Factors of conflict in the early 21st century

Army, Jan 2003 by Leonhard, Robert R

Reading through any general military history of the world, you can see that scholars have categorized various time periods not just chronologically, but qualitatively. We think of 17th-century warfare as the period of the musket and pike, while the early 19th century was all about Napoleonic warfare. In ancient China, we associate the fifth through third centuries B.C. as the period of the warring states-a time in which warfare was dominated by conflict between similarly organized states. A decidedly different dynamic began to unfold over the next century as the first of many Mongoloid invaders, the Hsiang-nu, began to invade China. In place of symmetrical, ritualistic campaigns against another organized state, this latter threat pitted the steppe against the city. In a similar fashion, we tend to view periods of military history in terms of their qualitative distinctiveness.

What, then, will historians say of the early 21st century? Pundits and practitioners of modern warfare agree that things have changed significantly over the past several decades. The technological, cultural and political contexts of war are quite different from those of even 30 years ago. When future scholars look back on the early years of the 21st century how will they characterize military art and science? The purpose of this article is to suggest the dominant factors of early 21st century warfare from an American perspective. The key issue for these factors is whether each is truly an enduring characteristic of modem warfare, or simply a temporary anomaly. In my view, the following factors are likely to persist for the foreseeable future, but on this there is clearly room for debate.

In my book, Fighting by Minutes: Time and the Art of War, I suggested a model for thinking about frequency in war. Frequency is simply the rate at which events happen. In high-frequency warfare, individual events such as decisive maneuvers, battles and invasions happen very rapidly in succession. In low-frequency warfare, significant events are separated by long periods of relative inactivity.

The amplitude of conflict refers to the combat power associated with a given event. High-amplitude events are very destructive and significant. Low-amplitude events by themselves are not significant. Obviously, the detonation of a nuclear warhead is a high-amplitude event. Amplitude, however, does not depend simply on the yield of destructive power. A single assassin's bullet striking down an important political or religious leader can have far-reaching consequences and can thus be considered a high-amplitude event.

This simple metaphor for the power and tempo (amplitude and frequency) of conflict is useful for characterizing a given period of warfare. While any period can experience various degrees of frequency and amplitude, the period from 1914 through the end of the Cold War is best characterized as high-frequency, low-amplitude conflict. Warfare, both conventional and unconventional, tended to unfold in campaigns of predictable and relatively short duration. Many such campaigns together composed wars.

By way of contrast, early 21st-- century conflict will tend in the opposite direction. Conflict will be, with some exceptions, lowfrequency, high-amplitude affairs. There are many reasons for this, but the chief one is that American dominance in conventional fighting-on the seas, in the air and on the land-make such conflicts an unappealing option for our adversaries. Instead, crafty opponents are much more likely to prosecute unconventional campaigns that unfold over long periods of time. During any given period, such events will be few but will have great political, economic, cultural and societal impact (hence, high-amplitude).

The implications of a switch from high-frequency/low-- amplitude warfare to its converse, low-frequency/high-- amplitude warfare, are many. Force structure, doctrine, materiel and training must all adapt to the change. Armies that succeed in the new warfare will not be optimized for high-speed tactical momentum, but rather for operational and strategic mobility and adaptability. During the long periods of relative inactivity, armies will have to rely on robotics, surveillance systems and a close integration of intelligence operations.

Among the many brilliant thinkers who wrestled with Napoleonic warfare in the early 19th century, writers like Henry Lloyd, Adam Heinrich Dietrich von Bulow and Antoine Henri Jomini gave the Western world a construct for thinking about modern ground operations. Jomini's paradigm for modern warfare has continued as the norm down to the present. His constructs included the base of operations, from which an army drew supplies and reinforcements, and the objective, the (usually) geographical point that the attacking army must reach in order to be victorious. Between the base of operations and the objective stretched the line of operations along which the army had to advance, often fighting sequential engagements against the enemy's defending army. Finally, from the rear of the army back to the base of operations was the indispensable line of communications, along which supplies and reinforcements would flow.