troung

US Wants To Transform War From Massed Armies To Guerilla Warfare

If military operations were the solution to groups like al-Qaida, the war on terror would have been over years ago, given that U.S. spending on defense roughly matches the rest of the world combined.
by Chet Richards
UPI Outside View Commentator
Washington (UPI) Apr 28, 2006
Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld has approved plans that designate the elite Special Operations Command, or SOCOM, as the Department of Defense's lead element for the "war on terror."

Instead of creating wars with half trillion-dollar price tags and endless streams of roadside bombings and mortar attacks, Green Berets and SEALS will slide in, grab the bad guys, and fly off into the night.

Is there any reason to doubt that we have found the key to the "Long War" on terror?

If "terror" were a military problem that could be solved with military methods, the answer would be: "no." SOCOM is exactly what it's advertised to be: the world's most highly skilled warriors.

Becoming a Navy SEAL, to give one example, takes two and a half years of training of such intensity that only one in five who start the program complete it. If military operations were the key to eliminating threats to our well-being in the years ahead, or at least reducing them to the level of irritants, SOCOM would be the folks you would want riding point.

If military operations were the solution to groups like al-Qaida, the war on terror would have been over years ago, given that U.S. spending on defense roughly matches the rest of the world combined.

The United States is not, however, meeting military forces on the field of battle, but facing a collection of various guerrilla and anarchist groups whose motivations are primarily economic, political, social, and most of all, religious.

Osama bin Laden and al-Qaida, for example, survive because they can convince large numbers of people that their religion and way of life are under attack by Western nations with a Christian, Jewish, or worst of all, secular agenda.

As evidence, they cite the West's military involvement against Muslims -- as bin Laden reiterated this week -- and U.S. support of non-democratic regimes that have invited the infidels in. Paradoxically, military operations, even successful ones by SOCOM, reinforce bin Laden's message.

The problem in areas of the world that harbor such groups is the economic, political, and social structures, or lack thereof. The United States could go in and take out terrorists, assuming there was intelligence of suitable quality, but if the society does not change, it will simply spawn more.

As an aside, the requirement for quality intelligence should not be taken lightly -- consider the problems the United States and coalition forces are having stopping insurgents in Iraq, a country they have occupied for three years with 130,000 troops. Although SOCOM will be effective tactically -- that is, their operations will likely work -- the strategic effect will be disappointing, like stabbing the sea with a very sharp sword.

Where might SOCOM's expertise prove useful? Perhaps it would be useful against the "resentful state leaders" labeled by journalist Robert Kaplan in a recent Washington Post article as the greatest threat to our well-being.

Kaplan posits that characters like Presidents Robert Mugabe of Zimbabwe, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad of Iran, Hugo Chavez of Venezuela, and Alexander Lukashenko of Belarus may acquire nuclear weapons and pay "terrorists" to use them against the United States and our allies. This scenario is not as far-fetched as it might sound. As Iraq demonstrated, countries without a nuclear deterrent are indeed at the mercy of anyone with a modern army, which Western countries undeniably have.

Let's postulate that for some reason -- say to deter what he fears is impending regime change - Mugabe wants the ability to threaten to set off a nuclear weapon in Washington and have his threat taken seriously. He might strike a deal with al-Qaida or some other "terrorist" group to plant the thing.

But if he were clever enough to get his hands on a working device, he also has the much more straightforward option to rent his own apartment within a few miles of 1600 Pennsylvania Ave. Would he risk giving a nuclear weapon to a third-party "terrorist" group and hope they meet high standards of business ethics?

Nuclear blackmail may well be a legitimate threat, although it isn't "terrorism" so much as it is a logical evolution in state versus state warfare, a poor man's strategic bombing campaign. SOCOM could be effective in a scenario like this, where they might mount a raid of some size to disrupt preparations for the attack and perhaps remove the perpetrator from the scene.

It would require superb intelligence, but good intelligence on Zimbabwe is easier to come by than on shadowy non-state groups like al-Qaida. On balance, SOCOM will likely be effective at the tactical level -- as with a counter-terrorism raid -- and there is also a possibility for success at the strategic level, that is, for positive and lasting effects.

But it is just a possibility, because if we operate as we have in the past and say we will in the future, there is no chance of success. In fact, by advertising that the primary tool in this war is a force of assassins and kidnappers 66,000 strong, the United States could be making itself less safe. In doing so, the world has been divided up into one zone where the norms of international law are obeyed and another where the Pentagon can strike at will.

Should the United States expect the House of War -- to use that deliciously ironic phrase from Islam -- to sit around waiting to get whacked? Or has the U.S. government given the Mugabes and Lukashenkos of the world the moral cover to actually do what Saddam was accused of -- take concrete action to protect themselves from the world's only remaining superpower?

