Abstract
Launched in the wake of 9/11, the US-led interventions in Afghanistan and Iraq forced painful transformations in Western militaries. As successful regime-change operations gave way to prolonged insurgencies, these forces confronted wars whose character rapidly developed in unanticipated directions. The US and its allies repeatedly failed to align national ends, ways and means to achieve stabilisation, reconstruction and political progress in Afghanistan and Iraq, before rediscovering counter-insurgency principles established in previous conflicts. The lessons of the wars are likely to continue shaping Western states’ approach to intervention and warfare for years to come.
This Adelphi book examines the military evolution of the conflicts, and their implications for the future character of war. It shows why combat remains the core military capability, and explains successful and unsuccessful adaptation by armed forces, especially the essential roles of leadership, culture and organisational agility in promoting ‘learning under fire’. Written by the author of the British Army’s report on post-conflict stabilisation in Iraq, the book is a valuable guide for policymakers, government officials, military officers and scholars seeking to understand the military legacy of a contentious and unpopular chapter in Western strategy.
Prussian military theorist Carl von Clausewitz outlined two facets of war: its nature, which remains constant under all circumstances; and its character, which encompasses the varying ways and means by which war is fought. War’s nature is inherently human, often chaotic. Waging war is an act or expression of policy, undertaken to maintain a position of advantage, create a more advantageous situation or influence the attitudes or behaviour of another party. The measure of a war’s success is the extent to which belligerents deem its political outcomes to be favourable. Opponents may employ all the military and non-military ways and means available to them to seek success.
War is a dynamic activity in which opponents constantly seek an advantage over one another. Effective use of new technology or tactics by one actor usually results in attempts by its opponents to develop countermeasures. If successful, these countermeasures often prompt further adaptation by the enemy. Therefore, most wars feature complex action–reaction dynamics that constantly change their character.
The post-9/11 wars in Iraq and Afghanistan have dominated the experience of US and allied land and air forces this century. These forces have changed a great deal as a result of this experience – as much as they did in either world war in the twentieth century.
The aim of this Adelphi book is to analyse the changing character of conflict in the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, with a view to identifying pointers to the future character of conflict. Analysing the wars from a military perspective, it seeks to give readers a clear understanding of the ways in which the character of both conflicts changed. The book examines strategic, operational, tactical and technical adaptations and adjustments during the wars to show how strategy, campaign design and military capability evolved. This allows readers to identify the elements of these factors that have a wider application.
The wars began with the al-Qaeda attacks on the United States on 11 September 2001. American combat troops left Iraq in December 2011, and the US-led NATO combat mission in Afghanistan ended in December 2014. Thirteen years of fighting led to more than 35,000 casualties among American and allied forces, and around 250,000 civilian casualties; the US alone required more than US$1.5 trillion in additional military funding over and above the Pentagon’s annual budget.
In both Iraq and Afghanistan, the US and its allies came extremely close to strategic defeat, due to inadequate leadership, reconstruction efforts, political strategy, military strategy, operational concepts, tactics and equipment. These shortfalls combined with failures – at every level – to adapt quickly enough to unforeseen circumstances, and provided opportunities that were exploited by insurgents and militias.
In both wars, it took several years for the US and its allies to recognise that the ends, ways and means they employed were insufficient for the task. Although they eventually adapted to provide enough security for limited political progress, the widespread perception that the conflicts were intractable, and the difficulty of achieving strategic success, resulted in a loss of confidence in the West in the utility of force as an instrument of state power. The political and military credibility of the US and its allies was damaged.
The wars in Iraq and Afghanistan have been described by many journalists. There is no shortage of memoirs. But there has been much less discussion of how the character of the wars evolved, and of the implications of these developments for armed conflict and armed forces in the future. To understand this evolution, a frame of reference is needed – a baseline idea of the likely future character of conflict. This would allow judgements to be made about the potential utility of specific ways and means of war.
