Travis DonselmanPSCI 600Dr. Mark T. Clark3/23/2011

The Revolution in Military Affairs: A Divorce of War and Politics?

In the Gulf War, the United States (U.S.) and its allies overwhelmed Iraq by sheer

superiority of its technology. Superior technology hitherto, while important, had seldom

produced victories as astonishing as that seen in Iraq. Iraq in 1991 fielded an army among the

world’s largest, one equipped with modern Soviet weaponry. With such a formidable opponent,

even the most optimistic war planners in the U.S. could scarcely have hoped for the final results.

The results—a decisive American-led victory in forty eight days at the cost of three-hundred

casualties (Boot 43)—changed how defense planners conceived of war. War, previously, had

been won by attrition (41-42). Still, for all of its discontinuities with war by attrition, American

strategy in the Gulf War still gathered troops en masse (41). The successors to the Gulf War, the

wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, ushered in the revolution in military affairs (RMA), which offered

an alternative to war by attrition and force en masse. By utilizing technology to achieve

“dominant battlespace awareness” (Kagan 6-7) and to execute tactics with near-perfect precision,

RMA promised to deliver victory in less time, with fewer troops, and with far fewer deaths than

in the Gulf War, argued proponents of RMA. Yet for all its promises, RMA has led the U.S. into

its two longest wars in history and its two bloodiest since Vietnam. Both the war in Iraq and the

war in Afghanistan have been less successful than the Persian Gulf War because civilian war

planners broke the Clausewitzian link between war and politics: they designed wars plans around

defeating the enemy when they should have designed war plans around establishing new

regimes.

The Bush administration envisioned victory as the destruction of the enemy’s forces or,

alternatively, its ability to control and command them (Kagan 4). The administration, in the

words of historian Frederick Kagan, reduced war to “a targeting drill” (5). War, for the

administration, ended on the battlefield since an enemy that could not fight would surrender

(ibid.). Such an approach would have worked if the U.S. was fighting a redux of the Gulf War

where victory meant rolling back Saddam’s forces. The Gulf War presented the U.S. with

limited war aims. The war aims of Afghanistan and Iraq, in contrast, were to establish pro-

American regimes. Faced with nation-building, U.S. war plans needed to encompass occupation.

Occupation would require a force akin to the 500,000 soldiers that fought in the first Gulf War.

While this was acknowledged by Bush (5), the administration, nonetheless, deployed a force less

than half that size to Iraq. With many of these service members in support roles, ground forces

numbered a scant 100,000 (Boot 45).

Some commentators have applauded the decision of the Bush administration to send in a

bare-bones ground force. The administration made more with less and provided the world with a

foretaste of future war, they argue. Among others defending the war effort has been Max Boot.

Giving a balanced assessment, Boot tempers the success of the Iraq invasion by the dilapidated

state of the Iraqi military (44). Even the elite of Iraq’s military, the Republican Guard, lack the

resolve to fight (49). It is clear in Boot’s account whether this was the result of poor discipline

and morale or the awe of the “new American way of war,” as he titles his piece. Whatever the

deficiencies of the Iraqi military, the new American way of war scored an overwhelming victory,

beside which even the successes of the blitzkrieg look pedestrian (44). As did the blitzkrieg, the

invasion of Iraq “rank[s] as one of the signal achievements in military history” (ibid.). As much

a signal achievement as a signaling event, the invasion of Iraq showed that light, mobile forces

would prevail over big, blundering armies if military planners exploited high-technology.

At the same time, Boot recognizes flaws in the military’s shift away from operations

other than war (OOTW). Military planners are making fewer allowances for peacekeeping

operations, exemplified for Boot in the closing of the Army War College’s Peacekeeping

Institute (57). This disdain for peacekeeping and nation-building concerns Boot greatly. Writing

shortly after the invasion of Iraq, he warned, “The army brass should realize that battlefield

victories in places like Afghanistan and Iraq can easily be squandered if they do not do enough to

win the peace” (ibid.). Boot understands that no military operation can succeed if war planners

sever political goals from war.

Having made this statement, Boot inexplicably judges RMA in Iraq a success without

considering the political objectives of the Iraq War. In defense of Boot, he authored his piece at

the height of American success in Iraq, well before the insurgency materialized. However, more

than the mere timing of the piece skewed Boot’s analysis. Boot’s analysis hinges on the belief

that the political objectives of the Iraq War were not endangered by network-centric warfare. If

network-centric warfare serves political ends as well as war by attrition does, then scholars need

only consider military results to pronounce the one better than the other. Such an assumption

would explain why a Clausewitzian, such as Boot, can ignore the question of political objectives

in analyzing RMA.

