The True Path to Victory

Lessons of Desert Storm

excerpts from the book

Rogue States and Nuclear Outlaws

America's search for a new foreign policy

by Michael Klare

Hill and Wang Publishers

With the successful conclusion of Operation Desert Storm, U.S. military leaders had achieved their most important post-Cold War strategic objective: convincing Congress and the American people of the need to prepare for a succession of regional encounters with Iraq-like powers in vital areas of the Third World. Whatever doubts had existed on this point before August 1990 were swept away by the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait and the subsequent conflict in the Gulf. Now, senior military officials embarked on a new campaign to convince Congress and the public that the Pentagon's preferred manner of fighting such wars-that employed in the Gulf conflict-should -' be embedded permanently in American military doctrine. To this end, the Department of Defense sought to define the "lessons" of Desert Storm-and, thereby, to determine how U.S. forces would be trained and equipped for the wars of the future...

***

Beyond Desert Storm: The "Post-Industrial Battlefield"

Even while Pentagon officials were publicizing their chosen lessons of Desert Storm, other military strategists were beginning to look beyond the present and to develop plans for the U.S. war machine of the twenty-first century. Numerous study groups were set up by the armed services to facilitate these endeavors, and many think-tanks and research organizations launched similar efforts. These all sought to draw on the Gulf War experience to construct plausible images of the future battlefield.

These projects covered a wide range of subjects, from specific military-technical problems to major doctrinal issues, but all shared the desire to capitalize on the achievements of Desert Storm and maximize U.S. advantages in technology, air power, weaponry, and mobility-what Cheney dubbed the "military-technological revolution" in warfare. Indeed, there appeared to be a semi-conscious effort to ignore the various deficiencies exposed in the Gulf, and to enter a new realm of machine-driven battle in which air power, guided missiles, and technology would reign supreme.

A major focus for such efforts was the modernization of the Army's Air-Land Battle Doctrine (ABD), the reigning combat doctrine of the 1980s and early 1990s. Originally designed for warfare against Warsaw Pact forces in Europe, ABD called for U.S. forces to conduct rapid counterattacks against the enemy's flanks and weak spots, along with "deep strikes" by aircraft and missiles against the enemy's rear-area installations. Although it had never been employed in Europe, the ABD concept was incorporated into plans for the ground offensive in Kuwait.

With the Cold War rapidly fading from memory, U.S. strategists have attempted to revise the Air-Land doctrine in light of the Persian Gulf experience. Air-Land Operations: A Concept for the Evolution of Air-Land Battle for the Strategic Army of the 1990s and Beyond, released by the U.S. Army's Training and Doctrine Command (TRADOC) on August 1, 1991, called for a more flexible version of ABD aimed at regional conflicts in the Third World. The key to success in such engagements, TRADOC affirmed, was to avoid traditional set-piece battles along a defined, continuous front line. Instead, battle commanders needed to acquire proficiency in "nonlinear operations"-combat operations conducted simultaneously at several disconnected locations at both front and rear. As with Desert Storm, such operations were said to involve rapid flanking maneuvers, air-mobile assaults on rear-area objectives, and air and missile attacks against the enemy's key "centers of gravity"-command centers, communications nodes, air defense radars, and so on.

These principles were further developed in the 1993 version of the Army's Field Manual 100-5, Operations, described as the first full-scale revision of Army combat policy since the end of the Cold War. "The 1993 doctrine reflects Army thinking in a new, strategic era," the manual's introduction affirmed. "It is truly doctrine for the full dimensions of the battlefield in a force-projection environment."

Here, too, the emphasis was on fast-paced, hard-hitting offensive operations that would engage enemy forces on all sectors of the battlefield-front, flanks, and rear. Drawing heavily on the lessons of Desert Storm, the manual instructed American commanders to employ surprise flanking maneuvers, sudden shifts of direction, nighttime operations, and rear-area assaults in order to keep enemy forces off balance and prevent them from mounting any counterattacks. "Several dynamic characteristics apply to offensive operations," the manual notes, "initiative on the part of subordinate commanders, rapid shifts in the main effort to take advantage of opportunities, momentum and tempo, and the deepest, most rapid and simultaneous destruction of enemy defenses possible."

While these two documents did not constitute a fully developed, coherent theory of war, it was apparent that American military thinkers were beginning to construct a new concept or style of warfare, one that bore as little relation to the attrition-oriented battles of World Wars I and II as those did to the infantry-and-cavalry battles of the pre-industrial era. They were seeking to meld the global reach of modern air and space systems, the high-precision destructiveness of advanced conventional weapons, and the speed of modern communications into a powerful, lightning-fast war machine capable of quickly defeating any military forces not so blessed with modern technology.

To characterize this new combat environment, U.S. strategists have coined the phrase ~ post-industrial battlefield." This term, says Lieutenant Colonel David F. Melcher of the Army staff, can be used "to describe the characteristics of warfare [found in] the modern environment in which we will fight-increased precision and firepower across expanded dimensions of the battlefield, increased speed and tempo, the ability to see the enemy anytime, anywhere, and to take the battle to him." On such a battlefield, there will be no "front lines" as in earlier wars; rather, the fighting will take place in disconnected encounters all across the battle zone and in the airspace above it, and in the 'cyberspace" of electronic warfare, high-tech surveillance, and instantaneous communications.

On such a battlefield, information technology, whether provided by space-based surveillance systems, airborne reconnaissance planes, electronic listening devices, or computerized command centers, will prove more decisive in battle than purely "industrial" assets such as tanks, mortars, and artillery pieces. By tracking enemy forces at all times of the day and night and guiding bombs and missiles to the enemy s most sensitive and vulnerable facilities, information systems will determine the tempo, location, and outcome of warfare. As suggested by Colonel James McDonough of the Army, "Information is the lifeblood of modern war, just as fuel was the lifeblood of war of movement and just as munitions and gunpowder were the lifeblood of the Boer War or World War I."

Such images have obvious attractions for the military in that they highlight American advantages in firepower and technology, while limiting the risk to soldiers on the battlefield. In a sense, the "postindustrial battlefield" represents a distillation of all the lessons the Pentagon would like to extract from Desert Storm, while excluding all those it would prefer to avoid. There are no politics on the postindustrial battlefield, no requirement for troops to remain on the ground for more than a few days at a time, no impassioned ethnic warriors who must be fought face-to-face and house-to-house; instead, there are only symbolic representations of enemy units on a screen, to be "zapped" by self-aiming, standoff weapons fired by distant operatives who never witness the bloody aftereffects of their actions.

Will such battlefields ever materialize? Nothing that has occurred since the Persian Gulf conflict would lead anyone to assume so. This has not, however, stopped the Defense Department from pursuing a strategic posture based on the assumption that American forces will be required to fight an endless series of Desert Storm-like encounters. By proceeding in this fashion, Pentagon leaders justify the maintenance of a large, multifaceted military establishment and continued-or even elevated-funding for a wide variety of high-tech weapons on the order of those employed in the Gulf. Their paramount task, and their greatest success, has been to persuade Congress and the American people of the validity of this assumption.

Rogue States ...

Authors and Books

Foreign Policy watch