Afghanistan and the new military doctrine

Afghanistan and the new military doctrine

CYBER AGE - ND Batra
From The Statesman
It is unthinkable that President-elect Barack Obama would give up on the historic legacy of the US as the most decisive and responsible global power in spite of the rise of others, for example, aspirant China and resurgent Russia. Just look at the people the man has brought into his cabinet. They are not here to chant the Requiem for Uncle Sam.
President Bush’s Defence Secretary Robert Gates, who will continue in the Obama administration, recently wrote in the Foreign Affairs that “to fail ~ or to be seen to fail ~ in either Iraq or Afghanistan would be a disastrous blow to US credibility, both among friends and allies and among potential adversaries”. Secretary of State-designate Hillary Clinton would hardly disagree with Mr Gates when he says that because of its poverty, bad neighbourhood, hostile geography, “Afghanistan in many ways poses an even more complex and difficult long-term challenge than Iraq ~ one that, despite a large international effort, will require a significant US military and economic commitment for some time”. And that could be for years to come.
Mr Gates’s national defence strategy is more comprehensive and goes far beyond what his predecessors had attempted. For example, one of the most serious problems a first-class power like the US military faces is how fast they can move forces from one trouble spot to another.
The answer: Swift and lethal forces, equipped with precision-guided weapons, with on the spot intelligence-gathering by a network of satellites, troops that can be air-dropped or parachuted to a battle zone bypassing traditional beachheads. Lighter and faster forces can finish wars in much less time with less collateral damages and fewer civilian casualties, especially when they are networked with computerised communication, Global Positioning System, unmanned aerial surveillance vehicles, and remotely controlled drones that can provide real-time battlefield pictures like a steady eye in the sky.
It worked in Iraq in the beginning when the war was conventional. Swiftness was achieved through optimum cooperation among Special Forces, Army, Navy, Marines and Air Force so that they acted as one blended and cohesive yet flexible force, a strategy which the Pentagon should institutionalise according to Mr Gates. But the military strategy of “shock and awe”, unfortunately, created the grand illusion of quick victory that in fact became a terrible strategic and political burden because American forces were not trained for the unconventional war unleashed by a decentralised networked enemy; nor were they ready for social reconstruction. The US forces could not find the brain of the enemy because its brain was dispersed throughout the network. Much more than a smart military doctrine was needed. The so-called Rumsfeld doctrine of “shock and awe” proved disastrous. The Powell doctrine, which is meant to avoid a Vietnam like imbroglio, is based upon a set of questions that include: Is a most vital US interest at stake that must be protected? Can we commit sufficient resources, an overwhelming force, for example, three-to-one, to win the war? Are our objectives well defined? Can we sustain the commitment, if it is a prolonged one? Will the public and Congress support?
Neither the Rumsfeld doctrine nor the Powell doctrine is applicable to the Afghanistan-Pakistan situation.Nor has it any universal applicability. Major-General Julian Thompson, a visiting professor at King’s College, London, writing in the Observer at the time of Iraq war wondered: “Would the Rumsfeld doctrine work against a first-class enemy?” Would the Rumsfeld or Powell doctrine work if Russia were to re-claim its former Soviet territories, for example?
The Al-Qaida doctrine of asynchronous warfare, the essence of terrorists’ strategy, which is still going on and is breeding in places like Pakistan, has made nonsense of every military doctrine.
The United States needs a new paradigm for dealing with the world.
As Mr Gates says: “Terrorist networks can find sanctuary within the borders of a weak nation and strength within the chaos of social breakdown. A nuclear-armed state could collapse into chaos and criminality. The most likely catastrophic threats to the US homeland ~ for example, that of a US city being poisoned or reduced to rubble by a terrorist attack ~ are more likely to emanate from failing states than from aggressor states.”
The Mumbai terrorist attacks should leave no doubt that Pakistan as a failing state poses as much threat to the US as it does to India. Quoting defence scholars Frank Hoffman and Michael Evans, Mr Gates says that the new defence strategy must take into account “the lethality of state conflict with the fanatical and protracted fervour of irregular warfare,” and “wars... in which Microsoft coexists with machetes and stealth technology is met by suicide bombers”.
That has been India’s tragic experience. While Pakistan’s nuclear threat holds back India from taking defensive-offensive measures, its professionally trained terrorist groups under a cloak of charities and NGOs have been causing havoc.
The ISI-supported Taliban and Al-Qaida in Afghanistan-Pakistan cannot be cowed down to submission by traditional military strategies. The enemy has to be tracked down “hilltop by hilltop, house by house, block by bloody block”, says Mr Gates, for which “the United States needs a military whose ability to kick down the door is matched by its ability to clean up the mess and even rebuild the house afterward.”
While the Pentagon is “re-programmed” to become a force of creative destruction, Mr Gates has not forgotten the much larger threat on the horizon: China’s developing mastery of space and cyberspace, satellite warfare and cyber warfare. Nor should India.
(ND Batra teaches communications at Norwich University)