And since nobody can be sure who's on the list or off the list, the U.S. government may also have given someone an incentive to provide the weapon.

On the other hand, a counter-proliferation raiding force could -- and the emphasis is on could -- have a positive impact. For example, if U.S. allies recognize that the state in question is a danger not only to the United States but to the democratic world, they will be more likely to support military action.

After the bombings in Madrid and London, it should not be hard to convince these governments to cooperate if the case is solid. Obviously the United States crying "Wolf!" in Iraq didn't help.

Another consideration is whether the American public and U.S. allies accept military force as appropriate for the situation. For many people, military force is only justified when all other options have been exhausted. It will mean that the U.S. SOCOM force needs to be viewed as the cavalry riding to the rescue and not as cowboys gallivanting around the world. Statements like

"We do not need ambassador-level approval," as reported by Ann Scott Tyson in Sunday's Post, do not help. With patience, honesty and some good intelligence work, objections can be overcome. If not, then perhaps the United States should be listening to what its allies are trying to say.

Finally, SOCOM operations have to be professionally executed, and then the military must get out, quickly. The reason such a raid would prove necessary in the first place is that the target country's economic, social, and political systems are dysfunctional. Military forces cannot help with any of those, but they can catalyze an insurgency.

The "what happens next?" problem is one for the world's diplomats and development experts to consider, and everybody needs to understand that the military is only involved in order to make their jobs possible. Regime change, with the resulting obligation to nursemaid a new one -- even if we can figure out how to do it -- may not be the best option.

Designating SOCOM as DOD's lead element in the "war on terror" makes sense if for no other reason than the other elements of DOD play virtually no role. However, SOCOM is not a panacea -- bin Laden and Mullah Omar have not been found, don't forget. These are difficult operations fraught with military risk but also, given the nature of their targets, with political, social, and religious implications.

To ensure that the first phase of an operation, even if successful, doesn't compromise the other three, the vast majority of our efforts must go into solving the "what next?" issue before the trigger is pulled. As the great 6th Century BC Chinese military strategist Sun Tzu once observed, victorious warriors win first, then go into battle.

(Chet Richards writes for the Straus Military Reform Project at the Center for Defense Information, a Washington think tank. He is a retired colonel in the U.S. Air Force Reserve and the author of Neither Shall the Sword: Conflict in the Years Ahead)

(United Press International's "Outside View" commentaries are written by outside contributors who specialize in a variety of important issues. The views expressed do not necessarily reflect those of United Press International. In the interests of creating an open forum, original submissions are invited.)

Source: United Press International

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Anon

Transformational 'information warfare' is a white elephant that is doomed the moment someone BESIDES Rumsfeld is secdef.

It has been an utter failure to date, and OIF proved beyond a shadow of a doubt(yet again) that massed, fast moving heavy forces dominate the battlefield....end of story.

xinhui

It is Robert Kaplan.......what else can I say.

lemontree

One question: What is Chet Richards' understanding of terrorism and guerilla warfare?

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Cheers!...on the rocks!!

-{SpoonmaN}-

While I doubt the substancial dollar price tag to the war in Iraq could have been avoided (although some more careful choices regarding contractors might have led to money being better spent) it didn't have to degenerate to the level it did and has. Rummy screwed up and didn't give the US Military enough people to control the country once they won the 'war' phase of the conflict. In effect, there wasn't ENOUGH mass to deal with the occupation.
And what happens to the Green Berets if one of their choppers gets shot down? This notion that high-technology and special forces can replace regular forces and good ol' fashioned firepower gets thrown around way too much, these things are force multiplyers, not the backbone of the Military. I'm sure if I know this then pretty much everyone else here would too so maybe I'm beating a dead horse.

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"I have this to say to the people of Australia: Kick me, I'm different."

SnowLeopard

There are so many holes in that approach, it is difficult to know where to start or if to start at all.

Three big problems I can see. First of all, when you start using your troops as secret agents and less as troops, you're running into the legitmacy of their existance, the protection they have as military.

Secondly, going into some country and seizing the legal leader, at least in that country, kidnapping him, yanking him out. Doesn't that sound just a little bit wrong? We have laws on the books that we don't assassinate foreign leaders; don't know about kidnapping them, but it would seem similar. But it also opens a great big door for if we start doing it, it sort of makes it "all right" for others to do it to us. We would denouce it as criminal..........but then, what would that make us if we did it ourselves?

"Might makes right". Well, fine, but do it so it is proper. There are a lot of distasteful things about invading another country, but it is one of those things for the enemy we are fighting, it is hard for them to use the same tactic, ie, invading the country. So we can still fight the proper way while their response can be called criminal and such.

The third thing is that special warfare is great ........ but one has to realize that it is specialized and meant for only a very few things. One of the things about a decently sized military unit is that it can easily respond when the question on the table is "where do you want what, when?". It can do a whole lot more, for a whole lot more people, than what spec ops can do. Spec ops may be able to go in and grab the leader, but the invading force can feed his oppressed people, if that is desired.

