Volume 48, Number 4 of Survival, the Institute's quarterly journal, has been published.
IISS Members and subscribers can access Survival online by clicking
hereFor non-subscribers, a pay-per-view facility allows purchases of individual
Survival articles.
The charge for each article is £10/$18.
A Long War?
Michael Howard
When, in the immediate aftermath of the appalling events of 11 September 2001, President George W. Bush declared a ‘global war on terror’, a number of pundits were deeply unhappy. At least the Pentagon has adjusted its language and now defines the West’s predicament as ‘a long war’. This is better, but still problems remain: is it really a ‘war’, and if not, what is it? Who or what is it against? What is it about? How should it be conducted? Whatever we call the conflict, it is likely to be long. The use of armed force offers no short cuts, and unless used with skill and restraint it may do more harm than good. The length of its engagements, when they occur, will be measured, not in days, but in weeks or even months, and will seldom appear conclusive. It will be that most frustrating of conflicts, a war of attrition. Success, when it comes, will do so slowly and incrementally. The military may protest that this is not the kind of war that they joined up to fight, and taxpayers that they see little return for their money. But this is the only war we are likely to get: it is also the only kind of peace. Buy this article online
The Iraq Experiment and US National Security
Steven E. Miller
In the aftermath of the attacks on 11 September 2001, the Bush administration adopted an aggressive strategy designed to attack and eliminate a set of threats now understood to be large and urgent. The strategy championed three big ideas – offensive action, regime change and preventive war – that put the United States on the road to Baghdad and a fourth, democratisation, that increased Washington’s ambitions once it was there. Nearly four painful years later, many of the hopes that accompanied the preventive attack on Iraq have been dashed. Washington now lives with fresh reminders that even a supreme power is not omnipotent and cannot readily bend others to its will. But whatever happens in Iraq, the rogue state–terrorist–proliferation threat is not going to disappear anytime soon, the powerful impetus of 11 September will continue to cast a shadow over the US debate, and consequently the ideas championed by the Bush administration will remain on the agenda. Iraq raises serious questions about the costs and feasibility of these ideas but does not undercut their basic logic.
Buy this article online
Iraq, Liberal Wars and Illiberal Containment
Lawrence Freedman
The wars in Afghanistan and Iraq were liberal wars, in that they were justified as part of a campaign to prevent existential attacks on the Western way of life. But defensively, in terms of protecting liberal society, the Iraq War was not needed; offensively, in terms of extending liberal society, it has been a failure. The human costs have been high, especially in Iraqi lives but also coalition forces, and this has led to a rapid erosion of public support. The experience of Iraq may well result in a reluctance to engage in ‘offensive liberal wars’. An alternative course to a policy of active regime change and intervention is something akin to containment. The liberal case for containment is that it is preferable to an illiberal war and, more positively, it ultimately depends on the strength and durability of Western countries. The liberal case against containment is that biding time requires tolerating continuing injustice and tyranny. Containment also depends on allies who are not necessarily liberal in themselves but who happen to be on the target’s periphery. The risk here is of commitments to regimes which cause their own instability, from which it is harder to save them than from the threat of external aggression. Buy this article online
Break Point? Iraq and America’s Military Forces
Michael R. Gordon
In terms of its doctrine and training, the United States military has been transformed by the war in Iraq. The army, which is carrying the principal load among the military services, has embraced counter-insurgency as one of its primary missions. These changes reflect the military’s ability to adapt to the changing battlefield. They are intended not only to guide the ongoing operations in Iraq and Afghanistan, but also future operations in the ‘long war’ against violent Islamic extremists. The new emphasis on counter-insurgency, however, is largely disconnected from the Defense Department’s previously established spending priorities and personnel policy. The result is that American defence is in a state of strategic confusion. There are not enough forces to effectively carry out counter-insurgency operations in Iraq and Afghanistan while maintaining a strategic reserve for other threats. To fully exploit the long overdue emphasis on counterinsurgency, maintain sufficient forces for dealing with unanticipated contingencies and bring coherence to American defence strategy, the Pentagon needs to increase the United States’ ground forces. Buy this article online
