Iraqi Freedom-style regime change is often neither necessary nor sufficient to thwart terrorist attacks. It is time to embrace a new strategy that favors preempting threats (based on tenets of Carl von Clausewitz) and includes maritime principles (championed by Alfred Thayer Mahan). In short, we must clarify Clausewitz and master Mahan.
It is seven minutes to midnight. During the Cold War, the Doomsday Clock reminded us just how close the world came to thermonuclear war. Today, the clock symbolizes the few minutes remaining before we lose New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, or Dallas to a devastating nuclear, chemical, or biological attack by al Qaeda or its ilk. President Bush is right when he warns that terrorism and weapons of mass destruction (WMD) constitute the gravest dangers to us.1 But despite the best of intentions since 11 September 2001, the United States remains seriously vulnerable to attack.
As the American people grow weary of an ill-defined war on terrorism and poorly conceived endgame in Iraq, our nation's fundamental Islamist enemies have survived and are patiently plotting another death blow. Their aim is to disrupt our economy and to tear apart the fabric of our democracy. Their ideas garner more widespread and deeply rooted support in the Middle East than U.S. citizens dare to admit. And their plans—without a complete reshaping of the U.S. military's conception of the principles of war—may succeed.
While one can argue about the perennial nature of the principles of war, it is clear that our military's dogmatic embrace of the concepts advanced by strategy theorist Carl von Clausewitz has severely limited options presented to U.S. policy makers. By continuing to propagate Clausewitz's narrow view, joint military leaders have dulled the U.S. armed forces' effectiveness at combating al Qaeda and the broader effort to thwart terrorism and aggression writ large. Our current joint doctrines are so grossly apolitical, continentalist, and tactical in nature that they have left the nation seriously ill-prepared to confront a whole host of strategic challenges.
The good news is that American culture and capabilities give us enormous advantages over our adversaries. The missing nexus is a coherent approach to force and foreign policy that leverages America's strategic strengths without unduly exposing its weaknesses. Success will ultimately depend on a willingness to reshape our military's joint doctrine in ways that cast out the canons of Clausewitzian conquest in favor of applying his principles in more limited ways to deter, deny, and preempt enemy aggression.
Combining Clausewitz with Mahan |
We must then augment Clausewitz's ideas with new joint principles steeped in the maritime tradition, focusing less on his On War and more on broadly influencing history. Combining the best of Clausewitz with a new mastery of maritime strategist Alfred Thayer Mahan will allow the nation to wage a more precise and effective global campaign against terrorism and aggression without (except in the most extreme cases) incurring all the pitfalls that come with occupying failed states.
The Trouble with Regime Change
Today, it is clear that Iraqi Freedom-style regime change cannot be the answer to every WMD and terrorist threat. The circumstances are certainly unique—abrogating the agreement ending the first Gulf War, more than a decade of belligerent non-compliance with United Nations resolutions, a horrific human-rights record, and a clear capacity to produce and use WMD—and they can and have been used to justify the war in Iraq. Indeed, the Iraqi people and the world may ultimately benefit from the removal of Sadaam Hussein, and yet the pundits will argue endlessly about the virtues and vices of our intervention. Rather than second-guess every past strategic move in the current war, however, we must move beyond Iraq and broaden our strategic thinking to confront a wider array of threats before it is too late.
The first step is to consider more carefully any plan that could spiral into an untenable occupation, draining our resources and our will. While the forcible forging of liberal governance may appear attractive at first blush, history has no solid case in which a national union of individual rights, freedom, and democracy has been truly consummated at the point of an American gun. Postwar Germany and Japan are commonly referred to as models of success. However, a closer examination of these cases suggests that democracy was less imposed by the Allies than embraced by the German and Japanese people in the wake of exhausting defeats. The lack of widespread insurgencies in these cases is proof enough that these modern nation states had coherent societies that bore little resemblance to the rogue regimes and failed third-world states that are the likely candidates for overthrow and occupation today.
Unlike our reactive overthrow of Afghanistan—where the Taliban's continued sponsorship of al Qaeda after the attacks of 9/11 gave us no choice but to intervene, irrespective of the cost—the preventive war in Iraq has created the enormous strategic confusion between preemptive war (to overthrow a regime) and preemptive strikes aimed at neutralizing capabilities such as terrorist networks and WMD facilities.
Regime change and our desire to spread democracy are noble endeavors. Yet one must ask if new preventive wars aimed at bringing democracy to places such as Iran and North Korea—even if the nation could muster the resources, the political will, and the decades of commitment it would require—would truly make us safe. The list of failed states seeking dangerous weapons and willing to host terrorists could grow, and the terrorism threat is not that narrow. We simply don't have the luxury of fighting this war one battle and one state at a time.
