editedSurreySlideshow2What We Do If We Are Never · Hitting the Target University of Surrey 12 July 2012 Panel 1: Theorising The Drivers and Consequences "What We Do If We Are Never

Hitting the Target

University of Surrey

12 July 2012

Panel 1: Theorising The Drivers

and Consequences

"What We Do If We Are Never

Going to Do This Again “

Paul Schulte

Carnegie Endowment, KCL, SOAS

‘Theorising the Drivers and Consequences of

Precision-Strike Capabilities’:• Drivers: (Simple - and deriving from the affordable

maximisation of national power) to:- remain credible in prospective state on state

conflicts -and to domestic electorates and service personnel

- exploit comparative advantages (huge for US)- protect and economise friendly manpower in

shrinking volunteer forces - discriminate and protect civilians- project force throughout (expandable)

battlespaces to kill individuals and disrupt organisations

- offset considerable enemy advantages (including technical innovations ) in the irregular campaigns of 4th Generation Wars

Features of 4GW - or , alternatively: Complex, Irregular , Hybrid or

Uncomfortable Warfare

•Complex and long-term, without breaks or boundaries

• Terror or intimidation as standard operational methods

•Non State Actors are increasingly important -often covertly allied with states

•Increasingly religious or ideological rather than national motivations

•America tends to loose them…

Further 4GW lndicators• Bases are often non-national or

transnational, or even virtual, in

cyberspace

• All available networks - political,

economic, social, religious,

diaspora, media, legal, academic and

military - are exploited

• The enemy's culture, and its symbols

are directly attacked

More 4GW signs and wonders• NonNonNonNon----combatantscombatantscombatantscombatants are deliberately introduced or imperilled to create operational dilemmas

• Sophisticated psychological warfare psychological warfare psychological warfare psychological warfare is employed, especially through media manipulation

• ““““LawfareLawfareLawfareLawfare”, emerges as a calculated strategy, increasingly employed by states and nonstate actors, “of using or misusing law … to achieve military objectives””””

• The willpowerwillpowerwillpowerwillpower (including the moral self-confidence) of entire electorates, supporting populations, and governments are the decisive targets.

Our Historical Moment• The REMF Problem and the Double Intellectual Task

• Never again Big Expeditionary COIN ?

• Its Persistent, Unsolved, Vitiating Political & Cultural Problems

– Incorrigible , Unpersuadably Disappointing Host Govts

– Fear , Inter- Cultural Loathing , and White Boots

• (Long term multinational multiagency Human Security operations are similarly unlikely)

• Different, changing insurgencies and COINs

Internal Metropolitan : 7/7, Fort Hood? ; Sudan, Syria ,Russia, India,

Determination and Strategic Patience outweigh PGMs

The Future

Lorenzo Zambernardi’s ‘Impossible Trilemma’ for Small Wars

I)Force Protection

II) Discrimination: Sparing and Protecting Non-Combatants

III )Elimination of 0pponents: Sculpting the Human Landscape

• More Green on Blue infiltration and assassination

• Globalisation, online insurgent manuals, widening technical education,

• Better bomb makers

• More no or low metal and/or self-forging IEDs.

• Expect drones (from basement factories like bombs), robots, man portable air defence weapons, volumetric explosives, and jamming devices to start being usedagainst government forces as anti-access weapons.

• Larger and younger populations, migrating into even more sprawling slums : worsening force to population or force to space ratios

I) Force Protection: Will get harder

II) Sparing and Protecting Non-

Combatants :“Little Change’

• Avoiding accidental civilian casualties will be frustrated even against humanitarian munitions.

• Courageous Restraint as a doctrine seems to have reached its limits.

• Faster digital reporting will show failures of discrimination and often misrepresent its successes.

II )Sparing and Protecting Non-Combatants: Little Change

• Protecting civilians against intimate intimidation and murder is not going to become easier.

