Something is wrong. Old salts and old Soldiers can feel it in their bones. Things are getting worse, not better. Terrorists have struck successfully across the globe, paralyzing transportation systems (Mumbai, London), indirectly removing governments (Spain), crippling economies (Iraq, perhaps northern Israel), and killing thousands (New York City). Seemingly intractable insurgent campaigns dominate our time and attention. Yet, on paper, the United States and its industrial allies are unmatched in military technology, logistics, and skilled manpower. Explaining this mismatch between capability and outcomes challenges our collective understanding.
Many in the military-security profession disagree over the causes of this mismatch and the theories best suited for dealing with our challenges. At one extreme are those who acknowledge the terrorists' success but argue for the continuation, largely unchanged, of programs and practices dating from the Cold War. At the other extreme are those who believe the events of the past few years herald an almost complete break in history, a so-called "fourth generation of warfare" that has evolved beyond Cold War weapons or doctrines.
These theories are at best partially correct; at worst, dangerously misleading. The world has changed. But along with change considerable continuity remains. Common sense and the recent missile barrages from southern Lebanon indicate that Cold War tools have not been discarded and may still be relevant in war. Yet, 19 men armed with box cutters did destroy the World Trade Center and damage the Pentagon. What theory of warfare can account for the simultaneity of religious hijackers and missile barrages?
The nature of war has not changed, but the center of gravity in warfare has shifted, and we have failed to balance our considerable tools and intellect across all domains of warfare. To use a sporting metaphor, while most of the U.S. military is lining up against an opponent in the football stadium, another of our opponents scores points by slashing tires in the parking lot. This failure to recognize in which "stadium" or "domain" we score the most points, rather than a wholesale change in the nature of war, can explain many of the challenges, and some of the failures, we face today. It can also help us redirect our efforts in ways that can ensure we win the campaigns that are being fought in the human domain.
A Shift Back to the Human Domain
The industrial-machine warriors of the United States have for the past generation continued to identify decision in war as being determined almost exclusively by the side with the better machines, machine operators, and machine doctrine. We argue that in warfare today, decision has shifted away from the machine. Our opponents choose not to participate in a mode of warfare that could lead to their collective slaughter. One can think about armed competition as residing in one or more of three domains, where decision is determined by human-on-human competition; machine-on-human competition; or machine-on-machine competition.
Conflict originated in the human domain, where the opponent who possessed greater physical strength, will, and wit prevailed. With the advent of early mechanically driven devices of war (e.g., the catapult), there began an evolution to a greater and higher technological degree of battle, in which machines would ultimately determine the outcome of what had begun as a purely human pursuit-war.
The industrial revolution of the late 18th century accelerated this process and seemed to further validate the deterministic corollaries: that the country with the better technology, better machine-related doctrine, and greater industrial base (machine-producing capacity) would prevail. In the mid-19th century, wave after wave of technological innovations produced machines (e.g., railroads, ironclad ships, breech-loading rifles) that provided a decisive edge in warfare. These waves of innovation instilled into combat ever more sophisticated levels of machine content, coming slowly at first, then accelerating in pace.
With each wave of machine innovation, warfare shifted further from the human domain of conflict to one decided by the matching of machines against flesh. To be sure, hand-to-hand combat, saber thrusts, bayonet attacks, and cavalry charges remained, but decision in combat was determined by those generals and admirals (and their staffs) who could muster the best machines, machine doctrine, and supporting industrial capacity.
Until the early 20th century, many refused to acknowledge that warfare had entered a new domain. The British Army, as it studied the impact of the machine, continued to search for a "human solution" to the firepower produced by machines. But despite their dogma, decision in warfare during World War I progressed to what we call the machine-human domain, wherein the machines were used to great effect to slaughter humanity on a scale unseen in history (e.g., the 1916 Battle of the Somme).
Reacting to this mass slaughter, military leaders effected a further technological-doctrinal shift that sought to replace human casualties with those of machines. Machines in World War II became particularly central to warfare, as evidenced by blitzkrieg tactics on land, mass aerial combat over Britain and Germany, and carrier and unrestricted submarine warfare at sea. This trend of substituting machines for manpower accelerated so much that by the Cold War the fate of the world depended on command and control systems and calculations of throw weight, warning, and reaction times. With the advent of the nuclear war plan, the human had to do little more than validate the orders to unleash the machines, which would then do the rest.
Emergence of the U.S. Military's Machine Mindset
This period of machine wars produced millions of human casualties and hundreds of thousands of shattered machines. But there was another casualty in our profession: a narrowing of thought about war. During this time, the belief that machines and their operators would prove to be unassailable protectors of nations and alliances became an infallible orthodoxy. During this time doctrine and the professional military education of the officer corps were melded to match man to machine. Our nation's preeminent military educational institutions were reconfigured to favor technology. As a result, foreign languages and area studies were deemphasized, and quotas were established to limit those who might depart from the orthodox machine/ engineering-oriented curricula.
