Land Warfare in the 21 st Century (I) – [ed.1993]

This paper was originally presented at the U.S. Army War College Fourth Annual Strategy Conference held February 24-25, 1993, with the assistance of the Office of Net Assessment. The Strategic Studies Institute is pleased to publish the paper as part of its Conference Series.

Preface

Land warfare in the 21st century will be shaped by the cumulative effects of many revolutionary changes that have yet to merge in a clear or predictable pattern. This paper identifies three elements of change that are likely to have the greatest impact on the Army and the joint conduct of land warfare.

First, the international system is undergoing its third major transition of the 20th century in response to the end of the cold war. The bipolar world has disappeared, replaced by uncertainty and instability. The United States as the world’s sole superpower is debating its role and responsibilities in such a world, a debate that is greatly influenced by domestic pressures to resolve a complex set of economic and social issues at home. Together these trends are forcing a dramatic shift in strategy from the Soviet global threat to regional crises that require collective applications of military power in “operations other than war.” These include humanitarian relief, peacekeeping, peace-enforcement, and peace-building (nation assistance) that will require a wide range of forward presence/peacetime engagement operations.

Second, changes in military technology are culminating in what many believe will be a “military-technical revolution” that brings unprecedented depth and transparency to the battlefield. Five of this “revolution’s” most significant technological developments for land warfare are lethality and dispersion; volume and precision of fire; integrative technology; mass and effects; and invisibility and detectability. These developments will drive adjustments in tactics, organization, doctrine, equipment, force mix, and methods of command and control. The authors believe that these innovations indicate that smaller land forces can create decisive effects IF technology is used by high-quality, well-trained and well-led troops employing proper doctrine. Implicit in this analysis is the assumption that there is a line below which technology can no longer compensate for cuts in force structure. That line will ultimately be determined by the capabilities of our adversaries and the will of the American public.

Finally, this paper cautions that change will inevitably coexist with at least three constants–the root causes of war, the nature of war, and the essence of fighting power. Preparation includes traditional non-quantifiable factors as much as technology. Leadership, courage, self-sacrifice, initiative, and comradeship under extreme conditions of ambiguity, fog, friction, danger, stark fear, anxiety, death, and destruction–all remain the coins of war’s realm and no amount of technological advance will degrade their value.

A central message of this paper is for strategists to carry the best of the present forward as we adapt to the revolutionary changes on the horizon. Land warfare will remain a vital component in the national military strategy, but only if we understand and respond to the forces that are shaping the battlefields of the 21st century,

INTRODUCTION

The collapse of the Soviet Union and the end of the cold war have given rise to a national debate unmatched since the end of World War II. Dramatic changes in the international system have forced policymakers to reevaluate old strategies and look for new focal points amidst the still unsettled debris of the bipolar world. At issue is the role of the United States in a new world order and its capabilities to defend and promote its national interests in a new environment where threats are both diffuse and uncertain and where conflict is inherent yet unpredictable. The degree of uncertainty in the global security environment parallels revolutionary changes in military technology and in the traditional concepts of how we employ military forces. Together, these trends require greater flexibility in U.S. military strategy and significant departures from cold war concepts of deterrence and war fighting. This paper examines their cumulative effect on land warfare of the future. Only by dealing with these questions today will we be able to make the investment and force structure decisions to best position ourselves for tomorrow.

These are times of both continuity and change, and must be understood as such. Complex changes are never complete breaks from the past [1] evolutionary and revolutionary changes coexist, each shaping the other. This relationship between continuity and change is discussed in the introduction to A.T. Mahan’s famous work, The Influence of Sea Power Upon History. There he tells strategists, “While many of the conditions of war vary from age to age with the progress of weapons, there are certain teachings in the school of history which remain constant.”[2] Then he cautions: “It is wise to observe things that are alike, it is also wise to look for things that differ.”[3]

This paper follows Mahan’s advice. It will describe how much in the realm of warfare is changing and where those changes are headed. The essay is developed in three steps: changes in the context within which war is fought; technological changes in the conduct of land combat; and, continuities in the nature of warfare. Change and continuity, when taken together, provide a foundation for examining 21st century warfare.

