Year: 2003
Type: article
Abstract: Bad terminology is the enemy of good thinking."-Warren Buffett 1 I n the last few years the use of nerve agent in the Tokyo subway by Aum Shinrikyo and al Qaeda's offensive leading to its 9/11 attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon forced us to reevaluate the threat of terrorism to our art of operations.As a term of art, asymmetric warfare now dominates public attention.But many use the term with little understanding of its operational meaning.In this new strategic environment we had best heed the admonition of Mr. Buffett, the Sage of Omaha, and agree on a set of definitions that will provide our tools for analysis.In preempting the terrorist are we really dealing with asymmetry, or is something else at work? Thinking of the threat as only asymmetric misses the mark, especially if we have the concept wrong.The combination of asymmetry and the terrorists' ability continually to devise idiosyncratic approaches presents our real challenge.Assessing the distinction and interrelationship between these two factors provides us with the initial understanding required to address the operational challenges.Asymmetry means the absence of a common basis of comparison in respect to a quality, or in operational terms, a capability.Idiosyncrasy has a different connotation-possessing a peculiar or eccentric pattern.In a military sense, idiosyncrasy connotes an unorthodox approach or means of applying a capability, one that does not follow the rules and is peculiar in a sinister sense.Actually, al Qaeda's overall strategy is not new.In the 11th and 12th centuries the Assassins, a militarily weak fundamentalist and extremist sect, used pinpoint killing to bring more powerful ruling groups to heel.Indoctrinating their young followers into an extreme and enthusiastic cult of Shiite Islam, they sent individuals and small teams out to infiltrate the inner circles of targeted 4 Parameters leaders.These zealots worked their way into the retinue of the targeted official by gaining trusted status as a groom, guard, or servant.When close enough to the target and with no regard for their own survival, they murdered their prey with the dagger given them by their leader.The Assassins even managed to threaten Sal al Din the Kurd, the commander who drove the Crusaders out of Palestine.After Sal al Din's mail shirt foiled the first attempt, while on campaign a wooden tower was built in his camp to provide him a safe resting place.For the Assassins, dying in the attempt mattered not, since their ascension into paradise was assured. 2 Sound familiar?Today, only the mechanism of attack has changed.Dispatching individuals or small teams with a mission to painstakingly infiltrate and develop an opportunity for attack remains a part of al Qaeda's technique.Instead of penetrating the structures within the palace of the ruler or the retinue of followers in the camp of a general, terrorist agents now weave their slow, purposeful way through international systems of education, commerce, and travel, accessing the fabric of democratic societies and exploiting our freedom of movement, information systems, protection of civil rights, and the general laxness in our public security.Instead of a dagger, al Qaeda's infiltrators began with explosives and then discovered how to reverse-engineer the technological mechanisms of modern society in highly destructive and murderous ways.Given our societal dependence on interconnected, technologically intensive systems, al Qaeda used asymmetric means to cleverly develop idiosyncratic attacks on its targets, thus changing our operational and strategic environment. History of Asymmetric WarfareTo isolate al Qaeda's true advantage, we should begin with a look at the historical roots of asymmetric warfare.Military affairs are replete with campaigns won by forces with capabilities similar, though different by degree, to those of their opponents.True examples of operational and strategic asymmetry are relatively rare.Technological, operational, and tactical innovation combine to create them.As a basis for measuring technological innovation today, many Summer 2003 5 General Montgomery C. Meigs (USA, Ret.) the former Commander of US Army Europe and 7th Army, is the Distinguished Visiting Tom Slick Professor of World Peace at the LBJ School of Public Policy, University of Texas, Austin.Early in his career he served as a company-grade officer in command of armored cavalry units in Germany and Vietnam.After study at the University of Wisconsin-Madison he taught history at the US Military Academy, and he subsequently received his doctorate in history from Wisconsin in 1982.His commands have included 1st Squadron, 1st Armored Cavalry Regiment; the 2d Brigade, 1st Armored Division in Operation Desert Storm; and the 3d Infantry Division until its reflagging as the 1st Infantry Division in February 1996.In October 1996 he deployed with the 1st Infantry Division to Bosnia as Commander of Task Force Eagle and NATO Multi-National Division (North).He returned to Bosnia in November 1998 as Commander of the NATO Stabilization Force (SFOR).cite the German offensive into France in 1940, the so-called blitzkrieg, as asymmetric warfare.It was not.The German attack on France in 1940 provides a useful example of the collapse of political will as a result of a disastrous campaign, but not the use of asymmetric warfare.The strategic differences between the French and Germans in 1940 involved organization, planning, and political will.The French plan of campaign placed many of their best troops deep in the Maginot Line forts.They then moved their crack maneuver forces into Belgium to counter the reprise of the Schlieffen Plan they expected on that axis.The 1940 German plan entailed an attack into the Low Countries designed to draw the French into a meeting engagement in Belgium.The German armored spearhead drove through the Ardennes at Sedan, the hinge in the French line between the Maginot Line and the French and British armies advancing into Belgium.Only second-rate, newly deployed units defended this essential linchpin in the French operation.The German blow fell precisely on the most poorly defended spot.The memory of the losses in the First World War traumatized the French generals.It sapped their resolve, draining from them any sense of innovation or sufficient intellectual ability to react in the 1930s to the growing capability of the Wehrmacht.Nor did French leaders study the German successes in Poland.Faced with the German occupation of the Ruhr, then the Anschluss, the Munich crisis, and then the German invasion of Norway, French leaders tabled difficulty after difficulty in councils of war, always recommending to their political chiefs accommodation and never the use of force, even when they had tremendous advantages early in the conflict.The tumultuous politics of the 1930s left the French body politic torn between the forces of the right and left.The connivance of the 200 richest families, none willing to look past its psychological fatigue and warped self-interest to appreciate the good of the state, devastated political will.The Wehrmacht actually had no tactical or operational weapon systems incomparable to those of the French or unknown to them.The French had the better tank.They had numbers of combat aircraft and pilots comparable to the Luftwaffe, which in the air-to-air combat over Holland and Belgium gave a good account of themselves.In the late 1930s French military thinkers like General J. B. E. Estienne and then-Colonel Charles de Gaulle argued for the type of mechanized units adopted by the Germans.They also advocated using aircraft and armored formations in tactics similar to those adopted by the Wehrmacht.They understood the purpose of close air support at the point of attack.Fixed on their experiences in the World War I trench fighting, however, the French senior generals rejected these ideas in favor of a doctrine derived from the tactics of infantry defense, allocation of artillery fires, parceling out their armor, and relying on the telephone for command and control.Differences in degree of capability-but not asymmetries-existed between French and German units at the tactical level as well.The German units were simply better, especially at the critical point in the campaign on the Meuse 6 Parameters
Author: Montgomery C. Meigs
Language: English
Subfield: Sociology and Political Science
Field: Social Sciences
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: hybrid
OpenAlex ID: W154365379