IHL Project Events 2006/07 - Transcript
The Art of War in the Modern World
Date: Tuesday 17 October 2006
Speaker: General Sir Rupert
Smith
Chair: Professor Christopher Greenwood
Professor Greenwood
Welcome to the first meeting of the International
Humanitarian Law Project for the new academic year. As most of you will I hope
know by now the project, although under the umbrella of the law department is in
fact interdisciplinary in its approach. Our aim is to study the role of law in
relation to the conduct of armed conflict in its various different facets.
Now one of the problems of lawyers talking about the role of law in international hostilities is that we tend to know a bit about law, we talk a great deal about law but hardly any of us know anything about the actual practice of fighting a war. We were therefore very pleased that Rupert Smith accepted our invitation to come and give the introductory lecture for this year. It would be difficult to think of anyone more qualified to speak on this subject than he is. Commissioned into the Parachute Regiment in 1964 he rose to the rank of 4 star General as the Americans would say in the British armed forces, the highest rank we now have since the colourful if perhaps somewhat redundant rank of Field Marshall was abolished a few years ago. As a General he commanded in three major conflicts. He commanded the British Division in the Gulf War in 1991, the British Armoured Division, the Desert Rats, he then went on to command UNPROFOR, the UN protection force in Bosnia in 1995 where he and the troops under his command played an essential role in bringing that terrible conflict to an end. He commanded British forces in Northern Ireland in the end of the counter-insurgency period there and then in his final job in the armed forces, before he left the army at the end of 2001, he was the Deputy Supreme Allied Commander in Europe, the highest ranking non-American officer in the NATO structure within Europe and as such was deeply involved with the Kosovo conflict in 1999.
Since leaving the army he has written a book The Utility of Force: the art of war in the modern world published in Penguin in paperback as well as hardback at a very reasonable price but not I regret to say available for sale outside the lecture theatre tonight. In that book he challenges many of the conceptions that not only we as lawyers and the civilians have had but also his military colleagues have had about the nature of armed conflict and suggests that we moved into a quite different era in terms of the fighting of war from anything that existed for most of the 20th century. I am delighted to welcome General Sir Rupert Smith to give our introductory lecture for this year.
General Sir Rupert Smith
Thank you very much indeed. I will talk for
about 40 minutes and cover the essence of what I've written in this book, The
Utility of Force. There isn't to time to set the argument out completely and so
it will be a series of assertions but I am happy in the time available in
questions to enlarge on my assertions if you wish to and I will try particularly
towards the end to indicate where I think the changes I'm going to describe have
a particular impact on the understanding of the law, its interpretation, its
usefulness and so forth.
Now it is my contention arguably in the book that the nature of our operations today and in the future are fundamentally of a different nature to those of the past and in particular for which our institutions have developed to conduct successfully. I call this form or model of war, the new form 'war amongst the people' in contrast to the previous form which I called 'industrial war'. The essential difference is that military force is no longer used to decide the matter but it is used to create a condition in which the strategic result is achieved, the strategic object being to alter the opponent's intentions rather than to destroy them. As a result we do not move in a linear process or peace, crisis, war, resolution, peace, which is how we have tended to think of this matter in our history books and so forth and that is how our institutions are structured, governmental institutions and so forth to understand and to function in these circumstances. We do not move in that nice linear process. We are now in a world of continual confrontations and conflicts in which the military acts in the conflict support the achievement of the desired outcome to the confrontation and the achievement of that desired outcome in the confrontation is achieved by means other than the military. Now that's the essence of it and I'll take you through it now.
When I talk of institutions I am referring to the institutions of governance whether they be in Whitehall, the District of Columbia or any other capital, whether they be parliamentary or administrative and whether they are national or inter-governmental. I refer to the executive institutions, the armed forces, the diplomatic, the intelligence services, the developmental services and the multi-national organisations such as NATO and so forth that we form from war and I refer to the institutional relationships, the processes and authorities that link them all into a whole and international law would fall into that heading.
Now these institutions are in the main unsuited to our current circumstances. All of them need to change or be understood in a different way. We need to change the way we think about this matter and work in a different way and to try and give you a metaphor for the magnitude of the change I ask you to think the world apart.
