Speed is not everything
The technological advancement of modern armies may prove less than effective against guerrilla warfare tactics, writes Galal Nassar
As we started our journey into the new century, the world remained convinced of the fact that a technologically superior army would always win the war. This view is changing, however, as US troops in Iraq, targeted by groups of guerrilla fighters armed with less-than-sophisticated weaponry, suffer losses on the ground. Perhaps the Palestinian suicide bombers and the armed resistance groups in Iraq best epitomise the nature of the confrontation between troops armed with advanced military technology and people fighting for their rights. Western military experts are slowly coming to realise that remote strikes on strategic objects alone will not determine the outcome of a battle on the ground. Which is why I think the future will see a return to more classical approaches to warfare.
War is a "chameleon" capable of changing its appearance according to shifting socio-political backgrounds, wrote Prussian soldier and military theorist Karl von Clausewitz in his famous three-volume work On War, which, perhaps, nowadays should be given more attention. Expanding on this idea, Clausewitz goes on to define the three distinct levels which comprise the phenomenon of warfare. The first level relates to spontaneous violence -- and the hatred which feeds it -- which is a reflexive impulse instinctive among the common populace. The second level relates to the strategic aspect of war, which means forming an innovative approach to the game of probabilities which affect the outcome of war. This requires a high degree of expertise which is normally the preserve of military experts or "generals". The third level relates to the political management of confrontation. War, according to Clausewitz, is ultimately a political act which should be directed by the political leaders of a nation, and thus requires a high capacity for rational thought and analysis. Clausewitz asserts that the interaction between these levels determines the shape of warfare. At the same time, however, social developments, shifts in political relationships, technological advances and changes in the cultural environment constantly affect the way each of these levels manifest themselves; hence, war's chameleon-like nature.
Based on Clausewitz's criteria, one might suggest that Mao Zedong's creative genius as a theorist of revolutionary warfare resides in his discovery of the principle that a resistance movement pitched against a military force, which is superior in military as well as organisational terms, has time on its side. This discovery elevated the status of limited engagement -- formerly regarded as a mere tactic in full-scale warfare -- to a fully-fledged martial/political strategy with its own rationale and rules of operation. Drawing on Clausewitz's system, we could define this theory as the strategic capacity for innovation in controlling the pace of war.
Sweeping and decisive action is generally considered the best response for a military machine which is superior both in technical and organisational terms. History provides us with examples of this principle in operation: the Napoleonic cavalry's routing and defeat of enemy forces; the charge of the German panzers in World War II, which created swift and deep breaches in the enemy front; the cruise missile bombardment of Iraqi command and infrastructural targets by allied forces in the second Gulf War which paralysed Iraqi forces before the ground battle was started; and most recently, the Americans' "shock and awe" campaigns against Afghanistan and Iraq.
Military experts have said that the astounding superiority achieved by the US military over its potential enemies in recent decades is due to its capacity for rapid, precise action at various combat levels. This is in keeping with the theory professed by military strategists like Paul Virilio: that victory in any military engagement will go to the combatant who possesses, and can effectively deploy, the means for accelerating the pace of battle. Clausewitz's "chameleon" metaphor is a reminder that the history of warfare does not follow a linear evolutionary path in which technological progress is a key factor. The history of warfare is governed by a complex interaction of many crucial factors, of which technological prowess is only one.
The ability to rapidly deploy forces, however, comes at a price. It requires, above all, constant and ever-increasing investment in logistics, and a decrease in the number of combat troops relative to the overall size of the armed forces. It also requires a substantial investment in modern equipment, the net result of which is the creation of a military machine which is vulnerable to technical errors and breakdowns. Machinery is also prone to "disappear". Particularly sobering in this regard is the observation made by Martin van Crefield in The Transformation of War on how easy it is to obtain parts of dismantled nuclear bombs.
The secret of Mao Zedong's originality lies in his refusal to join the race for tactical speed. The peasant army he led would never have been able to win a war fought on that basis. He chose, instead, to transform a "weakness" into an advantage by making deceleration his trademark. The success of guerrilla warfare, he said, is based on the "ability to endure over the long term", and the ability to use all available means to make the enemy pay a toll which eventually becomes impossible to sustain. As Raymond Aron, the French philosopher and military strategist put it, "Guerrilla fighters win the war as long as they don't lose it, and those who fight guerrillas lose the war as long as they don't win it." The implication here is that each side has its own particular timeframe. The accumulated death toll among US forces in Vietnam, for example, is a bitter reminder of this paradox.
The outcome of unequal engagements depends to a considerable extent on the capacity of the combatants to control the pace of battle. Or, to put it another way, non-parity can be defined in terms of the ability of the stronger side to accelerate the battle to such an extent that the enemy is overpowered, versus the determination of the weaker side to decelerate the battle in such a way so as to inflict the greatest amount of damage on the enemy over the long term. In equal wars, on the other hand, such as those fought in Europe in the 18th and 19th centuries, the difference between victory and defeat generally depend on the advantages to be gained from accelerating the pace of combat.
It is unlikely that the wars of the 21st century will form an extension of the traditional wars of the past century. Enormous material resources and vast technological advances will not be enough to automatically tip the balance between victory and defeat. Superior US military technology will no longer provide a guarantee that the US will emerge victorious from the wars Washington appears ever more eager to wage. Nevertheless, it appears that wealthy Western societies are set to watch their armies become more and more technologically advanced.
Western democracies cannot afford to wage the protracted wars of endurance of the type espoused by Mao. They have become conditioned to the notion of reciprocation rather than sacrifice, which marks a difference between post-"war hero" worship societies and those which still indulge in hero worship. Western democracies, therefore, will go to all lengths to minimise, as much as possible, the number of lives lost in combat. This, they believe, can be accomplished through technological superiority. This is evident from the recent wars on Iraq and Afghanistan, and before that in the 1991 Gulf War in which Iraq lost 100,000 troops compared with coalition fatalities which amounted to 140. The most poignant example, however, is the Kosovo war, the first war in military history in which the victors sustained not a single combat-related death.
