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Nuclear Strategy and Today’s Operating Environment

At one time nuclear strategy was one of the central pillars of U.S. national defense strategy and foreign policy.  Its related technologies were probably the most expensive items in the U.S. defense budget.  Deterence was the central concept in the U.S. national strategy to meet the threat of nuclear attack.  It was most graphically illustrated by the idea of mutually assured destruction (MAD).  However, since the end of the Cold War the idea of nuclear war has been pushed to the margins of the national defense strategy debate.  Since 9/11, strategy discussions have continued to largely ignore the issue of nuclear weapons.

There are two nuclear scenarios which have received some attention, both related to the issue of proliferation:  one is nuclear armed “rogue” states –most specifically a nuclear armed Korea and the potential for a nuclear armed Iran; and the other threat is small scale “suitcase” nuclear terror attack.  These threats are catagorized by the national defense strategy (NDS) as  “catastrophic challenges.” 

The 2005 NMS identifies the threat of WMD but it does not clearly articulate the role of the U.S. nuclear arsenal relative to the WMD and other threats.  The 2006 national military strategy to combat WMD says that offensive operations “  Kinetic (both conventional and nuclear) and/or non-kinetic operations [will] defeat, neutralize or deter a WMD threat or subsequent use of WMD.”  The NMS for WMD implies that deterence is still a central part of strategy to combat the threat of nuclear attack.

Some questions to consider regarding the role of nuclear weapons in current strategy:

Is deterence a viable strategy agains the nuclear threats in today’s operating environment?  Is deterence against WMD integrated suffeciently with the overall national strategy?  Is current U.S. strategy asymetric or symetric?

“Its the Economy Stupid!”

Maoist revolutionalry war theory puts the priority of effort on the political line of operations.  Our experience with our own domestic politics indicates that the key to successful politics is the economy.  Therefore… maybe:

COIN = Politics

Politics = Economy

.·. (therefore)

Economy = COIN

What do you think??

The Use of Force in Urban COIN –Conclusions from British Army operations in Northern Ireland

A major lesson to be learned for the British experience in Northern Ireland is regarding the use of force.  During the second phase of British operations in NI the British military strategy was a symmetric approach.  The PIRA used force (bombings, assassinations, sniper attacks etc.) and the UK forces responded with increased overt security operations (raids, check points, patrols, arrests and detention etc.).  British operations were focused on metrics which measured the military capabilities of the PIRA.  Though not unimportant, this was not the center of gravity of the of the PIRA.  The center of gravity of the PIRA was the support of the Catholic population of NI.  

 

PIRA attacks against British targets rarely garnered popular support from the Catholic population (A).  However, overt British security operations against the PIRA elicited great popular sympathy for the PIRA in the Catholic population (B).  Over time, this gradually built up significant sustained support for the insurgency and provided a friendly population that reliably provided recruits and resources.  This cycle could only be broken by systematically not responding to attacks with overt security operations.  Instead, the response had to be covert –precisely targeted with little or no public signature.  In addition, a very thorough information response had to be orchestrated.  This response emphasized the illegality and immorality of the attack and labeled the insurgents as terrorists (C).  This type of response decreases public support for the insurgency.  Over time this strategy gradually weaned the population from supporting the insurgents.  It also had the effect of greatly increasing the HUMINT provided by the population to the security forces (D).

The British security forces began to recognize this dynamic in the late 1980s.  By the early 1990s a change in British strategy began to have effects on the situation in NI.  By the middle 1990s Sinn Fein, the political arm of the PIRA, began to push for a change in strategy.  The PIRA recognized that armed struggle was causing them to lose the support of the population and therefore it was imperative that they change their strategy to one of negotiation while they still retained significant popular support.  Hence the negotiated cease-fire between the opposing factions in NI and the Belfast Agreement of 1998.

Another aspect of COIN operations illustrated by the history of the NI “troubles” is the definition of victory.  Given that the current situation appears to be proceding to a democrat solution, who won?  Did the PIRA and Sinn Fein achieve their objective of creating a means of uniting Ireland (through democracy), or did the British government win because violence has ended and democratic process are dominant?

