adequately consider whether human
108 THE EVOLUTION OF AIRPOWER THEORY IN THE UNITED STATES
violence, in addition to being a continuation of politics by other means, was also a cultural or
biological activity. It does not adequately acknowledge whether nations can stage thoroughly
rational wars in service to thoroughly stupid (and ill-conceived) political ends. Further,
Clausewitz’s military romanticism gives short shrift to combined operations between land and
sea; coalition warfare (the dominant form of war not only in the 20th century, but especially over
the last decade); the technological, economic, and moral dimensions of war (note, for example,
that Clausewitz thinks soldiers are expendable in the service of the state); and guerrilla warfare,
revolutionary warfare, or military operations other than war.
27 Clausewitz, On War, 136.
28 Members of the “Bomber Mafia” included Robert Olds, Kenneth Walker, Harold Lee George,
Donald Wilson, Robert Webster, Laurence Kuter, Haywood Hansell, and Muir Fairchild.
Virtually all of them became influential general officers in the U.S. Army Air Forces during
World War II. In turn, the COA and EOU were basically a mix of forward-thinking military
planners and civilian economists.
29 Colonel Thomas A. Fabyanic, USAF Ret., “War Doctrine, and the Air War College – Some
Implications for the U.S. Air Force,” Air University Review XXXVII (January-February 1986), 12.
30 Lieutenant Colonel Don Wilson, “Long Range Airplane Development,” November 1938, Air
Force Historical Research Agency (AFHRA), Maxwell Air Force Base, Alabama, file no.
248.211–17, 5–6.
31 The examples appear in James C. Gaston, Planning the American Air War: Four Men and Nine
Days in 1941 (Washington, D.C.: National Defense University Press, 1982); Rick Atkinson,
Crusade: The Untold Story of the Persian Gulf War (New York: Houghton Mifflin Co., 1993); and
General William M. Momyer, Air Power in Three Wars (Washington, D.C.: U.S. Government
Printing Office, 1978). The quotations are from Benjamin S. Lambeth, “Pitfalls in Force
Planning: Structuring America’s Tactical Air Arm,” International Security 10 (Fall 1985), 92.
32 Count Gianni Caproni, Memorandum on “Air War”, 1917, AFHRA file no. 168.66–2, 2.
33 ACTS bomber instructor Muir “Santy” Fairchild was typical. He understood the dangers of
metaphors but still subscribed enthusiastically to the “industrial web” theory of strategic
bombardment. See Kenneth Schaffel, “Muir S. Fairchild: Philosopher of Air Power,” Aerospace
Historian 33 (Fall 1986), 167.
34 “Address of Major General Frank M. Andrews Before the National Aeronautical
Administration,” January 16, 1939, AFHRA file no. 248.211–20, 8.
35 Nino Salvaneschi, Let Us Kill the War: Let Us Aim at the Heart of the Enemy, 1917, AFHRA file
no. 168.661–129, 31; Caproni, Memorandum on “Air War”, 2. Because Salvaneschi worked hard
to popularize both Douhet’s and Caproni’s thinking in World War I, Let Us Kill the War accu-
rately reflects their thinking at the time.
36 Beyerchen, “Clausewitz, Nonlinearity, and War,” 63.
37 Quoted in Andrew G. B. Vallance, “The Conceptual Structure of Air Power,” in Air Power:
Collected Essays on Doctrine, ed. Vallance (London: Her Majesty’s Stationery Office, 1990), 1.
38 Warden denies this influence, but then again, so do others. In the opinion of this author, who
after 5 long years can speak with some authority on how ideas get diffused and repackaged in the
hallways of the Pentagon, these individuals fail to acknowledge that Boyd – who was a tireless
briefer – did indeed make a major contribution to an entirely new Pentagon zeitgeist on the use
force, particularly in the mid- to late-1970s and 1980s. Other thinkers working in “The
Building” then harvested intriguing new ideas out of this environment, recombined and synthe-
sized them in unique ways, and lastly pronounced them as something “new.” This type
borrowing – either witting or not – was (and remains) rampant in the Pentagon. Therefore, those
THE EVOLUTION OF AIRPOWER THEORY IN THE UNITED STATES 109
who worked there at the time and subsequently made major contributions to airpower thought
should admit their overall debt to someone as disturbingly original as Boyd. Their achievements
are no less respect worthy for having acknowledged the debt they owe. For an intellectual
biography of Colonel Boyd, who indeed proved that uniquely talented individuals can push mas-
sive bureaucracies toward desired ends, see Grant T. Hammond, The Mind of War: John Boyd and
American Security (Washington and London: Smithsonian Institution Press, 2001).
39 Unfortunately, when it came to the role(s) of military aviation, the U.S. Army and its Air Corps
began jousting over actual words – in true “win-lose” fashion – as early as the interwar years. On
the Army side, for example, Major General R. M. Beck, Jr., Assistant Army Chief of Staff,
directed the Air Corps to delete all references to “independent air operations” in a draft version
of Field Manual 1–5, Employment of the Aviation of the Army. A suitable substitute, in Beck’s
opinion, was “operations beyond the sphere of influence of surface forces.” See Memo for the
Chief of Staff, March 29, 1939, 2, in AFHRA file no. 167.5-3 (1936–1939).
40 The following model is the creation of Dr. Robert Pape, who attempted to develop a “value
neutral ordering tool” that emphasized process rather than prescription. (Process-oriented models
of war are always more “reality inclusive” than those based on content-laden rules or principles.)
However, the Pape model does have limitations, as then-Major Tom Ehrhard later observed. It
did not account for the contexts of strategic and doctrinal planning, for example. It focused on
the most severe applications of aerospace power instead of considering broad range of possible
options. And finally, it did not consider “the full range of outcomes which strategists seek to
achieve or avoid.“ As a result of these limitations, Ehrhard improved upon Dr. Pape’s model, and
a number of these improvements appear here. The resulting framework may continue to rule out
different courses of action, but as Don Herzog rightfully observes: “Any vocabulary will down-
play certain possibilities, [or] will make them elusive or invisible or presumptively unacceptable.”
Embedded within any language, however, are “concepts, even ideological concepts, [that] open
up new possibilities we wouldn’t notice without them.” See Robert A. Pape, Jr., Bombing to Win:
Air Power and Coercion in War (Ithaca, New York: Cornell University Press, 1996); Major
Thomas P. Ehrhard, USAF, Making the Connection: An Air Strategy Analysis Framework (Maxwell
Air Force Base, Alabama: Air University Press), 38, 50; and Don Herzog, “Interest, Principle,
and Beyond: American Understanding of Conflict,” in Behavior, Culture, and Conflict in World
Politics, eds. William Zimmerman and Harold K. Jacobson (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan
Press, 1993), 234.
41 See Ehrhard, Making the Connection: An Air Strategy Analysis Framework, 19.
42 Ibid., 50, particularly for the third question in the figure.
43 Clausewitz, On War, 586.
44 For a discussion of each approach, see Robert A. Pape, Jr., “Coercion and Military Strategy: Why
Denial Works and Punishment Doesn’t,” The Journal of Strategic Studies 15 (December 1992),
423–475.
45 Pat A. Pentland, Theater Strategy Development, unpublished manuscript in author’s possession,
1993–94, 2–5.
46 Ibid., 3.
47 See Major David S. Fadock, USAF, John Boyd and John Warden: Air Power’s Quest for Strategic
Paralysis (Maxwell Air Force Base, Alabama: Air University Press, 1995).
48 Major Kevin E. Williams, USAF, “In Search of the Missing Link: Relating Destruction to Outcome
in Airpower Applications” (Maxwell Air Force Base, Alabama: Air University Press, 1994), 5–7.
49 See Carl Kaysen, Note on Some Historic Principles of Target Selection (Santa Monica, CA: RAND
Corporation, Project RAND Research Memorandum 189 (RM-189), July 15, 1949.
110 THE EVOLUTION OF AIRPOWER THEORY IN THE UNITED STATES
50 Ibid., 2.
51 Ibid., 4.
52 Ibid., 5.
53 Ibid., 5-6.
54 Salvaneschi, for example, claimed that the Allies “must aim, not at the army that fights, but at
the factories of Essen.” See Salvaneschi, Let Us Kill the War, 38.
55 For a major discussion of this point, see Irving L. Janis, War and Emotional Stress (Westport,
Connecticut: Greenwood Press, 1951).
56 Today’s logical equivalent for “tonnage” is most likely “explosive effect.” See Janis, Air War and
Emotional Stress, 87, 140, 143. See also Constantine Fitzgibbon, The Winter of the Bombs (New
York: Norton, 1957); Hilton P. Goss, Civilian Morale Under Aerial Bombardment 1914–1939, 2
vols. (Maxwell AFB, Alabama: Documentary Research Division, Air University Libraries, Air
University, 1948); Jack Hirshleifer, Disaster and Recover: A Historical Survey (Santa Monica, CA:
RAND Corporation Research Memorandum (RM) 3079, 1963); Charles Ikle, The Social Impact
of Bomb Destruction (Norman, Oklahoma: University of Oklahoma Press, 1958); Hans Rumpf,
The Bombing of Germany, trans. Edward Fitzgerald (New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston,
1963); and Richard M. Titmuss, Problems of Social Policy: History of the Second World War, United
Kingdom Civil Series (London: Her Majesty’s Stationery Office, 1950).
57 Janis, Air War and Emotional Stress, 118, 127, 130, 135–37, and Alexander George, “Emotional
Stress and Air War – A Lecture Given at the Air War College,” November 28, 1951, 19, in
AFHRA File No. K239.716251–65. For additional support that irregular bombing worked best
against Germany, see K. W. Yarnold, Lessons on Morale to be Drawn From Effects of Strategic
Bombing on Germany: With Special Reference to Psychological Warfare, Technical Memorandum,
ORO-T-2 (Washington, D.C.: Operations Research Office, October 1949).
58 Janis, Air War and Emotional Stress, 98, 103, 106–107, 144.
59 Ibid., 100.
60 George, “Emotional Stress and Air War,” 12.
61 Ibid., 21. The United States Bombing Survey (USSBS), despite the inconsistencies that exist
between its summary volumes and survey reports, largely supports Professor Janis. One USSBS
report concluded that continuous heavy bombing did not produce decreases in morale propor-
tional to the amount of bombing accomplished; it also determined that those who directly expe-
rienced the effects of air attack had much lower morale than those who experienced them
indirectly. See United States Strategic Bombing Survey, The Effects of Strategic Bombing on
German Morale, Vol. I (Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1947), 33.
62 Janis, Air War and Emotional Stress, 127.
63 Stephen T. Hosmer, Psychological Effects of U.S. Air Operations in Four Wars 1941–1991, (Santa
Monica, California: RAND Corporation, 1996), xv-xxiii; and Group Captain A.P.N. Lambert,
RAF, “The Psychological Impact of Air Power Based on Case Studies Since the 1940s,” (Master’s
thesis, Cambridge University, 1995), 79–91.
64 Major Jerry T. Sink, “Coercive Air Power: The Theory of Leadership Relative Risk,” Maxwell Air
Force Base, Alabama: unpublished essay in the author’s possession, April 1993, 7–8; and
Ehrhard, Making the Connection: An Air Strategy Analysis Framework, 22–25.
65 Schelling defines the essence of bargaining as follows: it is “the communication of intent, the per-
ception of intent, the manipulation of expectations about what one will accept or refuse, the
issuance of threats, offers, and assurances, the display of resolve and evidence of capabilities, the
communication of constraints on what one can do, the search for compromise and jointly desir-
able exchanges, the creation of sanctions to enforce understandings and agreements, genuine
THE EVOLUTION OF AIRPOWER THEORY IN THE UNITED STATES 111
efforts to persuade and perform, and the creation of hostility, friendliness, mutual respect, or
rules of etiquette.” See Thomas C. Schelling, Arms and Influence (New Haven, CT: Yale
University Press, 1966), 136. See also 143 on the issue of holding a threat in reserve.
66 To coerce or compel an adversary with airpower-based threats, however, requires several things.
First, any bargaining process requires discrete and qualitative boundaries that both sides can rec-
ognize as “conspicuous stopping places, conventions and precedents to indicate what is within
bounds and what is out of bounds … Second, all bargaining must be based on actions, actions
and words, but never words alone. Finally, communications must be simple and form recogniz-
able patterns, except in those limited instances where you want to send a deliberately ambiguous
message. If you do not meet these preconditions, Schelling observes, threat-based (or “vicious”)
diplomacy will lack the “high fidelity” it needs to succeed. And if you and your opponent do not
communicate in the same “language” or “currency,” you both may spin into uncontrolled war-
fare. Ibid., 134–35, 164, 166.
67 Ibid., 142.
68 Ibid., 175.
69 Ibid., 180.
70 Ernest May, Lessons of the Past (New York: Oxford University Press, 1976), 134.
71 Ibid., 137.
72 These nations are typically authoritarian ones, where those in power use “divide and conquer”
tactics to keep potential domestic rivals in check.
73 Ibid., 132, 134.
74 Ibid., 140–42. Thomas Fabyanic repeats Professor May’s conclusions, although more emphatically,
in “Air Power and Conflict Termination,” in Conflict Termination and Military Strategy: Coercion,
Persuasion, and War, eds. Stephen J. Cimbala and Keith A. Dunn (Boulder, Colorado: Westview
Press, 1993), 155. According to Fabyanic, air power destroyed, “beyond any doubt,” the will of
the Italians and the will and ability of the Japanese to wage war. In both instances, the loss of will
then “brought about a change of government and new leaders who were not committed to a con-
tinuation of the war.” Significantly, Fabyanic supports these bald assertions by citing The Lessons
of the Past, i.e., he depends upon the authority of another historian to “prove” his point.
75 Hirschman, “The Search for Paradigms as a Hindrance to Understanding,” 339.
76 See Leon Sigal, Fighting to a Finish: The Politics of War Termination in the United States and Japan,
1945 (Ithaca, New York: Cornell University Press, 1988), 1–25; and Robert A. Pape, “Why
Japan Surrendered,” International Security 18(Fall 1993), 154–201.
77 Kenneth Waltz, Theory of International Politics (Reading, Massachusetts: Addison-Wesley
Publishing Co., 1979), 189 (emphasis added).
78 Ibid., 191.
79 See Charles L. Glaser, Analyzing Strategic Nuclear Policy (Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton
University Press, 1990), 81-82. Despite the original nuclear focus of the questions, they bviously
apply to conventional air operations as well.
80 See Sink, “Coercive Air Power: The Theory of Leadership Relative Risk,” 2.
81 Ibid.
82 Ibid., 3.
83 See Major Martin L. Fracker, “Psychological Effects of Aerial Bombardment,” Airpower Journal
VI (Fall 1992), 56–-67; and George H. Quester, “The Psychological Effects of Bombing on
Civilian Populations: Wars of the Past,” in Psychological Dimensions of War, ed. Betty Glad
(Newbury Park, California: Sage Press, 1990), 201–14.
84 Fracker, “Psychological Effects of Bombardment,” 55.
112 THE EVOLUTION OF AIRPOWER THEORY IN THE UNITED STATES
85 Ibid., 59, 65. The attack (or campaign) must typically be massive and unrelenting.
86 Ibid., 59, 61-62.
87 Major General Charles D. Link, USAF, “An Airman’s Perspective,” transcript in the author’s pos-
session of a presentation given in Washington, D.C., January 7, 1997, 112.
88 See Hans Morgenthau, Politics Among Nations: The Struggle for Power and Peace, 5th ed., revised
(New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1978), 22.
89 See Commander Joseph A. Gattuso, Jr., USN, “Warfare Theory,” Naval War College Review
XLIX (Autumn 1996), 113.
90 For discussions of the U.S. Army Air Corps Tactical School and its unique theory of precision
bombardment, see Peter R. Faber, “Interwar US Army Aviation and the Air Corps Tactical
School: Incubators of American Airpower,” in The Paths of Heaven: The Evolution of Airpower
Theory, ed. Phillip Meilinger (Air University Press, 1997); Robert T. Finney, History of the Air
Corps Tactical School, USAF Historical Studies: No. 100 (Maxwell AFB, AL: Research Studies
Institute, March 1955); and Thomas H. Greer, The Development of Air Doctrine in the Army Air
Arm 1917–1941 (Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1985).
91 On the last point, see Lieutenant Colonel Phillip S. Meilinger, “The Problem with Our Air
Force Doctrine,” Airpower Journal VI (Spring 1992), 24-31. For a general review of U.S. Air
Force doctrinal development, see Lieutenant General John W. Pauley, “The Thread of
Doctrine,” Air University Review XXVII (May–June 1976), 2–10.
92 Robert Frank Futrell, Ideas, Concepts, Doctrine: Basic Thinking in the United States Air Force
1907–1960, Vol. 1 (Maxwell Air Force Base, Alabama: Air University Press, December 1989),
367.
93 Ibid, 369.
94 See Millard F. Harmon, Draft Letter, January 30, 1940, p. 2, in AFHRA file no. 245.01–1.
95 Futrell, Ideas, Concepts, Doctrine, Vol. 1, 373. Barker became deputy commander of Air
University in 1949. As Commandant of the Air War College, it was his responsibility to codify
Air Force thinking on airpower.
96 Ibid., 389, 392.
97 The first official Air Force dictionary also took five years to produce. The publication, with its
30,000 definitions, appeared as Air Force Regulation 5–32, dated June 4, 1956.
98 Futrell, Ideas, Concepts, and Doctrine, Vol. 1, 398–400.
99 Known ironically as “the diplomat,” LeMay attended the ACTS in 1939–40.
100 See Aaron L. Friedberg, “A History of the U.S. Strategic ‘Doctrine’-1945 to 1980,” Journal of
Strategic Studies 3 (December 1980), 37-71; David Alan Rosenberg, “U.S. Nuclear War
Planning, 1945–1960,” in Strategic Nuclear Targeting, eds. Desmond Ball and Jeffrey Richelson
(Ithaca, New York: Cornell University Press, 1986), 35–56; and Scott D. Sagan, Moving Targets:
Nuclear Strategy and National Security (Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press,
1989).
101 Peter J. Roman, “Curtis LeMay and the Origins of NATO Atomic Targeting,” The Journal of
Strategic Studies 16 (March 1993), 47.
102 For the dangers of institutional self-interest masquerading as national policy, see Graham T.
Allison, Essence of Decision: Explaining the Cuban Missile Crisis (New York: Harper Collins
Publishers, 1971). Allison observes that decision making results “from innumerable and often
conflicting smaller actions by individuals at various levels of bureaucratic organizations in the
service of a variety of only partially compatible conceptions of national goals … and political
objectives.” As a “Model II” organization, SAC’s fixation on targeting reflected the influence of
internal “procedures and programs” in addition to perceived threats. See Allison, 6.
THE EVOLUTION OF AIRPOWER THEORY IN THE UNITED STATES 113
103 The mistaken belief that targeting was the essence of theory is best illustrated by the develop-
ment of the Single Integrated Operations Plan (SIOP), which first appeared in 1960–61 and
focused on preplanning a well-choreographed nuclear assault against the Soviet Union. See
Peter Pringle, SIOP, the Secret U.S. Plan for Nuclear War (New York: Norton, 1983).
104 On the historical continuities between interwar strategic bombing theory and postwar nuclear
warfare and deterrence, see Richard H. Kohn and Joseph P. Harahan, eds., Strategic Air Warfare:
An Interview with Generals Curtis E. LeMay, Leon W. Johnson, David A. Burchinal, and Jack J.
Catton (Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1988); Michael Sherry, The Rise of
American Air Power (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1987); George Quester, Deterrence
before Hiroshima (New Brunswick, New Jersey: Transaction Books, 1986); R. J. Overy, “Air
Power and the Origins of Deterrence Theory Before 1939,” Journal of Strategic Studies 15
(March 1992), 73-101; Roman, “Curtis LeMay and the Origins of NATO Atomic Targeting;”
and Barry D. Watts, The Foundations of U.S. Air Doctrine: The Problem of Friction in War
(Maxwell Air Force Base, Alabama: Air University Press, December 1984), Chapters 6 and 7 in
particular.
105 See Robert F. Futrell, Ideas, Concepts, Doctrine: A History of Basic Thinking in the United States
Air Force 1907–1964 (Maxwell Air Force Base, Alabama: Air University Press, 1971), 405.
106 For an opposing view, see Pauly, “The Thread of Doctrine.” Pauly skirts the issue of post-ACTS
theory and its reliance on a “one-time revelation from on high.” Instead, he asserts that Air
Force doctrine “has been responsive to changing times and philosophies while maintaining a
consistent thread of fundamental principles.” That these principles represent a retreat from a
higher level of activity – the building and testing of competing theories of airpower – goes
unacknowledged by Pauly. See 3, 9.
107 John Schlight, review of Crosswinds: The Air Force’s Setup in Vietnam, by Earl H. Tilford, The
Journal of Military History 53 (July 1994), 561.
108 Ibid.
109 See Colonel Dennis M. Drew, “Two Decades in the Air Power Wilderness – Do We Know
Where We Are?”, Air University Review XXXVII (September-October 1986), 6–7.
110 According to Dr. Mark Clodfelter, airpower was effective only during the conventional phases
of the war, and then only at certain times (i.e., Linebacker II in 1972). Against elusive and self-
sufficient insurgents in South Vietnam, the interdiction campaign was ineffective. See Mark
Clodfelter, The Limits of Airpower (New York: Free Press, 1989). See also Earl H. Tilford, Jr.,
Crosswinds: The Air Force’s Setup in Vietnam (College Station: Texas A&M University Press,
1993), and Donald J. Mrozek, Air Power and the Ground War in Vietnam (Maxwell AFB, AL:
Air University Press, January 1988).
111 See Kohn and Harahan, Strategic Air Warfare, 125–26.
112 Robert F. Futrell, Ideas, Concepts, Doctrine: Basic Thinking in the United States Air Force 1907-
1960, Vol. II (Maxwell Air Force Base, AL: Air University Press, December 1989), 322.
113 “The Icarus Syndrome,” RAND Research Brief, n.d., 2.
114 Karl H. Builder, The Icarus Syndrome: The Role of Air Power Theory in the Evolution and Fate of
the U.S. Air Force (New Brunswick, New Jersey: Transaction Publishers, 1994), 35.
115 Ibid.
116 Major James M. Ford, Air Force Culture and Conventional Strategic Airpower (Maxwell Air Force
Base, Alabama: School of Advanced Airpower Studies, May 1992), 42–47. See also the United
States Air Force Statistical Digest, produced annually by the Comptroller of the Air Force,
Directorate of Data Systems and Statistics.
117 Ibid., 45–46.
114 THE EVOLUTION OF AIRPOWER THEORY IN THE UNITED STATES
118 Tactical Air Command Manual 2–1, Tactical Air Operations, 15 April 1978, para. 1–3. The
authors of the manual thought new command, control, communications, intelligence, and
interoperability technologies would integrate air operations over the battlefield. As a result, air-
craft could perform different missions simultaneously and yet function en masse. Clearly,
TACM 2–1 prefigured John Warden’s emphasis on Parallel Warfare.
119 General Charles L. Donnelly Jr., USAF, Ret., “A theater-Level View of Airpower,” Airpower
Journal 1 (summer 1987), 3.
120 Robert D. Russ, “The Air Force, the Army and the Battlefield of the 1990s,” Defense 88
(July/August 1988), 12–13. Note the absence of offensive strategic operations in Russ’s state-
ment.
121 Drew, “Two Decades in the Wilderness,” 12. For a discussion of the orthodox 1984 version of
AFM 1-1, see Colonel Clifford R. Krieger, “USAF Doctrine: An Enduring Challenge,” Air
University Review, XXXV, (September-October 1984), 16–25.
122 Not surprisingly, those involved with the development of doctrine at the time see things differ-
ently. Major General Perry Smith, for example, remembers “the superb strategic planning sys-
tem that was created in the Air Force in the 1970s …” Unfortunately, one could argue that
effective planning is not a synonym for theoretical or doctrinal vitality. Maj Gen Perry M.
Smith (ret.), unpublished letter in the author’s possession to Colonel Phillip Meilinger, School
of Advanced Airpower Studies, October 2, 1994, 1–2.
123 Drew, “Two Decades in the Wilderness,” 7.
124 John Warden graduated from the U.S. Air Force Academy in 1965 and subsequently flew 266
combat missions as a forward air controller in Southeast Asia. After commanding the 36th
Tactical Fighter Wing, he returned to the Pentagon in 1988 and eventually served as the Air
Staff ’s Deputy Director for Warfighting, Directorate of Plans. During this period Colonel
Warden and others helped create the Air Force’s new “Global Reach, Global Power” doctrine.
He also headed CHECKMATE, the planning cell that devised the strategic air campaign
(INSTANT THUNDER) conducted against Iraq. Subsequent to the Gulf War, Colonel
Warden served as a special assistant to Vice President Quayle on technology-related issues, and
as commandant of the USAF Air Command and Staff College from 1992–1995.
125 See Andrew F. Krepinevich, The Army and Vietnam (Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University
Press, 1986).
126 Colonel John A. Warden III, USAF, “The Enemy as a System,” Airpower Journal IX (September
1995), 42.
127 Warden echoes James Spaight, who claimed that “whatever Napoleon may have said, the mate-
rial factors are in … [air] warfare at least as important as the moral.” See James M. Spaight, Air
Power in the Next War (London: Geoffrey Bles, 1938), 129.
128 Warden, “The Enemy as System,” 43.
129 Fleet Marine Force Manual 1 (FMFM-1), Warfighting (Washington, D.C.: Headquarters
United States Marine Corps, 6 March 1989), 10.
130 John A. Warden III, “Thinking Across Historical Discontinuities,” The American Warrior, eds.
Chris Morris and Janet Morris (Stamford, Connecticut: Longmeadow Press, 1992), 204.
131 Despite the impressions created by popular media, the Vietnam conflict provided a foretaste of
predictability in war. For a description of early laser-guided munitions and their nascent con-
tribution to probability warfare, see Lon O. Nordeen, Jr., Air Warfare in the Missile Age
(Washington, D.C.: Smithsonian Institution Press, 1985).
132 Edward Luttwak and Stuart Koehl, The Persian Gulf and the Renaissance of Strategic
Bombardment, unpublished manuscript in the author’s possession, 1991, Chapter V (“The
THE EVOLUTION OF AIRPOWER THEORY IN THE UNITED STATES 115
Future of Strategic Air Power”), 24. This manuscript reflects Dr. Luttwak’s enthusiastic, largely
uncritical acceptance of Colonel Warden’s theories of airpower immediately after the Gulf War.
He later tempered his enthusiasm but continued to believe in the efficacy of aerospace power.
133 John A. Warden III, “Employing Air Power in the twenty-first Century,” in The Future of Air
Power in the Aftermath of the Gulf War, eds. Richard H. Schultz, Jr. and Robert L. Pfaltzgraff,
Jr. (Maxwell Air Force Base, AL: Air University Press, July 1992), 61.
134 John A. Warden III, “Yugoslavia-Opportunity and Risk,” unpublished memorandum in
author’s possession, 29 November 1992, 4.
135 A less exhaustive but similar list appears in John A. Warden, III, “Air Theory for the Twenty
First Century,” in Battlefield of the Future: 21st century Warfare Issues, eds. Barry R. Schneider
and Lawrence E. Grinter (Maxwell Air Force Base: Air University Press, September 1998).
136 Warden, “The Enemy as System” 43.
137 Ibid., 2, 14.
138 Ibid., 15; see also Warden, “Air Power in the Twenty-first Century,” 62–63, 65, 68.
139 According to Robert Pape, the U.S. Air Force unsuccessfully tried all three options in the Gulf
War, and yet neither Saddam Hussein nor 42 other top government/military leaders were cap-
tured or killed during the conflict.
Threatening What the Enemy Values:
Punitive Disarmament as a Coercive
Strategy
As a result both of the demise of the cold war and the evolution of tech-
nology, most significantly the development of flexible and reliable
precision-guided munitions, conventional air power is increasingly being
used in situations other than large-scale wars, although many of its
greatest successes continue to occur in combined-arms operations. Yet
most theoretical discussions of coercive air power continue to focus on
the longstanding debates among strategic bombing theories that were
largely developed before and during the Second World War, particularly
the choice between launching punitive attacks against civilian targets and
attacking an enemy’s armed forces and war production in order to deny
118 THREATENING WHAT THE ENEMY VALUES
This essay suggests another strategic approach for the coercive use of air
power and other military force: attacking the armed forces of an
adversary based on their value to the enemy regime rather than their con-
tribution to victory in the current confrontation. Largely as a result of the
precision weapons and sensors revolutions, threatening to destroy
military assets that the enemy values highly now offers a potentially
viable coercive strategy for situations in which frustrating the enemy’s
military strategy is impractical or irrelevant, without turning to attacks
on civilian targets that are likely to be formally illegal, politically
unacceptable, and ultimately ineffective. Such “punitive disarmament”
strategies are not an optimal or even a suitable approach for dealing with
every opponent. However, this is a strategic alternative that policymakers
should consider, particularly in the sorts of limited-stakes coercive
confrontations that are likely to increasingly dominate the U.S. security
agenda in coming years.
combatant has lost the ability, and not just the will, to fight, as in the case
of Germany’s surrender in 1945.
Punishment and denial advocates have each identified many of the prob-
lems with the other approach. Punishment strategies often fail because
civilian will frequently proves to be very resilient in the face of military
attack.11 Even when it is not, this may matter little, for many govern-
ments are willing to tolerate considerable harm to their populaces, in part
because civilian suffering is often most limited for national leaders and
THREATENING WHAT THE ENEMY VALUES 121
their privileged cronies and greatest for those with the least influence over
– and the least responsibility for – national policy. Air campaigns and
blockades directed against national economic systems have occasionally
succeeded, but only with considerable difficulty and great weight of
effort, due to the robustness of advanced economies.12 Punishment
strategies directed against enemy leaders also have a poor track record:
leaders who matter the most are usually hard to threaten or kill, while the
most vulnerable leaders, as in democracies, tend to be easily replaced, and
triggering popular uprisings or military coups against embattled national
governments is notoriously difficult.13 Most seriously of all, particularly
for Western leaders contemplating employing punishment strategies,
deliberately harming civilians is a violation of the laws of war, and as
weapons become more precise, the amount of suffering that may be
inflicted upon a nation’s population without committing a war crime has
plummeted.
be one that is not vulnerable to the sorts of attacks that the coercer is
willing or able to mount against it, as was the case for U.S. efforts to end
the insurgent war in South Vietnam by interdicting the flow of supplies
from North Vietnam to the Viet Cong.15 Finally, in some cases of coercion,
there is simply no question of denying the enemy’s strategy, for example
if one wished to coerce a target state to cease violating the human rights
of an oppressed minority. Victory or defeat on the battlefield is not an
issue in cases such as El Dorado Canyon or the 1970 Israeli-Egyptian
War of Attrition, and in limited conflicts such as NATO’s war against
Serbia in 1999 it may be all but impossible to deny the enemy its military
objectives without escalating the level of violence beyond its acceptable
limits.
TARGETS
Punitive Disarmament
The central proposition of Schelling’s seminal analysis of coercive vio-
lence is that in order to coerce, one should threaten what the enemy
values. “To exploit a capacity for hurting and inflicting damage, one
needs to know what an adversary treasures and what scares him.”17 Like
Douhet and the ACTS theorists, like many of the air strategists of the
Second World War, like most of his fellow nuclear deterrence theorists,
and like most designers of economic sanctions, Schelling assumed that
what the enemy valued most would usually be the lives and welfare of its
civilian population, but in fact this need not be the case.
What is valued by the enemy – and by this we mean the relevant enemy
decisionmakers, whether an individual despot, a ruling cabal, or an entire
national population – can range from physical objects, to the safety and
well-being of the civilian populace, to intangible objectives like victory in
war, the survival of an ideology, or national honor. Some of these may be
susceptible to coercive threats, and some will not, either because the
attacker cannot destroy them, or because it is unwilling to do so. States
often place widely different values on similar possessions and aspirations,
making it dangerous to draw sweeping generalizations about how best to
coerce enemies. However, many – though not all – of them place great
value on their armed forces and military equipment, making these into
potentially important targets for punitive coercion.
pure denial strategy would have ignored Yugoslav ground forces deployed
far from Kosovo on the grounds that these could not influence the
fighting there and that there would be plenty of time to attack them later
prior to any NATO ground invasion when they might become militarily
relevant. On the other hand, a pure punitive disarmament strategy would
have attacked valuable Yugoslav military forces regardless of their loca-
tion, giving no special weight to those in Kosovo unless their location
made Belgrade value them especially highly.
The United States and its allies have also carried out attacks that can be
considered to be punitive disarmament, at least in the context of larger
coercive campaigns, such as the attacks on Iraqi Special Republican
Guard units during Operation Desert Fox in 1998. Two other, more
successful examples suggest something of the potential efficacy of
punitive disarmament. The first was the destruction of the Iraqi air force
during the 1991 Gulf War. Although Coalition forces set about
126 THREATENING WHAT THE ENEMY VALUES
destroying Iraq’s air force simply in order to clear the way for the main
coercive and brute force air effort, the progressive and inexorable annihi-
lation of Iraq’s military aircraft ultimately caused a remarkable decision
in Baghdad: to order the surviving aircraft to flee to internment in Iran,
Iraq’s longstanding and bitter regional enemy, presumably with the real-
ization that they might never be returned (as ultimately they were not)
but with the hope that at least in Iranian service they might do more to
threaten the United States than they would as wrecks at home.
The other example occurred during the 1982 Falklands War. As the
British task force was approaching the Falklands to recapture the islands
following the Argentine invasion, the cruiser General Belgrano, one of the
two largest ships of the Argentine fleet, was torpedoed and sunk by a
British attack submarine. Immediately after this loss, the Argentine air-
craft carrier Veinticinco de Mayo was ordered to abandon the search for
the British fleet and return to port, where she disembarked her aircraft
(which operated from land bases during the ensuing battle). Fearing
further losses, the Argentine fleet played virtually no role in the remainder
of the conflict, and thus was relegated to the political sidelines in the
ruling junta, in spite of having been the armed service that had most
aggressively promoted the seizure of the Falklands in the first place.23
Feasibility
Punitive disarmament strategies may offer important practical advan-
tages over the traditional alternatives. As noted above, punitive attacks
directed against civilian populations, either directly or indirectly, have
generally been unsuccessful in the past. Coercive air campaigns designed
to threaten leaders have a far shorter track record, but they have achieved
little to date, and there are powerful reasons to doubt their likely effec-
THREATENING WHAT THE ENEMY VALUES 127
For example, Iran is by far the largest and most powerful of the former
“rogue states,” now members of the “Axis of Evil,” that have become the
focus of American defense planning in recent years.24 It has rearmed sig-
nificantly since the end of the Iran-Iraq War, and its air power was bols-
tered in 1991 by the arrival of some 125 Iraqi aircraft fleeing coalition
attacks. Yet the Iranian air force possesses only about 125 combat aircraft
that can reasonably be described as modern and another 175 obsolescent
ones,25 while Iran’s principal naval warfare capabilities are concentrated
in a mere three submarines, three frigates, and twenty missile-armed fast
attack craft. A similar pattern even appears in Iran’s much larger ground
forces: only 500 or so of its nominal strength of some 1,500 main battle
tanks are both serviceable and modern enough to serve in even the least
advanced NATO army.26 Thus a reasonably limited U.S. air campaign
could destroy a large proportion of Iran’s air and naval power in relatively
128 THREATENING WHAT THE ENEMY VALUES
short order, and it could also cripple Iran’s armored forces over a longer
period, assuming the availability of sufficient reconnaissance capabilities;
in contrast, actually defeating and occupying Iran in a war would be a far
more difficult and expensive undertaking.27 Much the same is true of
China, a state so large and heavily armed that the United States can
hardly contemplate waging a full-scale conventional war against it. In
spite of the impressive size of the People’s Liberation Army, China pos-
sesses only 100 or so significant warships and less than 500 modern
military aircraft, even using the most charitable interpretations of those
two adjectives.
States fighting wars using light infantry or irregular forces that cannot
easily or economically be attacked from the air usually possess other
military assets that are more vulnerable. Recognition of this fact appears
to have shaped U.S. use of air power against Iraq in response to Baghdad’s
suppression of the Kurds, and some of NATO’s planning for attacks
against Serbia in order to change Belgrade’s policies in Kosovo. In such
cases, aerial denial strategies might well be impractical, but punitive dis-
armament strategies could be executed (although the mere fact that the
targets could be bombed does not imply that the strategy would
necessarily succeed). The nature of punitive disarmament targets may also
increase attackers’ ability to monitor their progress, because it is relatively
straightforward to assess the amount of physical damage inflicted against
military vehicles and facilities, at least compared to strategies designed to
degrade enemy morale or to cause other largely intangible effects.
cations facilities that serve both military and civilian purposes. Moreover,
high value military assets are not normally co-located with civilian
populations, so attacking them usually holds relatively little risk of
causing collateral damage, a consideration that has consistently loomed
large for American air strategists in recent conflicts. Of course, it is
intrinsically difficult by definition to punish civilian targets without
making the population suffer, either during or after the conflict. Denial
strategies can also be hard to execute without doing considerable damage
to civilians as well as military personnel. Conversely, if the coercing state
is concerned about gaining or retaining the sympathy of the enemy
population, either during the confrontation or afterwards, striking military
targets will be less likely to generate hostility among them than attacking
civilian or dual-use targets. It may also be less likely to cause them to rally
in support of their own government, although this will depend on the
relationship between the state’s armed forces and its general population.
However, this does not mean that punitive disarmament strategies are
likely to offer the prospect of bloodless victories, and they should not be
embraced in the expectation that they will do so. Although continued
advances in limited-effect and non-lethal weapons will further increase
their owners’ ability to mount highly discriminate attacks, eliminating all
chance of collateral casualties is never possible, no matter how precise
and reliable one’s weapons may be. Moreover, except when attacking vir-
tually helpless adversaries, suppressing enemy defenses almost invariably
places those manning the defenses at risk.
Secondary Effects
Punitive disarmament strategies also offer other potential benefits,
though these are less significant than the acceptability and feasibility con-
siderations discussed above. For example, demonstrating the ability to
execute such a strategy successfully might strengthen the coercer’s deter-
rence credibility in future confrontations with the same or other adver-
saries. The most significant secondary effect of such strategies is likely to
be that even an ultimately unsuccessful punitive disarmament campaign
would reduce the military capabilities of the target state, thus potentially
contributing to a subsequent denial effort, or simply reducing the threat
posed by the adversary’s armed forces until it is able to rearm. In contrast,
a punishment strategy directed at civilian targets is not likely to provide
much preparation of the battlefield if it fails to coerce. However, in some
cases this may be a problem: if the coercer does not wish to create a
power vacuum in the region, weakening the enemy’s ability to defend
itself against third party attackers may produce destabilizing effects,
which strategists would want to take into account when selecting a
strategy.
