[Politics] Militarized Pacifism
Having established that a nation owes a moral benefit of the doubt to its neighbors, foreign policy becomes an interesting matter. On the one hand, that benefit of the doubt reduces the heightened expectation of imminent attack that one suffers from in the theoretical state of nature. On the other hand, however, there is a strong economic incentive to being the only bad egg in the basket of otherwise common-sense heeding individuals. (This is, in fact the circumstance that creates the expectation of imminent attack in the SofN!)
So then, a nation's foreign policy must keep a nation safe and secure - but it also must not provoke other nations into endangering that security or contribute to an atmosphere wherein all parties expect to be attacked by all other parties immediately.
The decision to attack a nation is either moralistic, or econonmic in nature. Largely the decision is economic in nature, such as the descision for the US to invade Iraq. The determination of the strategists of one nation that objectives important to their nation are achievable at an acceptable cost is the only reason given for the bulk of wars. Occasionally, however, the reasons for war are moralistic, such as for Hitler, or your run-of-the-mill Islamic terrorist group. That is, they have chosen war as a means of moral expression, rather than purely for economic gain. The problem with this second type is that while you can deterr the first type by raising the costs of military action until they outweigh the benefit - the right thing, as moralists will believe, is the right thing, at any price. Which means economic deterrance will not dissuade moralistic military action.
On the other hand, deterrence has many forms. The object of a rational nation is to increase peace. Peace is best increased by not contributing to war. Many assume that this means that the peaceful nation is a nation disarmed of all weapons so that it may not pose a threat to anyone. The rationale goes that such a nation poses no threat to anyone, and so no one will fear it sufficiently to attack it. In a world of hugs and puppies, this would be sufficient. However, the problem of the defenseless nation is that it offers zero economic expense to aggressors who wish to exploit it's potential economic gains. The economic descision to attack is only offset by the possibility that every single one of their neighbors will also see the oppourtunity and seize upon it.
Even though a rational nation would still not invade its defenseless neighbor, one cannot expect every nation to be rational. This alone establishes the requirement for a military to defend the nation against all comers. The question, however, in foreign policy is often 'How large should our military be?' According to the Powell Doctrine, our military should be tremendous, large enough to overwhelm any other nation in the world such that no one has even a shred of ability to threaten us. This doctrine is highly successful as a military strategy, but largely irrelevant from a foreign policy standpoint as the expenses such a military incurrs are equally tremendous, and such expense is a waste if one is not in a situation where attack is imminent.
The Rumsfeld Doctrine, by comparison focuses on smaller forces that are hinged on surgical operations - particularly using air power to put pressure on specific objectives. This makes a military less expensive, but somewhat susceptible to the Powell Doctrine. On the surface it looks like the beginnings of a rock-paper-scisors relationship, but there are other ways to reduce the costs of maintaining a military than the Rumsfeld Doctrine chooses to emphasize.
Network-Centric Warfare offers one alternative, and has worked well with the Rumsfeld Doctrine. The downside is that this creates a 'key man' scenario, where if the technology were interrupted somehow, the entire military force would be paralyzed. Ironically, NCW is vulnerable to the Rumsfeld Doctrine, and largely defeats the cumbersome Powell Doctrine. RPS is now complete...
The correct development of military force, therefore, must use the minimum size of unit to accomplish objectives at the lowest possible cost (including replacement costs!). Not one of these doctrines achieves this. The Powell Doctrine gets the job done well, but costs exorbatant amounts of resources. The Rumsfeld Doctrine uses very expensive hardware to achieve objectives with a minimum of force size, but ultimately runs into follow-through problems such as are being experienced in Iraq, and NCW achieves all of the requirments, but without actually being as secure as it looks on paper. A fourth, trump-doctrine is needed that can respond to any of these Doctrines as well as being relatively inexpensive to maintain, and also flexible enough to handle any mission.
Ironically, ever since the industrial revolution, warfare has become a matter of 'getting there the firstest with the mostest.' Prior to the firearm, excellence in war was a matter of highly trained generals and men, rather than large forces. (Though large numbers of highly trained men was best, of course.) A knight in armor could largely ignore any number of armed peasants unless they had some sort of maneuvering advantage over him. His armor made him nearly unkillable, and as long as he was skillful, even other knights could not stop him. In Japan, the supremacy of Samurai in battle followed similar lines. The warrior that was most skilled had the least to fear. But a well skilled Samurai costs the same to feed as a peasant spearman.
