Recent events in Iraq and Lebanon lead me to wonder if the necessity to maintain at least minimal support for wars by avoiding large spikes in our casualty rates makes it impossible for modern, high-tech, highly connected democracies to successfully prosecute aggressive wars.
The US/UK war in Iraq has clearly been hampered, if not lost, through the philosophy of force protection. US forces have taken a very aggressive approach to minimising risks to their troops. The resulting atrocities – civilians shot for driving too close to US forces for instance – have fed the insurgency and destroyed any chance of winning support for the occupation forces. The military philosophy that prefers to call in “precision” air support in urban areas rather than risk troops causes civilian deaths and reduces the likelihood of actually killing or capturing the targets of the action while simultaneously recruiting for your opponents.
The Israeli Army’s need to avoid casualties is partly driven by need: Israel is a small country and can’t afford to replace large numbers of combat losses but it appears to be hampering their action in Lebanon in a similar fashion – they have hoped for air power would do the heavy killing and that troops would be relatively unopposed. As Billmon notes, Hezbollah hadn’t read that plan so didn’t know what they were meant to do. Pat Lang has more to say about the futility of relying on aerial bombardment in this sort of war.
To fight a guerilla war with conventional military forces requires massive deployment of infantry in close combat, with the concomitant losses. You need to be everywhere, all the time, using only minimum force in order to minimise civilian deaths.
Valuing the lives of your troops in tens of civilian lives guarantees that you will kill so many that you will create the army that will defeat you.
The alternatives to military action – honest negotiation for instance – are too protracted, too soft, too complicated and too stereotypically feminine for the macho men and women that are in charge at the moment. They also have the disadvantage of possibly being effective, unlike military action.
Crossposted from European Tribune.
as SecState, there does not seem to be any real need for diplomacy. She just shows up, gives a bright smile and utters stern words and leaves. Not tremendously successful, but then one wonders if she really really wants success. Maybe she likes that smell of blood lingering in the air?
When Bush came to power promising to run the US like a business he didn’t mean the sort of business that negotiates in good faith, builds long term relationships with its community and looks after its workers.
Yeah, looks like he h ad the Enron model in mind.
I’ve been writing on the subject of the efficacy of war for quite a while now. I one of the few in this field who don’t think casualty avoidance is what makes our recent wars ineffective. In fact, avoidance of own force casualties is an essential element of superior conduct of war, and given our technological superiority in any sort of conventional conflict we’re likely to fight, high friendly casualty count is not just unnecessary, it’s undesirable. That’s especially true with our current posture of having a standing professional force that must be able to redeploy from one war and engage in another.
The real limiter, IMCO, is the effectiveness of inflicting casualties on the enemy. At some point, that too becomes counter-productive, as destroying large portions of an adversary’s civililan population tends to defeat the political purpose of the conflict. You don’t liberate “freedom loving peoples” by destroying them.
This is a very interesting subject, and I look forward to further discussions on it.
Best,
Jeff
Does counter-insurgency come within your definition of “conventional”.
The US/UK war in Iraq has clearly been hampered, if not lost, through the philosophy of force protection.
That statement is – being kind – unsupported by the record. Jeff Huber’s statement above is about as accurate and succinct as possible on point. Suggest reading the review of Fiasco (Ricks, 2006) for a wider view. The title is an accurate characterization of the last three years of American involvement in Iraq.
Sigh. Bad link. Here’s the right one: Fiasco.
So you don’t believe that the habit of blowing away civilians who get too close is strategically bad idea?
Ricks was kind enough to send me a complimentary note on an article I wrote ten years ago, and I’ve been following him ever since.
He’s probably the “dean” of Pentagon correspondents, and is not one to make offhand declarations like he does in FIASCO.
I caught him in MTP Sunday, defintely plan to write the book.
Jeff
I don’t mean for any of my comments to come off like I’m dog piling on Colman.
A lot of respected people in the national security field share the view that casualty avoidance is a bad thing, for many and varied reasons.
I happen to disagree because I think the position is based on a number of faulty assumptions. I’ll write more on this in the next week or so.
I look forward to it.