Phil Taylor's papers
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BACK TO : British/American Foreign Policy and the War on Terrorism
West must become smarter in use of force - General [Rupert Smith] West must become smarter in use of force - General Thursday, October 27, 2005 by Paul Taylor BRUSSELS (Reuters) - Why does the West so often win wars and then go on to lose the peace? A former NATO commander and veteran of military operations in Northern Ireland, Iraq and the Balkans tackles that question in a challenging book that advocates a complete rethink of the way Western nations organize and use their armed forces. In "The Utility of Force," retired Gen. Sir Rupert Smith, one of Britain's most decorated soldiers, says Western armies are still set up to fight "industrial wars" which ceased to exist at the end of World War Two in 1945. "War no longer exists," he writes. Smith is withering about President George W. Bush's talk of a "war on terror" after the September 11, 2001, attacks on the United States, which he calls a "statement without useful meaning" since no decisive outcome is possible. "The terrorist is demonstrating a better understanding of the utility of force in serving his political purpose than those who are opposed to him -- both political leaders and military establishments," he writes. Most modern conflicts, Smith argues, are "war amongst the people," in which military might is of limited use in attaining the strategic objective, which is to win hearts and minds, and change an opponent's behavior. Even when Western armies prevail in a conventional fight, as in the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq to overthrow Saddam Hussein in 2003, they often fail to achieve their ultimate goals because their political masters bungle the aftermath or guerrillas out-think or outlast them. MISAPPLIED "We don't understand how to use the tool to achieve the purpose we want," Smith told Reuters in an interview. "The other side in Iraq has been much more successful than the U.S. and UK in changing the mentality of the people." The military are ill-equipped to cope with lower intensity confrontations pitting states or coalitions against non-state forces, where only limited force may be applied under the media's gaze to achieve objectives that are sometimes hazy. "Since the end of the Cold War force has been used time and again, yet failed to achieve the result expected," Smith writes. "It has been misapplied, whilst in other cases leaders have shrunk from applying it because they could not see its utility." He cites the 1991 Gulf War, which succeeded in driving Saddam's Iraqi invasion force out of Kuwait but not in establishing a stable order in the region, as well as failed "humanitarian interventions" in Somalia and the Balkans. Smith commanded the British Armoured Division in the 1991 Gulf war and was commander of the U.N. force in Bosnia in 1995. In a vast survey of the changing nature of war, this highly intellectual soldier contends that the dropping of the atom bomb on Hiroshima put an end to total war between major powers, which began with Napoleon's campaigns in the early 19th century. "The paradigm of interstate industrial war was literally blown to pieces on August 6, 1945," he writes. Yet governments and military hierarchies on both sides of the Iron Curtain ignored that reality for 45 years, massing their forces and missiles for an impossible third world war, while waging other, less intensive conflicts at the same time -- the Americans in Korea and Vietnam, the Russians in Afghanistan. Smith's argument found an echo in a report on Tuesday by the International Institute of Strategic Studies which said Western powers were being forced to rethink strategy because the Iraq conflict had shown the limit of their conventional armies. In its annual report, "The Military Balance," the think-tank said conventional armies had been sucked into messy conflicts, often in towns, where they face enemies invulnerable to the advanced gadgetry supposed to herald a new era in warfare. UNENDING CONFLICT Since the fall of the Berlin Wall, Smith says, the main threats to international security have come from the break-up of states, guerrilla struggles and shadowy terrorist networks. "It is these kinds of conflicts and enemies that we face most commonly now, in our post-Cold War world, though we still try to mold them all back into the industrial model: to use force and forces in accordance with a dogma rather than a reality," he argues. The sequence is no longer peace-crisis-war-resolution-peace, but a continuous state of confrontation and conflict. Conflicts tend to be timeless, even unending, he says, citing the Israeli-Palestinian struggle or the 55-year-old standoff between North and South Korea, which is still tying down U.S. forces on the Korean peninsula and has turned nuclear. The military is limited in its use of force by political constraints such as the need to avoid alienating the civilian population, a low threshold of public acceptance for casualties and the need to preserve equipment and forces. Smith says the United States and the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) may be less well equipped to prevail in these modern conflicts than the European Union -- a relative military dwarf with experience in nation-building, policing and reconstruction -- provided the EU can drum up political will. He does not prescribe in detail how armed forces should be transformed, but the implication is that the military needs fewer tanks, warships and fighter planes and more intelligence, police, civilian affairs and media specialists. Above all, he insists, the use of force must be "nested" in an overall political strategy to achieve the desired objective. That is where the United States went wrong in Iraq, Smith contends, failing to plan properly for the post-war occupation and reconstruction, to anticipate the resistance or to understand how to win Iraqi hearts and minds |