I’ve been reading Daniel Kahneman’s book, Thinking Fast and Slow, and thinking, mostly slowly, about the many ways in which the psychology of decision-making relates to strategic studies. In fact, Kahneman himself occasionally suggests military illustrations for his and others’ research on decision making.

Some readers may have come across prospect theory – Kahneman and longtime collaborator Amos Tversky’s groundbreaking research that won Kahneman a Nobel prize in Economics. I like the theory because it it’s evidence based, and comprehensively undermines the rational actor, expected utility models that were the basis of my undergrad education in social sciences.

In a nutshell, prospect theory holds that we don’t much like losing. In fact, we dislike losing a whole lot more than we like winning stuff. Truly, a bird in the hand is worth two in the bush. Moreover, when we are faced with losing something, we are more disposed to gamble on retaining it than we are when faced with a gamble to win something. We are, in the jargon, risk acceptant when in a domain of losses.

Stay with me, because there’s a strategic application to this that I’m by no means the first to see (Levy and Thompson point it out in their book Causes of War, for example). Whether we consider ourselves as in the domain of losses or gains depends entirely on what our personal reference point is: the outcome with which we are satisfied. That might be the status quo ante bellum, for example. But it might not be – we might consider the status quo to be unjust, and the true reference point to be a situation that is more balanced in our favour than the present conditions suggest. In such a situation, we are, prospect theory holds, more likely to gamble on risky ventures than if the present situation were more advantageous than our perceived reference point.

So far, so Nazi Germany gambling like a mad thing against improbable odds in the 1930s. Your goal, as Kahneman says, is your reference point. And for Hitler, bent on revenge and prepared to bet the farm on restoring Germany to its proper place, that was pre-1918 Germany, or perhaps Germany after 1,000 years of the glorious Third Reich.

A second aspect of Kahneman’s research programme shows how we typically overweight improbable events. In expected utility theory, the standard social science model, the expected value we will derive from some gamble is proportional to the probability of that gamble paying off. It’s simply the probability of the payoff multiplied by what the payoff means to us – in terms of pleasure or pain.

In the real world, however, psychologists have found that our sense of proportion is skewed towards improbable events. We weight these much more heavily in deriving the expected value of an outcome – good or bad. It’s this that makes terrorists tick – we are most unlikely to be killed by them, and yet we spend a fortune to protect against their pinprick attacks – overweighting the improbable, in part because it seems so vivid, and easily brought to mind. The distortion happens at both ends of the probability spectrum – where things are nearly impossible, and conversely where there are almost certain, you can bet we’ll be overweighting that bit at the end, compared to what a theoretically rational actor would do.

Combining these two fundamentals of cognitive psychology gives Kahneman a quadrant that looks like this:

Modified from Kahneman, Thinking Fast and Slow, 2011, p. 317

Let’s go through it:

1. Think about the top right cell here. You’re in a domain of losses – some way distant from your reference point – you know, the political goal that Clausewitz told you to keep in mind at all times. Now, the enemy attacks, and does well. As things stand, you face the near certain prospect of defeat. There’s a 95% chance you’ll lose the war and with it your whole empire.

The enemy meanwhile makes you a peace offer that any rational actor would approve of. You will lose much of what you control. In fact, you will lose the exact expected value – 95% of your empire. You should take that certain deal, right? Rather than fight on crazily in an (almost) lost cause and risk losing the lot? 5% of empire is better than zero percent of empire, after all. That’s the rational thing to do, no?

Prospect theory says you are disposed to gamble. You hate losing, after all. What’s more, there’s a high probability of the event happening, and that distorts your weighting such that you are insensitive to the overwhelming probability of defeat. You overweight the benefits associated with that slim, 5% chance of victory, and not losses consequent on the attack. Prospect theory and the bias induced by improbable events are working in the same direction. Even if the enemy offered terms that let you keep 10% of your empire, you might still gamble, well against the odds to lose nothing.

2. What about the cell bottom right? Overall, it’s still the case that things have been going badly, viz your initial reference point. You’re in that domain of losses. Now the enemy has attacked, and you once again face the prospect of losing. But it’s not armageddon out there – there’s now only a low probability of your total defeat, if you don’t accept terms.

Here comes the enemy negotiator, and he’s offering a sensible terms, at least to a rational actor. He only wants 5% of your empire, and you get to keep your head. He’s not likely to beat you, is he? Surely you should gamble on almost certainly not losing the war?

…but still, what if that 5% came good? You’d lose everything. you focus on that 5% chance , in fact, you over-focus on it. Suddenly it doesn’t seem so remote. The overweighting of remote possibilities kicks in, and you become, on balance, risk averse. Of course, a savvy enemy negotiator knows you’re going to worry about that small chance – and he can exploit that worry, and drive a harder bargain. Perhaps you give up 10% of your realm. Still, better safe than sorry. Effectively you’ve bought some insurance against regime change.

3. What’s going on top left? Now the boot is on the other foot – you’re ahead of the curve. ‘Mission Accomplished’ banners are streaming from your castle. And you are on the attack, and have a 95% prospect of winning the war and your enemy’s total unconditional surrender. That’s almost certain, right? So when the enemy comes crawling to you, what do you do?

You’re risk averse, of course. You’re in the domain of gains, already ahead of your reference point. You can gamble on getting more, through driving home this latest attack, but there’s an outside chance you’ll lose the battle if you do, and gain nothing. What’s more, the distortion induced by the certainty effect – operating very close to absolute certainty of winning – means that more attention than is strictly ‘rational’ gets focused on that slim residual chance of losing. Discretion is the better part of valour here, for sure. And the enemy, knowing that, can drive a hard bargain. If you settle, you still get a decent chunk of real estate, but you are likely to settle for much less than a rational actor would, with a keener appreciation of how unlikely defeat is, and more stomach for the fight.

4. In the last cell, you are still in the domain of gains, and mounting an attack. There’s only a five percent chance of it paying off, but boy, if it does! You win the whole caboodle.

Prospect theory says that in a domain of gains, you likely to be risk averse. But here, it’s just so tempting… the possibility effect – the slim possibility that victory might be yours, draws your attention disproportionately to it. Here comes the enemy negotiator, and he offers you a settlement to call off the attack and cease fighting that’s bang in line with the expected value – 5% of the gain you might make. A rational actor would accept. You know what happens next.

