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September 30, 2006
Combination Warfare
One of the hallmarks of maneuver warfare as it has been conceived in the Marine Corps is the use of combined arms. "Combined arms" refers to the use of various weapons systems in concert, such that each reinforces the weaknesses of the other. The doctrinal definition is this:
Combined arms is the full integration of arms in such a way that to counteract one, the enemy must become more vulnerable to another. We pose the enemy not just with a problem, but with a dilemma -- a no-win situation. [from Marine Corps Doctrinal Publication 1, Warfighting]There's no reason to think that this doctrine couldn't be articulated at the national level as well. Rather than confining it to the realm of military strategy and the use of force, why not include all the elements of national power -- diplomatic, economic, informational, military, etc -- and force them to work in concert toward a common goal? This may be an ideal, but it is one at which the US does not perform so well. The primary reason is the way our foreign policy bureaucracy operates: there is little in the way of the kind of unity of command necessary for an individual decision-maker to muster all elements to work in concert.
But not so in Iran, warns Robert Kaplan:
Combination warfare, a term coined by Air Force colonels James Callard and Peter Faber, acknowledges that in an age of intensive military, media, financial and other activities, battle must be joined in a coordinated fashion on several fronts to create sustained and shifting pressure on the adversary.An earlier Adventures post excerpted an op-ed by Henry Kissinger in which he discusses the way to conceive of diplomacy and expanded upon that, describing a view of the use of power similar to "combination warfare":Iran's power structure, armed with an admirable Persian gift for subtlety and manipulation, has restricted its own domestic organs of dissent so that it is well positioned to lay siege to media and political elites elsewhere. Its president both shocks and fascinates Western journalists; sophisticated mullahs at Davos, Switzerland, have made deals with international businessmen; Iranian intelligence agents encourage Islamic power demonstrations that undermine Europe's resolve; and Iran's diplomats follow a strategy of delay and partial concessions that evaporate.
The goal is to buy time while Iran's scientists work 24/7 to develop a nuclear capability to alter the balance of power in the Middle East.
Readers may also be interested to know that the Chinese have developed a similar view of the use of power, which they call "unrestricted warfare". From Wikipedia:Diplomacy never operates in a vacuum. It persuades not by the eloquence of its practitioners but by assembling a balance of incentives and risks. Clausewitz's famous dictum that war is a continuation of diplomacy by other means defines both the challenge and the limits of diplomacy. War can impose submission; diplomacy needs to evoke consensus. Military success enables the victor in war to prescribe, at least for an interim period. Diplomatic success occurs when the principal parties are substantially satisfied; it creates -- or should strive to create -- common purposes, at least regarding the subject matter of the negotiation; otherwise no agreement lasts very long. The risk of war lies in exceeding objective limits; the bane of diplomacy is to substitute process for purpose. Diplomacy should not be confused with glibness. It is not an oratorical but a conceptual exercise. When it postures for domestic audiences, radical challenges are encouraged rather than overcome.The popular methods of portraying diplomacy include its being on the opposite end of a one-dimensional axis that includes military action on its far end, and of characterizing diplomatic initiatives as merely talk and not action. Such a view is unconstructive. Diplomacy is dealmaking, pure and simple. The tragedy perhaps is that so much of our recent dealmaking has seemed much more like concession-making alone.
Unrestricted Warfare is the English title of a book on military strategy written in 1999 by two Colonels in the People's Liberation Army, Qiao Liang and Wang Xiangsui. Its primary concern is how a nation such as China can defeat a technologically superior opponent (such as the United States) through a variety of means. Rather than focusing on direct military confrontation, this book instead examines a variety of other means. Such means include using International Law (see Lawfare) and a variety of economic means to place one's opponent in a bad position and circumvent the need for direct military action.Commentary
Combination warfare, as a title for the collection of powers that constitute the means of the state to fashion its ends, is deceiving, because the use of the term "warfare" could easily be misconstrued to mean a battle of some kind. The same is true of unrestricted warfare. An old-fashioned term, that few use any more, works much better: statecraft. It's better not only because it implies the use of all elements of the state to achieve a goal, but also because "craft" hints that there is much more art than science in the process.
But Kaplan's larger point, that the US should be engaging in brinksmanship with Iran to dissuade its nuclear aims, still stands, as does his estimate of why the US is not succeeding:
Only to Western elites is power strictly either economic or military. In reality, power is the combination of both these elements, depleted or magnified by the extent of political will required to deploy them — which historically has been the function of a deep-seated faith of one kind or another. Put simply, the Iranian regime has more nerve than we do. Nerve translates into power.Exactly. Regardless of what conception of the use of power we labor under, the ultimate factor in determining success is willpower. Another section of Warfighting puts this pretty eloquently (for a government document):
The essence of war is a violent struggle between two hostile, independent, and irreconcilable wills, each trying to impose itself on the other.Will Iran succeed in imposing its will upon us? That's a bit more pointed than the manner in which such things are usually described, but probably more descriptive of the actual nature of the game -- and more evocative of the consequences of failure.