CHANGES IN THE CONTEXT WITHIN WHICH WAR IS FOUGHT

Warfare cannot be understood properly if viewed in isolation; international and domestic realities form its context and must be understood as well. A survey of some of the important changes in these two arenas, therefore, is the appropriate starting point for understanding how warfare is and is not changing.

International Trends: Integration and Fragmentation.

The end of the cold war has unleashed contradictory trends. On the one hand there are fledgling democracies and market economies that clamor to be incorporated in regional and global systems; the increased importance of transnational organizations, information and communication networks, and financial structures; heightened awareness of transnational problems like environmental, health, migration, and monetary issues; and the readjustment of alliances and relationships among the major industrial nations as well as among these nations and their lesser-developed neighbors. As these changes generate movement toward greater global integration, multinational organizations assume more importance as actors in foreign affairs and international relations. In turn, greater integration results in partial erosion of the traditional concept of national sovereignty. The Secretary General of the United Nations refers to this trend when he says, relationships among nations are increasingly shaped by the continuous interaction among entire bodies politic and economic. Such activity almost resembles a force in nature, and indeed may be just that. Political borders and geographic boundaries pose slight barriers to this process.[4]

Accompanying the movement toward global integration in some parts of the international arena, however, is a countervailing trend toward fragmentation in other parts. Ethnic and religious hostility, weapons proliferation, power struggles created by the disappearance of the Soviet Union, elimination of the fear of regional conflicts escalating to superpower confrontation, radicalisms of a number of varieties, rising expectations of democracy and free markets coupled with the inability of governments to meet these expectations–all are forces that generate fragmentation, not integration.[5] For example, “in the three years since the cold war ended, some 4.5 million new refugees have fled their native lands to escape the civil wars and ethnic cleansing that too often have followed the collapse of communism.”[6] Anyone who reads the newspaper or watches television news knows that these forces of fragmentation are as present around the world as are the forces of integration.[7]

For many, the world is growing more dangerous, albeit the dangers are different and more subtle than those of the cold war. Local and regional “bullies” are emerging following the collapse of the former Soviet Union, and they are amassing more and more military force. International arms sales make high-tech weapons available to any customer who can afford them. These sales significantly increase a third world military force’s ability to fight at extended ranges with increased accuracy and lethality, thereby compounding the problems of an intervention force. A sampling of this proliferation includes China’s sale of short-range theater ballistic missiles to Iran, Libya, Syria, and Pakistan; North Korea’s sale of similar missiles to Iran, Libya, and Syria; the Commonwealth of Independent States’ sale of T-72s to Syria, SA-16s to North Korea, submarines to Iran, and T-80s, ATGMs, and SAMs worldwide. Currently 18 countries have advanced precision guided munitions; by early in the next century, that number is expected to grow to over 40. Those who would consider threatening U.S. global interests are hard at work buying the hardware that they will need and learning their lessons from the Gulf War. Future adversaries will try to deny American forces in formation, prevent buildup, inflict mass casualties, and prolong the conflict.[8] They will seek to deny us the minimal cost, decisive victory that we achieved in Panama and the Gulf and which we seek to achieve elsewhere in the future.

Domestic Realities: New Threats to U.S. National Security.

As the forces of integration and fragmentation push and pull to create international challenges different from those of the cold war, our nation also faces a particularly difficult and complex set of domestic problems. The victory in the cold war did not come without costs to the United States, and America is only now confronting some of those costs. By maintaining a primarily outward focus for the last 45 years, America and its allies defeated their main external threat–the former Soviet Union. Nearly 50 years of external focus, however, has resulted in two new sets of threats to U.S. national security.[9]

The first set consists of threats to our economic security, which stem from both internal and external sources. The internal threats involve declining competitiveness and productivity, loss of jobs base–and its corresponding tax base, erosion of the manufacturing base, fiscal and trade deficit, decline of the middle class wage and standard of living, low savings and investments, the savings and loan crisis, and the eroding infrastructure, as well as others.[10] Some of the major external threats to the economic pillar of America’s national security involve our reliance on foreign oil, much of which is located in areas of the world controlled or threatened by regional hegemons; our foreign debt which will top $1 trillion before 1995;[11] our loss of market share and manufacturing base to other industrial nations;[12] and political instability in areas that could offer overseas markets for U.S. goods or opportunities for expansion of U.S. companies.