A game two can play:

There are a number of implications for strategy of this sort of research. We like to think of strategy as being an intensely practical activity, using force instrumentally to link ends, ways and means.

A good strategist, we sometimes argue, should be a rational thinker, carefully judging the threats and assigning resources to meet them. In war, when the likely costs exceed the benefits, the rational actor draws stumps. If two rational actors with matching assessments of probabilities are fighting, we can see war as a negotiation with a rational, mutually acceptable outcome. Even if the information on payoffs and probabilities is initially uncertain, fighting is one way of providing the belligerents with a clearer picture.

But if two real, human actors are at war, things are more complicated. We can – for example – imagine someone in the top left pitched in battle against someone in the top right. The actual settlement, and the course of fighting depends, among other things on where those initial reference points are; on what their respective sensitivity to the being in a domain of losses or gains are (which depends, among other things, on emotions); and on how extreme the probabilities associated with the various strategies are.

Model that, if you can, my quantitative chums.

In a paper under review, I argue that prospect theory is one aspect of cognitive psychology among others that can explain why states fight on past where you would think a rational actor would call it quits. Let me know if you want a shufty.

Here we go again: ‘Afghan Leader Karzai Condemns “US Marines Body Desecration” Video‘. Of course this is to be condemned and I expect that the marines in question will now be facing charges under the Uniform Code of Military Justice which is designed for these sorts of instances. It may or may not cause an uptick in violence but I doubt that the actions of these ‘strategic corporals’ will have much detectable impact on the general state of affairs in Afghanistan which are what they are: bad and staying bad. It will cause consternation at home too, for a while, until the next celebrity nipple slip or whatever else distracts viewers. In the interim there will be vicious exchanges of outrage in comments pages such as here:

As a US Marine, I am appalled at this. The fact of the matter is that by acting in this way, these gentlemen were going against the core values that each of us learn from day one of bootcamp and/or OCS. There is absolutely nothing that warrants behavior like this, and the only feeling that this kind of action should evoke is dishonor to both the individual as well as the Marine Corps.

vs.

Absolutely awesome….you dumb ass people do not realize the Taliban rape and behead captured soldiers or dismember them prior to death. I know this because I have served there and these details are not released to the press in my opinion the only thing better is the Soldiers taking a crap right on their dead faces after placing a piece of pork in their mouths. Screw those sorry bastards.

The thing is, though, these scenes are really only partly outrageous if you accept the definition above. To be sure, they are violent. And they go beyond standards of what is right and decent not to mention standards of discipline in the Marine Corps. But they’re really not unusual. It’s only unusual that such things now propagate outside of the theatre of conflict so widely and rapidly. Dreadful things have always happened in war. Consider this quote from Joanna Bourke’s An Intimate History of Killing (p. 37) of body desecration banal enough to have become some sort of family tradition:

In Bougainville (1944), John Henry Ewen of the Australian Infantry Force recalled his uncle telling him about a skeleton in the First World War which they had propped up with a dog biscuit in his mouth. Imitating his uncle, Ewen sat a Japanese skeleton under a signpost, added a tuft of dry grass for hair, and stuck a tin hat on his skull. He looked ‘pretty good’, Ewen commented, adding that he wished he had a camera.

Achilles desecrating the body of Hector

The major difference today is John Henry Ewen is hardly ever without a camera. Cameras are ubiquitous in daily life and on the battlefield. A while ago I wrote in an article ‘The More You Know the Less You Understand‘ that ‘networked soldiery which can film anything and store and share the images on a microchip changes the rules of the game.’ I’m now not quite as sure of that statement–I’m not sure, as I was implying then, that it really is a strategic game changer. Now, I think perhaps that while the style of play is different it’s still the same old game. At the time  I wrote that I was impressed by something the journalist Andrew Marr had said in the Daily Telegraph in ‘Digital Cameras Have Dispelled the Fog of War‘:

If ordinary troops can film anything and store it in tiny chips, or send it straight on, then the gap between what actually happens in war and what the domestic audience knows about has been closed.

Yes, of course, British families knew more about the Somme than historians sometimes admit: my family in Glasgow received and washed the sons’ laundry from the front every week, sending back packets of cake and small comforts.

But, somehow, actually seeing real-time images of what was going on would have been very different. Could the First World War even have been fought? I doubt it – and the same goes for much else. Had the Grande Armée had digital cameras, would Napoleon have stayed in power for five minutes after the retreat from Moscow?

Somehow, no doubt, wars will continue to be fought, and furtive cruelties will carry on in darker corners. But warfare has depended for centuries on a rampart of silence, a wall of willed incomprehension, between civilians at home and those killing. In a small way, the arrival of digital photography has broken through that wall.

There’s more than a kernel of truth to what he says and I like very much the line ‘rampart of silence, wall of willed incomprehension’. Images which in the old days would have ended up in a shoebox in the attic, or destroyed when the picture-taker returned to the normality of life back home are now shared and infinitely reproduced on the Internet. And yet the truth is still that the gap between what actually happens in war and what the domestic audience knows of it has not been closed. In fact, I’d hazard a guess that it has grown. The camera provides an illusion of intimacy, of beingthereness which can be false and misleading.

I’m not really trying to defend what these Marines were up to. Only to suggest that the dense media ecology in which war is now fought has an Alice in Wonderland like dimension which obscures as much as it illuminates while boosting war’s inherent chanciness, non-linearity and tendency to unintended consequences. As Ben O’Loughlin and Andrew Hoskins put it in War and Media:

…instant recording, archiving and distribution of images and stories add a chaotic element to any action. Nobody knows who will see an event, where and when they will see it or how they will interpret it. Nobody knows how the reactions of people locally or around the world will feed back into the event, setting off a chain of other events, anywhere, in which anybody may get caught up.

