The US has long had small units of agile operators. There called special operations forces, and we are emphisizing them more now than we have ever done in the past.
As for smaller enemies using tactics like Hezbollah, that's nothing new. There pretty much normal guerrilla and terrorist tactics. Maybe Hezbollah is better at them than the average guerrilla/terrorist group. Its probably a good idea to study Hezbollah and others like them. Understanding groups like that helps to determine if, when and how, to deal with them. But Hezbollah doesn't represent anything seriously new.
Which isn't to say there are no changes. Technology advances, and what was one rare, expensive military technology, can now be done cheaper and easier. For example see interestingprojects.com A group like Hezbollah might be able to build something like that. But for the most part Hezbollah is armed by Iran. They are dangerous because they have a radical mid-ranked power as their sponsor, and because their sponsor thinks (probably correctly) that supporting groups like Hezbollah won't open itself up to attack or other serious consequences.
We have now entered an era where non-states or quasi-states do a lot better militarily than states do.’’
I don't think that is an accurate statement. Hezbollah is like previous guerrilla and/or terrorist groups. Hard to utterly defeat, or to deter, but they can't cause nearly the damage that a conventional military can cause.
They might do better than some military forces when they fight a sophisticated powerful military, but that's only because the sophisticated powerful military can clobber an armed force that tries to take it head on. That also isn't new (although few powers have had the relative advantage in that regard that the US does now). Guerrilla resistance has often persisted when conventional resistance didn't have a chance.
The one thing that might be new is a decreased ruthlessness of the great powers. Rome had "Carthago delenda est", the Mongols had their piles of the skulls of those who would not surrender, etc. This change is certainly a good thing overall, esp. when you consider the greater lethality of modern weapons. OTOH it probably allows groups like Hezbollah to remain a problem for longer than they would have if the powerful nations of the world had attitudes like Rome or the Mongols. That's a price worth paying, because the alternative is far worse, but its still a price. |
