The Future of Force

Feb 5, 2015 Joseph S. Nye, Jr.

In modern hybrid wars, conventional and unconventional forces, combatants and civilians, physical destruction and information manipulation are deeply intertwined. How can a country prepare for such multifaceted and unpredictable conflicts?

MUNICH – At the World Economic Forum’s recent annual meeting in Davos, I participated in a panel of defense leaders to discuss the future of the military. The issue we addressed is a critical one: What kind of war should militaries today be preparing to fight?

Governments have a very poor track record when it comes to answering this question. After the Vietnam War, for example, the United States’ armed forces suppressed what it had learned about counter-insurgency, only to rediscover it the hard way in Iraq and Afghanistan.

America’s military interventions in these countries exemplify another key challenge of modern warfare. As outgoing US Secretary of Defense Chuck Hagel pointed out in a recent interview, in war, “things can get out of control, and drift and wander” in ways that can cause a military to fall into a more “accelerated” use of force than was initially anticipated. Against this background, the notion that force alone can transform conflict-riven societies in the Middle East and elsewhere is a dangerous fallacy.

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0 Comments on this paragraph, 20 in all 20 Comments on this article

jagjeet sinha Feb 13, 2015

Sir Francis Drake, the Duke of Wellington, and Sir Winston Churchill together perhaps demonstrated what William the Conqueror, Alexander the Great and Genghis Khan demonstrated - the World always needs Winners to ensure the World's growth. While Chinese wisdom indeed judges the best victory is won without a single bullet, ground reality demands preparedness just in case Sun Tzu has to go back to the wisdom board. Darkness has nothing to loose and is only enlightened when pulverized. Soviet capitulation was in the hope of a common European home. Chinese capitulation inspired by the common Pacific home. Indian capitulation inspired by the commonwealth of The Anglosphere. Capitulation of Faith that offers no hope, requires the wisdom board to reaffirm The Trinity and bring back hope.
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j. von Hettlingen Feb 10, 2015

As long as mankind exists, there will always be aggression and the use of force to settle conflicts, if the parties can't agree on resolving them peacefully. History repeats itself one way or another. We may be living in a new era, but our human nature remains the same.
After elaborating the different generations of "modern warfare", Joseph Nye asks: what the "future of force" will be like? Military planners are focusing on the development of asymmetric warefare. After World War II, there had been many incidents of a military superpower, facing tough resistance from a smaller power, which applies its strengths against the weakness of its enemy, by employing guerilla tactics. Vietnam and Afghanistan should offer the US and the Soviet Union valuable lessons.
Conversely non state actors, like the Al Qaeda, ISIS, Taliban etc. have been able to launch devastating attacks on soft targets, causing heavy casualties and destruction. Terrorists know that the only way to undermine a government's popularity is to show its inability to protect its own civilians. So Part of the Western strategy in fighting Islamist extremism is pychological - to engage in a battle for hearts and minds of the majority Muslims. Nowadays a war can be fought on many fronts - political, diplomatic, financial, and economic. Military force is not always the most appropriate response, if the conflict is a political one.
It's quite true what Chuck Hagel says about the vagaries of a war, as “things can get out of control, and drift and wander.” Human nature is unpredictable and this has an impact on the players' actions. The more are involved, the more fluid and complicated the situation becomes. To address the challenges, small groups of highly skilled and mobile special forces, surgical strikes fired from highly sophisticated manned or unmanned aircraft, backed up by good intelligence are the preferred options of defence officials.
According to Nye, China's strategy of “unrestricted warfare” has "no rules", as it "combines electronic, diplomatic, cyber, terrorist-proxy, economic, and propaganda tools to deceive and exhaust US systems". No doubt the US is equally obsessed with outsmarting China!
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Richard Graham Feb 9, 2015

The author's conception of warfare is shallow at best. Guerrilla goes all the way back to the Napoleonic Wars, but then that never stopped a Harvard 'intellectual' from pontificating about anything.
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Imran Siddiqui Feb 9, 2015

Prevention is more important than action. Preventive measures for states like Pakistan is very important including watching closely elements within society which sympathize with terrorists and their ideologies. eradication of incitement to hatred etc
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Jonny Calder Feb 8, 2015

"After the Vietnam War, for example, the United States’ armed forces suppressed what it had learned about counter-insurgency" claims Nye. Perhaps the biggest future problem of force projection by the West is that those claiming expertise in such matters are either totally uninformed about relevent details of history, or are willfully obfuscating. That the US military suppressed its "counter-insurgency" tactics (presumably, as in Iraq, Veitnamese resistance fighters are somehow insurgents in their own territory) would doubtless come as a surprise to the many tens of thousands murdered by these tactics throughout Latin America, to pick an example at random. Nye seems unconcerned with questions of motive and intent, and presumably questions of the legality of new 'counter terrorism' or 'counter insurgency warfare' are of no interest, although the perpetuation of Western military adventurism with massively asymmetric force projections forces those natives with the temerity to resist to adopt whatever 'generation of rules and tactics' are possible without billions of dollars of materiel A sad article showing the apparent amorality of the international relations wonk at work
- Richard Graham Feb 9, 2015
  
