Arms and influence

The technical level

THEORY
The last--and lowest--level of strategy is the technical level. As its name implies, this level is all about technology--weapons, communications, transportation, and the like.

Needless to say, technology has been important in every period of warfare. Greek fire gave the Byzantines a key naval advantage. In the American Civil War, the railroads, telegraph communications, and ironclad warships helped tip the balance in favor of the Union. In World War II, cryptography gave the Allies the power to eavesdrop on German and Japanese communications.

You can come up with dozens of examples of how technology re-shaped warfare, and at the same time, how military concerns drove innovation. A generation of physicists--Einstein, Heisenberg, Fermi, Oppenheimer, etc.--not only re-wrote the rules of modern warfare, but also transformed the international system, and even US presidential politics. The first A-bombs begat H-bombs, bombers begat intercontinental missiles, ICBMS begat submarine-launched missiles, missile-armed submarines inspired new ways to detect and kill submarines...The list of innovations goes on.

The technical level is so easy to explain, and the examples so handy, that it seems like belaboring the point to describe it at all. The first step into military affairs you took probably had some connection to the technical level. Some WWII history buffs become experts in the relative merits of German, Soviet, British, Italian, Japanese, and American tanks. Some of us, as children and adolescents, built models of military aircraft, warships, or tanks. Many of us got drawn into the interesting discussions during the first Gulf War about Patriot missiles, M1A1 tanks, satellite imagery, and other pieces of equipment in the impressive US arsenal.

All good reasons why I made this level the last one to discuss. By working our way down the hierarchy of strategy--grand strategic, theater, operational, tactical, technical--we can see how easily we can overvalue the technical level. Every soldier wants the best weapon available. Unfortunately, not even the best rifle, tank, fighter, or submarine can save the day if the other levels of strategy aren't working.

PRACTICE
Going back to my last post, I'll belabor another point. Yes, the United States has superbly-trained troops, armed with some of the best military hardware in the world. (The same compliment should be extended to our coalition partners, too.) However, we're in the thick of a crisis where the best troops with the best equipment can't deliver victory.

On the electronic battlefield, GPS and other technologies give a commander the exact position of every soldier in his unit. That's an extraordinary achievement, something every commander from Themistocles to Zhukov would have wanted, if it had been available. But are these soldiers in the right places, doing the right things? As I've argued in earlier posts, there are serious defects in every level of strategy above the technical and the tactical, in both the war in Iraq and the war against al Qaeda. (Again, these are two separate wars. Even if Iraq had been the wellspring of international terrorism, you don't fight Iraqi insurgents the same way you stop the terrorist threat.) If the strategies at these levels aren't working, it doesn't matter how well trained a soldier is, or how impressive is the equipment he carries.

We've also been maneuvered--or more tragically, maneuvered ourselves--into a position where our tactical and technical edge is severely blunted. In the first Gulf War, US tanks outranged their Iraqi counterparts. In an average armored combat, the Iraqis didn't even get a chance to fire a shot before their tedchnically superior enemies knocked them out. In the current war, not only is the battlefield empty of enemy tanks, but armor is worse than useless in counterinsurgency warfare. An M1A1 tank can give "force protection" to infantry under fire, but it can't win "hearts and minds" by blowing up apartment buildings.

Anyone could have made the previous observation without understanding the levels of strategy. Therefore, I hope this discussion made two contributions, above and beyond what common sense could have supplied: (1) you can now see the technological side of warfare in a new (and slightly dimmer) light; and (2) this discussion has illuminated more clearly what else needs to be fixed before our technical and tactical strengths can be put to good use.

The tactical level

THEORY
The tactical level is fairly straightforward: the art of fighting with a particular kind of military unit. In the hierarchy of strategic levels, success at the tactical level has to contribute to the success of the next level up, the operational level. I alluded to this connection in my last post, showing that the fighting skill of the Roman legionnaire made the stunning victories of the Roman campaigns possible. Of course, an inexperienced Roman politician could always command the army straight into disaster, but you couldn't blame the legions for the mistakes of someone like Varus.

People who follow military affairs are often fascinated by the tactical level. Tank aficianados, for example, like to read and talk about armored tactics. It's a pretty interesting topic. But as we've seen, it's only one small part of a much larger story.