Nearly 200 years ago we had the realists and then there appeared on the scene the impressionists and the impressionists were trained as realists. They had the same paint brushes, they had the same canvasses, they had the same palates and they looked at the same view but they had a completely different understanding of the outcome they were trying to achieve when they wielded their paint brushes and they produced a change in understanding and interpretation of art that took a long time for the world of art to understand and appreciate and what I'm saying in the book is that we have shifted in the understanding of war from the realists to the impressionists and as I go on to explain modern war you'll see why I think the art of war now is an act of impressionism and not realism in that artistic sense for sure enough its realistic enough if you're caught up in it.
Now I have also said that we are now in a world of confrontations and conflicts and I'll try and explain what I mean by these words. They are not synonyms. They are frequently used as synonyms particularly in the press and in general commentary. They are not synonyms. A confrontation occurs when two or more bodies in broadly the same circumstances are pursuing different outcomes. Political affairs of all stripes, national and international, are about resolving confrontations and much of the law is the same. When the parties are resolved to work together or to abide by some rules of law we have what I call collaborative confrontations. Indeed as I've said much of the law and the practice of it can be understood as a means of resolving by a collaborative process a confrontation but when one or both sides cannot get their way and will not accept an alternative outcome they sometimes seek to use military force to get what they want, they turn to conflict.
Now with industrial war, the previous paradigm, we sought to resolve the matter by conflict. War was intended to be strategically decisive and we developed all sorts of laws, many customary, which were intended to control the way we fought our wars. However in adopting conflict as the course of action the side that is weak, if it is wise, does not play to the opponents strengths but rather follows the path of the guerrilla or the terrorist and avoids set battles, except on their own terms, and the operationally or strategically decisive engagement so as not to present the opponent with the opportunity to strike the mortal blows and achieve their objective directly by force of arms.
The wise, weak side adopts the generic strategy composed of the propaganda of the deed, the strategy of provocation and the erosion of the will, so as to advance their position in the overall confrontation or else they seek to replicate the opponent's strength and like North Korea and others develop nuclear weapons while following the same generic strategy. Now there is very little time to explain the generic strategy but I will try and do it as quickly as I can and for those who want me to expand upon it I will do so at question time. How many of you have brought up or associated with very young children? [Audience response] Not breeding much are we? Think back to your own childhoods then, you all did this. It is also firmly explained by the anarchist, the Trotskyists and the Leninists. The propaganda of the deed is when little Willie hurls his yoghurt across the kitchen and into the kitchen wall. I am important, see me; I am in pain, pay attention to me; I am making a noise, there must be something wrong and the more the noise, the more the violence of the act, the more you recruit sympathy and attention, the propaganda of the deed. You are recognised, people write about you, people pay attention to you. Reduce the skyline of New York, propaganda of the deed. We all know about Al Qaeda.
The strategy of provocation has two sides to it. Think back to your childhood, you pushed, you found out how far you could go and when there was an over reaction you were the victim, you established that there was sympathy coming your way, you recruited to your cause and when there wasn't a reaction you knew just how far you could go and the erosion of will, how many times were you bought a game or taken to the cinema because you dripped, dripped, dripped, dripped, oh sod it, go and play football! Those are the generic strategies. Now you have to adapt them, you have to use them within your circumstances and so forth but that's how you function if you are weak and wish to win.
Now if you are strong and have nuclear weapons you have too much to lose in using them but whether you have them or not you have to find a way to exert your power, to use your strength, which is more than just your military forces, for as the philosopher Michel Foucault said, "Power is not a possession, it is a relationship". How do you establish that relationship in your powerful position, your apparently powerful position, with this apparently weak person? Finding a way to establish that relationship to advantage is the strategic question of our time. How and to what end do we apply for sub-strategically in the conflict so as to gain our strategic and political position in the overall confrontation.
Now this form or paradigm of war, war amongst the people, where the use of military force is substituted and frequently only tactical in effect has six characteristics or trends. Now I call them trends because they alter in the circumstances and you must understand them as each affecting the other and although I shall give them to you in a list and those of you earnest fellows who are taking down notes will write them in a list you should actually understand them in a circle each affecting all of the others.
