Wanted: A Unified Field Theory for a Third World War

The ongoing conflict with ISIS/ISIL/the Islamic State (hereafter called Daesh) has attracted attention and interest around the world.  Pope Francis has weighed in and it is perhaps surprising that he may have come closest to identifying this conflict as the Third World War.  Henry Kissinger reportedly agrees with him.  However, there have been few signs that the US government recognizes this as a single global conflict much less any signs of a coherent coordinated strategy that addresses each local conflict and its links to every other local conflict.

This is a war that is very like wars of the past while yet being something different from what we are accustomed to.  It is the 21st Century under attack by the 15th Century.  It is a war between dogmatic conformity draped in religious trappings claiming for itself the right to impose its beliefs through deadly violence on a modern world that emphasizes diversity, technology, progress, and individual choice.  Like the Seven Years War it is taking place on a global scale in terms of reach with a relatively small and localized geographic context.  It is and will be fought by complex local alliances, marked by competing interests between politics and faith, and religious differences that result in alliance relationships or are overcome in the interests of the nation states participating – a geopolitical stew worthy of The Thirty Years War.

In Nigeria, the enemy calls itself Boko Haram.  Al Qaeda in the Maghreb is active to varying degrees in Algeria, Burkina Faso, Chad, Mali, Mauritania, Morocco, Niger, Senegal, and Tunisia.  Al-Shabaab in Somalia was reportedly responsible for the attack on the Nairobi shopping center.  Al Qaeda in Yemen is losing fighters to Daesh as are the Taliban in Afghanistan and other groups in Pakistan.  The Abu Sayyaf group in the Philippines is now also reportedly aligning itself with Daesh.  We are confronted simultaneously with disparate enemies at locations spanning half the globe but we appear to be addressing each fight in isolation from the others.

It features full spectrum warfare with combat taking place on open ground, city streets, deep jungles, high mountains, the airspace above all of these places and between them, and in cyberspace.  Do not be fooled into thinking that Daesh’s use of our own technology against us makes them modern thinkers.  Remember, Marx and Lenin promised that they would hang the last capitalist with the rope he sold them.  They doubtless consider it fitting that they will attack us with our own technologies.  As to being professional and sophisticated fighters, if you spend enough time on a battlefield and survive, you get good at it.  This sophistication and professionalism will not necessarily carry over into other parts of their lives, especially where it might clash with their dogma.

This coalition for the 15th Century shares fighters, resources, and know-how in addition to their shared enemy.  They crave for us to identify them as our enemy because it enhances their stature and facilitates their recruiting and fundraising.  Whether of allies or enemies, neither coalition will be in unanimous agreement on many of a whole range of issues relating to why we fight, what we are fighting for, what achievements might cap our respective final victories.  They don’t need to be in agreement on anything other than who is “we” and who is “them”.   As in The Thirty Years War our enemies have in common a number of points of ideological/theological agreement and they agree that we are the enemy, an enemy that must be destroyed even though that is beyond their actual capabilities at the present time.  History shows that we ignore this determined threat at our own risk.

All of that said, we need to understand a number of key things about this Third World War.

We are fighting an idea.  We can kill its adherents but the idea will survive.

We must adapt our approach, our strategy, to each conflict/theater/locality appropriately while not undermining our efforts in other theaters.

We, not just the US but all of our partners, must recognize that it is all one war and we must cooperatively frame a common strategy accordingly.

The US does not need to put its troops, aircraft, etc. into every single one of these fights.

It does, however, need to make sure that one or more of its local allies are in each and every one of these fights with the fullest possible US support.

We also need to understand that whichever of our partners does put boots on the ground, those troops will eventually come to resent taking all of the risks of ground combat while we take none.

If the only tools in our tool box are hammers, all of our problems begin to look like nails.  We need to use resources and take actions beyond the battlefield that will help our local allies shape that battlefield into a desired state.

We need to be able to peel away their supporters by a number of means including seeing that local grievances are addressed.

We need to eliminate (realistically minimize) actions by our own or coalition forces that discourage or drive away our supporters among the populations. 
 
