Asia Times: ANALYSIS : Bush's lone military superpower vision : Part 3: The nature of future wars and US strategy


	February 20, 2001	atimes.com

Editorials

ANALYSIS
Bush's lone military superpower vision
Part 3: The nature of future wars and US strategy
By Uwe Parpart
Editor, Asia Times Online

For several years the US Department of Defense (Pentagon) has declared that it is pursuing fundamental changes to the US force structure and modernization programs that are designed to capture an emerging "Revolution in Military Affairs" (RMA). What sort of revolution are we talking about?

Andrew W Marshall, director of the Pentagon's Office of Net Assessment, the man now charged by President George W Bush and by his new (and former, during the Ford administration) immediate boss, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, with conducting a fast-track review of US strategy and weapons programs with a view toward taking revolutionary new developments into account, says that RMAs result "when the application of new technologies to a significant number of military systems combines with innovative operational concepts and organizational adaptation in such a way that it fundamentally alters the character and conduct of a conflict".

Marshall's starting point in defining the current RMA with the aim of restructuring the US military "top-to-bottom", appears to be the 1991 Persian Gulf War. That war, he says, "needs to be seen as something like Cambrai [the 1917 battle in which the British first employed tanks on a large scale]". In the 1920s and '30s, the German military applied the lessons of Cambrai and evolved the tank- and ground-attack aircraft-led "blitzkrieg" tactics that allowed it to defeat numerically vastly superior French and British forces in 1940 in record time. But much as the British and French to their detriment did not build fast enough on the basis of technological and tactical innovations that had given them victory in World War I, Marshall complains that the US defense establishment in the 1990s has been slow in pushing ahead with in-depth transformation of US forces in line with technologies and operational concepts that proved so devastatingly effective in the Gulf War. "Back in 1990," he lamented at a Brookings Institution presentation last year, "I thought we were at about 1923. Now, after the passage of 10 years, I think we have reached 1924."

The Gulf War equivalent of massed tank attack at Cambrai was deployment of superior information gathering and processing technology to convey real-time intelligence on the battlefield and enable use of lethal, long-range, precision-guided munitions on a continuous 24-hour basis. Numerically superior Iraqi forces barely ever knew what would or did hit them, found what hit them impossible to locate or out of range of their weapons systems, and saw their own internal communications systems shut down or severely degraded by electronic attack. The ground war was over in less than 100 hours with minimal US and allied forces casualties.

Those Gulf War lessons are embodied in the US Joint Chiefs of Staff "Joint Vision 2010" and "Joint Vision 2020" (the latter issued in May 2000) military doctrine and the parallel Force XXI US Army concept which stresses superior situational awareness, high-speed operations, massing of effects, and precision deep fire. But apparently President Bush, who accused the Clinton administration of "neglect" of the military during the election campaign, and reviewer Marshall believe that too little is being done too slowly by way of implementation. And judging by Marshall's writings and speeches, he will want to go further and in his ongoing assessment of US forces and strategy take into account not merely the need for rapid introduction of technological advances and concomitant operational concepts, but also the threats arising from so-called asymmetrical responses by technologically less advanced potential US adversaries.

One such asymmetrical response (denoting the use of unconventional tactics in combat rather than use of forces of comparable size and quality and employing similar tactics) was demonstrated by Saddam Hussein during the Gulf War when he decided to fire primitive but effective Scud missiles at declared non-combatant but close US ally Israel and at US and allied logistics bases in Saudi Arabia. US defenses proved largely ineffective in countering that threat. Another such response was the attack by Islamist terrorists allegedly linked to Afghanistan-based Osama bin Laden on the US missile destroyer Cole in the port of Aden last year. Yet another example of the threat of asymmetrical warfare is the rudimentary, but potentially devastating, nuclear-ballistic missile capability of countries such as North Korea and Iran, reviewed in 1998 by a US panel headed by Donald Rumsfeld which recommended deployment of US ballistic missile defenses.

More generally, what asymmetric responses to technically superior US capabilities could accomplish is laid out in great detail in the book Unrestricted Warfare by Qiao Liang and Wang Xiangsui, published by the Chinese People's Liberation Army Literature and Arts Publishing House (Beijing) in February 1999. Methods of warfare proposed in the book include hacking into websites, targeting financial institutions, engaging in terrorism, and using the media, to name only a few. The authors are two senior colonels from the younger generation of Chinese military officers. In an interview with Zhongguo Qingnian Bao, Qiao stated that "the first rule of unrestricted warfare is that there are no rules, with nothing forbidden".

So, Marshall has his hands full with his US forces review and knows that even with national and theater missile defense and timely implementation of revolutionary technologies and tactics, US security and the "full spectrum dominance" ("the ability of US forces, operating alone or with allies, to defeat any adversary and control any situation across the entire range of military operations, from nuclear war to major theater wars to smaller-scale contingencies") aimed for in "JV2020" will not be easy to come by. He himself has pointed out that most of the tools of information warfare or long-range precision strike weapons are or will soon be available to most anyone.

"JV2020" calls for the US "to work to shape the international security environment in ways favorable to American interests, be willing and able to respond to the full spectrum of crises as needed, and prepare now for an uncertain future". But what exactly are those "American interests" that the "international security environment" should be tailored to suit? Do they include containing the influence of an economically and militarily increasingly powerful China in Asia, as the Marshall "Asia 2025" study (see Part 2 of this series) seems to suggest? Does the American national interest demand that the US military spring to the defense of Taiwan in case of conflict with mainland China? Does it demand enforcement of no-fly zones in Iraq 10 years after the Gulf War and if so, for how long?

In his recent Norfolk, Virginia speech (see Part 1 ), George W Bush said, "We must put strategy first, then spending. Our defense vision will drive our defense budget, not the other way around." That's agreed. But strategy itself cannot be narrowly defined only in terms of superior military-strategic capabilities or else military commitments become open-ended and unlimited, by definition regarding the rise of any power anywhere as an intrinsic threat to the United States. Bush and his advisers during the election campaign showed a fair understanding of that. They criticized what they saw as the Clinton administration's "open-ended deployments and unclear military missions" and pledged "to find political solutions that allow an orderly and timely withdrawal [of US forces]". Bush also pledged that, "As president, I will order an immediate review of our overseas deployments - in dozens of countries." That review, much as Marshall's review of US military capabilities, is now in order and should be as "challenging to the status quo" as Bush has mandated Marshall's exercise to be.

((c)2001 Asia Times Online Co, Ltd. All rights reserved. Please contact content@atimes.com for information on our sales and syndication policies.)

back to the top

©2001 Asia Times Online Co., Ltd.

Asia Times Online is designed and produced by Multimedia Asia Co., Ltd.