Showing your hand

THEORY
Power—especially the hard variety—is something that by nature has a limited quantity. In fact, by using power, you give all kinds of evidence about how much you really have. Once the OPEC countries demonstrated how they could use oil prices as an economic weapon, the United States learned how vulnerable it was to this tool of extortion, and could it could defend itself through improved gas efficiency, the maintenance of a strategic reserve, and other measures.

The limits of military power, of course, are sometimes the easiest to measure. The Nazi war machine, as fearsome as it was, reached its limits at the English Channel and the Volga River. The frontier of Roman power in Britain had a very visible marker, Hadrian’s Wall.

Governments often choose, however, not to expend their military power to their furthest limits, or even at all. Withholding force maintains the mystery of how much you really have—a question that you may not be able to answer accurately yourself, and certainly don’t want to learn in the worst possible way. Threatening attack, or escalating attack, therefore can be more effective than throwing all the firepower you can at an enemy.

Sometimes, withholding force doesn’t work. Johnson may have thought that the North Vietnamese would have understood how bad things could get if the war continued to proceed up the escalation ladder, so keeping military action at the lower rungs made sense on paper. It didn’t succeed, however, in forcing the North Vietnamese to the negotiating table—though later action, such as the US response during the Easter Offensive, did work. In the 1990s, US air strikes against the Bosnian Serbs and the Serbian government did bring the enemy to the bargaining table, without having to deploy US ground troops.

If you can withhold some or all of the force you can exercise, it’s usually a good idea. Fighting on every front, exercising all of your strength, trying every strategy you have—once you’re done, you’re done.

PRACTICE
We’ve currently reached the limits of US military power at the current level of mobilization. After deploying a limited force in Iraq and Afghanistan, the US military has cycled through as many units as it could, kept the Guard units in theater for as long as possible, and cancelled the planned rotations of regular units. Short of a draft, we have no further military strength to bear, unless we start “drawing down” forces in Korea, Europe, or other areas.

The US military has approximately 500,000 active duty (regular) troops, supported by 700,000 reserve and Guard units. Approximately 130,000 are stationed in Iraq, with another 50,000 in Korea, Afghanistan, and Bosnia.

We can feel how badly overextended we are now. In particular, we feel the pinch in areas where we can least afford it. Many units critical to the Iraq and Afghan wars come predominantly from outside the regular units. Approximately 95% of the psychological warfare and civic action specialists, for example, are not regulars. Logistical units, too, often come from the Guard and reserves, which was one of the temptations of “outsourcing” logistical duties to “contractors” (mercenaries) who are increasingly skittish about doing their business in Iraq.

We have, in other words, shown our hand. Not only do we know the limits of our power, so do are adversaries. The North Korean government continues to thumb its nose at us over its nuclear weapons program. Any possible threat to go to war with them over nuclear proliferation—as we did in 1994—is not what it used to be.

Reality doesn’t fit the Richard Perle and David Frum theory: fight a war to show how powerful we are; threaten war with other adversaries; if they aren’t impressed with our power yet, use it on them, too. Repeat this process as often as necessary to end the threats to us.

Leave aside the backlash this approach might create, and the certainty that, even if we were to reinstate the draft, we could not fight every war, everywhere that we feel threatened. The problem of “showing our hand” alone is good reason not to go this route. Our enemies will learn how much strength we have, and how to fight us. (For example, there’s good evidence that the Iraqi insurgents learned from how the Taliban and al Qaeda adapted to US tactics in Afghanistan.)

Showing your hand is a lousy way to play poker, and it’s an abysmal way to protect vital national interests.

Comments

[Oscar]

Nice post. Particularly the point about showing your hand.

On the practical level, though, this may not have actually happened. There are several places in the ME that would be in a world of hurt if we suddenly sicced the Navy on them, and the Navy isn't doing much right now. The Air Force is also underutilised at the moment. What we have done is show the limit of our invasion-leading-to-nation-building potential, which certainly weakens the Pearle/Frum approach.

If enough people in this country get a chance to see what happened Nick Berg, there might be a constituency to use some of our unused power in other places than Iraq. The "Let's waste Mecca" brigade could get it done without raising a sweat, for example.

I am beginning to think that this is not a war at all: it is a game of chicken (shades of Thomas Schelling - one of my favorite writers back in the early 60's). Or to cite a rather different writer (Anthony Burgess): this struggle will only be ended by that "good old ultraviolence" when we "let that korova flow" and flow and flow. RAther deressing, what?

[Oscar]

OOPS, second last word should be: depressing

[Kingdaddy]

Yes and no. Unless you're the most extreme form of pacifist, you have to accept that defeating terrorists means using nasty, violent means. That's not the same as granting carte blanche to do anything, however. And we don't need to match atrocity with atrocity to win--quite the opposite.

I'm for the pursuit of al Qaeda to the ends of the earth, so that every terrorist in that organization is either in a prison or in the grave. However, the blunderbuss approach--using conventional forces to raze Fallujah, for example--is just wrong, wrong, wrong. Obviously, we're not fighting al Qaeda in Fallujah, we're fighting someone else. And the siege of Fallujah was shockingly destructive, killing innocent bystanders so that we could "prove" that no one disses the US and gets away with it. How exactly is that supposed to defeat the Army of the Mahdi, let alone al Qaeda?

I'm for what the Israelis did with the PLO, starting in the 70s. Among other measures, the Israelis assigned hit teams to track down and kill the Black September terrorists who slaughtered the Israeli athletes at the Munich Olympics. As the excellent book Vengeance shows, even as careful as they were, the Israelis did make mistakes (killing a waiter innocent of being a PLO operative, for example). Certainly, some people will object to even that innocent person's death as being an unacceptable cost. However, if we really want to "get" al Qaeda, it's going to take an effort like Israel's.

Or what we were trying to do with FD/TRODPINT before 2001, or Task Force 121 afterwards.

[Oscar]

Well, I think you and I see the root causes differently. I think that the thing that needs change is Islam. Until certain interpretations become totally unacceptable, Islam is a time bomb endangering every none Muslim on the planet. The problems are two:
1. The denigration of other religions
2. The unity of religion and politics

Fortunately, Chrisitianity got through the one period when both held for it, and there was always "render unto Caesar" to help out.

Thus, for me, "the pursuit of al Qaeda to the ends of the earth" is insufficient. I wish we could try Sharon's wall on the Islamic world: as been suggested elsewhere on the blogosphere, this would force the Muslims to either learn to live with each other (historically no easy task) or will kill off so many of them that the remainder might finally give up in exhaustion (sort of like Lebanon). Of course, this is fantasy, so that is why I asked the rhetorical question you were begging for in a previous post.

I await your answer with interest, as I expect some ideas that hadn't occurred to me.

[ff14rmt]

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