Iran, Israel and the Politics of Terrorism
Ray Takeyh
After nearly three decades of constant change and reform, Iran’s hostility toward Israel is the most entrenched element of its foreign policy. The problem is that Tehran’s hostility has served both its ideological mandates and strategic calculations. There has never been sufficient incentive for the clerical oligarchs to abandon a policy whose costs in terms of US sanctions and criticism seemed bearable. Given the current consolidation of conservative power within Iran and the collapse of diplomatic efforts to ensure a viable Israeli–Palestinian peace, Iran’s policy is unlikely to change noticeably. Hizbullah’s apparent triumph only strengthens the hands of Iranian hardliners pressing for confrontation with the Jewish state. In the end, the best manner of extracting Iran from the Arab–Israeli arena is for the United States and the key Arab states to launch a concerted diplomatic effort to resolve the remaining differences between Israel and the Palestinian Authority. In the meantime, a determined effort to rebuild Lebanon and strengthen the central government in Beirut may in time diminish Hizbullah’s influence. Such a development would not just diminish Iran’s radicalism, but would remove a series of corrosive disputes that have done much to undermine the stability of the Middle East. Buy this article online
A Nuclear-armed North Korea: Accepting the ‘Unacceptable’?
Mitchell B. Reiss
Perhaps the least noted and most astonishing aspect of the entire diplomatic process involving North Korea during the past few years has been the almost complete inability of four of the world’s strongest military and economic powers – the United States, China, Russia and Japan, which include three nuclear weapons states and three members of the UN Security Council – to shape the strategic environment in Northeast Asia. They have proven thoroughly incapable of preventing an impoverished, dysfunctional country from consistently endangering the peace and stability of the world’s most economically dynamic region. This has been nothing less than a collective failure. Only when the other parties to the Six-Party Talks undertake a fundamental reassessment of the costs and benefits of their current policies will there be a chance to rein in, never mind reverse, Pyongyang’s nuclear-weapons programme. Buy this article online
Counter-insurgency Redux
David Kilcullen
Counter-insurgency is fashionable again: more has been written on it in the last four years than in the last four decades. This is heartening for those who were in the wilderness during the years when Western governments regarded counter-insurgency as a distraction, of interest only to historians. So it is no surprise that some have urged the re-discovery of classical, ‘proven’ counter-insurgency methods. But today’s insurgencies differ significantly – at the level of policy, strategy, operational art and tactical technique – from those of earlier eras. An enormous amount of classical counter-insurgency remains relevant. Indeed, counter-insurgency provides the ‘best fit’ framework for strategic problems in the ‘war on terror’. But much is new in counter-insurgency redux, possibly requiring fundamental re-appraisals of conventional wisdom. Buy this article online
The Problem of Uncertainty in Strategic Planning
Michael Fitzsimmons
Much has been made about the defining role of uncertainty in strategic planning since the end of the Cold War. For all of its importance, however, recognition of uncertainty poses a dilemma for strategists: in predicting the future, they are likely to be wrong; but in resisting prediction, they risk clouding the rational bases for making strategic choices. Overconfidence in prediction may lead to good preparation for the wrong future, but wholesale dismissal of prediction may lead a strategist to spread his resources too thinly. In pursuit of flexibility, he ends up well prepared for nothing. A natural compromise is to build strategies that are robust across multiple alternative future events but are still tailored to meet the challenges of the most likely future events. Recent US national security strategy has veered from this middle course and placed too much emphasis on the role of uncertainty. A more balanced approach would address a wide range of potential threats and security challenges, but would also incorporate explicit, transparent, probabilistic reasoning into planning processes. The main benefit of such an approach would not necessarily be more precise predictions of the future, but rather greater clarity and discipline applied to the difficult judgements about the future upon which strategy depends.
Buy this article online