The first characteristic is that the ends for which we fight have changed. In industrial war we sought to resolve the political confrontation that was its cause directly by military force. The objectives for the use of military force in industrial war, hard and simple, they tend to be expressed in terms of take, hold, destroy, defeat, unconditional surrender and so forth. In war amongst the people the objectives are valuable and complex. They describe a condition which enables intentions to be changed or formed by other means, political or economic and so forth. An example would be the current one in Afghanistan, to create a safe and secure environment. Because in war amongst the people military force does not resolve the confrontation directly the conflicts or forceful acts contribute to one or other sides efforts to win the confrontation and the more we seek to establish law and order the more the will or intentions of the people, as opposed to the government or administration of those people, become the objective.
Let me give you some examples of what I'm talking about and I'll go some way back into history. My first example, and I believe the first of the wars amongst people, was the Korean War where we changed our intentions when China because to do otherwise was to use the atomic bomb and we therefore settled for the condition of a divided Korea on or about the same line that the war started on and we've had to maintain that condition of confrontation ever since, a confrontation in which that conflict nested is still unresolved and is now nuclear.
The Yom Kippur war in 1973 when Sadat's objective was to create a condition by military force in which the confrontation between the Egyptians and the Israelis could be resolved, he took the Israelis completely by surprise. Not because the Israelis couldn't see what was going on, they could, but they could not conceive of someone trying to fight a war to create a negotiating position and so they just didn't believe what they were seeing were preparations for a war, it must be an exercise. Those who want to read about it Kissinger is probably the best shortest read on the subject.
Bosnia, Kosovo, Afghanistan, Iraq, all give examples, regardless of the rhetoric of the time, the military are being used to establish a condition usually expressed as a safe and secure area rather than to resolve the confrontation. An example, consider Hezbollah and Israel this year. They have been in confrontation for a long time and their confrontation sits within the greater confrontation that has existed since the founding of the state and drawing only on the media coverage Hezbollah is said to have initiated the conflict either separately or in some to take prisoners to bargain with, a tactical act to improve ones position in a confrontation, to draw Israel into an attack on Lebanon so as to enhance Hezbollah's position in Lebanon by showing they could defend successfully against Israel, another condition, certainly not a decisive in any conflictional sense and/or to improve their position, these are the Hamas down in Gaza and/or to further Iranian objectives in their confrontations with the United States etc., etc.
In all cases military force is being used to establish a condition to advantage. Israel on the other hand initially announced its ends in the hard terms of industrial war, to destroy Hezbollah and to defeat the rocket attacks but soon these were adjusted to the conditional objectives, the gaining of viable internationally guaranteed buffer zone, re-establishing deterrents, weakening Hezbollah and to improve their bargaining position over prisoners and some commentary argued that Israel was also trying to coerce Lebanon into controlling Hezbollah, another conditional objective to establish by punitive means the condition in which Lebanon controls what happens within its borders. You will note one of the consequences of this is it's very difficult to define victory or even to say what victory looks like.
The next trend is that they tend to carry out these actions in multinational groupings or in non-state groupings. These coalitions or at root collaborative confrontations need not be the formal ones like NATO or the UN or the coalition in Iraq today. They are often and particularly in the theatre informal and include other non-military agencies, the OSCE, UNXCR, Oxfam or Médecins Sans Frontières and you can have other very dangerous informal alliances where you dine with the devil for short term tactical advantage and run grave risks of regretting it afterwards, the Northern Alliance in Afghanistan or the Kosovo Liberation Army, the KLA in Kosovo of being examples.
I labour these trends to highlight four consequences - the difficulty of analysis and explanation particularly when the alliance is only in theatre as opposed to a strategic level. The dangerous informal alliance with the KLA was a theatre level arrangement that all the nations of NATO were in denial about and just refusing to accept was happening which made it extremely difficult to deal with.
The problem of foreseeing the effects of a particular action in the conflict, that you can do something down there in the conflict, it can have unexpected consequences in the capitals of this collaborative alliance. You witnesses this with the British calling for reinforcements from NATO because the British got in a big fight in Afghanistan and suddenly these other capitals weren't quite so interested in this problem.
The difficulty that these groups in collaborative confrontations have in deciding on strategy witness the performance of the United Nations over what to do about North Korea or what to do about Lebanon and Israel and if you want another example look at how inadequate the G8 was with the same Lebanon/Israel situation and so forth. It is extremely difficult to come to a concerted view and finally it is very difficult to apply the law since the law is dependent upon the states but you are not operating the states and you are frequently not operating against a state.