To assess what these threats to American economic security entail, strategists must understand that the rules governing U.S. economic recovery have changed. The American economy will not heal merely by the actions taken at home. Domestic action is necessary, but not sufficient. “If this century has taught one lesson,” says Peter Drucker, it is that no part of the developed world prospers unless all do . . . it is to the self interest of every single participant in the world economy to restore as fast as possible the economic ties that war has cut, to restore transnational confidence, and to restore the transnational flow of goods and investments.[13]In this sense, foreign and domestic policy are two sides of the same coin; they cannot be viewed as two separate problems.

Adverse economic trends, however, are not the only dangers to American national security that gestated as we fought the cold war. During that period’s extended external focus, a second set developed: threats to the nation’s political and social cohesion. These involve “the disuniting of America”–to borrow Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr.’s, term.[14] The problems of drug abuse and the resultant disregard for the rights of other citizens and disrespect for democratic values and institutions; the increasing gap between the rich and the poor; the decline of public education, the disintegration of the family, and the disregard for the basic rules of civil behavior; the rise of crime and of welfare dependence; the acceptance of vulgarity as “the norm”–these problems have led author and sociologist Professor James Hunter to conclude that America is in the midst of what he termed a “culture war.”[15] In most major American cities, people of comfortable circumstance live peacefully together, enjoy quality schools, and live the American middle-class dream; those afflicted by poverty do not. This ever-growing divergence is not healthy for a democracy. Regardless of Hunter’s description of this condition as a “culture war,” this much is clear: these and other problems constitute a threat to the ultimate foundation of our nation’s security–an educated, civic-minded, participative polity that is the basis of a democratic government.[16]

On the surface these two sets of threats–economic and cultural–seem unrelated to the military or the nation’s military power; they are, however, relevant in at least three ways. First, the United States must attend to the internal economic, social, and cultural issues threatening the ultimate foundation of its security. Heeding these threats should not, however, push the nation to the extremes of isolationism. U.S. economic recovery, for example, requires success both within the nation and around the world. But solving internal threats will require resources. Military strategists, therefore, must expect that America will both reduce the military budget and, simultaneously, ask that its military contribute to the challenges of domestic regeneration.

Second, U.S. military strategists can expect that their political leaders will seek ways in which to use the military element of national power–in conjunction with, and usually subordinate to, other elements of national power–to promote an environment conducive to political and economic stability abroad. Such uses of the military element of power follow from the fact that American economic security is tied to the world at large, a world in which the cold war’s veneer of stability has been lifted, thus revealing significant unrest, fear, hatred, and jealousy. Thus the U.S. military should expect to conduct operations, usually in conjunction with allies and friends, that are aimed at creating or restoring conditions favorable to economic development and trade.

When one thinks of “military operations,” the image usually includes combat forces. While such operations may be required, strategists must begin to think differently about the use of the military element of national power. Operations linked to strengthening or restoring conditions favorable to global trade, investment, and economic development may include combat operations, but not necessarily.

The United States has established markets in nations with whom it has alliances or friendships. America must maintain these economic relationships and keep the normal, free-market competition between the United States and these nations free from instability or confrontation. Here, military operations might mean continued presence in existing alliance organizations, combined exercises, refinement of common operating procedures, and continuation of exchange programs.

Many of the markets that might become available for global economic investment, development, and integration are threatened by regional instability. America–in conjunction with allies and friends, as well as global and regional organizations–must do what it can to promote the conditions in which corporations will invest, products can be sold, and economies prosper.