In parallel to the developments in the military realm of technical education and doctrinal development, a nexus of business-political-social interests embraced the requirements of machine-on-machine warfare. This nexus was able to harness the talents of the American labor force, the ingenuity of American business, and the political support in Congress to produce unmatched machine war-making capabilities. As a result, the United States devoted a national fortune to the development and fielding of more advanced combat aircraft, ever quieter submarines, longer-range missile systems, space-based surveillance systems, and a national ballistic-missile-defense system.
To be sure, the decision to focus on machine versus machine combat as decisive in warfare was indeed appropriate for much of the 20th century. The business, political, and military leaders of the Cold War-human products of the machine-age paradigm-correctly understood the machine challenge to be the challenge, and developed capital-intensive, higher-technology solutions accordingly. That the United States and our allies won the Cold War and swept the field of a high-technology peer competitor for the immediate future validates the wisdom of their time.
The problem is that, while we no longer find ourselves operating in the machine domain, we continue to produce a machine-dominated officer corps to use high-technology, machine-domain weapon systems. Continuing to produce outdated solutions to current problems is not a phenomenon unique to the military, however. Studies in socio-technological development have argued that how institutions identify and address their principal challenges is in large part determined by what they have done in the past.
Our leaders, familiar with a military-machine paradigm, educated in high technology, and employing the best weapons of war in the history of the world, naturally saw the machine as the continuing solution to our security challenges. As a result, the challenges in the human domain were relegated to discussion among Navy SEALs, counter-narcotic surface squadrons, and Marine Corps and Army infantrymen, all groups that seemed to count for less in the machine-centric debates of Cold War financing and acquisition programming.
Advanced Machines Prove Indecisive
Along the way, our opponents opted out of machine warfare, returning instead to warfare whose center of gravity resided in the human domain. Increasingly, powerful nations experienced a series of surprises-anomalies if one subscribed to the idea that warfare must inexorably evolve to higher levels of machine and technological content. These defeats at the hands of insurgents, freedom fighters, and terrorists occurred coincident with another surprise: high-technology, machine-dominated warfare either didn't happen as expected, or when it did break out, it proved to be ultimately indecisive. The Cold War never went hot; the Korean War never turned nuclear; Iraqi pilots in 1991 took off, only to defect to Iran. In other cases, such as the Vietnam War and the Palestinian Intifada, and perhaps in Iraq today, advanced-technology weapons have been increasingly irrelevant to political victory, as at least one of the antagonists chooses to fight a " low-tech" war, one closer to the human domain, in which human factors indeed determine the decision.
What has happened has been a decisive shift in the trajectory of war, away from an evolution of greater machine technology back to the human domain. The technology our opponents use against us is widely available, including bombs, rockets, and sniper rifles. Further, the fight will be in the human domain of ideas and culture-by Web site and on Al Jazeera, in the minds of suicide bombers and those who fear them. Our advanced machines are not irrelevant in this war. But faced with limited resources, we must objectively assess our existing and emerging technologies to find those most effective in the human domain.
Overcoming Technological Advantage
For generations, opponents of a stronger power have opted for a strategy that seeks to negate their technological or numerical disadvantages. But these conflicts have typically been regional and local. It is different this time. The technologically and numerically weaker party, such as the al Qaeda terrorists, can now, by acting in the human domain, reach across the globe. How is this possible?
Human-centric warfare on a global scale has been abetted paradoxically by the technologically driven trends of urbanization and globalization. With globalization, the environment in which war is fought has changed. For example, a global credit system ease transfer of financial resources (logistics), global airline and merchant fleets facilitate movement (transportation), and global cell phone networks allow coordinated effects (command and control). Further, urbanization provides safe havens (concealment), concentrated (and susceptible) recruiting bases (personnel), and concentrated targets.
In addition, technologies of instant and global communications (cable television, and the Internet) magnify and proliferate what would otherwise be local events. This magnifying effect also explains why the opponent's victories mean so much, and our mistakes are so costly in the ultimate battlefield, the hearts and minds of those who stand on the sidelines. Tactical events now have strategic consequences.
War in the Human Domain
Valid theories should offer both an explanatory and a predictive power. If we have failed to understand that warfare has shifted decisively back to the human domain, would this failure help explain the baffling setbacks of the past few years? The following are brief summaries of key setbacks and surprises imposed by individuals or organizations that would not normally pose a threat to a nation as powerful as ours.