The third and most obvious trend is that war takes place amongst the people. Firstly, as I have tried to explain, the objective is the will of the people. Secondly, the opponent often operating to the tenants of the guerrilla and the terrorist depends upon the people, the concealment, the support both moral and physical and for information but these conflicts take place amongst the people in another sense through the media. Whoever coined the phrase the 'theatre of war' or 'theatre operations' was remarkably prescient. I can tell you from considerable personal experience that command of a modern operation is being like one of two or more producers in the pit of some Roman circus or amphitheatre and down there in the sand you have two or more lots of gladiators mixed up with idiot who can't park his car, the people who are late for their seats, the ice cream sellers, the ticket touts and so forth and they are all milling around in the pit with you and around the top, all the way round the outside, you have this highly factual audience who are all paying attention to where its noisiest in the pit by peering through the straws of their coca cola tins and your business is to write the most compelling narrative and act it out so that everybody understands what you want them to understand in that pit and then you're the winner because they think you are and if you don't think that is the case consider the circumstances a month and a half ago.
The conflict between Hezbollah and Israel took place amongst the people in both senses that I've used the phrase. In Israel the people and their houses, the towns and cities were manifestly the target of the rocket attacks and Israel in attacking Hezbollah, operating amongst the people, hit Lebanese people and property and in the theatre who had the most compelling narrative? On balance and judging the majority views that's expressed in the media not least by the <?? – 29.29> with 'Hezbollah wins' or words to that effect across the front. Hezbollah told the best story, who disciplined silence and an uncommon lack of the organisational ego played to the generic strategy that I've described and in particular the propaganda of the deed and they were seen to stand up to the IDF and have to be treated with and with the strategy of provocation, particularly within the context of the greater confrontation, they were able to cast themselves as the victims and yet they have lost their position in southern Lebanon, there is now an international barrier which is yet to be tested but it's there between them and Israel. They have lost men and material in large measure. They have cost their backers a great deal of loot and they have a difficult position with the people of Lebanon or they wouldn't be apologising for starting the war by accident immediately afterwards and yet they are declared the victors and Israel consumed with its own difficulties in its kitchen appears to be incapable of telling a better story - war amongst the people and theatre of war.
The fourth trend is that war amongst the people is timeless. We set out to win industrial wars quickly because the whole of the society was involved and we wanted to get back to peace and have a normal life. In our new circumstances timing is more important than doing things to time. The basic tactic is to engage only on one's own terms and when it is to our advantage to do so safely and when our military objectives are to set conditions in which other instruments of power are to resolve the confrontation then of course we must maintain that condition until they succeed. We're still in Korea aren't we and we are still in Cyprus and we are still in Lebanon because UNIFIL, the first I in UNIFIL stands for interim and they deployed in 1978, if my memory serves me correctly, they've been reinforced now, so how long is interim?
The fifth trend is that we fight to preserve the force. Now no commander wants to suffer any more casualties to his men and equipment than he has to but in industrial war it was in the main possible to place your losses. We developed the production lines to do this, there was conscription, the big training depots, extra reserve formations and you had the defence industrial base and you paid to keep the production lines open and so forth. In this country, and in most countries, the only production line for M1 Abrahams tank in America that is open at the moment is there to produce major spare parts. We cannot replace what we lose. I think I was the first British general since probably Wellington in the Peninsula to actually have to consider how to fight his force in 1990 in Iraq and bring it back. I had every serviceable tank in the British army and they wanted their train set back. We fight so as to preserve the force because we have to sustain the operation and to do that needs a continuous process and we fight because politicians at home uncertain of their own people's support for the venture wish to keep the costs to men and material within bounds that are politically sustainable in the circumstances.
The sixth and final trend is that new uses are being found for weapons and organisations that were acquired and developed for different purposes. Now I am not arguing that commanders shouldn't adapt their forces to their circumstances, they jolly well should, but if we look at the use of some of our weapons they are not being used for the purpose they were purchased for and I for one in 40 years of service have never gone to war in an organisation that I was trained in and if that doesn't tell you that's something is changing I don't know what does.
Please note that in spelling out these characteristics I have not said that there will not be big fights or that the future is one of urban terrorism. I am not saying that at all. Indeed the examples, the Yom Kippur war or some of those on the Israeli/Lebanon border or in Afghanistan this year have been big battles and were not the stuff of urban terrorism at all. Nor have I said that these fights will not be in support of objectives to do with the sovereignty of the state but I am saying that force will not be used to achieve this directly or strategically. It may if it is used well establish a condition in which the objective is achieved by other means.
