LTC Nagl on War in the 21st Century
LTC. John Nagl had an article, not yet within reach online, in the prestigious RUSI list where he used his review of The Echo of Engagement: The Army’s Way of War by Brian McAllister Linn to driveway home a geopolitical and grand crucial reality that I offer here with my subsequent comments( principal hat tip to Lexington Green for the PDF):
In the twenty-first century, wars are not won when the foe army is defeated on the battlefield; in the gen, there may not be a uniformed enemy to fight at all. A substitute alternatively, a war is only won when the conditions that spawned armed disagreement have been changed.
Fielding first rate traditional militaries of local or regional “reach” are inordinately dear propositions and only the United States maintains one with worldwide power projection capabilities and a logistical ass that can fight wars that are both far away and of desire duration. Economics, nuclear weapons, asymmetrical disparities in established firepower, globalization and the revolution in communication technology that permits open-horse's mouth warfare have incentivized warfare on the tuppence and stealthy at the expense of classic claim on state warfare. The predictions of Martin van Creveld in The Change of War are coming to pass - war has ratcheted declining from armies to networks and blurs into felony and tribalism. In this scenario, kinetics can no longer be neatly divorced from manipulation - or economics, sociology, history and cultivation. “Legitimacy”, stemming from getting actions on the certifiable and moral levels of war right, occurrence tremendously.
‘Decisive results’ in the twenty-first century will take not when we wipe a piece of land utterly of enemy forces, but when we protect its people and put aside them to control their territory in a manner constant with the norms of the civilised world.
This is “Shrinking the Gap” to use Thomas P.M. Barnett’s adage. The remediation of failing and failed states not to “bliss” but basic functionality that permits a managerial exercise of sovereignty and positive connectivity with the vacation of the world.
...
Read more...