The important point is: domestic actions alone will not result in U.S. economic recovery; the current global economic conditions require action abroad to complement domestic policies. American military presence and operations can contribute–again, in conjunction with and usually subordinate to other elements of national power as well as regional and global organizations–to setting the conditions under which economic interests can flourish. There are no historical precedents for long-term economic prosperity absent a security umbrella that provides the stability in which economic strategies succeed.

Third, although the cold war is won, America must remain prepared to protect its global interests. Local and regional power struggles were created by the lifting of the Iron Curtain. Once restrained for fear of sparking a superpower confrontation, a variety of bullies–some known and some yet-to-emerge, some armed with advanced technology weapons and some not–await opportunities to establish or expand their power, sometimes to the detriment of U.S. national interests. When committed to prevent a crisis from developing or to resolve one that has arisen, America will expect its military to accomplish the mission assigned–decisively and at the least cost in American lives and resources.

Decisive use of military force does not necessarily entail total war. Rather, it means overwhelming use of the military element of national power relative to the strategic aims, military mission, specifics of the situation, and threat conditions. While preserving the principle of proportionality, decisive force is the opposite of incrementalism or gradualism. Thus, in those crises or conflicts involving U.S. military forces, the action will be characterized by military power employed in an overwhelming way with as much precision as possible to complete the mission in the shortest time possible and–again–at the least cost in lives and resources.

In sum, American political leaders are requiring the military to contract in both size and budget, contribute to domestic recovery, participate in global stability operations, and retain its capability to produce decisive victory in whatever circumstance they are employed–all at the same time. What these four simultaneous requirements mean to military strategists is this: (a) leverage quality in terms of soldiers, units, training, and doctrine as well as technological superiority to counterbalance reductions in size, (b) maximize the benefits of maneuver and tempo used in conjunction with firepower, (c) synchronize the contributions of all the services in ways that were previously not achieved, and (d) maintain maximum flexibility and balance in force structure and capabilities.

Simply put, international and domestic realities have resulted in the paradox of declining military resources and increasing military missions, a paradox that is stressing our armed forces. The stress is significant. It requires fundamental changes in the way the nation conducts its defense business.

TWO CONCEPTUAL SHIFTS

Before even discussing the ways in which the conduct of land warfare is changing, one must realize the extent of the shift in the paradigm used by the last three generations of U.S. strategists. The strategic paradigm of the cold war–preventing the spread of communism–does not fit the realities of today’s world; to use it to solve new problems is to guarantee failure.¹⁷ This is the first–perhaps the most important and most difficult–conceptual shift that affects the way the conduct of land combat is changing. America needs a different model by which to raise, equip, deploy, organize, educate, train, fight, coordinate, and sustain her armed forces. Containment and our “traditional” concept of deterrence–elements of America’s cold war strategic defense–require rethinking in light of current realities. The United States no longer has a negative aim–to prevent the spread of communism.[18] It has a positive aim–to promote democracy, regional stability, and economic prosperity. What some are calling “collective engagement” is coming to replace containment. Deterrence has retained some of its meaning, but “prevention” is beginning to emerge as a complementary, and possibly alternative, strategic concept. This is a significant conceptual shift from that of the cold war, but it is not the only shift required.

The second conceptual shift involves refining the understanding of how to use military force. The concept of “war” is usually understood in terms of conventional combat: the armies of one nation-state or alliance of nation-states fighting those of another. Every other act of violence, use of force, or form of hostility is categorized as “operations other than war.”[19] Using these kinds of distinctions, some go so far as to draw the following kinds of categories of violence: peacetime activities with very low levels of violence, crises, conflicts, war, and war termination activities.