Now just before I go on to address some of the implications of this and finish this talk I thought I would just read you a short press cutting from the Daily Telegraph of 2nd October and I was putting these notes together that day and there in front of me, I was actually on Eurostar and had a great big pile of newspapers, there was this man Brigadier Ed Butler who was just coming out of Afghanistan and this is the report in the newspaper of what he was saying as he came out. I'll gallop through it and then as I go I will indicate where he's hitting the characteristics I've just described. Now I am going to find out whether he's read my book or not but he seems to have done so!
"British forces in southern Afghanistan came within hours of retreating from a key base because they suffered a critical shortage of helicopters", the task force commander (that was Ed Butler) has disclosed. In an exclusive interview with the Daily Telegraph Brigadier Butler said "Taliban fire was so heavy and accurate at Mousa Khala, a key forward base in Northern Helmund, that army helicopters faced a serious risk of being hit". He said "the loss of such crucial equipment together with the political impact of a large loss of life meant he came close to ordering his soldiers to abandon their base". Well that sounds to me like fighting to preserve the force.
Brigadier Butler said he had warned his superiors early last month that the intensity of Taliban attacks was such that mounting air supply and casualty evacuation misrules was likely to lead to the loss of a Chinook helicopter. The Brigadier who leaves his posting at the end of this week said, "The strategic significance of losing Mousa Khala would have been huge but that was set against the likelihood of helicopters being lost but the political impact would have been either greater". Fighting to preserve the force, fighting so as not to lose the force. He goes on to say, "We have repeated pleas to NATO allies to send additional aircraft. (I've touched on that one already) We are not going to be beaten by the Taliban", said Brigadier Butler, "But the threat to helicopters and very professional Taliban fighters and particular mortar crews was becoming unacceptable. We couldn't guarantee that we weren't going to lose helicopters. The paratroopers were within 36 hours of abandoning the base before tribal elders approached the Afghan government to negotiate a ceasefire between British forces and the Taliban in the area." Non-state actors again coming into play, a condition appearing, not a victory. "I told them, you tell the Taiban to stop firing at us and my soldiers will stop firing back at you." That seems to me more like establishing a condition than winning, not winning in industrial terms. The ceasefire was held for 16 days and the Afghan solution "We are bidding for people's minds here. The people are sick of war and they are turning to the government to end it, establishing a condition, the objective is the will of the people. I am pragmatic about this", said the Brigadier. 'We won't turn Afghanistan round over night as some people continue to believe, time less, moral, legal ethical compasses of some people may be tested by this process but the repercussions of failure are too great to be contemplated." I think he's saying play it long and the military have very little to do with this, it's all got to be done legally, economically etc. He goes on and there are other examples but there is an example of war amongst the people and it isn't just urban terrorism and social.
Now let me just touch some of the implications and I have chosen ones that lean if you like towards the interpretation of the law and I'll take my last 5 minutes or so just to bring them up. The first is to understand that the people are the strategic objective. We may enter their territory, we may attack their armies but these are ends in themselves. They are enabling objectives to gaining at the very least the tacit support of the people. The idea being to form their collective intention to at the least not support your opponent who operates amongst them, which is essentially what the good brigadier was saying about the Afghan people around where that particular battle was taking place. Now there is nothing asymmetric about this, the opponent is fighting for the will of the people as well.
The second implication is to do with the idea of force being an
act of last resort. Now as a generalisation the use of force was thought to be
an act of last resort when considered within the paradigm of industrial war, and
later if someone wants me to I'll explain why, but is it now? Is there an
orderly process recognised by both parties in which force is the last act? If it
is with North Korea then it's nuclear. Do both parties see force as an
alternative to other options instead of being used in concert with it? In other
words industrial war, peace, crisis, war, resolution we see it as a linear
process. Is it a linear process? Why does it have to be a linear process? Our
opponents in war amongst the people aren't using it as a linear process at all.
It's being used hand in glove with the other processes and when all other
options are exhausted will force provide a resolution and if it doesn't do we
just pile on more force or will the price be too high to bear and what other
options are there before us if it is too high to bear? Do we accept defeat or
how do you terminate the engagement if your last resort isn't working. Is defeat
an exit strategy?