Clausewitzians who adhere to RMA base their enthusiasm for it on a misguided premise.

The premise of these thinkers is that network-centric warfare has no effect on political outcomes.

For political aims short of regime change, network-centric warfare, in fact, may not hinder their

achievement. In fact, network-centric warfare may enhance the success of these goals. Had

policymakers sought something short of regime change in Iraq, Boot’s assessment of RMA there

would be fully justified, as RMA demonstrated a effectiveness and efficiency not before seen.

Its effectiveness can be measured by the fact that a country eighty percent the size of France fell

to American forces in 26 days compared to the 44 days it took the Germans to vanish the French

in World War II (Boot 44) or the 48 days the ground war in Kuwait took in 1991 (43). Its

efficiency can be measured by the 27,000 fatalities the Germans suffered in the French invasion

compared to the 161 suffered by the “Coalition of the willing” in Iraq (44) or by the sheer

discrepancy in force size, which for the Gulf War compared to the invasion of Iraq was more

than 2 to 1 (43). More pronounced than even these numbers, however, is the way RMA turned

traditional military planning on its head. Traditional military planning advises a ratio of 3 to 1

for invasions, 6 to 1 for invasions in difficult terrain, as forces would encounter in Iraq (44).

Instead, in Iraq, Coalition forces faced a disadvantage of 3 to 1, perhaps even 4 or 4.5 to 1 (ibid.).

Coalition ground forces never numbered more than 100,000 and estimates place Saddam’s forces

at close to 450,000 (ibid.). Such small numbers posed problems for post-invasion occupation.

Occupation after conventional fighting had ceased was problematic because network-centric

warfare was too efficient. The efficiency of RMA, which Boot and others argued was its greatest

strength, actually undermined U.S. efforts to achieve political victory in Iraq.

Because RMA revolutionizes warfighting by eliminating the need for a large ground

force, it changes what the military can accomplish. The military, in some ways, can accomplish

much more with RMA. RMA strengthens warfighting capabilities. Warfighting capabilities,

however, are not the be-all and end-all of war making. The be-all and end-all of war, as

Clausewitz pointed out 150 years ago, is the achievement of political objectives. Clausewitz

describes war as “an act of violence to compel our opponent to fulfill our will” (I.2). The

destructiveness of war serves no other purpose than to allow one country to obtain what it wants

from another country. If anything less, war would resemble a sport, and its savagery would

dissipate. Nothing save for political goals could justify war’s destructiveness since the ferocity

of the fighting stems from the stakes of war (I.11). War, in short, would resemble going paint-

balling or playing Counter-Strike. These two activities are what war degenerates into when it

lacks political goals.

Just because RMA promotes warfighting capabilities does not mean that it strengthens

war-winning capabilities, at least when winning the war requires nation-building. The erosion of

nation-building capabilities concerns Boot, but he fails to realize that this erosion stems from

RMA. RMA prescribes forces too small to conduct nation-building or peacekeeping functions.

Boot attributes the erosion in these functions to decisions made at the strategic level.

While his criticism is well-aimed, Boot misidentifies his target. He finds fault with military

leaders for shifting focus from operations other than war (OOTW) functions through such

decisions as closing the Peacekeeping Institute. As a matter of fact, the military’s self-defeating

emphasis on combat to the exclusion came from the Bush administration. The administration’s

disdain for OOTW was summed up in the mantra, “Superpowers don’t do windows” (Kagan 5).

This attitude permeated the administration all the way up to the Oval Office.

Bush’s vision of war, inspired by RMA and enshrined in the Rumsfeld Doctrine, did “not

focus on the problem of achieving political objectives” (4). Political objectives would be dealt

with after military victory had been achieved. The most flagrant example of this was in Iraq,

where after toppling Saddam’s regime, Bush planned on having the U.S. Army (USA) make way

for United Nations (UN) peacekeeping forces (ibid.). UN peacekeepers were necessary because

network-centric war did not provide the man-power needed to conduct OOTW. Bush supported

the move to network-centric warfare, along with its accompanying reduction in numbers. In a

speech given during the 2000 presidential campaign, Bush maintained that, “Power is

increasingly measured not by mass or size, but by mobility and swiftness.” Bush accepted the

RMA dogma that technology and maneuverability could replace size.