Target Vulnerability
The most obvious requirement for such a strategy is that the targets
actually be vulnerable to destruction, which means that the attackers
must be able to locate and identify the targets, penetrate the enemy’s
defenses, and finally destroy the targets, all at an acceptable cost both in
losses among the attackers and in collateral and other undesired damage
on the ground. The extent to which these requirements can be met will
depend on a number of factors in addition to the attacker’s reconnais-
sance and strike capabilities, such as whether the defenders are taken by
surprise, and whether the forces to be attacked are operationally active or
can be dispersed and concealed.
For this reason, among others, naval vessels are perhaps the most attrac-
tive of all targets for a punitive disarmament strategy, being relatively
large, expensive, few in number, difficult to conceal, and generally
unmovable into civilian neighborhoods. Aircraft share all of these
characteristics, though each to a more limited degree, as do some types
of high-value military facilities. Air defense assets such as surface-to-air
THREATENING WHAT THE ENEMY VALUES 133
missile batteries and early warning radars may also make good counter-
value targets because the attacker will probably want to strike them in the
course of attacking other targets anyway, and because concealing and dis-
persing them imposes significant opportunity costs on the target state. It
thus follows that, other things being equal, punitive disarmament
strategies should be more effective against sea and air powers than against
states that invest little in their navies or air forces.
The value that a state places on a military asset may be based on a variety
of factors. Some of these are intrinsic to the asset: the amount that it is
worth to its owner in and of itself, for example because of what it cost to
acquire or because of its political symbolism.30 Other elements of value are
extrinsic: a function of an asset’s practical utility for gaining or protecting
things that are intrinsically valuable, such as national security (usually
against external threats) or political survival of a regime (particularly
against internal enemies).31 Denial strategies consider only the short-term,
extrinsic value of military forces: states are assumed to value their armed
forces as tools to provide victory or defense in the present conflict, but not
as intrinsically valuable assets. Punishment strategists tend to have the
same attitude, seeing attacks on military forces either as a distraction from
or merely a necessary prerequisite to threatening intrinsically valuable
assets such as civilian populations and economic capacity. Punitive dis-
armament strategies are based instead on the proposition that military
forces may be so extrinsically and intrinsically valuable that threatening to
destroy them can be coercive in its own right.
states that depend on arms imports but that have become pariahs, will
tend to be better targets for punitive disarmament targeting than will
states with the resources and opportunity to produce or purchase new
weapons easily after a confrontation ends. Similarly, other things being
equal, sophisticated systems that few countries can manufacture will tend
to be better targets for such a strategy than will facilities and equipment
that are available from many vendors.32 Armed forces that are deemed
essential for regime survival are likely to be valued particularly highly;
military regimes may be especially suitable targets for punitive disarma-
ment since they rely on military power to provide domestic political con-
trol, and also might be expected to be more averse to military losses than
civilian governments due to the high intrinsic value they place on the
lives of their fellows.33
Extrinsic value will also be greatly affected by the severity and immediacy
of the security threats facing the target state. The less secure a state is, the
more disturbing the prospect of having its defenses weakened will be. In
addition, the value of the various elements of its defense apparatus will
be shaped by the nature of the potential security threats: if the greatest
threat to a regime is domestic unrest, its jet aircraft and naval forces may
seem to be relative luxuries, whereas mainly being concerned by threats
of amphibious invasion would presumably increase the value of these
units while making counterinsurgency forces something that the enemy
might expect to be able to live without. In general, external threats from
technologically advanced rivals will tend to make target states more
susceptible to punitive disarmament coercion than will threats from
insurgent or other irregular forces.
itself. For example, sinking some of the ships in a country’s navy is likely
to increase the individual value of the remaining vessels (at least up to the
point where the surviving fleet ceases to be an effective force), though it
makes the navy as a whole less valuable.34 If this happens, it will facilitate
punitive disarmament, because it will mitigate the problem of “killing
the hostage.” On the other hand, international confrontations tend to
stoke the fires of nationalism, making mere physical objects, and even the
lives of soldiers and citizens, seem progressively less important when
compared to the value of national honor or survival.
In some cases, assets that do not have great value to the enemy’s national
leaders may be intrinsically valuable to other actors who can influence
policy. For example, military leaders might feel greater loss from the
destruction of the forces they command than would a civilian govern-
ment with less direct ties to the armed forces. In such a situation, the
impact of threats to destroy those forces might depend on how much
weight the national leadership places on the concerns of its military, and
how confident the government is regarding the military’s loyalty to it.
Similarly, a government that value or depends upon the support of the
populace is more likely to fear the destruction of that which the people
value than would an oligarchic or tyrannical state that cares little for the
happiness of its subjects.
Above all, however – and this point cannot be overemphasized – the first
rule of punitive coercion, regardless of the target set, is that the severity
of the threat must exceed the magnitude of the coercer’s demands. For
this reason, opportunities for successful punitive strategies diminish as
the coercive stakes rise; typically, when values such as national survival
truly hang in the balance, no punitive strategy is likely to succeed because
surrender will appear worse than any destructive threat, and only denial
strategies will have a reasonable chance of coercing the enemy.35
Consequently, punitive disarmament strategies will show the greatest
promise in cases of coercion over stakes of limited value to the defender.36
Conditionality of Demands
One other aspect of the coercer’s demands should also be considered in
this context, though it is not unique to punitive disarmament, or even to
punishment strategies more generally. Not only must the target state care
136 THREATENING WHAT THE ENEMY VALUES
more about the loss of what the coercer threatens to destroy than it cares
about the concessions being demanded, but it must also expect that if it
concedes, the threatened assets will not be destroyed anyway. In other
words, both the threat of punishment and the promise of restraint in
return for surrender must be reasonably credible, or else the target state
will have little incentive to comply.
Herein lay the fatal flaw in the threats made against Iraq by the United
States during the weapons inspection crisis of early 1998. American
leaders suggested that if Baghdad did not comply with Security Council
resolutions requiring complete disclosure of the extent of its programs for
developing weapons of mass destruction, they would bomb any facilities
from which UN arms inspectors were barred. Such threats had an
intuitively appealing an-eye-for-an-eye quality, seemingly akin to a parent’s
threat to confiscate toys that are not properly put away. However, since
the purpose of the inspections was to dismantle Iraq’s biological and
chemical weapons programs, Washington was essentially threatening to
destroy some of Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction unless Iraq allowed it
to destroy all of them. It was far from surprising that this coercive threat
failed to change Iraqi behavior. In general terms, punitive disarmament
will fare best by avoiding not only threats along the lines of “disarm or
we will destroy your army,” but also threats to destroy military assets
until or unless the target state makes other concessions that will render it
equally vulnerable to attack.
and many other countries have given even shorter shrift to these and
other “enabling” systems in favor of investing in combat aircraft.37
Overcoming such shortfalls will require not just more and better sensors
and other hardware in order to locate and identify targets, but also
greater emphasis on developing sufficiently deep strategic intelligence
pictures of prospective enemies to be able to understand the values that
they attach to one’s potential targets.
are ill-used they are likely to fail (and they may fail anyway, given that
war is an imprecise business), and failure can be expected to weaken the
coercive leverage that similar strategies will provide subsequently.
However, if used judiciously, punitive disarmament may provide a more
attractive policy option in certain cases than the traditional alternatives
that have dominated thinking about coercive strategy alternatives in the
past.
NOTES
1 The author is an Associate Political Scientist at RAND in Washington, D.C.. The views
expressed in this essay are his own, and do not represent the opinions of RAND or of any agency
of the aUnited States Government. For their invaluable comments on earlier versions of this
work, the author wishes to thank Scott Douglas, John Mearsheimer, John Mueller, Michelle
Mueller, John Nagl, Kim Noedskov, John Olsen, Daryl Press, Dan Reiter, Alan Vick, Harold
Winton, Paul Yingling, and the participants in seminars where earlier versions of this project
were presented at the School of Advanced Airpower Studies, RAND’s Washington and Santa
Monica offices, the U.S. National War College, and USAFE/NATO AIRNORTH Head-
quarters.
2 Operation Enduring Freedom is not included in this list in spite of being a spectacular opera-
tional and strategic success for U.S. air power because it was not coercive in nature, as will be
discussed below.
3 See Robert A. Pape, Bombing to Win: Air Power and Coercion in War (Ithaca: Cornell University
Press, 1996); Karl Mueller, “Strategies of Coercion: Denial, Punishment, and the Future of Air
Power,” Security Studies, Vol. 7, No. 3 (Spring 1998): 182-228. The recent popularity of air
power theories emphasizing high-tempo operations as a means of dazzling slower-witted enemies
into bewildered psychological collapse, which has grown out of the theories of John Boyd and
John Warden and now often appears under labels such as “rapid dominance,” represents an
apparent exception to this gross generalization. However, in spite of the modern jargon in which
they are usually expressed, most of the theoretical content of such strategies would be familiar to
the air theorists of the 1930s.
4 See Thomas C. Schelling, Arms and Influence (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1966), ch. 1;
Karl P. Mueller, “The Essence of Coercive Airpower: A Primer for the Military Strategist,” RAF
Air Power Review, Vol. 4, No. 3 (Autumn 2001): 45-56.
5 A secondary, coercive goal of the attack may have been to deter other Middle Eastern states from
pursuing nuclear weapons development lest they provoke a similar attack by Israel. However, it
is highly unlikely that the Israelis believed the Osirak raid would discourage Saddam Hussein
from continuing to develop weapons of mass destruction, indeed it could reasonably be expected
to encourage him to redouble his efforts.
THREATENING WHAT THE ENEMY VALUES 139
6 Washington’s secondary but important destructive objectives were also vividly illustrated by
General Colin Powell’s statement that he wanted to see burning Iraqi tanks as kilometer markers
along the road from Kuwait to Baghdad.
7 Air power advocates often overstate this distinction, however. Air attacks against an adversary’s
heartland do not bypass the enemy’s military forces, for they must still overcome the opposing
air defenses.
8 Pape, Bombing to Win; on the other air theorists discussed here, see Phillip S. Meilinger, ed.,
Paths of Heaven: The Evolution of Airpower Theory (Maxwell AFB, Ala.: Air University Press,
1996).
9 See Pape, Bombing to Win and the ensuing exchange of articles in Security Studies, Vol. 7, No. 2
(Winter 1998).
10 J. C. Slessor, Air Power and Armies (London: Oxford University Press, 1936); Karl Mueller,
“Strategic Airpower and Nuclear Strategy: New Theory for a Not-Quite-So-New Apocalypse,”
in Meilinger, ed., The Paths of Heaven: 279-320; Pape, Bombing to Win. To this list could be
added the ACTS, whose theorists argued that attacking the enemy’s “industrial web” would both
cripple its ability to fight and make its economy and society collapse, thus achieving victory
through a combination of denial and punishment (though they believed that protecting the wel-
fare of the civilian population would be the concern that would ultimately prompt the enemy to
surrender). So could many contemporary suggestions that attacking enemy command and con-
trol abilities will produce strategic paralysis and leave the enemy defenseless.
11 See Pape, Bombing to Win, but also C. G. C. Treadway, “More Than Just A Nuisance: When
Aerial Terror Bombing Works” (Maxwell AFB, Ala.: Air University Press, 1997).
12 See Mancur Olson Jr., The Economics of the Wartime Shortage (Durham: Duke University Press,
1963); Alfred C. Mierzejewski, The Collapse of the German War Economy, 1944–1945 (Chapel
Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1988).
13 Pape, Bombing to Win, 79-86; Stephen T. Hosmer, Operations Against Enemy Leaders MR-1385-
AF (Santa Monica: RAND, 2001).
14 For a good discussion, see Pape, Bombing to Win, 32-35.
15 Mark Clodfelter, The Limits of Air Power (New York: Free Press, 1989).
16 For further discussion, see Mueller, “Strategies of Coercion.”
17 Schelling, Arms and Influence, 3
18 In fact, they may even be relevant to the other major field of coercion: domestic law enforcement.
A relatively little-known U.S. federal law prohibits perpetrators convicted of misdemeanor
domestic violence from owning firearms (as is the case for all felons). Although this statute was
enacted primarily to protect domestic violence victims from being shot, the relatively limited
enforcement of the law can be attributed in large part to many police considering loss of the right
to own guns to be a disproportionately punitive response to the crime in question.
19 Although this is a highly theoretical possibility, given the failure of past air campaigns to trigger
coups, it is one that should not be discounted altogether.
20 In the end, Britain dealt with the rising German threat by forming alliances with Japan and
France, allowing it to shift forces from other theaters back to home waters. While the German
naval threat did not deter British participation in World War I, London did turn out to be
remarkably reluctant to risk the loss even of obsolescent capital ships during the conflict, notably
at Gallipoli.
21 Karl P. Mueller, Strategy, Asymmetric Deterrence, and Accommodation: Middle Powers and Security
in Modern Europe, Ph.D. diss., Princeton University, 1991, ch. 8.
22 John J. Mearsheimer, Conventional Deterrence (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1983), ch. 6. In
140 THREATENING WHAT THE ENEMY VALUES
this case, and even without nuclear weapons, the defender would have stood a good chance of
defeating an invasion, for reasons that Mearsheimer describes in some detail, though he does not
give much attention to the possibility of deterrence by denial.
23 Max Hastings and Simon Jenkins, The Battle for the Falklands (New York: Norton, 1983): 323.
24 On the unsoundness of the rogue state concept, See John Mueller and Karl Mueller,
“Methodology of Mass Destruction,” in Eric Herring, ed., Preventing the Use of Weapons of Mass
Destruction (London: Frank Cass, 2000), pp. 163-187, also pub. as Journal of Strategic Studies,
Vol. 23, No. 1 (March 2000).
25 The former total includes F-14As, MiG-29s, Mirage F-1EQs, Azarakhshs, Su-24s, and P-3s (26
Su-27s are also on order), while the latter includes F-6s, F-7Ms, and non-upgraded F-4s and
F-5Es. The Iranian air force also operates about 90 transport and tanker aircraft, which it might
value even more highly. (Jane’s World Air Forces [Coulsdon, UK: Jane’s Information Group,
2002]: 191)
26 Charles Heyman, ed., Jane’s World Armies (Coulsdon, UK: Jane’s Information Group, 2001):
351.
27 Actually conducting such a campaign against Iran’s land and air forces would involve significant
operational challenges not addressed here due to the large geographic size of the country
requiring very long range flights to attack locations such as Tehran from bases in the Persian Gulf
or central Turkey, but the same difficulties would be faced by any type of air campaign, and
would in fact increase the appeal of countervalue military targeting relative to more labor-
intensive targeting options.
28 This is far less true at the tactical level, where slack and adaptability tend to be in much shorter
supply, than at the strategic level. Of course, economies, militaries, and other systems vary widely
in these respects, which is why, for example, bombing the German aircraft industry in World
War II accomplished little while attacks on the transportation and liquid fuels sectors were far
more successful. See Mancur Olson Jr., “The Economics of Target Selection for the Combined
Bomber Offensive,” RUSI Journal, Vol. 107 (November 1962): 308–314; Mierzejewski, Collapse
of the German War Economy.
29 See “The Microfoundations of Economic Sanctions,” Security Studies, Vol. 6, No. 3 (Spring
1997): 32-64; David A. Baldwin, “The Sanctions Debate and the Logic of Choice,” International
Security, Vol. 24, No. 3 (Winter 1999/2000): 80–107.
30 Examples of states’ concern with the intrinsic value of military forces are not uncommon,
ranging from Hitler’s decision to rename the pocket battleship Deutschland early in the Second
World War in order to minimize the embarrassment that Germany would suffer if it were sunk,
to contemporary fears that the high cost of B-2 stealth bombers will make leaders reluctant to
send them into harm’s way.
31 For further discussion of these concepts, see Michael Desch, “The Keys that Lock Up the World:
Identifying American Interests in the Periphery,” International Security, Vol. 14, No. 1 (Summer
1989): 86–121.
32 It is hardly necessary to provide examples of weapons that are and are not difficult to acquire in
the international marketplace, but it may be worth observing that when facilities for producing
weapons of mass destruction are in question, threats to nuclear facilities are likely to be far more
effective than threats to attack plants for producing chemical or biological weapons.
33 See Stanislaw Andreski, “On the Peaceful Disposition of Military Dictatorships,” Journal of
Strategic Studies, Vol. 3, No. 3 (December 1980): 3–10.
34 However, if the attrition were so severe that the surviving ships were no longer able to fight effec-
tively, their extrinsic value might decline rather than rise.
THREATENING WHAT THE ENEMY VALUES 141
35 This is the central argument of Pape’s Bombing to Win, although Pape submits that threats of
nuclear destruction are sufficiently severe to outweigh even truly vital interests. For further dis-
cussion, see Mueller, “Strategies of Coercion.”
36 Even more generally, the higher the stakes in a confrontation, the harder it will be to make an
enemy back down regardless of the strategy that is employed. However, denial strategies tend to
be less sensitive to this tendency because it is at least theoretically possible to convince the enemy
that success is beyond reach regardless of how appealing success may be.
37 For further discussion, see Karl Mueller, “Flexible Force Projection for a Dynamic World,” in
Cindy Williams, ed., Holding the Line: U.S. Defense Alternatives for the Early 21st Century
(Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 2001).
38 In reality, any sound strategy or concept of operations is by definition based on a logical plan to
achieve desired effects. It has become commonplace, however, to associate effects-based opera-
tions with concepts such as nodal targeting analysis and “rapid dominance” that promise that the
effects of multiple attacks on well-selected targets can be multiplicative rather than additive, and
some of which emphasize disrupting enemy decision-making processes rather than influencing
them.
Small Nations and Asymmetric Air Power
Goals and strategies have been variously defined to further mention: the
generation of strategic, operational and tactical level surprise; achieve-
ment of psychological impact; pursuit of the collapse of state-based
authority structures; use of weapons that differ significantly from the
opponent’s mode of operations, and application of innovative means that
an opponent cannot match in kind.3
Most nations, large and small, have accepted asymmetric warfare and
144 SMALL NATIONS AND ASYMMETRIC AIR POWER
These were tactics that are not only accepted by historians of modern
western liberal democracies, but celebrated as the more lateral, asymmetric
and daring acts of war. These tactics provided a ‘point of difference’ and
at least momentarily gave leverage or advantage to the protagonist against
otherwise relatively balanced (symmetrical) forces. Such examples of
asymmetric warfare are an inherent aspect of the manoeuvrist approach.
They are to be expected as the sorts of outside-the-box activities that any
warrior might rise to, especially against an ascendant enemy. However, in
modern times, when sub-national groups utilise the same tactics –
posting mail bombs and carrying out suicide bombings – they are
labelled ‘terrorists’. The difference surely lies in the targeting.
Targets and tactics are what actually distinguish the ‘terrorist’ from the
‘asymmetric warrior’ within the otherwise perfectly acceptable ‘conven-
tion’ of asymmetric warfare. These include killing civilians; hostage
taking; disinformation attacks; biological, chemical and radiological
threats and so on. It is in these areas that terrorist operations cross, or at
least blur, the boundaries between criminal acts and acts of war.
Terrorism generally aims to produce and capitalise ‘terror’ amongst
civilians. Thus, at least in the West, terrorism can be distinguished as
involving attacks ‘prosecuted with no regard to ethical, legal and moral
restraints as would normally be applied by a liberal western democratic
nation’.4
With the modern economic imperatives facing small nations (and all
nations for that matter), custodians of air power are challenged to extract
maximum potential out of minimum inventory. The question is raised as
to whether the traditional preoccupation with ‘fielded’ forces is the best
method for resolving essentially political conflict.
Air power is the product of aerospace capability and air strategy. The
‘capability’ factor is somewhat more a constant than a variable for many
146 SMALL NATIONS AND ASYMMETRIC AIR POWER
This paper is about asymmetric warfare strategy for small nation air
power. It is about seeking viable alternatives to conventional air strike
strategy – alternatives within the means of small nations. It is about
seeking a strategy for the application of air power which might directly
access the source of conflict rather than its symptoms. It is about the
prospect of small nation strategic bombing.
Central to the large coalition strike paradigm is the potential of air power
to simply overwhelm at the national level. If there is a single set of con-
cepts which dominates current superpower strategic bombing doctrine it
is: high mass, high speed, high tech, high tempo and high sustainability;
all brought together in parallel to achieve the unconditional surrender of
an enemy through the single-handed application of air power. John
Warden’s ‘Five Ring’ strategic targeting model of Gulf War fame is a case
in point.6 Such approaches pursue ‘strategic paralysis’ – the large-scale
destruction of critical functionality within the enemy nation through the
felling of entire sub-systems.
intensive and well beyond the means of small nations and small coali-
tions. More than 2000 combat aircraft took part in the Gulf War
Coalition. Seventy percent of nations currently holding some form of air
strike capability would struggle to muster more than 100 operational
bombers on a good day.7 The bombing rate in large coalition campaigns
across World War II, the Vietnam War and the Gulf War averaged more
than 44 000 tons per month.8 Small air power nations simply cannot
wage this kind of air war or hope to ‘strategically paralyse’.
The real question for small nations is not how America might wage air
war, but how Peru and Ecuador might better have fought their last, and
how South Africa or Finland might best prepare for their next.11
The potential for small nations with limited resources to have such influ-
ence is the basic question. This definition of ‘strategic air strike’ will be
useful. There will be no attempt to define ‘small nations’ however – they
know who they are.
Proposition One:
Limited War Need Not Seek Unconditional Surrender
Limited war is fought for limited objectives. It is seldom fought (espe-
cially by a defender) for the annihilation of the other party. The sorts of
limited policy objectives that could result in armed conflict for small
nations include:
SMALL NATIONS AND ASYMMETRIC AIR POWER 149
The final solution in the Iran-Iraq war (1980–88) grew out of a hesita-
tion or temporary cease-fire. Surrender was not on the agenda for either
nation; but offensive action produced a pause for consideration of
options which eventually grew into terms for peace.
To amplify this expectation there are certain natural advantages for small
nations holding purely defensive postures. According to Liddell Hart:
Proposition Two:
The Ultimate Target is the Supreme Decision-Making Body
The mind of the enemy and the will of his leaders is a target of
far more importance than the bodies of his troops.21
Student of Mao Tse-tung
Air power removed the fixation with the battlefield and took war to
wherever it might otherwise be fought. The truly subordinate nature of
military decision-makers to the political decision-maker was realised.
‘War is merely the continuation of policy by other means’.22 ‘(W)ar is
only a branch of political activity … it is in no sense autonomous’.23
Surrender of a nation’s military leader was only ever pursued for the con-
sequences it held on the resolve of opposing supreme decision makers.
With the advent of air power, and the choice thus presented to overfly
rather than overwhelm military forces, the possibility arose that the ulti-
mate subject of war could be more directly influenced; not by destroying
the military, but by destroying other targets which also had great worth
to the political leadership. The ultimate strategic target became accessible
by means other than the fate of their representative armies.
The relationship between political and military minds is not always par-
ticularly well articulated. Political and military objectives are different
but not separate.24 There is no discrete switch-over between political
targeting and military targeting in terms of strategic outcomes. The
SMALL NATIONS AND ASYMMETRIC AIR POWER 153
transition is gradual and continuous with any one strike having both
political and military elements to its consequences. Figure 2 illustrates
the point.
At the highest orders, strategic air power has direct access to the political
outcome. The process is quintessentially coercive and the actual destruc-
tion of enemy forces becomes unnecessary. Real pressure is brought to
bear on the authorities who actually create and hold the policy under
contest. The key enemy decision-makers and their perceptions justly
become the direct focus of operations. In essence, the higher the order of
strategic strike, the more immediate the political effect and the less rele-
vant the military effect.
The essential point here is that the supreme decision-making body is the
ultimate subject of war. Supreme decision-making bodies make the
policy over which war is fought, and they make the decisions by which
war is discontinued. Any means which provides access to the supreme
decision-making body’s opinion, behaviour or resolve regarding its objec-
tives, has the potential to solve crisis (or favourably change its form)
without the conventional clash of military on military.
Proposition Three:
The Root of Air Power Success is Joint Strategy
Strategic air strike need not be judged on its potential to be unilaterally
decisive in war. There is no obligation for small nations to attempt air
power’s solo application, nor to criticise air power when such promise is
not offered.
Air power primacy – whether ‘war can be won by air power alone’27 – is
a significant matter of debate in the US, with flow-on effects to the rest
of the world. After Operation Desert Storm, advocates like General
McPeak claimed that the campaign represented ‘the first time in history
that a field army has been defeated by air power’.28 In contrast, the foyer
of the Joint Staff area inside the Pentagon River Entrance carries a large
plaque which states:
Air power does not win wars alone, but in concert it can contribute a sig-
nificant influence to the overall outcome. The strategic air offensive may
be contributory or leading in a joint military campaign, but doctrine for
the independence and decisiveness of any one national power element in
a conflict denies the true joint nature of influence.
The success of air power for small nations – and arguably for large – is
dependent on joint coordination. This is true at two levels: the opera-
tional level through joint coordination with other Services, and the
strategic level through joint coordination with other national power ele-
ments.
In the military team, air power combines with the efforts of land and sea
power to produce a synergistic effect directed at the minds of military
decision-makers. Even in independent air operations it is recognised ‘that
independent operations of one service are seldom, and if successful never,
irrelevant to the other services’.30 The tactic of coordinating air interdic-
tion with land force attack to simultaneously raise the enemy’s logistics
demands while reducing supply is a good demonstration of joint Service
synergy. Military pressure is a product of the cumulative effects of all
military arms. As Wrigley wrote:
Neither a navy nor an army nor an air force (is) going to win a
great war by (its) own unaided efforts. We must seek out the best
methods of utilising the special attributes; how best, for instance,
to combine the mobility of a navy with the resisting power of an
army and the striking power of an air force.31
The greater focus of this paper is on the potential of air strike at the
SMALL NATIONS AND ASYMMETRIC AIR POWER 157
The role of strategic air power in the successes of the past campaigns,
despite the claims of the zealots, is due to the combined effects at both
the operational and strategic levels of war. In Bosnia, it was the combined
effects of bombing, the consequent inability to move troops, the
increasing success rate of enemy Croat and Muslim military operations
against the Serbs, the enduring effects of the politically orchestrated
supply stoppage, and strong diplomatic pressure which all culminated in
the mind change of Bosnian Serb decision-makers.33
In Operation Allied Force, it was factors like oil trade sanctions, the pub-
licly waning support from Milosevic’s deputy Vuk Draskovic, the West’s
diplomatic victory in keeping Russia out of the war, and threats of
ground invasion by NATO leaders (in particular British Prime Minister
Tony Blair) which all cumulatively and critically influenced Milosevic’s
thinking.
158 SMALL NATIONS AND ASYMMETRIC AIR POWER
Notwithstanding the above, there are models that have a useful level of
universality in explaining cause and effect in human issues. In particular
‘cost-benefit analysis’ (or ‘decision calculus’) provides a useful basis for
planning. It is the process at the heart of rational human decision-
making, even across cultures. Parties tend to do things from which they
stand to profit and avoid things which cause loss or pain.37 The mani-
pulation of another’s profit and loss considerations can be used, there-
fore, to manipulate behaviour. In the peacetime international arena,
nations pursue their political objectives for some form of profit (moral,
economic, territorial or otherwise). During conflict, in rational cost-
benefit terms, the attacker will be expected to relinquish his objectives if
their pursuit becomes too expensive. As Clausewitz wrote:
A = Bp(B) - Cp(C)
where:
A = value of continued aggression
B = potential benefits of aggression
p(B) = probability of attaining benefits by continued
aggression
C = potential costs of aggression
p(C) = probability of suffering costs
Pure diplomacy and pure force present two distinctive approaches to the
handling of international conflict. Schelling, however, speculated on a
function of military power which combines both force and bargain; both
bullets and words. He recognised the powerful ability of force to hurt as
a form of bargaining collateral. Schelling distinguished between ‘brute
force’ and ‘coercive force’. His ‘brute force’ involved physically preventing
certain behaviour in the opponent, normally by destroying something to
remove an option. ‘Coercive force’, by subtle contrast, involved hurting
or punishing an adversary in such a way as to have him change behaviour
to avoid further pain.42 ‘Brute force’ corresponds to what is now more
commonly referred to as ‘denial’ – the reduction or elimination of the
enemy’s ability to resist.43 ‘Coercion’, on the other hand, centres on
psychological effect. Figure 3 summarises the distinction.
There are many strategies for coercion, but most can be accommodated
into four conceptual categories47: denial, punishment, risk and
decapitation. There is no intention to review those categories in detail
here.48 However, in essence, denial is as detailed above. It is the coercive
‘side-effect’ of successful brute force military-on-military operations.
Gulf War attacks on fielded armour in Kuwaiti theatre of operations ‘kill
boxes’ represented a form of denial. It simply amounted to the removal
of fighting pieces from the board for Saddam Hussein, but ultimately the
high rate of attrition would have some bearing on the attitude and
resolve of the leader for further conflict.
Risk strategies offer a great deal of scope for small nation air power. They
permit, and in fact prefer, the measured rather than continuous and
intense use of strike; they can be paced for maximal integration with
other instruments of influence and coercion; and they provide for some
control over escalation.
targets, and the strategy is aimed most directly at the psychology of the
ultimate leader.
in which the protagonists did not at least hold their own; namely, the
Contras in Nicaragua and the rebels in the Malayan Emergency. In con-
trast, applications of unconventional warfare in Korea, Vietnam and
Northern Ireland remain widely heralded as undefeated by the much
more substantial conventional military forces which have opposed them.
One is tempted to conclude that ‘the span of military techniques covered
by the term “revolutionary” warfare may actually represent a more effec-
tive way of waging war than operations by organised forces’.54
Richard Simpkin suggests that the various forms of modern land warfare,
including revolutionary warfare and manoeuvre warfare can be arranged
on a continuum. At the right of the continuum lie mass armies; at the
left, terrorists. Small-force manoeuvre warfare and guerrilla warfare sit
right and left respectively, but adjacent to each other on the same con-
tinuum.55
When the stakes are high the fixation with convention is even more
uncanny. While the non-conventional methods of warfare are more
legally risky, when the very survival of one’s small nation is at stake, any
obsession with convention must be checked for common sense. Is it
better to have lost a fair war, or to have won by exploiting all available
options including the unconventional if necessary? The guerrillas of
North Vietnam, Cuba and Algeria would be quick to provide an answer.
The use of air power in the style of guerrilla warfare would, of course,
demand numerous other considerations. Such risks as similar enemy
operations in reprisal, damage to domestic support and the chance of
adverse third party response would need case-by-case assessment.
However, none of these variables should automatically be considered to
rule out less conventional options. Circumstances, as well as ‘rules’, figure
in acceptability. With regards to international opinion, for example, if the
invading nation were one already widely condemned, and already facing
international sanctions, then the world’s response to a small nation’s
unorthodox counter-action may be quite sympathetic. While ‘going non-
conventional’ might be expected to attract scorn, it may not so easily
divert it. The victim or underdog seems to enjoy some licence when it
170 SMALL NATIONS AND ASYMMETRIC AIR POWER
In summary, the quest for alternative strategy for small nation strike
should include consideration of other asymmetric warfare precedent.
This paper does not suggest that revolutionary warfare theory might offer
a wholesale solution to the quest. No one approach can suit all circum-
stances. This paper does suggest that the conventional employment of
force against military targets need not always be considered the only
option, especially when the stakes involve defence for national survival.
We must ask: ‘Do other options exist?’ and ‘How little adjustment in
thinking would be necessary to establish and maintain non-conventional
options in reserve?’ Open-minded, small air power strategists should
allow themselves to be influenced by successful non-conventional example.
Spot Bombing
An understanding of the perspectives, constraints and precedents out-
lined in this paper – along with a basic understanding of air power doc-
trine and history – forms an adequate basis for speculation on possibili-
ties for alternative small nation air strike strategy.
nation air power for the direct influence of politicians rather than
militaries. It would not necessarily replace conventional brute force
applications. It would merely provide another option in the small nation
repertoire for influence. It would not call for a change in technical capa-
bility; just a change in planning orientation. There is no historical pre-
cedent to speak of, but Operations Babylon, El Dorado Canyon68 and
Deliberate Force69 may offer some guidance.
leave a large aggressor with the initiative, and risk a war of attrition that
small nations can least afford.
Asymmetric warfare and spot bombing are about seeking enemy weakness
rather than strengths. Liddell Hart identifies as the crux of all conflict the
need to:
(p)ick out your opponent’s weak spot and hit him there with all
possible force, whilst at the same time guarding against the risk
that he may knock you out instead.72
Bombing has evoked moral and legal debate since its earliest applica-
tion.76 Yet the 1977 Additional Protocols to the Geneva Conventions
represent the first substantial attempt at its control.
Attacks are legitimate against: civilians who take direct part in hostilities;
production, storage, transportation and communication facilities with
any military utility; economic targets that indirectly support operations;
and any object normally dedicated to civilian purposes which is used for
military purposes.81
The search for better small nation air strike application suggests that
small nations must exploit every possible advantage in the application of
their air power, that small nations must target innovatively and to the
limits of acceptability, and that blind or unquestioning adherence to con-
ventions can produce unnecessary handicaps. These directions do not
necessarily challenge LOAC. LOAC is not black and white. It is rather
176 SMALL NATIONS AND ASYMMETRIC AIR POWER
The challenge for the spot bombing strategist – for both moral and polit-
ical reasons – is to seek targets that appropriately stimulate the desired
cost-benefit calculations and political reactions, without crossing the
line. Spot bombing demands lateral thought and risk taking, but ‘(t)he
right to adopt means of defeating the enemy is not unlimited’.86
radio silence amid heavy electronic countermeasures, and from 200 feet
and 540 miles per hour over populated areas in the dead of night.
A credible level of damage is required for impact. Failure in this area risks
sending a negative message of vacillation or lack of commitment. In
Operation El Dorado Canyon, significant damage was achieved to air
defence (SAM) systems, buildings, runways and aircraft on the ground.
Collateral damage did occur but this was minimised through very restric-
tive rules of engagement.
While brute force operations tend to speak for themselves, higher orders
of strategy benefit by effective dialogue. Concurrent diplomacy was a
strong feature of Operation Deliberate Force. Ongoing talks were also a
significant player in the bombing of North Korea and Vietnam. Indeed,
bombing served the aim of the talks more than talking enhanced the suc-
cess of the bombing.
The grand strategist must not only produce incentives for concession,
but work to dissolve the disincentives. Diplomacy, economics and poli-
tics are involved. Parallel high-level functions must be coordinated in the
air campaign to complete the coercion formula.
air strike which is not coercive in nature but deserves special mention.
Operation Babylon demonstrated high order political intervention
through brute force. It demonstrated the complete removal of a critical
enemy option as opposed to the coercion of the enemy to not exercise
that option. The Iraqi acquisition of nuclear weapons was delayed
indefinitely and the context of Middle Eastern politics was altered for at
least the next decade. Political objectives were achieved without war, and
without deferring to enemy decision-makers.
Conclusion
This paper has been about the feasibility of strategic air strike for small
nations. By default – by seeking strategy for small nations of asymmetric
means with larger foe – it has also been about asymmetric air power. It
180 SMALL NATIONS AND ASYMMETRIC AIR POWER
has notably not been about countering asymmetric attack. It has been
about adopting asymmetric attack.
The challenge this paper puts to small nations is to raise the strategic order
of air strike operations – to prepare not just for the direct and indirect
support of fielded battle but also for the exploitation of opportunity to
more directly influence the ultimate strategic aims in conflict.
small nation air strike can be contemplated. Small nations cannot realis-
tically generate and sustain the mass, tempo and simultaneity in air strike
which typifies large nation air strike methodologies. In this respect, such
methodologies and the plethora of doctrine and musings which surround
them are misleading to small nations.
should be considered feasible for small nations. This paper has been
intended to encourage a strategic orientation to air strike in those who
have so far considered its conduct exclusive to superpowers or large
nation coalitions.
The added bonus for small nations contemplating strategic air strike is
that the process forces them to also examine their own vulnerabilities to
asymmetric operations. One is encouraged to consider factors such as the
strength of one’s own national economy; the identity and likely physical
and psychological accessibility of the supreme decision-making body; the
depth of organic supporting industry; the likely reliability of specific
third parties; the likely resilience and vulnerabilities of the national
population under stress; and the accessibility of (and redundancy levels
in) financial, communications and other civil infrastructures, to name a
few. Such concerns are highly relevant in the context of current events
regarding the most unethical and illegal branch of asymmetric warfare –
terrorism.
The challenge for small nations is to gear up to apply air power where its
effects on the overall conflict are most significant – raising the strategic
order of application. Strategic air power is about improving strategy to
maximise the value of existing capability. While there may be preferred
hardware and infrastructural co-requisites, adopting the strategy is not as
much about capability, as planning orientation. It is about thinking
harder rather than working harder; about treating diseases rather than
symptoms.
The secondary message of this paper is that small nations are not neces-
sarily well served by the abundance of large nation air power doctrine.
There is a general need for small nations to look critically at such doc-
trine and ask more searching questions about their own maximum
potential with modest means. There is too little independent thought
and original material being generated by small nations attending to their
own particular circumstances.
Creative strategy is required. There is little precedent for small nation air
strike outside of major alliances and coalitions. But air power is young.
There is a great deal more to look forward to than back on. Therefore,
SMALL NATIONS AND ASYMMETRIC AIR POWER 183
with due respect to history, we should make it our servant rather than our
master. With a history of larger partners, small nations and small coali-
tions have simply not had the need or opportunity to think strategically
about air strike. But the post-Cold War world is an uncertain place, char-
acterised more by a large number of small nation wars than the small
number of large nation wars in our past. This challenge may call for more
creative foresight than historical analysis. It was General Heinz
Guderian’s creativity and innovation which led to Blitzkreig,91 not some
slavish adherence to historical precedent. It was Colonel John Warden’s
ingeniously fresh combination of ideas which contributed to Gulf War
victory, not blind reverence to extant doctrine. We celebrate these
strategic architects for creating precedent, not copying it.
NOTES
1 The terrorist attacks of 11 September 2001 in which highjacked airliners were flown into the
World Trade Centre and the Pentagon in the US.
