| 19 May 2007 04:16 SOMALIA WATCH |
Analysis |
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No Easy Battle Summary : In the wake of this week's terrorist attacks in the United States, the U.S. government is trying to decide how it can defeat its new style of enemy. The key to victory is finding the enemy's center of gravity, or what enables it to operate, and destroying it. But what has worked for the U.S. military in the past may not be enough this time around. Analysis: The foundation of any successful military operation is defining and attacking the enemy's center of gravity: the capacity that enables it to operate. A war effort that does not successfully define the enemy's center of gravity, or lacks the ability to decisively incapacitate it, is doomed to failure. The center of gravity can be relatively easy to define, as was the Iraqi command and control system, or relatively difficult to define, as was Vietnam's discovery of America's unwillingness to indefinitely absorb casualties. In either case, identifying the adversary's center of gravity is the key to victory. In the wake of this week's terrorist attacks in the United States, this question is now being discussed in the highest reaches of the American government. The issue, from a military standpoint, is not one of moral responsibility or legal culpability. Rather, it is what will be required to render the enemy incapable of functioning as an effective force. Put differently, what is the most efficient means of destroying the enemy's will to resist? This is an extraordinarily difficult process in this case because it is not clear who the enemy is. Two schools of thought are emerging though. One argues that the attackers are essentially agents of some foreign government that enables them to operate. Therefore, by either defeating or dissuading this government from continuing to support the attackers, they will be rendered ineffective and the threat will end. Such a scenario is extremely attractive for the United States. Posing the conflict as one between nation-states plays to American strength in waging conventional war. A nation-state can be negotiated with, bombed or invaded. If a nation-state is identified as the attackers' center of gravity, then it can by some level of exertion be destroyed. There is now an inherent interest within the U.S. government to define the center of gravity as Iraq or Afghanistan or both. The United States knows how to wage such wars.The second school of thought argues that the entity we are facing is instead an amorphous, shifting collection of small groups, controlled in a dynamic and unpredictable manner and deliberately without a clear geographical locus. The components of the organization can be in Afghanistan or Boston, in Beirut or Paris. Its fundamental character is that it moves with near invisibility around the globe, forming ad hoc groups with exquisite patience and care for strikes against its enemies. This is a group, therefore, that has been deliberately constructed not to provide its enemies with a center of gravity. Its diffusion is designed to make it difficult to kill with any certainty. The founders of this group studied the history of underground movements and determined that their greatest weakness is what was thought to be their strength: tight control from the center. That central control, the key to the Leninist model, provided decisive guidance but presented enemies with a focal point that, if smashed, rendered the organization helpless. This model of underground movement accepts inefficiency -- there are long pauses between actions -- in return for both security, as penetration is difficult, and survivability, as it does not provide its enemies with a definable point against which to strike.This model is much less attractive to American military planners because it does not play to American capabilities. It is impervious to the type of warfare the United States prefers, which is what one might call wholesale warfare. It instead demands a retail sort of warfare, in which the fighting level comprises very small unit operations, the geographic scale is potentially global and the time frame is extensive and indeterminate. It is a conflict that does lend itself to intelligence technology, but it ultimately turns on patience, subtlety and secrecy, none of which are America's strong suits. It is therefore completely understandable that the United States is trying to redefine the conflict in terms of nation-states, and there is also substantial precedent for it as well. The precursor terrorist movements of the 1970s and 1980s were far from self-contained entities. All received support in various ways from Soviet and Eastern European intelligence services, as well as from North Korea, Libya, Syria and others. From training to false passports, they were highly dependent on nation-states for their operation. It is therefore reasonable to assume the case is the same with these new attackers. It would follow that if their source of operational support were destroyed, they would cease to function. A bombing campaign or invasion would then solve the problem. The issue is to determine which country is supplying the support and act. There is no doubt the entity that attacked the United States got support from state intelligence services. Some of that support might well have been officially sanctioned while some might have been provided by a political faction or sympathetic individuals. But although for the attackers state support is necessary and desirable, it is not clear that destroying involved states would disable the perpetrators.One of the principles of the attackers appears to be redundancy, not in the sense of backup systems, but in the sense that each group contains all support systems. In the same sense, it appears possible that they have constructed relationships in such a way that although they depend on state backing, they are not dependent on the support of any particular state.An interesting development arising in the aftermath is the multitude of states accused of providing support to the attackers: Afghanistan, Iraq, Iran, Pakistan, Algeria and Syria, among others, have all been suggested. All of them could have been involved in some way or another, with the result being dozens of nations providing intentional or unintentional support. The attackers even appear to have drawn support from the United States itself, as some of the suspected hijackers reportedly received flight training from U.S. schools. The attackers have organized themselves to be parasitic. They are able to attach themselves to virtually any country that has a large enough Arab or Islamic community for them to disappear into or at least go unnoticed within. Drawing on funds acquired from one or many sources, they are able to extract resources wherever they are and continue operating.If such is the case, then even if Iraq or Afghanistan gave assistance, they are still not necessarily the attackers' center of gravity. Destroying the government or military might of these countries may be morally just or even required, but it will not render the enemy incapable of continuing operations against the United States. It is therefore not clear that a conventional war with countries that deliberately aided the culprits will achieve military victory. The ability of the attackers to draw sustenance from a wide array of willing and unwilling hosts may render them impervious to the defeat of a supporting country. The military must systematically attack an organization that tries very hard not to have a systematic structure that can be attacked. In order for this war to succeed, the key capability will not be primarily military force but highly refined, real-time intelligence about the behavior of a small number of individuals. But as the events of the last few days have shown, this is not a strength of the American intelligence community. And that is the ultimate dilemma for policymakers. If the kind of war we can wage well won't do the job, and we lack the confidence in our expertise to wage the kind of war we need to conduct, then what is to be done? The easy answer -- to fight the battle we fight best -- may not be the right answer, or it may be only part of the solution. |
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