I’m not sure I can work through all the issues in a blog post–or for that matter in an article. The problem is complex, as academics dodging the question like to say. If however, you are interested in this area then I would recommend Janina Struk’s new book Private Pictures: Soldiers’ Inside View of War which puts the thing in historical context, from the Crimean War to Iraq. I found it very worthwhile. Let me quote from the conclusion which I think is salient:

The standard representation of war has become perceived as neutral–just as the imperialistic attitudes reflected in the images of the empire were also regarded as neutral at the time. But paradoxically, rather than reveal the true nature of war in the way that commentators imagined photography would do when it was invented more than 150 years ago, photographs have had the effect of concealing it. By serving commercial and aesthetic demands above the political, war photography does little to counter the ideological view that war is just and inevitable–in fact it could be argued that it goes some way to sustaining it.

Perhaps this is precisely the point: that the nineteenth century idealists, and all those in the business of representing war ever since, were not really searching for true depictions of war but rather drama, heroism and humanity as perceived by those of us who have never been there. As a consequence what they were seeking was not images of war, but ‘war photography’, a genre that would suitably reflect these elements. Perhaps that is why the snapshots taken by soldiers that capture fragments (and that is all a picture can do) of the brutal, mundane, frightening, and shameful world of war, that ignore the conventions of photography, are deemed problematical, confusing or unacceptable.

So, you know, don’t rush to judge.

Of course, the band's founder, Phil Campbell, left in 1984 for a very successful career with Motörhead; but that, dear readers, is another story for another day.

Amidst a hockey-sock of uncertainty and anxiety, one country stands out from the crowd–and that is saying a great deal, given that the crowd includes Syria, Egypt, Nigeria, China, and North Korea (to name but a few).  That country, of course, is Iran.

Now, as the sharper amongst you may have guessed, I am a bureaucrat (at least for the moment!) and that means that I belong to one of the most risk-averse (and risk-insulated) tribes that you will ever meet.   Therefore, I will not offer a prediction as to what –if anything–will happen.  But, because I am specialist bureaucrat that deals with risk analysis and management, what I will do is analyze the process of determining the risks and the options surrounding ‘the problem of Iran’. 

Risk

What is needed here is a little methodology (bear with me).  Risk is an oft-abused term that needs to be defined before it is of any use.   The risk to an object (be it a person, an asset, or a programme) is generally regarded as the function between threats to that object, the vulnerabilities of that object, probability of those threats actually occurring, and the impact or consequence to the object if they do occur. 

The very first thing to determine,  however, is the object in question.  ‘What is at stake?’ Or more stated more properly, ‘What is at risk?’  This is crucial, because depending on what we regard as ‘at risk’ the threat posed by Iran varies significantly.  Given that we are operating in the realm of the political, which means that there are a number of choices or perspectives that we might adopt, the question of what is at risk cannot be assumed to be self-evident.  Do we consider American regional influence to be at risk?  Or is it the existence of the State of Israel? Or the security of other allies or states of interest, such as Saudi Arabia, Iraq, or Afghanistan?  Or is it the concept of innocent passage and perhaps even freedom of the high seas?  Of course, we may choose to hedge our bets and use fluffy terms, such as ‘national interest’, but since these lack specificity, we only (perhaps not by accident) add to the ambiguity, rather than providing clarity. 

Commentators, such as John Yoo, have made the case that Iran is “a looming threat” but it is not quite clear what it threatens, exactly.  The breathless warnings of Cassandras like Yoo and Matthew Kroening take it for granted that the reader knows what is at stake.  Frankly, most of the time it seems as if they are implying that it is the very existence of civilisation, at least, that is in jeopardy.  As Stephen Walt points out, this is a tried, tested, and true (unfortunately) rhetorical device that bears no relation to the actual risk being described. 

In any event, we can see that even in the first step of the risk analysis process, we are beset by argument and debate.  What is critically important to see is that this debate is not, at this stage, about facts, but rather about perspectives.  About chosen frames of reference.  About ideological positions.  And that means it is often going to be a nasty, emotion, and heated debate, rather than a productive one. 

Unfortunately, the subjective aspects of the debate that characterise the beginning of the ‘risk analysis’ process often continue to colour the remainder of it.  For instance, when the notion of probability comes up, it is most often discussed in equally subjective terms.  Yoo, for instance, speaks of Iran as an “unavoidable challenge”, pushing any measurement of probability towards the end of spectrum marked certain.  And yet any forecast is clearly arbitrary, even if mathematical terms are introduced.  There is no way of knowing the probability of an Iranian nuclear strike.  Attempts to ‘know’ these things have failed in the past (such as with Iraq in the lead up to the 2003 invasion), not least because the process of measuring has a significant impact on the thing being measured (ooo…quantum politics kids, a la Herr Doktor Heisenberg, hang on to your hats!).  Warnings, monitoring, discussing options–these activities alter the risk equation as it goes along.  See, for instance, this week’s naval cat and mouse game.    

The same skewing occurs with respect to impact.  Those looking to spur action choose to portray potential impacts in the most dire way, while those looking for other courses will downplay any consequences.  That goes for second order consequences, too.  THEY will cause Armageddon, but WE will be surgical in our response, causing nothing but joy and light.

Response

Once an analysis has been conducted and a determination of the risk made, the next logical step is to formulate some kind of response.  There are two important aspects to be aware of here.  The first is that ‘risk appetite’ or ‘risk tolerance’ is not a pre-set value.  What one actor can live with, another may find intolerable.  Famously, for instance, Dick Cheney was said to have preferred the ’1% Doctrine’ (whereby even a 1% chance of an event occurring was enough to warrant a response).  Others set there thresholds higher.  Some too high: Neville Chamberlain, for instance, faced with indications of Germany’s desire for domination in Europe, was satisfied with verbal assurances to the contrary.   Again, I would claim that risk appetite can also be associated with a particular ideological–rather than empirical or biological–position, so where you sit often determines where you stand, as it were.

Given a particular risk tolerance, there are four strategic options for risk management:

1. Avoidance
2. Transfer
3. Mitigation
4. Acceptance

Avoidance means what it says: try and have nothing to do with the threats that you have identified, insulating yourself from their impacts.  Essentially, you are trying to reduce the probability of a threat occurring to zero.  This can be easier said than done, depending on the circumstances.  If you want to avoid the risk to your life posed by commercial air travel, it can be done.  You may have to forgo some opportunities (vacations abroad, membership in altitude-calibrated societies…), but it is possible.   In the world of geopolitics, however, it is not so easy, especially at the strategic level.  Again, the issue really defines how you frame the argument; what is at risk in the first place?  The USN could, for instance, avoid confrontation with Iran by withdrawing from Gulf.  This, however, would not work as a feasible strategy if the ‘object at risk’ were US freedom of the seas, for instance. 

