A new kind of war - FB Ali

On the recent thread about Anwar al-Awlaki’s killing, the question came up as to whether the US really is at war or not. This is an important issue, and its answer carries much wider significance beyond just the legality of killing Awlaki.

The short answer to the question, of course, is: it is war, because the US chooses to treat it as such. But it’s the dawn of a very different kind of war.

When George Bush declared his Great War on a nebulous noun (which most people understood to mean Islamists, though some construed it as Islam), he still waged it in the conventional manner. Pinning the blame for 9/11 on Afghanistan and Iraq, he invaded both countries. This was not much different from Austria-Hungary declaring war on and invading Serbia in 1914 because of the assassination of Archduke Ferdinand by a Serb nationalist.

Even when Obama unleashed his ‘drone war’ on the tribal areas of Pakistan, this too could be construed as a conventional operation, much like the sustained US bombing of Cambodia during the Vietnam War because it also served as sanctuary and base for the enemy. The widespread knowledge that the Pakistan government, although officially opposed to the drone strikes on its territory in fact approved of them (even allowing them to be launched from an airbase in Pakistan), muted questions about the oddity of bombing a friendly country.

But Awlaki’s execution enables us to see the drone war in a completely new light. If we look beyond the questions of legality and morality, what we are witnessing is the birth of a new kind of war ─ war with machines, and war without national frontiers.

War without frontiers was initiated and developed by Israel. Suffering attacks from Palestinians (and their Arab supporters) based in various countries, it adopted a policy of attacking and killing them, even though this violated those countries’ sovereignty. Other states had resorted to such a tactic occasionally (e.g, in the cases of Georgi Markov, Alexander Litvinenko, Bashir Gemayal), but this was the first time a country had adopted it as military policy. Israel could afford to do so because US backing protected it from any military reprisals from the countries whose sovereignty it thus violated. The US, of course, feels even more immune.

War with machines has become a practical proposition because of the rapid pace of technological development in this field. The extent and direction of US developments in drone technology is laid out in a recent article in the Washington Post as well as in a review of two recent books in the New York Review of Books.

These robotic hunter/killers can increasingly replace humans in the waging of war, not only on the ground but also in the air and on and under the sea. Especially the humans who have hitherto done the fighting and the dying. The reduction in human vulnerability and loss, coupled with greatly increased capability and lethality, will make this new kind of warfare irresistible to generals and policy-makers.

For the United States, determined to exert power globally, and convinced it is engaged in an open-ended war with an amorphous, worldwide enemy, this capability is profoundly attractive, not least because of its comparatively low cost (both human and financial). That is why Peter Finn in his WaPo piece calls it “the future of the American way of war”. With its overwhelming preponderance of power compared to the rest of the world, the US can afford to exercise this new military capability inside most countries, no longer burdened by any need to first invade them. Or even notify.

So far the US has been using this new type of warfare against those it believes represent a danger to its security, i.e, as a counter-terrorism tool. It will become increasingly tempting to its leaders to use this cheap and (for the US) painless power projection to achieve a wider range of international policy goals. NATO’s intervention in Libya (in which the US also used its drones) is a portent of things to come. A foreign president or prime minister presented with a US demand would be hard-pressed to refuse it, knowing that this could invite the swift and silent destruction of some key installation or personage, including him.

While this technology would give the US tremendous capability in the future, it should consider the other side of the ledger. Even with its present limited use, it is paying a price, as poignantly expressed by Dr Brenner in his contribution to the National Journal blog. In a thoughtful recent piece, Tom Engelhardt reviews this issue and points out the pitfalls that could lie ahead. Quite apart from these intangibles, there are purely practical considerations to weigh. Other countries and groups may not be able to achieve the same heights of technical sophistication, but they can certainly duplicate many of these achievements. It would be foolhardy not to expect that potential enemies would also acquire some significant degree of this capability.

If the aim of military power and its exercise is national security, would US security really be enhanced in a world awash with military drones, where sensitivity to their use had been deadened by longstanding US example? If the few minor or failed attacks after 9/11 could push the US well towards becoming a ‘security state’, what kind of a country would it become under the threat of lethal drones flying up from backyards and windows and swooping down from the skies on vital targets?

This is a critical crossroads. If the US yields fully to the seductive promise of these new weapons, and the new kind of war they make possible, it risks not only a radical destabilization of the international structure, frail as it already it is, but also of America itself. What it is, what it stands for, how it sees itself, and, not least, how it’s seen by the world. And all without significantly increasing national security or furthering national goals.

Comments

[confusedponderer]

I have come to distrust R2P. I increasingly think that it is usually used as a mere fig leaf to rationalise interventions otherwise unpalatable. I do not trust in the purity of the motives of the people using the R2P crowd's arguments and language.

The general idea, and I simplify for brevity, is that R2P supersedes national sovereignty because there are crimes against humanity being committed, on a scale that supersedes national sovereignty. Almost by it's very definition, R2P is an absolute exception.

It is probably a decent thing to do to intervene in a hell hole like genocide era Rwanda, where the exceptional criteria are certainly met - but honestly, no intervention justified based on R2P so far has been in a situation as severe as that.

