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Small Wars vs Big Wars
February 1, 2009 | Posted by Charlie - 11:32am | 98 Comments
The grown ups over at the Small Wars Journal put up the latest from Tom Ricks' Inbox. He notes:
Marine Maj. Gen. Larry Taylor, now in Iraq, recently wrote to a young Marine to warn him against assuming that the country's next war will be like those in Iraq and Afghanistan/Pakistan. I was particularly struck by his last point -- that the danger of being wrong about a big war is far greater than the danger of being wrong about a small one.
And in the general's own words:
Also, IMHO, the risk of being unprepared to fight the nation-state is much greater than the risk of being unprepared to fight the guerrilla.
Anybody who's worked on COIN-related issues in the last ten years has heard some version of this. And I, Charlie, am willing to be persuaded that even if wars amongst the people constitute the most likely future threats, they don't constitute the most dangerous ones. It would require a lot of work, and possibly a considerable amount of beer, but I'm willing to be convinced.
But let me make one point first. I think we've systematically underestimated the impact of our flat-footedness in confronting a variety of irregular threats. This goes back at least to the Marine barracks bombing in Beirut and runs through Mogadishu, Nairobi, the USS Cole, to the Trade Towers. MajGen Taylor is concerned that we might not be able to deter nations states in the future. I think we should be concerned that we have already demonstrated inability to deter non-state actors. In fact, we have provided the opposite: a clear and compelling invitation to attack us in an irregular manner. And perhaps when these efforts focused on mere embassies and barracks, you could say that these were tragic, but isolated attacks that could be dealt with locally or tactically (ie, force protection, local counter-terrorism, etc.).
But we now know that's utter folly. These aren't Lilliuputian pin-pricks. We now know that our stumbling in Lebanon and clumsiness in Somalia provided very clear lessons learned to al Qaeda and their fellow travelers. (I don't have the links to the AQ docs handy, but many of you will be familiar with the references.) Our ham-fistedness not only failed to deter our enemies, but provided them with a clear strategy for confronting us. Today we are experiencing the long-term, strategic effects of our myopia.
Like the general, I am unsure of the nature of all our future threats. And like the general, I worry that focusing on COIN could leave us somewhat more vulnerable to conventional attack. I just wish the general would worry more about the impact of our already demonstrated vulnerability to irregular assaults.
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