The second risk management option is transfer.  In ordinary realms (such as finance or commerical operations) risk transfer means insurance.  Essentially, one outsources the risk, by passing it on to a third party.  Worried about the threat of fire as a source of risk to your home, you can ‘transfer the risk’ to the insurance company.  Note that while some benefit (and arguably peace of mind) can come from such a transfer, you can never really transfer all the risk away.  If your house burns down, you might get a pay-out, but you cannot escape the risk of being injured or killed in the blaze.  Again, note that the risk that was transferred was specifically about a particular ‘object at risk’ (the physical dwelling).  Your life is another matter entirely.  In geopolitical terms, risk transfer is often attempted–by kicking difficult balls into touch, by referring them to the Security Council, or Allies, or other actors.  But, just like in real life, there is often a sticky residue that remains.  Iran is not North Korea where a strategy of containment and compartmentalisation has worked (to a degree). 

The third option is mitigation.  It is sometimes referred to as control, but I think that overstates the case.  This is the most ”active” of the options: it contains the measures one takes to try and reduce the risk.  Generally speaking this can be done in two ways: by reducing the threat or by reducing the vulnerability to that threat.  In physical security terms, this might mean going out and disrupting or destroying those pesky terrorists or pirates.  Or it might mean improving the armour plating on your vehicles, or getting a newer high-tech IED jamming device.  Geopolitically, it might mean increasing your means of deterrence or launching pre-emptive strikes on Iranian nuclear facilities, or providing naval escorts to commercial vessels navigating the tricky Straits of Hormuz.  Whatever the decision, this option is about capabilities.  There is little point in coming up with ideas that cannot be put into practice.  Similarly, there is little point in implementing plans that have no effect.  Making a sweeping generalisation (and invoking the Rid Principle of Blogorific Freedom in so doing) those commentators, be they civilian or military, that one might label as Hawks, tend to put their faith in this option as the best one available.  More guns, better ships, awesome F-35s–these are the ‘mitigating measures’ that are needed to address risks. 

 Finally, we come to acceptance, which while the term of art, is not one that I think adequately addresses what this option actually entails.  One way of looking at acceptance is to view it as resigning oneself to the risk that remains after all else has been tried.  Another way is to see it as the result of a deliberate ‘cost-benefit’ analysis: whatever the potential upside is (a better reputation, cost savings from not taking an aggressive approach, etc.) outweighs the potential downside (money spent on guns and not butter, potential to ignite a tinderbox, etc.)  I think both views are needed.  The problem is, of course, that acceptance is–perhaps more than any other option–bound up in the inherently subjective/ideological Gordian Knot of risk tolerance/risk appetite.  How much risk should we accept?  How far should we attempt to avoid, transfer, and mitigate before we accept?  All very good questions, and none of them are technical in nature.  They are inherently political, and that is where the fun starts.

While not a formal risk management option, I would like to propose that what lies behind these active options is the idea of risk absorption.  In short, this is what we end up with when all that ‘sticky residue’ (mentioned above) and ‘unintended consequences/second order risks’ and accepted risks are accounted for.  Often times, the total risk picture is not known, due to neglect, the sheer complexity of it all, errors in calculation and/or wishful thinking.  But all the ‘real risk’ (if such a thing could ever be known) is absorbed by an object…until it can no longer be accommodated.  For instance, we might say that we accept the risk of a nuclear Iran, but can we really?  Or, we might say that we can accept the risk of armed conflict with Iran if that is what results from a strategy of ‘not backing down’.  Maybe, though, with all the other risks that we have absorbed (either knowingly or unknowingly) perhaps our capacity to deal with that risk is exceeded.  Maybe we need to cut our budgets and cannot deal with two contingencies at the same time any longer.  So we might ‘accept’ a risk, without being able to actually deal with it. 

In reality, of course, nothing is simple.  There are not simple ‘risk-reward’ calculations, or cost-benefit analyses to be done.  And it is not that we would make the ‘right’ decisions ‘if only’ we had more information, more time, another satellite, better allies, more honest interlocutors, better hair (but it never hurts).  There are risks that need to be traded, prioritised and off-set.  Military risks sit along side financial and economic risks, which must be seen in the context of domestic political risks.  There is no correct answer, no preferred perspective. 

Risk is a tricky thing.  It is as beguiling as it is confusing.  As some wise old Persian once observed

If one has to jump a stream and knows how wide it is, he will not jump. If he does not know how wide it is, he will jump, and six times out of ten he will make it.

 The trick is in knowing whether or not you really do know…or not.

Surprisingly tough question, posed by a friend hard at work on her research proposal. I thought I’d crowd source an answer from learned readers here. But first, here’s what I suggested:

Conventional warfare isn’t just about capabilities employed – that is, industrially manufactured, technologically advanced equipment, deployed by recognisably military organisations. Rather it is a society’s way of fighting that encompasses the doctrinal thinking, the organisational structures, the rules of engagement, and even the appropriate goals of violence. What makes it ‘conventional’ is just that it adheres to the dominant conventions of the time.

Of course, all this changes through time as the societies and conventions involved in generating ‘conventional’ approaches to war evolve. Thus, the conventional forces of Napoleon look radically different from the ‘conventional’ forces of France today.

Such an evolution in conventional war might include changes in permissible conduct – For example – why were chemical weapons seen as conventional in the context of WW1, but not now? Why could you flatten Dresden in 1945, but not now?

They might also involve changes in force structure – Why use conscripts as part of a conventional military in Vietnam, but not now? What about the use of private contractors? Is outsourcing violence like that ‘conventional’, or does it profoundly change the relationship between the state/society and those who enact its violence?

And it might also involve changes in concepts, as for example on attritional force v manoeuvre, where the ‘conventional’ approach of British strategic thought (and American, from the early 1980s onwards, if not before) was to substitute manoeuvre and shock action for firepower.

