Previous IFPA-Fletcher Conferences

The 33rd IFPA-Fletcher Conference
on
National Security Strategy and Policy

October 16-17, 2002
The Ronald Reagan Building and International Trade Center
Washington, D.C.

Transcript Session 1:

Asymmetric Threats and the Changing Face of Warfare
Address by Dr. Richard Shultz, Director, International Security Studies Program, and Professor of International Politics, The Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy, Tufts University

Pfaltzgraff: So it is with great pleasure that I introduce Professor Shultz. He is the author of the Secret War Against Hanoi, published in 1999. He is Director of the International Securities Studies Program at the Fletcher School and he is my closest colleague and friend at the Fletcher School. So, Dick, welcome.

Shultz: Thank you, Bob, for that nice introduction. Could I have the PowerPoint? So what I want to talk about today is asymmetric threats, terrorism, and the changing face of war. And what I want to do is first look back for a few moments on how we assessed terrorism before 9/11. And here are the kinds of questions that typically were asked. What is terrorism? Is it war? Is it violence? Is it crime? What is it? What are the trends?

Who are the terrorists and what are their objectives? How do terrorists organize? Do they cooperate among themselves? Are there linkages among terrorist groups? Do states sponsor terrorism? And then, finally, how important is sanctuary? And generally these are the kinds of questions that were asked by specialists and analysts both in government and out. You find them in the estimates on terrorism, some of the NIEs and so on.

Now, here are the answers to those questions pre-9/11. First of all terrorism was not a Category One national security issue and it was not a form of warfare. And it was not a form of warfare because it did not resemble war, at least as we know it, as we study it, as we’ve practiced it. Terrorism did not fit a war paradigm. It fit more a judicial, criminal, legal paradigm. In terms of trends, terrorist incidents were down, but they were more lethal, and the U.s. was the target.

Terrorist use of WMD, most thought had low probability. In fact in some of things, if you look back on it, this WMD issue was really seen as a canard not to be taken too seriously. The ideology of terrorist organizations, that was increasingly religious based, and this made terrorist operations more violent and indiscriminant. Organizationally, terrorist groups were changing from hierarchical and professional to less cohesive and more amorphous.

The assessments of the World Trade Center tended to be this was a not a cohesive and certainly not an operation in the way that Steve Emerson just described it, just the opposite. The ranks of professional terrorists were now joined by amateurs and, in fact, terrorism is becoming more of an amateur enterprise. There was no meaningful Internet-- There were no meaningful international terrorist linkages because of splits among terrorist groups. National, ethnic, religious fault lines were too different to make them cooperate.

For example, you can see in old estimates that the idea the Shiite and Suni(?) would ever work together was not really plausible. State support was down said this analysis. There was non-state assistance emerging. But what that really meant and who was involved in that was unclear. Now, during this time, there were a few, what I would call strategic iconoclasts, individuals who, at the time this view of terrorism was the mainstream argument, there was a small group that had an alternative point of view on this.

It is often known as fourth generation warfare, an alternative perspective. And in 1990 a fellow named Martin Van Creveld published a book, Transformation of War and you can see his key argument up there. It may go a little bit too far in that he thinks states no longer are going to fight one another. But he argued that as war between states exits through one side of history’s revolving door, at least it is not going to be as prevalent.

Low intensity conflict among different organizations will enter through the other. National sovereignties are being undermined by organizations. I put in there non-state actors that refuse to recognize the states’ monopoly over armed violence. Now Van Creveld, when he made this argument was, frankly, considered far out, too far out to be taken seriously except by the Marine Corps, ironically, who gave him the Oppenheimer Chair for War Fighting Strategy at Quantico and thought he had something to say.

Some analysts who agreed with Van Creveld proposed that war in the post-modern era would take a pre-modern form. This is kind of Ralph Peters and Bob Kaplan and so on: war is going to return to primitive warfare. Others, and I think who were more on the mark, others wanted to know how non-state actors, who were in the midst of their, and terrorists, who were in the midst of their own transformation-- And I would propose that in the 1990s, groups like Al Qaeda carried out a transformation in the way they thought about the things I have on the slide, how they thought about transnational globalism.

What’s globalism mean for their organization? Globalism affects everyone, how does it affect them? How did they think about asymmetrical and unconventional operations, network based organizations and information technology. And there were a handful of people who were working fourth generation warfare in this direction. Some of them were in Paul Wilkinson’s program over at St. Andrew’s. Out at the Naval post-graduate school you had John Arquilla and company and, of course, Spinney and Boyd.

And here is what they thought about war. This was their take on it. “Warfare in the future will be highly irregular, unconventional and decentralized in approach. Unconventional operations will be employed to bypass superior military power of nation-states, to attack and exploit political, economic, population and symbolic targets. Both the organization and operations of fourth generation of warriors will be masked by deception, denial, stealth, and related techniques of intelligence state craft.”

“Terrorist organizations and operations will be profoundly affected by information age technologies, which will provide these non-state actors with global reach. Modern communications and transportation technologies will have a profound impact on this new battlefront. There will be no fronts and no distinctions between civilian and military targets. Laws and conventions of war will not constrain terrorists and their state sponsors from seeking innovative means, to include WMD, to attack non-military targets and inflict terrible carnage.”