We need to understand and to remember that the war will not end in a way that we can control nor can we dictate the full shape of what comes afterwards.

ADDENDUM:  I wanted to add a short comment after attending two more sessions at The Brookings Institution this week that touched on this conflict.  I've said for sometime that the US is a status quo power, which in part answers the complaint that we have no national strategy, we are defending the status quo and thus reacting to threats against it.  However, while the US sees itself as defending an established international order, there are many nations who see the democratic free market capitalist USA as a revolutionary expansionist power and a threat.  And, the international order which the US is defending is not simply a matter of nation states, international organizations, and international institutions, it is a process for how all of these interact with each other.  Within this process, a referendum in Scotland - however regrettable it might be - is acceptable.  Sending uniformed armed men (and women) onto the territory of an independent sovereign nation in order to overturn the government of that nation or to steal its territory is not acceptable.

Clausewitz, Mars, and Murphy

In 1831, a Prussian Major-General died at the age of 51 having never commanded an army or even a battlefield during his military service. However, his legacy would be his lifelong effort to examine and even dissect that phenomena that defined his life – war itself. Carl von Clausewitz had served Prussia and briefly Russia through the wars with first revolutionary and then Napoleonic France, studying both these and earlier wars seeking to fully understand war and warfare. The fruits of this effort were written, edited, and re-written throughout his life and would be published after his death by his widow as “Vom Krieg” or “On War.”

Over the fifty-odd years that I have studied military history, war, and warfare, I didn’t actually get around to reading Clausewitz for about half that time. This was actually a good thing since the Michael Howard/Peter Peret translation wasn’t published until 1976 and for my money this is the English-language version you want to use - unless you actually read German and can think like a 19th Century German philosopher.

When I first began to read “On War” during my time in the Naval War College’s Command and Staff Course, was the realization that Clausewitz recognized just how much of a gamble war was and remains. I would summarize his approach very much as, “Okay, guys, going to war is really, really not a good idea primarily because of the infinite number of things that can and will go wrong – and it never, ever comes out the way you expect it to. However, that said and if you are still absolutely determined to go to war – here’s how it works.” It’s almost as if Clausewitz believed that the real name of the God of War wasn’t Mars but rather Murphy.

“On War” has been mined by many people for epigrams and quotes, which were all too often taken out of context in hopes of overawing critics of whatever hobbyhorse was being advocated, much as people borrow from the Bible to prop up a weak argument. But like its subject, “On War” is a complex work whose true value and meaning come from the interactions between the various ideas – just as war is truly defined by the sum total of the interactions between its numerous elements. Despite such abuses, some of the work’s ideas are of particularly relevance as the United States and some friends and allies begin air (and possibly other) military operations over Libya.

The first thought that comes to mind is that starting a war is a lot easier than ending it, something pretty clearly on many peoples’ minds and reflected in much of the public commentary. The corollary second thought is that no war ever ends the way you expected it to when it started and this is true of just about every war I have studied. There are several reasons for this; in particular there is what Clausewitz called friction. Friction is Clausewitz’s label for the innumerable little things that will go wrong when you try to translate a military plan into reality – think of the old children’s rhyme “for want of a nail” and you get a glimmer of the idea. Also, you can try to move any large number of people around and get them to do what you want them to do when and where you want to do it. All of the little problems, questions, confusions, etc. that keep it from happening constitute “friction.”

Clausewitz was also aware of the problem often referred to as “mission creep” in the ongoing discussions on Libya. He knew from experience the reality that a country would go to war with a certain goal in mind – perhaps to seize a city or a province, recapture a city or province lost in the last war, punish a rival ruler or country by destroying all or part of its territory or its armed forces, or just old fashioned raid, loot, and pillage the enemy countryside for a while. This happens because most of the people deciding about whether or not to go to war are politicians – who may at best take the advice of the people who will be doing the fighting, but at least as often do not.

The most important contribution that the generals make in their explanation to the politicians is to set before them the all important relationship between ends and means; “If you give me this much military force, I can do this; if you give me this much more military force, I can do that.” As we have seen in recent years, political leaders who ignore such advice, almost always regret it.