Such conceptual changes might include the actors against whom force is used – ‘conventional’ warfare is sometimes supposed to involve armies fighting armies. Allied forces in WW2 would figure in many people’s definition of ‘conventional’ armed forces – but they put most of their resources in the European theatre into the strategic bombing of the enemy’s civilian morale and war-production capability, not the destruction of his main force.

All these variations, which are profound, are sometimes subsumed within a blanket definition of ‘conventional’ warfare. So, what we understand by ‘conventional’ as a heuristic is a particular approach to warfighting that Russell Weighley describes in his American Way of War – which captures some of the elements one might instinctively think of as ‘conventional’: state centric, firepower intensive, industrialised, focused on armies as the enemy centre of gravity, regularised and regulated. But even that covers a multitude of approaches to warfighting, and neglects a great deal of variation, even within individual societies in a particular period.

It might just be that ‘conventional’ warfighting is simply a good way of making a polemical point in favour of one’s own view of appropriate strategy. Conventional warfare is stale, attritional and inappropriate to the challenges of the modern era. Or conventional warfare is neglected at our peril, given skill fade in critical branches, like artillery and armour.

With all that in mind, does it still make sense to talk about ‘conventional’ war?

Drafting this response to my friend, by the way, distracted me from reading about the size of the clitoris and the aggressive tendencies of female spotted hyenas. Which is, perhaps, a story for another day.

I recently had the opportunity to ask this question to a group of serving UK military personnel. It cropped up in relation to an intriguing query raised by Ole Jørgen Maaø in his article: Leadership in Air Operations – In Search of Air Power Leadership:

Air power has often been used to attack societies and structures within societies, often to deter an enemy from pursuing their goal. This requires in-depth analysis of an enemy’s society. Is a fighter pilot best at doing such an analysis? It is hard to believe such a proposition. It could be that different analysts of society, such as political scientists, social anthropologists, sociologists or even psychologists at least ought to be consulted in such an analysis. Maybe a political scientist is better educated and trained to perform this task?

We know from history that commanders with exclusively military backgrounds have not always won the day: Mao Zedong – for example – was a librarian, while his defeated opponent – General Chiang Kai-Shek – was a seasoned military veteran. So in an age where warfare is increasingly fought in alternative theatres outside of the traditional battlefield, a pressing question has become:

Is it right for people with an exclusively military background to lead the armed forces and oversee military operations? (this refers only to leadership of the armed forces, not the state as a whole).

Would an Air Marshal be capable of handling cyber threats such as Stuxnet or would a computer programmer be more appropriate? Would a General be best positioned to ferret out terrorists from an unfriendly population or would a police constable be preferable? Would an Admiral be most suitable to tackle the tangled social, political and economic roots behind marine piracy or would a sociologist be better? At a broader level, Clausewitz asserted that War is the continuation of policy by other means, and many modern analysts believe that political successes are just as important in today’s wars as military ones.

Should we then hand over command of the armed forces to civilians?

‘Yes’ is a tempting answer. But that misses an important piece of the puzzle. The people most able to influence enemy assets and support friendly forces from land, sea and air are almost certainly the people with the most experience in these areas. The same Air Marshal who might struggle to understand the complexities of cyber warfare is still more likely to know about how to destroy an enemy radar post or intercept an enemy fighter squadron than a computer scientist. Removing military leadership from any and all command of the armed forces would be ridiculous.

However, in an age where some say that warfare is becoming ever more complicated, it does seem important to more effectively combine civilian, military and political expertises within our military command structure.

So what then would be the best way to carry this out?

Should wars be waged by committee, with delegates drawn from a sprawling pool of military and civilian specialisms, each one providing bespoke advice and guidance about their area of expertise? It sounds logical in theory, but would be a nightmare to implement. What level of decisions would the body make? How would decisions be made? Who would chair the group? How would arguments be resolved? How would the group respond quickly enough to rapidly moving events? Which specialisms would be included? We have seen before the difficulties of using committees in war, albeit on an international rather than interdisciplinary scale.

Or should we appoint a single leader with a background in politics, the military and civilian trades? Alexander the Great embodies this model. As combined military and political leader, he exploited the structural weaknesses of the Persian Empire by pursuing a path of political decapitation, militarily triumphed against vastly larger armies, and effectively channelled civilian efforts to achieve incredible technological feats (such as coordinating civilian engineers to build a massive causeway during the Siege of Tyre) and to accomplish political goals (such as infusing Greek culture into the rich tapestry of societies he conquered). But this has its problems too. Firstly, finding a person with all of the requisite modern skills would be a Herculean task. But perhaps more importantly, it would create a potentially abusive concentration of power that could lead to military dictatorship or worse.

Should we then try to share command between two or more partners? During the final civil war of the Roman Republic, the military commander Octavian used his political skills to outmanoeuvre his opponent – Mark Anthony – with propaganda, while his close aide Agrippa used his engineering genius to build a navy and his military expertise to defeat Anthony’s forces at Actium. Their partnership worked well, but others have failed. We cannot forget that prior to Actium, Anthony had himself been the military expert who was allied with Octavian, that is until their relationship fragmented and collapsed into civil war. This seems like an unappealing risk for today.

Or would we be better off dividing the two elements entirely, as once proposed by President Obama in his speech about developing a Civilian National Security Force? This once again is flawed – not only would it involve vast expense, but could easily lead to rivalries and gaps in communication and coordination between the two separate entities.

It seems then that there are no easy answers. But the importance of the question remains.

Sadly, no one in the group agreed that I should be the leader of our armed forces. But they did believe that academics should be more involved with the decision making progress. The considered and balanced nature of their response both reflects well upon the sophistication of the UK’s armed forces, and shows how seriously the military itself takes the issue.

Or perhaps they just didn’t want to hurt my feelings.

I posted here earlier about the connection between economic reality and foreign and defence commitments.  Here is an update to that post.