“Fourth generation warriors, frequently in the name of religion, will be remorseless enemies for the states they challenge. Their operations will be marked by unlimited violence, unencumbered by compassion.”

Now, if we take these two points of view, if you will, the fourth generation argument and how terrorism was assessed pre-9/11, you know, it seems like the iconoclast had it more right. And if we had time, we could go down and look at, describe the global network that Al Qaeda created. Steve Emerson talked about it some. Al Qaeda is a globally networked organization. It is not hierarchical. It reflects the impact of globalism on organization, communication, and operations.

Its multi-national alliance of Islamic extremists-- In terms of linkage, for example, it’s interesting to look at who all are affiliated with Al Qaeda. And I put them into the following categories. There are terrorist groups fighting regimes led by Muslim rulers that they believe to be violating Islamic principles and who are in bed with the west, Egypt is an example, Algeria is an example.

Al Qaeda has national level affiliates that are fighting regime seen as repressing Muslims, India and Indonesia. Al Qaeda has affiliates that are groups fighting major conflicts to establish Islamic states, Chechens and Palestinians. And, of course, Al Qaeda has Baba(?). So, if we filled all this in we would see that in fact the way fourth generation warfare theorists argued war was changing organizationally, that is Al Qaeda.

If we looked at how Al Qaeda thinks about operations, and that would include targeting, weapons, technology, WMD, strategy, it looks a lot like what Van Creveld and others were talking about. Indeed Al Qaeda is probably the quintessential practitioner of fourth generation warfare. And, therefore, it would seem that this has real implications for American national security policy.

Now Bob spoke about some of the President’s speeches. I read them all and I think they are very interesting speeches. One needs to pay attention to them. They are a window into how the President sees the implications of 9/11 for national security policy. And I frankly would call your attention of the West Point of the speech. The West Point Speech was an interesting one. And I just picked a few things out of it. First of all, the theme-- The President told the cadets that day that you graduate from the Academy in a time of war, our war on terror has only begun.

And then he added, on the nature of war, he said, “We face a threat with no precedent. The gravest danger lies at the perilous crossroads of radicalism and technology.” And as he went on to describe this threat, it looks a lot like-- He describes it in fourth generation terms. And then he tells us that our cold war strategic concepts, deterrence and containment, are still necessary, he is not throwing them out, but they are not sufficient.

“New threats require new thinking. Deterrents and containment are inherently defensive,” says the President. “The war will not be won on the defensive. We must take the battle to the enemy.” And then he adds, “The transformation is essential. Our security will require transforming the military. It must be ready for pre-emptive action.” And, of course, that is the phrase that has gotten all of the attention.

I would propose that, in part, the Bush doctrine, the emerging Bush doctrine, and that is what it is, it is the Bush doctrine, is premised on the concept of pre-emption. Not alone, but that is a key aspect of it. And here is the way I interpret that. An actual armed attack is not a necessary pre-condition for using force. “We will use force to pre-empt terrorists in states that harbor, finance, train, or equip, the agents of terror.” Those are the President’s words.

Twenty-first century security requirements are different than during the cold war. And here are some of the things that are new. Self-help is ultimately the only realistic alternative. Intelligence can provide evidence of state or group’s hostile intentions. WMD availability to terrorists and hostile regimes has to be taken seriously, as Bob said. And the global reach of terrorists and their state supporters is real.

Therefore, here is the criteria for pre-emption. And adversary has attacked the U.S. in the past and/or has a manifest intent to do so in the future. That adversary is actively planning operations to attack. And that adversary seeks to magnify the lethality of the attack. As Steve said, the lethality goes up with the attacks. To wait seems to only increase the danger.

Now in the National Security Strategy, which just came out, this concept seems to be central. And it is very interesting, by the way, to look at some of the remarks by the Secretary of the Defense, also a very interesting person to follow. There appears to be emerging Rumsfeld’s rule for the use of force. And they are a revision of the Weinberger rules and the PAL(?) Doctrine. There is a lot of attention to the issue of overwhelming force in the discussion that has been in the papers.

It seems to me a more key difference is over the rule of last resort, because if you look in the old Weinberger Doctrine, it talks about military force as a last resort. But Rumsfeld and the President in the National Security Strategy all suggest that because of the nature of war today, last resort may not be the best thing to do. Now this has obvious implications for the transformation of the military and, in fact, for the Marine Corps.

And I would just call everyone’s attention to page 29 of the new National Security Strategy on transformation, which talks about Afghanistan and then it says the following: “We must prepare for more such deployments by developing assets such as,” and they talk about some of those assets. And they include “transport(?), maneuver and expeditionary forces” “This broad portfolio of military capabilities must allow us to have access to distant theatres.”

So it seems to me that if you work your way back through this, that there’s some significant developments in terms of military transformation that grows out of this National Security Strategy for the Marine Corps and for other forces and most importantly, I think, special operations forces.

Thank you.