2 A definition given by Major General Tony Milton, UK, ‘Asymmetric Warfare: The British View’
(unpublished), a presentation to ‘New Zealand Defence Force Symposium 2002 – Asymmetric
Warfare: Defeating Trans-National Terrorist Campaigns’, Trentham, New Zealand, 14–15 May
2002.
3 List derived from excellent analysis by Dr Cathy Downes, ‘Addressing 21st Century Asymmetric
Conflict’ (unpublished), a presentation to ‘New Zealand Defence Force Symposium 2002’,
14–15 May 2002.
4 A definition actually applied to ‘unconventional war’ by Admiral Chris Ritchie, ‘Asymmetric
Warfare: The Australian View’ (unpublished), in a presentation to ‘New Zealand Defence Force
Symposium 2002’, 14–15 May 2002. This is written with a clear conscience as an air power
agent from a small nation with no capability or intent for the mass killing of civilians. The author
cannot speak for how the major powers that continue to harbour nuclear weapons (and there-
fore abstain from signing the 1977 Additional Protocols to the Geneva Conventions protecting
civilians) rationalise their situations.
5 Richard P. Hallion, Precision Guided Munitions and the New Era of Warfare, APSC Paper No. 53,
Air Power Studies Centre, Canberra, April 1997, p. 4.
6 Applied in the Gulf War, the five concentric circles depict a hierarchy of sub-systems within a
184 SMALL NATIONS AND ASYMMETRIC AIR POWER
national system. The model suggests a means of prioritising targets by identifying generic cen-
tres of gravity for an enemy’s sustainment of a national war effort. In priority order these include:
leadership, system essentials, infrastructure, population and fielded forces. However, with suffi-
cient air power, target sets can be attacked in parallel rather than in series. See Shaun Clarke,
Strategy, Air Strike and Small Nations, Air Power Studies Centre, Canberra, 1999, p. 76.
7 Derived from statistics in: ibid., pp. 80-83.
8 A figure derived from statistics in Reaching Globally, Reaching Powerfully: The United States Air
Force in the Gulf War, A Department of the Air Force Report, September 1991, p. 29. As cited
in Waters, Gulf Lesson One, p. 163.
9 Although the census is somewhat general. These figures include all types of bombers, fighters,
anti-shipping and anti-submarine aircraft – any platform with the slightest capability to destroy
a surface target. See Clarke, Strategy, Air Strike and Small Nations, pp. 187–190.
10 While there is no doubt that air doctrine has a measure of universal applicability at the tactical
level, the limited means of small nations become critically discriminating at the strategic cam-
paign level.
11 With 135 and 122 platforms respectively.
12 As cited in Michael Knight, Strategic Offensive Air Operations, Brassey’s (UK) Ltd, 1989, p. 1.
13 Strategic Aerospace Warfare Study Panel (SAWS), Aerospace Power for the 21st Century: A Theory
to Fly By, (unpublished), Maxwell Air Force Base, Alabama, 4 October 1996, p. iv.
14 M.J. Armitage and R.A. Mason, Air Power in the Nuclear Age: 1945–84, Macmillan Press,
London, 1983, p. 44.
15 Robert A. Pape, Bombing to Win, Cornell University Press, New York, 1996, p. 254.
16 Leon V. Sigal, Fighting to a Finish: The Politics of War Termination in the United States and Japan,
1945, Cornell University Press, Ithaca, 1988. As cited in Pape, Bombing to Win, p. 88.
17 Carl von Clausewitz, On War, translated and edited by Michael Howard and Peter Paret,
Princeton University Press, New Jersey, USA, 1984, p. 91.
18 B.H. Liddell Hart, Thoughts on War, Faber & Faber, London, 1944, p. 47.
19 Clausewitz, On War, p. 81.
20 Sun Tzu, The Art of War, Shambala, Boston, 1988, p. 67.
21 As described by a student regarding the target of Mao Tse-tung’s ‘indirect approach’. Brigadier
General S.B. Griffith II in his ‘Introduction’ to Mao Tse-tung and Che Guevara, Guerrilla
Warfare, Cassell, London, 1961, p. 20.
22 Clausewitz, On War, p. 87.
23 ibid., p. 605.
24 B.H. Liddell Hart, Strategy, 2nd rev. edn, Frederick A. Praegar Inc., New York, 1967, p. 351.
25 And what is more, through such high strategic order action a relatively small and poorly
resourced force (Argentina) would have prevailed over the much greater one.
26 John A. Tirpak, ‘Short’s View of The Air Campaign’, Air Force Magazine, September 1999.
27 A claim made by John Keegan regarding Operations Allied Force in ‘Please Mr Blair, Never Take
Such A Risk Again’, Daily Telegraph, 6 June 1999.
28 General Merrill A. McPeak, Selected Works 1990–1994, Air University Press, Maxwell Air Force
Base, Alabama, August 1995, p. 18.
29 The subtitle of the plaque is ‘Operation Desert Storm: 24–28 February 1991’. Yet this period
acknowledges just five days of a 42-day campaign. In ‘Air Force Basic Doctrine’, a presentation
by Lieutenant Colonel Vinnie Farrell, 613th Air Operations Squadron , at the ‘Pacific Rim Air
Doctrine Symposium’, Guam, 04–07 April 2000.
30 Sir Charles Webster and Noble Frankland, History of the Second World War: The Strategic Air
SMALL NATIONS AND ASYMMETRIC AIR POWER 185
Offensive against Germany 1939–1945, Vol II, Her Majesty’s Stationery Office, London, 1961,
p. 9.
31 Air Vice-Marshal H.N. Wrigley, The Decisive Factor: Air Power Doctrine, (edited by Alan
Stephens and Brendan O’Loghlin), Australian Government Publishing Service Press, Canberra,
1990. pp. 12–13.
32 ibid., p. 13.
33 Andrew Lambert, ‘Coercion and Air Power’, Air Clues, Vol. 50, No. 12, December 1996, p. 449.
34 Thomas C. Schelling, Arms and Influence, Yale University Press, New Haven, 1966, p. vi.
35 Mechanisms include the likes of popular revolt, the prospect of future loss, leadership change
and battlefield breakthrough. Air strike applied to appropriate targets produces these effects or
‘mechanisms’. These in turn translate to desired political level changes. Pape, Bombing to Win, p.
328.
36 In World War II, Japan and Germany faced very similar strategic bombing pressure. Japan sur-
rendered; Germany did not. Any given air strike campaign will produce different outcomes
dependent on the specific context of the application.
37 Even ‘suicide terrorism’ is not irrational in this sense, with sacrifice or martyrdom considered
‘profitable’.
38 Clausewitz, On War, p. 92.
39 This is an equation from Pape, with a semantic modification that ‘aggression’ replaces ‘resistance’
so as to solely depict the perspective of a small defensive nation under attack. Pape, Bombing to
Win, pp. 15–16.
40 Schelling, Arms and Influence, p. 1.
41 ibid.
42 ibid., pp. 2–6.
43 Major Scott Walker, ‘The Unified Field Theory of Coercive Airpower’, Airpower Journal,
Summer 1997, p. 73.
44 Lambert, ‘Coercion and Air Power’, p. 445.
45 ibid., p. 446.
46 Walker, ‘The Unified Field Theory of Coercive Airpower’, p. 71.
47 Recently collated into a taxonomy, Pape, Bombing to Win, p. 328.
48 For full treatment with specific attention to small nations, see Clarke, Strategy, Air Strike and
Small Nations, pp. 115–134.
49 John A. Tirpak, ‘Short’s View of The Air Campaign’, 1999.
50 Walker, ‘The Unified Field Theory of Coercive Airpower’, p. 73.
51 ibid., p. 74.
52 ibid.
53 Forty-four leadership and 156 command and control facilities including palaces, command
bunkers and telecommunications nodes were attacked from the air. Pape, Bombing to Win, pp.
80, 82. Saddam Hussein is said to have been woefully unaware of the state of his troops for much
of the conflict.
54 Richard E. Simpkin, Race to the Swift: Thoughts on Twenty-First Century Warfare, Brassey’s Future
Warfare Series Volume I, Brassey’s, London, 1985, p. 313.
55 ibid., p. 311.
56 Wylie, J.C., Military Strategy: A General Theory of Power Control, Rutgers University Press, New
Brunswick, New Jersey, 1967, p. 63.
57 Vo Nguyen Giap, People’s War People’s Army, Foreign Languages Publishing House, Hanoi, 1961,
p. 21. As cited in ibid., p. 61.
186 SMALL NATIONS AND ASYMMETRIC AIR POWER
58 ‘Non-conventional’ here refers to any method (e.g. guerrilla warfare) that represents an alterna-
tive to ‘conventional’ warfare. This group includes the subset of ‘unconventional’ which specifi-
cally covers terrorism.
59 Patterns of Global Terrorism 1996, United States Department of State, April 1997, p. iv.
60 ibid., p. iii.
61 Internet, http://cain.ulst.ac.uk/events/peace/ pp9398.htm, and
http://cain.ulst.ac.uk/events/peace/ pp9899.htm, 17 May 2002.
62 Samuel B. Griffith (trans), Mao Tse-Tung on Guerrilla Warfare, Praeger, 1961, p. 52. As cited in
Wylie, Military Strategy, p. 60.
63 Ross Babbage, A Coast Too Long: Defending Australia Beyond the 1990s, Allen & Unwin, Sydney,
Australia, 1990, pp. 100–124.
64 Simpkin, Race to the Swift, p. 318.
65 Wylie, Military Strategy, p. 37.
66 Operation Babylon was Israel’s aerial destruction of the Osirak nuclear reactor near Baghdad,
Iraq in 1981. It was a successful mission designed to set back Iraq’s attempts to develop an atom-
ic weapon.
67 For brief but useful treatment of the anticipatory self-defence issue see K.A. Kyriakides, ‘Air
Power and International Air Law’ in Stuart Peach (ed.), Perspectives on Air Power: Air Power In
Its Wider Context, Defence Studies (RAF), Joint Services Command Staff College Bracknell,
1998, pp. 117–120.
68 Operation El Dorado Canyon was the 1986 American air strike on Libya in response to alleged
state sponsored terrorism under the rule of the leader, Colonel Qaddafi.
69 Operation Deliberate Force over Bosnia was the successful 11 day NATO air offensive against
Bosnian Serbs aimed at stopping attacks on ‘Safe Areas’ occupied mainly by Bosnian Muslims.
70 For example, avoiding high-risk penetration environments where EW, SEAD and self protection
systems are lacking.
71 Lambert, ‘Coercion and Air Power’, p. 446.
72 B.H. Liddell Hart, Thoughts on War, p. 179.
73 As cited in Babbage, A Coast Too Long, p. 61.
74 ‘Denial’ in this context does not refer to the coercion strategy, but simply refers a national secu-
rity strategy for a protective shield (in contrast to forward defence options) designed to prevent
an enemy reaching Australia’s shores. Paul Dibb, Review of Australia’s Defence Capabilities, report
to the Minister of Defence, Australian Government Publishing Service, Canberra, 1986, p. 35.
75 W.B. Pritchett, The Dibb Report: Strategy and Force Structure, a paper presented to the Australian
Fabian Society Conference on Australian Defence, Melbourne, 2 August 1986, p. 8. As cited in
Babbage, A Coast Too Long, p. 123, footnote 27.
76 Even the very first series of raids by the Italian Gavotti in 1911 were condemned by the Turks
who claimed damage to a field hospital. Saundby, R., Air Bombardment: The Story of its
Development, Chatto & Windus, London, 1961, p. 7.
77 For example, the civilian population shall not be the subject of attack; military operations shall
only take place against military objectives. Protocols Additional to the Geneva Conventions of
12 August 1949, International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC), Geneva, 1977, art 48 and
51(1).
78 That is, non-combatants, civilian and specially protected objects as defined in law of armed con-
flict. . Australian Defence Force Publication 37 (ADFP 37): Law of Armed Conflict, first edn, 1996,
p. 5–3, para. 509.
79 ibid., p. 2–2, para. 208.
SMALL NATIONS AND ASYMMETRIC AIR POWER 187
The first is that states can no longer rationally endorse a national defence
strategy predicated on an essentially defensive outlook. That approach
not only concedes the initiative to an aggressor, but also allows him to
prepare and grow strong in his own time. ‘Homeland Defence’ will be a
credible catch-phrase only when it incorporates the commitment and the
military capabilities to go out and destroy the enemy, wherever his bases
and strength may be. Waiting for something to happen is not an option.
That conclusion has clear implications for force-structuring.
It might seem curious that although this model has become increasingly
obvious over the past ten years, it still has not been fully embraced by
many military professionals and government decision-makers. Taxpayers
whose contributions continue to subsidise outdated defence force struc-
tures, systems and ideas have every right to feel aggrieved at the way in
which their money has been misused and, consequently, their security
compromised.
The basic problem in most, if not all, Western nations has been poorly
informed politicians, who decide how defence budgets will be disbursed,
and who therefore shape force structures and capabilities, too often for
the worse; and insular single-services which continue to cleave to legacy
systems and obsolescent concepts of operations at the expense of 21st
century capabilities.
The fact is, ‘mass’ and ‘closing with the enemy’ are obsolete concepts
within advanced defence organisations, having been replaced by ‘irre-
sistible knowledge’, which in turn is translated into lethal force by elusive
platforms (primarily airborne, and of which stealth is the exemplar) and
stand-off precision weapons.
The key to dominating any battlespace with aerospace power is the sym-
biotic relationship between the weapons that hit the targets and the ideas
192 ASYMMETRIC ADVANTAGE AND HOMELAND DEFENCE
Impressive doctrinal and technical progress has been made in the five
years since the USAF’s then-chief of staff General Ronald Fogleman
stated that ‘in the near future we will be able to find, fix, track and target
– in real-time – anything of consequence that moves or is located on the
face of the earth’ (an assessment which was subsequently endorsed by his
successor, General Michael E. Ryan).7 A classic illustration of the kind of
capability Fogleman was identifying occurred during the war against
terrorism in Afghanistan, in an operation that led to the death of Osama
bin Laden’s senior military commander, Mohammad Atef.
Eventually, just after midnight on the second day, the convoy arrived at
a building where a high-level meeting appeared to be in progress.
Pictures of a crowded car park and frantic activity were transmitted back
to Florida by a Predator circling overhead but unheard. Assessing that the
time was now right, Central Command called in three USAF F-15s
armed with 1200 kg PGMs. The fighters each dropped one 1200-kg
laser-guided bomb onto the building, scoring direct hits; simultaneously,
the Predator fired two Hellfire missiles into the car park. Mohammad
Atef was among the 100 or so dead, and General Fogleman’s credibility
was enhanced.
At least the British Army seems to have grasped the new calculus.
Addressing a symposium on indirect battlefield effects in January, the
assistant chief of the general staff, Major General Richard Dannatt, told
delegates, ‘One must always be wary of absolutes, but perhaps air
maneuver really does offer the most exciting development in emerging
military capability since 1945 … The land component must therefore
move swiftly to understand how the entire battlespace – not just the
ground environment – can be exploited; it must become second nature’.11
While the indigenous armies played a minor, albeit necessary, role in the
Balkans, they were critical in Afghanistan. The question was one of how
to kill or force the surrender of substantial numbers of seemingly
intractable Taliban and Al Qaeda terrorists. Frequently the Americans
were confronted by besieged fortress-cities (Mazar-i-Sharif, Herat,
Kabul, Kunduz, Kandahar) whose enemy garrisons could have been
destroyed either by bombing, which would have caused the death of
non-combatants at the hands of Western air power, or by massed warfare
between the local armies, which was highly likely to involve heavy casu-
alties, massacres and war crimes. In the event precision bombing was
more effective against urban targets than perhaps ever before, but on
most occasions indigenous ground forces were required to clean-up
pockets of resistance.
The subject is nothing if not sensitive, raising the dreadful moral ques-
tion of the relative weighting placed on indigenous and (in this case)
American lives. On the other hand, the moral question would be no less
challenging if a society which possessed the means to fight with an over-
196 ASYMMETRIC ADVANTAGE AND HOMELAND DEFENCE
Urban warfare represents the last major frontier for the application of
decisive aerospace power, and even there important progress has been
made since the Russians’ reprehensible and inept misuse of firepower
during their air assault on the city of Grozny in the late-1990s.
Significant developments include the exploitation by land forces of tech-
nologies that look around corners and through walls, and the use of sol-
diers to designate targets for strike aircraft. Given the emphasis now
placed on directly targeting an enemy regime’s leadership – their assets,
their interests, their values, their lives – the Israeli Air Force’s employ-
ment of attack helicopters and fast jets in urban environments is note-
worthy.19 So too is the example of the American air offensive against the
Taliban stronghold of Kandahar, which fell following two months of dis-
crete strikes against pin-point targets, including Mullah Mohammad
Omar’s palace and other residences used by the Taliban hierarchy.
According to an eyewitness report, ‘a trip around the city … indicated
that, for the most part, the bombs hit their targets and there were
relatively few civilian injuries’.20 The death of the Taliban’s once-feared
intelligence chief Qari Ahmadullah, killed when a house in which he was
hiding was singled-out by American jets in late December, provided
another compelling demonstration.21
Perhaps the main obstacle to the full development of new era warfare is
the dogmatic attachment of many soldiers to the mantra of ‘seize and
hold ground’, a doctrine which has been an article of faith in armies for
thousands of years. There is no doubt that the imperative to take
territory almost as an end in itself was valid for the majority of pre-21st
century conflicts, and the concept retains considerable force today. But it
is no longer necessarily the key to success. Two issues are paramount.
that are supporting the air operation by revealing the location of the
enemy or forcing it into the open’, a development acknowledged by
General Scales as representing ‘a tectonic shift in the nature of how
ground forces fight’.22
An equally revealing insight into culture and attitude comes from the
Australian Army, widely regarded as being among the best in the world.
Although purpose-designed attack helicopters have existed for over thirty
200 ASYMMETRIC ADVANTAGE AND HOMELAND DEFENCE
years, none has yet found its way into that army’s order of battle. And
when the Eurocopter Tigers now on order eventually arrive in around
2004 they will be known as ‘armed reconnaissance helicopters’, even
though some army specialists consider them to be potentially the single
‘most potent capability’ their service will have operated in its 100-year
history.26 The official description, however, suggests that the Tigers will
be regarded primarily as a supporting capability within a concept of
operations based on the traditional mass of infantry and armour.
The final aspect of land forces and 21st century homeland defence that
requires comment is peace operations, an activity which has assumed an
increasingly high profile in the past twenty years.
ADF’s air strike forces were not needed, but there should be no doubt
that the implied threat was well-understood.
The peace operations in Bosnia, Kosovo and East Timor provide a stark
contrast to America’s salutary experience in Somalia in October 1993,
when the US Army special forces that were put ashore without any pre-
ceding application of overwhelming air power suffered politically unac-
ceptable losses at the hands of recalcitrant local warlords and were com-
pelled to make a humiliating withdrawal.
Presently only the United States can fully apply the form of advanced
military power described in this paper, and very few countries possess the
skills, qualities and resources to develop the necessary capabilities within
the next twenty years. But for those that do the goal is now more achiev-
able than ever before.
For those nations other than the US that wish to transform their defence
force there are two issues of superseding importance, one related to
homeland defence and the other to technology.
202 ASYMMETRIC ADVANTAGE AND HOMELAND DEFENCE
Just as massed armies provide the symbolism for 20th century warfare, so
stealthy strike/fighters symbolise 21st century warfare. Stealth is not
unstoppable, but it does confer an enormous tactical advantage. One
authoritative independent report has concluded that the greatly reduced
radar cross-section of stealthy aircraft is so difficult to counter that ‘as
long as jet aircraft offer the most reliable option for air superiority and
ASYMMETRIC ADVANTAGE AND HOMELAND DEFENCE 203
Currently only two genuinely stealthy manned aircraft are either in or are
about to enter production, the US’s F-22 Raptor and F-35 Joint Strike
Fighter. The F-22 will be the world’s outstanding air superiority fighter
for the next twenty-five years, far surpassing any of its rivals; while the
JSF will be at least the equal of the rest, in addition to being the pre-
dominant all-purpose surface attack platform. With an indicative cost of
US$100 million, perhaps more, the F-22 is likely to be banished from
most acquisition programs. The JSF’s prospects will be discussed shortly.
As one of the handful of nations with the potential to leverage 21st cen-
tury air power, Australia serves as a useful case-study for small- to
medium-sized defence forces and the defining roles of air combat and
precision strike, both deployed and home-based.
Stovl would provide unequalled operational flexibility for both air com-
bat and strike. Fixed bases have been air power’s Achilles’ heel since
World War I, firstly because they identify the places from which opera-
tions can be mounted and the distances aircraft can penetrate; and
secondly because they are large, easily-found, high-value targets. And
more recently the Afghanistan campaign highlighted another trouble-
some dimension, related to the age of intervention, namely, the sensi-
tivities associated with any requirement to establish large, fixed, highly-
visible bases in politically uncertain states. Some thirteen such bases
were constructed to support Operation Enduring Freedom, almost all in
countries where a Western military presence can cause violent resent-
ment.33 Air-to-air refuelling provides an answer to part of the first prob-
ASYMMETRIC ADVANTAGE AND HOMELAND DEFENCE 205
lem but brings with it more expense and complexity and new
vulnerabilities. The capacity Stovl offers for operations from a vast range
of localities and platforms, including ships if necessary, redefines the
notion of flexibility.
Stovl does come at a cost, namely, a reduced payload of fuel and weapons
to offset the increased demand for engine power made by short/and or
206 ASYMMETRIC ADVANTAGE AND HOMELAND DEFENCE
vertical takeoffs and landings. And because the F-35 will utilise a
forward-mounted shaft-driven lift-fan to supplement the traditional
thrust-vectoring from the engine’s rear nozzle, it will carry around 1500
kilograms of additional weight at all times. The lift-fan will, however,
reportedly provide significant additional thrust for Stovl manoeuvres.
Wing-mounted ducts which are used for lateral control will also
contribute some thrust.
For ten years now asymmetric aerospace power has been the key to
victory in a succession of theatre-level campaigns which, when measured
against the sweep of history, have been extraordinarily quick, decisive,
and low-casualty. Those victories have been achieved against apparently
powerful conventionally-arrayed armies (Saddam Hussein), ruthless war
criminals (Milosevic), and allegedly insuperable guerillas (the Taliban).
And they have been fought day and night, in all weather, in deserts,
mountains, dense forests, caves and cities. Those facts indicate that what
ASYMMETRIC ADVANTAGE AND HOMELAND DEFENCE 207
NOTES
1 Among the more significant of these thinkers are Colonel John Warden, Colonel John Boyd,
General David Deptula, Colonel Douglas Macgregor, General Robert Scales, and Vice Admiral
Arthur Cebrowski.
2 Douglas A. Macgregor, ‘Resurrecting Transformation for the Post-Industrial Era’, in Defense
Horizons, September 2001, pp. 2, 8. See also Thomas E. Ricks, ‘Bull’s-Eye War: Pinpoint
Bombing Shifts Role of GI Joe’, in The Washington Post, 3 December 2001, p. A01; Vernon
Loeb, ‘Marines’ Mission Stirs Army Debate’, in The Washington Post, December 9, 2001, p. A32;
and Steven Lee Myers, ‘Marines Dig In but They Find Little to Battle’, in The New York Times,
December 1, 2001.
3 ‘A Test for Bush’s Military Reform Pledge? Some Decry Transfer of Reform Advocate to Army
Staff Job’, in The Washington Post, February 20, 2002, p. 13.
4 Robert L. Scales, ‘Checkmate by Operational Maneuver’, in Armed Forces Journal International,
October 2001, pp. 38–42.
5 The contrast between the US’s largely unsuccessful bombing attacks against Viet Cong tunnels
and the destruction of Taliban caves, which for many terrorists have become tombs, could
st
scarcely be more striking. See William M. Arkin, ‘In 21 Century War, 2 Cavemen Stand Out’,
in the Los Angeles Times, December 8, 2001; and ‘Battle leaves caves mute and bloodied’, in The
Australian, December 13, 2001, p. 9.
6 For authoritative accounts which include detailed targeting analyses see: for the Gulf War,
Richard P. Hallion, Storm over Iraq (Smithsonian Institution, Washington, 1992); for Bosnia,
Robert C. Owen, Deliberate Force: A Case Study in Effective Air Campaigning (AU Press, Maxwell
AFB, 2000); and for Allied Force, Benjamin S. Lambeth, Nato’s Air War for Kosovo (Rand, Santa
Monica, 2001).
7 General Ronald Fogleman, Address to the Strategic Air Warfare Study Panel, Maxwell Air Force
Base, February 1996; and General Michael E. Ryan, ‘New World Vistas: USAF Air and Space
Power for the 21st Century’ in Shaun Clarke (ed.), Testing the Limits, Air Power Studies Centre,
Fairbairn, 1998, p. 14.
208 ASYMMETRIC ADVANTAGE AND HOMELAND DEFENCE
8 See ‘Iron fist reaches out from the other side of the globe’, in The Australian, November 19,
2001, pp. 1, 8. The precise means of detecting and tracking hostile (and indeed friendly) forces
in Afghanistan is classified. For one insight into the technologies and broad approach see
William B. Scott, ‘Improved Milspace Key to Antiterrorism War’, in Aviation Week & Space
Technology, December 10, 2001, pp. 36–7.
9 United States and Nato Military Operations Against the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia, Hearing
Before the Committee on Armed Services House of Representatives, April 28, 1999.
10 Edward N. Luttwak, Book Review, ‘Lifting the Fog of War by Bill Owens with Ed Offley’, New
York Times Book Review, January 21, 2001, p. 21.
11 Quoted in ‘Apache underbid threatens Air Maneuver’, in Jane’s International Defense Review,
March 01, 2002.
12 The Washington Post, February 25, 2002, p. 21.
13 ‘Special forces act on orders to kill’, in The Australian, November 26, 2001, p. 9.
14 Cited in Thomas E. Ricks, ‘Bull’s-Eye War: Pinpoint Bombing Shifts Role of GI Joe’, in The
Washington Post, 3 December 2001, p. A01. See also Michael R. Gordon, ‘New U.S. War:
Commandos, Airstrikes and Allies on the Ground’, in The New York Times, December 29, 2001.
15 Cited in Thomas E. Ricks, ‘Rumsfeld’s Hands-On War’, in The Washington Post, December 9,
2001, p. A01.
16 Quoted in the Los Angeles Times, December 12, 2001, p. 1.
17 ‘In a Desert Outpost, Afghan War Was Won: U.S. Firepower Decimated Taliban at Tarin Kot’,
in The Washington Post, December 31, 2001, p. 1. For detail on the evolution of ‘flex targeting’
during the Kosovo air campaign, see Benjamin S. Lambeth, Nato’s Air War for Kosovo (Rand,
Santa Monica, 2001), pp. 120–136.
18 ‘How Special Ops Forces are Hunting Al Qaeda’, in U.S. News and World Report, February 25, 2002.
19 Mark Hewish, ‘David versus Goliath’, in Jane’s International Defense Review, November 2001,
pp. 24-36; Barbara Opell-Rome, ‘Israeli Gunship Crews Train for Assassination Missions’, in
Defense News, November 26-December 2, 2001, p. 30.
20 John Pomfret, ‘Kandahar Bombs Hit Their Marks: Few Civilian Deaths Evident’, in The
Washington Post, December 12, 2001, p. A01.
21 ‘Taliban Intelligence Chief Killed in Attacks’, in The New York Times, January 2, 2002.
22 Major General Robert L. Scales, quoted in ‘US programmes likely to receive increased invest-
ment because of proven roles in Afghanistan’, in Jane’s Defence Weekly, January 2, 2002.
23 Major General Robert L. Scales, ‘Checkmate by Operational Maneuver’, in Armed Forces Journal
International, October 2001, p. 42.
24 Daniel G. Dupont, ‘Skeptics and Believers: Aviation has little visibility in the new Army vision’,
in Armed Forces Journal International, March 2000, pp. 28-34.
25 See Christopher Lawson, ‘Shinseki Wants Larger, More Flexible U.S. Army’, in Defense News,
July 19, 1999, p. 18; and in the same issue Dov Zakheim, ‘20 Years Later, Commanders Still
Seek Lighter U.S. Army’, p. 15.
26 Colonel Trevor Jones, quoted in Max Hawkins, ‘Army Beefs Up its Most “Potent Capability”’,
in The Australian, Defence Update, November 20, 1998, p. 2.
27 For an examination of this proposition see Lieutenant Colonel Charles M. Westenhoff, ‘Air
Power and Political Culture’, Air Power Studies Centre Working Paper No. 42, Air Power Studies
Centre, Fairbairn, 1996.
28 Defence 2000 – Our Future Defence, Department of Defence, Canberra, 2000, par. 8.37.
29 Rebecca Grant, The Radar Game: Understanding Stealth and Aircraft Survivability, IRIS
Independent Research, Arlington, 1998, p. 50.
ASYMMETRIC ADVANTAGE AND HOMELAND DEFENCE 209
30 A more developed example of the emerging Australian aerospace-power model can be seen in
Israel, a country which views military defence with a life-or-death seriousness. In response to the
new security calculus the Israelis are emphasising asymmetric air and space systems across the
board. Those systems will (or already) include: the Arrow anti-ballistic missile defence system;
the Python 5 enhanced short-range air-to-air missile; a beyond-visual-range air-to-air missile; a
very long-range, precise, high-speed air-to-surface missile; a long-endurance, high altitude UAV
armed with those missiles and which can loiter over a threat area for about sixty hours; a second
long-endurance, high-altitude UAV, this time low observable and with an information gathering
function; AWACS systems; manned JSTARS and Sigint systems; and a space program including
Israeli-owned and -operated satellites. David A. Fulghum and John D. Morrocco, ‘Israel Air
Force to Grow in Size, Power and Range’, in Aviation Week & Space Technology, April 10, 2000,
pp. 62-5; and Barbara Opall-Rome, ‘IAI Completes Ofeq Spy Satellite, Begins Launcher Work’,
in DefenseNews, December 17–23, 2001, p. 18.
31 The author has no connection with Lockheed Martin and used only publicly-available sources
to prepare this article.
32 Two variants of the SDB are planned, one guided by GPS for use against fixed and stationary
targets, and another with a terminal-seeker and an automatic target-recognition system for use
against mobile targets. As an illustration of the effect SDB could have on campaign planning and
target prosecution, the B-2, which can carry 16 joint direct attack munitions, may carry 324
SDBs.
33 William M. Arkin, ‘U.S. Air Bases Forge Double-Edged Sword’, in the Los Angeles Times, January
6, 2002.
34 Jonathan Marcus, BBC News, ‘Analysis: The military lessons’, 15 December 2001.
35 Early information indicates that heavy bombers flying primarily from Diego Garcia – a round-
trip of 6500 kilometres – dropped about 70% of all weapons. See ‘Afghan War Will Shape Future
U.S. Military Structure’, Stratfor Strategic Forecasting, PRIVATE HREF=»» MACROBUT-
TON HtmlResAnchor http://www.stratfor.com.home/0110232100.htm, viewed October 26,
2001.
36 James Dao and Eric Schmitt, ‘New Pentagon Debate Over Stealth Plane’, in The New York Times,
December 11, 2001.
37 Robert Wall, ‘Air Force UCAV Design Reworked’, in Aviation Week & Space Technology, February
25, 2002, pp. 28–30.
38 Michael Sirak, ‘UCAV programme nears first flight’, in Jane’s Defence Weekly, 6 March 2002, p.
9; Robert A. Wall and David A. Fulghum, ‘UAVs Spotlighted as Defense Priority’, in Aviation
Week & Space Technology, February 11, 2002, p. 26.
Modern Competitiveness Theory
I want to talk about air power theory and winning in the twenty-first
century. We have to think about what theory really is, and particularly
what air theory is. It has occurred to me that in a certain sense there is
neither air theory, ground theory nor sea theory, but there is competition
theory. There is strategy for achieving something. There is strategy for
winning, and whether you are using air, land or sea components, what
you primarily want to do is make sure that you are successful. You want
to know that you are going to win. The kind of business that we are in
is the kind of business where winning is what counts. Coming in second
does not count. So what I have been trying to do over a fairly extensive
period of time is to put together a series of ideas that will allow you to be
successful. These ideas will allow you to win regardless of what competi-
tion you are in, but I will provide an obvious focus on the military side.
Given that overarching concept, theory or strategy, you start thinking
about the tools that are most suitable for allowing you to make things
happen in order to win. At that point you have a sub-theory: air sub-
theory, ground sub-theory or sea sub-theory. So that is the thrust of what
I want to talk about today. Now, as we are going through this, if anybody
has something they want to say, because they think it is wrong or they
have a comment, please do not hesitate to stop me.
I think one of the useful things to do before we get into this, is to talk a
little bit about my background in order to provide you with some
212 MODERN COMPETITIVENESS THEORY
There are several things that were significant in my life. I primarily flew
F-4s, OV-10s and F-15s at various times and places. There were some
things that were part of my early career that really got me thinking in a
particular way and the first one was my experience in Vietnam. I served
in Vietnam in 1969-1970, with more than 250 combat missions. I was
hit a few times. Not personally, I was kind of lucky, but my airplane was
hit. A couple of times I was on the verge of bailing out into territory that
was not particularly attractive, but fortunately I did not have to do that.
At the end of my year in Vietnam, where I spent half of the time working
with the 1st Air Cavalry in South Vietnam, and the other half flying over
the Ho Chi Minh trail, I started looking around. I had lost friends from
both the ground side and from the air side, and at the end of my year in
Vietnam the situation and progress was about the same as when I arrived
there. I did not like this at all. The idea of making this kind of effort
without winning does not make any sense. My resolution at that time
was that I was never going to be part of anything as senseless as this ever
again. We ought to plan to win, and if we are not going to win we should
not be playing at all. It is easy to make a resolution, but what you do
about it is entirely different. Of course, it was only five years later that
the North Vietnamese flag went up over Saigon, and we lost for sure.
Now, when you start thinking about it in more depth, however, some-
thing interesting strikes you, because for all practical purposes we won all
the battles. If there was one thousand battles in total between the
Americans and the North Vietnamese, whether they were Vietcong or
regular troops, we probably won 995, and the five we did not win were
utterly inconsequential and would be inconsequential in any other war.
How could it be that you win all these darn battles and lose the war? The
answer becomes pretty clear, at least to me – the other guy obviously had
a significantly better strategy. The flip side of that is also quite interesting.
It says that you can succeed in war even if you fail in battle. You can
succeed in war even if you are tactically inferior – as long as you have the
MODERN COMPETITIVENESS THEORY 213
Event number two is that I found myself reporting to the Pentagon for
the first time in the mid-seventies. I was rapidly getting involved in geo-
politics and war-planning among other things. I had more than a little
bit of involvement at that particular time with working on American
war-plans in the event of a conventional conflict with the Soviet Union
in Europe. As I am looking at these war plans it becomes obvious to me
that the way that they are laid out is very similar to the way we laid it out
in Vietnam. There was simply the expectation that we are going up head-
to-head with the Soviets. It is assumed that we are going to fight them
man-to-man, airplane-to-airplane and tank-to-tank, and because we are
superior we are going to win. In other words, we were planning to fight
an attrition war against an opponent who had more to attrit and had
shown an ability to be careless about losses in World War Two. This does
not make a lot of sense, and as you start reflecting upon military history
you realize that in an attrition kind of a war, predicting who the winner
is going to be is very difficult. I believe, in fact, that it is a matter of
chance. It is almost pure chance for a lot of reasons. So that again drove
me to say that there has to be a better way of thinking about these things.
Of course, like all of you in your careers right now, you do not have a lot
of time to sit down and write books. But I finally had the opportunity
when I went to the National War College in the mid-eighties to focus on
air power and to actually write a book – The Air Campaign. I wanted to
look into the fact that there are some better ways to employ existing
assets, not future assets, but existing assets. There had to be a better way
to employ them in order to come up with a significantly higher
probability of winning and to take some of the chance out of war.
Obviously, what we want to do whether we are in a business operation
or in a war operation is to reduce chance as much as possible. Now, we
can get into an interesting philosophical discussion about Carl von
Clausewitz, but I think that to say that war is a crapshoot is simply
irresponsible. You want to load the dice as much as you possibly can, and
that is the name of the game.
214 MODERN COMPETITIVENESS THEORY
I found that the ideas in The Air Campaign had a good deal of
applicability even at a wing level. I was the Vice Commander and next
the Wing Commander in Bitburg, Germany, and I began to apply some
of the concepts in The Air Campaign and found that they worked pretty
well even at a wing level. I next went back to Washington and the
Pentagon. Not too long after that I was asked by Lieutenant General
Michael Dugan, who was then the Deputy Chief of Staff for Plans and
Operations, whether there was some way that we could take some of the
ideas articulated in The Air Campaign and elevate them to a higher level,
in order to make them Air-Force-wide. I said we could start working on
it, and in that process we began to develop the Five Rings concept. We
began to move the whole idea of The Air Campaign up to another level.
Then, as you all know, we had the opportunity right after the Iraqi
invasion of Kuwait, to present a set of ideas to General Norman
Schwarzkopf and General Colin Powell. They accepted the concept, and
finally a few months later it was tested pretty much the way it had been
laid out. It was obviously expanded, but pretty much the way it had been
laid out, and the Gulf War worked pretty well. I say pretty well, because
if we could go back and do it over again now, I think we could do it sig-
nificantly faster. There was no reason that it had to take forty-two days,
no reason why we had to lose over one hundred of our own people, and
no reason why it had to end quite the way it did. There are a lot of things
that we could do better, but nevertheless, it worked reasonably well,
especially in contrast to my experience in Vietnam.
So I came down here to the ACSC, and again used many of the same sets
of ideas as kind of guidelines to put together a new curriculum, and the
thing that was sort of a start for what you are all into now. That was the
military career. After the military career in 1995, when I left the USAF,
I thought that there was a pretty high probability that business competi-
tion was not very different from military competition. Why could we not
just take the same sets of ideas, and apply them in the business world?
That is what we decided to do. Take for example the market capitaliza-
tion of Texas Instruments. Market capitalization, in very simple terms, is
merely a multiplication of the total number of shares of stock
outstanding in a company times the share price. If you look at Texas
Instruments you see that over a fifteen-year period the share price did not
go anywhere. In other words, the company was not doing very much.
The company, in 1994 and 1995, made an internal decision that their
problem was not their inability to make good computers and good chips,
but their problem was one of strategy. They had a bad strategy so they
started to think about strategy. We had the opportunity to come in and
start working with them with many of the same sets of ideas in early
1996. Their strategic focus, augmented with what I was able to teach
them, allowed them to increase their value to themselves and their share-
holders significantly in a pretty short period of time, according to the
current Chairman and CEO, and that is the power of strategy.