The current issue of Foreign Affairs provides an even more cogent example of this phenomenon.  In their article ‘The Wisdom of Retrenchment’ Parent and MacDonald make the argument that in tough financial and economic times, scaling back foreign policy ambitions and commitments make sense, and not just budgetary sense at that:

In fact, far from auguring chaos abroad and division at home, a policy of prudent retrenchment would not only reduce the costs of U.S. foreign policy but also result in a more coherent and sustainable strategy. In the past, great powers that scaled back their goals in the face of their diminishing means were able to navigate the shoals of power politics better than those that clung to expensive and overly ambitious commitments. Today, a reduction in U.S. forward deployments could mollify U.S. adversaries, eliminate potential flashpoints, and encourage U.S. allies to contribute more to collective defense — all while easing the burden on the United States of maintaining geopolitical dominance. A policy of retrenchment need not invite international instability or fuel partisan rancor in Washington. If anything, it could help provide breathing room for reforms and recovery, increase strategic flexibility, and renew the legitimacy of U.S. leadership.

We can see economic considerations at play, not just in the work of observers.  Take, for instance that fact that in his speech to the Australian parliament, U.S. President Obama made sure that the E-word was not left unsaid.  He devoted a significant part of his speech to informing his audience (the one in Canberra and elsewhere in the region–particularly Beijing) that

As the United States puts our fiscal house in order, we are reducing our spending. And yes, after ‘a decade of extraordinary growth in our military budgets – and as we definitively end the war in Iraq, and begin to wind down the war in Afghanistan – we will make some reductions in defence spending.  As we consider the future of our armed forces, we have begun a review that will identify our most important strategic interests and guide our defence priorities and spending over the coming decade.  So here is what this region must know.  As we end today’s wars, I have directed my national security team to make our presence and mission in the Asia Pacific a top priority. As a result, reductions in US defence spending will not – I repeat, will not – come at the expense of the Asia Pacific.

It would be perhaps too strong to make the point that this is a codicil to US President Nixon’s 1969 Guam Doctrine.  But, again, my point is we are seeing strategy discussed here not just in terms of ends but also in terms of means.  This is a healthy and realistic debate. 

We might ask, though, not what the President said, but what he didn’t say.  Which capitals did not get such assurances and what can we read into that?  If this is truly an ‘cost-benefit’ calculation exercise, where in the world is going to be ‘last priority’?

Of course, we haven’t completely turned the corner from the kind of ‘toys for the boys’ economic arguments that usually predominate defence budget discussions.  The F-35 still sounds like the cure for the common cold, a necessary–nay, indespensible–addition to the ‘meagre’ arsenal of the US.  And, not for nothing, the F-35 means jobs, so–regardless of its defence utility–it is the kind of program to which politicians with constituents–and with campaign donors, like Lockheed and unions–pay attention.

But you have to like this kind of retort, from Steve Chapman in the Chicago Tribune:

Superhawks often pretend defense spending has dropped by citing outlays as a share of GDP, which have declined slightly. But that’s a misleading statistic. As a share of his income, Bill Gates spends a lot less on food now than when he was in college. But in real dollars, he spends a lot more.

Simply Wrong, Mick: Still tight, but now it must be mentioned.

We are living in an age of austerity, that is for certain.  And that means that, like it or not, we have to tighten our belts and get serious about trimming the fat, concentrating on the essentials, and weathering this storm by doing what it takes to re-adjust our priorities.  For example, that might mean jettisoning the slick, fast moving model in favour of a more sensible, economical version.  [And here, of course, I am referring to Italian Prime Ministers, not motorcars.] 

We have spoken about ‘defence in an age of austerity’ here at KOW before.  The debate has mostly been about looking at certain capabilities possessed by a military and discussing who should get what and why.  I saw a couple of articles lately that made me wonder if the discussion wasn’t taking on a different aspect now.  Rather than discussion the ‘ways’ part of the strategic equation, it may be that some people are ready to look at the more fundamental ‘ends’ components.

Before I embark, let me set out some caveats.  First, I freely admit that I could be reading too much into the two examples I am going to use in this short post, but my point is not to say that these authors are definitely basing their arguments on a ‘guns or butter’ mentality.  The arguments they are making, they have made before, that is for sure.  My point is that the arguments as presented here are bolstered–one explicitly, the other indirectly–by an “in tough economic times, we must concentrate on ‘core business’, even in our grand strategic choices” type narrative. 

Second, I am not saying that I agree or disagree with the particular decision that the authors are promoting.  I am more interested in the process by which they are making their arguments.  

With that throat clearing done, let’s move on to the substance of this post.

Steven Walt in his FP blog, puts forward a case for the US not having a ‘special relationship’ with Israel. Israel, he says, currently enjoys just such a ‘special relationship’ with the US, in that

Israel is the only country in the world that mainstream U.S. politicians (and most members of the foreign-policy establishment) cannot openly criticize.

 Walt believes it is time to re-examine that relationship:

even prominent critics of U.S. policy…agree that the United States should support Israel’s existence (within the pre-1967 borders) and should come to its aid if its survival were ever in jeopardy. Rather, the real debate is whether the United States should have a special relationship with Israel, in which the United States gives Israel generous economic, military, and diplomatic support no matter what it does, and where U.S. politicians cannot offer the mildest criticism of Israel’s conduct without facing a torrent of abuse and political pressure from the Israel lobby.

 As a self-proclaimed Realist, Walt’s bottom line is to ask

 whether the current “special relationship” of unconditional U.S. support is in America’s national interest.

 What he suggests is, when taken in the context of global affairs, not that radical:

A better approach would be to treat Israel like a normal country and have a normal relationship with it. In other words, make U.S. support conditional on Israel’s conduct and limited to those areas where our interests are genuinely aligned. In other words, deal with Israel the same way we deal with other democracies around the world.

Of course, any talk of ‘normal’ is radical when dealing with US-Israeli relations.  Suggesting that Washington treat Tel Aviv the same way it does Ottawa, Copenhagen, or London is opening a big can of worms, to be sure.  What I am wondering is that in an era of constrained resources, one where ‘choices will have to be made’ does this type of argument have more chance of success than it may have had in the past?

 The second example deals with another ‘nearest and dearest’ ally of the US: Taiwan.  It is more explicit in its ‘cost-benefit’ calculus, as visible by its opening paragraphs:

With a single bold act, President Obama could correct the country’s course, help assure his re-election, and preserve our children’s future.

He needs to redefine America’s mindset about national security away from the old defense mentality that American power derives predominantly from our military might, rather than from the strength, agility and competitiveness of our economy. He should make it clear that today American jobs and wealth matter more than military prowess.