• Insurgents also adapt: black chapattis before the Indian Mutiny in 1857, now threatening text messages on mobile phones.

• Oil Spots and Development Zones can’t stop suicide bombers, or assassination squads of young men on motorbikes slipping in and out of the surrounding Badlands

III )Eliminating Opponents: Encouraging

• Technically easier , leveraging new weapons with

the rapid Find, Fix and Finish system developed in

Iraq and Afghanistan. Ever better lasers in the

Jungle.

• But legal and political questions about numbers of

suspected irreconcilables killed in night raids and

air attacks, and drone strikes beyond national

boundaries of host nations.

• And ,as Rumsfeld admitted, we do not know how

many enemies are recruited for each one killed.

ItItItIt’’’’s not only UAVss not only UAVss not only UAVss not only UAVsImportant Targeted Attrition of Important Targeted Attrition of Important Targeted Attrition of Important Targeted Attrition of

Irreconcilables by Special ForcesIrreconcilables by Special ForcesIrreconcilables by Special ForcesIrreconcilables by Special ForcesLocally feared and resented Night RaidsLocally feared and resented Night RaidsLocally feared and resented Night RaidsLocally feared and resented Night Raids

Alternatives to Big External COINCombinations & Sequences of:

1)Abstention from direct involvement 2) Prediction and Prevention – Upstream Aid & Power broking 3) Embedded Training and Equipping 4)Active Assistance in early suppression of insurgencies –(e.g. Cold War Latin America, Dhofar ) SF and PGMs In-country balancing’’ ; ’ ugly stability’or promotion and assistance of congenial rebellions (e.g. Iraq, Iran, Libya, Syria (?)Backed by trainers and precision strikes from NATO and partners5) (As a last resort) Time - Limited Large Footprint Humanitarian lntervention/COIN with Western Troops and airpower.But Will we believe we could get out in good time?

-Will locals trust us to stay long enough?

Further Overhanging Uncertainties for

Western Intervention and PGMs

-

Impact of PGMs on Alliance

Cohesion and lnteroperability

Degree of future US dependence on targeted

killing (including drones):

– Success?

– Compatibility with international law?

– Allies ‘ inhibitions?

Campaign Concepts

• Can we discard the recent notion that , after projecting Western force , we must always clean up the underlying problems which led to the instability which we claimed we had to quell ?

• Can we ( all?) contemplate war without reparative stabilisation, in which precision guidance can’t help?

Western Moral Doubts• The people may be the prize which needs protecting,

but everybody knows they will nonetheless suffer,

• PGMs can’t guard them.

• Dislodged former regime elements and religious fanatics must now be expected to systematically harm their largely unprotectable fellow citizens .

• This will undermine the case for numerous Humanitarian Interventions and leave most Operations conducted essentially in the security interests of the intervening countries.

• (‘Risk Transfer Militarism’?)

Growing Anxietiesover the domestic consequences of the most controversial aspects of Western

Intervention

• New technologies(combinations of cyber, chemical, biological, volumetric explosives, shoulder fired surface-to-air missiles, 3-D printing) may make bringing the War home disturbingly easier

Drones and UAVsA new Predator species whose strikes may

demand vengeance - somewhere

Complexity and Feed Back Loops : What can be proven to work ?

What & Where, are Success and Failure?

Public or Tribal reactions to Drone Strikes may vary unpredictably widely (eg

between Pakistan, Yemen - or, hypothetically, in Mali, against jihadi

iconoclasts)

Consequences of PGMs for Campaign Legitimacy

• International law is uncertain , and Western public

opinion sets (inconsistent) limits on behaviour.

Nevertheless , violence legislates.

• International and domestic electoral opinion is critical

to the outcome of 4 GW Wars . Outside judgements

on the efficacy, legality and moral legitimacy of

advanced weaponry in a campaign will be based on

ambiguous, incomplete, information , interpreted

through personal and cultural stereotypes.

As in this workshop. . .?