Case One: Bombing of the USS Cole (DDG-67) - A technologically advanced, machine-intensive organization - the U.S. Navy - suffers a devastating attack on a multi-billion-dollar ship. How was this possible? The ship carried a full wartime load of missiles and ordnance; networks and computers had been upgraded with the latest software; the ship's engineers had passed the latest engineering exams with flying colors. The machines all worked as designed; the crew performed as they were trained for machine-centric warfare. The attacker: a small boat loaded with explosives. The machines and their operators didn't fail, rather our understanding of the human domain of Yemen was deficient.
Case Two: The 9/11 Attacks - Commercial aircraft are hijacked and used as flying bombs to attack the Pentagon and devastate New York City, killing thousands who until that day believed they were invulnerable in the American homeland, protected by two oceans and legions of ships, planes, tanks, and electronic surveillance equipment. As the 9/11 report indicated later, the electronic intercepts and computer databases worked more or less as designed. However, humans were unable to translate the intercepts fast enough, or put together the pieces in a way meaningful to allow effective action.
Case Three: The Iraqi Insurgency - Our machine-organized military performed magnificently, exceeding all expectations in the major combat operations of Operation Iraqi Freedom. "Shock and Awe" was indeed effective, and the enemy's machine resistance proved an easy opponent. But the enemy personnel generally chose not to offer themselves for slaughter, and instead melted away, only to realize a more effective way to fight-in the human domain of urban alleys, air waves, and symbols. How to find these fighters in the human domain? One must speak the language, know the culture, and interact with the people. But as discussed in numerous reports and in the media, the American military and intelligence services continue to suffer from a severe shortage of Arabic linguists.
Case Four: Public Affairs/Iraqi TV Network versus Al Jazeera and Al Arabia - The human domain is a cognitive domain. Storytelling is central to political victory. Yet our country was insensitive to the urgency of public affairs in an occupied country, and the U.S. government lost several crucial months before it established a U.S.-supported Iraqi TV network in Iraq. Our inability to tell our story in Iraq has hampered our campaign, especially given the hostility of many Arabic-language broadcasts. How important have images and public affairs become? As an illustration, consider the unfortunate shooting of a wounded insurgent in a mosque by a Marine rifleman. Captured by an embedded NBC journalist, it was repeated endlessly by Al Jazeera, a Network that refused to air videos of insurgent executions of hostages because of their violence.
Case Five: Abu Ghraib Prison Scandal and Perception Disaster - Crucial to warfare in the human domain is trust, especially building trust among neutrals or the uncommitted. Higher-level leadership understood the sensitivity of this issue and gave the appropriate orders assigning clear responsibility on the handling of detainees. But what human resource was tasked to carry out these orders? While the best and the brightest military officers commanded warships, Army combat units, and Air Force squadrons, our machine-centric military assigned poorly screened, ill-trained reservist prison guards to this sensitive task. The result: perhaps one of the greatest strategic failures of the Iraqi campaign. Machines weren't the answer at Abu Ghraib; rather, highly qualified people were needed.
In each of these cases, our machines worked as designed. Yet they proved less relevant to the campaign we have found ourselves in, a campaign now firmly rooted in the human domain.
The Search for a Solution: Follow the Money
This shift back to the human domain has been occurring slowly, over decades, but is still not appreciated by major institutions that have a stake in the existing military-industrial arrangements. This transformation will be among the most difficult of any undertaken since the inception of the American military. In past transformations-from sail to steam, from ground to air power, from propeller to jet, from terrestrial to space-all could ultimately enjoy the support of large work forces, defense industries, and political leaders. But the transformation that faces us now is one that will require redirection of resources, termination of defense programs, and Joss of jobs in certain defense industries located in someone's congressional district; revamping of military and intelligence career paths; and reform of training and educational institutions. In short, a simultaneous transformation of the network of industry, Congress, labor, military personnel, platforms, and education that we know today.
The exact changes necessary to transform our military will be best determined by each service, once each has come to understand that decision in warfare has shifted from the machine to the human domain. Much of what needs to be done is relatively low cost (by American standards) and intellectual. But it will entail shifting both resources and career paths. In the end, what's important is where the money goes and who gets promoted. We need to change the trajectories of both the budget and the selection boards away from the machine-war paradigm with which we are all comfortable.
The nature of war has not changed; the age-old principles of war need not be replaced. Rather, we need to understand that three domains of warfare exist, and we must correctly identify where the strategic center of gravity now resides. Our enemies today prefer the domain where human factors, human decision, human cognition, and human action rather than machine action are decisive.
We don't need more and bigger machines to fight other bigger and better machines. Rather, we need to reapply our technological advantages to the human domain. Further, we need more appropriately educated and trained men and women, versed in languages, comfortable in other cultures, with professional and personal contacts around the world. To be sure, the possibility of a "machine-machine" war against a major industrial power still exists, and we must continue to hedge against this possibility. But our congressional, defense, and military leaders must put this possibility in perspective, and accept future risk balanced against the current and continuing need for the tools and the training to fight and win across all domains of warfare.