Ie, when they were around (I understand they aren't, now), we would occassionally say, "SEALS are great but sometimes, you just would rather have an MAB!"
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("Air support here, Colonel. Understand you have some unwanted company. Where do you want the lead?"--"PUFF" AC-47 on radio
"Put it on the base! We don't have it anymore."--Col. Kirby
"Right ...... this will just take a minute." and PUFF comes in and mows down all the VC, (w,stte), "The Green Berets")

troung

Not much it seems.

Mugabe? Enough said.

SRB

Remeber Iran hostage rescue operation or Grenada recon mission or Somalia ?

And all this operations were on small scale, in war against terror you need large number of this risk black-ops and tehnology gap wouldnt help because in earlier operations there was even a bigger tech gap and this ops failed.
Nothing can replace heavy bomber and tank in war, this is prove war tactic.
Maybe using bigger fleet of Predators could be even more efficent than black-ops. If you know in which house are terrors why to send commandos and risk, send couple of Predators and wipe that house .

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ArmchairGeneral

It seems to me that this article doesn't understand the nature of special forces. Yes, they are the best of the best super warriors and all that, but that is just part of the equation. If you want tough, smart, extraordinarily well trained super soldiers, we have 'em. They're called the Army Rangers.

Special Forces are a bit different. As I understand it, their original mission was the "Hearts and Minds" campaign in Vietnam. They are oriented more towards intelligence and counter-insurgency operations. So rather than going around in helicopters and taking out dictators and such, they are more likely to be found skulking around a terrorist training camp, observing their operations, or going into a village, helping them dig a well, make the US look good, and eventually enlist their aid in fighting the terrorists.

Instead of a "very sharp sword stabbing an ocean," it would be more like an intelligent virus infecting a host, corrupting the cells of the enemy, even causing the the various parts of the host to fight each other rather than attack us.

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Anon

Both the mogadishu raid and Grenada were succesful operations.

Pyrhic yes, but victories nonetheless...

ArmchairGeneral

Again, I don't think we would risk special forces to take out a couple of terrorists. What they would be doing is finding out which houses contain terrorists, and guiding those Predators to the correct target. Or alternately, they can make contact with a village chieftain who maybe don't like the terrorists too much, and persuade him to do the dirty work for us. That's the beauty of special forces: adaptability and flexibility.

Will they replace heavy weaponry? Of course not. Nobody expects them to. What they can do is tell that heavy weaponry where to shoot, as well as do things conventional forces cannot. Afganistan is a prime example of good use of special ops forces. They designated targets for airstrikes, made friends with the locals, helped train resistance forces, and in general made trouble for the Taliban while making America look good.

Anon

We can and do risk operators for a few terrorists.

The mogidishu raid was a case of exactly that. We risked approx 150 elite troops and about a dozen specops birds to a massed enemy force just to secure a handful of Aideeds top aides.

Spec Operators WANT those missions. It's the whole reason they do what they do. For the most part, they're action junkies.

ArmchairGeneral

It was my understanding that we were trying to capture Aideed himself, but he wasn't there. I wasn't saying that we wouldn't ever use special operations forces for such missions, but unless it's a very high value target, like Aideed, we wouldn't waste high value resources on it.

Also, I was in part referring specifically to the Army Special Forces, which were not used in the Mogadishu Raid, at least not as such (I'm sure some of the Delta Force operators were Green Berets). Much of my information regarding special forces comes from Tom Clancy's book on SOCOM, so I can't vouch for its total accuracy, but it's my impression that the "action junkies" are kinda weeded out from the Special Forces themselves. Not that they don't like fighting, but the gung ho, use a LAW to break open a door, shoot 'em up kind of people stayed in the Rangers, while the Special Forces people, while they are experts at fighting, also are experts at intelligence gathering and are good with people too. Perhaps I'm overemphasizing the differences, though.

lemontree

Depending on Special ops and negating conventional COIN has a very serious disadvantage. It gives the enemy freedom of movement (as Spl ops are not continuous), to intimidate the population. Where as regular COIN deployment strangulates the enemies freedom of movement and provides security and instils faith (for the govt) within the people.

Spl ops works better in an urban guerilla environment than in semi-urban or adverse environment.

-{SpoonmaN}-

They don't work their guts out to meet the insane physical and psychological standards because the job is safe, and they don't turn down the opportunity to make crazy amounts of money in the private sector because the Military pays so well. BTW I figure you should know this, exactly what is the deal with US Army special forces, since the Rangers appear to be more like our Commandos (Specialist Assault troops rather than LRRP and CT operators etc.) based on what people are saying here, so is Delta Force the US Army's branch of SOCOM or is it something else?