Armored tactics are now a very well understood discipline with time-honored principles. If at all possible, fight on the move. Maneuver to a "hull down" position, like a brick wall or a hillock, so the rest of the tank gets extra protection while the turret can still fire at the enemy. "Shoot and scoot" is a pretty effective technique, so that the enemy won't find you in the spot from which you just fired. Hitting the enemy from the flank or rear is key, if you're worried that you can't penetrate the thicker armor in the front. Never drive tanks into city streets unless the infantry has first cleared the surrounding buildings of hidden enemy soldiers armed with anti-tank weapons. And so on.

Tactical discussions like these fill official military manuals, thrilling first-person accounts, and computer games (with varying degrees of realism). Fighter tactics, submarine tactics, special operations tactics...The list is long just looking at contemporary warfare, and would be even longer if you looked backwards into history. The heavy cavalry tactics of medieval knights, the harassment tactics of Muslim horse archers, age of sail tactics...

Mastering the profession of arms at this level may or may not contribute to victory, however. The 1983 invasion of Grenada (Operation Urgent Fury) looked more like several separate invasions. Marines, Rangers, paratroopers, Delta Force commandos, naval aviation--each force seemed to be operating separately from the others. (It's worth asking, as many did after the invasion, why all the services needed to be involved in this operation, when perhaps this was a simple amphibious assault and hostage rescue.) The Grenada invasion succeeded in spite of itself; if the Cuban and Grenadan forces had offered stiffer resistance, a somewhat comically uncoordinated operation could have been a major disaster.

Tactics are critical, and the human face of warfare is most visible at this level: the tank platoon commander, the infantry seargent, the fighter pilot, the commando, the captain of a submarine, the helicopter gunship pilot. Other levels may seem more abstract, but they're just as important.

PRACTICE
There's a lot I could say about the tactical level, particularly when it comes to the types of troops needed for counterinsurgency and counterterrorism. I'll save that discussion for later, since I'll be digging into the specifics of those two types of warfare in future posts. For now, I want to talk about two important misunderstandings about the tactical level of the war in Iraq.

As you can guess from reading this blog, I'm very sympathetic with a comment that General Anthony Zinni made during his 60 Minutes interview broadcast last weekend. Zinni argued that nothing justifies shutting down critical discussion of the Iraq war. The slogan "support the troops" is an argument for open discussion, not the stifling of criticism. If the US Army give soldiers faulty rifles, Zinni said, no one would complain if you point out their defects. Given the danger these faulty weapons pose to the soldiers carrying them, it'd be the responsibility of any citizen, not just someone in uniform, to point out the risk. If you arm the same soldiers with a faulty strategy, the risks are exactly the same--and so is our common responsibility to point out defects when we see them.

Unfortunately, critical discussions of our counterterrorism effort against al Qaeda and our counterinsurgency operations in Iraq make a lot of people uncomfortable. There's a chain of reasoning that breaks in a fairly obvious place, but one apparently that a lot of people pretend not to see. We have a superbly equipped and trained military, particularly at the tactical level. We are justifiably proud of these men and women in uniform. They are trained and equipped to perform amazing feats in service to the nation, and they pledge their lives in our common defense. However, pride in their accomplishments as tactical virtuosos doesn't mean that their virtuosity is being put to good use. The operational and theater strategies that determine when, where, and who they fight may be fatally flawed. Therefore, we're not supporting our troops through our silence; we can only support them, as Zinni correctly says, if we identify strategic defects that makes "harm's way" more harmful than it should be.

My second point about the US military's efficiency is that it often leads to unrealistic expectations. You should be applauded for your extraordinary achievements; the price of success shouldn't be wildly escalated expectations than you can do the impossible. The rollercoaster of emotion about the Patriot missile batteries used in the 1991 Gulf War showed this psychology in action. At first, people expected the Patriots to be able to intercept and destroy close to 100% of the SCUD missiles the Iraqis fired at Israel. This expectation was wholly unrealistic, and unfortunately, some US military and civilian officials encouraged this misperception. When the actual rates of successful Patriot intercepts were released to the public after the war, many cried foul, charging that they had been hoodwinked into trusting a technological marvel that was far less than marvelous. Whatever you think of the Patriot missile system, you can't fault it for failing to knock down every SCUD missile. As advanced as the Patriot technology was, no system could deliver complete success.

