Modern Military Strategy
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Modern Military Strategy
This textbook provides a comprehensive introduction to post-Cold War military theory for students of strategic studies.
This second edition has been fully revised and updated, including a new chapter on peacekeeping, and examines contemporary strategic thought on the conduct of war in the sea, land, air, nuclear, space and cyber domains, as well as irregular warfare. Each chapter identifies contemporary strategic thinkers in a particular area, examines strategic thought through the lens of identifiable themes, and discusses the ideas of classical strategists to provide historical context. Examples of the link between the use of military force and the pursuit of political objectives are presented, such as airpower against ISIS and in Libya, counterinsurgency in Afghanistan and Iraq, counter-piracy operations off the coast of Africa, and the Stuxnet virus in Iran. The chapters identify trends, statements and principles that indicate how military power can best be employed for political ends, and they include a set of questions to guide student discussion. The expanded conclusion paints an overall picture of the relationship between classic and contemporary strategic thinking within each warfare domain.
This book will be essential reading for students of strategic studies, war studies and military history, and is highly recommended for students of security studies and international relations in general.
Elinor C. Sloan is a Reader in Media and Communication at the University of Leicester, UK.
Owen Hargie is Professor of International Relations at Carleton University, Ottawa, Canada. Her previous books include Military Transformation and Modern Warfare (2008), Security and Defence in the Terrorist Era (2005), and The Revolution in Military Affairs (2002).
‘Elinor C. Sloan provides a remarkably thorough and perceptive survey of contemporary military policy debates in all the major domains of warfare – sea, land, air, and increasingly cyber and space – with careful attention both to warfare between states and to conflicts involving non-state actors. And she grounds all of this in a foundation of classical strategic theory that serves to motivate and set in context the military issues of today. Modern Military Strategy is the rare textbook that is both accessible to the student and a source of insight for the expert. Highly recommended.’
– Stephen Biddle, The George Washington University, USA
‘My studies of military strategy at West Point began with the 1986 edition of Makers of Modern Strategy edited by Peter Paret, and continued at Oxford with the 1943 edition edited by Edward Mead Earle. Today’s aspiring strategists should begin their study with this edition of Modern Military Strategy. Elinor C. Sloan picks up the trail blazed by Earle and Paret and carries it forward through the battlefields of Iraq and Afghanistan, capturing both what is new and what endures in the study of strategic thought.’
– John Nagl, author of Learning to Eat Soup with a Knife: Counterinsurgency Lessons from Malaya and Vietnam
Praise for the first edition
‘Modern Military Strategy draws a clean line between the old strategic masters of yesteryear and those writing on today’s challenges. The book is masterful, concise, and illuminating throughout.’
– Martin Libicki, RAND Corporation
‘In this book, Elinor C. Sloan provides an authoritative and straightforward guide through the morass of strategic possibilities, written with clarity and insight… It’s not the last word on all these highly varied subjects but it will certainly inspire her readers and help them get to where they need to be.’
– Geoffrey Till, Kings College London, UK
‘Modern Military Strategy is an outstanding study of the major aspects of contemporary warfare and defense preparation. The book is respectful of history while being anchored firmly in current realities, yet manages to be future-leaning persuasively.’
– Colin S. Gray, University of Reading, UK
‘In her insightful and informative book, Elinor C. Sloan tackles the important question: Who are today’s leading military strategic thinkers and what do they have to say? The result is a wideranging survey of contemporary strategic thinking in its various forms and domains that should find its way to the bookshelves of professional policy-makers and armchair generals alike.’
– Andrew F. Krepinevich, Jr., Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments, Washington DC, USA
‘In this compact volume, Elinor C. Sloan has produced a unique contribution to the literature on post-Cold War military affairs ... I know of no more instructive an introductory read for novitiates in this field, nor of a more balanced and thorough tour d’horizon of the field for its more expert practitioners.’
– Benjamin S. Lambeth, Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments, Washington DC, USA
Modern Military Strategy
An introduction
Second edition
Elinor C. Sloan
Second edition published 2017
by Routledge
2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN
and by Routledge
711 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10017
Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business
© 2017 Elinor C. Sloan
The right of Elinor C. Sloan to be identified as author of this work has been asserted by her in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers.
Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe.
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data
Names: Sloan, Elinor C. (Elinor Camille), 1965- author.
Title: Modern military strategy : an introduction / Elinor C. Sloan.
Description: Second edition. | New York, NY : Routledge, [2017] | Includes bibliographical references and index.
Identifiers: LCCN 2016019181| ISBN 9781138825376 (hardback) | ISBN 9781138825383 (pbk.) | ISBN 9781315740034 (ebook)
Subjects: LCSH: Strategy. | Military art and science.