These kinds of categories are quite useful, for they allow a strategist to plan for the use of military force under a variety of graduated circumstances. Further, they demonstrate that not all uses of military force involve “going to war.” Thus the categories provide a convenient conceptual distinction and an important political one. Politically, the United States, whether acting unilaterally or in conjunction with friends and allies, must be able to distinguish the use of military forces in “war” from other uses. As Bernard Brodie explains, as American citizens we expect and desire that our nation will involve itself in war only…for political ends that are reasonably consistent with [America’s] basic political philosophy….We…also expect that the ends for which we fight are…sought through the kind of war that is reasonable to fight,..[and has a] possibility of success….[otherwise] resorting to war is simply wanton destruction of life and goods on a vast scale.[20]

The expectations that Brodie outlines remain part of the American military, social, and political psyche. When the nation wages “war,” all understand that defining clear, achievable political aims; raising and sustaining the required means to attain those aims; and ensuring the support of the nation–i.e., national will, are absolutely vital to success. Without these conditions, “resorting to war is simply wanton destruction.” Thus, military doctrine appropriately codifies the distinction between “war” and “operations other than war.”

As useful, convenient, and important as these categories are, however, their simplicity can be seductive. Categorizing “war” as separate from all other uses of military force may mislead the strategist, causing him to believe that the conditions required for success in the employment of military force when one is conducting “war” differ from use of military force in operations “other than war.” For example, when planning for war, no serious strategist would fail to ask, “Should we have clearly stated, achievable political aims? or Should the nation allocate the necessary means to attain its political aims? or Should we have some assurance that the nation supports the war?” Yet, when debating the use of military force in “operations other than war,” just such questions may not always arise.

As the nation begins the 21st century the strategist should take seriously Michael Howard’s suggestion. “It is quite possible,” Howard says, that war in the sense of major, organized armed conflict between highly developed societies may not recur, . . . Nevertheless violence will continue to erupt within developed societies as well as underdeveloped, creating situations of local armed conflict often indistinguishable from traditional war [21] .

Strategists must refine their understanding of how to use military force to correspond with the realities of the day. Clausewitz defined war simply as “an act of force to compel our enemy to do our will” which “springs from some political purpose.”[22]”No one,” he says, “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.”[23] While his definition of “war” is less applicable given today’s political realities, his admonitions concerning using military force are instructive. They apply aptly to the kind of violence that Michael Howard describes as “often indistinguishable from traditional war.”

One way a nation might use its military force is to compel its adversary, sometimes by resorting to or threatening violence, to do its will. Such uses are both consistent with what Clausewitz called “war” and, as Howard says, are “often indistinguishable from traditional war.” American and allied forces in Somalia, and their possible employment in Bosnia provide two excellent examples. When a nation so uses its military forces, a contemporary Clausewitz would caution that nation not to begin without first being clear about its political aims and how those objectives are to be achieved. Objectives and concepts must be supported by allocating sufficient military sources and by mustering the national (or international) will to attain the political aim.

No doubt, today’s global realities are different from those that Clausewitz contemplated. Contemporary strategists confront representatives of feudal lords, religious groups, ethnic groups, drug cartels, crime syndicates, even transnational corporations using force or threats of force to achieve their objectives. Furthermore, nations now use operations other than war–e.g. peacekeeping, peace-enforcement, supervising cease-fires, assisting in the maintenance of law and order, protecting the delivery of humanitarian assistance, guaranteeing rights of passage, and enforcement of sanctions–to compel adversaries to do their will. While these endeavors do not qualify as “war” in today’s military-politico parlance, they are examples of acts “of force to compel our enemy to do our will” which spring “from some political purpose.”

Once again, Brodie’s ideas are applicable: Those who talk abstractly…[about war] find themselves matching discourse with those who speak of dead bodies, burnt villages….The euphemisms of the strategists can be counterproductive….the manipulators use jargon that the man in the front lines…can hardly consider relevant to his conditions.[24]

As useful and necessary as the distinction between “war” and “operations other than war” is, strategists cannot allow these conceptual categories to become the kind of euphemisms to which Brodie alludes. Leaders and strategists must recognize the requirements essential to success whenever military force is employed: identifying clear, achievable political aims; planning and employing strategic measures for achieving those political aims; raising and sustaining adequate means to implement the strategic measures; and ensuring the support of the nation (or coalition).

Expanding the traditional understanding of the use of military force in war to “operations other than war” makes both politicians and military leaders uneasy, for they find it is difficult–albeit no less important–to identify clear, achievable strategic aims. There is an emotional temptation to want to “do something” without first

clearly understanding what political purpose that “something” is supposed to accomplish. Yet, as Brodie reminds us, this requirement remains paramount, else what we do is “simply wanton destruction of life and goods.”

