Grunts (2 page)

The American Love Affair with Techno-War

Since the beginning of World War II, no group of people or nation-state has invested more money, energy, and sheer hope in technology as a war winner than the United States. The belief that technology and machines can win wars of their own accord was prevalent as long ago as World War II and it still persists, arguably in even stronger form, in the twenty-first century. In 1947, S. L. A. Marshall, the noted combat historian, wrote: “So strong was the influence of the machine upon our thinking, both inside and outside the military establishment, that . . . the infantry became relatively the most slighted of branches.” The country paid a high price in blood and treasure for this oversight in World War II, but very little changed in subsequent decades. In 2006, another erudite military analyst, Ralph Peters, wrote something eerily similar to Marshall’s passage: “Too many of our military and civilian leaders remain captivated by the notion that machines can replace human beings on the battlefield. They cannot face . . . reality: Wars of flesh, faith and cities.” Marshall and Peters both understood that flesh-and-blood human beings win wars. Machines and technology only assist them.
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Shrinking from the horrifying reality of war’s ugly face (more on that later), Americans have a tendency to think of war as just another problem that can be addressed through technology, economic abundance, or political dialogue.
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These are American strengths so it is only natural that Americans would turn to them in time of need. Nor is there anything inherently wrong with the idea of maximizing these considerable American advantages. But there is something more at work here. Reared in the comfort of domestic peace and prosperity, most modern Americans cannot begin to comprehend that, more than anything else, war is a barbaric contest of wills, fought for some larger strategic purpose. Victory in combat usually comes from the resolve of human beings, not the output of machines. Yet, the modern American war-making strategy invests high hopes in the triumph of genielike superweapons and technology. To some extent, this is because Americans took the wrong lesson from World War II. They erroneously believed that victory in World War II came mainly from Allied matériel, technological, and manpower superiority. This created a zealotlike faith that these advantages would guarantee victory in any future conflict.

Hence, ever since, the United States has had a persistent tendency to invest too many resources in air power and sea power, sometimes to the detriment of ground power. For instance, in fiscal year 2007, the Army and Marine Corps collectively received 29 percent of Defense Department budget dollars even though they were doing almost all of the fighting in Afghanistan and Iraq. The technology-rich Air Force and Navy received over 54 percent of the funding. In late 2008, even in the midst of two major ground wars, congressional leaders and Pentagon security “experts” were still talking about cutting, in future budgets, the ground forces in favor of wonder-weapon technology. Bing West, a leading American military commentator, even claimed that, as of 2006, the American armed forces contained more combat aircraft than infantry squads, “and more combat pilots than squad leaders.” This in spite of the fact that, based on intelligence intercepts, insurgents in Iraq feared American infantry soldiers much more than American technology. One result of this misappropriation of resources was the sad spectacle of overstretched, overworked ground troops going into combat in Iraq without adequate personal armor or weapons.
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I want to state quite clearly that I am
not
arguing, in some sort of reactionary, antediluvian way, that modern technology, cutting-edge machines, firepower, sea power, and air power are unimportant for national security. All of these things are of tremendous importance. No serious person could possibly argue that the United States would have won World War II and prevailed in the Cold War without a preeminent navy and air force, not to mention a qualitative edge in weaponry, automation, engineering, economic largesse, communications, and supply. No rational individual would ever claim that there is no need for a navy or an air force, so why does anyone, for even a moment, confer any semblance of legitimacy on the view that ground combat forces are obsolete, especially when history proves that notion so absolutely wrong? It should be obvious to everyone that air, sea, and ground power are all vital. Indeed, Americans wage war most effectively when the services cooperate and fight as a combined arms team.

So, to be absolutely clear, I am not howling at the rise of the technological moon, pining away for a preindustrial time when small, well-drilled groups of light infantrymen decided the fate of empires. I am simply saying that, throughout modern history, no matter how advanced weaponry has become, the foot soldier has always been the leading actor on the stage of warfare. Further, I am contending that the sheer impressive power of techno-war leads to an American temptation to over-rely on air power and sea power at the expense of ground combat power. The problem is not the emphasis on technology. The issue is simply too much of a very good thing, to the exclusion of what is truly vital, at least if we are to consider actual history, not just theory. Embracing an expensive new brand of techno-war while impoverishing land forces is foolish and self-defeating, but it is too often the American way of war. Time and again since World War II, American leaders have had to relearn one of history’s most obvious lessons—
wars are won on the ground, usually by small groups of fighters, who require considerable logistical, firepower, and popular support
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The question, then, is who supports whom. Modern American military strategists too often have fallen under the sway of the erroneous idea that ground forces only exist to support air forces or navies. That is exactly backward.
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In 1950, Bruce Palmer, one of the leading Army intellectuals of the post-World War II era, wrote with succinct, prescient simplicity: “Man himself has always been the decisive factor in combat. Despite the devastating power of modern weapons, there are today no valid reasons to doubt the continued decisive character of the infantryman’s role in battle. All indications are that the infantry will decide the issue in the next war as they did in the last.”
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Subsequent history proved him exactly right. Since World War II, nearly every American conflict has been decided on the ground, Kosovo being the lone, and debatable, exception. Even in the Gulf War, with the impressive, and devastating, performance of coalition air forces, the ground army had to carry out the actual job of pushing Saddam’s armies out of Kuwait. So, at the risk of belaboring the point, we must consider not the theoretical but what has actually happened in recent wars. I realize that just because events unfolded one way in the past does not guarantee they will happen the same way in the future. That is quite true. But surely the patterns of past events indicate some level of probability that those same patterns will hold true in the future. If ground soldiers were of paramount importance in every previous conflict, isn’t it reasonable to assume that they will remain important in any future war? After all, human beings are terrestrial creatures. They live on land, not in the air or sea. Doesn’t this simple fact indicate a strong likelihood that land is the main arena of decision in war?