The same phenomenon is at work in Iraq, only the focus this time is on flesh and blood soldiers, not steel and silicon weapons systems. Because "the troops" are seen as the best in the world, we've set them up for unfair accusations of failure when we discover that total efficiency is impossible. The crew of an Apache gunship can't fire on a building with absolute certainty that the missile won't hit a neighboring apartment block by accident. The gunner can't know for sure that there aren't innocents in the building when the rocket explodes. The pilot and gunner may have performed their mission with unmatched efficiency, while unwittingly killing bystanders in the process. Who's fault is that?

A recent NPR story about US snipers in Iraq epitomized this risk. For all the embedded reporters, thousands of air time reporting on the war, countless articles discussing the day-to-day fighting in Iraq, there has been very little explanation of how the modern "profession of arms" actually works. Snipers have a tough tactical challenge--stalking and killing a specific target from long range--that requires special skills and some innate talent.

The reporter, Anne Garrels, first interviewed a recently-trained sniper, one of many recently put through "sniper school." Just as there aren't enough Arabic language speakers in Iraq, there's also a shortage of snipers. The soldier interviewed readily admitted that he was not the most proficient in his craft, but he tried to do his best. In the highly populated areas where he was deployed, he had to be careful not to hit innocent bystanders. His "score," therefore, wasn't as high as it might be, had he more experience and a less complicated battleground in which to hunt.

OK so far. However, Garrels then interviewed another, more experienced sniper. Suddenly, the whole tone of the piece changed. Sgt. Daniel Osborne, the seasoned sniper, talked about his higher kill rate, and then spoke in measured tones about how if he ever killed an innocent bystander by accident, he'd be no better than the people he was fighting. As Garrels says near the end of the piece, "Sgt. Osborne says he...has...made...no...mistakes."

I'm not being cute with the punctuation. That's exactly the kind of inflection that Garrels used in that sentence. That's also the kind of outlandish expectation that sets up soldiers like Osborne for later accusations of being babykillers and psychopaths. Mistakes will happen, with tragic results. Soldiers are trained to avoid civilian casualties, which offend their moral sensibilities in any case. But as other accounts like this one and this one show, it's unrealistic to expect US snipers to operate in difficult, confusing, and dangerous places like Fallujah, Najaf, and Karballah and not make mistakes.

The higher the pedestal, the longer the fall--and news stories like Garrels' piece put the troops on a very high pedestal indeed.

Operational strategy: another example

THEORY
Since the operational level sometimes requires a bit of further explanation for it to "click" in the minds of someone unfamiliar with it, I realized another example might be useful. If you look at ancient and medieval warfare, the dividing line between the operational level and other levels is far more clear.

Take the operations of the Roman legions. Before modern communications, the commander of the legion couldn't afford to split up his force and fight across hundreds of miles of terrain, the way modern armies do. The Roman army on the march might temporarily break down into smaller formations, but recombined as a single force once battle was joined. In fact, every ancient and medieval army fought this way--which is why you can drive around the battlefield of Agincourt in a few minutes, while driving around the D-Day beaches takes at least half a day (if you decide not to stop anywhere for long).

The Roman army--republican, early imperial, or late imperial--fought at the operational level in essentially the same way.For example, when waging an offensive campaign against the Celtic barbarians, the army would stay on the move until it came into contact with the enemy. The legions would then try to force the Celts to fight on the ground of the Roman's choosing. Although the barbarians normally outnumbered the legionnaries by as much as ten to one, Roman training, tactics, and technology would normally win the day. After the decisive battle, the Romans would pursue the remnants of the Celtic army until the region was safely subjugated.

Obviously, not every campaign followed this model. However, the ones that do fit this picture--such as Julius Caesar's operations in Gaul--show clearly the contours of operational strategy. In pursuit of a theater objective (conquering or re-conquering a province), the Roman army--including the main legionary force, auxiliaries, scouts, and spies--found, fixed, and finished the enemy in a highly efficient way. The battles--Zama, Pharsalus, Alesia, Teutoburg Forest--normally were the decisive moment in the campaign.

How well the Roman infantryman fought, or the deficiencies of Roman cavalry, are important tactical questions. Here's another one: as one contemporary observer noted, the Romans trained with the ferocity and seriousness of actual combat, so that combat seemed as easy as training. This tactical superiority certainly made spectacular Roman victories possible, even when their opponents vastly outnumbered them. But the tactical and operational levels are obviously two different (if interdependent) things.