In that light, the current U.S. joint strategy that appears to mirror the Clausewitzian trinity, where armies are first defeated, then states are overthrown, and finally people are subjected to new forms of governance, will not suffice. While opting for such regime change is best seen as a last resort, the nation must nevertheless be better prepared to deal with insurgencies, whatever the case. While combating classic insurgencies has never been America's strong suit, the recent globalization of transnational cultures, capital, and religious beliefs is fueling a larger, global ideological front that will be even tougher to combat. These radical insurgents can no longer be relegated to the realm of low-intensity threats as the proliferation of destructive technologies transforms them into highly elusive, high-intensity foes.
While regime change is no model, its critics—most of whom tend to oppose any military action whatsoever—need to be reminded that there is no substitute for being ready, willing, and able to strike, alone if necessary, to "cut off and kill" our enemies as far forward as possible. The need to directly combat terrorism while simultaneously undermining the festering conditions from which it feeds creates a difficult paradox solved only through a better understanding of the indirect approach. The United States must balance the effective use of force to deny all forms of aggression while also using our broader diplomatic, intelligence, military, and economic power to promote stability, prevent conflict, and create a global environment of hope that undermines the insurgents' ideology and power in the long term.
This strategic approach is not novel. It has long been the forte of maritime nations and naval officers, who by virtue of necessity became the true masters of strategy. It is no coincidence that great sea powers and maritime coalitions have won every major war in modern history, nor that the greatest forces shaping modern history have been mercantilist maritime coalitions led first by Great Britain and now by the United States.2
Deriving Naval Calculus
Despite this preponderance of strategic maritime success, American naval strategists have been extraordinarily reluctant to formalize any clear principles of maritime strategy. The U.S. Navy has kept such doctrine at arm's length for fear that any set of principles might be considered binding in ways that would undermine the historical foundation of naval success—the initiative and independence of its commanders at sea. Another roadblock has been the complexity of naval thinking, which cuts across strategic, operational, and tactical levels in ways that are difficult to reduce to succinct maxims.
Even at risk of oversimplification, however, it is important to start deriving the basic formulas underlying the calculus of naval strategy. We must do so because, as we have seen in recent decades, even a flawless application of the arithmetic of air-land warfare, in the absence of such saltwater sensibilities, can leave us with stunning tactical successes that yield too little strategic and political benefits.
The U.S. military's post-Vietnam rediscovery of Clausewitz is much to blame.3 To be fair, Clausewitz certainly understood the political nature of conflict and that "the result in war is never absolute."4 He nevertheless failed to offer tangible examples of how to make the sophisticated link between the operational and political realms of conflict. He was at a loss to explain, for example, why, despite Napoleon's battlefield decisiveness, the French emperor repeatedly failed to reap lasting political advantage from his widespread military victories. Military commanders have found it all too easy to focus on Clausewitz's clear, brilliant battlefield advice while seeking to avoid the larger perspective and subsequent responsibility when the political ramifications of military actions do not work out quite as expected. Like Napoleon on Elba, they often find themselves in places such as Baghdad, baffled as to why, despite their stunning battlefield success, victory escapes them.
Mahan presents us with no such problem. In fact, his works suffer from the opposite flaw. Despite the legendary tactical ineptness of his ideas—the neglect of emerging naval tactics, direct power projection ashore, and guerre de course—The Influence of Sea Power upon History was an enormous triumph of strategic thinking. Mahan explained how inherently limited uses of naval force could be combined with the broader exertion of national influence to favorably shape history.5 A close examination of Mahanian thinking and naval history reveals four unspoken but fundamental principles of strategic success: patience, presence, pressure, and partnerships.
Patience: Naval strategies have always been so successful because they enlist time as an ally to pressure enemies to exhaustion while setting the conditions to favorably influence history. One should not underestimate the strategic importance of managing the clock and assuring that time is on your side. Long-term success depends on the clear understanding that while military engagements may sometimes be settled quickly, political attitudes are slow to change. Patience is the ability to take the long view, to set clear objectives while articulating the costs and benefits so that people know the measure of progress and are thereby willing to persevere calmly in the face of adversity.
Presence: Presence is the ability to be there with the balanced capabilities, on land where necessary and sustainable and at sea in all key regions. It demonstrates our commitment to allies and friends, underwrites regional stability, shapes the environment and attitudes, acts as a deterrent, and assures an initial response capability to a major regional crisis, should deterrence fail. The notion that we can garrison our forces and surge them into war only increases the likelihood that we will have to do so. Presence is even more critical today, because it allows U.S. forces to find, fix, and rapidly strike new, widely dispersed threats—whether they emerge as a terrorist cell plotting in Indonesia or a nuclear weapon being produced in Iran. The United States cannot afford to miss any opportunity to strike at these types of threats forward before they reach U.S. soil.