There are a couple of reasons for me saying this. First, the concepts that
we are going to lay out are things that we had a chance of working with
in several different environments, and that has given me the confidence
that in fact they have a fairly good set of applications. The other reason
is that when we are talking to business audiences we are using a lot of the
same terms that we use in the military world. We use a lot of examples
from the Gulf War and some other military operations in history in order
to illustrate how these concepts are put into effect. What we have found
is that when you present to a business audience a set of ideas that are
from another world, a military world, it gives them a different lens
through which to examine their own operations. Frequently when you
216 MODERN COMPETITIVENESS THEORY
can back-off and look at yourself from a different perspective you get
some insights and understanding that are difficult to get when you are
looking introspectively. So what I am going to do today is kind of the
opposite, and that is to use some of the business ideas, not very many but
some of the business illustrations, to provide a lens through which to
view this whole concept of strategy.
First I want to make a point that is already made, but I want to re-
emphasize it. One of the things that struck me, certainly in the early part
of my flying career, was the idea that winning was a matter of flying the
airplanes better and dropping the bombs better, and if you can get really
good at that you were certain to win. But it is already said that in fact
that does not seem to happen in the real world and there are a couple of
examples here. The North Vietnamese beat the United States with in-
ferior tactics, inferior capabilities and by losing all the battles. If we
switch that into the business world, and go back twenty years, we recall
that Apple Computer had the first really great solution to what we now
think of as PCs. Apple was a really nice computer, probably technically
superior to the IBM PC, but because Apple Computer had an old world
proprietary strategy and IBM had a new world open architecture strategy,
the PC, even though an inferior box and an inferior piece of equipment
simply destroyed Apple. It simply marginalized Apple over a period of
time. It did not make any difference that the Apple computer was in fact
better. The strategy was bad so things did not work out particularly well.
So, if the strategy is bad then you have a serious problem. The whole
concept of theory, and of competition theory, is to give you the ability to
develop the kind of strategies that will lead to success.
Here is very simply what we believe the outlines for good strategy need
to be and what the outlines are for the theory that we have tried to work
with and develop over a long period of time. The words that we use are
the words that we are using in the business world. I am going to go
through them very briefly, then expand this and finally talk in some
detail about each of the component parts.
Number one, we believe that any theory or strategy must start with a very
accurate definition of what you want the future to be. The very first step
is that you design the future. In other words, you design the peace that
is going to follow the war. That becomes the thing from which all else is
derived. Number two, you always have a limited number of assets,
whether they are airplanes, money, guns or whatever they may happen to
be. You have a limited number of assets. There are on the other hand a
potentially infinite number of targets, and you can think of targets as
anything from a tank to a president. You have an infinite number of
targets, but a limited number of assets. If you apply the assets to the
wrong targets, then you are not going to succeed. So the second part of
the concept is that you target for success, which in other words means
218 MODERN COMPETITIVENESS THEORY
that you spend a lot of time to make sure that you get the targets right.
The third step is campaigning to win, which simply means that you are
going to create the organization, and you are going to orchestrate the
resources that you have available to you, so that you get the future you
have decided that you are going to create. Then the fourth step is the one
that we typically ignore in business and in the military. In the business
world we talk about it as finishing with finesse. It is war termination or
the idea that all wars end and everything ends. If you do not end it well,
then you have not done your job. So all four of these things need to go
together and we think of these as the four imperatives. There are other
parts obviously, that are connected with this. There are sets of general
rules that flow across all aspects of the planning and the execution, and
underneath each one of these are a variety of additional ideas. We are
now going into these.
Now idea number two is a little bit different. Idea number two has to do
with how do you manage planning and operations in a world that is very
complex and moving very quickly, in which information moves
instantly? CNN, NBC and other news channels are right there with the
right information ready to go. Now, we believe that it is pretty straight-
forward, that everything you do really has to be done in the open. Let me
elaborate. On 6 August 1990 I pulled together a handful of people to
start putting a war-plan together for the Gulf operation. We did not have
any idea on how we were going to sell it, but we thought we would figure
220 MODERN COMPETITIVENESS THEORY
it out later, so our immediate concern was not about how we were going
to sell it. Well, as we know, two days later General Norman Schwarzkopf
called General Michael Dugan, now the USAF Chief of Staff, to discuss
an air option. He got hold of General Michael Loh instead, because
Dugan was out of town, and General Loh told him that we had some
people working on an option, and that we would be happy to come
down to tell him how to win the war on 10 August. General
Schwarzkopf did not believe we could come up with an option in two
days, but was of course very interested. Right after that General Loh
called me and told me that he had told Schwartzkopf that I would go
down to Tampa in two days to tell him how to win the war. He said, “do
you have any problems with that”!
Well, the war-plans against the Soviets that I mentioned earlier had gone
on for the previous twenty years, and by the time that our opponent
went away it was still in my view not ready to be executed. So, in 48
hours we were going to present something that was different from thirty
years of planning! The question is, how do you go about actually doing
that sort of planning? Well obviously one option is to grab a couple of
your really smart people – individuals that you really trust. Then you go
into a closet someplace, you put up some compartment and no access
signs so that you are not disturbed. Then you can come up with this
perfect plan, but in the real world, and this struck me as I am walking
down the hall on my way back to the basement of the Pentagon, it is such
a complex operation requiring so many different ideas that the isolated
approach would be fatal.
strongly opposed to this. They said we could not do that, arguing that we
have to control this, but in fact we cannot plan a war unless we have
many people involved. I believe, considering the environment we are in,
that this is the only way you can do good planning for a couple of
reasons. One, because you need an awful lot of ideas if you are going to
get the right ideas put together quickly. Number two, if people are not
involved in the planning, when they have to go out and execute at an
operational level, the chances of them doing what the little group of
planners in Washington, or the 9th Air Force had put together, are very
small. Basically because people miss all the nuances on all the important
things if they are not actually part of the planning. So in my view this
becomes then absolutely critical and is really a part of the environment
in which we live. We can no longer afford to do the secret compartment
planning. You have to get it out in the open and you win not by secrets,
but by exploiting information ideas and concepts faster than anybody
else.
You need guiding presets. You have to have some things that are going to
guide your strategic and operational behavior. In the Gulf War there were
four basic things that we laid out for General Schwarzkopf, and he agreed
222 MODERN COMPETITIVENESS THEORY
to them. One was that the war was going to be focused against Saddam
Hussein – not as a single target, but against Saddam Hussein and his
policies rather than the Iraqi people. Number two was that we would do
everything possible to keep Iraqi civilian casualties and property damage
to an absolute minimum. Number three was that we would do every-
thing possible to keep our own casualties to an absolute minimum, and
number four was that we would at all times fight the war asymmetrically.
In other words, we would always avoid the head-to-head kind of
operations, which was likely to drag us into an attrition kind of war.
First of all let us think about an opponent as having some fairly signifi-
cant amount of energy. There was for example a pre-hostility level of
energy available to Iraq. Obviously there was a lot, because it had done a
pretty nice job with Kuwait and clearly it had the ability to do some
MODERN COMPETITIVENESS THEORY 223
other things. Our objective is, in one sense or another, to identify the
minimum amount of what the opponent needs in order to do certain
things. Once you have identified the level of energy, which the enemy
system needs in order to succeed with his aggression, then your process
becomes fairly straightforward, because you then need to reduce the
system energy of your opponent down below the level that is required for
him to succeed. By dealing with the level of energy you are changing the
system.
We put this in slightly different terms when using the Five Rings Model
as a general analogy for a system. Any system has a degree of energy and
with a military opponent our problem is to change that energy level by
parallel operation in order to drive it down to a point that is acceptable
to you. You can drive it down to zero if you want to, and every once in
a while this is the case, although it is pretty rare. Probably the classic
example of driving it down to zero is of course what the Romans did with
Carthage in the Third Punic War, which simply meant that Carthage was
gone forever as it was utterly and completely destroyed. If we are looking
at this from a business standpoint we do not focus our energy on our
opponents, but we focus our energy on the market that we want to
change, and we apply our assets in such a way as to increase the energy
level of a market so that we can make some money from it, so that the
224 MODERN COMPETITIVENESS THEORY
market moves in the direction that we want it to move. It is still the same
thing: positive energy and negative energy. We normally think of war as
a negative energy event, but there are probably some positive things that
ought to be going on at the same time. In business as a general rule it is
almost all positive.
You are all familiar with the concept of the Five Rings and you have had
a lot of discussions on it, so I would just like to make a couple of points.
First of all, I believe that what the Five Rings really does is describe how
the real world is organized. It does not make any difference whether it is
a company, a squadron, a market, a country or anything else. Every
system has these components. Every system has something that provides
leadership; has something that converts energy from one form to
another; has an infrastructure to hold it together; has population; and has
some kind of forces or agents. There is absolutely no exception to this.
We can put it into this form for a couple of reasons. First, when we put
the whole country or the whole market or the whole company together
in one place, we then know that we have the focus on changing the whole
thing. That is our objective. We also begin to get some general ideas
about where relative priorities lie. We know that, in general, if you can
get the leadership of a country, a company or a market to be going in a
particular direction, then there is a tendency that the country, company
or market starts going in the direction which you prefer. Sometimes that
is all you need. On the other hand, if you put an enormous amount of
effort on the outer ring, the fielded forces ring, then it is unlikely to have
much impact on the overall system.
For example, during the planning part of the Gulf War there was a num-
ber of people who said, for a variety of reasons, that what we ought to do
is focus strictly and solely on the Iraqi army in Kuwait. Let us make the
assumption that we destroy the Iraqi army in Kuwait. 500,000 people are
killed or captured. A couple of thousand tanks are destroyed etc. Those
losses would probably have been a little bit less than what the Iraqis had
suffered in the war with Iran, during which time Iraq had become sig-
nificantly stronger, significantly more powerful and a significantly bigger
threat in the region. In other words, the things that are in the outer ring,
whether they are armies, air forces, navies, sale forces or a variety of other
things, they are in the periphery. It is not that they are not important,
MODERN COMPETITIVENESS THEORY 225
but they are not the core part of the system. What we are really trying to
do, therefore, is to use this model to choose the centers of gravity, which
is the targets that will allow us to change the system in the way that we
need to change it. Our objective is to change the whole system in such a
way as to get where we want to go. Now there are a couple of other points
I would like to make about this.
I want to make one other point here as we are talking about systems. Our
probability of success against an opponent is a combination of two
things: the physical capability of this system, and if you will, the morale
of this system. Let us think about this for a second. If we can drive either
one of these to zero, then the probability of them being successful goes
down to zero. We can be the strongest people in the world, but if we have
no will to do anything, then it does not make any difference. There is no
question about that. Likewise, we can have the most will in the world but
if we have zero physical capability, in other words if we are dead, it does
not make any difference how much will we have. So, in accepting that,
where does our focus go? Well we could focus on morale, but nobody
quite knows how to do it. On the other hand, what we do know is what
the physical components are of any system. We know who the leaders
are, we know who the people are and we know what the infrastructure is
etc. What is it on the other hand that has an impact on morale? Well,
basically what has impact on morale is the people’s appreciation of what
their physical prospects are. Do I have a gun to fight with? Is there some-
body back home? Is there a road over which I can travel and a whole
variety of other things? So all we are saying here is not that the morale
business is not important, but in fact that it is impossible to do anything
about the morale other than focusing on some physical aspect of it.
226 MODERN COMPETITIVENESS THEORY
Maybe directly against a person, maybe more generally, but in the final
analysis the only place in which you can put your efforts is against some-
thing physical. So, this reasonably describes the physical state of an
opponent, and thereby the model becomes useful. We will see now in a
couple of instances of business that it does allow us fairly rapidly at a
working level to understand how a system works, which again allows us
to choose the right targets and then make something happen to it.
Campaign to Win
Let us next move into the campaign to win aspect. I want to address a
couple of things here. Obviously what we are talking about doing in the
campaign stage, is creating a master attack plan, because the chances that
we can attack all those centers of gravity at the same time are probably
fairly small. We want to take a cross section that will allow us to begin
moving this system in the direction, in which we want it to move. Then
we need to create an organization that is designed specifically to accom-
plish the objectives that we have made for ourselves. The last aspect is
bringing this whole system under parallel attack in order to generate as
quick a movement as possible. I would like at this point to just focus on
a couple of these aspects. The first one is organization. We make the point
that you have new objectives, new technology and new situations, so from
an organizational standpoint you have two choices. You can either try to
make the old organization work, or you can make a new organization.
Now in general it is sort of interesting that the people in business or war
who have tried to make the old organizations work have not done very
well. Conversely, the people who have created new organizations have
tended to do fairly well. Consider the French and the Germans 1930.
Both of them developed new technology, new airplanes and new tanks.
The French decision was basically to put these new technologies into the
organization created three hundred years previously by Louis XIV. The
Germans, on the other hand, decided to apply the new technology in tank
armies and air armies. I suppose there are some real experts in here on this
situation, but I would argue that probably as much as fifty per cent of the
reason of the rapid German success starting in May 1940 against the
French was not because the French were not good fighters or that they did
not have good equipment, but because of an organizational superiority on
the part of the Germans. So that organization, although quite imperfect,
MODERN COMPETITIVENESS THEORY 227
was still able to overcome the organization of the French. If we look at the
organization that we generally have in the military today it is not much
different from the organization that Frederick the Great had some 250
years ago. If we in fact have new technology and different sets of ideas etc.,
then it is a fairly good chance that this is no longer the right kind of
organization. In fact, rather than being in this organization it needs to be
what we think of as an organization on demand, where you have a lot of
different little groups that are doing things that are all strategically
aligned, because they have all been part of this planning process. Then one
or the other simply assumes a greater degree of importance. This is pretty
much the situation that we had of the organization when Iraq invaded
Kuwait. One of these things was Checkmate, which sent out tentacles or
communication lines depending on how you like to think about it, in
order to bring a lot of these things together in Washington and a lot of
other places, in order to develop sufficient energy to be able to plan and
execute a different kind of war in a different amount of time.
thought of Iraq as a system with some centers of gravity and then we put
these things under parallel attack in such a way that we significantly
reduced the system energy of Iraq. Once that is done, the fact that the
military ground forces are out there does not make much difference any-
more, because you have addressed the problem from a system approach as
opposed to dealing with it from an individual serial approach. The
difference is extraordinary. In the serial world if you do not succeed with
your first target set, you generally cannot move on to the second target set,
so you have to get all the things right. If you approach things from a
system perspective you can afford to get a lot of the targets wrong, you can
afford to miss a lot, because your measure of merit is not hitting a
particular target, but your measure of merit is having a system impact.
Take the operations against the electrical systems. I could not begin to
tell you now, and I am not even sure that I knew at the time either, what
percentage of the electrical targets we hit in the first twenty minutes of
the war. But we did not care, and the reason that we did not care is
because five minutes into the war the lights went out in Baghdad, and
they did not come back on. So we have this system, where that part of
the energy was simply not operating, and in a certain sense it did not
even make a difference whether the Iraqis had simply turned off their
entire electrical grid. It did not matter. The lights were out, and therefore
the Iraqis did not have this benefit. Thus, we had this mini-system effect
and that is what we are looking for. So it is a completely different mind-
set again. I do not care whether we hit that particular target. What we are
looking for is a system-effect and we want to do these things in parallel
in such a way as to create a very rapid collapse, which, incidentally, you
can do with very few things being hit. It does not take much energy to
do this if you take the right things. The system collapses and basically
now you are in a significantly better situation than what would otherwise
have been the case. System collapse is what you want. You want the lights
to go out in Baghdad.
happy with the ending and that the transition into the next phase makes
sense. This means we have to define the exit points. We frequently think
about exit points as failure exit points, but they can be both positive and
negative. What do we want the good exit points to be? How are we going
to make sure they happen? In the event that things do not happen the way
we thought they would, how are we going to get ourselves out? If you do
not think about the things back here you have a serious problem. We see
this in business all the time, where people get so wedded to a particular
product or a particular business methodology that even when it starts
going down the backside of its lifecycle they are emotionally, culturally and
mentally unable to appreciate that it has served its purpose and it is time
to get out. If, on the other hand, you have made the decision early on, then
when things starts to go to the backside or they go the way you do not want
them to go, it is much easier to say we have already talked about this. We
have discussed this and it is not a failure, it simply did not work out so it
is time to move on to something else. You have to make this part of the
planning and it has to take place at the time you do the rest of the plan.
You need exit points. Exit points then obviously need to have a termina-
tion plan of some sort. Obviously that was one of the major things we did
not do as well as we should have done with the Gulf War. Likewise, asso-
ciated with this, a war may end but that does not mean that you are
entering a perpetual state of peace, and that everyone is going to live with
the results. So, one part of the finish with finesse imperative is that you at
230 MODERN COMPETITIVENESS THEORY
the beginning start to think about how you are going to reconstitute your
resources so that you are ready to go again and make the things happen
that may need to happen in the next conflict. Or it may be a case of sim-
ply keeping the war you have just finished under control.
Those are basically the four imperatives. We can wrap these together with
a couple of sets of ideas.
The last problem was the problem of measuring progress, and this goes
back in some sense to this business of the transition from managing
misses to managing hits. The one set of ideas was that progress was going
to be measured by the number of sorties that were flown in particular
234 MODERN COMPETITIVENESS THEORY
sectors and particular areas. The other set of measuring success was
whether the lights were out or not. Those two are so diametrically
opposed that they did not come together during the course of the war.
There was a constant conflict, and as far as I know that kind of conflict
is not yet entirely resolved, although you would have a much better feel
for that than I do.
Now, a quick thought here. Suppose you are an Iraqi or a Serbian and
you are presented with the problem that you are going to accomplish
something. What do you do? You need to be very careful about your
evaluation of your own objectives. In other words, if the Iraqis had gone
through this theoretical process that we have just been through, then I
think that they in fact could have achieved virtually anything that they
wanted to achieve. You need to take great care in choosing your enemy.
It is a really big mistake to get the meanest guy around mad at you, and
since there are ways to avoid getting the biggest guy around mad at you
they needed to think that one out very clearly. They needed to think
about their enemy’s centers of gravity even if they allowed us to be
enemies. Then they needed to think about the real centers of gravity, and
what they needed to do to affect them. From a military standpoint there
is probably nothing that they could do. From a psychological, political
and economical standpoint there was probably a lot that they could do if
they had thought about it in broader terms as opposed to really limiting
themselves to the military aspect of the invasion of Kuwait. They needed
to think asymmetrically, obviously, because once the war commences
they will have a problem, even if we do not fight it very well.
We need to be very agile. One of the things which was interesting in our
initial discussion with General Schwarzkopf, was that he agreed that we
were going to go after Saddam, but asked what we were going to do if he
decided after the first morning of bombing to raise the white flag? The
analogy that I used was as follows. You remember Lord Nelson, the
English sea captain who sailed into Copenhagen to attack the enemy
fleet. His flag-lieutenant tapped him on the shoulder and said the
admiral was signaling us to break off the action and return. So Nelson
asked for the telescope, which he picked up and held to his patched eye
and said, “I see no signal. Proceed”! That was what he did and he was
very successful. So I told General Schwarzkopf that we could do the
MODERN COMPETITIVENESS THEORY 235
same. We are going to make darn sure that we are not going to be able
to see any white flag. Now, that is an anecdote, an interesting anecdote,
but the real point here is that if Saddam Hussein had been a very agile
guy, and there are not very many agile people that are in command of
business operations or military operations, then he could have said that
he made a mistake on the first morning of the war and declared a with-
drawal from Kuwait. We would have had to stop the war right then, and
the thing that has happened to Iraq that drove the energy level down and
gave us control fairly simply would not have taken place, and Iraq would
have remained a very dangerous and a very capable country that had only
suffered a minor setback. You simply have to do risk-reward exercises.
Lastly something that we have not talked about specifically is using a Red
Team. One of the things we did when using this open planning in
Checkmate was to have a group of people in Long Range Planning
Division playing the Red Team. They would participate and listen to all
of the planning that is going on at a daily basis. Then they would come
in and tell me what they would have done if they were the smartest and
most asset-rich Iraqis in the world. How would you beat this plan that
you know perfectly? They would lie out things and we looked at it and
discussed it and if we concluded that they could do something we would
suggest a countermove in advance that would prevent them from
succeeding. So you have a Red Team that keeps you from getting into a
group-thinking mode. It is institutionally charged with criticizing you. If
Saddam had a Red Team he may have received some additional ideas as
opposed to a whole group of people saying “Yes Saddam. Yes Saddam”.
Now we can laugh at that a little bit, but how many times, when a four-
star general or a president says we all ought to do something then we all
say “Yes Sir. Yes Sir”. The Red Team gives you an institutional way to
work around that kind of a problem.
Summary
In summing up, the theory that we have discussed seems to have worked
reasonably well. It seems to be scaleable, it seems to be adaptable and we
have applied it to several different places. So it seems to work. Second,
territory in itself is generally not a center of gravity and you do not need
to worry particularly about that. Parallel attack is very hard to counter.
236 MODERN COMPETITIVENESS THEORY
In fact I do not know any way to counter parallel attack once it is under-
way. The combination of stealth and precision really has redefined mass
and concentration. I guess at this point I would go a little bit further and
say that I suspect it is time to throw away, at least on a hypothetical basis,
all of the existing principles of war and rethink where we are now. Then
there is information. It is a very fast moving world, so everybody needs
to know what is going on and why it is happening. So when we keep
secrets that means that people that are out there do not know what it is
that they are supposed to do, and because they are good and smart people
they will end up making perfectly logical decisions that may have a
dangerous strategic impact. People have to know and we simply can no
longer afford to live with compartmentalization and the kinds of secrets
that we have lived with. Every bomb counts in today’s world and every
bomb is a political bomb. It is political in the sense that if it goes off in
the wrong place it will have political repercussions, and if it goes in the
right place it will lead to desirable political impacts. Moreover, we can
have the best technology in the world with airplanes and tanks, but if
they are not applied smartly with an approach that makes sense and
comes to the problem from the right direction, then being technically
superior does not give you any particular good value. The last point I
would make is that we are pretty darn good with precision of impact. We
can drop a bomb ninety-nine times out of one hundred in the middle of
this auditorium, but we sure cannot control the damage that is done once
it comes in. If our objective is to take out this computer, because this is
the key to this operation with bombs, then we cannot do that. We can
drop a bomb on it, but we are also going to destroy the rest of the
building. That becomes more and more of a problem for us, so we need
to have precision of effect where bombs only take out computers or they
only take out that seat.
Part II
Introduction
All good strategists are paranoid.1 They also are control freaks. Great
strategists are paranoid, too, but unlike the merely “good” strategists,
great strategists are not control freaks. Great strategists are opportunity
freaks. That is, a great strategist knows the objective and seeks to meet it
by capitalizing on whatever opportunities the environment presents,
asserting control effectively wherever and whenever control is possible,
even in spite of resistance. Good strategists understand centers of gravity.
Great strategists understand asymmetric operations and how to exploit
them. Centers of gravity and asymmetrical operations are complex
matters. Although they smack of lofty “strategy” and “strategic thinking,”
they often degenerate into rehashing history on the one hand or bizarre
theoretical meanderings on the other. Rarely do either of these two
antipodes rise to the level of the useful.
All of us must be wary of the possibility for rude surprises ahead, hence
this symposium. The right knowledge and the will to act on it can help
prevent one from being caught unawares. In competitive activities,
especially those where the stakes are high, a key element, perhaps the key
element of knowledge is the understanding of the relationship of centers
of gravity to balance. Those unbalanced entities can be put on road to
ruin. Given that knowledge – a rich awareness of centers of gravity and
their significance and an appreciation of the logic of asymmetric
operations – one cannot be easily unbalanced, even if one is taken by
surprise. Where the stakes are so high that they involve the survival of the
state, or mortal risks and consequences, it is negligence to be ignorant of
these matters. So that there is no doubt as to the importance of this
knowledge let me assert that only amateurs are ever surprised, and – in
warfare – only fools are unbalanced. We have been visited by what should
not have been a rude surprise, but those who sought to unbalance us are
fools because they did not. The one thing I hope to attain in this
discussion is awareness so deep that they – those fools – cannot in the
future.
understand “the” center. At the center, to me, is the way people create
wealth. Alvin and Heidi Toffler’s book, Creating a New Civilization: The
Politics of the Third Wave, discusses what they call the “wave theory of
conflict.”2 The Tofflers explain that the sweep of history is the sweep of
waves of civilization, arising, spreading, coexisting, and colliding. The
First Wave of civilization “was and still is inescapably attached to the
land.”3 It was the product of the agricultural revolution and began when-
ever humankind changed from nomadic hunting and gathering to the
more pastoral and sedentary life of flocks and farming. The land yielded
its sustenance, wealth, and bounty according to the rhythm and tempo
of the seasons. The flock, the herd, planting and the harvest framed life
and living. Warfare in the First Wave usually was seasonal, so of course
the belligerents planned warfare, battles, and wars around the need to
sow and reap. The ancients describe this eloquently, but even as late as
our own Civil War, soldiers deserted to return to their land for planting.
War was about the land, the source of subsistence and wealth. The
historian Robert L. O’Connell writes, “agriculture would dictate that war
among the settled would be essentially about territory, both on the
battlefield and in a larger political sense.”4 The way we make war, the
Tofflers tell us, is the way we make wealth – keep this point in mind –
and the wealth of First Wave societies is embedded in their land.
And what did soldiers and armies seek to know in the First Wave? They
sought first to master the weapons of warfare that were not surprisingly
the weapons of the hunt and the farm. Leaders, generals, and armies
sought to know the geographical boundaries of territory, the limits of the
land of families and clans, where the “not us” were, their numbers and
arms, when they would approach, and what they might want. Each of
these potentially was knowable, and “meaning” was derived from seeing
the objects or behavior that transformed the unknown into the known.
They – the enemy – wanted land, the bounty of the land, living space,
or the means of producing people, crops, and herds. Scouts could count
them. We could use our spies and their traitors to try to learn of their
intentions. Yet, even in the First Wave there are mysteries, things that one
clan or group cannot easily understand about another clan or group.
Because Waves include social forms, everything in a society is affected
and circumscribed by the Wave. Many of these First Wave mysteries are
and were religious in the sense that they pivoted on tribal totems or
242 CENTERS OF GRAVITY AND ASYMMETRICAL WARFARE
taboos. Some, such as the effects of killing the chieftain or capturing the
monarch, affected fighting. Other mysteries did not affect fighting. The
trick, we are told, is not being “knowable,” even in the First Wave. The
T’ai Kung tells us:
What human qualities are and were treasured in the First Wave? The late-
Carl Builder, drawing heavily on the Tofflers’ works, suggests that fami-
lies and clans of First Wave societies value animal strength and cunning.6
Strength overpowered enemies and the cunning of the likes of T’ai Kung,
or Sun Tzu, or Wu Tzu, or Machiavelli introduced additional mystery
and deception to amplify the effects of physical power. The knowledge
needed about the enemy essentially was intention, time, location, and
numbers. From these simple bits of data, centers of power and strength
could be discerned. No small chore, but not as difficult as the challenges
we face today. Even while we still have First Wave societies (and
thinking), the Second Wave emerged.
global rather than domestic scale, and it was this struggle that
basically determined the shape of the world until recent times. It
set the frame within which most wars took place.7
The Second Wave created “mass societies that reflected and required mass
production.”8 The late-Carl Builder accordingly noted that Second Wave
societies valued “organization and discipline,” simply because planning
for mass production (to increase wealth) and producing mass warfare (to
steal or protect wealth) required those values.9 When humans organize
for mass production, then standardization, rationalization, mass trans-
portation, and all kinds of engineering become important. Successfully
waging war in the Second Wave required a massive war economy –
money still and forever constituting Cicero’s “sinews of war” – the levée
en masse, military engineers, and a mass of killing appliances and
machines.10
assigned, we can “roll” and make tough choices as befit the commanders-
in-chief. We can decide about the antipodes of concentration and
dispersion, the choice of massing or de-massing, vexed only by the need
to “concentrate mass” at the decisive point and time and knowing that
massing presents a like-minded enemy with very economical targets.13
Even to the great Clausewitz, however, there were some mysteries in the
Second Wave: friction and chance. The Second Wave’s military theorists
searched for the secrets governing the role of chance and friction in the
clockwork universe of warfare. They hoped to unravel the mysteries of
chaos. All here know that “things happen” on both sides when we let slip
the dogs of war, but few can anticipate “why.” Second Wave warfare
becomes much easier to prosecute when we use Third Wave implements
and capabilities. We can use computers and software to make con-
nections, discern patterns, model action and reaction, stimulus and
response, measures and countermeasures. We can simulate fights. Using
this knowledge we believe we can then use “dominant battlespace know-
ledge” to create the initial condition, and it is our adversary, not us, who
is victimized by confusion and chaos.14 Thus, the Third Wave is critically
important to Second Wave warfare forms.
What human qualities does it take to flourish and make wealth in the
Third Wave? It takes knowledge, intelligence, initiative, creativity and
innovation. The vestiges of old forms – processes, structures, organiza-
tions, etc. – remain, but are altered. But there may be, as the Tofflers
observe, some surprising parallels between the greatly demassified and
highly individualized First Wave and the greatly demassified and cus-
tomized Third Wave. As one example, are not the knowledge, intelli-
gence, and creativity of the Third Wave closely akin to the “cunning” of
the First Wave? Another example might be the nature of work in the
Third Wave. In the First Wave, work occurred in and around the home.
Children stayed close to parents. In a world of increasing telecommuni-
cations capabilities, might not more work occur in the home? Might not
more parents find it possible to work and attend to their children in the
home? As a third example, consider that the First Wave citizen-soldier
brought the scythe from the field or the squirrel gun from the farm to
fight in First Wave wars. Can we not envision the Third Wave citizen-
soldier bringing the computer, the software, the business innovation, and
the advanced technology of the Third Wave to the militia and to the
fights of tomorrow? And yet, we see Second Wave thinking seducing us
into overlooking such similarities. How are such oversights possible?
are the keys to success in the Third Wave, then ought not our armed
forces – indeed all the state’s governing bodies – be organized in ways
attending to liberating and using those traits? But, mostly, the armed
forces are separate from the other instruments of power the state pos-
sesses and remain organized into separate hierarchies with, some argue,
variety and texture provided by a lot of “stovepipes.”19 More importantly,
David Ronfeldt tells us that where “knowledge” is the commodity being
transacted in the Third Wave, the best way to make that transaction is
through a network, not a hierarchy.20 Yet, that great oxymoron “Military
Intelligence” is organized in hierarchical forms even today.21 For example,
“network-centric” warfare, an attempt to understand how warfare has
and will change, focuses more on the “network” than on the struggle.
So What?
Why we should care? We should care because notions of centers of
gravity must change to prevent being surprised and then unbalanced by
asymmetric operations. With economic security underpinning national
security we have entered an era where our old Second Wave thinking and
organizational forms, built solidly around the requirements for success in
the industrial age, no longer suit us. Rather than replace them, reorganize
ourselves, or take entirely fresh approaches to the problems that we face,
new problems, we limp along applying one band-aid after another and
missing the fundamental realization that things have changed. The
CENTERS OF GRAVITY AND ASYMMETRICAL WARFARE 247
exhausted them consuming the enemy. Grant knew his own operational
center of gravity and worked to protect it. Grant’s boss, Abraham
Lincoln, knew the Union’s strategic center of gravity – the will to end the
war with the South’s unconditional surrender and return to the Union –
and worked to protect it. This case, and other evidence and experience,
convinces me, and leads me to try to persuade you, that the way to think
about a center of gravity is to understand a center of gravity as that which
we or our adversary can least afford to have badly hurt at any given
moment.
In former times, the key Clausewitzian variables of time, space, and mass
dominated.26 Military science then (like today) lagged or was no better
than the science of the age. Time was the measurement of change. It
often was as seasonal, as epochal as campaigns. Space was not understood
as the separation between bodies, it was understood better as the room
to maneuver on the ground. And mass was understood fundamentally as
being the proxy term for “the army.” Today, the significance of the vari-
ables, and indeed the variables themselves, may be different. Although
military science today still trails “real science” by decades, we are each
well aware – the protestations of soldiers notwithstanding – that warfare
CENTERS OF GRAVITY AND ASYMMETRICAL WARFARE 249
The larger changes result from the disproportionate effects that informa-
tion and value now assert, and will continue to assert in the future.
Having data on time, space, and matter and knowing the relationships
between time, space, and matter – information – affects each of the other
variables and the system as a whole. Information – data endowed with
relevance and purpose – has thus become a “commodity” or a “basic
resource” in business parlance. This commodity now affects time, space,
and matter configurations in ways that create complexity and admit nov-
elty on a scale impossible in former times. Information on consumption
rates or consumer preferences, for example, can substitute for
“inventory” in retail or manufacturing. Substituting information for
inventory originally was novel, but the purpose of introducing this
novelty was not so much for its usefulness (although novelty can be
especially useful in warfare), as it was for satisfying some higher order
preference or value. The value was wealth creation. The usefulness of
armed force derives not from winning battles, inducing “paralysis” on the
enemy system, or destroying the center of any of “the five rings,” rather
armed forces derive value from their ability to contribute to what their
stakeholders value: the ability to satisfy their owners’ preferences by
subduing actions and will hostile to those preferences.
Throughout the years of the cold war there was both a multipli-
cation of international organisms capable of producing right
and a reduction of the resistance to their functioning….the
proliferation of these different international organisms and their
consolidation in a set of symbiotic relationships – as if the one
asked the other for its own legitimation – pushed beyond a
conception of international right based in contract or
negotiation, and alluded instead to a central authority, a
legitimate supranational motor of juridical action.30
Thus, the wronged parties in a dispute can include states, groups, non-
governmental organizations, corporations, and even individuals.
Depending on where one stands, the “enemy” could be any one of these.
Each may have their view of the rightness of their grievance. Each may
have the wherewithal to hurt another. Each may have different values
252 CENTERS OF GRAVITY AND ASYMMETRICAL WARFARE
and different information. Some may disagree and, for whatever reason,
reduce the enemy to an equivalence of values:
The convolutions I see and am trying to illuminate make such glib state-
ments difficult for me to comprehend. A center of gravity exists in time,
can be positioned in space – even if the space is cyberspace – and must
have some material manifestation. Even “computational” power is
manifest in computing machines and the availability of electrical power.
There are many ways to appreciate and understand “time,” as Hughes
pointed out in “The Cult of the Quick.” “Space” is even more complex,
especially as we learn more about quantum mechanics. “Matter” in an
age of both tangible and intangible value is more complex still.
We are stuck in Second Wave thinking, trotting out the old, dead
Germans and Prussians with authority. Thinking about these tactical
centers of gravity and how they are objectified or reified in forces may
CENTERS OF GRAVITY AND ASYMMETRICAL WARFARE 253
Asymmetries
For the decade after the Cold War’s end, many analysts and pundits strug-
gled to perceive the outlines and underlying dynamics of a new world
order. Most analysts talked of “asymmetrical” warfare. In fact, some of the
experts talked so slickly of asymmetrical warfare that it was clear they
failed to appreciate that the aim of all warfare is to create asymmetries to
best an enemy. Asymmetric operations are not only the aim of all military
operations, they also are the aim of every competitive operation. They aim
to offset an attacker’s weakness by striking at a center of mass that shocks,
disorients, and unbalances an adversary. Asymmetric operations intend to
create “rude surprises.” The target is that which the attacker perceives will
surprise, unbalance, disorient and leave the target susceptible to a
cascading collapse of power structures. Asymmetric operations do not
attack utility as much as they attack what the holder values.
Why were we surprised? In 1993 the book War and Anti-War gave
warning of an asymmetric attack, ironically against US economic centers:
States are complex human organizations. Moreover, states are not the
only complex human organizations with the capacity to do harm, witness
Al-Qaeda, the Taliban, and genocidal ethnic factions. States must insure
that the people have the necessities for life, among which are food, water,
and perhaps even gainful employment. To fulfill these basic requirements
for life, states must have some territory, some place to grow food, some
wealth, and a more or less secure environment in which the people live.
A state must provide its citizens protection from other states, just as the
Talibanic state was obligated to afford its members and the people of
CENTERS OF GRAVITY AND ASYMMETRICAL WARFARE 257
Thus, states and groups attend to their defense. When they attend to
their defense they produce “things” that they believe are useful tools for
defense. If they do not understand the threats they face as a group and
do not produce the right tools, their group can be surprised, can become
unbalanced, and render their people defenseless. At the strategic level,
there may be but one center of gravity. In the Third Wave knowledge-
based economy that center may be, crudely, money. Economic power
underpins the power of any state or group.41 To destroy a state or a
group, destroy its economy, its finances, and its wealth-producing
systems. A poor – or sometimes even a “poorer” – nation cannot easily
produce the stuff for warfare, as we knew warfare in the past. An
impoverished nation can ill defend itself. Belligerent actions, surprise
attacks, are easier to mount. Very little wealth is required for some of
these military-type operations, even if the operations are aimed at
producing strategic effects. Strategic effects are effects that, as we asserted
earlier, we can least afford to bear at any given moment. They hit our
strategic center and hurt us badly. They hurt that which we most value.
In advanced nations, these operations strike at ability to be whole. And
our ability to be whole is underpinned by the satisfaction of many lesser
needs. These needs are fulfilled because of our wealth. Our wealth,
because of all that it makes possible, is the source of all power and move-
ment in an advanced nation or group. Abraham Maslow attempted to
classify needs, and hence values, relevant to individuals and to
organizational behavior. What can teach us about asymmetries?42
This hierarchy suggests that values are a legitimate framing device for
knowing the information we must acquire about ourselves or an
adversary and understanding that which our adversary or we can least
afford to have badly hurt at any given moment. We should test this.
If that is so, the attacks must have been directed against a center of
gravity. For the targets or victims to constitute a center or centers of
gravity, the attackers would have had to understand our values based on
information. The attackers’ values would have to be incompatible with
ours; ours would have to be intolerable to them. The enemy then would
We can, of course, draw many lessons from this. One lesson, offered by
Douhet, is, “To bend the enemy’s will, one must put him in intolerable
circumstances; and the best way to do that is to attack directly the
defenseless population of his cities and great industrial centers. It is as
sure as fate that, as long as such a direct method of attack exists, it will
be used.”45 Al-Qaeda used that method, employing unconventional
means. Another lesson is that an asymmetric attack that is not exploited
by follow-on attacks, may fail to unbalance the attacked party. A third
lesson is that the US has the means to put any adversary state or group
in intolerable circumstances and, after September 11th, 2001, we have the
will.