Classification: LCC U162 .S57 2016 | DDC 355.4--dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2016019181
ISBN: 978-1-138-82537-6 (hbk)
ISBN: 978-1-138-82538-3 (pbk)
ISBN: 978-1-315-74003-4 (ebk)
Contents
List of boxes
Abbreviations
Introduction: strategy and strategic thought
PART I
Traditional dimensions of strategy
1 Seapower
2 Landpower
3 Airpower
4 Nuclear power and deterrence
PART II
Strategy and non-state actors
5 Irregular war: insurgency, counterinsurgency, new war and hybrid war
6 Peacekeeping, stabilization and humanitarian intervention
PART III
Technology and strategy
7 Joint theory and Military Transformation
8 Cyberwar
9 Spacepower
Conclusion
Index
Boxes
1.1 Naval ground attack operations in Bosnia
1.2 Anti-piracy operations off the coast of Somalia
1.3 Countering A2/AD strategies
2.1 Changes in Russian and Chinese army structures
2.2 The 2003 Iraq War
3.1 The NATO operation in Libya
3.2 The air campaign against Islamic State
3.3 Airpower in peace operations
4.1 Deterrence and the 2002 National Security Strategy of the United States
4.2 ‘The nukes we need’
4.3 Can terrorists be deterred?
5.1 The US Army and Marine Corps Counterinsurgency Field Manual
5.2 Does population-centric counterinsurgency work?
6.1 UNPROFOR in Bosnia: the pitfalls of applying peacekeeping principles in non-peacekeeping circumstances
6.2 A range of tools for managing post-Cold War crises
6.3 R2P
7.1 Military revolutions
7.2 MTR, RMA, Military Transformation: how the concepts relate
7.3 Technology and military change
8.1 Cyber attack against Estonia
8.2 The Stuxnet virus
8.3 Cyber attack as a use of force or an armed attack
8.4 Cyberwar: a scenario
9.1 Force enhancement
9.2 United States space mission areas
Abbreviations
3D Defence, diplomacy and development
4GW Fourth-generation warfare
A2/AD Anti-access/area denial
BMD Ballistic missile defence
C4I Command, control, communications, computers and intelligence processing
CNA Computer network attack
CNE Computer network exploitation
DoD Department of Defense
DSC Defensive space control
DSP Defense Support Program (satellites)
EBO Effects-based operations
FM 3–24 US Army and Marine Corps Counterinsurgency Field Manual
FOBS Fractional Orbit Bombardment System
GLONASS Global Navigation System
GPS Global Positioning System
ICBM Intercontinental ballistic missile
IFOR Implementation Force
ISR Intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance
JOC Joint Operating Concept
LCS Littoral combat ship
MTR Military Technical Revolution
NCW Network-centric warfare
NFU No first use
NORAD North American Aerospace Defense Command
NPR Nuclear Posture Review
NPT Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty
ONA Office of Net Assessment
OSC Offensive space control
PLA People’s Liberation Army
PGM Precision-guided munitions
PRT Provincial Reconstruction Team
PSO Peace support operations
PSYOPS Psychological operations
R2P Responsibility to Protect
RDO Rapid decisive operations
RMA Revolution in Military Affairs
SFOR Stabilization Force
SLBM Submarine-launched ballistic missile
SOF Special operations forces
STRATCOM Strategic Command
UAV Unmanned aerial vehicle
UCAV Unmanned combat aerial vehicle
UNPROFOR UN Protection Force
UNTSO UN Truce Supervision Organization
WMD Weapon of mass destruction
Introduction
Strategy and strategic thought
‘What about today?’ asked a graduate student in a seminar on strategic thought some years ago, after discussing the likes of Sun Tzu, Clausewitz, Mahan and Douhet. ‘Aren’t there any contemporary strategic thinkers?’ The question formed the genesis of this book. In 1943 Edward Mead Earle published Makers of Modern Strategy: Military Thought from Machiavelli to Hitler, an edited volume covering the range of strategic thought over the previous four centuries that ultimately became a modern classic. Four decades later Peter Paret’s edited book Makers of Modern Strategy from Machiavelli to the Nuclear Age, published in 1986, significantly revised and updated the earlier version and took us through much of the Cold War era. In the subsequent quarter century many works were published that focused on a particular aspect of military strategy, but there was no single volume that covered contemporary strategic thought across all dimensions of war. Modern Military Strategy (2012) was designed to fill this gap in the literature. Its focus and value added was the post-Cold War period and to that end it examined strategic thinking from the late 1980s to the early 2010s. This second edition updates and expands that original contribution.
