The foundation of any successful military operation is
defining and attacking the enemy's center of gravity:
the capacity that enables it to operate. A war effort
that does not successfully define the enemy's center of
gravity, or lacks the ability to decisively incapacitate
it, is doomed to failure.
The center of gravity can be relatively easy to define,
as was the Iraqi command and control system, or
relatively difficult to define, as was Vietnam's
discovery of America's unwillingness to indefinitely
absorb casualties. In either case, identifying the
adversary's center of gravity is the key to victory.
In the wake of this week's terrorist attacks in the
United States, this question is now being discussed in
the highest reaches of the American government. The
issue, from a military standpoint, is not one of moral
responsibility or legal culpability. Rather, it is what
will be required to render the enemy incapable of
functioning as an effective force. Put differently, what
is the most efficient means of destroying the enemy's
will to resist?
This is an extraordinarily difficult process in this
case because it is not clear who the enemy is. Two
schools of thought are emerging though.
One argues that the attackers are essentially agents of
some foreign government that enables them to operate.
Therefore, by either defeating or dissuading this
government from continuing to support the attackers,
they will be rendered ineffective and the threat will
end.
Such a scenario is extremely attractive for the United
States. Posing the conflict as one between nation-states
plays to American strength in waging conventional war. A
nation-state can be negotiated with, bombed or invaded.
If a nation-state is identified as the attackers' center
of gravity, then it can by some level of exertion be
destroyed. There is now an inherent interest within the
U.S. government to define the center of gravity as Iraq
or Afghanistan or both. The United States knows how to
wage such wars.
The second school of thought argues that the entity we
are facing is instead an amorphous, shifting collection
of small groups, controlled in a dynamic and
unpredictable manner and deliberately without a clear
geographical locus. The components of the organization
can be in Afghanistan or Boston, in Beirut or Paris. Its
fundamental character is that it moves with near
invisibility around the globe, forming ad hoc groups
with exquisite patience and care for strikes against its
enemies.
This is a group, therefore, that has been deliberately
constructed not to provide its enemies with a center of
gravity. Its diffusion is designed to make it difficult
to kill with any certainty. The founders of this group
studied the history of underground movements and
determined that their greatest weakness is what was
thought to be their strength: tight control from the
center.
That central control, the key to the Leninist model,
provided decisive guidance but presented enemies with a
focal point that, if smashed, rendered the organization
helpless. This model of underground movement accepts
inefficiency -- there are long pauses between actions --
in return for both security, as penetration is
difficult, and survivability, as it does not provide its
enemies with a definable point against which to strike.
This model is much less attractive to American military
planners because it does not play to American
capabilities. It is impervious to the type of warfare
the United States prefers, which is what one might call
wholesale warfare. It instead demands a retail sort of
warfare, in which the fighting level comprises very
small unit operations, the geographic scale is
potentially global and the time frame is extensive and
indeterminate. It is a conflict that does lend itself to
intelligence technology, but it ultimately turns on
patience, subtlety and secrecy, none of which are
America's strong suits.
It is therefore completely understandable that the
United States is trying to redefine the conflict in
terms of nation-states, and there is also substantial
precedent for it as well. The precursor terrorist
movements of the 1970s and 1980s were far from self-
contained entities. All received support in various ways
from Soviet and Eastern European intelligence services,
as well as from North Korea, Libya, Syria and others.
From training to false passports, they were highly
dependent on nation-states for their operation.
It is therefore reasonable to assume the case is the
same with these new attackers. It would follow that if
their source of operational support were destroyed, they
would cease to function. A bombing campaign or invasion
would then solve the problem. The issue is to determine
which country is supplying the support and act.
There is no doubt the entity that attacked the United
States got support from state intelligence services.
Some of that support might well have been officially
sanctioned while some might have been provided by a
political faction or sympathetic individuals. But
although for the attackers state support is necessary
and desirable, it is not clear that destroying involved
states would disable the perpetrators.
One of the principles of the attackers appears to be
redundancy, not in the sense of backup systems, but in
the sense that each group contains all support systems.
In the same sense, it appears possible that they have
constructed relationships in such a way that although
they depend on state backing, they are not dependent on
the support of any particular state.
An interesting development arising in the aftermath is
the multitude of states accused of providing support to
the attackers: Afghanistan, Iraq, Iran, Pakistan,
Algeria and Syria, among others, have all been
suggested. All of them could have been involved in some
way or another, with the result being dozens of nations
providing intentional or unintentional support. The
attackers even appear to have drawn support from the
United States itself, as some of the suspected hijackers
reportedly received flight training from U.S. schools.
The attackers have organized themselves to be parasitic.
They are able to attach themselves to virtually any
country that has a large enough Arab or Islamic
community for them to disappear into or at least go
unnoticed within. Drawing on funds acquired from one or
many sources, they are able to extract resources
wherever they are and continue operating.
If such is the case, then even if Iraq or Afghanistan
gave assistance, they are still not necessarily the
attackers' center of gravity. Destroying the government
or military might of these countries may be morally just
or even required, but it will not render the enemy
incapable of continuing operations against the United
States.
It is therefore not clear that a conventional war with
countries that deliberately aided the culprits will
achieve military victory. The ability of the attackers
to draw sustenance from a wide array of willing and
unwilling hosts may render them impervious to the defeat
of a supporting country.
The military must systematically attack an organization
that tries very hard not to have a systematic structure
that can be attacked. In order for this war to succeed,
the key capability will not be primarily military force
but highly refined, real-time intelligence about the
behavior of a small number of individuals. But as the
events of the last few days have shown, this is not a
strength of the American intelligence community.
And that is the ultimate dilemma for policymakers. If
the kind of war we can wage well won't do the job, and
we lack the confidence in our expertise to wage the kind
of war we need to conduct, then what is to be done? The
easy answer -- to fight the battle we fight best -- may not be the right answer, or it may be only part of the
solution. |