Pressure: Deploying the classic maritime strengths of blockade, encirclement, and gunboat diplomacy can allow the United States to positively shape the global environment, forcing enemies to defend themselves everywhere. Pressure achieves effects first through steady exertion of both cooperative influence and coercive force over time. It also paves the way for the use of concentration, surprise, and offensive action to hit the enemy hard with precision and devastating effect at the time and place of our choosing.
Partnerships: Historically, the strategic success of maritime coalitions is unquestioned. As Chief of Naval Operations Admiral Mike Mullen continues to point out, globalization and the diverse array of threats today make it difficult for any nation to go it alone.6 Today, a broad coalition of freedom-loving nations is needed to thwart the wide variety of common global security challenges.
Taken together, these principles underlie the success of past naval strategies, yet they remain only on the periphery of the current American way of war. Their articulation and inclusion will greatly strengthen our joint doctrine.
Preemption Is Possible
As historian Paul Kennedy argues, a blend of maritime and continental approaches is the most sound strategy.7 If we bring together Mahan and Clausewitz, an effective preemptive strategy is not only possible but executable and sustainable.
Preemption should capitalize on the classic Clausewitzian principles to deliver the more narrow yet quick results Americans expect from military action. The aim is to neutralize dangerous capabilities and those intent on striking free people and free societies. The objective is simply to deny aggressors the capabilities to use force to cause great harm or to inflict their will on others. As in democracy itself, the hope is that by removing force as a viable option, the antagonists will eventually choose to settle their differences peacefully. These preemptive strikes can be made enormously effective by integrating the nation's joint capabilities to include air, land, sea, and special forces. Just as Israeli strikes on the Osirak facilities in 1981 set Iraq's nuclear program back decades, bringing the full capabilities of the United States military to bear on terrorist cells and weapons of mass destruction facilities offers the best hope of keeping America safe.
Successful preemption, however, requires impeccable intelligence. Unfortunately, our current intelligence system—reeling from years of colossal failures, from Tet, to the Soviet collapse, to 9/11, to the missing WMD in Iraq—is not up to the task. While John Keegan in his seminal work, Intelligence on War, correctly points out that in the end "only force finally counts" in matters of preemption, especially when going after terrorists and WMD located in sovereign states—accurate intelligence is especially critical to both the effective and legitimate use of that force.8 No U.S. strategy can be successful against today's threat without garnering much greater intelligence effectiveness through reforms such as many of the ones currently under way.
By integrating precise, accurate intelligence with limited joint strikes, we can assure that criminal leaders such as Sadaam Hussein are denied the destructive weapons and technologies they would use to harm America's people and interests. In the absence of direct, state-sponsored attacks on freedom, the United States should then rely on a patient global presence to keep pressure on non-state enemies and rogue regimes while fostering partnerships to nudge the rest of the world toward the peace, stability, free markets, and open societies that freedom's enemies abhor.
This combination of Clausewitz and Mahan will produce a new hybrid joint strategy that allows us to strike with Clausewitzian effectiveness to eliminate the deadly threats aimed at America, while using the same forces to influence attitudes, shape events, and possibly even transform rogue regimes over time. The most powerful part of the strategy may be what the Boston Globe called "Stethoscope Diplomacy"—much like the Abraham Lincoln (CVN-72) strike group and USNS Mercy (T-AH-19) humanitarian missions to Indonesia—which truly offers "the best possible defense against the demonizing of America by its enemies abroad."9
Preempting threats without regime change greatly enhances our security while preserving to the maximum extent possible our ability to deploy American military, economic, political power to positively influence people and history. Most important, it gives us the best chance to push back the doomsday clock, buying time to strengthen freedom through partnerships that shape a better, more peaceful world.
Commander Adams, a submarine officer, is a frequent contributor to Proceedings and the commanding officer of Provincial Reconstruction Team, Khost, Afghanistan.
1. See, for example, the President's Speech at National Defense University on 11 February 2004, www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2004/02/20040211-4.html. back to article
2. This is the well supported thesis of Colin Gray, The Leverage of Sea Power (New York: The Free Press, 1992). back to article
3. References to Clausewitz are prevalent throughout discussions of U.S. doctrine. For a classic example, see Harry G. Summers, Jr. On Strategy (New York: Dell Publishing, 1982). back to article
4. Carl von Clausewitz, On War (New York, Penguin, 1968 edition). back to article
5. Alfred Thayer Mahan, The Influence of Sea Power upon History, 1600-1783 (Boston: Little Brown, 1982 edition). back to article
6. dmiral Mike Mullen remarks to the 17th International Sea Power Symposium, 21 September 2005, www.navy.mil/navydata/cno/mullen/speeches/mullen050921.txt. back to article
7. See Paul Kennedy, Preparing for the Twenty-First Century (London: Fontana Press, 1994). back to article
8. John Keegan, Intelligence in War (New York: Vintage Books, 2002), p. 249. back to article
9. Editorial, "Stethoscope Diplomacy," the Boston Globe, 14 May 2006, link to article. back to article