PART V – GAINING THE UPPER HAND IN SYSTEM PERTURBATIONS
Reviewing rules # 10-12 from Dr. Barnett’s Deleted Scene on System Perturbation. As before my remarks are in regular text, Dr. Barnett’s in bold:
When do we gain the upper hand in System Perturbations?
Rule #10: A strong offensive strategy can force a certain amount of structure on the most asymmetrical of enemies.
Because I believe state-on-state wars are fundamentally a thing of the past, I have strong expectations that the enemies — whatever form they take — will be both fairly distributed in their organizational structure and seek to wage war on us in the most asymmetrical means. This enemy could be an Al Qaeda, or a SARS, or an anti-American intifada in Iraq. In these situations, defensive strategies inevitably fail, because all the initiative is left to your enemy. Some might say, “But if you cut off one head of the Hydra, then ten more with appear!” But to be perfectly blunt, I hate arguments that take you down the path of saying in effect: “Whatever we do, let’s not piss off the terrorists.” If you don’t take the fight to the enemy, the enemy brings the fight to you, so we can do this in Manhattan or in Iraq — and I prefer Iraq. You can counter with, “But what all those soldiers dying in Iraq?” Those lives are no more, nor any less precious than the almost 3,000 we lost on 9/11. But the big difference is that there are soldiers, not civilians. Taking the fight to the enemy forces that enemy to adapt himself to whatever offensive strategy you pursue. If you shoot on sight, then he will hide. If you track him across networks, then he will have to stay mostly off-grid. If you plant yourself in Iraq and Afghanistan, then you will fight him in Iraq and Afghanistan, not New York and Washington.
Interesting. I have commented a number of times in PNM and terrorism related posts on the need for the United States to control the initiative and I don’t wish to be redundant in my comments so I will selectively address a couple of Dr. Barnett’s points:
On asymmetry: the United States is in the peculair position of having the entire rest of the planet combined in an asymmetrical stance. This ” unipolarity” is something the world has not seen since the period between the final defeat of Napoleon in 1815 and the unification of Germany when Great Britain ruled the waves even as the size of the Royal Navy declined in absolute and relative terms.
I have to disagree here though with Dr. Barnett- I don’t think state on state warfare per se is dead except within the Core. What has died is any interest in taking the United States on in a head-on clash because the Soviet model of warfare both in terms of equipment and doctrine has proven that it is no match for American, real time computer processing,Leviathan power.
Saddam had a very good, very large, Soviet armed military in 1991 and we crushed it easily. There’s really little indication today that China or North Korea could do much better than Saddam did. Quantity, whether it is a million artillery pieces or 5000 medium range ballistic missiles or the Syrian Air force, is no match for quality. The only hope of an opponent is to strike massively at our initial deployment at the start of our logistical steamroller and all this would accomplish is to delay the inevitable as a now angry America mobilized and retaliated.
You will see vestiges of state on state warfare in the Gap, most likely in central Africa and you will see states attacking the U.S. while trying very hard not to leave a return address. Case in point, Iran and Syria playing games in Iraq. This is warfare within the context of everything else. Whether we recognize it or not is merely a political choice.
When Dr. Barnett discusses “Taking the fight to the enemy forces that enemy to adapt himself to whatever offensive strategy you pursue” he is talking about consciously structuring our attacks – not merely military assault but using the range of tools at our disposal- to in effect force the enemy to evolve organizationally to a form that we find easier to defeat. Our pressure should make it tempting for al Qaida to adopt tactics and structure that works for them in the short run to their long-term disadvantage.
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