  I disagree with Nye's suggestion that the US military 'suppressed' what it 'learned' about counter-insurgency. It never learned anything at all, despite the best efforts of people like Col David Hackworth. They retreated into their bedrock bigotries and refused to believe that they lost the war to peasants. Nye, and others, currently ignore the subsequent defeats of the US in Afghanistan and Iraq.
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Edward Reed Feb 8, 2015

"Osama bin Laden outraged and provoked the US..." All of this was clearly predicted by opponents of the the invasion of Iraq. Problem is not not-knowing, the problem is that overseas interventions are driven by domestic political-military-industrial interests cheered by interlocking media.
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James Drogan Feb 8, 2015

It also seems wise to educate society on the nature of forthcoming conflict.
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gerald sinclair Feb 8, 2015

It is always interesting and amusing to read pontificating articles on the 'rules of war' or as the Chinese quote said no rules of war.
In fact of course war itself means all the normal rules of social behaviour have been broken or are being temporarily ignored and leaves one and only one rule 'win'
Something America has not done since WW2 in the Pacific, and articles like this vividly show why.
To paraphrase Sun Tzu do everything you can to stay out of war, but once at war doe everything you can do win it.
These holding 'police action ' types of involvements we have seen since WW2 are like draws in soccer, nobody wins and nothing is resolved.
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John Jones Feb 8, 2015

When the UN was founded in 1945 it vowed to save future generations from the scourge of war. It failed then to set up the structures which could have guaranteed peace but settled for the perpetuation of nation states, each with their own armies and each free to pursue foreign policies geared to their national interest. This was sheer madness. Why can's we recognise this and now do the sensible and humane thing? See
http://www.garrettjones.talktalk.net
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Fetewei Tewoldemedhin Feb 8, 2015

Fourth-generation warfare takes this decentralized approach one step further, with no definable fronts at all. Instead, it focuses on the enemy’s society, reaching deep into its territory to destroy political will

Isn't that fantastic .. kill enough of them ( in Iraq's case half a million) and then you will have a better leadership .. How is it History and historians never learn about it always void
.... God help us
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John Brian Shannon Feb 7, 2015

Hi Joseph,

Well stated.

Your post prompts me to say that we must meet threats with *appropriate* response.

For example;

We need to maintain a strong and ready conventional military to deal with other conventional military powers which may seek to harm our interests anywhere around the world.

We need to maintain a strong and effective WMD defense, in the very unfortunate case that we ever come under WMD attack by any nation or identifiable group.

So far, so good.

And we need to always maintain a capable and near-instant rapid reaction force of sufficient size to meet insurgency threats anywhere our interests are threatened anywhere in the world.

Not as good because of limited budgets, but still a force that enemies must factor into their equations.

HOWEVER, the best thing we can do, is to not require military action in the first place -- by dramatically ramping-up our diplomacy so that we aren't going to war or facing insurgents.

This is the one arena which must be proactive and not reactive.

I'm not certain that this is the case...

For an example of this, please see: http://johnbrianshannon.com/2014/10/04/the-real-story-of-afghanistan/

Another point is that whenever we (meaning NATO, the West, the U.S.A., or any Western nation) kills a combatant, non-combatant hostile, or innocent civilian non-hostile of any country -- we have just gained 250 lifelong enemies.

The average person on this planet is related to, or friends or co-workers with, 250 other people.

If we kill 1000 people of any nation in drone attacks (let's use the hypothetical nation of 'Hypothestan' for example) then we have instantly gained 250,000 lifelong enemies.

If we militarily attack Hypothestan and kill 100,000 people, in that case we have instantly gained 25 million lifelong enemies.

Lifelong, is a long time.

Those enemies don't care if their loved one was killed by a U.S. drone, by a U.S. soldier or by an air dropped U.S. bomb -- or other Western nation drone, soldier or bomb.

All they know is that we killed their loved one. All we know is that we have another 250 long term enemies.

Ergo, the one thing that we don't attach enough importance to (diplomacy) is the thing that is allowing unfathomable future problems.

The last thing we need in *almost every* non-Western nation in the world, is 250,000 West-haters.

That would be a very large total indeed. But it's where we're headed, if we don't become very proactive about using diplomacy to preempt these sort of situations from happening.

The size, scope and engagement of our Western diplomatic corps needs to rise to a level where situations are completely dealt with before they become magnets for West-haters or America-haters.

Instead of always fighting the last war, we now need to focus on preventing the sorts of situations from occurring, that trigger war and the concomitant deaths that result in West-haters and America-haters in huge numbers.

What's missing, isn't any lack of military prowess or capability, what's lacking is a large enough, experienced, and engaged diplomatic corps.