CENTERS OF GRAVITY AND ASYMMETRICAL WARFARE 261
Conclusion
We are engaged in a protracted struggle, precipitated by an asymmetric
attack against our center of gravity. How will it turn out? I agree with this
assessment: “There’s no doubt that terrorists will cause another major
disaster some time in the next couple of years … But while that will be
dreadful, like the IRA and similar groups, the current lot have no chance
of ultimately ‘defeating’ the USA and the rest of the Western coalition.”46
They will not defeat us because we’re tenacious, we’re learners, and we’re
innovators. We now sense or know what our center of gravity is, what are
centers are, and we will protect it and them vigilantly from the rude
surprises that the weak may hope to visit on us. We’ve learned from the
rude surprise and are innovating solutions to problems we have not
encountered yet. We know that asymmetric operations can aim at what
we value. Thus a new target set emerges.
NOTES
1 The views expressed here are my own. They do not necessarily reflect the views of Alvin or Heidi
Toffler, Toffler Associates, or any of Toffler Associates’ customers.
2 Alvin and Heidi Toffler, with a Foreword by Newt Gingrich, Creating a New Civilization:
The Politics of the Third Wave (Washington DC: The Progress and Freedom Foundation,
1994).
3 The Tofflers do not use “civilization” in the very narrow and largely “religious” sense that Samuel
Huntington uses it. Rather, they use it in the sense of “super-civilization”: bigger than a specific
culture, religion, or set of institutions. See Samuel P. Huntington, “The Clash of Civilizations?”
Foreign Affairs 3 (Summer 1993), pp. 22–49.
4 Robert L. O’Connell, Ride of the Second Horseman: The Birth and Death of War (New York:
Oxford University Press, 1995), pp. 82–83. In a conversation at Carlisle Barracks, O’Connell
explained that his subsistence taxonomy is another way of looking at Waves. See also Robert L.
O’Connell, Of Arms and Men: A History of War, Weapons, and Aggression (New York: Oxford
University Press, 1989).
5 Ralph D. Sawyer, translator and commentator, with Mei-chun Sawyer, “T’ai Kung’s Six Secret
Teachings,” The Seven Military Classics of Ancient China [Wu ching ch’i shu], (Boulder: Westview
Press, 1993), pp. 68–69.
6 Carl H. Builder, “Peering Into the Future: Trying to Get the Enterprise Right,” unpublished and
unclassified lecture to the National Reconnaissance Office, March 11, 1997.
7 Alvin and Heidi Toffler, Creating a New Civilization, p. 12.
8 Alvin and Heidi Toffler, Creating a New Civilization, p. 13.
9 Carl H. Builder, “Peering Into the Future.”
10 One need only to scan Frederick, Jomini, Clausewitz, von Moltke, Schlieffen, and Schlichting
to recognize that the machinery of warfare extended to the mechanical way in which massed
armies were formed, trained, and employed. The motto of the German Fuhurüngsakadamie der
Bundeswehr is “The mind moves the mass,” but students there assert that the mass moves the
curriculum. See Daniel J. Hughes, ed., translated by Daniel J. Hughes and Harry Bell, Moltke
on the Art of War: Selected Writings (Novato, CA: Presidio Press, 1993).
CENTERS OF GRAVITY AND ASYMMETRICAL WARFARE 263
11 Second Wave thinking includes holding the belief that all systems are closed systems. See Erich
Jantsch, The Self-Organizing Universe (Oxford: Pergamon Press, 1980), p. 7 quoted in Margaret
J. Wheatley, Leadership and the New Science: Learning about Organization from an Orderly
Universe (San Francisco: Berrett-Koehler Publishers, Inc., 1992), p. 18.
12 “New Unified Command Plan Ensures Every Nation Is Covered,” Inside The Pentagon, January
24, 2002, p. 4.
13 Airmen often criticize soldiers for their obsession with “mass,” but the airman’s mass raid or
“gorilla package” show a closer bond than usually admitted.
14 See: Ilya Prigogine and Isabelle Stengers, Order Out of Chaos: Man’s New Dialogue with Nature
(Boulder: New Science Library, 1984), pp. 171–6, 297–313; James Gleick, Chaos: Making a
New Science (New York: Penguin Books, 1987); and John R. Boyd, “Creation and Destruction,”
in “A Discourse on Winning and Losing,” August 1987.
15 Alvin and Heidi Toffler, War and Anti-War: Survival at the Dawn of the Twenty-first Century
(Boston: Little, Brown and Company, 1993), pp. 21–23.
16 Richard Brodie, A Virus of the Mind: The New Science of the Meme (Seattle: Integral Press, 1996).
17 Desmond Morris, The Naked Ape: A Zoologist’s Study of the Human Animal, (New York:
McGraw-Hill Book Company, 1967). See also Will and Ariel Durant, The Lessons of History
(New York: Simon and Schuster, 1968), who assert that states behave like humans writ large.
18 If Joint Vision 2020 is wrong, for example, and it is authoritative, then it is wrong for many.
19 Carl Builder The Icarus Syndrome: The Role of Air Power Theory in the Evolution and Fate of US
Air Force (New Brunswick NJ: Transaction Publishers, 1993).
20 David Ronfeldt, Tribes, Institutions, Markets, Networks: A Framework About Societal Evolution
(Santa Monica: RAND Report P-7967, 1996). The chart on p. 17 is instructive. See also John
Arquilla and David Ronfeldt, The Advent of Netwar (Santa Monica: RAND, 1996). See also John
Arguilla and David Ronfeldt, Networks and Netwars: The Future of Terror, Crime, and Militancy
(Santa Monica CA: RAND, 2001).
21 Many Second Wave mass-production forms seem evident in the ways in which the “intelligence
community” is organized. One could argue that this community is organized around the separate
human senses(eyes or ears(with the necessary integration of the senses a bureaucratic function.
22 Harry S. Dent, Jr., The Roaring 2000s (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1998).
23 Horace Porter, Campaigning With Grant (New York: Bantam Books, 1991), pp.174–6. This is
an abridged reprint of a book published originally in 1897.
24 Porter, Campaigning With Grant, p. 212, reports:
In speaking of his visit to the Middle Military Division, General Grant said: ‘I ordered Sheridan
to move out and whip Early [Confederate Major General Jubal Early].’ An officer present ven-
tured the remark: ‘I presume the actual form of the order was to move out and attack him.’ ‘No,’
answered the general; I mean just what I say: I gave the order to whip him.
25 Peter F. Drucker, “The Coming of the New Organization,” Harvard Business Review on
Knowledge Management (Boston: Harvard Business School Publishing, 1998), p. 5.
26 The plural suggests that there is more than the strategic level center of gravity, even to
Clausewitz. John Osgood, “A Study of Clausewitz’s Concept of the Military Center of Gravity,”
http://pw1.netcom.com/~jrosgood/wc4.htm, writes:
Clausewitz’s discussion of the issue suggests that at the operational level the center of gravity is
‘always found where the mass is concentrated most densely.’ He believed that at the operational
level a commander must understand the dynamics of space, mass, and time. Space was the the-
ater of operations, mass was the army and time was the campaign. Enemy vulnerabilities or deci-
sive points were not to be confused with center of gravity.
264 CENTERS OF GRAVITY AND ASYMMETRICAL WARFARE
27 Armies are huge enterprises. To govern them, one needs doctrine. Doctrine does not change
quickly in armies.
28 More than one year before he died, John Boyd, wondered aloud to me if there were only three
“things that matter” in the universe: time, space, and matter, all of which were “held together”
by “information.” He wondered aloud that, since “space” was the separation between bits of matter,
perhaps there was only time, space, and information. We will test the discernment that gives us.
29 Thomas Hughes, “The Cult of the Quick,” Aerospace Power Journal, Vol. XI No. 4, Winter 2001,
p. 64.
30 Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri, Empire (Cambridge MA: Harvard University Press, 2000),
p. 181.
31 John A. Warden III, “Air Theory for the Twenty-first Century,” in Barry R. Schneider and
Lawrence E. Grinter, Battlefield of the Future: 21st Century Warfare Issues (Maxwell AFB AL: Air
University Press, 1995), p. 106.
32 Adapted from Frank B. Strickland Jr., “It’s Not About Mousetraps: Measuring the Value of
Knowledge for Operators,” Joint Forces Quarterly, Autumn 1996, http://www.dtic.mil/doc-
trine/jel/jfq_pubs/1913.pdf
33 Jeffrey A. Harley, “Information, Technology, and the Center of Gravity,” Naval war College
Review, Winter 1997 at http://www.nwc.navy.mil/press/Review/1997/winter/art4wi97.htm.
34 Information on who really is an adversary and who really is an ally is becoming more difficult
to come by, for example.
35 George W. Bush, “President Bush’s State of the Union Address,” The Washington Post,
(eMediaMillWorks), January 30, 2002; p. A16.
36 Alvin and Heidi Toffler, War and Anti-War: Survival at the Dawn of the 21st Century (New York:
Little, Brown and Company, 1993), p. 149.
37 Qiao Liang and Wang Xiangsui, “Unrestricted Warfare: Assumptions on War and Tactics in the
Age of Globalization” (Beijing: PLA Literature and Arts Publishing House, 1999), p.149. Note
the emphasis on the “weaker side.”
38 “2 Panels To Probe Spying Failures,” Washington Times, January 30, 2002, p. 9.
39 Timothy L. Thomas, “Deciphering Asymmetry’s Word Game,” Military Review, July–August
2001 at http://www-cgsc.army.mil/milrev/English/JulAug01/thomas.htm.
40 Will and Ariel Durant, The Lessons of History, (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1968), p. 19.
41 Paul Kennedy, The Rise and Fall of the Great Powers: Economic Change and Military Conflict from
1500 to 2000 ((New York: Random House, 1987).
42 Abraham H. Maslow, “A Theory of Human Motivation,” Psychological Review Volume 50, 1943,
pp. 370–396 and Motivation and Personality, (New York: Harper and Row, 1954). He postulat-
ed there are five categories. At the basic level are the physiological needs, such as thirst, hunger
and sex drives. To satisfy this level of needs makes us hunt for food, breed cattle, grow crops, dig
wells and look for mates. When these basic needs have been satisfied, the next higher level
becomes a more important motivator; the level of safety and security needs, which is represented
by freedom from fear of external harm, climatic extremes, or criminal activity. To satisfy this
level, we build tents, huts and houses, we organize ourselves in tribes, villages, cities, states, we
establish policing forces and armies, and we formulate rules and laws. The next higher level cor-
responds with belonging and social activity or affiliation needs. This level motivates us to under-
take action in exchange for support, affection, and friendship. The fourth level represents our
drive for esteem and status; it makes us strive for status and respect, adopt behavior to get access
to and be accepted by those we admire. At last, when all previous levels of needs have been ful-
filled to our satisfaction, we strive for self-actualization, for self-realization and fulfillment.
CENTERS OF GRAVITY AND ASYMMETRICAL WARFARE 265
43 BBC, “Osama Bin Laden urges targeting US economy,” December 27, 2001, 19:57 GMT,
Transcript: Bin Laden video excerpts, at
http://news.bbc.co.uk/hi/english/world/middle_east/newsid_1729000/1729882.stm
44 Dan Balz and Bob Woodward, “Bush Awaits History’s Judgment: President’s Scorecard Shows
Much Left to Do,” The Washington Post, February 3, 2002; p. A15.
45 Guilio Douhet, Dino Ferrari trans … The Command of the Air (New York: Coward-McCann,
Inc., 1942), p. 282.
46 Email from my friend, the RAAF Historian, and noted airpower thinker, Dr. Alan Stephens,
January 29, 2002.
Asymmetric Warfare:
Rediscovering the Essence of Strategy
Now, asymmetry seems to have become the icon for every form of war-
fare that does not conform to the favored Western way. It may arise from
information warfare, terrorist attacks, the employment of ‘dirty nuclear
bombs’, attacks against domestic infrastructure, and any other ‘unfair’
method of fighting.6 The awareness of the rise (or danger) of complex
terrorism and the highly publicized vulnerability of open modern
(Western) societies feed the ‘spread’ of asymmetric warfare.7 The
problem with buzzwords is that they tend to be underspecified, over-
employed and badly understood. In fact, the concept has gradually been
268 ASYMMETRIC WARFARE
Subsequently, two reflections inform this study. First, the most current
Western definitions about asymmetry offer only a limited view on the
nature of asymmetric warfare and are Western or US oriented. It is con-
sidered to be something that other people ‘do’ against Western nations
and their armed forces.16 This is obviously a fallacy. It is not only directed
against US or Western interests nor is it not only offensive. It may not be
a deliberate policy or doctrine. It may be purely reactive and oppor-
tunistic, or a way of fighting opted for by default. It may occur due to
the West’s own interventionist policy whereby Western countries bring
troops or actions to bear on a locally raging conflict.17 Western action
executed according to the reigning Western style of warfare, that is dom-
inated by long range observation and standoff precision attacks, is
thoroughly asymmetric to anyone on the receiving end on these attacks,
as the Taliban in Afghanistan will attest to. One commentator rightly
said that the United States is the world’s most asymmetric military
force.18
270 ASYMMETRIC WARFARE
But asymmetric war has not been confined to struggles where Western
forces meet those of non-Western countries. The Russian experience in
Afghanistan in the eighties and Chechnya in the nineties may be con-
sidered a very unwelcome and costly encounter with asymmetric war-
fare, with the urban battles for Grozny as an exponent of it,22 and
several authors have proposed that what is now considered ‘asymmet-
ric’ is actually the norm in quite a few conflicts in the ‘third world’.
ASYMMETRIC WARFARE 271
for military purposes, was added. In fourth generation war, the methods
of internal conflicts would be turned against the US.26
And as van Creveld, Holsti and Kaldor are at pains to point out, the con-
flicts and combat methods they describe cannot be explained, studied or
resolved by conforming to the Clausewitzian model. They are funda-
mentally different from interstate wars. As van Creveld notes ‘War as an
instrument of state policy is a relatively new form of organized violence
… the main purpose of the use of force in Europe for the past 350 years
has been to advance and/or protect the interests of the state. War has
been political’. But ‘war as a continuation of politics by other means’ is
no longer applicable here:
when the stakes are highest and a community strains every sinew
in a life and death struggle that the ordinary strategic
terminology fails […] to say that war is ‘an instrument’ serving
the ‘policy’of the community that ‘wages’ it, is to stretch all three
terms to the point of meaninglessness. Where the distinction
between ends and means breaks down, even the idea of war
fought ‘for’ something is only barely applicable. […] war of this
type […] merges with policy, becomes policy, is policy.29
ASYMMETRIC WARFARE 273
Although these descriptions are obviously not false, they are not very
informative nor very distinctive. Another definition recently suggested is
somewhat more useful because it points to the different dimensions in
which war can be waged and in which asymmetries may be found and
exploited: ‘Through the application of military, political, economic and
technological leverage, asymmetric strategies may successfully undermine
an opponent’s strengths. Although one contestant may not be able to win
on a traditionally framed battlefield, the strategies employed may nullify
the adversary’s conventional advantages, erode his will to fight, disrupt
his ability to operate effectively, or deter him from action entirely’ com-
mented one author recently.34
Steven Metz and Douglas Johnson have suggested a more general and
complete definition of (strategic) asymmetry as ‘acting, organizing, and
thinking differently than opponents in order to maximize one’s own
advantages, exploit an opponent’s weaknesses, attain initiative, or gain
greater freedom of action’. This is the working definition employed here. It
offers insight into the fundamental dialectic nature of war – asymmetric
war is an activity that all sides (states or other types of actors) can and
will engage in – and it avoids the trap of thinking in terms of threats or
weapons or a certain ‘warform’. Instead, it shows that it is the result of
actions, organizational choices and the cognitive domain of the inter-
acting contestants.
This definition also brings attention to the fact that asymmetric war is far
from a contemporary phenomenon. Freedman may disagree with this
definition because it ‘is hard to see how asymmetric warfare defined so
broadly is that different from all other types of strategic thought’. I find
that however a particular strength.37 As Metz records in another discus-
sion on the meaning of asymmetry,
Contrary to the current debate, his work goes far beyond tactics, tech-
nology and weapon programs. As will be argued below, reading the clas-
sics to illuminate today’s strategic problems is very educational. Sun Tzu’s
work is very comprehensive and it points to the various dimensions in
which asymmetric war can and should be waged and through which
methods. Reading Sun Tzu deflates the hype surrounding the concept of
asymmetric warfare while underpinning its significance and establishing
the real nature of it. And the identification of the principle characteristics
of asymmetry is probably more fruitful to better understand asymmetric
threats than attempting to establish a perfect definition, as Gray noted
after a survey of the ongoing debate.39
distilled through reading the whole text. Thus I will draw statements,
notions and ideas together from several chapters. This exercise will show
how the ideas across the chapters are related. The picture that emerges
strongly suggests that one can indeed discern several core concepts that
together form a coherent, consistent and logically constructed strategic
approach that is holistic in nature and that constitutes an approach to
waging war in which multidimensional asymmetry is key.
This leads to the second problem of the gap between cultures and the
role of the translator. Even when he is conscious of the particular socio-
ASYMMETRIC WARFARE 277
cultural lens through which he analyses and interprets Sun Tzu, he has
no other tools to explain Sun Tzu and translations are therefore likely to
give a narrower meaning than Sun Tzu intended. The meaning and
concept of time can serve as an example. Ancient Chinese time is
characterized in the following way: Time and space are integrated, time
is cyclical, time is made up of discrete but very large units, and time is
heterogeneous and discontinuous. The western concept that time is
fleeting, unidirectional and divided into measurable and equally long
intervals does not exist. This has implications for writing history because
when thinking in cyclical time, there is no particular difference between
what happened 300 years ago or just yesterday which means tomorrow
will not be that different and that lessons from 300 years ago are perfectly
valid 100 years from now.
However, there must be no doubt about the status of Sun Tzu in the
Chinese strategic literature or about the fact that there actually was such
a person as Sun Tzu (Tzu means master, by the way, so his name really is
just Sun). Sun lived in the Warring States period, a period in which the
kingdoms of the Chinese realm frequently fought each other. Sun made
his mark as a military commander in some battles and was appropriately
named Sun Wu, Sun the Warrior. Sun offered his services to King Ho Lu
of Wu (514-496 B.C.), a small state at the mouth of the Yangtze river.
After impressing the King with his earnestness by executing two of the
king’s concubines who failed to follow orders, Sun Tzu was made a
general in the army of Wu which he led to victories against larger
armies.42 These victories gave Sun credibility in writing his lessons.
For that is what they are. The Art of War is an instruction addressed to
the King on how to conduct the most serious affair of the state; war. As
much as it is descriptive it also is prescriptive and normative. The wis-
dom of his lessons was widely recognized throughout the Chinese king-
doms for centuries. Various commentators interpreted the text43 and in
1082, a compilation was ordered of the most important military texts to
serve as a basis for improving the performance of the Sung armies. This
compilation, called The Seven Military Classics, centered on Sun Tzu’s
text.
In the 19th century Sun Tzu was translated into French. Sun Tzu has
278 ASYMMETRIC WARFARE
The Warring States Period, ‘All Under One Heaven’ and Tao
Some knowledge about Chinese philosophy and the historical context of
the period helps with regards to clarifying some ideas, because under-
standing Sun Tzu begins with some insight into the concepts of ‘All
under One Heaven’, the Tao and Harmony. So before we turn to the text
of The Art of War and the strategic and operational level concepts, we will
take a short journey into the wider context of the book. The setting is
primarily one of autocratic kingdoms in agrarian societies with the trade
business at a rise and in the Warring States period, the ‘All Under One
Heaven’ concept was established in a period of turbulence and dis-
harmony. ‘All Under One Heaven’ means that everybody and everything
is in the same boat and peoples, kings, events, plans and strategies cannot
be seen in isolation. So although one may be at war with one people, they
and we are all Under One Heaven and what we do to them is connected
to other dimensions besides the opponent. It indicates that everything is
connected in the Realm, as we may describe the area and peoples living
in the warring States. In one sense it makes us aware of the fact that the
peoples and kingdoms at war belonged to the same ethnic people; the
Chin people, and we are basically witnessing a large scale civil war. It also
brings up the point that war cannot be separated from other state affairs.
China there exists a continuous concrete world that is the source and
locus of all of our experience. Order is ‘imminent’; things belong to each
other and are inherently connected. Order and regularity are not derived
or imposed upon the world by some independent power but are inherent
parts of the world. Change and continuity are equal. The world is
dynamic, autogenerative and self-organizing.
Without objectivity, objects are not static but are snapshots in a process
of change and change occurs along a continuum, both ends of which are
normally indicated with Yin (sunny side) and Yang (the shady side). The
property of an object is expressed as a point on a continuum relative to
the point of another objective on that continuum. Things are categorized
as relative to each other. So nothing is black unless there is something
white or at least something less black (gray comes to mind) to contrast it
with. There are no formal, absolute and unique properties but shades,
nuances, analogies and cross referencing. A thing is associated with
another by virtue of the contrastive and hierarchical relations that sets it
off from other things. This evokes that and one evokes many.
the methods of creating harmony are equally successful and some dis-
positions are more fruitfully creative than others. It is the capacity to
anticipate the patterned flow of circumstance, to encourage those dis-
positions most conductive to a productive harmony and ultimately to
participate in negotiating a world order that will make the most of its
creative possibilities.
In social and political life there are several layers of order, and these are
combined by lateral and hierarchical relations to form some sort of
harmony. The quality of these relations defines the character of the
harmony. Harmony, then, is the creation of order between things and as
harmony involves the art of contextualizing, constantly changing the
properties of things, order is not static but rather dynamic. To maintain
order is to maintain a balance among the changing properties, to
correctly discern the pattern of change.
the fate of a state. A state should be able to wage war effectively. A state
should therefore always be prepared for war, be vigilant and possess a
ready, capable force for deterrence as well as for fighting. This should not
be taken as a state of enthusiasm with respect to waging war. On the
contrary, war is to be avoided as much and as long as possible because
inherent in war is the chance of catastrophe for the state. Besides, war is
a very costly affair for everyone involved. To solve crisis a state should use
regular diplomatic means, as well as irregular, what we would perhaps
consider devious and illegitimate means, such as assassination of the
enemy’s leader or his generals, bribing key figures among the leader’s staff
and persuading his allies to change sides. This view on statecraft is con-
sistent with the ancient view on war, which is fundamentally one of dis-
turbance of order.
As all things are normally in a state of order, when there is war, the cause
must be a disturbance of the order. War can only be waged for the pur-
pose of restoring order47. This is the legitimizing factor. What makes any
military action appropriate as opposed to self-seeking is the claim that it
serves the quality of the socio-political order as a whole rather than any
particular interest group within it. As in the socio-political order, all
orders are interdependent and mutually entailing, the system has within
it a mechanism for reordering. There is no right or wrong in waging war.
It is in favor of the social order or against it, as the latter can never be
justified. That is, unless a leader has forfeited his authority by squandering
his integrity or is abusing his people, because leadership also means to
behave in accord with one’s people; the Tao of the leader is that which
causes the people to be in harmony with their leaders. So the harmony
within a state between the leader and those ruled over extends to a sense
of harmony in the whole system.
War then not only means restoring order in the whole system but also in
a state and as such involves a sense of punishment against the leader of
the state. As a matter of fact, there is a deep and abiding association in
the Chinese world between the execution of punishment and warfare. In
both instances the central authority is acting in the interest of the whole
to define the sociopolitical order at its boundaries. Also ‘to order’, ‘to gov-
ern’ and ‘to dispatch a punitive expedition’ are expressed with the same
character ‘cheng’. And ‘to shape’ is expressed with the same character as
ASYMMETRIC WARFARE 283
This view on war and its function also shape the attitude towards it.
There is a fundamental distaste for war as it means that something has
already been lost and war will cost resources and lives, thereby also
creating a danger for instability within the states that wage war to restore
order. War always constitutes loss. This outlook provides the context for
properly understanding the following statements from The Art of War:
And here we come across a crucial point. War is only justifiable when all
possible alternatives have been exhausted and must be entertained with
the utmost seriousness and restraint. The commander must be in pursuit
of quick termination and preservation of life and resources, not only
one’s own but also those of the opponent. If war must be fought, it must
be fought at minimum cost.52 As the fighting is conducted by people
who belong to All Under One Heaven and who were good neighbors
yesterday and perhaps will be again tomorrow, the war should basically
aim at removing the sore from the rebellious state, and that sore is most
likely the leader. War must be fought while constantly keeping in mind
the need to be able to resume normal life and relations after hostilities.
In an agrarian society, which cannot rapidly replenish lost crops and lost
labor force, serious losses had serious repercussions. Preservation means
maintaining the capability to achieve harmony.
284 ASYMMETRIC WARFARE
It also provides suggestions for asymmetric war. Instead of going after the
armed forces in full battle, other methods must be employed in different
dimensions in order to prevent actual combat or to win the war at a lesser
cost. Disrupting the alliance, or threatening and besieging cities could
undermine the will to continue fighting.
Preservation also underlies the quest for intelligence before embarking on
war and before going into battle. This is the reason for striving for quick
victories and it underlies the schemes for gaining easy victories by putting
the enemy off balance before joining battle with him. As Sun Tzu states
of order. The previous section has indicated the mindset with which Sun
Tzu approaches problems in general and I will now turn to these
problems. This section starts with a description of some core concepts at
the grand strategic level and it will subsequently discuss lower levels of
war. We will see that at each level we come across more or less the same
core concepts, although at each level the concept may have a slightly
different meaning or impact. Alternatively, a concept may materialize in
different ways at different levels of war. There is, however, a strong
continuity across the levels. The concepts, which describe strategic
behavior, are scalable, to speak in modern complexity theory terms.
Grand strategy and Shih. Throughout the book, Sun Tzu mandates care-
ful planning and the formulation of an overall strategy before the com-
mencement of a campaign. The focus of all planning in grand strategy
and military operations must be the development and maintenance of a
prosperous, contented populace whose willing allegiance to their leader
is unquestioned. Thereafter, diplomatic initiatives can be put into effect,
but military preparations should never be neglected, a theme that also
permeates Seven MilitaryClassics. Preservation informs the preference of
the tools of statecraft:
But this attitude does not prescribe passiveness. In order to safeguard against
constant intrusions, to deter and wield power in the diplomatic sphere,
constant vigilance and a ready, well trained and disciplined army was
necessary. The Chinese equivalent of ‘si vis pacem, para bellum’ lies in: ‘do
not depend on the enemy not coming, depend rather on being ready for
him’.56 It is not suggested, however, that the other tools of statecraft cease to
286 ASYMMETRIC WARFARE
be of value when war is embarked upon. War happens within the totality of
a changing context and this context will have a continuous influence on the
war. A good leader will attempt to shape the environment to further his
interest and thus create conditions for a quick decision in war.
Again, this pattern of change can be discerned if one knows the Tao and
it can be manipulated to further one’s interest. Here again we see that the
environment shapes the perceptions but also that perception shapes the
environment and lead to actions. One’s disposition and any change in it
is a factor in the environment of any neighboring state and will also exert
influence on the total state of harmony. Shih is a continuum and one’s
position on it can be discerned and influenced. We will come back to shih
when we talk about the military concept for victory. It is mentioned here
to indicate the importance of constant vigilance and the need to observe
changes in one’s environment, because this fuels the need for fore-
knowledge.
The victorious army first realizes the conditions for victory, and
then seeks to engage in battle.64 Only when victory is assured
should one start a campaign for ‘the victorious army first realizes
the conditions for victory and then seeks to engage in battle’.65
Knowledge is essential for security. Taking that into account, the perhaps
excessive emphasize on and optimism about obtaining information is
understandable. The quest for information, however, is not an absolute
measure, it must be understood in two senses. First, one needs better
understanding than the opponent, hence one’s efforts to conceal one’s
plans and positions. Secondly, we need to understand foreknowledge in
the same sense as the Chinese concept of general knowledge. This
concept comes from being able to discern patterns and relations and it is
holistic in the sense that an object can only be understood in light of its
context. It is a penetrating form of comprehension67 about changes and
their implications. Chapter 9 states that perfect information is of no
value, unless one has a penetrating understanding of its meaning and is
able to see the emerging patterns. Information must be coupled to judg-
ment. In the chapter devoted to the use of spies for the purpose of
gaining information and disseminating false information, Sun Tzu again
warns us that:
With this comes the third reason to dismiss any sense of determinism in
Chinese thought. As we will see in the next section, Sun Tzu stresses the
importance of constant adaptation to the enemy. This concept of
‘according with the enemy’ fundamentally denies the possibility of exact
long-term predictions and deterministic thinking. The commander must
constantly make estimates about the context at hand and this is in a
constant state of change so his plans must change accordingly. This is
reflected in the following statement: ‘One should not fix a time and place
for battle in advance’. The same notion is also stated in the concluding
line on page 2 of Chapter 1 in the basic outline of the mechanism for
defeating an opponent: ‘They cannot be spoken of in advance’.
In other words, as the campaign and battles progress, one needs to adjust.
Knowledge, Order, Preservation of harmony, preservation of the state
and the army, shih and foreknowledge are thus logically intertwined and
the one who wins is the one who understands the world better, who
290 ASYMMETRIC WARFARE
knows the patterns and order and can shape the world accordingly. And
this also applies when we look to the situation when war and operations
are actually planned in advance. And here we enter the field of strategy
and tactics.
Then he follows with the famous statement that is often quoted out of
context:
If they are substantial, prepare for them; if they are strong, avoid
them. If they are angry, perturb them; be deferential to foster
their arrogance. If they are rested, force them to exert themselves.
If they are united, cause them to be separated. Attack where they
are unprepared. Go forth where they will not expect it. These are
the ways military strategists are victorious. They cannot be
spoken of in advance.70
Several concepts from this short section of the book are further developed
later. These all derive from the basic concept that strategy is about putting the
ASYMMETRIC WARFARE 291
enemy off balance, about creating disharmony and chaos. And, so the last
sentence tells us, there is no way of exactly knowing in advance how this
can or will be accomplished, for it depends on a myriad of contextual
factors, the prime one being the need to shape one’s actions in
accordance with the opponent’s actions and reactions. That is the
mechanism for victory. Sun Tzu thus focuses upon manipulation,
thereby shaping the enemy and creating an opportunity for an easy (as in
less costly) victory by applying maximum power at the appropriate time
and place(s).
To this end, Sun Tzu explores the possibilities offered by certain types of
terrain and indicates what type of terrain should be avoided and what
type of terrain is best suited for the various forms of operation. The
advantage of possessing better judgment of terrain must be exploited. He
proposes tactics for probing, manipulating and weakening the opponent.
To this end, one needs to know the opponent’s plans, positions and
future moves. A commander should try to divide the opponent’s forces,
weaken the bonds that tie the troops into a cohesive mass, weaken mutu-
al trust between men, units, officers, troops and allies:
Thus, the enemy will be weakened through confusion about our position,
through the subsequent dislocation of his forces and the state of disorder.
All these strategic and tactical factors, which span the mental, the moral
and the physical dimensions,76 together with the grand strategic factors
such as the quality of the alliances of the opponent, combine to put the
enemy off balance. The aim is to get the opponent in a position against
which the shih and hsing, all the potential energy of one’s army, can be
released with the maximum effect, against a disorganized and locally
inferior force. The basic idea is to go forth where they do not expect it and
attack where they are not prepared.77 Battle must be avoided until one is
certain that a favorable balance of power (not just in terms of numbers)
has been created. Several statements relate to this mechanism:
When all that is accomplished and the conditions for victory have been
established, all the preserved latent energy will be released:
One who knows when he can fight, and when he cannot fight,
will be victorious’,80 and ‘one who knows the enemy and knows
himself will not be endangered in a hundred engagements.81
concept, I will address two requirements for the whole scheme to work,
namely foreknowledge and cohesion. Together, these three concepts gird
the scheme of putting the opponent off balance by the use of surprise
through deception and deceit, and the methods Sun Tzu proposes to
achieve surprise: The idea of formlessness and being unfathomable, main-
taining high speed, ensuring variety and flexibility in actions, the idea of
using the unorthodox and orthodox, and finally of knowing how to discern
the vacuous and substantial. These ten concepts are valuable for operations
at all levels of war, although they are most frequently used when Sun Tzu
discusses those activities at what we would call the operational and
tactical level. Most of these have not been mentioned before, but now
that we know what Sun Tzu proposes as the basic mechanism, we can
easily see what they mean and how and where they fit in.
‘Accordance with the enemy’. This concept intellectually forms the basis of
the whole idea. It is the assumption that one can shape the opponent and
for that one should act in accordance with the opponent’s actions. This
is an essential idea in Chinese philosophy and it is expressed as yin. Every
situation has its advantages and disadvantages and can be turned into an
opportunity. Yin involves responsiveness to one’s context, to adapt one-
self to a situation in such a manner as to take full advantage of the
defining circumstances, and to avail oneself of the possibilities of the
situation in order to achieve one’s own purposes. Shape and adapt, attack
what they love first. ‘Do not fix any time for battle, assess and react to
the enemy in order to determine the strategy for battle’.83 Yin requires
sensitivity and adaptability. Sensitivity is necessary to register the full
range of forces that define one’s situation, and on the basis of this
awareness, to anticipate the various possibilities that may ensue from the
situation. Adaptability refers to the conscious fluidity of one’s own dis-
position. One can only turn prevailing circumstances to account if one
maintains an attitude of readiness and flexibility. One must adapt oneself
to the enemy’s changing posture as naturally and as effortlessly as flowing
water winding down a hillside:84
for this reason, one who does not know the plans of the feudal
lords cannot forge preparatory alliances. One who does not know
the topography of mountains and forests, ravines and defiles,
wetlands and marshes cannot maneuver the army. One who does
not employ local guides will not secure advantages of terrain.
One who does not know one of these four or five cannot
command the army89 [and] The means by which enlightened
leaders and sagacious generals moved and conquered others, that
their achievements surpassed the masses, was advance knowledge.
Advance knowledge… must be gained from men, for this is the
knowledge of the enemy’s true situation’90.
The corollary of attacking when the ch’i, or spirit, of the enemy troops is
low, is that one should guard one’s own so as to ‘with the rested await the
ASYMMETRIC WARFARE 297
fatigued, with the sated await the hungry’.92 Elsewhere Sun Tzu says that
the troops should be looked upon as beloved children.93
Surprise. From these concepts we can now turn to the basic mechanism
of attacking where the enemy does not expect it, and the ensuing
achievement of surprise. Without surprise at some stage in the encounter
with the opponent, it will be difficult to mass superior force. Surprise is
achieved through the interaction of several methods applied simultane-
ously. Sun Tzu’s military thought has frequently been erroneously
identified solely with deceit and deception. These two terms, however,
connect ideas that ultimately need to produce surprise. Only twice do
deception and deceit appear explicitly in the book. The most famous one
is found in Chapter 1, where it is stated that ‘warfare is the Tao of
deception. Thus although you are capable, display incapability to them.
When committed to employing your forces, feign inactivity. When your
objective is nearby, make it appear as if distant; when far away, create the
illusion of being nearby’. The second one appears in Chapter 7 and states
that ‘thus the army is established by deceit, moves for advantage, and
changes through segmenting and reuniting’.
Deception and Deceit. Deception and deceit are achieved by moving sepa-
rately and keeping the opponent guessing where one will unite. If one is
already united, one can disperse again in the hope that the opponent has
united and thereby committed his forces. Troop deployments or the
image thereof are used together with misinformation from (expendable)
298 ASYMMETRIC WARFARE
Being Formless and Unfathomable. Sun Tzu stresses the need for a com-
mander to be unfathomable and obscure, never revealing his plans or
intentions even to his own troops.98 Being unfathomable through
deception and deceit will cause the opposing commander to be confused
or forced to respond in a way that is not in accordance with his initial
plan. He is forced to react, especially when he suddenly discovers that we
are moving towards an object that he needs to defend. Thus he is shaped.
We recognize these notions in the following statement: One who excels
at moving the enemy deploys in a configuration to which the enemy
must respond. He offers something that the enemy must seize. With
profit he moves them, with foundation he awaits them.99
The concept of formless may also mean that one lacks an identifiable
mass, which means that the enemy cannot discern a pattern or a main
body, perhaps due to the true physical dispersion of our forces or through
being unfathomable, employing deceit and being successful in deception
activities. He must disperse his forces in order to defend what he
treasures and to cover the possible routes we can take, as he is not aware
of our position.
ASYMMETRIC WARFARE 299
They must not know the location where we will engage the enemy.
If it is not known, then the positions that they must prepare to
defend are numerous. If the positions the enemy prepares to defend
are numerous, then the forces we engage will be few.100
Speed and Rapidity. So all these terms aim at getting the opponent dislo-
cated and confused. And to enhance the creation of confusion and being
unfathomable, one should use superior speed. Rapidity of movement
and attacks help shaping the opponent and will wear him down:
The Orthodox (cheng) and the Unorthodox (ch’i). There is one set of polar
opposites whose multitude of variations is inexhaustible and which leads to
the enemy being completely wrong footed. This is the concept of using the
orthodox (cheng) and the unorthodox (ch’i). This is an important set of polar
opposites. They can be translated as the straightforward method and the
crafty method or the direct method and the indirect method. Ch’i and
Cheng must be understood in the widest sense as meaning energy, strategy,
ideas, forces (moral, mental and physical). The point is that one can use
force (and not forces as in specific types of units) in conventional,
traditional or imaginative unconventional ways in dealing with an
opponent. Nothing in itself is straightforward or crafty, direct or indirect.
The concept is characterized by the notion that the unorthodox can become
the orthodox, which is typical of the Chinese use of polar opposites.
Whether it is one or the other depends on what one thinks the opponent
will expect in the particular circumstances of the battle in question.
Generally in battle one engages with the orthodox and gains victory
through the unorthodox […] the changes of the unorthodox and
orthodox can never be completely exhausted. The unorthodox and
the orthodox mutually produce each other, just like an endless cycle.
Who can exhaust them?.104
ASYMMETRIC WARFARE 301
The correct use of the concept of emptiness and solidity combined with
the effects of previous concepts, create a situation where one will be able
to find and attack a weak spot in the enemy’s defenses. By being form-
less, unfathomable and quick, we force the opponent to disperse, as we
302 ASYMMETRIC WARFARE
From the Essence of The Art of War to the Essence of Asymmetric War
It is obvious that The Art of War is informative in order to understand the
meaning of asymmetric warfare. For Sun Tzu, the creation of asymmetries
is the key to victory. The Art of War can be seen as the embodiment of
asymmetric warfare or at least as a very good example of it. The first
point Sun Tzu makes clear is that asymmetries can be found and created in
various domains and dimensions. Sun Tzu points out a variety of potential
leverage points with which to achieve an asymmetric situation, at the
tactical, operational, strategic and political level, in the physical, temporal,
spatial and, importantly, the cognitive and moral domain. For Sun Tzu,
war is a multi-level and multi- dimensional contest, where military
operations and actual fighting are an important, but not the only part.