The most vocal advocate of RMA in the Bush administration, Secretary of Defense

Rumsfeld, continuously haggled with his generals over force levels. He wanted a sleek force of

no more than a quarter or a million. Generals insisted on levels equal to those in the Persian Gulf

War. A compromise figure of 300,000 soldiers was eventually reach, an commitment which

Rumsfeld later disavowed, leading to the 100,000 ground forces and 250,000 total forces that

entered Iraq. Such small numbers were sufficient, Rumsfeld argued, because man-power would

play little role in determining victory. Rumsfeld’s thinking only applied to military victory.

A swift military victory came at the cost of an easy occupation, which until the surge in

2007, left political victory hanging in the balance. If the Bush administration paid any heed to

political outcomes, it was that a large American footprint would arouse indigenous suspicions,

fueling popular resistance. In retrospect, it appears that the popular resistance was fueled by the

limited American presence. A small force hampered the U.S. military’s efforts to curb sectarian

violence, protect the population, and restore basic services, such as water and electricity. This

alienated the Iraqi public far more than an extra 100,000 soldiers would have. Large

deployments of soldiers are needed to maintain order and prevent violence and a breakdown in

society likely to leave men and women desperate, resentful, and dangerous (10). How civilian

war planners failed to appreciate this or the fact that the “shock and awe” tactics of RMA that

destroy a country’s infrastructure would hamper American war aims (10), speaks to how

dramatically war planners divorced political aims from military means.

The small force and tactics of RMA hamper rather than support victory where the U.S.

seeks regime change. RMA would not short-circuit American war efforts if policymakers were

seeking the limited aims that marked American defense policy during the Reagan, first Bush, and

Clinton years. For wars like the Persian Gulf War, network-centric warfare would have

succeeded because precision-guided munitions and better intelligence would have reduced

civilian casualties in Iraq while decimating Saddam’s forces more quickly and with fewer

military casualties. Saddam’s forces could have been ousted from Kuwait with the smaller sized

forces used in 2003 if network-centric warfare had existed. Network-centric warfare lends itself

to limited objectives. If American policymakers were seeking limited aims, the shortcomings of

network-centric warfare would not come into play.

Network-centric warfare is failing the U.S. because American security policy shifted

under Bush from limited military objectives to larger goals, namely, regime change (Kagan 10).

In order to successfully make this transition in policy, war planners needed to continue in the

American tradition of war by attrition or force en masse. Large forces, while slower to achieve

military victory because of logistical issues, achieve full control over a country, which regime

change requires. Regime change cannot be accomplished through the small forces of RMA.

Robert Kaplan, like Boot a proponent of “economy of force” (77), realizes this limitation

of RMA and other alternatives to force en masse. While arguing that economy of force will

allow the U.S. to maintain its presence around the world, Kaplan believes that the U.S. must

avoid further exercises in regime change. Such ventures dilute American strength around the

world (66), drain resources better spent on maintaining global hegemony (68-69), and run

counter to the transformation underway in the military towards “light and lethal” (77). If the

U.S. continues to aim for regime change through military rather than diplomatic means, Kaplan

believes the U.S. will have to abandon its transition to stream-lined forces. As an alternative to

war by attrition, Kaplan advocates the use of special forces in bringing about limited social

change though he acknowledges the role special forces have played in actual regime change in

the past (78). Kaplan, however, remains skeptical of regime change. Regime change either

diverts too many conventional forces from other theatres or risks overstretching the few special

forces in the field (ibid.). Unlike Boot, Kaplan realizes that stream-lining the military will limit

the U.S.’s ability to establish pro-American regimes.

Other strategists aside from Kaplan have noted the limitations of RMA. Stephen Biddle,

a researcher with the Army War College, contends that network-centric warfare, for all of its

marvel, fails to accomplish what only boots on the ground can do. Examining the invasion of

Afghanistan, Biddle found the battles mirrored the close-up action of traditional combat as the

enemy adjusted to network-centric warfare (32). Traditional combat, while supported by

precision-guided missiles and airstrikes, had replaced network-centric warfare by the end of the

Afghanistan campaign. Biddle hypothesizes that a revolution in military affairs has yet to occur

since large grounds forces still win wars.

War for the foreseeable future will require large deployments to achieve the political

successes envisioned by the Bush administration and continued by the Obama administration. If

a revolution in military affairs has occurred, future administrations will need to learn from the

mistakes of the Bush administration by implementing network-centric warfare under limited

circumstances. Network-centric warfare cannot be the new American way of war because it

cannot achieve political results in all situations in which the U.S. wages war. Bush’s changes to

American security policy, which advocates regime change, make this especially true.