It's not that the present diplomatic corps aren't doing the job, it's just that there are so many more situations to preempt, than there are diplomatic teams available.

Simply decide how many enemies you *don't want* the West to have, and divide that number by 250. That's where we need to focus our efforts.

As always, best regards, JBS
- John Brian Shannon Feb 9, 2015
  
  Hi Gerald Sinclair,
  
  Well, the only reason you and I, and everyone else on the planet are still alive, is because right thinking diplomats ended the Cold War *before* our Mutually Assured Destruction doctrine (and the other side too) annihilated all life on the planet.
  
  "The supreme art of war is to subdue the enemy without fighting." -- Sun Tzu, The Art of War
  
  "To fight and conquer in all our battles is not supreme excellence; supreme excellence consists in breaking the enemy's resistance without fighting. -- Sun Tzu, The Art of War
  
  Regards, JBS
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- gerald sinclair Feb 8, 2015
  
  If William the Conqueror, Alexander the Great and Ghengis Kahn had taken any notice of the sentiment in this article and in most responses they never would have won a battle, but the reality if human nature is someone else would have and history therefore would have been different.
  Wars change history both by avoiding them as one post said by diplomacy but if that fails by winning them.
  At this stage of man's evolution there are no other concrete alternatives just pipe dreams.
  A new reply to this comment has been posted.
- gerald sinclair Feb 8, 2015
  
  If William the Conqueror, Alexander the Great and Ghengis Kahn had taken any notice of the sentiment in this article and in most responses they never would have won a battle, but the reality if human nature is someone else would have and history therefore would have been different.
  Wars change history both by avoiding them as one post said by diplomacy but if that fails by winning them.
  At this stage of man's evolution there are no other concrete alternatives just pipe dreams.
  A new reply to this comment has been posted.
A new reply to this comment has been posted.
Petey Bee Feb 6, 2015

A fine example of the one-dimensional worldview present in current leadership circles -- use of n-th generation use-of-force tactics to compel your adversary to accept whatever it is you want to do.

Also, interestingly, use of economic means to decide conflicts was not mentioned at all. A sizable oversight. Was the closest thing there was to stabilizing Iraq post-2003. Was also successfully used to destabilize on many occasions, typically with good short term results but very bad long term ones.
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Allan Bleiken Feb 6, 2015

The fact is that the world posses the capability to mass produce untold millions of automated, semi-artificially intelligent drone robots that can be programmed to launch on a moments notice.

These robots can essentially replace individual soldiers, or major weapon systems. Such technology is not unique to any one country, and as one country moves in this direction, many other countries will be forced to follow.

The Buck Rogers version of the world is not that far off, and a very frightening world it will be. Imagine a high spead, stealth capable terrorist. Not a nice world to look forward to.
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Tom Resom Feb 6, 2015

The Author forgot another generation of modern warfare: Air domination and carpet bombing. While it was introduced by Hitler's Condor Legion in the Spanish civil war (eg. bombing of Guernica), it was later perfected by the US and GB over Germany and Japan, with later incarnations in Korea, Vietnam, and to some extent even in Gulf War (1991) and some resemblence in the "Shock and Awe"-tactic in the Iraq Invasion (2003).

In addition, covert operations, propaganda, and deception have to some extent been always a part of warfare. But the US OSS and later CIA have always been the true masters of these techniques (Iran, Cuba, Chile, Iran-Contra Affair, just to name a few).

I don't want to blame US for anything, just completing the picture.
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Rik Rijs Feb 6, 2015

The author forgot one item: outright lies. Colin Powell lying for the USA before the whole world in the UN assembly when claiming that Saddam Hussein/Iraq possessed WMD was an excellent way of loosing credit. Spying on European allies was one step more. As what weapons concerns: unmanned fighterjets have the furure. China, India, Russia and the US are working on it. Those buying todays generation of manned fighterjets are only nostalgics.
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hari naidu Feb 5, 2015

This is an amazing piece of writing in which the word *peace* never appears.

I wander why? Are we getting so demoralized by IS that we can’t see beyond our noses?

Yes IS stinks! IS was organized by Sunni Generals of old Iraqi Army funded and trained by US/CIA.

Saudi Arabia is also part of the problem because it has funded IS – through third parties.

Iran has been a beneficiary of the rise of IS – US appears now ready to seek Iranian support against IS.

These are regional conflicts that can be resolved if US Congress and its allies are able and willing to make UNSC operate as it was intended after end of WWII.

POTUS has not been able to create a coalition of nations under UNSC able and willing to eradicate terrorism from face of earth. Principally because US Congress won't allow him....

Instead what we’ve is asymmetrical exacerbation of IS threat to the point of unmitigated political/military disaster.

The future is not going to be defined and/or resolved by a hegemonic military force but an unremitting global political submission to eradicate war as we know it – and institute world-wide disarmament.
May sound like a pipe dream…but what’s the alternative?
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