 As Adm. Mike Mullen, then chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, declared last year, “The most significant threat to our national security is our debt.”

 What is this ‘single, bold, act’?  Well, unlike Walt, Kane does not shy away from radical advice for President Obama:

He should enter into closed-door negotiations with Chinese leaders to write off the $1.14 trillion of American debt currently held by China in exchange for a deal to end American military assistance and arms sales to Taiwan and terminate the current United States-Taiwan defense arrangement by 2015.

 The deal would eliminate almost 10 percent of our national debt without raising taxes or cutting spending; it would redirect American foreign policy away from dated cold-war-era entanglements and toward our contemporary economic and strategic interests; and it would eliminate the risk of involvement in a costly war with China.

No half-measures there.  Again, my interest is not in the prescription, but the logic upon which is it is based. 

I see this as an entirely more productive line of debate that they ‘re-arranging deck chairs on the Titanic’ approach of nipping and tucking at defence budgets, cutting ships here, grounding squadrons there, disbanding regiments left,right, and centre.  It is a much better strategic decision to ‘do less with less’ rather than attempting to more, or even the same, with less.  An age of austerity should mean no more white elephants, no stone left unturned and nothing unexamined.  

Defence is about politics.  And most of us can remember what a sly politician once said about politics:  “It’s about the economy, stupid!”

This post was going to be entitled "A posse ad esse" but that don't Tweet so good.

Frank Kaplan, in his recent Slate article ‘The post-9/11 Military’,  discusses many points about the contemporary US military.  Let me pick up three for further exploration. 

Which way do we go?

Kaplan notes that there have been many changes in the US military since 9/11, including a (re)new(ed) emphasis on counter-insurgency.  He also points out that not everybody is happy with this:

Some officers and analysts sound an alarm bell over these changes. As military personnel learn new skills and adapt to new forms of warfare, are they un-learning old skills, which might be essential if the old forms of warfare stage a comeback? Artillery and advanced air-to-air jet fighters aren’t so important now, but they might be if a large power invades or starts bombing an ally.

While he does not mention them by name, KOW readers/followers (or since we are in a kingly trope, maybe subjects works better?) will immediately see the stalking horses of Gentile and Nagl.  For those who need a bit of the ongoing debate between these two, allow these extracts from a recent Joint Force Quarterly dialogue to suffice:

Gentile: War essentially is about death and destruction, its hard hand. Unfortunately, the dogma of counterinsurgency has seduced folks inside and outside the American defense establishment into thinking that instead of war and the application of military force being used as a last resort and with restraint, it should be used at the start and that it can change “entire societies” for the better. 

Nagl: U.S.military doctrine…is flexible, adaptable, and well suited to the broad spectrum of threats Americafaces today. It frees the military from a misguided belief that there is a single U.S.way of war that is essentially “about death and destruction.” Instead, it teaches that the Army, and the Nation, must be able to fight and win along the entire spectrum of conflict, from conventional war against a conventional enemy to training and equipping the security forces of our friends and partners around the globe before an insurgency reaches a degree of virulence that demands a  substantial U.S. troop deployment to subdue. 

As this debate raged on, then-Secretary of Defence Robert Gates in an pragmatic, umpire-like move, famously declared: “”I have noticed too much of a tendency towards what might be called ‘next-war-itis’…” He didn’t want the intellectual attention of the military and its attendant supporting community to become distracted with dreams (and nightmares) of tomorrow.  The focus should be on today, and places like Iraq.  “That is the war we are in,” Gates said. “That is the war we must win.” 

For all intents and purposes, though, that war, and along with it the one in Afghanistan, are over.  Even the most pragmatic must agree that the time has come to discuss what comes next. 

Ahh…but there’s the rub: There is no consensus on what tomorrow might bring.  Events in the Arab Spring have not clarified matters.  On the contrary, they have served only to muddy the waters, providing ‘proof’ of everything from the necessity of stability no matter what political stripe it may wear; to the unstoppable power of popular will; to flexibility of airpower; to the utility of military alliances; to the wisdom of leading from the rear.

One thing is clear: the will of the International Community is fickle—intervention happens, but not necessarily coherently or consistently.  We intervened over (and in) Tripoli, but left Damascus more or less on its own.  The militaries of countries prone to lead or join such interventions will not be given a road map for the future, but rather a story book from Dr. Seuss: 

Oh! The Places You’ll Go!

You’ll be on your way up! You’ll be seeing great sights!

You’ll join the high fliers who soar to high heights.

You won’t lag behind, because you’ll have the speed. You’ll pass the whole gang and you’ll soon take the lead. Wherever you fly, you’ll be best of the best. Wherever you go, you will top all the rest.

Except when you don’t.

Because, sometimes, you won’t.

I’m sorry to say so but, sadly, it’s true that Bang-ups and Hang-ups can happen to you.

And in the West, in societies where the paradigm of civil-military relations is ruled by the principle of civil control, the military will have to be prepared to go where they are told. 

Preparing, to my mind, will not be about choosing one path over another, of deciding between Gentile or Nagl.  A bit of both will be required, as will a resignation to the fact that mistakes will be made and lessons learned will be lost and then relearned. 

The key struggles will be two:

1. The future means less.  Defence budgets will decline.  Period.  White elephants will need to be sold, sacred cows sacrificed and iron rice bowls broken.
2. ‘Keeping your powder dry’ will mean needing to come to grips with the temptation of becoming so well rounded that you no longer have a point. 

If war today and tomorrow are about risk management, as many believe they are and shall be, then we must understand that risk management always entails balancing costs with benefits, making priorities, and perhaps counter-intuitively, taking (or at least accepting) risks.  We cannot do everything and what we cannot do we must accept as being a vulnerability.  The aim is to try and reduce that vulnerability, or at least comprehend it.  We may not be able to predict the future, but we can anticipate some of things that are likely to happen in it.

The dangers of Post-Heroic Warfare

Kaplan also raises the important point about the use of UAVs.  A segment of the military of today has changed from being made up of people being drones to people flying drones.  The most critical aspect of the use of UAVs, especially armed ones, is not technological, but rather ethical.

