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Tuesday, Nov 24, 2009
Of the three resources required by terrorists -- money, weapons and people -- the resource most vital is people. Our "war on terrorism" should aim to dry up the swamp of despair found in refugee camps, favelas and impoverished villages throughout the world. As the writer Robert Kaplan has pointed out, for millions of young people from this swamp, barracks life and terrorist training camps are a step up. Though the first suicidal attackers did not come from refugee camps, it is a safe bet that the next wave will.
The military component, however, necessarily remains at the center of national security. But the military of the 21st century must look and perform much differently from that of the 20th. Paradoxically enough, it will be more technological but it will also be more human. Technologically, our military will expand into space. But that component must be defensive, not offensive. The 21st century military will also involve more precision-guided munitions. In the Persian Gulf war 10 percent of munitions were precision-guided, and even those were not as consistently accurate as we were led to believe. In the Afghan war, 90 percent of our munitions were precision-guided. But that dramatic increase did not prevent us from bombing the wrong targets. Once again, precision is an asset only if the human factor, accurate intelligence, controls.
We are indeed in a "revolution of military affairs" largely driven by technology but dependent on intelligence collected and analyzed by humans. Our fighting forces are increasingly directed by and through a complex web of command, control and communications networks, all interwoven and interrelated. The first Persian Gulf war was directed from a makeshift headquarters in Saudi Arabia. A decade later the Afghan war was directed from Central Command in Florida. We are relying on UAVs, unmanned air vehicles, and UCAVs, unmanned combat air vehicles, as fast as we can produce them. The commander in chief can monitor real-time pictures from these vehicles in the White House.
But high technology can be both extremely vulnerable to and dependent on the human actor. Exotic Pentagon communications networks are vulnerable to 21-year-old hackers. And the precision-guided munitions onboard planes flying from Diego Garcia or aircraft carriers in the Indian Ocean were guided by Delta Force personnel wearing civilian clothes and riding mules across the hills of Afghanistan. And wedding parties are wiped out because of the failure of human intelligence.
Even in the age of terrorism and "crime/war," we will need expeditionary forces. But they must be lighter and swifter. Getting there fast is now more important than getting there big. And ultra-sophisticated, post-Cold War conventional weapons systems -- ships, planes and tanks -- will have to be different. Despite our enormous wealth, we can no longer afford to integrate technology so closely to platforms that the platform must be replaced when technology changes -- as it does with lightning speed. We cannot afford ships, planes and tanks that are outdated the year they come into service. Platforms -- once again, ships, planes and tanks -- must be built for durability and long life. The weapons and sensors we place on them must be "plugged in" -- that is, readily removable when new ones become available.
The two illustrations are, of course, the venerable B-52 bomber and the aircraft carrier. The B-52, now in its sixth decade of life, is still performing -- even though it's older than the fathers of the pilots who fly it. And we keep aircraft carriers in service for over half a century. The platform doesn't change. But the technological sensors and weapons change almost overnight these days. Even then, human ingenuity trumps everything. Delta Force, as I mentioned, used a 3,000-year-old transportation system, the mule, to direct 21st century technology.
The roots of Secretary Rumsfeld's current uneven attempts to transition from 20th century weapons and warfare to preparation for what some have called the "fourth generation of warfare" of the 21st century trace to the military reform movement of the late 1970s. Even then, we reformers were advocating unit cohesion and officer initiative, maneuver strategy and tactics, and lighter, faster, more replicable weapons. Without attention to new people policies and innovative strategy, tactics and doctrine, the cancellation of weapons such as the Crusader artillery piece will by itself not transform the military sufficiently for a new kind of conflict.
Paradoxically, once again, the most technologically superior superpower in human history is now dependent on human ingenuity more than ever. If intelligence fails, as it did one year ago, all the technology in the world cannot save us. To know when, where and how terrorists intend to strike, and what they intend to use to do so, is almost entirely dependent upon human intelligence collection. Electronic surveillance, intercepts and wiretaps, bugging and pursuing, cannot altogether replace the human agent.
There is every reason now to believe that, within days, American forces -- possibly with token support from allies -- will invade Iraq. Under these circumstances, and acknowledging the unity of America behind our forces once committed, any attempt to outline a national security policy for the future, such as I undertake here, requires several observations to be made.
The American people deserve to know the costs of this commitment. They deserve to know which members of the international community openly support us, including with military resources. They deserve to know, most of all, casualty estimates on both sides. We have been told none of these things. It cost us 50,000 American lives in Vietnam to learn the lesson that the American people must not be misled, lied to, or treated as incompetent on military engagements.
The United States military does not belong to the president; it belongs to the American people. Our support for its commitment to combat is crucial for its success. That support cannot be granted in the dark and without a candid statement by the commander in chief regarding the probable costs in human lives and national treasure of its commitment.