Excellence-Centric Warfare, as I like to call it, focuses on the training of individual soldiers. It is a 'special-forces' heavy doctrine. Conventionally, special forces and commandos are used conservatively as they are expensive to train, and are usually drawn from very veteran ranks. Israel, however, has demonstrated that commandos have a very useful purpose in conventional battle formations where they can be astoundingly successful. Furthermore, well trained soldiers, of the highest discipline, are more likely to make plans given to them by their superiors successful on the field. While Net-centric warfare is useful at increasing the effectiveness of force, well trained, highly disciplined troops can do the same thing. Together the combination would be unstoppable, but even if the enemy exploited the NCW weakness, there would still be good, old savoir-faire for the military to fall back upon. An attitude shift away from the conventional means of breaking down a soldier's identity and erasing their individuality to create a government-issue military part that happens to be shaped like a citizen, and towards the embracing of a warrior-culture where supremacy of skill, temperence, and understanding are paramount creates a very different kind of soldier.
With such a well tempered sword, the nation may maintain a smaller force of extraordinarily potent warriors who may be entrusted with a wide variety of missions and objectives. They are, once raised, cheaper to maintain than a force of equal potency because their strength is in the individual soldiers, rather than in difficult-to-maintain hardware. The replacement cost of such soldiers is high, but so is the replacement cost of Rumsfeld's aircraft and missiles, or Powell's massed formations, or NCW's satellite networks. The cost reduction comes in the numbers needed and the supplies therefore.
With such a force, a nation may enjoy security in its tactical and strategic flexibility. Because they can quickly adapt to any attack, they needn't fear an enemy's ability to cause them harm - giving them the luxury of being generous and peaceful. When an enemy does attack, the military is potent enough to inflict grievous harm to that enemy, creating a solid economic deterrent against such an attack. When a moralistic enemy is not deterred, the military 'has teeth' as they say. It is not a defenseless nation, and because the military does not rely on specific hardware or methods, it is flexible enough to handle a moralistic nation, such as Hitler's Germany, or a smaller enemy such as Al Qaeda - which requires a very delicate approach.
Awareness is the key to ECW. The cost savings on the military are partially offset by the greater expense in Intelligence. Such a nation need not wait for the first punch to be thrown. The notion of pre-emptively disarming a threat is a sound principle, but not when the pre-emptive action is on a grand scale and highly destructive to another nation. Instead, intelligence and espionage should be used to detect, monitor, and isolate nations which have designs on attack, and such designs should be prepared for and foiled by maneuver, rather than military force. If an enemy intends to assail a beach and invade - prepare that beach to receive them. Pre-emptive defense, I call this. This strategy is interceptive, rather than aggressive. The risk to one's own nation is greater, but the costs are lower, and the contribution to global fear of attack is far, far less. This is the responsible way to conduct war.
Against non-national agencies, such as terrorist cells and so forth, intelligence and espionage assets can analyze, infiltrate, isolate, or actively hunt out rogue elements of a foriegn nation and should do so collaberatively with that nation's legal agencies to create a useful relationship between the nations. Our spies may hunt for Al Qaeda operatives in, say, Egypt. Where we find them, we betray them to the Egyptian police who may take initiative in arresting, trying, and convicting them. Should the setting be not Egypt, but Sudan, where we can expect no co-operation from the Sudanese agencies, we take matters into our own hands, engaging in small surgical operations and raids against Al Qaeda, rather than pre-emptively toppling all of Sudan and miring ourselves down.
Finally, the dialogue should always be one of co-operation, good will, and patience. In this way, people see the motivation behind our military actions as being only that which we deem necessary to prevent violence from happening, while preserving as much of the civillians around whom we operate as possible. We accept certain risks of attack in order to provide the necessary 'benefit of the doubt' to our neighbors so that they need not fear us unless they have designs against us. This type of nation is much more approachable than the world-wide bully who invades who so ever they feel they can, simply because they want to - and then is rude and abraisve to the international community at every turn.
The African proverb has it best, "Speak softly, and carry a large stick." While simplistic, the philosophy of Militarized Pacifism embraces this principle. By providing the promise of substantial retaliation, a nation creates a strong disincentive to other nations' designs towards violence against them. Cultivating a reputation of being fair and wise in dealings, and amiable to peace in general lays the foundation for the soft power that is far preferable.
There is however a grey area in this policy regarding espionage. In order to ensure invincibility in defense, readiness and awareness are critical. Additionally, threats to a nation protected by the threat of hard power remains vulnerable to nonconventional forces, terrorists, and other sabotage. To counter these risks, a significant portion of the defense budget should be spent on intelligence gathering, analysis, and synthesis such that a nation's commanders have the information and perspective they need to make descisions on how to protect the country. The quality of this information must be the prime concern, not its cost. A smaller soldiery will suffice if the intelligence is of superior quality.
Miltary actions are to be engaged in surgically, using exactly the minimum amount of force required to achieve all objectives with minimum losses. The key to such operations lies in a small, highly trained, exceptionally equipped force whose missions are based upon only the best intelligence available.