Posted by Chester at September 30, 2006 5:47 AM
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Comments
There is a reasonably current theory of air warfare called the Five Rings Theory. I don't remember where I first encountered it, but I'm sure it must be out there on the internet somewhere.
Basically it designates different critical concentric "rings" of targets (metaphorically, not spatially) such as C&C, infrastructure, etc.
Anyway, the theory goes that you must simultaneously conduct airwar across all five rings in order to achieve victory.
Where it gets interesting is that it incoroporates the spirit of Boyd in that the actual campaign is built on the unpredictability of strikes across the five rings, and actual missions are designed to be fluid against resistance. Thus you are continually degrading key strategic sectors while doing so in an unprdictable manner, giving where you meet resistance and attacking where they are weak, all of which leads to a preordained end result that you decided upon far in advance. Very SunTzu stuff. Which is ironic since it is the "Five Rings" theory, which gives a nod to Musashi's "The Book of Five Rings".
I have long thought that defense and diplomatic policymakers would benefit from getting together to construct a similar theory of integrated imposition of national will. They were getting something like this together at Cantor Fitzgerald pre-9/11, but I don't know where it's gone since then.
It would be interesting to try to define the rings of an integrated policy, and which was concentric to which. Obviously broad things like military capacity and economic systems would be necessarily a part, but I would think media and culture would be in there somewhere as well.
What I do know is that we have to look at hard and soft kill options across all the rings. You deal with China differently than you deal with Iran, militarily as well as culturally, economically, etc. . But a single unified doctrine with a bit of latitude built in would sure as hell be helpful.
Helpful in setting policy and doctrine, but also helpful in esoteric things like defense appropriations, cultural exchanges, balance of trade, and a whole lot of other things.
Might also take politics out of the game if it was done right.
Interesting piece Chester. Good food for thought.
Posted by: huskermet at October 1, 2006 3:16 AM
Dear Chester:
In Mr. Kaplan's essay, the concepts of "combination warfare" and brinkmanship combine in a way the author perhaps did not make so explicit.
The diplomat's toolbox (the one containing sticks, not carrots) includes such things as banking restrictions, diplomatic isolation, international legal measures, selected trade embargoes, and then an escalating range of military damage.
To employ brinkmanship on an adversary requires one to be willing to suffer painful consequences as a result of applying pain on the adversary (for example, bombing Iran, but paying $100 per barrel for oil, receiving terror retaliation, and suffering an economic recession in return).
Diplomats see the synergistic benefits of the tools in his toolbox as a secondary feature. A diplomat entertaining the thought of escalating up the brinkmanship ladder is first hoping to persuade his adversary to change his behavior by taking on as little pain and risk to himself as possible.
In the late 1930s, President Roosevelt attempted to change Japan’s aggressive behavior in China with diplomatic sanctions and embargoes. This failed. In the end, full-scale war, painful to both sides, was required.
With Iran, it seems, for a variety of reasons, that none of the non-military tools of persuasion are likely to have any effect on Iranian behavior, regardless of what combination they are used.
The non-military tools in the toolbox could work against Iran if there was unanimity in the world about using them. With unanimity, brinkmanship against Iran could work at much lower level of cost and risk. But that is not the case right now.
It seems premature to have a negotiation with Iran. First, the rest of the world has to complete a negotiation with itself.
Posted by: westhawk at October 1, 2006 6:32 PM
Rats ! My comment vanished. I hate it when that happens, and no time to reconstruct it now. Will try again later, but this is an excellent post.
Posted by: El Jefe Maximo at October 2, 2006 9:44 AM
One of the reasons none of the non-military tools have failed to move the Iranians is that they calculate the U.S. doesn't have the capability to use force against them. Our diplomatic endeavors have failed because the Iranians don't perceive that they are backed up with a credible threat of force.
Iran feels safe in shrugging off the warnings of the international community because it sees the disunity you mention, and judges that the West won't attempt any politically costly military measures. In the end, no one is able to make them stop, least of all through diplomatic means, so they'll continue the program.
Posted by: mj at October 3, 2006 9:42 AM
Georgetown Journal of International Affairs, Winter/ Spring 2002, Conflict & Security p.61 has the article that started this:
"An Emerging Synthesis For A New Way of War, Combination Warfare and Future Innovation" by James Gallard and Peter Faber.
(There is a copy online but I did not preserve the URL and cannot find it now :-(. It is a scan of two articles from the journal and is either of low quality or my fonts do not render it properly, so it is barely readable.)
Gallard and Farber use as their starting premise the work "Unrestricted Warfare" by Qiao Liang and Wang Xiangsui (Beijing: PLA Literature and Arts Publishing House, February 1999)
This work (about 158 typewritten pages or a 228 page .pdf) is available online at:
Posted by: rich at October 3, 2006 8:26 PM