Post-heroic war: Why US wants our troops

This is what the US has tried to do; first, by using force and then by pushing the UNSC into giving legal cover to what was deemed illegal. This, the UNSC has almost done by eschewing the debate on the war’s legality. Yet, without a wider acceptance, the ground reality cannot be turned into a new legal norm. It is important to co-opt other states to contribute to post-war efforts.

This is the second aspect, the political. The willingness of other states to work in post-war Iraq — whether under the occupying powers or the UN Special Representative — would, through state practice, establish the norm. The political is linked to the factor of legality. Indeed, the legality of the new norm can be firmly established only when the legal and the political can be made to overlap.

Until there is a disconnect between the two, the political could always be challenged on the basis of it being illegal and the legal would always remain vulnerable to the vagaries of the political.

The third factor relates to the operational deployment of troops. There are two issues here: the number of troops the US went to war with and the low-intensity war it has had to fight since hostilities were declared over by President Bush. The war was waged on the basis of the doctrine of ‘‘Shock and Awe’’ to achieve ‘‘Rapid Dominance’’. The concept was first put out in 1996 in a paper written by Harlan Ullman and James P. Wade et al for the National Defence University. Rapid dominance, as opposed to the Powell Doctrine of ‘‘Decisive Force’’, envisaged a smaller force capable of controlling and achieving mastery of the environment ‘‘at extraordinary speed and across tactical, strategic, and political levels (to) destroy the (enemy’s) will to resist’’.

At least in theory, force under Rapid Dominance is to be applied pervasively and simultaneously. This entails for the plan to obtain not just physical but also psychological effects throughout the spectrum of combat by fielding a range of capabilities in order to render the adversary impotent. The concept emphasises the ability to dominate with smaller forces, rapidly, decisively and without necessarily inflicting high attrition on the adversary.

Before the onset of the war, most US experts and strategists were convinced that the Iraqis would rise in revolt against Saddam Hussein and welcome the coalition troops. The relative ease with which the Iraq Front fell seemed to vindicate the original assessments. A smaller, rapidly advancing force dominated the environment and destroyed the enemy’s will to resist. Now we have the prospect of a long, low-intensity warfare. This kind of war and battlefield environment is very different from the first phase. Given the daily attacks on the US troops and the occupying powers’ obligations under resolution 1483, suddenly the ratios of space demand the deployment of a much larger force.

But there is more, and this is what Edward Luttwak called the ‘‘post-heroic war’’ in his book, Strategy: The Logic of War and Peace. Discussing the Kosovo war, Luttwak termed it ‘‘post-heroic’’, a war in which the US military sustained zero casualties. But equally interesting — and somewhat disconcerting for Luttwak — is the reluctance of the US military and political leadership to sustain casualties. This finds reflection in his narration of the famous incident of the Apache helicopter gunships that never flew. Luttwak’s point is that ‘‘modern, post-industrial societies’’ refuse to accept war’s human losses because post-industrial families have one or two children — ‘‘all of whom are expected to survive, and each of whom embodies a much larger share of the family’s emotional capital’’. (Indeed, Luttwak says that other factors like media and TV coverage may be peripheral and substantiates this by describing the aversion of the Soviet society to the deaths of its soldiers in Afghanistan and, now, in Chechnya.)

This refusal to accept human losses and the political costs it entails for the leaders poses a problem for great powers (invariably post-industrial in this era) that have, historically, fought to secure not just vital interests but to sustain their great-power status, maximise their interests and even come to the help of allies where their core interests aren’t directly threatened: ‘‘They (great powers) could only remain ‘great’ if they were seen to be willing and able to use force even to protect interests far from vital, and indeed to acquire more ‘non-vital’ interests, whether in the form of distant possessions or further additions to their spheres of influence’’.

In the past, great powers had a different demographic profile with families averaging six or seven children. Young deaths through disease and other causes were common and thus much more acceptable. That stoicism is absent in post-industrial societies. So, what should great powers that still need to fight wars that are not strictly defensive in nature do with the new, post-industrial demographic profile? In the battlefield this is partly answered by technology, what the world saw in Kosovo, and more recently in Afghanistan and Iraq.

But while defeating the adversary through remote-controlled violence is one thing, holding ground and exploiting the gains there still require the deployment and employment of infantry and its supporting arms. And in a situation where ground forces are likely to face combat, even irregular combat, an army has to face up to and accept casualties. Luttwak’s way out: ‘‘Historically, societies unwilling to suffer combat casualties have turned to mercenaries, both foreign and ‘denationalised’’ local volunteers.’’ He mentions the British Gurkha regiments and the French Foreign Legion as two examples.

This is precisely what Washington wants to do in Iraq. Bush’s presidential campaign cannot afford body bags even if it is a trickle. What better way than to pay to get troops from other states while keeping overall command as an occupying power and continue to pursue the agenda for which the war was waged. This is why it is so important for Pakistan not to send its troops to Iraq at this stage. As I wrote last week, let us wait for the events to unfold. — The Friday Times