 

 

 

 

 

Mao and the Iraqi / Afghani Insurgency

There are a wide variety of insurgent groups who have operated against U.S. forces in Iraq and Afghanistan since 2003.  Very few, if any, have followed a Maoist strategy.  Some analysists believe that this fact proves that Mao’s Revolutionary War theory is not relevant to the type of adversaries faced by the U.S. in the GWOT.  Are these analysists correct?

H301 Poll — Red Lobseters versus Mass. National Guard

Feel free to comment on your answer!

Regular army or militia

If you look at the American Revolution as a People’s Revolutionary War, the revolutionaries had two military tools –the militia and the continental army.  Both served important political purposes.  The continental army forced the British to keep most of their forces consolidated thus limiting their mobility and ability to control ground.  They also represented a conventional military capability that won international allies. The militia controlled all the ground where the British regulars were not physically present and thus ensured revolutionary political domination of the colonies.

Which of the two roles was more important?  Could one have been successful without the other?  Was it impossible for the British to be successful politically, given the problems and limitations of 18^th Century military power?

H200 Opinion Poll

My Doctrine Right or Wrong

The results of flawed doctrine: Unescorted Daylight Strategic Bombing

The focus of H200 was an analysis of how useful doctrine developed in peace time, based on previous war experience, proved to be in the conduct of operations in World War II.

 The history of interwar transformation and doctrine development process provides insights into the relationship of peacetime visions of future wars and the actual conduct of war.  In World War II the German army, the U.S. Navy, the U.S. Marine Corps, and the U.S. Army Air Force all attempted to execute doctrine developed in the years after WWI, on the battlefields of WWII.

 In some cases, blitzkrieg doctrine for example, the doctrine proved remarkably effective.  In other cases, the primacy of the battleship in navy doctrine for example, the doctrine failed to meet the requirements of modern war.   Were there organizational characteristics that permitted a particular service (the German army) to have an accurate understanding of tactical ground warfare, and another (the U.S. navy) fail to understand the importance of key technologies?

 Some observers believe that writing doctrine in peace time is a futile exercise because the lessons of history are such that the conditions of the next war will be completely different from the last war and impossible to predict.  Getting doctrine right is more luck than genius.  Thus only very multi-functional formations are of any use to the army of the future, and only vague, general and generic doctrine is appropriate for the current and future operating environment.  Do you agree or disagree?

 Are there doctrinal issues which our current military refuses to recognize because we have invested too much in organization, training, and equipment to change the doctrine at this point?  If so what are they and why are they flawed?

Doctrine versus Technology

In the video above, virtually none of the technology, or even the tactics techniques and procedures used to attack Iwo Jima were available seven years earlier when the Marines issued their 1938 manual on landing operations.

In the interwar years the Germans and the U.S. Marine Corps developed concepts for operations (doctrine) before they developed the enabling technology.  Ultimately, the doctrine would not have been successful without the technologies that were added later.  However, without the initial doctrine the technologies may  not have ever been developed, or may have been utilized in a different way.  Is this the right way to transform?  Should doctrine always precede technology?  Are there situations where technology should precede doctrine?   Which comes first in the U.S. military today?

Driving Transformation

A variety of factors influence transformation.  Usually, however, one factor is the initiator.  For example and obvious dangerous threat which has defeated a country in the past could be the factor which initiates  the transformation process.  Once that initiator is successful in “kick-starting” the transformation process the remaining factors interact with each other dynamically to eventually achieve the end result product of transformation.  Which of the factors was the most important for starting the transformation process during the interwar years?  In some countries and military services transformation did not occur, or failed to transform into a successful form.  In the interwar years what factor was the most important to preventing successful transformation?  The dynamics that effected transformation in the interwar years continue to effect transformation today.  Which is the most important factor effecting transformation in the U.S. military today?