PRACTICE
I had another reason for bringing up the Roman example. I used a modern phrase--find, fix, and finish--to describe a classic operational approach. Cornering the enemy, fighting at the time and place of your choosing, and ruthlessly pursuing the remains of the enemy army--these steps seem like simple common sense, an energetic and rigorous approach to fighing a war.

Finding, fixing, and finishing Iraqi insurgents, as I said in my last post on operational strategy, appears to be the primary concern of US troops in Iraq today. American forces, like the Roman legions, are extremely efficient at the tactical level. Unfortunately, the situation is a bit more complicated than the find, fix, finish formula:

• The Romans had to apply this formula once when fighting the Gauls. US troops have to find, fix, and finish the enemy every single day in Iraq.


• Unleashing the full efficiency of the US military will increase casualties among innocent bystanders, level homes, and damage not only mosques, but sacred sites like the shrine of Imam Ali in Najaf.


• We're not always sure we're shooting at the right people. Sometimes, barbarians would engage in hit and run attacks on the Roman legions, then melt back into the population. Normally, however, the Roman army had few problems identifying the enemies, or anticipating when they would attack.


• Find, fix, and finish is only one "vertical" dimension of counterinsurgency strategy. "Horizontally," the United States needs to be doing a lot more than military sweeps to ensure a stable, friendly Iraqi regime will someday govern from Baghdad. Once the warriors of a Gallic tribe were defated on the battlefield, the Romans had the region under control for the time being. In Iraq, the situation is not nearly as easy as that.

The operational level

THEORY
As Luttwak says in Strategy: The Logic of War and Peace, the operational level is, perhaps, the trickiest to explain. Something clearly exists between decisions made at the theater level, such as the entire western front in World War II, and the those made by an infantry captain leading an assault on the Normandy beaches. But what is this middle level?

The battle is perhaps the easiest starting point for understanding the operational. The battles of the Bulge, Stalingrad, Midway, El Alamein, and Guadalcanal share some important features. One or both combatants were looking for a decisive engagement that will change the situation in a particular theater. The battle for Normandy gave the Allies a beachhead on the European continent. The Japanese were trying to cripple the American fleet at Midway, but failed. Battles don’t always result in one side gaining some significant advantage—a point well illustrated by the WWI meatgrinder battles of the Somme and Ypres. What matters, however, is that one or both sides are looking for a decisive change.

What’s interesting to note, by the way, is the decreasing frequency of significant battles in the history of modern warfare. John Keegan, in his classic book, The Face of Battle, makes this point at some length. Battles may be less frequent, but violence in wars like the civil war in Peru, the Serb-Croat conflict, and the Iran-Iraq war is no less intense, or in cases like Rwanda and Bosnia, far more vicious. Either the combatants aren’t seeking some dramatic clash, or they’re failing to engineer them. What, then, defines strategy at this level somewhere between the theater and the tactical levels.

To properly depict the operational level, then, you have to recognize its  “combined arms” character. Conventional militaries have infantry, armor, air power, and naval power. Guerrilla armies have both fighters and political cadres. Operational strategy, therefore, is the realm where combined resources (not all strictly military) jointly contribute to the advancement of theater goals. Eisenhower’s strategy for D-Day—employing every type of unit available, from OSS units working with French partisans to battleships pounding the beaches—required skills far different from those that even the most capable Navy commander or Army major had. Similarly, an NLF commander for a South Vietnamese district needed to employ guerrillas. political cadres, spies, and the occasional support of conventional NVA units to slowly erode the Saigon government’s control and legitimacy.

We may not be as accustomed to thinking in operational terms, but this level often is the fulcrum on which larger victories and defeats turn. The stunning German successes in the first years of WWII were due largely to a great operational innovation, the blitzkrieg. In WWI, the first tanks were mobile artillery supporting the infantry; in WWII, the infantry now supported the tanks.

But not alone. Infantry screened the tanks from attack, pinned down the enemy, and blasted holes in the enemy line. Artillery pounded tough defenses. Aircraft bombed enemy units and headquarters, strafed enemy reinforcements moving to the front, and relayed the birds eye view of the battlefield. The tanks slashed through the enemy line, spreading confusion and panic, encircling masses of troops then unable to escape. Blitzkrieg therefore relied as much n the chaos it created as the actual number of casualties it inflicted. None of this would have been possible without radio communications, efficient supply lines, and troops trained to improvise in a quickly-changing situation.