This is not entirely as new a question as it sounds, of course.  There have been other technological advances in warfare that have greatly challenged the ethics—and the ethos—of warfighting, the advent of atomic weapons being only the most extreme example.  Writing in 1996, Edward Luttwak wondered if the post-Cold War, post-Gulf War military reality would lead to an increase in bellicosity, as technology and overwhelming supremacy across the spectrum of conventional war lead to something approaching what the Australian academic Christian Enemark calls ‘risk free killing’. 

If the cost to Us is so slight, in comparison to the price we impose on Them (and the statistics of casualities, intentional and accidental alike inflicted by the West since 9/11 illustrate this to be undeniably the case), do we now fight war free from one of its most powerful restraints? 

If so, many believe that this would have the most profound effect on our understanding of war.  Christopher Coker, for example, believes that war has been a fundamental component of the human condition: 

war – though it may seem paradoxical to claim this – can create a common community of fate in which it is possible, often for the first time, to see that the traditional differences of tribe, religion, race or custom are unimportant compared with similarities all human beings share (pain and humiliation, for example).

If we remove from one side of the war equation such things as pain and humiliation, does that mean we lose our ability to relate to each other, to share ‘a common community of fate’? 

How many colours is your parachute?

The final point that Kaplan touches on that I would like to discuss revolves around an intriguing question that he poses: 

Not all athletes are pentathletes. Can all soldiers be full-spectrum operators? Can all Marines be three-block warriors?

If it is true that, as it says in Line 1, Chapter 1 of the New Testament of Warfare (FM 3-24) “Counterinsurgency is not just thinking man’s warfare–it is the graduate level of war,” are we up to the challenge?  Even if the future is not COINeriffic, few would deny that today’s soldiering bears anything but a passing resemblance to granddad’s soldiering, replete as it is with technical advances and legal considerations of, if not graduate level, then certainly community college complexity. 

This line of questioning raises some other very interesting questions:

1. Should we head for a two-speed army?  If all soldiers cannot be all things to all people for all situations for all time, then is there wisdom in creating specialists or even specialized units/formations for stability/COIN operations, as separate from conventional forces?  This idea was mulled around early in the post-9/11 period.

(Perhaps this is a decision that can only be contemplated by large armies, such as that of theUS.  Smaller armies tend, by necessity, to be more general purpose.  The British Army, for instance, prided itself on being able to operate equally effectively in the Central European Plain and on the streets of Belfast and elsewhere besides.  In a post-Basra world, though, I detect a lack of confidence now.)

1. Are we recruiting the right people and developing them properly?  If we need pentatheletes, are we getting them?  How have we changed the standards, the templates, and the marketing campaigns in order to get them into the military, across the board?  Once we get people into the military, what are we doing to ensure that they gain the necessary training, education, and exposure, so that they might be able to think and fight the way we want them to in the future?  Once we return to the ambiguity contained in the earlier part of this post (scroll up…waaaay up), it is apparent that if we don’t know which way we are heading, it is unlikely that we can prepare ourselves to get there in one piece.

What happens if we look to both of these questions at the same time, while keeping in mind the seemingly post-Heroic nature of contemporary and future war?  If preparing for war is increasingly risky (at the macro level) while at the same time waging it is becoming less and less risky (at the micro level), why do we have to be constrained by warriors at all?  Why do we need a pilot to fly a drone?  Why can’t a civilian do it, tucked up nice and safe in a bunker outside Las Vegas?

One risk management strategy is that of risk transfer.  Why not simply outsource the problem to contractors, at least for those tasks that we cannot or do not want to have our soldiers doing?  

Taking this extension even one step further, why have humans do it at all?  Just as Christopher Coker pondered before he wrote The Ethics of War, will a post-post-9/11 army end up Waging War without Warriors?  Will machines help take even more risk out of war?

Summing Up: I am not as optimistic as Kaplan

The subtitle of Kaplan’s article is “Our soldiers and generals have adapted well to the post-9/11 world.”  That may or may not be true.  It depends on the scorecard we use.  What is more, it is another matter altogether to ask whether or societies and our politicians have adapted well.  

What concerns me is not whether or not if we have succeeded so far (let the Historians have their say), but if we are able to do so as we enter the second decade after 9/11 and our third since the end of the Cold War.  If I am sure of one thing it is that many questions remain.

18 hours on a tuna boat from Malta to Misrata (Photo: Charles Barlow)

We don’ t usually indulge in omnibus type posts here on KOW, but what the heck: it’s Friday.

It looks as if the apparent glory of the Libyan mission is going to be spread widely, with all and sundry claiming victory.  Canada’s Stephen Harper and France’s Nicholas Sarkozy are leading the charge, while Britain’s David Cameron is also pleased with himself.   For all three statesmen, the hope is that this ‘good war’ (a noble cause combined with no Western casualties)  can translate into ‘great politics’ at home.

As James Kirkup of The Guardian states, though, the aftermath of the war will be rough for Cameron:

Mission not yet accomplished. Difficult days ahead. A lot of work still to do.  Those are the lines-to-take for ministers discussing Libya this week. Publicly, there is to be no jubilation, no crowing about the apparent success of David Cameron’s first major foreign policy adventure. Privately though, there is celebration, and relief. The PM is said to feel no little satisfaction at his apparent vindication.  He should enjoy that feeling while he can, because regardless of what happens in Libya next, he will shortly face some difficult questions arising from his military intervention.

The apparent contradiction between the recent utility of the British Armed Forces and the ongoing deep cuts to capability is going to be difficult for Cameron to paper over.  Will the swan in Cyrenica turn out to be the siren of the cygnus for D.C.?

In the US, opinion is mixed over whether or not Libya was evidence of an Obama Doctrine.  Micheal O’Hanlon is cautiously satisfied, and Max Boot wants to ‘wait and see’:

if it fails, andLibya devolves into anarchy or despotism, this operation will likely be remembered as a tactical triumph that didn’t translate into strategic success. The outcome still hangs in the balance.

At a more tactical level, this little gem is quite an amusing tale of how the Libyan rebels got their hands on a beauty of a mini-UAV.  The protagonist is a very good friend of mine: a mix of Flashman and Fitzroy Maclean who always seems to land on his feet.  BZ, Charles!