War in the 21st Century: A New (and costly) Paradigm

In the past we have fought regimes, countries, specific targets. That required a certain kind of military strategy.

Now, however, we are fighting individual and widespread terrorist organizations, which like web pages can propagate and recruit new members as others are eliminated. Terrorist organizations move between countries and are not part of official government, or else the ties are very complex.

Lebanon's situation illustrates one version of the problem. The government does not support Hamas, yet there are Hamas members within the government and society at large. Israel's solution -- attack Lebanon -- is like burning down a house to destroy a termite infestation. Israel failed to root out the terrorists, and probably made things worse by providing terrorists with more arguments with which to persuade recruits ("See? We have to defend ourselves from Israel the aggressor!" "Hmm... I see what you mean...")

Israel failed to fully consider the question, "where is the enemy?" in framing its military operation. When the enemy is embedded in a civilian and urban population, covert operatives and infiltration are better tactics than bombs and frontal attack.

Iraq is a similar situation. Believing Saddam Hussein was somehow linked to the 9/11 attacks (in fact, he probably wasn't, as the Shi'a/Sunni conflicts we're seeing now illustrate the same ethnic/religious differences that existed between his regime and Al Quaeda), Bush took us to war against Iraq. But Iraq was not a terrorist organization. It may or may not have been a country where there were terrorists. It certainly was a corrupt and deplorable regime, but freeing people from oppression is a separate military goal from fighting terrorism. Different goals require a different strategy, and involve different risks and costs.

The cost, in this case, is thousands of American soldiers' lives, tens of thousands of Iraqi civilians' lives, locking up large amounts of American money and military resources in Iraq as opposed to other operations, and loss of American clout in world politics.

The risk, in this case, is that in the anarchy of civil war, terrorists find it far easier to move around the country, attract recruits, and hone their skills fighting American soldiers and hardware. They also have an ongoing source for anti-American propaganda, since a few guys with digital cameras or camcorders can now document "proof" of American aggression/oppression and spin it within hours.

America, like Israel, failed to root out its enemy, because it was using 20th century tactics on a 21st century problem.

The other risk is that America will devote too many resources to fighting the war in Iraq, and leave itself vulnerable to domestic and foreign threats from anywhere else.

Iraq and Afghanistan are tying up our military resources, which actually makes it harder to fight the War on Terror.

UPDATE 7/15/07: Apparently I'm not just some fool spouting off...

Former CIA officer Bruce Riedel blames the invasion of Iraq for diverting the U.S. military from the hunt for Bin Laden and giving al Qaeda its second wind.

"Al Qaeda in Iraq has grown from virtually nothing before the war to one of the most successful al Qaeda operations in the world today," Riedel tells Martin. 

 From news article: Intel: Al Qaeda Ups Efforts To Strike U.S.

How does one define victory in the War on Terror?

"Terror" is not a specific enemy the way the Axis, the U.S.S.R., or the Vietcong were. We can't lock up "terror" in Guantanamo Bay.

Terrorist organizations, unlike the opponents we've fought in the past (except, perhaps, the mafia and/or communists), are organic. Leaders can be martyred, but it's very hard to stamp them out completely. Different military strategies are needed to combat them. Again, covert operations, infiltration, and counter-propaganda may be more appropriate tools than direct military intervention.

The War on Terror is also like the War on Drugs and the War on Poverty.

Can we really "win" those? Or simply put in place long-term strategies that mitigate these problems as much as possible, and do what we can to minimize their impact? Again, those "wars" must be fought using very different tactics from conventional warfare.

In the past, wars have been profitable. World War II helped kick America's economy out of depression. The entire country became a factory, geared towards producing military hardware and supplies for the war effort. That meant jobs.

Vietnam was different, although we didn't realize how different. The economy went into recession. A generation of young men just entering the job market were instead overseas fighting the Vietcong. Generally, these were potential blue-collar workers. America shifted somewhat towards technology and service-sector jobs, which tend to employ highly-educated or less physically able citizens of the sort who tend to keep out of military service. Traces of that change still operate in our economy.

More importantly, Vietnam showed up a problem which has been made even more clear by the two wars in Iraq.

Military technology has fundamentally changed the nature of war.

Now, one person or a small handful can blow up a mass transit system, coordinate activities in multiple cities or on the other side of the planet, or do largescale amounts of damage on the ground in places like Bagdad and Lebanon.

Warfare conducted by countries has also changed in scale. We are no longer talking about armies clashing on battlefields, fleet maneuvers, or aerial dogfights any more than we are talking about knights charging each other on horseback and attacking with lances. Our weapons cause mass damage, even non-nuclear ones. And the battlefield is now urban centers and highly populated areas.

This is somewhat the same situation that Europe and Japan faced in WWII. Cities and countryside were utterly devastated: infrastructure, regional authority, government, police, utilities, business, the job market and civil services.

Modern wars are immensely more expensive, and the chances of chaos, civil war, anarchy, and economic collapse are greater. Reconstruction is also far more costly.

The 9/11 commission spoke of "a failure of imagination" in pre-attack military strategy, and in failing to anticipate terrorist activities.

However, we are dealing with an even more fundamental failure of the imagination in considering how war works.

In the past, peace activists and liberals were scorned as unpractical idealists.

Now, curiously, our administration is advocating "freeing oppressed people" (one of the stated reasons for our involvement in Iraq) and overlooking the pragmatic cost/benefit analysis.

Is it worth it? becomes an increasingly urgent economic, pragmatic, and strategic question. Corporations providing military hardware may benefit, but the overall drag on the economy and anxiety generated in the stock market may offset the boom from increased spending in that sector. The increased collateral damage footprint of modern warfare means increased costs of reconstruction and a greater likelihood of leaving target of miltary intervention in shambles.

Staying out of large-scale conventional war and shifting to more targeted military operations makes good economic sense. We need to concentrate on the economy and social issues such as immigration and health care, and have military operations shift to a more covert intelligence/counterintelligence approach concentrating on infiltrating and targeting individual terrorist cells rather than major military targets.