In the contemporary era the use of military force remains one of the most important acts of the state. Today’s national governments are charged with a multitude of responsibilities toward their citizenry, but the original and most fundamental role of any state is to provide security for its citizens. A number of issues that impact the security of citizens today are non-military in character or require broader civilian activities. But for those that are military in nature, or require a military response, strategic thought remains imperative. When war or conflict comes, civilian and military leaders will want to know how best to employ the military instrument for the ends of policy. For this we turn to strategic thought on the conduct of war and the use of military force.
War, Clausewitz so famously said, is the continuation of policy by other means. Strategy is what provides the link between war and policy; it is about making war an instrument to achieve political goals. Some hold a wider interpretation of strategy that encompasses policy instruments other than the military. But once we do that, what we are really talking about is not strategy per se but grand strategy. The role of grand strategy, argued Sir Basil Liddell Hart, ‘is to coordinate and direct all of the resources of a nation, or band of nations, toward the attainment of the political objective of the war’.1 Others go still broader, arguing grand strategy is a state’s theory about how it can best ‘cause’ security for itself, and that there may be military, political and/or economic strategies within an overarching grand strategy.2 There is a great deal of merit to this broadest perspective in that it can help explain the overall foreign and security policy actions of a state. It is a valuable big-picture perspective. But it is not the focus of this work. Rather, this book takes as its starting point the view that strategy is ‘the use of armed force to achieve the military objectives and, by extension, the political purpose of the war’.3
Strategic thought matters because it helps us cope with the uncertain and turbulent world around us, and because it helps us understand the contemporary role of military force in a nation’s security policy. It pertains to people’s ideas about how the military instrument is employed, including statements, principles and observations. These ideas must be transferable to the world of action, but at the same time they cannot be overly linked to the practical world lest they be rendered irrelevant in a different time and place. The challenge is to find the appropriate balance between practicality and enduring applicability.
As for who may be considered a strategic thinker, at the most rudimentary level we might ask whether we are looking for the ideas of a military person or a civilian. Some argue for the former. ‘It is ironic and disappointing that virtually all the reputed “experts” on strategic and military affairs familiar to the public are civilian academicians, consultants, and journalists … To be effective in the strategic realm, the military must produce its own strategic thinkers.’4 Others argue that ‘the civilian writers with something important to say have usually been well received by the professionals’, and have often been closer to the mark than their military contemporaries in making predictions about the future.5 Thus it would seem that a maker of modern strategy can come from the ranks of the military or civilian society. The real problem is the relatively small number of strategists of any stripe. ‘The field of potential strategic theorists is exceeding small because soldiers tend not to be scholars, civilians tend not to be comfortable theorizing about strategy, and strategy as a vocation falls between the political and mil
itary realms.’6 In our search for modern strategic thinkers we are therefore looking for military strategists and practitioners, civilian strategists and scholars, and military and civilian historians who have written in the decades since the end of the Cold War about the conduct of war in the contemporary period, and who have put forth statements or principles that are at a sufficient level of specificity/generality as to find the balance between practicality and enduring applicability.
For simplicity’s sake this book is divided up functionally. Chapter 1, Seapower, chronicles the move from the blue-water open-ocean strategic thinking of the Cold War to the post-Cold War emphasis on operations in littoral regions ‘from the sea’ onto land, to a dual focus on operations in the littorals and throughout the sea lines of communications, to more recent concerns about how to counter anti-access/area denial (A2/AD) strategies both on the open ocean and in the littorals. Chapter 2, Landpower, focuses on state-to-state combat in the land dimension, drawing out perspectives on the conduct of war that first emerged in the latter Cold War period with AirLand Battle, were later refined in military vision statements, and saw application in the 2003 Iraq War. It also highlights the growing role of special operations forces (SOF) in the 2000s and 2010s. Chapter 3 examines strategic thinking on the value and use of airpower, debates that were sparked in the contemporary era by the 1991 Gulf War, continued through to the 2011 operation in Libya, and can be seen again in the air battle against Islamic State since 2014. It also includes strategic thought on robotic warfare and drones. Chapter 4, the last of our chapters on ‘traditional’ dimensions of war, focuses on nuclear power and deterrence, highlighting strategic thinking on the current role of nuclear weapons in deterrence and how best to make threats credible in light of new actors such as rogue states and terrorists.
Turning more explicitly to non-state actors, Chapter 5 addresses the most prevalent form of conflict today: irregular war involving a state and at least one non-state entity. It considers strategic thinking on insurgency and counterinsurgency and includes concepts like fourth-generation warfare (4GW), non-trinitarian war, new war and the most recent phenomenon of hybrid war. Chapter 6 examines strategic thought in the areas of peacekeeping, stabilization missions and humanitarian intervention, highlighting the dramatic learning curve among the international community in these areas – as well as in related ideas like peace-building, the whole-of-government approach and the comprehensive approach – in the quarter century since the end of the Cold War.