Sun Tzu has a keen eye for statecraft and the different dimensions in
which war is waged. The political, diplomatic, economic and moral
dimensions are not omitted, in fact, he warns against a singular exclusive
focus on the military dimension. Therefore, he addresses alliances,
national infrastructure, the economy, political leadership and military
leadership. He focuses on the moral dimension. Alliance cohesion, unit
cohesion, trust among political and military leaders, trust among
military leaders and their troops, and the morale of the troops are
discussed. All the above notions can be affected through physical actions,
threats, misinformation, lack of information, and bribery; military and
non-military methods. Numerical, organizational, positional and temporal
advantages can be created and exploited. Surprising novel and varying
combinations of weapons and methods are advocated, and not all of
them are military in nature, nor do they all involve combat.
Similar leverage points were also identified by Metz and Johnson and var-
ious other authors. They argue that
The fact that Sun Tzu favors a holistic approach is not surprising, as
Chinese thought is distinctly holistic and contextual. It stresses context,
connections, change and the recognition of patterns as prime factors for
cognition. This outlook permeates Sun Tzu’s work and is most obviously
present in the idea that order can be discerned and accordingly the world
can be shaped. It is the one who possesses the superior ability to discern
order who is able to impose harmony between himself and the environ-
ment, thereby shaping the opponent’s environment and making it
difficult for the him to do the same. This applies to all the levels we
encounter in The Art of War, and leads to an additional important insight
ASYMMETRIC WARFARE 305
At the grand strategic level this is manifest in the list of available strategies
which include diplomatic, economic and military methods. At the
operational, tactical and military strategic levels, we see it in the inter-
actions of the supporting concepts which all aim to put the enemy off
balance, to isolate sections of the opponent’s forces at different
aggregation levels of his system and thereby shaping him. Military dis-
advantages can for instance be mitigated through waging war in non-
military domains. Alternatively, military parity can be turned into
advantage through the disruption of the opponent’s alliance. In other
words, Sun Tzu describes methods that affect the whole, in that he
regards the environment as a whole which includes the enemy.
of always maintaining harmony on one’s own side. Sun Tzu aims at dis-
rupting connections (moral, informational, spatial, ideational, and logis-
tical). In The Art of War, Sun Tzu addresses relations between the leader
and his people; between the commander and his troops, and between
units. Sun Tzu states in various passages that these connections can be
manipulated or destroyed by: physically separating them; isolating them;
dislocating them; by morally disrupting cohesion through creating dis-
trust; through decreasing support for the leader by thwarting his plans
and taking away his army; by spreading false information; by bribing
officials:111 through diplomatic pressure; through disrupting his alliances;
and generally chipping away at the greatness of the leader and the legiti-
macy and integrity of his actions.
Sun Tzu also lists disorganization, distrust, ruin, collapse, flight and
insubordination as factors that can undermine an army, factors that
induce chaos and lead the commander away from a state of harmony.
Through the combination of the above factors and unanticipated
physical movement, Sun Tzu aims to confuse (mental sphere) the enemy
and work on his morale. Through the use of secrecy, rapid movements
and attacks, by attacking where not expected, by the combined use of
orthodox and unorthodox methods the enemy will be dislocated, con-
fused and numerically inferior, which affects the morale of the troops.
The simultaneous employment of multiple (and varying) methods affects
moral, mental and physical aspects at all levels of the enemy’s system. The
whole idea of preservation of harmony at all levels, of inducing chaos at
all levels of the enemy camp, of acquiring information and being form-
less, fathomless and of maintaining secrecy, etc, is about the need to
maintain and affect the capability to adapt. The aim is to take action in
308 ASYMMETRIC WARFARE
the various domains where he cannot react or does not know how to
respond. In fact, when flexibility is degraded, so is his capability to adapt.
Concluding Remarks
The essence of strategy and the argument that asymmetry is as old as
warfare itself may seem to be rather trivial issues, and as irrelevant as the
entire debate on asymmetric war. Colin Gray has been very sceptical
with respect to the concern and debate on asymmetric warfare,
describing asymmetry as a hollow concept precisely because ‘defense and
war planning always have significant asymmetrical dimension’.114 There
is, of course, some merit to his position. However, three reasons underpin
the significance of coming to grips with the concept and understanding
the nature of it, even if it means restating old truths about war and
strategy.
The first reason lies in the fact that in this era, when the West has shown a
particular appetite for military interventions, the chance of encountering
asymmetric responses (in the sense of non-Western methods and rules)
ASYMMETRIC WARFARE 309
increases. The second reason lies in the West’s constant surprise when an
opponent does not rapidly give in to the obvious demonstrations of
Western military power.115 Stating that asymmetric warfare is about the
mind is not trite or trivial. Luttwak, Gooch and Cohen and scores of
others have pointed out that failure to react, learn and anticipate will
bring failure to armies and nations.116 Others state that, despite the
experiences in Vietnam, Somalia, Bosnia and Kosovo, the essence of
strategy apparently eludes political and military leaders in the West.
There appears to be little or no recognition and application of the
strategic-level lessons of the Vietnam War and the hundreds of other,
smaller conflicts that have taken place over the past several years. This
was recently stated in a study on asymmetric warfare by an expert on
strategy and ‘small wars’.117 Revisiting a classic in strategic theory appears
warranted if it results in a better comprehension of a (perceived) policy
problem, no matter how hollow it may be.
The final reason is the obvious fact that various countries deliberately
examine the current Western style of warfare to form asymmetric
responses. The Serbs learned about patterns of Western air operations
from the Iraqis and incorporated these lessons in their air defense system
during Allied Force. The concern for the WMD capacity of Iraq and
North – Korea is reinforced by the deliberate attempts by these countries
to bury and harden their research, production and storage facilities
expressly in response to Western air ordnance capabilities and limitations.
NOTES
1 Vincent J. Goulding, Jr., ‘Back to the Future with Asymmetric Warfare’, Parameters, Winter,
2000–2001, p. 21.
2 ‘Asymmetrical Threats New Military Watchword’, Aviation Week & Space Technology, April 27,
1998, p. 55. In this article this refers to ‘weapons and tactics that relatively weak enemies could
use to foil or circumvent the West’s technological supremacy’.
3 See for instance the bibliography of asymmetric warfare of the US National Defense University
at www.ndu.edu/library/pubs/warfare.html, which listed in August 2001 104 articles, books and
reports, most of which were published after 1995.
4 Lawrence Freedman, ‘The Third World War?’, in Survival, Vol. 43, no.4,Winter 2001–02, p. 73.
5 Several authors have noted this. See for instance in ibid, p. 70., Freedman observes that ‘the very
success of Operation Desert Storm made it less likely that future enemies would fight in a way
that so conformed to American preferences’.
6 Ibid. A 1998 report from the National Defense University defined asymmetry as ‘not fighting
fair’. This can be found in chapter eleven of the NDU/INSS publication Strategic Assessment
1998,which is titled ‘Asymmetric Threats’. See www.ndu.edu/inss/sa98/sa98ch11.html.
7 Thomas Homer Dixon, ‘The Rise of Complex Terrorism’, Foreign Policy, January-February
st
2002, pp. 52–63; Alvin and Heidi Toffler, War and Anti-War, Survival at the Dawn of the 21
312 ASYMMETRIC WARFARE
Century, Little, Brown and Company, London, 1993; and several chapters in John Arquilla and
David Ronfledt, In Athena’s Camp, RAND, Santa Monica, 1997, in particular chapter 12, ‘The
Advent of Netwar’.
8 Freedman, p. 71.
9 Colin Gray, ‘Thinking Asymmetrically in Times of Terror’, Parameters, Spring 2002, p. 5.
10 Secretary of Defense William S. Cohen, Report of the Quadrennial Defense Review, Washington,
D.C., Department of Defense, May 1997, Section II.
st
11 Transforming Defense: National Security in the 21 Century, Report of the National Defense
Panel, Washington, D.C. December 1997, p. 11.
12 US Joint Chiefs of Staff, Joint Strategy Review 1999, Washington, D.C. p. 2.
13 Kenneth F. McKenzie, Jr, ‘The Rise of Asymmetric Threats: Priorities for Defense Planning’,
Michele A. Flournoy (ed), ,QDR 2001, Strategy Driven Choices for America’s Security, National
Defense University Press, Washington, D.C. 2001, p. 76.
14 Ibid, p. 75
15 Ibid, pp.78-90. This approach to the meaning of asymmetry has not only been typical of military
or defence reports. See for instance the Spring 2000 article in Orbis by Winn Schwartau titled
‘Asymmetric Adversaries’.
16 The already mentioned strategic assessment falls into this category, as do various other articles,
for instance an article that summarized the proceedings of a conference debating the question
emanating from Joint Vision 2010, whether ‘this nation [ the US] be defeated by asymmetric
means that strike at known Achilles heels of the Armed Forces as well as key nodes in a largely
unprotected civil infrastructure?’ See Robert David Steele, ‘The Asymmetric Threat: Listening to
the Debate’, Joint Forces Quarterly, Autumn-Winter 1998–99, pp. 78.
17 See for instance Nicholas Newman, Asymmetric Threats to British Military Intervention
Operations, RUSI, Whitehall Paper Series, no. 49, London, 2000.
18 Timothy L. Thomas, ‘Deciphering Asymmetry’s Word Game’, Military Review, July–August
2001, p. 33.
19 For instance the US planning document Joint Vision 2020 addresses asymmetric threats using
the threat of long-range ballistic missiles as a key example; Department of Defense, Joint Vision
2020, Washington, D.C., The Joint Staff, 2000, p.5.
20 See Freedman for this somewhat cynical, but nevertheless pertinent remark. Freedman, pp.
71–72.
21 During the Second World War, the Germans displayed surprising adaptability in dispersing their
war production facilities, delaying the materialization of the full effect of the Allied strategic air
offensive. See for instance Richard Overy, The Air War 1939–1945, Stein and Day, New York,
1980, or Why The Allies Won, W.W. Norton & Company, New York, 1995. For the various
Korean countermeasures, see for instance Robert Futrell, The United States A ir Force in Korea
1950–1953, Revised Edition, Office of Air Force History, United States Air Force, Washington,
D.C., 1983. The interdiction campaigns in Vietnam are well documented. Insightful and well
known are the analyses offered by Mark Clodfelter, The Limits of Air Power, The Free Press, New
York, 1989, and by Robert Pape, Bombing to Win, Cornell University Press, Ithaca, 1996, in par-
ticular chapter 6. For analyses of these tactics in recent operations, see for instance Benjamin
Lambeth, NATO’s Air War for Kosovo, A Strategic and Operational Assessment, RAND, Santa
Monica, 2001; B.R. Posen, ‘The War for Kosovo; Serbia’s Political-Military Strategy’,
International Security, 26, 1, pp. 93–128; Daniel Byman and Matthew Waxman, ‘Defeating US
Coercion’, Survival, vol. 41, no.2, Summer 1999, pp. 107-20; D. Byman, K. Polak & M.
Waxman, ‘Coercing Saddam Hussein: Lessons from the Past’, Survival, 40, 3, pp. 127–51;
ASYMMETRIC WARFARE 313
Robert Scales, ‘Adaptive Enemies, Dealing with the Strategic Threat After 2010’, Strategic
Review, Winter 1999, vol. 27, no. 1, pp. 5–14.
22 See for this argument for instance Goulding.
23 K.J. Holsti, The State, War and the State of War, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 1996,
pp. 36–39.
24 Mary Kaldor, ‘Introduction’, Global Insecurity, Restructuring the GlobalMilitary Sector, Volume III,
Pinter, New York, 2000, p. 6. In this chapter she summarizes key arguments from her insightful
book New & Old Wars, Organized violence in a Global Era, Polity Press, London, 1999.
25 Ralph Peters, ‘The New Warrior Class’, Parameters, Summer 1994, p. 16.
26 See William Lind, et al, ‘The Changing Face of War: Into the Fourth Generation’, Marine Corps
Gazette, October 1989; Thomas X. Hammes, ‘The Evolution of War: The Fourth Generation’,
Marine Corps Gazette, September 1994, and William Lind, et al, ‘Fourth Generation Warfare:
Another Look’, Marine Corps Gazette, December 1994.
27 As Colin Gray argues, not without reason, in chapters 3 and 4 in Modern Strategy, Oxford
University Press, Oxford, 1999.
28 Various authors besides van Creveld. Kaldor and Holsti have made this point,. See for instance
Freedman, p. 61, which is a repetition of a point he made earlier in The Revolution in Strategic
Affairs, Adelphi Paper 318, Oxford University Press for IISS, London, 1998; Edward Luttwak,
‘Towards Post-Heroic Warfare’, Foreign Affairs, 74.3 (May–June 1995) or Byman and Waxman,
p. 108. The same observation is often made by authors debating the revolution in military
affairs, the literature about which is vast. An early influential paper arguing that an RMA was
underway, appeared not long after Desert Storm: Eliot Cohen, ‘A Revolution in Warfare’, Foreign
Affairs, no. 73, 1994, pp. 109–124. A useful short summary and discussion has been produced
by Colin Gray, Weapons for Strategic Effect, Occasional Paper No. 21, Center for Strategy and
Technology, Air War College, Air University, Maxwell AFB, Alabama, January 2001. Most
recently Gray discussed this topic in ‘The RMA and Intervention: A Sceptical View’,
Contemporary Security Policy, vol. 22, no. 3, December 2001, pp. 52–65. Here he explicitly
makes the connection with asymmetric war. Other useful discussions that go beyond the slogans
include Craig A. Snyder and J. Mohan Malik, ‘Developments in Modern Warfare’ and Andrew
Latham, ‘Re-Imagining Warfare: The Revolution in Military Affairs’, both in Craig Snyder (ed),
Contemporary Security and Strategy, MacMillan Press, London, 1999.
29 Martin van Creveld, The Transformation of War, New York, 1991, p. 142–143, also cited in
Holsti, p. 38
30 Quite a few experts have contributed to this debate, for instance John Keegan, Christopher
Bassford, Colin Gray, Robert Bunker.
31 The Tofflers discern first, second and third wave wars, and clashes of warforms. See War and
Anti-War.
32 Freedman, p. 71.
33 Charles Dunlap, ‘Asymmetric Warfare and the Western Mindset’, in Matthews, L.J. (ed),
Challenging the United States Symetrically and Asymetrically: Can America be Defended?, US Army
War College Strategic Studies Institute, 1998, p. 1, cited in Newman, p. 7.
34 Kristin S. Kolet, ‘Asymmetric Threats to the United States’, Comparative Strategy, 20, 2001, p.
277.
35 Newman, pp. 2–4, 92.
36 Bennett, B.W. , Twomey, C.P., Treverton, G.F., What are Asymmetric Strategies?, RAND, 1999,
p. 3.
37 Freedman, p. 84.
314 ASYMMETRIC WARFARE
st
38 Steven Metz, Armed Conflict in the 21 Century: The Information Revolution and Post-Modern
Warfare, Strategic Studies Institute, U.S. Army War College, Carlisle Barracks, April 2000, p. 22.
Basil Liddell Hart summarized his thoughts in an eight point advise in Strategy, Preager , New
York, 1967, in particular chapter XX. Interestingly, this edition includes a two -page introduc-
tion with citations from Sun Tzu’s The Art of War. Edward Luttwak basically argued that precisely
because a certain strategy, doctrine, weapon, or method has proved its value in combat, it will
not be successful the next time because the opponent, and third parties observing the events, will
learn, respond and will attempt to nullify the advantage by taking countermeasures or by
adopting the successful practices. See Edward Luttwak, Strategy, The Logic of War and Peace,
Harvard University Press, Cambridge, Ma, 1987. Charles Dunlap has illustrated how techno-
logical superiority, as demonstrated by the West in the nineties, creates its own counteractions,
problems and dilemmas; Charles Dunlap, ‘Technology: Complicating moral life for the nation’s
defenders’, Parameters, vol. 29, no. 3, 1999, pp. 24–53.
39 Colin Gray, ‘Thinking Asymmetrically in Times of Terror’, p. 5.
40 Several excellent interpretations have been published in the past decade. I rely in particular on
Ralph D. Sawyer’s new translation The Art of War, Bopulder, Co, 1994, with an extensive intro-
duction for reference to the text. Additionally, I refer to Roger Ames, Sun Tzu, The Art of War,
Balantine Books, New York, 1993, for additional explanation of some concepts, Ames being par-
ticularly valuable for the intellectual context of The Art of War.
41 There are some pitfalls when interpreting Sun Tzu. Through analyzing Sun Tzu, one destroys
structures which may have a particular value or purpose. One may see what seems like relations,
connections and continuities, but only after ripping apart the original setting of parts of the text.
However, keeping in mind that what we know of The Art of War is to some extent fragmentary
anyway, there can’t be much harm in fragmenting it slightly further, if for no other purpose than
to see if one is able to increase one’s understanding or perhaps reveal new insights, as long as we
realize that it is a mental exercise taking place in the 21th century in which meaning and
language may be differently connected than when The Art of War was written.
42 O’Dowd and Waldron, ‘Sun Tzu for Strategists’, Comparative Strategy, Volume 10, p. 25.
43 For the sake of readability I have avoided enumerating all the Chinese names of the Chinese
commentators and translators, anyone interested in them should take a look at O’Dowd and
Waldron, p. 26.
44 This is a very rough and unbalanced description of Boyd’s rich body of thought.
45 This section about some fundamentals of Chinese thinking comes from Ames, pp. 43–66.
46 This is not easily digestible material. However, anyone familiar with the ideas of modernity in
sociology will recognize similarities between this section and the concept of reflexivity. See for
instance Anthony Giddens, The Conseqences of Modernity, Blackwells, Oxford, 1990, p.36
47 In ancient China , righteous wars were of three types. The first and primary form of war was a
punitive expedition carried out by the central authority against a local feudal leader for offences.
The second form was revolutionary war or rebellion, which was justifiable only when the king
or emperor seriously deviated from the publicly accepted deeds of a leader and subsequently
inflicted extreme hardship on the people. The third form of war was a war started by a feudal
leader of a state against the leader of another state. This was considered an extraordinary phe-
nomenon. See Chen-Ya Tien, Chinese Military Theory, Ancient and Modern, Mosaic Press,
Oakville, 1992, p.31.
48 See Ames, pp. 68–70
49 Sawyer, Ch 3, p. 177.
50 Ibid, Ch 1, p. 167.
ASYMMETRIC WARFARE 315
51 Ibid, Ch 3, p. 177.
52 Which is not saying that the battles in the Warring States period were bloodless. During the
Warring States period, the scale of conflict surged phenomenally, sustained by the increasing
agricultural productivity and expanding material prosperity. Weaker states could easily field
armies of 100.000 men and there are reports of armies being mobilized to a total of 600.000
men. Numerical strength has become crucial. Casualty figures read like reports from the First
World War: 100.000 casualties in the battle of Ma-ling in 341 B.C., a number growing to
450.000 men being slaughtered in a single battle in 260 B.C. This also gives a glimpse into the
required level of sophisticated planning and coordination. See Sawyer, introduction, pp. 53–57.
53 Ibid, ch 3, p. 177.
54 Ibid, ch 2, 173–174.
55 Ibid, Ch 3, p. 177.
56 Ibid, Ch 8, p. 203–204.
57 Although in the classical Chinese philosophical framework, our common division into grand
strategic, strategic, operational and tactical levels does not make any sense as they are interwoven.
58 For some additional meanings see Ames. p. 73.
59 In that respect I do not agree with Micheal Handel who, in his comparison of Sun Tzu,
Clasuewitz and Jomini, states that Sun Tzu is merely overoptimistic about the possibility of
gaining total knowledge and of shaping the environment. Handel also states that the differences
between Sun Tzu and Clasuewitz are definitely not due to different cultural outlooks. I think I
demonstrated that Sun Tzu’s emphasize on gaining information to shape the environment can
be perfectly understood within the framework of Chinese philosophy. It is completely consistent
with it. See Michael Handel, Masters of War.
60 The Tao causes the people to be in accordance with the leader, ch 1, p. 167.
61 Sawyer, ch 1, p. 167.Note that the first, the fourth and the seventh are about factors that affect
cohesion in various levels of the system. The second takes into account the personal traits and
qualities of the commander, qualities that are elsewhere defined in terms of discipline, wisdom,
fairness, experience, righteousness and in character traits such as vanity and greed which may be
exploited (see Sawyer, p. 133). The third is about the extent to which the season and the terrain
are favorable for a campaign. Here the fact that we are dealing with an agrarian society is impor-
tant, for soldiers needed food and the harvest needed to be secured so the men could only in cer-
tain periods be gone from the state. The fifth is about quantity of the forces and the sixth about
the quality of those forces. So Sun Tzu makes sure that the most relevant factors are taken into
account.
62 Ibid, ch 4, p. 184.
63 Ibid, ch 12, p. 228.
64 Ibid, ch 4, p. 184.
65 Ibid, ch 4, p. 183
66 Ibid, ‘one who cannot be victorious assumes a defensive posture, one who can be victorious
attacks’, ch 4, p. 183. Here too preservations are paramount to exploiting opportunities later in
the campaign.
67 Ibid, ch 9, p. 203. Here is a crucial part for understanding the meaning of Sun Tzu’s quest for
information. ‘Thus the general who has penetrating understanding of the advantages of the nine
changes knows how to employ the army. If a general does not have a penetrating understanding
of the nine changes, even though he is familiar with the topography, he will not be able to realize
the advantages of terrain … even though he is familiar with the five advantages, he will not be
able to control men.
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The end set by other societies is not to impose its will on the West (our
way of understanding war) but to prevent countries like the United
States from imposing its will on them. The means is to turn the West’s
strengths against it. As William Perry remarked in 1998: “our enemies
will follow Sun Tzu and turn our strengths against us”. Sun Tzu tells us
that “one gains victory through the unorthodox”. And the means to do
that, he also tells us, is to know the enemy: “the general who knows his
enemy will not be endangered in a hundred engagements”. What he
meant by ‘knows’ does not mean merely intelligence about enemy plans
or formations; knowledge goes beyond the simple acquisition of infor-
mation to include an understanding of the thought processes and value
systems of an enemy leadership as well as an enemy population.
Thirdly, asymmetric warfare is as old as war itself but the way the West
now fights its wars makes it especially vulnerable to asymmetric
strategies. It expects a decisive victory; it abhors casualties; it is less
warlike than at any time in its history. Once the resort of the strong,
writes Michael Mandelbaum, war is now the resort of the weak. Western
societies use war as a means of last resort; weaker societies use it as a
means of first, in part, because the weak have much less to lose.
Humane Warfare
When using the term ‘humane’ one is looking at three factors. First, the
attempt to minimise casualties on one’s own side, to reduce risk to one’s
own men. The second is to fight one’s enemies humanely: with the
minimum of collateral damage to citizens and non-belligerents alike. The
third is to be seen to be acting in a humanitarian fashion. Indeed Western
soldiers are increasingly encouraged to see themselves as humanitarians.
It seems to me that such arguments, though well taken, miss the point
on a number of counts. First, ‘zero tolerance’ is real enough in the minds
of those who advise policy makers including the military. Whether the
perception of casualty aversion is accurate or not it seems to shape cur-
rent American military planning as well as long term force development.
In a society which is structured around the avoidance of risks in all walks
of life the military will also be encouraged to see risk aversion as its
principal mission. ‘Force protection has become the air force’s highest
priority’ writes Brigadier-Gen. Richard Coleman, the Director of USAF
security forces, ‘conducting that mission is now as important as
projecting our combat power’.
The second problem is that many of the West’s adversaries are fully aware
that societies they may have to fight are risk averse. America’s adversaries
are watching it closely. Its withdrawal from Somalia was a disaster for its
standing in the Islamic world where a willingness to die for one’s belief
tends to be seen as a sign of moral conviction. Interviewed on ABC news
the terrorist leader Osama bin Laden made the following observation:
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It is only our sense of the tragic that tells us that there are not always solu-
tions in life because no resolution is ever final, and few causes are ever
totally just. Tragedy usually involves, not the clash of good versus bad but
two half truths – the fact that they are half true is what makes life tragic.
But then the United States is no longer a society that is in touch with
tragedy as a way of understanding life. Some years ago the military
historian, Williamson Murray, took an informal poll of 65 students on
his military history courses in three different universities and found only
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five had been exposed at high school or university to a single Greek tragedy.
The academic world, he warns, is producing a generation of Americans
who are incapable of understanding the nature of the tragic through the
medium of books. One day they may find themselves disadvantaged when
they find themselves fighting people beyond their comprehension.
There is not a problem that confronted the Greeks. The great virtue of
reading Euripides’ Trojan War plays (the most savage indictment of the
cruelty of war to be found anywhere in the Western canon) is that
arguments are never resolved by scholarly argument. The counter propo-
sition would have been incomprehensible to the Greeks. And it is
precisely because their tragedies grew out of a chaotic world in which
violence was often random and ever present that what they had to say
about it should still be of interest to us. For the great tragedies convey the
image of a radically plural world in which there is no ultimate principle
and no ultimate judge to reconcile all differences. Differences have to
resolve themselves.
Is the problem the medium rather than the message? In a world in which
the cinema to a very large extent determines our perception of the world,
the sense of the tragic is also largely absent. Most of the Hollywood fare
offered on our cinema and TV screens is not in itself necessarily self-
limiting but its life-enhancing themes, usually describing triumph over
adversity, do not always describe the world as it is.
ASYMMETRICAL WARFARE 325
The issue, writes Mark Le Fanu, hinges on the notion of seriousness, and
taking seriousness seriously. “A measure of bleakness is part of the human
condition and it used to be possible to reflect this in art”. It seems impos-
sible to do so any longer. If we take a defining event: the war in Bosnia
which claimed over 250,000 lives in the first half of the 1990s, the war
passed almost without comment in Hollywood. Those films that did
emerge from the conflict had an energy and inventiveness which put them
in a different league. But how many were seen in the West? Emir Kusturica’s
diptych about the war, ‘Underground’ (1995) and ‘Black Cat, White Cat’
(1998) found few takers at the box office in the West. And filmmakers
would have had to have been astute indeed to catch the other great films
about the war: Goran Paskaljevic’s ‘The Powder Keg’, Srdjan Dragojevic’s
‘Pretty Village, Pretty Flame’, Stole Popov’s ‘Gypsy Magic’ and, most
memorably, Ademir Kenovic’s melancholy masterpiece ‘The Perfect Circle’.
Each of them in their different ways were compelling works of art, imbued
with a concept of tragedy that would have helped decode the conflict for a
Western audience had there been one of any significant size.
Let me turn to a second dilemma. For not only are western societies
unwilling to demand too much of their own soldiers; they are also
increasingly reluctant to appear insensitive to human suffering. Instead
they are expected to experience humanity in both senses of the word.
During the Kosovo war, for example, the Director of Information
Strategy and News of the British Ministry of Defence, when asked to
name the Ministry’s greatest success, had no hesitation. Every time the
326 ASYMMETRICAL WARFARE
But that is the problem. The humanity of our soldiers has to be seen on tele-
vision if the media itself is not to become an ‘asymmetric asset’. And today
the media scrutiny of war is unprecedented and exerts a strong influence on
the way Western democracies fight. Learning from its experience in
Vietnam the US imposed strict controls on the mass media. Few gruesome
pictures were shown during the Gulf War. Of the 1,104 ‘Desert Storm’
photographs which appeared in the nation’s three major news magazines,
only 38 showed actual combat, while 249 were ‘catalogue’ style photo-
graphs of military hardware. In the end, General Powell terminated combat
operations before they fulfilled the objective of destroying Iraq’s elite
Republican Guard. The media had obtained footage of carnage on the road
to Basra which they were quick to name emotively “the highway of death”.
They also began running stories of pilots who had expressed misgivings
about shooting up Iraqi troops who were powerless to defend themselves.
When it comes to the news media, and especially the cable channels and
networks proliferating within the Western world, the West, of course, is not
entirely on the defensive. It would be wrong to exaggerate the extent to
which a transparent media environment is a necessary handicap for military
operations. Recent Chinese writing on the Revolution in Military Affairs
displays a fascination with the West’s ability to determine reality not only
for itself but the world. In the Gulf the West was able to use news reports
from over 100 on site reporters, exaggerating the success of the Patriot
missiles to keep Israel out of the war and to hold the alliance together. And
it made effective use of TV news releases and radio broadcasts and real time
transmission to make the war appear more bloodless than it was.
The West is also well placed to fight media wars for another reason, even
more important. It owns most of the real time cable news networks. And
the latter tend to frame the debate in Western terms, in the vernacular of
a democratic discourse. If an Arab company (rather than CNN) had been
present when Iraq invaded Kuwait in 1990 it might have framed the event,
not as an act of aggression, but an attempt to reverse over a century of
colonial humiliation. And the gradual allied build up during ‘Desert
Shield’ produced such an imbalance of forces between the coalition and
Iraq that an Arab news agency might have chosen to frame the debate in
terms of the humiliation of a fellow Arab nation. Indeed this is what
happened when the network Al-Jazeera covered President Bush’s first ‘war
of the twenty-first century’, the war against terrorism. The newscasters
showed not so much a war against Islam but the humiliation of yet another
Moslem society, this time Afghanistan, a theme which had much greater
resonance in the Arab world.
told, now focus less on control over the ability to transmit information
than over the creation and destruction of credibility.
And that is especially important not only for world opinion, but public
opinion at home. For western democracies too are becoming more inter-
ested in legitimacy than strict legality. While the rule of law is a central
characteristic of a democratic state, its belief in the legitimacy of an inter-
national norm and observance of that norm does not imply the state is
law abiding or submissive to authority. As Ian Hird points out, often the
opposite is true: “A normative conviction about legitimacy might lead to
non-compliance with law when laws are considered in conflict with that
conviction”. Arguably that was the case with NATO and Kosovo.
But while the West certainly has an advantage when it comes to the
transmission and dissemination of news, it suffers from several disadvan-
tages as well which allow non-western actors to maximise its own sense
of unease. The fact that the global media channels are Western promotes
“virtual convergence”. It makes the world into a single cognitive space, a
variation of the global village. The non-Western world knows much
more about the United States than the United States knows about it. As
Martin Libicki warns, small states may be able to use “the globalisation
of perception” to cast themselves as victims even in the eyes of
Americans. Reading the psyche of the American people is considerably
easier than reading that of the Chinese.
The third dilemma western armies face is rather different. Our soldiers
are being asked to confront a ‘post-modern humanism’ which allows us
to recognise in others our own complex selves, making the stranger for
the first time fully accessible and imaginable. As Julia Kristeva claims
330 ASYMMETRICAL WARFARE
“strangely the foreigner lives within us: he is the hidden face of our
identity, the space that wrecks our abode, the time in which under-
standing and affinity found us. By recognising him within ourselves, we
are spared detesting him in himself ”.
All this may appear rather remote from the practical concerns of soldiering.
But there are many people who would like to see the military empathise
even more with others. Some analysts would like to see the military more
actively involved in vaccination programmes; the management of food
centres; the distribution of relief items. They would like to see the last
vestige of the warrior ethos disappear altogether. The problem with this is
that the military is becoming divided between those who still see them-
selves as warriors and those who see themselves as humanitarians. It is a
danger that has been analyses by two American sociologists of the military
who take as their case study, American involvement in Somalia.
Soon afterwards the cultural fault lines running through the military
began to be exposed. Black soldiers were especially vulnerable. They had
been drawn to the conflict by the fact that it was one of the first
American military missions in Africa, offering them a once in a lifetime
opportunity to discover their African roots. But they were soon singled
out as the main object of hatred and scorn. The Somalis expected them
to be able to speak their language and when they discovered they couldn’t
took it as a personal affront. They were also racially different. Because
they were not Semitic Somali children frequently abused them on patrol
by calling them ‘adorn’, the Somali word for slave. Black women soldiers
were especially singled out and accused of being ‘whores’ for not covering
their heads while out on patrol.
There is much more in the study I have just quoted about internal
divisions within the military, between whites and blacks and men and
women. But one of the key ones was between those who saw themselves
as warriors (bitterly critical of the restraining orders preventing them
from dealing as harshly with the Somalis as other contingents were
allowed to) and those who saw themselves as humanitarians, who put a
premium on being humane.
What is even more striking, however, is that few of the soldiers who
thought of themselves as ‘humanitarians’ seem to have been aware of how
they were seen by the Somalis themselves. There was much respect for
their humanitarian mission but not for humanitarian soldiers. And this
was not just because a warrior culture despised a post-modern military.
Even the Somalis who originally welcomed the American intervention
found themselves at odds with the American mission. They particularly
disliked the Rangers and their use of Black Hawks (helicopter transports)
332 ASYMMETRICAL WARFARE
which flew over the city continuously, swooping down so low that they
destroyed whole neighbourhoods, blowing down market stalls and ter-
rorising cattle. The helicopters would create havoc on the streets leaving
the crowds below choking on dust and exhaust. Often women walking
down the streets would have their robes blown off. Some had children
torn from their arms by the powerful up-draught made by the helicopters
as they hovered overhead. In a word, many Somalis felt brutalised.
The helicopters had become an evil presence over the city. Yusuf
remembered lying in bed one night with his wife who was
pregnant when Black Hawks had come. One hovered directly
over their house. The walls shook and the noise was deafening
and he was afraid his roof, like others in the village, would be
sucked off. In the racket his wife reached over and placed his
hand on her belly: ‘Can you feel it’, she asked. He felt his son
kicking in her womb, as if thrashing with fright.
Risk Aversion
If you go on one of the war games or exercises conducted in the United
States you find the US military is turning increasingly to comic books
and films to come up with striking names for its new enemies. In the
Mojave Desert, ‘Hamchuks’ and ‘Samarians’ run about in their green
jumpsuits and black berets. In Orange County, San Francisco, ‘Boolean’
refugees present a new security challenge. If you ask commanders for the
real country or real name you get the same reply: “we don’t do countries,
we do uncertainties”.
Deterrence
When discussing deterrence we face the problem that much of the liter-
ature emerged from the context of the nuclear stand-off which charac-
terised the Cold War. The concept of deterrence – convincing an opponent
that the risks of a particular course of action (such as military inter-
vention) outweigh any possible gains are not new, but in consulting the
existing literature we find the requirements for deterrence revolve around
the idea of perfect rationality and are usually centred around Western
models of cost-benefit analysis or economic utility. The factor that
generally complicates deterrence operationally (ie that make it difficult to
deter countries from behaving in a particular way) are largely cultural.
Subjective and cultural differences between the actors involved such as
objectives, means, commitment and so on do not always apply.
Even then, much of the discussion of deterrence today looks at how the
West might deter a leader like Saddam Hussein from invading Kuwait or
Milosovic, Kosovo. There is remarkably little discussion of how both
might deter the United States from intervening against them.
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The fact is, deterrence works both ways. The West sees war as an alter-
native to bargaining; many non-Western societies see it as a process of
bargaining. The power to hurt rather than military strength represents
their most impressive military capability, and it is pain and violence, not
force in the traditional sense, which is characteristic of that capability.
The fact that military victory on the battlefield may be out of reach is not
the issue. Deterrence is not threatening to defeat an adversary if it crosses
a line, but hurt him. Deterrence in these circumstances is the science of
intimidation (rather than coercion).
Just before the Kuwait crisis began, just a week before the invasion,
Saddam told April Gillespie, the US Ambassador in Iraq, “that yours is a
society which cannot accept 10,000 dead in one battle”. Similarly,
Milosovic told the German Foreign Minister, Josckar Fischer, before the
Kosovo War, “I can stand death… lots of it, but you can’t”. Both were
intending to intimidate their enemies. Unlike nuclear deterrence,
asymmetrical deterrence is not especially rational. It is also a bluff that
can be called, and was on both occasions. But that does not necessarily
mean it will not succeed in the future.
Disruption
The next best thing when deterrence fails is to disrupt an enemy’s
operations, especially in the build-up phase which can take some time.
This option was certainly open to Saddam Hussein. It is generally
conceded by military experts that at least during the first four weeks of
August 1990 he could have launched an attack on Saudi Arabia and
captured the ports of Jubayl, Damman and Dhahran, through which
most of the coalition supplies were later routed.
The only unit that was in any condition to defend the ports was the 82nd
Airborne Division. But its firepower was much too light, and its tactical
mobility too restricted, to have defeated a major attack. In default, writes
Geoffrey Record, the coalition would have been forced to use the
operationally remote ports of Jiddah and Yambu on the Red Sea – on the
opposite side of the theatre of operations, in a confined body of water
crowded with commercial traffic and controlled geographically at one
end by the Yemen, one of Iraq’s few allies.
ASYMMETRICAL WARFARE 335
Alternatively Iraq could have made greater use of terrorism. After all,
Saddam promised a terrorist attack on the West but never delivered it. One
reason is that many terrorism movements were sponsored by coalition
members such as Syria. Another was simply lack of time and planning;
another may have been a belief that the West would engage in more
effective counter-terrorist measures than it had in the past. Also the very
short period between the time the crisis erupted and the war began
probably left most of the region’s principal terrorist groups unprepared for
the kind of operations which they might have launched with support from
Baghdad.
Finally, Iraq did not have the capabilities to threaten the most vulnerable
part of a force which is engaged in a military build-up: the means of
power projection: aircraft carriers, maritime transport, often unprotected
merchant ships, and strategic airlift. Iraq didn’t have anti-ship cruise missiles,
though he did have mines which were not an inconsiderable feature in
dissuading the United States once war began from launching an
amphibious attack on Kuwait. Low levels of attrition may have minimal
operational impact (the loss of an aircraft carrier apart) but there again
clandestine operations against airbases and ports might have caused
significant virtual attrition and certainly undermined the coalition’s resolve.
Defeat
Given that the chances of defeating the West are more remote than deter-
ring it or setting back its plans, other societies are more likely to pose a
different question: not whether they can defeat the West but whether
they can prevent themselves from being defeated. The two questions are
very different. They can assure, for example, that their defeat is pro-
visional, and the result incomplete. As General Charles Boyd admitted in
the summer of 1995, speaking of operations in Bosnia, “at the end of the
day the US must face the reality that it cannot produce an enduring
solution of military force (or on the ground) – only one that lasts until
it departs”.