A nation so protected has no need for pre-emptive warfare, the invasion of smaller nations, or to participate in an arms race with another. All of the expenses of such wars are far greater than the preventive expenses of the introspective, militarized pacifist nation.
So then, a nation's foreign policy must keep a nation safe and secure - but it also must not provoke other nations into endangering that security or contribute to an atmosphere wherein all parties expect to be attacked by all other parties immediately.
The decision to attack a nation is either moralistic, or econonmic in nature. Largely the decision is economic in nature, such as the descision for the US to invade Iraq. The determination of the strategists of one nation that objectives important to their nation are achievable at an acceptable cost is the only reason given for the bulk of wars. Occasionally, however, the reasons for war are moralistic, such as for Hitler, or your run-of-the-mill Islamic terrorist group. That is, they have chosen war as a means of moral expression, rather than purely for economic gain. The problem with this second type is that while you can deterr the first type by raising the costs of military action until they outweigh the benefit - the right thing, as moralists will believe, is the right thing, at any price. Which means economic deterrance will not dissuade moralistic military action.
On the other hand, deterrence has many forms. The object of a rational nation is to increase peace. Peace is best increased by not contributing to war. Many assume that this means that the peaceful nation is a nation disarmed of all weapons so that it may not pose a threat to anyone. The rationale goes that such a nation poses no threat to anyone, and so no one will fear it sufficiently to attack it. In a world of hugs and puppies, this would be sufficient. However, the problem of the defenseless nation is that it offers zero economic expense to aggressors who wish to exploit it's potential economic gains. The economic descision to attack is only offset by the possibility that every single one of their neighbors will also see the oppourtunity and seize upon it.
Even though a rational nation would still not invade its defenseless neighbor, one cannot expect every nation to be rational. This alone establishes the requirement for a military to defend the nation against all comers. The question, however, in foreign policy is often 'How large should our military be?' According to the Powell Doctrine, our military should be tremendous, large enough to overwhelm any other nation in the world such that no one has even a shred of ability to threaten us. This doctrine is highly successful as a military strategy, but largely irrelevant from a foreign policy standpoint as the expenses such a military incurrs are equally tremendous, and such expense is a waste if one is not in a situation where attack is imminent.
The Rumsfeld Doctrine, by comparison focuses on smaller forces that are hinged on surgical operations - particularly using air power to put pressure on specific objectives. This makes a military less expensive, but somewhat susceptible to the Powell Doctrine. On the surface it looks like the beginnings of a rock-paper-scisors relationship, but there are other ways to reduce the costs of maintaining a military than the Rumsfeld Doctrine chooses to emphasize.
Network-Centric Warfare offers one alternative, and has worked well with the Rumsfeld Doctrine. The downside is that this creates a 'key man' scenario, where if the technology were interrupted somehow, the entire military force would be paralyzed. Ironically, NCW is vulnerable to the Rumsfeld Doctrine, and largely defeats the cumbersome Powell Doctrine. RPS is now complete...
The correct development of military force, therefore, must use the minimum size of unit to accomplish objectives at the lowest possible cost (including replacement costs!). Not one of these doctrines achieves this. The Powell Doctrine gets the job done well, but costs exorbatant amounts of resources. The Rumsfeld Doctrine uses very expensive hardware to achieve objectives with a minimum of force size, but ultimately runs into follow-through problems such as are being experienced in Iraq, and NCW achieves all of the requirments, but without actually being as secure as it looks on paper. A fourth, trump-doctrine is needed that can respond to any of these Doctrines as well as being relatively inexpensive to maintain, and also flexible enough to handle any mission.
Ironically, ever since the industrial revolution, warfare has become a matter of 'getting there the firstest with the mostest.' Prior to the firearm, excellence in war was a matter of highly trained generals and men, rather than large forces. (Though large numbers of highly trained men was best, of course.) A knight in armor could largely ignore any number of armed peasants unless they had some sort of maneuvering advantage over him. His armor made him nearly unkillable, and as long as he was skillful, even other knights could not stop him. In Japan, the supremacy of Samurai in battle followed similar lines. The warrior that was most skilled had the least to fear. But a well skilled Samurai costs the same to feed as a peasant spearman.
Excellence-Centric Warfare, as I like to call it, focuses on the training of individual soldiers. It is a 'special-forces' heavy doctrine. Conventionally, special forces and commandos are used conservatively as they are expensive to train, and are usually drawn from very veteran ranks. Israel, however, has demonstrated that commandos have a very useful purpose in conventional battle formations where they can be astoundingly successful. Furthermore, well trained soldiers, of the highest discipline, are more likely to make plans given to them by their superiors successful on the field. While Net-centric warfare is useful at increasing the effectiveness of force, well trained, highly disciplined troops can do the same thing. Together the combination would be unstoppable, but even if the enemy exploited the NCW weakness, there would still be good, old savoir-faire for the military to fall back upon. An attitude shift away from the conventional means of breaking down a soldier's identity and erasing their individuality to create a government-issue military part that happens to be shaped like a citizen, and towards the embracing of a warrior-culture where supremacy of skill, temperence, and understanding are paramount creates a very different kind of soldier.