The trouble is that wonder-weapons and techno-vangelism push all the right buttons in American culture. Wonder-weapons are good business for defense contractors. They are career makers for field-grade military procurement officers. They appeal to the American public’s fascination with high-tech gizmos (if you doubt that, take a look at the latest line of video war games, cell phones, or PalmPilots, and then get back to me). For Washington politicians, wonder-weapons hold an irresistible lure, in much the same way a brand-new casino or a full slate of NFL games hypnotizes an inveterate gambler.

For our friendly neighborhood congressman or senator, the latest super-ship, guided missile, or new-generation heavy bomber promises some very alluring prospects. They offer standoff weaponry that can supposedly protect the American people at home, as well as inflict surgical destruction on any enemy overseas, and they can do these wonderful things without requiring constituents to do much more than raise their television remotes for a collective cheer. More than anything, expensive new weapons systems offer precision war—desensitized, tidy, and impersonal—while risking the lives of, at most, only a few technical professionals who have, after all, signed up for this kind of thing. Best of all, for our national leaders in Congress and the White House, this version of techno-war is politically safe, negating the kind of soul-searching debates that naturally flow from the employment of ground troops. Of course, there is also the delightful prospect that said weapons system could be built in our congressman’s district or our senator’s state, creating local jobs. Needless to say, compared with the glitzy allure of the latest high-tech weaponry, there is little glamour (and usually not as much profit) for contractors and government officials alike in churning out rifles, machine guns, boots, and bullets for infantrymen. So priority often goes to the big-ticket stuff. I will readily concede that this mind-set has, in its own muddled way, somewhat enhanced American national security by making the United States the unchallenged world leader in military technology. However, the cost of this has been too great, and not just in dollars. The price of America’s fascination with new age warfare is a fundamental misunderstanding of what war is and how best to prepare for it.

I will illustrate my point with one cautionary example of this misplaced thinking—namely, the planning for the Iraq War. Donald Rumsfeld’s Department of Defense disregarded Army troop level recommendations and launched the invasion of Iraq without adequate manpower or planning for the ambitious mission of destroying Saddam Hussein’s regime, occupying the country, and forging a democratic future. Rumsfeld and his partners mistakenly believed that overwhelmingly superior technology, “shock and awe” weaponry, and mobility would win this war, not ground soldiers securing terrain and people, especially in Iraq’s many cities. Moreover, they failed to grasp that the effectiveness of technology and firepower is substantially diminished in urban areas, especially in the information age, when the killing of innocents by one errant bomb can cause a strategic setback. When one considers that, at the current rate of global urban growth, over two-thirds of the world’s population will live in urban areas by 2050, this would seem to be an important point.

Alas, Rumsfeld’s retinue simply figured, or hoped, that they would not have to fight in cities. They were dead wrong. In Iraq, the cities turned into the main arena of contention. Like many Americans, the Iraq War planners made the mistake of believing that, in war, technology trumps the human element rather than the other way around. They shrank from the fundamental reality that war is largely a contest of
human will
. It is also inherently ugly, vulgar, and destructive. Nor is this ever likely to change. When they dismissed the importance of these kinds of uncomfortable subjective realities that did not fit onto their spreadsheets, the terrible consequence was, of course, post-Hussein chaos, a pervasive insurgency, and a protracted, blood-soaked war.
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Humanity’s Fatal Flaw

Humanity has a fatal flaw and it will probably never go away. That flaw is the propensity to make war. I offer no explanation as to why humans have this terrible flaw. Perhaps a psychologist could attempt to forge such an explanation. As a historian, I can simply state the fact that wars have marred the entire span of human history. They continue to do so today. There is no reason to believe that the future will be any different. In fact, one could argue that war has been the most powerful causative force in human history. At times war can act as a remarkably constructive force for humanity (the defeat of Nazi Germany leaps readily to mind).

Even so, war is like disease—a sad, immutable reality that is an inherent aspect of our troubled world. To ignore this reality and wish it might all go away is foolish in the extreme, quite similar to a cancer patient refusing treatment in the vain hope that the disease will disappear. It is far better to understand it and master it, much as doctors seek to triumph over a deadly disease. Only when we understand the true nature of war can we hope to prevent it. The nature of war is waste, destruction, barbarity, human anguish, depravity, and ultimate tragedy, not video monitors, joysticks, push buttons, and expensive gadgets. War cannot be sanitized or transformed, no matter how hard techno-warriors try to change it, from what it really is. War is an ugly beast that cannot be made to look nice through cosmetic surgery. War destroys youth. It destroys infrastructure. It destroys hopes and dreams. In its most common form, it is fought by small groups of frightened human beings (usually men), on the ground, in almost intimate fashion. Generally, war entails killing, the most taboo yet strangely all too common of human behaviors.
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Citizens of a free society must understand all of this. We cannot afford the luxury of turning our eyes from these realities, any more than a health care professional can afford to be squeamish at the sight of blood. For if we succumb to the belief that war is simply a bloodless technological problem, to be dealt with at a safe distance, employing only machines and new-generation weapons, we will continue to court disaster.

In this book, I hope to make two major points. The first has to do with the importance of land power. In the late nineteenth century, Alfred Thayer Mahan, an American naval officer, wrote a significant book called
The Influence of Sea Power Upon History, 1660-1783
. Basically, Mahan argued that sea power equated to national power. The Royal Navy was his prime example, but he also clearly implied that the United States must follow the same path, especially through the construction of battleships. Mahan made his case by describing a litany of key naval battles. His argument for the importance of seaborne commerce, as protected by naval power, is indisputable.