Indeed, one of the extraordinary features of the Middle East and one of
the most difficult for the West to grasp is that political regimes survive
defeat fairly easily. Nasser, after all, remained in power until he died
despite the humiliating loss of the Sinai Peninsular in 1967. Sadat
survived an ‘inconclusive victory’ in 1973 which was no victory at all.
Saddam Hussein survived two ruinously costly wars that were both total
failures. Quadaffi survived the humiliation of a US air strike in 1986. In
most other societies governments would not have survived such defeats –
witness the fall of the generals in Argentina in 1982.
What explains their persistence in power? The Islamic world has seen
many changes since Napoleon arrived in Egypt in 1798 and inaugurated
what a contemporary historian called ‘the great rupture’. But though it
has come to terms with modernity and capitalism and the nation state
and even the old dichotomy between men and women as more and more
women enter the workplace, what is striking is that so much that is
ancient has survived. The central importance of Islam as a source of iden-
tity and hope; the fatalism of life (which accurately reflects its continued
precariousness in the region, the result of entrenched and endemic
underdevelopment); and the legitimacy still attached to personal power.
If the political order of the Middle East has failed to produce genuine
power-sharing or accountability or parliamentary institutions, the continued
fatalism of its people, their dread of anarchy, and the precariousness of
their lives, tends to lead to the admiration of a strong, capable ruler.
Elsewhere in societies such as Afghanistan, the Taliban may lack popular
ASYMMETRICAL WARFARE 337
Their rule very rarely penetrates down into society or challenges age-old
customs or beliefs. That makes them so difficult to take on successfully.
The warrior is he who defends the faith against the unfaithful or non-
believer. It is in the battle itself that victory lies, not its issue which is why
Iraq could describe its defeat in the Gulf War as “the prelude for the
victory of the faithful”.
There is little point in discussing why one side won a war unless the
question of ‘what did victory mean’ is addressed. Looked at differently
military capability is a matter of fitness for purpose but this purpose is
culturally constructed. In surviving against the allied coalition Saddam
Hussein triumphed.
In 1991 Saddam secured his survival by the way he chose to fight – thus
denying the Alliance any chance to go on to Baghdad and remove him.
By launching SCUDS only against Israel (who the US successfully
deterred from retaliating) and by not using the chemical and biological
weapons he had in his possession, he signalled his willingness to play ‘by
the rules’. By showing restraint he signalled that the retention of Kuwait
was a national interest but not a matter of national survival. Unlike
Napoleon at the Congress of Vienna he avoided being described as an
international outlaw and thus made it difficult, if not impossible, for him
to be removed physically from power. Only by doing so could the United
States have won an unconditional victory. He gambled, successfully, that
the US and the world would be deterred from going further and
removing him from power.
But the object of asymmetry is not so much the defeat of superior force as
to ensure that its victory is conditional. Sometimes the victory only lasts as
long as the forces remain in the ground (thereby tying them down to an
endless presence, witness the NATO semi-protectorates in Bosnia and
Kosovo). At other times, a power can rely on its enemies to lose their
ASYMMETRICAL WARFARE 339
(1) The importance of the decisive engagement (vital to the way the West
has seen war since the Greeks engaged the Persians at Marathon) cannot
be overstated. Bringing the enemy to the fight, to a make or break engage-
ment that will determine all in an afternoon has been a traditional
Western way of practising war for two millennia. Many non-Western
societies, by comparison, have chosen to avoid battle, to out-manoeuvre
their enemies, to keep their forces in being, prolong the war until the
enemy gets demoralised or gives up. This was Sun Tzu’s advice to a
successful general and it has been the Chinese way of practising war ever
since.
(2) The West has also invested an enormous amount in technology. It has
used it to impose its will on the enemy quickly and decisively. Other
armies have often only been interested in preventing their enemies from
imposing their will on them, technology has been less important. They
have chosen to use their technologies for indirect rather than direct
purposes and sometimes not even that. And time and time again they
have succeeded: the Mujahadin rebels facing a high-tech Soviet army
340 ASYMMETRICAL WARFARE
with its tanks and helicopter gunships; Islamic militants chasing out of
the Lebanon the world’s most heavily armed power.
(3) Finally, the importance of what Thucydides called the ‘sinews of war’
or capital resources, the use of wealth to equip and kit out an army in the
field, has been a way by which Western societies have prevailed on the
battlefield. Other communities, however, have chosen to use war to make
money and to prolong it enough to make serious money at that.
Our purpose here is less to answer these questions than to pose them.
Nonetheless, we will offer some tentative answers. To begin to see what
these might be, we need to put the questions into historical context.
The second generation saw the formal recognition and adoption of the
operational art, initially by the Prussian army. Again, both ideas and
technology drove the change. The ideas sprang largely from Prussian
studies of Napoleon’s campaigns. Technological factors included von
Moltke’s realization that modern tactical firepower mandated battles of
encirclement and the desire to exploit the capabilities of the railway and
the telegraph. Third generation warfare was also a response to the
increase in battlefield firepower. However, the driving force was primarily
ideas. Aware they could not prevail in a contest of materiel because of
their weaker industrial base in World War I, the Germans developed
radically new tactics. Based on maneuver rather than attrition, third
generation tactics were the first truly nonlinear tactics. The attack relied
on infiltration to bypass and collapse the enemy’s combat forces rather
than seeking to close with and destroy them. The defense was in depth
and often invited penetration, which set the enemy up for a counter-
attack.
While the basic concepts of third generation tactics were in place by the
end of 1918, the addition of a new technological element-tanks –
brought about a major shift at the operational level in World War II.
That shift was blitzkrieg. In the blitzkrieg, the basis of the operational art
shifted from place (as in Liddell-Hart’s indirect approach) to time. This
shift was explicitly recognized only recently in the work of retired Air
Force Colonel John Boyd and his “OODA (observation-orientation-
decision-action) theory”. Thus we see two major catalysts for change in
344 THE CHANGING FACE OF WAR
The tactical and strategic levels will blend as the opponent’s political
infrastructure and civilian society become battlefield targets. It will be
critically important to isolate the enemy from one’s own homeland
346 THE CHANGING FACE OF WAR
Leaders will have to be masters of both the art of war and technology, a
difficult combination as two different mindsets are involved. Primary
challenges facing commanders at all levels will include target selection
(which will be a political and cultural, not just a military, decision), the
ability to concentrate suddenly from very wide dispersion, and selection
of subordinates who can manage the challenge of minimal or no super-
vision in a rapidly changing environment. A major challenge will be
handling the tremendous potential information overload without losing
sight of the operational and strategic objectives.
The second signpost is the way terrorism seeks to use the enemy’s
strength against him This “judo” concept of warfare begins to manifest
itself in the second generation, in the campaign and battle of encircle-
ment. The enemy’s fortresses, such as Metz and Sedan, became fatal
traps. It was pushed further in the third generation where, on the defen-
sive, one side often tries to let the other penetrate so his own momentum
makes him less able to turn and deal with a counterstroke.
Terrorists use a free society’s freedom and openness, its greatest strengths,
against it. They can move freely within our society while actively working
to subvert it. They use our democratic rights not only to penetrate but
also to defend themselves. If we treat them within our laws, they gain
many protections; if we simply shoot them down, the television news can
easily make them appear to be the victims. Terrorists can effectively wage
their form of warfare while being protected by the society they are
attacking. If we are forced to set aside our own system of legal protections
to deal with terrorists, the terrorists win another sort of victory.
was a perfectly oiled machine, and that was what the military culture of
order sought to produce.
However, each new generation has brought a major shift toward a battle-
field of disorder. The military culture, which has remained a culture of
order, has become contradictory to the battlefield. Even in the third
generation warfare, the contradiction has not been insoluble; the
Wehrmacht bridged it effectively, outwardly maintaining the traditional
culture of order while in combat demonstrating the adaptability and
fluidity a disorderly battlefield demands. But other militaries, such as the
British, have been less successful at dealing with the contradiction. They
have often attempted to carry the culture of order over onto the battle-
field with disastrous results. At Biddulphsberg, in the Boer War, for
example, a handful of Boers defeated two British Guards battalions that
fought as if on parade.
The contradiction between the military culture and the nature of modern
war confronts a traditional military Service with a dilemma. Terrorists
resolve the dilemma by eliminating the culture of order. Terrorists do not
have uniforms, drill, saluting or, for the most part, ranks. Potentially,
they have or could develop a military culture that is consistent with the
disorderly nature of modern war. The fact that their broader culture may
be non-Western may facilitate this development.
high explosives? To draw our potential fourth generation out still further,
what if we combined terrorism, high technology, and the following
additional elements?
All of these elements already exist. They are not the product of “futur-
ism,” of gazing into a crystal ball. We are simply asking what would we
face if they were all combined? Would such a combination constitute at
least the beginnings of a fourth generation of warfare? One thought that
suggests they might is that third (not to speak of second) generation
militaries would seem to have little capability against such a synthesis.
This is typical of generational shifts.
The purpose of this paper is to pose a question, not to answer it. The
partial answers suggested here may in fact prove to be false leads. But in
view of the fact that third generation warfare is now over 70 years old,
we should be asking ourselves the question, what will the fourth
generation be?
The official line in Washington is that the world’s only superpower has
won yet another glorious victory, more stellar, if that were possible, than
even its triumphs in Grenada and Panama (Saddam’s survival has
knocked a bit of the tinsel off the Gulf War, Lebanon is best forgotten,
and we seem to be moving to get our revenge for the unfortunate affair
in Somalia). As Olivares said of Nordlingen, it is the greatest victory of
352 THE CHANGING FACE OF WAR
the age. More, we have successfully reduced war to little more than
airstrikes, called in by a few intrepid Green Berets on the ground. The
only risks are taken by whatever local allies we can rent for the occasion.
As General Nivelle put it, “we have the formula,” and we can apply it
anywhere. Iraq appears to be the next likely laboratory.
Unfortunately, there is less to all this than meets the eye. While
Washington attributes the Taliban’s (possibly temporary) collapse to
American actions, particularly air attacks, there were others factors in
play. As a Pashtun-based movement, it was never strong in non-Pashtun
parts of Afghanistan; before the first bomb fell, Mullah Omar said that
the Taliban would lose Kabul and the government. The Northern
Alliance’s new Russian-supplied tanks and other heavy weapons may
have had Russian crews as well. Money – perhaps the most powerful
weapon in this sort of war – undoubtedly played a role in the side-
switching.
The surprise of the campaign was the rapid collapse of the Taliban in its
own Pashtun region. Here, however, the decisive factor was not what we
did right but what they had done wrong. The Taliban had broken the
first rule of all politics: it had alienated its own base (the Arabs of Al
Quaeda did the same by alienating most of the Afghans). By ignoring
tribal rulers and tribal customs, playing the bully and simply not meeting
average Afghans’ basic needs, the Taliban had cut the ground out from
under itself. It only took a small push to make it fall.
What of Al Quaeda? It seems to be the big loser thus far. While its
casualties have probably been small, it has lost its base in Afghanistan,
possibly for good (again, a base it had alienated).
But is that how Al Quaeda sees the strategic picture? Possibly not. From
its perspective, it may have effectively applied the old lesson from
fighting the Crusaders. When the Western knights put on their
impenetrable plate armor, mount their massive, powerful horses and
charge, you scatter. At the end of the day, they hold the battlefield, but
nothing more. You survive, and when they return to their camp,
dismount, and take off their armor, you sneak up and shoot in some
arrows. They win most of the battles, but in the end, you win the war.
Pakistan, Saudi Arabia and Egypt. While the answer is yet unclear, it may
well be that those regimes’ legitimacy, already shaky, has been further
weakened. Indeed, by forcing them to publicly line up with America
against “terrorism” and bin Laden – and thus also against large segments
of their own populations – we may have pushed them closer to a fall. If
just one of them does fall – not to mention two or three going – bin
Laden will have good reason to think himself the victor, even if he is
doing so in Hell.
Of the three centers of gravity, the most critical is Pakistan, because it has
nuclear weapons and the most competent conventional forces in the
Islamic world (our aircraft carriers will be out of the region very quickly
if Pakistani subs start hunting them). It may also be the country where
the regime’s legitimacy is most fragile. It is difficult to think that the
course of the Afghan war thus far has made its legitimacy stronger. The
pro-American Pakistani government has:
Events are now moving toward the next and possibly final act in the fall
of the regime in Pakistan. If war does break out between India and
Pakistan – and having spent this much money on mobilization, India is
more likely to fight than not – Pakistan is likely to be defeated. Its only
alternative appears to be public humiliation by agreeing to India’s terms
and ending its support for the Islamic guerillas in Kashmir. Either event
makes it probable that General Musharraf ’s head will be the ball in an
informal if enthusiastic game of soccer, and Pakistan will find itself with
a Taliban-like government. America’s position in Afghanistan, as well as
in-the entire region, will be untenable, and our “glorious victory”
through airpower will have turned to ashes in our mouth.
THE CHANGING FACE OF WAR 355
What is to be done? First, we should get out of Afghanistan now, while the
getting is good. Contrary to the beliefs of the Wilsonians, who think that
if we can just teach them to make cookoo clocks and cheese with holes in
it, the Afghans will become Swiss, the best state we can hope for in
Afghanistan is a permanent, low-level civil war. That applies the Afghans’
fighting spirits where they are applied best, to each other. Unfortunately,
the momentum in Washington is now toward another exercise in “nation
building,” which means we are likely to stay, and pay for it.
Second, focus all our energies on preventing another war between India
and Pakistan. Washington is beginning to wake up to this, but it remains
mesmerized by day-to-day events in Afghanistan, and India and Pakistan
get a second-best effort. While General Musharraf may not survive even
without a defeat by India, he is virtually certain to go down if Pakistan is
beaten. If he goes, so do we.
ment. Some recent press reports suggest the Saudis themselves may ask
us to leave; we should pray those reports are correct.
Finally, we must understand once and for all that the problem we are
facing is not merely “terrorism.” It is Fourth Generation Warfare, and it
is the biggest change in war since the Peace of Westphalia in 1648. The
entire American national security establishment needs to bend its efforts
to understanding what a Fourth Generation world is likely to be like.
Regrettably, since this task requires ideas, not more “programs” with vast
budgets, it is presently not receiving any attention in Washington. In
today’s Pentagon, the program is the product.
The Soviet Union’s defeat in Afghanistan eventually led to the fall of the
Soviet regime itself. Of course, we know the same thing could never
happen here.
NOTES
Introduction
The brilliant anonymous English poem Tom O’Bedlam’s Song is about the
physical and mental wanderings of a highly intelligent madman four cen-
turies ago. However, the final stanza set out above could well be a useful
description of modern warfare – particularly information operations. It
contains all the issues we should be thinking about in war, such as force
structure and capability, psychological warfare, modified weapons and
platforms, uncertainty, shadowy opponents, and the confidence, perhaps
sometimes misplaced, that we will be able to fight whenever and wher-
ever the battle takes us.
The title of the book of essays for which this paper was originally writ-
ten includes the word ‘asymmetric’ as it applies to warfare.2 Two points
need clarification here. There is a difference between war and warfare.
War is the condition; warfare is the fighting and its associated processes
that we undertake while at war with another party. Secondly, the term
‘asymmetric warfare’ is tautological. It has been used frequently to imply
358 SOME THOUGHTS ON WARFARE IN 21ST CENTURY
that only the weak use ‘asymmetric warfare’ because the strength of a
large opponent leaves them no alternative. This is wrong. All wars are
asymmetric. They must be by definition because both sides will be
seeking the other’s weak points while masking and protecting their
vulnerabilities.
The antithesis of this is attrition warfare; a term which implies that both
sides are so closely balanced that neither has an advantage, and
consequently they must bludgeon it out on the field of battle until one
of them sues for peace. In this case the winning side will also be so
exhausted that it is unlikely to be able to take advantage of its pseudo-
victory. The major historical example of this was the trench warfare on
the Western Front between 1914 and 1918. Nowadays, any national
leader who allowed himself to be drawn into such folly would have to
possess the two dominating personality traits of persistence and
aggressive stupidity, which are endearing in young pet animals, but
inappropriate in politicians and senior military officers at the start of the
21st Century.
War is an affair of states. If the parties fighting one another are not states
then it is not a war. If we use the term war in describing non-state
violence then we give the protagonists more rights and a level of social
acknowledgment than if we had used another term. The British, who for
half a century faced revolts and insurgencies in former colonies from
Malaya to Kenya and Cyprus, always defined such violent confrontations
as ‘emergencies’. This ensured that their opponents rarely, if ever, enjoyed
the luxury of legal recognition or particular status – such as prisoner-of-
war – where that status afforded certain undeserved benefits3.
This paper will consider the issues of war and warfare in 21st Century
and offer comment on how we can prevent such disasters. The method-
ology will be to use Tom O’Bedlam’s list of issues – though not perhaps
in the order his creator set them out.
missing then there is no threat. However, they can all change rapidly and
– given the anarchic nature of the international community – enemies
can turn into allies and old friends can become bitter antagonists. The
British and French fought as allies in the First World War but they came
close to fighting each other in 1923 over French demands for reparations
from their former mutual enemy Germany. This merely illustrates the
point that in international relations the only factor that guides the policy
of every nation on the planet is national interest.
The other issue that affects the nature of both threats and vulnerabilities
SOME THOUGHTS ON WARFARE IN 21ST CENTURY 361
Psychological Warfare
Psychological warfare is all about convincing your adversary that you
have a hidden capability and in fact can do more than your capabilities
suggest. Commanding a ‘host of furious fancies’ – even if they are only
in your head – is actually quite useful if you can convince the knight of
ghosts and shadows that they do exist and are capable of defeating him.
Hitler was extremely successful in convincing the European powers of
German might in the late 1930s – to the consternation of his own
generals4 – long before the Wehrmacht was actually able to do what he
claimed.
Shadowy opponents are always more of a concern than those who are
well defined. We are frightened by our own lack of knowledge about
362 SOME THOUGHTS ON WARFARE IN 21ST CENTURY
The problem of poorly defined enemies gets worse when the adversary is
a terrorist. Secret societies have long been the bane of state leaders5.
Osama bin Laden and al Qu’ida are no different, they are just more wide-
spread and thus threaten a larger number of societies. Terrorists are so
difficult to pin down that we tend to credit them with more power than
they really have. We must remember that their form of violence is the cry
of the weak and they will use any method to make their mark. Their
general ploy is to exploit vulnerabilities not match the capabilities of the
states they are trying to bring down. Their concepts will frequently be
subtle, but we must not confuse subtlety of conception with subtlety of
execution. There is little doubt that some would use weapons of mass
destruction if they could acquire them, though to date – with the
exception of the Aum Shinrikyo sarin nerve gas attack on the Tokyo sub-
way in March 1995 – they have used either conventional weapons, com-
mercial explosives, or civil airliners in the guise of missiles to great effect.
SOME THOUGHTS ON WARFARE IN 21ST CENTURY 363
Modern Weapons
For most of recorded history it was the mark of a great commander that
he husbanded his forces and used only the minimum necessary to com-
plete the task. Lesser commanders used what they had and then either lost
the battle or retreated to within reach of their logistics system for hasty
replenishment. The advent of weapons of mass destruction (WMD) has
– for the last fifty years – provided even mediocre commanders with so
much firepower that only the insane or the desperate would contemplate
using it. WMD are so dangerous that they require absolute political
control and are the ultimate reason for the existence of states and their
unchallenged prerogative for making war. WMD in the hands of non-
state actors are a recipe for the destruction of civilisation and a retreat to
the dark ages. In short, such a situation must be prevented at all costs.
striking back and creating a virtual second front that took some pressure
off the Soviet Union, which was fighting for its very survival.
War, as it is practiced by the United States and its allies at the turn of the
Third Millennium, is influenced by a range of factors. These include the
Law of Armed Conflict, and the general belief that war should be precise.
This last element is another error and demonstrates the folly of sloppy
language. (As Sir Ernest Gower noted so cogently in his Complete Plain
Words the two alternatives in what appears to be the poor use of language
are that the writer is either expressing a clear idea poorly or describing a
woolly concept with great clarity.7) In the case of war studies many
writers are guilty of both, but it is usually sloppy language that is their
major crime. The conduct of war should be accurate and, given the
lethality of modern weapons, warfare should be as accurate as possible.
The term accuracy defines how close a result comes to the true value. If
a person fires several bullets at the bullseye of a target and all of their
shots as a group are centred on the bullseye then their firing can be said
to be accurate. If another person fires at the bullseye and all of their shots
are clustered in a very tight group - but not centred on the target – then
their firing can be said to be precise. If we combine these two terms as an
analytical tool we can say that something that is both accurate and
precise is exact. We would be living in a fool’s paradise to expect that war-
fare will ever be exact – but it is something for which we should strive
because it implies that we trying to have as much control as is humanly
possible over the conduct of the war.
Modern warfare also requires all parties to use discrimination and pro-
portionality. Discrimination means that we must never wittingly target
the innocent so – yet again – we must ensure that we have good intelli-
gence to be able to discern who exactly it is that is attacking us. This will
often be difficult if we face an opponent who uses proxies or ensures their
attacks are disavowable. It will be harder still if do not understand the
reasons why we are being attacked. When we do respond it is important
that we do so with the greatest of skill. Such skill is essential in the
military staff officers who specify weapon performance parameters, the
weapon designer who creates the weapon in accordance with the specifi-
cation, the constructor, the technician on the flight line, and the aircrew
who launch the weapon. Modern weapons have to have a level of
lethality that ensures that the target is obliterated, but at the same time
they must be sophisticated enough to ensure that their effects do not
harm innocent bystanders who happen to be nearby.
The question is whether armed forces are the appropriate people for the
task. It can be argued that military personnel have an unlimited liability
clause in their contracts and therefore they are expected to perform what-
ever task they are given by the government of the day. In giving them
these roles their government must be aware that the skills required for
fighting in a war are different from those needed to enforce peace in a
bitterly divided country where the culture and societal mores are entirely
different from those in the country supplying the peace keepers.
Furthermore, some cultural practices in those places where peacekeeping
is necessary will be abhorrent to those maintaining or enforcing the
peace.
people – perhaps mainly women – who could help the victims, who will
statistically be women and children, in ways that warfighters might not
be able to do. Some cultures will only allow women to talk to other
women on certain issues. This concept, while only in embryonic form
here, has other advantages given the number of conflicts in the world and
the paucity of highly trained warfighters to undertake the necessarily
violent elements of OOTW.
The message Glover wants to get across however is still valid. Distance
from the target must not be allowed to reduce the responsibilities of
those selecting the aim point and firing the weapons at it. In all acts of
war there must be humans in the control loop of the weapons being used
– and those people must be military for a variety of reasons – and they
must be highly trained in a range of skills. But such training is still not
enough. Training is about functional skills that enable us to perform
practical tasks successfully. The essential element in the development of
368 SOME THOUGHTS ON WARFARE IN 21ST CENTURY
NOTES
1 This is the final stanza of the anonymous poem that first appeared in print in 1620. Some crit-
ics suggest this may have been a poem by Shakespeare from an unpublished play. The version
cited here is in Harold Bloom: How to Read and Why. HarperCollinsPublishers, London, 2001,
p. 110.
2 Note of Thanks. I would like to thank the staff and fellows of the Aerospace Centre at RAAF
Fairbairn in Canberra, Australia for reading the original manuscript and making valuable com-
ment on its content. The errors that remain are mine. Disclaimer. The content of this essay sets
out the personal thoughts of the author. It in no way reflects the policy of the Australian Federal
Government, the Australian Defence Organisation, the Royal Australian Air Force or the
Aerospace Centre.
3 For a persuasive argument on this subject see Sir Michael Howard’s address Mistake to declare this
a ‘war’ to the Royal United Services Institute in London in October 2001. Reported by
Associated Newspapers Ltd., 31 October 2001 on
http://www.thisislondon.c…/story.html?in_review_id+470295&in_review_text_id=42415.
4 Ernest R May. Strange Victory: Hitler’s Conquest of France. I B Tauris, London, 2000, pp. 40-52.
5 For a useful description of some of the odd thinking that accompanies terrorism see Carl Sagan,
The Demon- Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark, Headline Book Publishing,
London, 1997, pp. 19-20.
370 SOME THOUGHTS ON WARFARE IN 21ST CENTURY
6 The Joint Direct Attack Munition (JDAM) is a guidance tail kit that converts existing unguided
free-fall bombs into accurate, adverse weather “smart” munitions. With the addition of a new tail
section that contains an inertial navigational system and a global positioning system guidance
control unit, JDAM improves the accuracy of unguided, general purpose bombs in any weather
condition.
JDAM is a guided air-to-surface weapon that uses either the 2,000-pound BLU-109/MK 84 or
the 1,000-pound BLU-110/MK 83 warheads as the payload. JDAM enables employment of
accurate air-to-surface weapons against high priority fixed and relocatable targets from fighter
and bomber aircraft. Guidance is facilitated through a tail control system and a GPS-aided INS.
The navigation system is initialised by transfer alignment from the aircraft that provides position
and velocity vectors from the aircraft systems.
Once released from the aircraft, the JDAM autonomously navigates to the designated target
coordinates. Target coordinates can be loaded into the aircraft before takeoff, manually altered
by the aircrew before weapon release, and automatically entered through target designation with
onboard aircraft sensors. In its most accurate mode, the JDAM system will provide a weapon
circular error probable of 13 meters or less during free flight when GPS data is available. If GPS
data is denied, the JDAM will achieve a 30-meter CEP or less for free flight times up to 100 sec-
onds with a GPS quality hand-off from the aircraft.
JDAM can be launched from very low to very high altitudes in a dive, toss and loft or in straight
and level flight with an on-axis or off-axis delivery. JDAM enables multiple weapons to be direct-
ed against single or multiple targets on a single pass. (dated 22 April 2002).
7 Sir Ernest Gowers, The Complete Plain Words – Third Edition. Crown Copyright, London, 1986,
p. 38.
8 This is a maxim developed by the noted American air power theorist and historian Dr Phillip
Meilinger. See Phillip S Meilinger. 10 Propositions Regarding Air Power. Air Force History &
Museums Program, Washington, 1995, p. 20.
9 ‘Asymmetric Warfare: Myth or Reality’ in Future Warfare – Proceedings of Australian Chief of
Army’s Conference Proceedings. Alan Ryan [ed.], Allen & Unwin Pty. Ltd, Sydney, 2002, p. 187.
10 Michael Ignatieff, The Warrior’s Honor, Vintage, London, 1999, p. 60.
11 Mary Kaldor, New and Old Wars. Polity Press, London, 1999, p. 8.
12 Jonathan Glover, Humanity: A Moral History of the 20th Century. Yale University Press, New
Haven, 2000, p. 64.
13 In discussing these issues with the staff at the RAAF’s Aerospace Centre it was pointed out to me
that air forces have generally been tardy in developing non-lethal weapons.
14 Glover, Humanity p. 64.
15 Carl von Clausewitz, On War. translated by Michael Howard and Peter Paret. Princeton
University Press, Princeton, NJ, 1976m p. 61.
Chechnya: Russia’s Experience of
Asymmetrical Warfare
Introduction
The issue of the Chechen conflict is extremely complicated and
controversial.1 Researchers’ attempts to present an objective and compre-
hensive picture of Russia’s experience in the conflict are challenging
because of the strict procedures regarding the formatting or dosing of
information. This leads to numerous tales about the situation in the
conflict zone. Like every conflict this one has social and human aspects,
as well as military and military industry components. The various
humanitarian aspects of the conflict have already become the subject for
close scrutiny by many Russian and foreign researchers as well as inter-
national organizations. This paper will mostly, if not exclusively, focus on
the military experience of Russia facing nontraditional, guerilla type of
conflict, which may be defined as asymmetrical warfare. Political
questions are also covered, but only where they are inseparable from
military elements. The topic is therefore Russia’s experience in operating
asymmetrical warfare.
A pure case of asymmetrical warfare is when you have the advantage with
regards to traditional military factors such as equipment, combatants etc,
but the enemy is using tactics and means that do not give you the
CHECHNYA 373
The major problem with Russia’s experience is that this conflict cannot be
called a pure case of asymmetrical warfare, defined above, as long as a state
has full dominance in hardware and software – in second-generation
military factors. The problem is that due to poor funding, corruption and
disintegration, the Russian army was far from being fully equipped and
trained.
However, even taking into account the poor conditions, the Russian
army was still vastly superior with respect to traditional military factors
– heavy armaments and on the army level. In the author’s view, all these
limitations regarding the Chechen experience do not undermine it as an
example of asymmetrical warfare.
Table 1
CHECHNYA 377
* One should keep in mind that Chechens have an ingrained “rifle culture” which means
that the male population admire weapons, small arms are regarded as symbols of power
and prosperity etc. This “love” of weapons is an important factor with respect to
individual training and arms maintenance.
** Three factors, namely means of communication, night vision equipment and maneuver-
ability (mobility) proved to be of great importance with regards to the relative efficiency
of the ground troops. The superior side with respect to these components had a huge
advantage over the other side.
*** The second Chechen conflict is characterized by a more active involvement by special
forces from different branches of the military and police structures (Ministry of Defense,
General Staff, Police, Ministry of Internal Affairs, Ministry of Justice, Federal Service of
Security).
**** Air superiority did not become a decisive factor in the Chechen conflict. One may argue
that without Russian air superiority the situation would have been even more
complicated, and this is probably true. However, as the important issue in the two
Chechen conflicts was to effectively use airpower against mostly dispersed small enemy
17
formations, air superiority in itself was not of great importance. But even if a gathering
of enemy forces, which is a good target for air attack, is detected, this usually happens
within or close to villages, with a high number of civilian losses as the consequence of
effective engagement of air power. Nonetheless it proved to be efficient with regards to the
destroying and blocking of enemy fortifications and camps in the mountain areas.
However, as these areas are frequently exposed to unfavorable weather conditions
(mountain fog), the efficiency of air power is decreased.
***** Skilful use of fire support, in particular long range artillery, gave the opportunity to min-
18
imize Russian combat losses in the second Chechen conflict.
****** Although unit level training is mostly comparable, small Chechen units are by some para-
meters better than Russian ones, due to better individual training. For instance, a unit of
7/8 Chechens is usually able to provide more fire density than a comparable Russian unit.
Unit Level The balance could be comparable, but the Chechens have advantages with respect to
three key factors (communications, night vision equipment, mobility).
Army Level On this level, the sides are mostly equal, with the Russian forces having a slight
advantage (on this level communication, mobility and night vision equipment are
less important components and are compensated by superiority in heavy arma-
ments). But the comparison (balance) between armies is not important. There are no
traditional big scale operations.
Regime Level Internal support of regimes is comparable, the international situation is more favor-
able for the Chechen side.
Table 2
In the mountains. Field offensive operations are difficult. The key factors
for a successful operation are air and fire support.21 Artillery fire support
is more efficient against mobile targets, as it provides a more rapid
CHECHNYA 379
To maintain sustainable
course in the conflict
Table 3
reaction to enemy maneuvers, but artillery must have a wide enough angle
for hill operations. Tactical aviation is more efficient against fixed targets.
Attacks from small enemy groups. Enemy forces will usually seek to avoid
open warfare against big and medium-size units. They prefer to carry out
surprise attacks and then either disperse or retreat to hidden positions.
380 CHECHNYA
Rocket/artillery fire as well as small arms fire are more effective than air-
craft fire in reaction to such attacks.
Detection and defeat of small enemy groups in towns (villages). This type
of action is extremely unpopular amongst the local population. The
major problem is that enemy combatants may represent only 1–2 per
cent of the village population. The most effective way to execute such an
operation is to establish a full blockade of the town and evacuate the
population while passport control is carried out and detected enemy
combatants are arrested. With regards to human rights it is a brutal
operation, but there are no other ways to minimize the risk of com-
batants escaping and to prevent them from free access to housing, food,
water etc. in the villages. The locals are not necessarily more friendly to
rebels, but they are prepared to provide whatever support they need,
because they have to keep in mind that “Russians come and leave, but we
have to live here”. This means that the local people are usually willing to
help the rebels, as they are afraid of them, not necessarily because they
are friendlier toward them. This makes for an urgent need to create
conditions for a peaceful life and provide order and security guarantees
for civilians.
Search for small enemy groups. The detection and defeat of small enemy
units became the most important type of operation. This task can be
effectively implemented with small groups that are mobile, well
equipped and in possession of good means of communication. These
groups search enemy units autonomously for up to a week, relying on
agent information, reconnaissance, and interceptions of rebel radio
transmits.
Corruption within the army. Corrupt officers are an asset with regards to
the organizing and maintaining of enemy supply routes, but corruption
also exists within the ranks of the rebel forces. This is not necessarily
based on money, but on a complicated mixture of prestige, status and
financial motivation. Corruption may, however, be used to turn the local
population into collaborators and thereby control the local infra-
structure.
There are some controversies with regards to the issue of home defense.
On the one hand, terrorist attacks are considered by the enemy to be a
success. On the other hand, they contribute to raise internal public sup-
port and army motivation, which helps the troops on the battlefield. A
defeated enemy will be motivated to commit acts of terror, but at the
same time, the enemy’s defeat will create the basis for a switch to political
measures of conflict resolution on acceptable terms. Thus prevention of
terrorist action is the best way to shift toward political means as soon as
possible, since acts of terror are very likely to destroy any endeavors for
peaceful crisis management by alienating the public opinion. The general
public will expect retaliation, and is not likely to easily accept peace after
terror.
Political Component
Political measures are the only way to ensure long-term conflict resolu-
tion.
Table 4 provides the conclusion of the analysis on the means used for the
different components of the Chechen conflict.26
Military Realm
• Military means are essential, but reach only a limited number of
conflict resolution goals.
• Communication and mobility are essential notions.
• Unit coordination is vital.
• Initiative is important. It is easier to prevent an enemy from
attacking (making use of control posts and permanent search/
detection operations), than to defend and react once attacked. It is
particularly important not to give the enemy initiative at night.
• Military activities should be limited in time. After a rapid defeat of
major enemy forces, the military should demonstrate power through
presence, thus proving to be the essence of deterrence and stability.
The problem is that the military acts of retaliation, and counter-
retaliation lead to an accumulation of public discomfort and revenge
motivation.
• The record of using “professionals” (not conscripts, but so called
contractors and officers) is mostly negative in the Chechen conflict.
This is a unique Russian experience not applicable to other asym-
metrical wars. The problem is that Russian “professionals” tend to
take the war too personally in that they are heavily motivated by the
loss of friends etc., sometimes even more so than by the belief in the
384 CHECHNYA
To create
conditions for a
peaceful life
To provide
maximum respect
for the human
rights of the local
population
To maintain a
sustainable course
Table 4
* The use of police forces in field operations proved to be inefficient, so these forces should rather
27
be used to guarantee territorial control.
CHECHNYA 385
Security Realm
Security forces consisting of local people are less efficient and reliable
than the external police force, and the former are not necessarily more
friendly to the indigenous population. The problem is that in a society
like the Chechen one, the clan structure is just as strong and important
as ethnic orientation. The former even prevails as soon as the direct out-
side threat diminishes.29 So police and security forces consisting of local
people may cross the lines of the traditional division of power among the
clans. However these forces can be really useful if they operate within a
limited area where the population is friendly to them (or their clans).
Political Realm
• It is better to bring a local collaborator (indigenous, but living out-
side the conflict area), than to choose someone from the ranks of the
enemy to cooperate with. In this situation, the problem of local
public support will become apparent, but this is better solved
through creating conditions for a peaceful life, rather than through
relying on a popular local figure.
• International criticism is a very important negative factor. With
international pressure to stop the conflict, efficient military actions
are next to impossible, as collateral damage cannot be completely
avoided.
• Internal political support is an important positive factor.
It is important to choose the right time for the shift toward a peaceful
conflict resolution. The major problem is that in traditional societies, like
the Chechen one, with unclear, but powerful clan divisions it is not dif-
ficult to conclude a peace accord with selected clans, but it is really a
challenge to make this accord comprehensive and extend it to the
majority of rebels. The problem is partly cultural. Chechens are obsessed
with status and prestige (money is just an element of this, usually not
even the dominant element). Thus they are ready to make an accord, but
this accord must contribute to improving their position versus other
386 CHECHNYA
clans: Every single warlord wants better conditions than the others.30 So
local leaders do not observe the principle of universality, thus making
whatever agreement fragmentary and temporary.
NOTES
1 Based on the speech “Russia’s experience of asymmetrical warfare: battle against separatism and
terrorism” of 6 February 2002 at the 2002 Royal Norwegian Air Force’s Air Power Symposium,
5–7 February 2002.
2 Second-generation (or Industrial Age) warfare: “This style of war-fighting tends to be linear and
slow moving, relying on masses of men and material to physically crush (albeit not necessarily
through frontal assaults) or threaten to crush an opponent”. Third-generation: This type of war-
fighting “breaks battlefield linearity by seeking and exploiting a combination of “spaces and tim-
ing” vis-à-vis an enemy (…), anticipating the actions of the opponent and preempting his inten-
tions via unexpected thrusts and parries by highly agile, dispersed friendly forces brought
together quickly for the mission and just as quickly dispersed when the action is finished. This
type of warfare also may free forces from the ponderous support structure characteristic of
Industrial Age warfare”. Fourth generation: “This primarily involves land forces (although tar-
gets can be naval vessels and air assets) – irregular or guerilla warfare carried out by groups moti-
vated by ideology, revenge, lust for power, ethnicity, religion or some other unifying bond”. (Col.
Daniel Smith (ret.), Marcus Corbin, Christopher Hellman. Reforging the Sword. Forces for A
21st Century Security Strategy (Condensed Report). Center for Defense Information,
September 2001. pp. 20–21)
3 Col. Daniel Smith (ret.), Marcus Corbin, Christopher Hellman. Reforging the Sword. Forces for
st
A 21 Century Security Strategy (Condensed Report). Center for Defense Information,
September 2001. p. 21
4 Chester W. Richards. A Swift, Elusive Sword. What If Sun Tzu and John Boyd Did A National
Defense Review? Center for Defense Information, May 2001. p. 23.
5 Chester W. Richards. A Swift, Elusive Sword. What If Sun Tzu and John Boyd Did A National
Defense Review? Center for Defense Information, May 2001. p. 47.
6 A lot of Chechen “generals” were officers in the Soviet Army: Dgohar Dudaev (the self-declared
president and supreme commander of Chechen rebels before his death in 1996) was a general in
the Soviet Army, Aslan Mashadov (the current president and supreme commander) was a
colonel, etc. Most of the ordinary rebels were serving in the Soviet Army as conscripts. All this
gave rebel forces perfect knowledge of hardware, software and nonmaterial conditions of the cen-
tral Moscow armed forces.