Like any level of strategy, the operational level needs to work in concert with the levels above and below it. Military history often is a discussion of how well this synchronization worked.

Theater strategy for the Vietnam War from 1965 to 1968 set the overall goals (preserving an independent South Vietnam) and the broad means (attrition strategy). Opinions about what went wrong for the US vary from blaming the theater strategy itself (as discussed in an earlier post) to identifying points at which the operational strategy was working at odds with the theater strategy. Both arguments have their merit.

Whichever argument you find convincing, they both share one important point: the efficiency of US search and destroy operations in Vietnam, to large extent, didn’t matter. Operationally, a search and destroy operation—which might combine mechanized and airmobile infantry, armor, artillery, close air support from fixed wing aircraft and helicopters, and even the occasional naval bombardment—succeeded by their own measures. To indicate success, US commanders pointed to statistics like the number of enemy soldiers killed, the number of villages temporarily secured during a sweep, and the number of US casualties kept to a minimum. Unfortunately, these proved to be the wrong measures.

NVA and NLF military strength could undermine political stability in the South, but killing enemy soldiers wouldn’t necessarily give the South Vietnamese regime the strength and legitimacy it needed to survive. At its worst moments, search and destroy operations worked against the theater goal of keeping the Saigon regime alive.  Free fire zones, the destruction of villages suspected of VC sympathies, refugees fleeing for their lives—the attrition strategy created these problems, and more, that deepened the political crisis in the South, and actually gave the Viet Cong more recruits. The real “center of gravity” in the conflict wasn’t the enemy soldier, but the US military was certainly trained and equipped to focus on that tangible and familiar target. Winning battles didn’t necessarily give the population a sense of security; killing guerrillas didn’t win support for the government. The Soviets learned the same hard lesson in Afghanistan.

It’s still possible in this analysis to pin blame on American theater strategy for creating other problems. The United States threw away much of its leverage with the South Vietnamese regime. Without leverage, the US could not budge successive governments in Saigon to make painful but necessary. Commitment itself became too much of a fetish, cornering the United States into arguing that its credibility in containing the USSR and China was, somewhat ridiculously, being tested in a country peripheral to the interests of all three superpowers. However, even if the theater strategy for fighting the Vietnam War had been a work of supreme brilliance, the operational strategy often worked against it.

PRACTICE
The big question about the current war in Iraq is, Are we winning? If our theater goal is to create a stable Iraq, friendly to the United States, capable of shifting the Middle Eastern balance of power, the answer is clearly no. Obviously, the US and its allies have insufficient troops to maintain control over Iraq; moving it into the column of reliable US allies seems like a dim hope. So far, Iraqi police and army units have proven ineffective; in the siege of Fallujah, they actually joined the forces fighting US troops. The Iraq war has made it harder for the United States to deal with the North Koreans, the Iranians, and perhaps also al Qaeda. (At least in one example, the Iraq invasion has helped a terrorist group allied with al Qaeda.)

But the problem isn’t merely one of strength. We could double, triple, or quadruple the number of troops, and still find the political ground in Iraq crumbling beneath us. In fact, I would argue, the current US operational strategy ensures our failure.

It goes without saying that the impressive plans for the invasion weren’t matched by equally impressive plans for the occupation. After a swift victory over Iraq conventional forces, US troops were caught by surprise by escalating guerrilla attacks. The Bush Administration, the Coalition Provisional Authority, and the US Central Command have all blamed these attacks on terrorists and insurgents (alias guerrillas). The fact that US authorities use these terms interchangeably is an unfortunate sign of exactly how unprepared the United States is for the war it’s now fighting. Not only do you use different operational techniques to defeat guerrillas and terrorists, but what the United States is doing today is doomed to fail against either kind of opponent.