With such a well tempered sword, the nation may maintain a smaller force of extraordinarily potent warriors who may be entrusted with a wide variety of missions and objectives. They are, once raised, cheaper to maintain than a force of equal potency because their strength is in the individual soldiers, rather than in difficult-to-maintain hardware. The replacement cost of such soldiers is high, but so is the replacement cost of Rumsfeld's aircraft and missiles, or Powell's massed formations, or NCW's satellite networks. The cost reduction comes in the numbers needed and the supplies therefore.
With such a force, a nation may enjoy security in its tactical and strategic flexibility. Because they can quickly adapt to any attack, they needn't fear an enemy's ability to cause them harm - giving them the luxury of being generous and peaceful. When an enemy does attack, the military is potent enough to inflict grievous harm to that enemy, creating a solid economic deterrent against such an attack. When a moralistic enemy is not deterred, the military 'has teeth' as they say. It is not a defenseless nation, and because the military does not rely on specific hardware or methods, it is flexible enough to handle a moralistic nation, such as Hitler's Germany, or a smaller enemy such as Al Qaeda - which requires a very delicate approach.
Awareness is the key to ECW. The cost savings on the military are partially offset by the greater expense in Intelligence. Such a nation need not wait for the first punch to be thrown. The notion of pre-emptively disarming a threat is a sound principle, but not when the pre-emptive action is on a grand scale and highly destructive to another nation. Instead, intelligence and espionage should be used to detect, monitor, and isolate nations which have designs on attack, and such designs should be prepared for and foiled by maneuver, rather than military force. If an enemy intends to assail a beach and invade - prepare that beach to receive them. Pre-emptive defense, I call this. This strategy is interceptive, rather than aggressive. The risk to one's own nation is greater, but the costs are lower, and the contribution to global fear of attack is far, far less. This is the responsible way to conduct war.
Against non-national agencies, such as terrorist cells and so forth, intelligence and espionage assets can analyze, infiltrate, isolate, or actively hunt out rogue elements of a foriegn nation and should do so collaberatively with that nation's legal agencies to create a useful relationship between the nations. Our spies may hunt for Al Qaeda operatives in, say, Egypt. Where we find them, we betray them to the Egyptian police who may take initiative in arresting, trying, and convicting them. Should the setting be not Egypt, but Sudan, where we can expect no co-operation from the Sudanese agencies, we take matters into our own hands, engaging in small surgical operations and raids against Al Qaeda, rather than pre-emptively toppling all of Sudan and miring ourselves down.
Finally, the dialogue should always be one of co-operation, good will, and patience. In this way, people see the motivation behind our military actions as being only that which we deem necessary to prevent violence from happening, while preserving as much of the civillians around whom we operate as possible. We accept certain risks of attack in order to provide the necessary 'benefit of the doubt' to our neighbors so that they need not fear us unless they have designs against us. This type of nation is much more approachable than the world-wide bully who invades who so ever they feel they can, simply because they want to - and then is rude and abraisve to the international community at every turn.
The African proverb has it best, "Speak softly, and carry a large stick." While simplistic, the philosophy of Militarized Pacifism embraces this principle. By providing the promise of substantial retaliation, a nation creates a strong disincentive to other nations' designs towards violence against them. Cultivating a reputation of being fair and wise in dealings, and amiable to peace in general lays the foundation for the soft power that is far preferable.
There is however a grey area in this policy regarding espionage. In order to ensure invincibility in defense, readiness and awareness are critical. Additionally, threats to a nation protected by the threat of hard power remains vulnerable to nonconventional forces, terrorists, and other sabotage. To counter these risks, a significant portion of the defense budget should be spent on intelligence gathering, analysis, and synthesis such that a nation's commanders have the information and perspective they need to make descisions on how to protect the country. The quality of this information must be the prime concern, not its cost. A smaller soldiery will suffice if the intelligence is of superior quality.
Miltary actions are to be engaged in surgically, using exactly the minimum amount of force required to achieve all objectives with minimum losses. The key to such operations lies in a small, highly trained, exceptionally equipped force whose missions are based upon only the best intelligence available.
A nation so protected has no need for pre-emptive warfare, the invasion of smaller nations, or to participate in an arms race with another. All of the expenses of such wars are far greater than the preventive expenses of the introspective, militarized pacifist nation.