SHOCK AND AWE: THE CHET RICHARDS PREVIEW BRIEF
“For to win one hundred victories in one hundred battles is not the acme of skill. To subdue the enemy without fighting is the acme of skill. “
– Sun Tzu
Dr. Chet Richards, the editor of Defense & The National Interest, former collaborator with military theorist Colonel John Boyd and author of A Swift Elusve Sword, has posted a brief based on his forthcoming book, Neither Shall The Sword . It’s a breathtaking piece of work that argues not for a mere “revolution in military affairs” but that the nature of warfare is undergoing an epochal shift.
Even if you have read The Sling and The Stone or are generally familiar with the ideas of John Boyd or other theorists like William Lind, Thomas P.M. Barnett or Philip Bobbitt this one by Dr. Richards is a fall out of your chair brief.
Drawing on Martin van Creveld, William Lind, John Boyd and Thomas P.M. Barnett, Richards illustrates the general theory of 4GW and takes that premise to their most radical logical conclusions regarding the appropriate military structure and geopolitical strategy for the United States. Conceding that we still do not know the final shape that 4GW will take, Richards points to the known aspects or tendencies of 4GW movements to be:
Frequently anti-State and not just anti-regime
Ideologically motivated
Emphasize conflict at the ” Moral” level
Uses the modality of guerilla warfare
The strategic posture the United States should adopt in the view of Dr. Richards is containment of problem regions and privatization of military and security functions. His rationale is that nuclear weapons makes State vs. State warfare among Core nuclear powers exceptionally unlikely and the massively expensive” Leviathan” conventional military cannot be employed effectively against 4GW insurgencies, is ponderous and too slow to adapt. We do not know how to ” rollback” nor do we reconstruct adequately or without fostering corruption. PMC’s on the other hand, being creatures of the market rather than the State, are creative and adaptive; moreover the history of pre-Westphalian era private warfare stretches back to the ancient world, so PMC’s moving to the forefront represents a return to the historical norm. Problem states will be integrated the way we absorbed the old Soviet bloc, with soft power and incentives and contained until they are ready to join the civilized world.
My Commentary:
Dr. Richards deserves great praise for his willingness to challenge not merely conventional thinking but the validity of the paradigm in which most discussions of military strategy and policy take place. It would be hard to imagine any government entity – even forums like the National Intelligence Council and the Defense Science Board, where unorthodox viewpoints are supposedly encouraged – creating so highly original a brief that challenges so many fundamental assumptions of U.S. military doctrine.
Secondly, in regard to the collapse of the Westphalian state system and the rise of PMC’s as increasingly significant evolutionary trendlines, Dr. Richards is, in my view, quite correct in emphasizing their strategic importance. They represent major changes in the global balance of power and the parameters by which that power may be exercised. PMC’s have become a necessary adjunct even to the mighty U.S. military but for small to medium sized but wealthy states, PMC’s represent power-multiplying leverage that can be hired far more cheaply than could be developed internally. If we are entering, as Philip Bobbitt argues, the era of the “Market-State”, then military power represents a commodity and not merely a public good for the State.
Critically speaking, I have a number of problems with the proposed strategy of Dr. Richards:
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