As in Vietnam, American forces are now focusing at the operational level on the enemy’s military strength. Whether the enemy is Ansar al-Islam or the Sadrist “Army of the Mahdi,” US forces are primarily concerned about killing or capturing as many of these enemy troops as possible. Tanks, helicopters, and jet aircraft pound enemy positions, often in heavily populated areas. American commanders believe that captured guerrillas—or, sadly, the relatives of suspected guerrillas—are “intelligence assets” that might help track down and eliminate even more enemy fighters. The pressures to wring information out of these “assets” have led to the dehumanizing, counterproductive, and shocking events at Abu Ghraib, Baghdad airport, and other jails. Meanwhile, efforts to win public support through rebuilding the country—the Vietnam-era term was civic action—continue on a completely separate track from military operations. Civic action is often impossible, since the people responsible for it—contractors, US troops, or humanitarian organizations—can’t safely reach the people they’re trying to help, or guerrillas demolish the work they’ve already done.

The operational strategy is clearly not working, in large part because we have a limited understanding of the enemy. The “insurgency” isn’t a monolithic organization, but a combination of different guerrilla, terrorist, and criminal groups. This mélange is hardly new in the history of warfare. Recent conflicts in Angola, Sierra Leone, the Balkans, Peru, El Salvador, Indonesia, the Philippines, and elsewhere have featured similar mixes of these three groups—often within the same organization (such as the FARC in Colombia).

However, the anti-occupation guerrilla groups are the real “center of gravity.” Not only are the guerrillas more numerous than the terrorists (including al Qaeda allies) and criminal gangs, but the they pose the most serious threat to the US occupation. Tragically, the guerrillas are far more akin to partisan forces fighting a foreign occupier—heroic figures to people inside and outside Iraq—than the universally condemned terrorists responsible for the 9/11 attacks. It’s easy to think that, because the guerrillas threaten us, killing as many guerrillas as possible is the road to victory. We'd be wrong yet again to believe that myth.

To make better sense of the situation, here are some points of comparison that reveal how different operational strategy looks for fighting terrorists, guerrillas, and conventional armies:

                                                                               

	Counterterrorism	Counterinsurgency	Conventional war
Required amount of force	Very small.	Moderate.	Overwhelming.
Type of units involved in combat	Small military units, such as Delta Force   (US) or the SAS (Britain). Agents within the terrorist organization are also   required. Other military assets are usually irrelevant; using them in their   normal role to bring maximum firepower to bear on a foe is counterproductive   when civilians die in the crossfire.	Troops who can stay in a region, work with   the local population, and earn their trust are a must. Primarily infantry,   with perhaps some armor or air support on infrequent occasions. Again, using   overwhelming firepower can be counterproductive.	Combination of all types of military units   (infantry, armor, artillery, air, naval) needed for a particular operation.
Type of operation	Raids on terrorist cells, hostage rescues,   police sweeps for supporters or informants. Intelligence operations critical,   from eavesdropping on communications to infiltrating terrorist cells.	Sweeps to eliminate guerrilla presence from   a region. Following that, defense against guerrilla raids, plus constant   patrolling to prevent the re-infiltration of guerrilla forces. Some   similarity to the intelligence operations used against terrorists.	“Traditional” military attacks to seize   territory, wear down enemy forces, disrupt command and communications,   eliminate supply depots, etc.
Coordination with grassroots political or   “civic action” efforts	Akin to police efforts to gain information   about criminals from the local population.	Critical on all fronts—everything from   building bridges to helping ensure fair elections.	Little or none required.
Time to plan and execute	Given the challenge of penetrating the veil   of secrecy around terrorist cells, operations can take months or years.   Occasionally, you have the opportunity to strike a training camp or other   facility, but these are normally not fatal blows to the terrorist organization.	The overall operation—securing an area,   ensuring the growth of security and legitimacy—normally takes months or even   years.	Operations can be planned and executed in   days or weeks.
Number of opponents	Terrorist cells are usually very small—sometimes   less than 10 or 20 people. Their supporters can also be a very small group.	Smaller than a conventional army, but larger   than terrorist cells. The number of supporters can be small or large,   depending on the phase of the guerrilla conflict and other factors.	Large, if they present any threat to US   forces.
Ease of identifying the enemy	Very hard. Terrorists are highly secretive,   adept at hiding within the population, and surface very briefly for swift,   dramatic strikes.	Hard. Usually disguised, and guerrilla   operations are normally hit-and-run affairs. You can find guerrillas in   particular regions (“liberated zones”), and you can catch guerrillas in the   act out their own military operations. Political operatives will be harder to   spot than fighters, however.	Easy. (They wear uniforms.)
Importance of territory	None.	Low to moderate, depending on the phase of   the conflict. Guerrillas need to establish an increasingly larger presence in   broad areas of the country to achieve victory through a final military push   or the political collapse of the regime.	High. Territory determines how safe are   lines of supply and communications, how much of the country is under your   control, where you’re vulnerable to enemy attack, and where you can make   attacks.
Measures of success	For terrorist operations, the political   paralysis of the enemy and their willingness to comply with your demands. For   counterterrorist operations, the number of terrorist cells eliminated, and   the prevention of any “regeneration” of the terrorist organization.	For both sides, the tilting of the political   balance of power. Both military and non-military means are critical, but the   goal is to engineer the political collapse of the enemy’s base of support.	For both sides, territory seized, plus   reduction or elimination of enemy forces.