In any event we have, with all other of the United Nations, not last September, a year last September, agreed that we have a responsibility to protect the citizens of the world and the abuse of their civil rights. The unconditional surrender of Germany in 1945 was brought about by using force as an act of last resort otherwise we wouldn't have heard about appeasement but it didn't stop the holocaust. When do we use military force and in what combination of measures to discharge our responsibility to protect that we all signed up to a year ago last September and is the answer to these questions the same at all levels from political through strategic, through theatre, to the tactical? I suggest it was in industrial war and our institutional thinking is still predicated on that experience but I don't think that's the correct answer anymore.
As a result of, and in particular the first three of my trends, we are confused about accountability and responsibilities. Who gives strategic direction or makes the theatre operational plan in Afghanistan or Iraq and how have we got our coroners deciding on whether it was a good plan or not and whether the tactics were right on some road in Iraq? Whose responsible and where, for what? We are confused about rules of engagement and law. We seem to think those two things are synonyms or synonymous and they're not. We're confused about proportionality and what are and what are not legitimate targets and we're certainly confused about the status of the individual caught up in war amongst the people, the whole sorry saga of Guantanamo Bay being but an example. We tend to think of neutrality and impartiality as being synonyms and they are not. If UNIFIL fails then I lay you a small wager that it will fail because it is confused between the difference between neutrality and impartiality just as we were with the United Nations in Bosnia for a very long time.
And we fail to understand the centrality of the law to our successful outcome of the confrontation and I will dwell just a minute on this. Any examination of the desired outcome of the wars amongst the people leads you to the recognition that the desired outcome contains some form of law and order, whether it be treaty law or day to day order and law upon the streets of a city and yet we are extremely bad because of our linear thinking as institutions and our structures of institutions in recognising that in the first instance and so frequently we shatter the capacity to establish the law before we start to build a capacity and are surprised that it takes a very long time thereafter and one of the biggest things we had, a problem, and this touches across the whole of the institutions, is to understand what I call the currency of deterrents and I stray a little over my 40 minutes by explaining about this. The soldier, me, I achieve my purpose because the currency of deterrents that I represent is the live rounds in my rifle and if you don't do what I tell you I will kill you and if you believe I will kill you 99.9 times out of 10 you will do what I tell you, the currency of deterrents is the ball in my magazine and the confidence in your mind that I will do what I set out to do and I can find you and shoot you. So I am collecting information to target you. I am passing information to tell you that I can see you and I will do what I say I will do, that's the role of information, the actual currency of the deterrent is the ball in the magazine and my ability to shoot it out but that is not the currency of the deterrents of the law. The currency of the deterrents of the law is evidential information capable of sustaining a successful prosecution and that is a very different thing to the information that I the soldier want in order to shoot you.
Now until the militaries have the capacity, and they have the capacity, are allowed to and are encouraged and it is developed, to develop the capacity to collect this other currency of deterrents, evidential information, and start to pass it to those who can use it positively, you will not remove the military from the streets because you haven't changed the currency of deterrents and unfortunately it is extremely difficult to sustain the value of my currency deterrents because just like children back in the playground the strategies of provocation quickly find out where the boundaries are and so it should be no surprise to you on the analysis I've just given you that organised crime rose in areas where conflicts has been taking place because almost all capacity to gather the deterrent, the information that supports the deterrents of the law as we destroy their <?? – 54.05> and the military are <?? – 54.10> and we do not understand what I have just said in institutional and organisational tasks.
So what must we do, we must change the way we think from the linear structure of thinking of industrial war that our institutions have grown up in and to recognise that we must now be conducting war amongst the people which means that we have got to be able to do this trick of translating our currencies and we must change our organisations, our institutional structures of thinking in particular so that you are able to do of all of these things at the same time to one purpose and in one direction and I have gone over my 40 minutes for which I apologise.
Professor Greenwood
Well I think that reaction there shows in itself
that no apology is needed for having gone over the time. Sir Rupert will be
happy to answer some questions.
Question
My name is <??> and I am a PhD student in the International
Relations Department. My question to you, sir, is how would you, where would you
put technology in your art of war? Do you see any kind of power for technology
in transforming the art of war in the modern warfare?
Question
Mike Jenkins, Kings – given that you have used the analogy
of the kids in the nursery you have also assumed that the parents looking after
them are both experienced or wisdom in order to make sure they go the right way.