There also is the real prospect that R2P, just like COIN, is a growth industry.

[VietnamVet]

Brigadier Ali,

Thanks for your comments on the assaults on state sovereignty and the sanctity of borders.

It is broader than just attacking failed States. Global Guerrillas has an excellent article on “Protesting Capitalism's Crisis”.

http://globalguerrillas.typepad.com/globalguerrillas/2011/10/occupy-insert-your-city-here-making-capitalisms-crisis-reality.html

He points out that all Western Nations are “Hollow States”; unable to protect its citizens from the ravages of capitalism run amok. Enron was a sign of our future; “Let’s blackout California to make money.” Today we are in a perpetual war against Islam to further fatten the Elites’ portfolios. Last weekend Dexia, a French Belgium Bank, was rescued. There will be no haircuts for wealthy investors; taxpayers again are taken to the cleaners.

In truth, the super rich, multi-national corporations and their political handmaidens have co-opted the democratic governments with the use of Marketing and Psychological Operations for their own gain. History, as we knew it, is dead.

[FB Ali]

TTG,

I would regard R2P as one of those academic fig leafs that are trotted out to provide some cover of respectability for actions by states that are of questionable morality. But they hardly ever act as initiators of such acts. For example, the Yoo memorandum did not ‘allow’ the CIA to use waterboarding; it would have done it anyway because it thought it necessary. The memo provided some ex post facto cover. Similarly, if a state (or group of states) feels that it serves its interest to intervene, and that it can get away with it, it will do so, R2P or no R2P. Its apologists can later trot this out to justify the action.

As for the US practising R2P (alone or with NATO), it is going to meet Russian and Chinese resistance. They got burnt by abstaining on the Libya SC resolution, when the “protection of civilians” was rapidly extended to include regime change. They are going to veto or oppose such interventions (as they did in the case of Syria).

I’m not sure whether a possible, even likely, economic collapse in the future will discourage interventions or increase them, as a means of securing needed resources.

[The Twisted Genius]

Brigadier Ali,

I agree that R2P is an academic and legalistic fig leaf. Russian and Chinese resistance to R2P, as you mentioned, has effectively stopped efforts to give a UN seal of approval to R2P. However, it will still be used to paint international interventions and aggressions as moral obligations. And it will be used by think tanks and national security industries as a revenue stream... at least until the next lucrative fad comes along.

Economic collapse may see more blatant cross border wars to seize resources, especially water, but military adventurism such as our invasion of Iraq and never ending war in Afghanistan will just not be worth it.

[seydlitz89]

FB Ali-

Very much a thought-provoking post.

Just a few questions: First, are we not talking about "warfare" and not "war"? You use the terms interchangeably in your post but are they different concepts? War is the political instrument of organized violence of one political community at odds with another. Warfare is the utilization of the means of war for a particular epoch which is in turn influenced by the political conditions/characteristics of the entities involved.

Naval warfare is "without boundaries" and submarine warfare as practiced first in the First World War, expanded the dimensions possible even further. Could we see a parallel between the submarine of 1914-18 and the drones of today in that the machine/instrument achieves a level of autonomy which could endanger/run counter to the very political interests it is meant to serve?

Submarines at the time were considered "terror weapons", are drones by their very characteristics also "weapons of terror"?

Finally does not the employment of drones attack the legitimacy of the state the US is supposedly wishing to support? The basis of state legitimacy being its monopoly on the use of legitimate violence within its borders? By condoning the use of drones over its territory targeting its own citizens, does not the host state become by definition a "failed state"?

[FB Ali]

Seydlitz89,

I think I used the two terms (war and warfare) discriminatingly. Space constraints prevented me from dealing with each separately.

The development of military robots will, in the future, create a new type of warfare, in which machines do the fighting and killing (and ‘dying’) instead of humans. To that limited extent, the development of this kind of warfare could be welcomed.

What I expressed concern about was the new type of war that these machines would make possible. Hitherto, the achievement of any significant results through military power required the exercise of considerable force across national borders, which also could not be concealed. The availability of highly capable, potent machines would tempt powerful countries to apply significant force against others without overtly violating borders, even secretly. This would invite a response in kind, if not degree, from states and even non-state entities.

If such a type of war were to become prevalent, it would tear up the present international order, and force even powerful countries to become ‘security states’.

[Jane]

When one state harbors a group which attacks a second state, what is the attacked state entitled to do by way of retaliation?

Is the second state limited to declaring war on the first state or can they simply attack the offending non-state actor directly despite the violation of the first state's sovereignty involved? After all, the harboring state is either unable or unwilling to use their asserted sovereignty (purported monopoly on the legitimate use of violence within their borders) to control the use of violence by the harbored group.

[FB Ali]

To get an idea of how fast this future is approaching, see:

http://www.spiegel.de/international/world/0,1518,792590,00.html

[Barry]

"Had Iraq any significant popular insurgency during that period, no doubt the US would have tried to aid it."

Iraq had an insurgency; in fact a two-sided one - Kurds and Shiites. The US let Saddam suppress the Shiite rebellion, and only then protected the Kurds.