There are a lot of points of comparison you might cite, but the ones used here are enough to support the basic argument: these three types of warfare demand three different operational strategies. 

Do US operations in Iraq look like classic counterinsurgency or counterterrorist operational-level strategy? Not at all. The US military is still an organization trained, equipped, and rewarded for its ability to fight conventional wars—a familiar problem with a long legacy. As Andrew Krepinevich argued in a great but often overlooked book, the US Army, thrown into an unfamiliar situation in Vietnam, first tried to apply familiar operational principles. The result (until key changes in 1968 and 1969) was the ubiquitous search and destroy operation—a failure however you look at it. This problem wasn't as simple as the “If you have a hammer, everything looks like a nail” principle. Changing the operational approach would have required wrenching organizational and doctrinal changes that the Army wasn’t convinced it needed to make—particularly when these military reforms may have threatened the Army’s “core mission” and undercut its ability to operate independently of other services and civilian agencies.

Obviously, this part of the Vietnam story is of more than historical interest. The US military is, once again, wrongly focused on the enemy soldier. Operations to find, fix, and finish the enemy—in Fallujah, Najaf, Karbala, Baghdad, and elsewhere—may result in an impressive body count. They won’t help win the war.

The theater level

THEORY
The next level down in the strategic hierarchy is the theater level. What defines this level is the overall choice of targets: a particular geographical region, or a particular opponent who, in some cases, might not be bound by geography.

Anyone familiar with the history of World War II instantly recognizes theater level strategy for what it is. The United States had a grand strategy--defeat the Axis powers--and to achieve this goal, it fought in the European and Pacific theaters. Nazi Germany had its own theaters: the Western Front, the Eastern Front, and the Mediterranean. Britain fought in Western Europe, North Africa, and Asia. The USSR's main theater was in Eastern Europe, but it also fought smaller skirmishes with the Japanese in the Far East.

Normally, theater level strategy isn't too hard to craft--at least, in figuring out who your friends and enemies are. Military history is often marked by rare occasions, though, when theater level strategy seems dangerously out of whack with grand strategy. One of the great controversies among aficianados of Napoleonic history, for example, is whether France ever needed to invade Russia. Was Napoleon knocking out a powerful opponent before the Russians could cement an alliance with Britain, or was he disastrously jumping the gun?

Just as Napoleon may have overestimated the Russian threat, creating a need for a theater level strategy that didn't serve French grand strategy, other combatants have at times underestimated threats. The classic example is Chamberlain's appeasement policy--at least, in the traditional view that he was hoodwinked by Hitler's promise of peace. Recently, some historians have been arguing that Chamberlain was simply buying time, since Britain in 1938 wasn't ready yet for an unavoidable conflict with the aggressive Nazi regime.

Theater level strategy demands more than just the identification of an opponent and an area of operations. Combatants also need to determine, in broad brushstrokes, how to defeat their opponents. The debate over the Vietnam War often focuses on this aspect of theater strategy. Should the United States have just pursued the Westmoreland attrition strategy more aggressively? Would an invasion of the North brought victory? Would a focus on a different approach to counterinsurgency given the South Vietnamese government enough breathing room to stand on its own, even in the face of its hostile Communist neighbor? How, in any case, would the United States have been able to use its power and leverage to put an end to South Vietnam's political troubles, which threatened to make any military strategy moot?

