It has become clear in the last few years that we have been involved in an asymmetic war for at least 30 years, possibly quite a bit longer, that finally caught our attention on 9/11. Much of the interest has been on the technological aspects of our asymmetric warfare.
Lt. Col. Abe F. Marrero, writing in the Armed Forces Journal, examined last summer's Israel-Hezbollah War for clues to the future direction of warfare. He summarizes the characteristic signature of Fourth Generation Warfare:
The Israel-Hezbollah clash and the shape of wars to come
Fourth-generation war, as described by the seminal work of William Lind, one of the originators of fourth-generation warfare theory, and like-minded colleagues, will involve in various degrees the following components:
• An ideologically centered, non-national base.
• Involvement of current, high-end technology.
• Dispersed logistical support.
• Attacks directed at the adversary's culture.
• Employing a comprehensive psychological warfare dimension, particularly through the media.
His conclusions are neither surprising nor comforting:
This war had several of the features of fourth-generation war that may serve as a preview of future conflicts. One of the most striking is how Hezbollah, using relatively low-technology weapons (i.e., Katyusha rockets) was able to sustain rocket barrages against Israel's technologically advanced precision fire. The IDF's advantage in technology was mitigated by dispersal of launching sites (orchards, urban areas) and using remote firing devices. This permitted Hezbollah to directly attack Israeli cities and towns, another characteristic of fourth-generation war. That the IDF could not totally destroy Hezbollah's rocket arsenal exemplifies yet another feature of this emerging type of warfare — dispersed logistical infrastructure. Despite the IDF's total command of the air space, Hezbollah rockets continued to be fired until the cease-fire. Also of relevance is how the information instrument of power was effectively used by Hezbollah to enable and support its objectives. Their manipulation of the media is a noteworthy example of how perceptions can change or minimize the outcomes on the field of battle. The information aspect of warfare is where the boundaries between politics and war can become blurred. Finally, these traits bear some conspicuous resemblance to events in Iraq — use of improvised explosive devices to mitigate superior military technology, adept use of media, dispersal of logistics, and transformational states (Shiite, Sunni and Kurd) within a weakened state. It is difficult to escape the conclusion that this may be the dominant type of warfare in the foreseeable future.
Lt. Col. Marrero includes this point about Hezbollah's ideology:
A cardinal feature of fourth-generation war is the involvement of an ideologically driven, nonstate actor entrenched in a nation state. Hezbollah, in Lebanon, is clearly cast for that role. Hezbollah comprises an Islamic religious indoctrination in which the ideology is rooted in the Koran and Shiite traditions, as interpreted by the ruling Iranian ayatollahs. The significance of this ideology is that in Hezbollah's view, its adherents are not merely Lebanese, but more important, Shiite Muslims and jihad fighters.
Frank Hoffman, at the Small Wars Journal, offers a review of Ralph Peters new book, Wars of Blood and Faith: The Conflicts That Will Shape the 21st Century, and suggests that as complicated as our previous experiences with counter-insurgency have been, especially the ideological dimension, they are incomplete descriptors for our current situation:
To Peters, we have exited a brief aberration of conflict and reentered a much longer era of fundamental struggles over God and blood. Now that the brief age of ideology is over, he thinks we are returning to the recurring tides of human history existence in which wars were fought over blood and belief, not over political systems or resource distribution. This is a profound distinction, and one that many politicians, officers and civilian experts cannot seem to fathom. "No matter how vociferously we deny it," Ralph notes, "our wars will be fought over religion and ethnic identity." The author leaves the reader with little doubt that those wars will be brutally savage and protracted.
For Peters, conflict over primitive faith and blood loyalties should induce alternations to the Maoist era counterinsurgency doctrine. The prescriptions in FM 3-24 claimed to have understood that today’s era was different and clearly attempted to come to grips with the complexities of insurgents fueled by religious hatred and primal loyalties. Peters argues, persuasively to this reviewer, that violence stemming from the confessional or ethnic identity is profoundly different and not easily rectified or solved by our historically grounded counterinsurgency theory of the past half century. In the midst of violent struggles between intolerant religious factions and age-old ethnic rivals, Peters finds the new manual replete with outdated remedies. LtCol Peters emphasizes, "A Maoist in Malaya could be converted. But Islamist terrorists who regard death as a promotion are not going to reject their faith any more than an ethnic warrior can—or would wish to-- change his blood identity."