Could you give your views about whether all the kids in the nursery have
actually that wisdom and whether intervention and our current expeditionary
policies are valid for future and the art of modern war?
Question
You have spoken about the need for progression in
institution <?? – 58.28> purpose, is the answer rather than progression actually
to regress to a stage where their moderating effects on the total escalation of
use of force isn't at such a point and there needs to be a realisation of our
ineptitude in trying to fight limited war?
General Sir Rupert Smith
I will take them in the order they came in.
Of course technology has a part in warfare regardless of its <?? – 59.39>. I go
back to my metaphor of the realists and the impressionists. In the art of war it
is not so much the paintbrushes or the canvas and so forth that makes the
difference it's the way they're used to achieve the outcome intended. The
science of war is where you start to enter the technological field, can I have a
better paintbrush, a more vivid red or whatever. This is, and here the
remarkable thing is that in war amongst the people increasingly it is not the
obvious things that are being used as the weapons or there were judged to be
obsolescent in industrial war terms. So the suicide bomber must be understood as
a weapon, a cruise missile. It is arguably more effective than an extremely
expensive cruise missiles we have in our infantries. So if you consider it as a
weapon, the technology and so forth, that's the impact these things are having.
The technologies of the internet and so on and so forth are all being used in
modern warfare by both sides and has a direct impact but they tend to be those
at are amongst the people. I find it extremely interesting to see where that may
take us when you consider things like defence industries and so forth.
The danger of using a metaphor of the playground is played out in the question and answer. I have no intention of trying to discuss the parents in trying to just give you an example from your memories of ones childhood, or bringing up children, of the strategies and provocation and so on but behind it there is a question I think of the expeditionary nature of our operations and I think the reply is so what do you do about strategies and provocation and so on and so forth? In a nutshell the counter strategy and generic strategy lies on two tracks, one is to operate to learn instead of making assumptions because you've got to learn who your opponent is and how he is functioning so as to isolate him from the people otherwise you involve the people and they tend to side with the opponent as a result and the second is to concentrate on altering the context. Go back to the example of the playground, the revolting child's strategy of provocation or propaganda of the <?? – 1.03.07>, if it is in the incorrect context, fails for the child and so your business as the strategist on the other side is to try and change the context of the way things are seen and acted out rather than to feel in the first instance that the actual issue that is presented to you by the child.
Question 3 (repeated)
The question was obviously the problem with
institutions is the <?? – 1.04.14> confusion and responsibility and institutions
they stop people…escalating force properly because they provide the most
influence and the reason we lose is because we don't use…our escalation of war
and our total use of force is not there, the logic of force is ignored and is
not important to have a realisation and then to stop about the <?? – 1.04.35>
sovereignties of extraneous use and have actually total use of force to win wars
and not be fighting these limited wars where our result has been <?? – 1.04.49>.
Institutions and escalation are two different things and it is not necessarily so that your institution inhibits your ability to escalate and if it is it isn't necessarily wrong that that is happening but behind it, as I think I've now heard you say, is that you shouldn't endeavour to limit your use of force in which case go back to my almost fourth paragraph about the strategist's provocation and propaganda of the deed, go and imagine the set of circumstances where that is played against you and see whether you will triumph with unlimited use of force. You may in a purely tactical or Stalinesque way and you will leave a wasteland like Grozny or somewhere like that and not much else but you will certainly not have resolved your confrontation. You may well have thought you have rubbed out your opponent but this is timeless and they come back.
Question
[Name] Newsweek Magazine – I am reading Norman Dixon's On
the Psychology of Military Incompetence right now and I realise that is the 30th
anniversary of the publication of that book and I wanted to ask you if you were
to update that book now what military incompetencies would you include in that
and also do you think that book still holds relevance to the British army.
Question
John Hemmings, MA student from Kings – my question is what
wars since World War 2 would you classify, if any, as the old model, the
industrial war or whether all wars since 1945 have actually been of this new
model?
Question
Lyn Verity – the concept of war amongst the people, do you
actually see the decline of the nation state?
General Sir Rupert Smith
Again in order, it's a smashing book, I do
recommend The Psychology of Military Incompetence to anyone who hasn't read it.