Once the war has begun it either goes better than expected or worse. Either way, this raises a new challenge to the politicians,

– if the war is going worse or is not achieving the goals originally set out for it the politicians must decide whether to settle for less than victory or increase the military forces committed to the war,

– and with the required increase in military forces they will consider whether not the greater forces involved also entails setting out a new and larger goal;

- if the war is going better than expected, there is always the temptation to set out a new and bigger goal to replace the original one and “cash in” on the success. However, seeking an expanded, larger goal may in turn spark increased resistance from an enemy who now can expect to lose more than was originally at risk.

So the politicians (in the Middle East, in Washington, London, Bonn, Rome, Paris, etc) declare that Gadhafi must not be allowed to fly his aircraft over Libya. The generals use a mix of bombers and missiles to destroy the Libyan radars and command and control centers for its air defenses so that their planes may now fly unencumbered and unchallenged as they keep pro-Gadhafi aircraft on the ground. And then the politicians declare, "That’s not what we meant!" Sometimes, you have to believe that the generals all wish they had decided to be professional athletes or street musicians instead of generals.

Televised Revolutions as the Newest Form of Reality TV Show

One hundred and fifty years ago, the United States had just sworn in its new President, Abraham Lincoln, while seven states had declared themselves no longer a part of that country and had already sworn in their own President, Jefferson Davis of Mississippi. The United States was already preparing for a civil war that would last for more than four years while the European powers watched from a distance with varying degrees of political, military, and economic interest. The Prussian military dismissed this war when it began as the clash of armed mobs that offered no insights or important new knowledge of war and warfare and thus not worth their attention.

This is approximately the situation now confronting the two sides in Libya. The Libyan Armed Forces, such as they were, have fragmented. Qadhafi has introduced the use of non-Libyan mercenaries to back up his selected units made up of tribal supporters and others with a vested interest in the regime's survival to beat back the growing armed popular revolt. The rebels are made up of angry young men and elements of the fragmenting Libyan armed forces that have defected to the rebels.

In essence, we are presented with two armed mobs confronting each other. The Libyan military, with limited capabilities before this uprising, have some slight advantage in that they are still generally organised and equipped according to the Army table of equipment. This means that they should have the communications, intelligence gathering, and logistics support normally part of the functioning of a regular army. Their weaknesses are that these will not really be fully effective nor fully integrated and linked across the full spectrum of pro-Qadhafi forces.

The rebels in their turn will have only the advantage of larger overall numbers and youthful and/or revolutionary enthusiasm. Unfortunately, they are still a good ways from being able to operate effectively as military forces even at a limited level equivalent to that of the pro-Qadhafi forces. They lack sufficient trained military leadership, reconnaissance, logistics, communications, heavy weapons, and most importantly air support. That said, their numbers, determination, and enthusiasm suggest that ultimately they can and should win this conflict.

The most important need and potentially the one must susceptible to a favorable resolution is the rebel need for effective leadership. Right now it appears that the Libyan revolutionaries/rebels are dependent upon the historical pattern in which previously unknown and unrecognized leaders will emerge on the battlefield as the militants continue to clash with Qadhafi loyalists. These leaders will not fit a single profile, but are likely to be a mix of both trained military officers who have defected to the rebels and previously unsuspected charismatic leaders with a knack for the kind of knockabout combat that will make up most of the conflict.

The biggest challenge for both the rebels and for outside powers wanting to support or at least recognize these anti-Qadhafi forces is that the battlefield leaders that emerge are less likely to have the political skills essential to the creation of a new regimen and political order. This lack will prolong the period of real uncertainty as to the ultimate direction of Libya's revolution. While it will be difficult for the Libyan rebels to pull off a battlefield victory and then a political success in the face of this and other challenges, it will be even more challenging for interested outside powers to make an early identification of these emerging leaders and then to work with them as this new political order itself develops. It's likely to be along process with numerous steps backward and forward as the situation develops first on the battlefield and then in the political arena. It's outcome is not likely to be successfully predicted by either Libyans or the interested powers.