7 Interfax, 2 October 1996 (with reference to Lebed’s speech in the Russian State Duma).
8 Moskovskiy Komsomolets (a popular Moscow newspaper), 14 January 1997 (figures valid for 13
October 1996).
9 Of course the war against Yugoslavia may also be regarded as a worthy reason for updating doc-
trines with regards to new military operations. However in referring to the Yugoslavian conflict,
the Russian political leaders and military establishment were covering not warfare practices, but
CHECHNYA 387
issues of international politics. Marshall Sergeev (then Russian minister of defense) stated in May
1999 that the NATO action in Yugoslavia “makes Russia conceptually revise its military doc-
trine”. He further explained that the president had already issued the directive authorizing such
a revision. Minyaem Voennuu Doktrinu (Change of Military Doctrine). Rossiyskay Gazeta
(Russia’s Newspaper), 15 May 1999.
10 Voennay Doktrina Rossiyskoy Federatsii (The Military Doctrine of the Russian Federation).
Rossiyskay Gazeta (Russia’s Newspaper), 25 April 2000.
11 Konseptia Natsionalnoy Besobasnosti (The Concept of National Security). Krasnay Zvezda (Red
Star Newspaper), 20 January 2000. In Autumn 1999, the then Deputy Secretary of the Security
Council (this body was responsible for developing the Concept) stated (but in a slightly vague
way) that the need to extend sections on terrorism was justified by the events in Dagestan (which
signalled the beginning of the second Chechen conflict) and terrorist actions inside Russia. Na
Soveshanii Chlenov Sovbeza V Kremle Prinyata Novayz Kontseptsiyz Natsionalynoy
Bezopasnosti Rossii (The New Concept of National Security is adapted at the Security Council
Meeting in Kremlin). Interfax, 05 October 1999). This seems to be the only officially voiced cor-
relation between doctrinal document revision and Chechen conflict experience. However, even
in this statement, the Chechen issue was mentioned after the reference to the NATO actions in
Yugoslavia as the reason for changing the Concept.
12 Report by the Chief of the Main Directorate of the Ground Forces of the Russian Armed Forces,
Gen.-Col. Bukreev, dated 14 December 2000. This report is available (in Russian) at the web-
site www.grani.ru (http://www.grani.ru/chechenya_mil/facts/lessons1).
13 Salavat Suleymenov. Chechnay: vse ge voina, a ne spetsoperatsia … (Chechnya: A war, rather
then a special force operation … ). Nezavisimoe Voennoe Obozrenie (Independent Military
Review), 01 February 2002.
14 Moskovskiy Komsomolets (a popular Moscow newspaper), 26 January 1995.
15 This apparent contradiction may be explained by the hypothesis that in fact Moscow did not
intend to fight: The assumption was that a demonstration of massive power would be enough to
put Dudaev on his knees.
16 The table gives Chechen and Russian advantages on individual combatant, unit, army and
regime levels. The table presents only advantages, with the assumption that one’s advantage is the
other’s disadvantage (weakness).
17 General Dudaev was preparing his Air Forces and Air Defense Forces, relying on 426 aircraft
(including 5 fighters) and 2 helicopters, as well as 27 air defense systems (including some
portable). Gen. Dudaev organized the training of about 100 pilots and sent another 40 people
to train as pilots in Turkey. His army had about 40 trained pilots. However at the very outbreak
of the conflict in November/ December 1994, the Russian army destroyed all Dudaev’s aircraft,
including his personal one. In this connection, Dudaev sent a telegram to the commander of the
Russian Air Forces, Petr Deinekin, which said “I congratulate you with full air superiority, but
we will meet on the ground”. (Novichkov N.N., Snegovskiy V.Y., Sokolov A.G., Shvarev V.U.
Rossiiskie voorugenniye siliy v chechenskom konflikte: analiz, itogi, viyvodiy. (Russian armed
forces in the Chechen conflict: Analysis, results, conclusions). Moscow 1995, pp. 14, 15, 108, 112)
18 Report by the Chief of artillery and rocket forces of the Russian Army, Gen.-Col. Karatuev,
dated 14 December 2000. This report is available (in Russian) at the website www.grani.ru
(http://www.grani.ru/chechenya_mil/facts/lessons2).
19 Report by the Chief of the Main Directorate of the Ground Forces of the Russian Armed Forces,
Gen.-Col. Bukreev, dated 14 December 2000. This report is available (in Russian) at the web-
site www.grani.ru (http://www.grani.ru/chechenya_mil/facts/lessons1).
388 CHECHNYA
20 If an enemy unit escapes from surrounding enemies, it may be traced for several days, partly due
to the Chechen tradition of removing the dead and wounded from the battlefield. They will vio-
late this tradition in the most desperate and difficult cases, however.
21 Report by the Chief of the Main Directorate of the Ground Forces of the Russian Armed Forces,
Gen.-Col. Bukreev, dated 14 December 2000. This report is available (in Russian) at the web-
site www.grani.ru (http://www.grani.ru/chechenya_mil/facts/lessons1).
22 This sniper tactics played its tragic part in the New Year 1994–95 assault on Grozny (the capi-
tal of Chechnya). By early January there were practically no officers left on the levels of platoon
and company, according to some estimates made by the troops that took part in this assault.
(Novichkov N.N., Snegovskiy V.Y., Sokolov A.G., Shvarev V.U. Rossiiskie voorugenniye siliy v
chechenskom konflikte: analiz, itogi, viyvodiy. (Russian armed forces in the Chechen conflict:
Analysis, results, conclusions). Moscow 1995, p. 42).
23 A possible assumption is that in the beginning of the second Chechen conflict in 1999, Russia
purposefully left this loophole open, keeping in mind that rebels escaping to Georgia would
relieve the situation in Chechnya and create a lever to influence the Georgian leadership.
24 Russian authorities are continuously insisting that there are existing links between Chechen
rebels and an international terrorist network, namely the Al-Qaida. Matthew McAllester. Tape
Backs Claim. Video Supports Russia on al-Qaida role in Chechenya. New York Newsday, 20
January 2002.
25 Vyacheslav Mironov. Ya Biyl Na Etoy Voyene. Chechnya 1995 (I was at this war. Chechnya,
1995). Moscow 2001, pp. 402–405.
26 This is table 3 plus the column “means”.
27 Report by the Chief of the Main Directorate of the Ground Forces of the Russian Armed Forces,
Gen.-Col. Bukreev, dated 14 December 2000. This report is available (in Russian) at the web-
site www.grani.ru (http://www.grani.ru/chechenya_mil/facts/lessons1).
28 On the contrary, professionals are expressing mistrust in political leadership, high-rank com-
manders, the mission itself etc. Vyacheslav Mironov. Ya Biyl Na Etoy Voyene. Chechnya 1995
(I was at this war. Chechnya, 1995). Moscow 2001, pp. 289–329.
29 For example in the period between the two Chechen conflicts in 1996-1999 Chechen com-
manders were engaged in a bloody struggle among their own people, organizing raids and
assaults against each other.
30 The head of the pro-Moscow Chechen Administration, Ahmad Kadiyrov, said in this regard: “If
the Russian troops stay there will be no war. If they leave, every area (clan) will have its own law.
That’s why power (leadership) must be elected and rely on force. Currently, this force must be
Russian”. Argumenty i Factiy (a popular Russian newspaper), 09 February 2000.
Another Gathering Darkness:
The Pessimist’s Guide to the Future
Dr. H. P. Willmott
If I were one of the celestial bodies I would look with complete
detachment upon this miserable ball of dust and dirt… I would
shine upon the good and evil alike… But I am a man… As long
as I breathe, I shall fight for the future, the radiant future in
which man,1 strong and beautiful, will become master of the
drifting stream of his history and will direct it toward the
boundless horizon of beauty, joy and happiness…
– No, replies the unhumbled optimist: You – you are only the
present.
Bronowski wrote that “the future will say of (the Industrial Revolution)
that in the ascent of man it is a step, a stride, as powerful as the Renais-
sance. The Renaissance established the dignity of man. The Industrial
Revolution established the unity of nature.”3 If this assertion is correct,
it may well be that this same future will regard the changes of the
twentieth century as responsible for the destruction of these achieve-
ments, if not for a reason that is immediately identifiable. These changes
would vie with one another in any consideration of the factors that have
altered society, transformed the world from the way in which individuals
ANOTHER GATHERING DARKNESS 391
live to the nature of the international order. These factors are many, as
many as there are dates that may be considered to be “the defining
moment” of twentieth century history. 6 August 1945, the date of the
attack on Hiroshima, is perhaps the most obvious of these: 21 July 1969
and the first lunar walk is perhaps another not simply because of Man’s
reaching beyond his own planet but because of its real-time transmission.
It was perhaps the first global “event,” and perhaps also the last. By the
mid-Seventies, and after such unprecedented successes as the Indian
immunisation programmes, television began to surrender its collectivist
identity and social function under the pressure of an ever more blatant
commercialism and a so-called entertainment industry. But in terms of
society and the international order, the collapse of an Eurocentric world,
the rise of two non-European states as the most powerful and important
countries in the world, the shift of industrial and financial power away
from western Europe, and indeed even away from North America, into
the Pacific rim represent massive changes. Arguably such developments
as the Green Revolution, the medical revolution that was heralded by the
advent of such drugs as salvarsan and penicillin, and the population
explosion have been no less important. At the present time the attention
paid to such matters as the information super-highway and third-
generation Information Revolution developments has served to obscure
the significance of developments that formed the basis of these advance-
ments and other related matters, such as the impact upon everyday life
of electrification, though perhaps the most far-reaching development of
the twentieth century has been the internal combustion engine. Though
neither electrification nor the internal combustion engine were twentieth
century inventions their application belongs to this century, and their
importance in changing the way we live needs little in the way of
elaboration. Likewise the communications revolution of the present time
serves to conceal the change that photography has come to represent in
the course of the twentieth century as any casual perusal of serious news-
papers around the turn of the century will reveal, and it is too easy to for-
get that this same century is the first century of mass literacy throughout
the world even though in China alone 400,000,000 people, or one-third
of the population or more than the population of western Europe,
remain illiterate.
and its impact, but even if John Lukacs was correct in seeing the two
world wars as defining the landscape of twentieth century history,
perhaps the defining moment that separates the nineteenth and
twentieth centuries were the events of 28 October 1929. This statement,
of course, does not accord with the view that the Second World War was
the last war of the nineteenth century and that in historical terms the
present century dates from 15 August 1945, but this particular argument
cannot be dismissed lightly. The Great Depression that followed in the
wake of the Wall Street Crash, besides inflicting possibly unprecedented
hardship and suffering on a global scale, marked the end of nineteenth
century ideas of progress. The Great Depression shattered the illusion of
competence on the part of the capitalist system. It, the Great Depression,
revealed a brittleness of an economic system that had been largely for-
gotten as a result of three decades without major and prolonged
recession. It proved that the capitalist economic system and the great
powers of the day had not been given guarantees that had been denied
previous civilizations. But war, specifically in the shape of two global
conflicts, has shaped the history of the twentieth century in a manner
that no other phenomenon can equal. The Russian and Chinese
revolutions, the impetus given to struggles for national self-
determination on the part of colonial territories, first the League and
then the United Nations, the Manhattan project and a host of scientific,
technological and medical developments flowed directly from the two
world wars, in whole or in very large measure. Preparation for war in the
period after 1945 ensured that the military remained the leader of
technological development, and if in the last ten or fifteen years this
primacy has been overtaken, specifically in the field of information
technology, the fact remains that whatever economic prosperity was
commanded in western societies in the third quarter of the century was
underpinned in no small measure by military spending. While defence
industries in a number of countries remain very important in terms of
employment and foreign earnings, the critical importance of these
industries in terms of their effect upon their national economies and
research and development has passed. But war remains very much with
us, its place in the (mis)conduct of human affairs assured, despite the
evidence of the twentieth century of the ineffectiveness of war and the
use of force in the realization of national objectives.
ANOTHER GATHERING DARKNESS 393
It is quite possible to regard the changes that are being brought about by
the Information Revolution and in the wake of the collapse of the Soviet
system optimistically. The last six or seven years have been years of
unprecedented optimism in terms of the collapse of Soviet communism,
the triumph of liberal democracy and the casual assumption that the
latter – and specifically the American version – represents the future.
One has as much confidence in such notions as one retains in such assur-
ances that battle has become so terrible that it is certain to abolish itself,4
though one point of optimism that has flowed from the collapse of the
Soviet Union and Warsaw Pact cannot be denied: the prospect of global
nuclear war has receded. But the collapse of the Soviet Union brought an
end to a period of stability within Europe and it did not bring peace. The
process of Soviet disintegration spawned a series of conflicts that added
to those already being fought around the world. It has been estimated
that in 1992 there were more than sixty wars being fought and the most
serious of these were ones that had flowed from the collapse of the Soviet
Union and Yugoslavia. In the long term the consequences of the passing
of the Soviet Union may well be profoundly disruptive in two quite dif-
ferent but related spheres – nuclear proliferation and organized crime.
The significance of former Soviet central Asia replacing Afghanistan,
Burma and Thailand as the major centres of opium production has
provoked fears that the Russian Mafiya, with control of the heroin trade,
could register an achievement – the undermining of the integrity of the
western banking system – that proved beyond the Soviet Union,5 while
the latter’s passing may well be a source of regret with respect to her
having been a major obstacle to nuclear proliferation. The little-known
Indo-Pakistani crisis of May 1990, which was only defused because of
the American ability to confront both parties with the reality and likely
consequences of their own actions but which many Washington insiders
regarded at the time as the most dangerous international crisis since
Cuba, represents a salutary warning of the dangers that will attend crises
between regional powers that have strategic weapons in their arsenals.
The likelihood of proliferation in the aftermath of the collapse of the
Soviet Union may and has to be assumed with all the potential for
instability thus entailed, most obviously in the Middle East, on the
Indian sub-continent and on and around the Korean peninsula. Herein
may be the real tragedy of the last fifty years, that the Cold War was
merely the period of nuclear initiation, that proliferation cannot be con-
394 ANOTHER GATHERING DARKNESS
tained, that the rest of the world will follow the example of powers
irresponsible enough to vest their security in the threat of annihilation.
If the passing of the Soviet Union and empire brought to an end the
danger of one form of war, we can be assured that liberal democracy will
have little change to show from a future series of conflicts that are certain
to follow the basic fault line of twentieth century history. Much, most,
of twentieth century strife has concerned itself with the struggle of
identity. At the start of this century virtually the whole of humanity out-
side the western hemisphere belonged to some twelve or thirteen
empires, either as citizens or subjects. The First World War was fought
about, or at least the treaties that ended that conflict tried to base them-
selves upon, the principle of national self-determination within Europe.
The Second World War and its aftermath saw that same principle extend
itself to colonial empires. With the collapse of the Soviet system and the
passing of time that has placed independence from colonial rule at the
distance of at least one generation, the search for identity has taken on
new dimensions that have given rise to a new “frontiersmanship” at the
expense of previously-existing national and state characteristics as
different groups have sought to establish and confirm their individual
and separate singularity, whether within or across existing boundaries.
recent years, specifically the upsurge in armed conflict, as merely the first
stage in a process that lends itself to portrayal in apocalyptical terms.
In the last years of the second millennium we stand on the brink of three
major and obvious crises which, when they break, will present themselves
in their most virulent form in the developing countries. At the present
time some 80% of humanity has access to about 20% of the world’s
resources. The vast majority of the world’s population – which has
doubled in the last two generations and which experienced a three-fold
increase between 1945 and 1995 – does not have access or has only very
limited access to proper shelter and decent clothing, while a quarter of
humanity does not have access clean water. One in five people in
developing countries, some 840,000,000 souls, suffer serious hunger,
and if 200,000,000 children between the ages of seven and eleven years
are obliged to work for most of the hours of daylight, three in ten of all
adults that form the world’s employable population lack work and the
means to sustain themselves and their dependents. Given continued
population growth, in part the result of the continued importance of the
family in terms of generating income and security, this situation can only
worsen, obviously in terms of pressure on resources but no less
importantly because of changing work patterns. At the present time
Kenya devotes 23% of its total state expenditure on education, half of
this total on primary education, but in 1989 the total number of children
in state secondary education numbered but 30,000. With the population
of 27,000,000 in 1993 expected to rise to 35,000,000 in 2000, the fact
is that Kenya and other states in the Third World will be obliged to
devote increased resources for longer periods in order to provide the
skilled base for future production, and with two obvious riders. Such
resources are not and will not become available, and at least in relative
terms, the human base for future production is ever-shrinking.
But lurking over the horizon are the food and fuel crises. In October
1994 an article in the International Herald Tribune posed the question of
whether China could survive beyond the year 2034, by which time
China would require the total surplus food requirement of the world.
The question was meaningless. The food crisis, given the depletion of the
resources of the sea and the fact that in the next decade a quarter of all
arable land in the United States will go out of production, is going to
396 ANOTHER GATHERING DARKNESS
explode long before 2034, and in any case the China crisis will present
itself in the next decade. Between 1994 and 2004 China must create
250,000,000 new jobs in the agrarian sector of the economy alone
merely to maintain present levels of employment and prosperity. Since it
would appear that this could only be achieved by a diversification of light
engineering and consumer production, the resultant energy requirement
will be equal to the present level of world surplus energy capacity. All
other considerations being equal, China’s requirements can be met at
least in the short-term, but seemingly only at the expense of a major
increase in energy prices at a time when alternative food sources must be
developed, and none need reminding of the disastrous consequences of
the 1974 and 1978 oil price increases for the countries of the Third
World. Whether the United States and Europe will accept continuing
trade arrangements that favour China and which alone would provide
her with the means of paying for these needs is quite another matter.
of the double premise that have underpinned the capitalist system would
seem to be dead. Leaving aside the fact that we have no guarantee that
the trough is not finite, that at the end of such a process as the limitless
accumulation of wealth one would not be forced back on the definitive
reality of food resources as the basis of real wealth, the real social problem
that is likely to emerge is the reality of permanent labour dislocation. The
impact of the Information Revolution has been to reduce the wealth-
producing base within society in real terms, while the pattern of
education and social development of the last fifty years means that those
who fall outside this base are unlikely ever to regain a position within it
and that the greater part of society will remain outside it. The long-term
implications of an ever greater concentration of wealth in relatively fewer
hands and the existence of political expectation created in a previous age
can hardly be missed. One suspects that even as a new generation
emerges with lower levels of expectation in the first couple of decades of
the coming century the greatest source of tension in western society will
be the clash of interests of a shrinking class of producers and the demands
of a growing class of consumers, most members of the latter certainly
lacking the means and perhaps even the inclination to join the ranks of
the other.
Moreover, the tendency toward a global levelling of income over the last
three decades promises no relief for western societies, quite the reverse
since it has partially involved the loss of traditional manufacturing
industries.7 But it also carries massively disruptive implications for the
developing countries because the same manifestations of social
divisiveness so apparent in western societies relative to persistently high
levels of unemployment and growing income inequality within national
economies has attended their development. The tendency toward a
levelling of income has not been more evenly spread in Third World
countries any more than it has been evenly spread in western society, but
it has taken place even at a time when the terms of trade, specifically in
terms of earnings from food and primary products, have worsened
massively for these countries.8 No process of industrialization has ever
taken place without massive upheaval and social strife. The shift of
industry into the Third World represents a movement into areas that are
generally unstable, and industrialization likely only to aggravate this
instability because the immediate impact is certain to depress living
398 ANOTHER GATHERING DARKNESS
While western Europe has yet to experience anything like the Eighteenth
Street phenomenon in the United States, the example of the current
struggle in Algeria with its progressive weakening of the state in direct
relationship to its manifest inability to protect its citizens from such
organizations as the Armed Islamic Group and the increase of
racketeering, prostitution, drug dealing and revenge killings in the urban
areas, point to the dangers presented by urban-based militants even in a
society where the state and the military possess the determination to
400 ANOTHER GATHERING DARKNESS
In any event the state has been weakened over the last two decades, but
in ways that extend beyond a failing police control over deprived inner
city areas. The real weakening of the state exists in the erosion of power,
authority and will, specifically in terms of the use of power in an anti-
cipatory manner. Moreover, anticipatory demands are increasing and,
ANOTHER GATHERING DARKNESS 401
of lifting weights of one ton – and laser weapons already exist and are
certain to enter service. In the next generation will change both the
battlefield and the basic structure of armies as a result of the reduction of
“teeth” in order to increase “tail” and to accommodate the networking of
formations. Radiators are certain to blur the distinction between the
conventional and the strategic. New camouflage-suits that can make
individual soldiers all but disappear and netting that can render tanks
undetectable even by infra-red surveillance point to the “empty battle-
field” being superseded by either the automated or the invisible
battlefield, perhaps both. One prefers not to think of the real alternative
battlefield that might become reality with the deployment and use of
genetic weapons – the biotech revolution – presently in the process of
being developed. One wonders, too, the future in terms of a world
directorate that still consists primarily of western countries that owed
their claims on positions of privilege to rights that are no longer unique,
and one wonders, in the long term, of the constancy of links between the
United States and western Europe. One wonders, for example, what will
be the consequences of the American contempt for her various allies and
associates as displayed by the Helms-Burton Act and the decision to set
aside the World Trade Organization ruling on its legality. One wonders
what the impact of the U.N. Agenda for Change might be in terms of a
commitment to “permanent revolution” at the very time when western
countries must decide whether the United Nations exists as the
instrument of change or as the means of trying to preserve what is. One
wonders, too, whether a re-alignment of loyalties will not follow the
disappearance of the Soviet Union in the sense that historically a single
great power has invariably raised an association of lesser powers against
herself. At the level of society and civil war one wonders if one stands on
the brink of a new brutalization of attitudes,15 a public indifference to
violence – an unconcern on the part of those with money and over-
familiarity on the part of those without – and a collapse of the shared
values that have provided the basis of social existence.
influences beyond their control. The global market, and particularly the
global money market in which an estimated 95% of finance is speculative
and adds nothing to the production of real wealth, has proved
profoundly disruptive of employment patterns and social security
expenditure. If the immediate impact has been registered in terms of lack
of training programmes and wage freezes for the lowest-paid members of
society, the longer-term impact upon conventional political wisdoms is
certain to be very divisive. The Right, for example, dominated the
political debate in the Eighties, but in the Nineties has been bitterly
divided between the new protectionists of the Buchanan and Perot breed,
the ultra-monetarists and the rump conservatives who went along with
the new creed of the previous decade but who should really be liberals.
In the political centre the division between pragmatism and “one-nation
conservatism” or devolved “localism” has served to rob liberalism of its
opportunity to assimilate part of the discarded Right, while on the Left
the divisions between modernists, progressives and stakeholders, while
not always obvious, has sapped traditional social democrat organizations
of credibility and unity. When the fragmentation of existing political
orders, and the accompanying widespread public perception of
corruption, complacency and incompetence on the part of government
is added to the scales, the fact that so many aspects of state policy have
been rendered irreconcilable by forces over which the state has no control
points to the fact that a basic redefinition of the state, society and civic
culture is in hand. And this leaves aside those elements of society that,
for one reason or another, has been and is excluded from what it sees as
an “establishment” process. In addition, that process has never been
under such strain than at the present. Over the last five years Britain,
Canada, France, Italy, Japan and the United States, and India, have
witnessed the repudiation of governing parties by electorates on a scale
and with a degree of comprehensiveness without precedence. It may very
well be that in such countries as Britain, Canada, Italy and the United
States there has been the first major re-alignment of political loyalties
since the Second World War and the election results of these years reflect
the wider changes that have taken place in those five decades. It may also
be the scale of the disasters that have overwhelmed incumbent regimes
reflect a electoral volatility that is more recent in origins in terms of
unprecedented anticipation, and which will become a permanent feature
of political existence. History does not provide assurance that this process
ANOTHER GATHERING DARKNESS 405
aftermath of the First World War, the changing role of the state and
perhaps even the movement toward – God help us – “Shock and Awe,”
I trust that individually and collectively we make the right choices, and
develop dissenting views simply in order to frustrate those who would
control us, as we seek new perspectives and a real understanding of war,
the state, society and the history of the twentieth century.
NOTES
1 No doubt some militant and hideous harpies will protest about the use of this word, but as far
as this author is concerned bugger political correctness: the real objection to this word lies with
the question of singulars and plurals.
2 Leon Trotsky, “On Optimism and Pessimism, on the Twentieth Century, and on Many Other
Things,” quoted in Isaac Deutscher, The Prophet Armed, Trotsky, 1879–1921, pp. 54–55.
3 Bronowski, The Ascent of Man, p. 286.
4 Keegan, The Face of Battle, p. 325–336.
5 See the article “Global Gangsters” in The Observer of 15 December 1996 and specifically the
references to Transnational Organized Crime and Operation Mercury.
6 Francis Fukuyama, The End of History and The Last Man, pp. xiii-xiv.
7 The changing patterns of industry and trade of recent years invites the following observation:
The need of a constantly expanding market … extends over the whole surface of the globe …
and through its exploitation of the world market has given a cosmopolitan character to produc-
tion and consumption in every country … It has drawn from under the feet of industry the
national ground on which it stood. All old-established national industries have been destroyed
or are daily being destroyed. They are destroyed by new industries … that no longer depend on
indigenous resources but resources drawn from every quarter of the globe. In place of old wants,
satisfied by domestic production, we find new wants, requiring for their satisfaction the products
of distant countries … Instead of old local and national exclusiveness and self-sufficiency, we
have diversity and universal inter-dependence of nations. And the process does not merely
involve materiel: intellectual creation is common property and from national and local literatures
has arisen a new world literature.
The comment was provided by Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels in the first section of The
Manifesto of the Communist Party, 1848.
8 For example, in terms of real purchasing power the value of tea has declined by 97% in the
course of the twentieth century and, perhaps surprisingly, in March 1998, and after a year in
which its price declined by a third, oil is cheaper than it was in 1948. In this latter case, the con-
ANOTHER GATHERING DARKNESS 407
sequences for such countries as Saudi Arabia are very serious but for such countries as Nigeria
and Indonesia the consequences are disastrous.
9 The fact that these economies have managed to ensure their present and future control of
production because of a price competitiveness that North American and European economies
cannot match may offset this problem. If “positive non-intervention” and authoritarian govern-
ment, with very restricted demands in terms of taxation continue to provide advancing living
standards for youth and those in employment – and Singapore and Hong Kong have the highest
standards of living in the world other than in the United States – then their economies may well
be able to afford an ageing underclass.
10 The rise of homelessness and diseases that had been all but eradicated in the generation after the
Second World War have been features of the Eighties and Nineties, and it is perhaps worth
noting that whereas the life expectancy of the homeless in London in 1990 was 47 years by 1996
this had fallen to 42 years, which was male life expectancy in Britain in 1900. In very large
measure the phenomenon of increasing homelessness in Britain was the result of deliberate
abolition of welfare provisions in the Eighties: the problem of disease stems from the fact that
antibiotics, which have saved millions of lives since World War Two, were in danger of becoming
powerless to fight off new strains of super-resistant bacteria. In hospitals throughout the West,
one strain – staphylococcus aureus – has already become legendary for its ability to collect
resistance traits against antibacterial agents. In such cases, doctors have been able to turn to the
“last resort” antibiotic called vancomycin – until recently. Another bacterium – enterococcus
faecium, which causes wound and urinary tract infections – has been discovered in a form
completely resistant to vancomycin. Doctors have also found that some strains of enterococcus
cannot be killed by any antibiotic. In the last thirty years forty diseases have been identified for
which there is no known cure. See speech of Professor Alexander Tomasz, of New York’s
Rockefeller University, the American Association for the Advancement of Science, San Francisco,
19 February 1994.
11 Margaret Thatcher, “There is no such thing as society. There are individual men and women,
and there are families.” Woman’s Own magazine article, 1987.
12 And permanent, endemic warfare as has occurred in such countries as El Salvador, where the
Farabundo Marti National Liberation Front has been active since 1979, and Guatemala, where
the American intervention in 1954 against a democratically elected government paved the way
for intermittent warfare over some four decades.
13 In Britain in 1970 the balance between productive and non-productive families – the latter being
defined as families in which no member was in receipt of payment for work and which therefore
includes retired people – was 5:1. In 1990 the balance had changed to 3:1 and it is projected that
by 2010 the balance will be 2:1.
14 Captain J. Welch, RN, “The International Money Market: A Weapon in Waiting?” Royal United
Services Institute Journal, April 1996. Walter Laqueur, “Postmodern Terrorism,” Foreign Affairs,
September–October 1996.
15 An Amnesty International report in June 1997 indicated that in the previous reporting year tor-
ture and maltreatment resulted in deaths of people in custody in no fewer than 46 countries,
while a total of 150 countries were found to have acted questionably with respect to individuals
held in custody.
16 Friedrich Nietzsche, Thus Spake Zarathustra.
17 From John Kenneth Galbraith, A Journey Through Economic Time, and the review of the same by
Richard J. Barnet that appeared in Book World, 19 June 1994.
18 Alighieri Dante, “Follow your own course and let people speak.”
Epilogue: The Transformation of the
Norwegian Security and Defence Policy
Historical Parallels
In 1263, the Norwegian King, Haakon Haakonson, mobilised the
Norwegian fleet to defend and maintain Norwegian control of the north-
western fringes of Scotland. The Norwegian fleet, which consisted of 160
longships, was totally ineffective as long as the Scottish King, Alexander
III, refused to engage the Norwegians in a naval battle. The Norwegians,
in turn, refused to engage the Scottish cavalry in a land battle. This
completely asymmetric situation led to a stalemate, but it also
contributed to the mutual understanding that negotiation would be the
best line of action. This is actually one of the few examples of an
asymmetric situation leading to a sensible decision by both parties.
The lack of Norwegian success was explained by the fact that the
Norwegian soldiers were reluctant to fight and complaining that their
duty was confined by the law, which stated that they should not go
beyond the Norwegian border. King Haakon’s successor, his son Magnus,
codified in 1273 that Norwegian mobilisation forces were obligated to
act in support of the King’s interests abroad, in order to establish a
capacity for operations in other countries.2
This is our first parallel. When Nato in 1991 revised the strategic concept
and Norway was obliged to establish Reaction Forces, the law had to be
changed before the Norwegian government could order officers on duty
outside Norwegian territory. During the Cold War such duty had been
voluntary and confined to UN peacekeeping missions. Officers were
EPILOGUE 411
That the western world’s countries have common security interests has
been clearly demonstrated in the 20th Century through the two World
Wars, the Cold War, and the latest wars in the Balkans. War between
some states will most certainly affect the others. Asymmetrical attacks, in
the form of terrorism, make no exemptions. This does not mean, how-
ever, that the foreign interests of one Nato – country will always coincide
with the interests of other Nato-members. For instance, the British and
French colonial interests in the fifties were not identical to Norwegian
interests. This is the reason why Norway opposed Nato operations “out
of area” during the Cold War, and Norwegian contributions to the
American war in Vietnam were inconceivable.
Norwegian interests in relation to the EU are primarily fish, oil and gas.
The referendum in 1994 proved that the majority of the Norwegian
people did not want to join the EU, and this must be seen in connection
with the different interests regarding how to manage these in accordance
with Norway’s vital resources. On the other hand, the government fully
recognises that not being a member of the EU is marginalising Norway’s
political position, given the development of a common security and
defence policy within the EU. The purpose of the Norwegian military
contributions to the EU, therefore, is to compensate for this outsider
position. The concern regarding the lack of influence in the EU is
EPILOGUE 413
primarily due to the fact that this reduces the Norwegian influence
within Nato as well. The Norwegian ability to fight for the preservation
of Article 5 as the core of the alliance is thus reduced.
Moreover, Norway has been fully aware of the fact that US military rein-
forcement is not, and has never been, intended to defend neither
Norwegian cod quotas in the Barents Sea nor the disputed Norwegian
claims in the waters surrounding the archipelago of Svalbard. Hence, the
disappearance of the Russian threat against Norway proper, which deter-
mined US presence in the High North, has to be compensated somehow.
Political and military support of the US may help to preserve as much as
possible of the American military guarantees given to Norway during the
Cold War. This explains why Norway politically supported the US in the
war against al-Qa’ida, and why there are Norwegian soldiers in Afghani-
stan and Kirgisistan.
The Norwegian Defence is therefore given the task to bridge the gap
between Norwegian national preferences on the one side, and allies’
motivation to stand by their military obligations towards Norway on the
other. Military integration shall therefore compensate for a politically
screened position.6 The fact that self-interest is motivating Norwegian
military contributions in international operations can hardly be charac-
terised as sensational. A more reasonable question is whether this policy
reduces threats against Norway, and enables Norway to handle possible
threats more effectively.
Conclusive Remarks
The answer to the question whether this policy really fulfils its objectives
depends on how valid the inherent political assumptions are. The USA is
still regarded vital for Norwegian security. The problem is the declining
US self-interests in Norway for strategic reasons. Norwegian policy thus
has to enhance the link to the USA by other means. One result of this
process is Norway’s reluctance to criticise US foreign policy and her
willingness to synchronise Norwegian positions to the American ones.
Furthermore, Norway’s willingness to offer military support to the USA
in the fight against terrorism must be regarded not only as an act of
solidarity, but as a reminder of mutual obligations. If such reminders
fulfil the Norwegian expectation of reciprocal support depends on the
case in question. There might be situations where political and military
support to Norway is subordinated other American interests. It is
therefore good reasons for questioning the Norwegian strategic estimate
as valid for the nation’s security.
Nevertheless, it is obvious that the Norwegian armed forces will face the
following challenges: Capability to guard Norwegian interests in the
northern waters, capability to participate adequately in joint UN, Nato
416 EPILOGUE
This brings us to the question whether the future Norwegian force struc-
ture is capable of handling these tasks? The reduction in size is more
obvious than the change in military components and structure. The
inheritance of the past seems to have determined the result to a greater
extent than the changed security environment and the new military
paradigm. The doctrinal alterations in the last decade are neither based
on the new asymmetrical threat nor on peace support operations. The
Norwegian manoeuvre warfare concept is retrospective rather than future
oriented. However, the most important factor is perhaps the readjust-
ments the armed forces have been forced to undergo. This process has
supported and encouraged a more flexible way of understanding the
complex nature of warfare, and such understanding is necessary for the
ability to respond adequately in an uncertain environment. History has
shown us that the tailoring of armed forces for one expected scenario has
often been unsuccessful.
A flexible military mindset does however not eliminate the problem that
arises when the tasks exceed the capacity. The imbalance between the task
portfolio given to the Norwegian Defence and the resources placed at its
disposal, is an enduring problem. It is thus tempting to recall the destiny
of the previously mentioned Audun Hugleiksson. He was executed
exactly 700 years ago.
NOTES
Hemisphere, but on the other hand Norway screened herself militarily from Nato by her bases
policy and other self-imposed restrains on allied military presence and activity in Norway.
Norway thus remained a fragment of her previous neutrality.
7 Innst. S.nr. 342 (2000–2002) Innstilling fra forsvarskomiteen om omlegging av Forsvaret i perioden
2002–2005., p. 21
8 Ibid.
9 Goldeiger and McFaul, “A tale of two worlds: Core and Periphery in the Post – Cold War Era”,
International organization, vol 46. 1992.
Biographical Notes
Wing Commander Shaun Clarke enlisted in the Royal New Zealand Air
Force (RNZAF) in 1981, completed a Bachelor of Science (BSc) degree
at Canterbury University and graduated from Pilots Course in 1984. He
has completed various flying tours, was Aide-de-Camp to the Governor
General of New Zealand in 1987, became a Qualified Flying Instructor
(QFI) in 1988 and flew in the Middle East in support of the United
Nations Iran-Iraq Military Observer Group in 1990. In 1996 he attended
the Royal Australian Air Force (RAAF) Staff College, completing No. 49
Command and Staff Course and topping the course with awards
including the Chief of Staff ’s Prize. He has been Director of the RNZAF
Air Power Development Centre (1998-2000) and in 2001 he served for
six months as a Senior Military Liaison Officer for the United Nations
Interim Mission in Kosovo (UNMIK). Since the inception of the new
Headquarters Joint Force New Zealand in July 2001, Wing Commander
Clarke has been Director of Current Operations.
Dr. Alan Stephens lectures in the history and strategy of aerospace power
at University College, Australian Defence Force Academy, Canberra. He
has been the RAAF Historian, based with the Air Power Studies Centre,
Canberra. Before joining the APSC he was a principal research officer in
the Federal parliament, specialising in foreign affairs and defence; while
prior to that he was an RAAF pilot, where his postings included the
command of No. 2 Squadron from 1980-1981. He is the author of
numerous books and articles on defence, air power and military history.
His most recent books are High Fliers: Leaders of the RAAF and The Royal
Australian Air Force. He is a graduate of the RAAF Staff College, the
University of New England, the Australian National University, and the
University of New South Wales.
Colonel (ret.) John A. Warden III (BSc, Colorado Springs; MSc: Texas
Tech University) is a former fighter pilot, his service having included over
BIOGRAPHICAL NOTES 421
Group Captain Ian MacFarling joined the RAAF in March 1977 after
serving for 12 years in the Royal New Zealand Air Force. In the RNZAF
he flew as a navigator on Canberra B(I)12 bombers (1966–69),
Sunderland Mk 5 flying boats (for a very brief detachment in 1966),
Bristol Freighters (1970–72 in Southeast Asia), and P3B Orions
(1973–77). In the RAAF he flew as a tactical co-ordinator on P3B
Orions in 11 Sqn, and his last flying duties were at RAAF’s Aircraft
Research & Development Unit, where he completed the tour as flight
commander [flight testing of slow speed aircraft]. He has a total of 5650
flying hours as a navigator. He is currently the Director of the RAAF
Aerospace Centre in Canberra where he is responsible for the production
of strategic level air and aerospace power doctrine, supervision of the
education of both RAAF and foreign fellows, and education in air power
history and theory. He also participates regularly as the interpreter in
bilateral Ministerial-level meeting between Australia and Indonesia.
BIOGRAPHICAL NOTES 423
Mr. Ivan Safranchuk has been the head of the Moscow office of the
Center for Defense Information (CDI) since July 2001. He graduated
from the Moscow State Institute for International Relations (MGIMO).
In 1997–2000 he was a researcher at the PIR-Center and the director of
the Nuclear Arms Control project. He is the author of a number of
research articles and reports on nuclear policy, nuclear disarmament,
Weapons of Mass Destruction (WMD) non-proliferation and Russian
foreign policy.