According to the IISS Armed Conflict Database, since 9/11, the overwhelming majority of armed conflicts have been intra-state. The IISS Armed Conflict Survey 2016 confirms that the trend is continuing, and will most likely do so throughout 2017 and beyond. Post-9/11 armed conflict between states includes US-led regime change in Afghanistan and Iraq, the 2008 Russia–Georgia War and Russia’s 2014 annexation of Crimea and sponsorship of rebel factions in eastern Ukraine. Israel’s 2006 conflict with Hizbullah and wars with Hamas in Gaza involved non-state actors with many of the characteristics of states. And the NATO intervention in Libya in 2011 had much of the character of a war to support rebel groups fighting against the Gadhafi regime.
Although inter-state wars have been in the minority since 9/11, there are many potential flashpoints for further such conflicts in the Middle East and Asia. These include tension between Pakistan and India, the two Koreas, and Iran and its neighbours, as well as China’s unresolved maritime disputes in the South and East China seas.
The future is likely to see constant intra-state conflict, including terrorism, insurgencies and civil wars. Hybrid conflicts may combine some or all of these traits with elements of inter-state conflict. But the potential for inter-state conflict remains, carrying with it the risk of escalation in time, space, intensity, casualties and displacement of civilians. This provides the framework for assessing pointers to the future character of conflict.
The military forces of NATO, the US and most other Western countries use the concept of levels of warfare to express the way in which war is planned and conducted. The terms are used extensively in this book. These simplified definitions are based on current US joint doctrine.Footnote1
Strategic level: At this level, a nation often determines the national (or multinational, in the case of an alliance or coalition) guidance that addresses strategic objectives in support of strategic end states and develops and uses national resources to achieve them.
Operational level: This level links strategy and tactics by establishing the objectives needed to achieve the military end states and strategic objectives. It sequences tactical actions to achieve objectives. At this level, the focus is on the planning and execution of operations using operational art: the cognitive approach by commanders and their staff (supported by their skill, knowledge, experience, creativity and judgement) to develop strategies, campaigns and operations to organise and employ military forces by integrating ends, ways and means. The operational level has been described by General David Richards as
the vital gearing between tactical activity and the strategic level at which politicians and Chiefs of Defence operate. It is the level at which campaigns are run and where political intent is analysed and turned into military effect; it is where wars are won or lost and it is demanding stuff.Footnote2
Tactical level: Tactics is the employment and ordered arrangement of forces in relation to each other. This level of war is where battles and engagements are planned and executed to achieve military objectives assigned to tactical units.
Campaigns: A campaign is a series of related major operations aimed at achieving strategic and operational objectives within a given time and space.
Operations: An operation is a sequence of tactical actions with a common purpose or unifying theme. An operation may entail the process of carrying on combat, including the movement, supply, attack, defence and manoeuvres needed to achieve the objective of any battle or campaign. A major operation is a series of tactical actions – such as battles, engagements and strikes – conducted by combat forces coordinated in time and space to achieve strategic or operational objectives.
In reality, the boundaries between the levels of war often blur and shift. And events may have simultaneous implications at all three levels.
The US provided most of the forces involved in the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. The United Kingdom also played a key role, as one of the two ‘occupying powers’ in Iraq in 2003–04 and as the second-largest contributor of troops to both wars. There is an abundance of US primary-source documents for both wars. The UK’s Iraq Inquiry provides a cornucopia of testimony by politicians, officials and military officers that illuminates the higher management of the war. I do not ignore other countries that contributed forces, but the US and UK military experience makes up the bulk of this book.
Given the length of the wars, the hundreds of thousands of US and allied personnel involved and the millions of people who lived through the fighting, this analysis is highly selective. The book does not cover the flawed assessments of Iraq’s weapons-of-mass-destruction capability made by US, UK and other intelligence agencies, nor the political and diplomatic processes that led to the UK and US decisions to attack Iraq. An analysis that does justice to these important topics would require another Adelphi.
This book analyses the wars from a military perspective, focusing on issues of the greatest enduring military importance. It assesses the management of reconstruction and the integration of civilian and military efforts, but not the reconstruction effort itself. Other excluded topics include force preparation and training, sea power, police capacity-building, logistics and military mental health.
Notes
1 US Joint Chiefs of Staff, Doctrine for the Armed Forces of the United States, 25 March 2013, pp. I-7–I-9, http://www.dtic.mil/doctrine/new_pubs/jp1.pdf.
2 David Richards, Taking Command (London: Hachette, 2014), p. 92.