Changes in the international and domestic political systems have altered the context in which military force will be applied. Reviewing these changes is important. Changes in the conduct of land warfare result from the interaction of a multiplicity of events, conditions, policies, beliefs, and even accidents.[25] Some of the changes occur in the international and domestic arenas, others are rooted in history and technology. The changes in military technology are as dramatic as those in international politics.

Notes:

1. Maurice Mandelbaum, The Anatomy of Historical Knowledge, Baltimore, MD: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1977, pp. 138, 140.
2. A.T. Mahan, The Influence of Sea Power Upon History, twelfth edition, Boston: Little, Brown, and Company, 1980, p. 2.
3. Ibid., p. 2.
4. Boutros Boutros-Ghali, “Empowering the United Nations,” Foreign Affairs, Winter 1992/93, p. 101.
5. For a different perspective on the forces of integration and disintegration, see Paul Kennedy’s “True Leadership for the Next Millenium,” The New York Times OP-ED, January 3, 1993, p. 9.
6. U.S. News and World Report, November 30, 1992, p. 36.
7. John J. Mearsheimer, “Why We Will Soon Miss the Cold War,” Atlantic, August 1990, pp. 35-50; personal unclassified briefing from the United States Army Intelligence and Security Command, December 1, 1992.
8. The information contained in this paragraph was taken from a Deputy Chief of Staff, Operations Briefing on December 21, 1992. See also Murray Weidenbaum, Small Wars, Big Defense, New York: Oxford University Press, 1992, pp. 14-16.
9. Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr., The Cycles of American History, Boston: MA: 1986, pp. 23-48, esp. p. 44.
10. Robert D. Hormats, “The Roots of American Power,” Foreign Affairs, Summer 1991, pp. 132-149.
11. William S. Dietrich, In the Shadow of the Rising Sun, University Park, PA: The Pennsylvania State University Press, 1991, p. 9.
12. Dietrich, pp. 10-31; Lester Thurow, Head to Head: The Coming Battle Among Japan, Europe and America, New York: William Morrow and Company, Inc., 1992, pp. 30, 35-39.
13. Peter F. Drucker, The New Realities, New York: Harper and Row Publishers, 1989, pp. 137-138.
14. Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr., The Disuniting of America: Reflections on a Multicultural Society, New York: W.W. Norton and Company, 1992.
15. James Davison Hunter, Culture Wars: The Struggle to Define America, New York: Basic Books, 1991, pp. 31-64.
16. David Halberstam, The Next Century, New York: William Morrow and Company, Inc., 1991, pp. 99-126; John Kenneth Galbraith, The Culture of Contentment, New York: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1992, pp. 13-29, 154-183.
17. James M. Dubik, “On the Foundations of National Military Strategy: Past and Present,” School of Advanced Military Studies Monograph, Fort Leavenworth, KS, December 31, 1990; Thomas S. Kuhn, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1970, second edition, pp. 52-91.
18. For a summary of the cold war in terms of the strategic offense and defense, see Zbigniew Brezezinski’s “The Cold War and its Aftermath,” Foreign Affairs, Fall 1992, pp. 31-49.
19. Preliminary Draft, Field Manual FM 100-5, Operations, Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office, August 21, 1992, pp. 5-1 through 5-6.
20. Bernard Brodie, War and Politics, New York: Macmillan Publishing Company, Inc., 1973, pp. 6-7.
21. Howard, The Lessons of History, London: Yale University Press, 1991, p. 176.
22. Carl von Clausewitz, On War, ed. and trans. by Michael Howard and Peter Paret, Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1976, p. 75, 87.
23. Ibid., p. 579.
24. Brodie, pp. 7-8.
25. John Lewis Gaddis, The United States and the End of the Cold War, New York: Oxford University Press, 1992, p. 156.

Autore: James M. Dubik Colonel & Gordon R. Sullivan General

Fonte: US Army War College Press