Hoffamn/Peters is closer to the mark than Marrero and points to a very significant difficulty. We have thus far established no mechanism and no conceptualization that can incorporate the current merger of ideology, religion, and technology. In almost every sphere except the arena of brute power and high tech, we are at a disadvantage with our enemies.
Even our edge in high tech has been neutralized by the ruthless exploitation by our enemy of non-combatants (on both sides) and their ability to compromise our media and co-opt them for use in disseminating their (enemy) propaganda. No one has been able to suggest an approach to the problem of our own information technology being used against us; if anything we lag dangerously behind our enemies because of our attempts to rely on evidence before disseminating information.
In terms of ideology, the West's primary ideology serves more to handicap us than to serve us. The prevailing ideology is almost exclusively from the left; liberal democracy with free markets has won the day even while mainstream elite ideology leans considerably farther to the left. Conservatives have become reluctant to appeal too overtly to the emotions of their audience, having been scarred by past associations with bigotry and racism. The left has no such qualms. Further, despite the repetition of the meme that Conservatives favor simple answers to complex problems, in reality, it is the Left which has perfected the populist sound bite. In addition, the conceptual framework under which most Western governments and elites operate, multi-culturalism and political correctness, reinforces the ethnic identity that forms one of the pillars that supports our enemy's alientation and hatred. Between the Left's blinders and the Right's reticence, we are poorly equipped to respond to an effective ideology.
However, it is in the arena of religious belief that the West is at its greatest disadvantage. We have struggled for several hundred years to move religion from its position in the vanguard of political control to its current position of relative irrelevance. In the West, religion, when considered at all, is supposed to inhabit a private, personal space, rarely if ever expressed in the political sphere. We might give lip service to religious belief but it is not expected to enter into our political life, let alone be an aspect of our military posture. While Democrats proudly display their religious bona fides on the cover of Time, they do so in the certainty that they would never do anything so gauche as to actually act on their faith in the political arena. That is something expected only of troglodytes like Bush or vaguely sinister and frightening "cultists" like Mitt Romney. For large swaths of the voting public, religious politicians are not to be trusted, perhaps because there is an intuitive sense that religious politicians may occasionally behave in ways inimical to the quasi-collectivist ideas that pass for sophistication among the cognoscenti.
The problem this presents is that religious belief offers a source of power that we cannot conjure out of secular faith. Anthropocentric Global Warming may induce the occasional adherent to violence in defense of Gaea, but it is unlikely to move large populations to support policies that will cause privation and pain; religion has the unmistakable ability to do just that; consider Gaza. Further, religious belief can be a powerful reinforcer of ideology, and vice versa.
Ideology is a systematic structure of thought that is available for adaptation by the young adult searching for meaning. Religion is a system of belief that exists much closer to the primal fears and desires of the young child and even when in quiescence in a rebellious adolescent, remains available for re-investment when necessary. It is not an exaggeration to say that "there are no atheists in fox holes"; once religious belief has been introduced in early life, it remains available forever. Thus, religion and ideology can become mutually reinforcing; the ideological structure is supported by an emotional scaffolding that involves the most intense emotional investments.
In addition, early religious inculcation lends itself to incorporation of one's religious identity as part of one's core identity. Ideology adopted in adolescence or young adulthood is relatively easily given up when it no longer serves a useful function; an ideological individual can evolve (as can ideological States.) One's religious identity, on the other hand, since it is part of the core identity, can only be given up under extreme conditions; losing one's religion is a discontinuity in identify, theocracies can only become non-theocracies through revolution (or through generations long processes.)
We remain befuddled as to how to address the religious elements of the current war. We are ill equipped for fighting a religious war in the 21st century and as a result have no choice but to fight a traditional counter-insurgency with the hope and prayer that we can maintain a fire wall around civilization until the religious fervor evolves or is extinguished. Ralph Peters suggests we will be waiting a very long time for such an eventuality and I suspect he is correct. In the meantime if anyone has any ideas on how to fight a religious war without terrible bloodshed, I would be delighted to hear.
Recent Comments