I recognise myself on all sorts of pages and it's mostly about the British army
so it's certainly relevant to the British army and it explains a great deal
about how big organisations work. It needn't be read as just the military and
yet the essential message of it is relevant today. I would have to go back and
read it with rather more care, certainly not in this audience and in public
without the prayer <?? – 1.08.44>.
I have two wars which I…the first is the first Iraq war, the Iranian/Iraq war essentially across the Shat-el Arab in the '80s which was…I have difficulty in fitting that, in fact I can't fit into <?? – 1.09.16> except that…and I say I can't because it doesn't fit the majority of my characteristics, it certainly was not timeless and all it did was to achieve a condition and so on and so forth, it hit some of them, it doesn't hit all the majority. The other one I would argue is the Falklands War of '82 where we were certainly fighting a campaign to achieve a strategy and it looks very industrial and old fashioned in its structures and so forth and yet it hits most of those characteristics although not very hard but we return to the condition of the confrontation and develop what the Argentinean's certainly started and babied and so forth in order to do the Sadat trick of altering the terms of the negotiation. What they were surprised by was the British, in particular Mrs Thatcher's actions who promptly went to war and they hadn't anticipated that so that as I say is a bit borderline but we are back with a condition. It certainly wasn't a state on state so that characteristic doesn't fit. It wasn't among the people in the physical sense but it was quite close to being amongst the people in the visual sense although that wasn't quite realised then because the technology didn't allow and the geography didn't allow it. It's timeless in that we still have a garrison there, we still haven't resolved this matter and we didn't worry too much about casualties. We didn't want to have anyone killed but my regiment had 257 notifiable casualties of which 44 were dead. We lost 7 ships. We would be leaping up and down if that was happening today in Iraq, if we had casualties at that sort of level so it doesn't quite fit.
The last one is do I see the end of the nation state? No, I think what's happening is our interpretation of the roles of the state is changing. We need the state to hold things with confidence like the National Health Service or whatever it is, to handle those sorts of things, those aren't going to go away but it's harder and harder for the state to act as a state. The interdependence of states is now becoming something that is limited in sovereignty and even a state as powerful and large as the United States cannot act on its own. In the Middle East it tried to and can't and it's a long book but I commend it to you by Philip Bobbitt called <?? – 1.13.26> where he discusses this and I find much of what he has to say directly relevant to my own experience particularly of the last 20 years of my service, mostly operating in multinational operations.
Professor Greenwood
Well I think we had better stop at that point.
Let me, before I turn to thank Sir Rupert, make an announcement to say that what
you've seen this evening is of course a vivid illustration of precisely what the
International Humanitarian Law project is about. If any of you would like to
receive further information about that we would be very happy to put you on our
mailing list, just go to the IHL page on the LSE's website.
A few words of thanks, first of all to the Law Society charity for funding this event, we are very grateful indeed for the support they have given to the IHL project generally. Secondly to three people who are associated with the project who did the lion's share, in fact all of the work, in organising this event, Heather Harrison-Dinnes who was responsible for setting it all up and for inviting our speaker, Louise Adimatsu who has done sterling work in running the project directly and Jasmine Mousa who helped out with many of the last minute preparations for this event. It's an indication of how much you have done and how successfully but what you have done has largely gone unnoticed at this event, it has been a seamless web of organisation but lastly and most importantly my grateful thanks to General Sir Rupert Smith for a most interesting and provocative lecture and also for some fascinating answers to questions that ranged from whose the most incompetent soldier in modern times through the future of the nation state to whether there is any purpose in moderation in modern warfare. Many of the questions posed to Sir Rupert reminded me of an examiner's meeting I went to in my young and enthusiastic days when I had set an exceptionally awkward question and the senior lawyer colleague said that's the kind of question I wouldn't dream of answering for less than 5000 guineas! Many of the questions posed to you, Sir Rupert, and some of the questions you posed to the audience definitely fell into the 5000 guinea category and I haven't yet made allowance for inflation but I thought it was a fascinating example of how in modern military life you have to think across such a wide range of issues and how those of us in civilian life who look both at the control of armed forces and the purposes of why force might be used have to rethink many of the assumptions which we have carried forward from a bygone age. It's always said that generals spend their lives fighting the last war, pacifists opposed to the last war and lawyers legislating for the last war. We certainly have seen an example of a general who isn't spending his life going on about the last war and is very much focussed on the next. Thank you very much indeed.
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