This leads us to the third aspect of theater level strategy: a definition of victory. Was victory in the Vietnam War the preservation of South Vietnam, mirroring the defense of an independent South Korea? Was it the preservation of US credibility, regardless of the consequences? Was it simple containment? The eradication of any threat from the North? Often, people with opposing views on what went wrong in Vietnam are talking past each other, since they're assuming different definitions of victory in the Asian theater of containment.

One more point is worth making before leaving this summary of theater strategy: what defines the theater for one combatant may not fit anyone else's involved in the conflict. Asia was, for the United States, one of several theaters in the Cold War. What happened in Vietnam may or may not have been important in the Asian theater, but it was small compared to the global objectives of the United States. The Vietnam War was certainly unrelated to the goal of nuclear deterrence. However traumatic the American defeat may have been, in reality, all the United States did was to redraw the perimeter of containment after Saigon fell.

In contrast, there was only one theater for the North Vietnamese regime: South Vietnam. Laos and Cambodia were part of this theater to the extent that they factored into North Vietnamese operations against the South (the course of the Ho Chi Minh trail being one such consideration). Victory or defeat in that single theater was absolute for the North Vietnamese.

Not surprisingly, therefore, many interpretations of the Vietnam War cite the mismatch of wills between North Vietnam and the United States as a critical element. From the perspective of theater level strategy, this insight makes perfect sense. It's an observation worth noting in other situations, such as the history of colonial wars in the 19th and 20th centuries, and even our own War of Independence. For the "locals," there always is just one theater--and, to go back to our discussion of power and leverage, that fact gives the locals considerable leverage over their more powereful enemies.

The essence of theater strategy, therefore, often boils down to choices about this war, at this time, against this foe, with these forces, fought in this general way.

PRACTICE
It may seem odd to describe counterterrorism as a theater level strategy, but that's effectively what it is. If the United States is now in mortal combat with al Qaeda, that group becomes one of our theaters of operations. Al Qaeda fighters may move from Afghanistan to the Philippines to New York, but wherever they are, they've become an important theater-level concern. Put in the simplest terms, American grand strategy demands the protection of defines life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. Al Qaeda threatens broadly threatens all three sacred elements of the American way of life.

What makes much less sense, of course, is how Iraq became an important part of our theater level strategy. The most generous argument someone can make includes one or both of the following points:

• 9/11 was bad enough, but an al Qaeda attack with nuclear, chemical, or biological weapons would have been far worse. Therefore, we have to work on two tracks simultaneously: (1) defeat al Qaeda and any other groups like it; (2) shut down secret weapons labs, restrict access to WMD technology, and do everything else necessary to eliminate anyplace terrorist might acquire WMDs. If the terrorist and WMD tracks ever do intersect, we'll have failed in our post-9/11 counterterrorist effort.


• Virulent anti-Western Islamist movements in the Middle East attract new adherents every day. So far, we've only affected Middle Eastern politics at the fringes. If we really want to shut down terrorist groups, we may need to take a bold stroke that re-defines the political equation in not jus a single country, but the entire region. In fact, we can't stop at one country, since such a masterstroke could turn into a terrible blunder if the backlash radicalizes more Muslims to join groups like al Qaeda.

Even in this generous interpretation of the Bush Administration's theater strategy in the Middle East and Central Asia, it has turned out to be a catastrophic failure so far. The invasion of Afghanistan made perfect sense. "Going downtown" (to borrow a phrase from the Vietnam War) meant invading to crush both the Taliban and al Qaeda so that Afghanistan could never become a terrorist base again. Many (myself included) have been critical of American follow-through in the Afghan operation. It's understandable that it will take time to stabilize the situation, given the ethnic, sectarian, and tribal conflicts in the country. No one expects an end to warlordism overnight--as President Kharzai readily admits. Victory in Afghanistan will take patience, resources, political skill, relentless pursuit of the Taliban and al Qaeda remnants, and time. However, the United States has done far less than it needed (and promised) to do in Afghanistan--in no small part because the Bush Administration was in a hurry to invade Iraq.

The Administration made an excessively risky bet in Iraq and lost. The WMDs weren't there. (By now, the looping strands of the "not finding WMDs isn't evidence that they don't exist" argument have completely unravelled.) There wasn't even an active WMD program, despite Bush's revisionist claim of "weapons of mass destruction-related programs."

There was no connection between the Baath Party and al Qaeda. The group to which Secretary of State Powell pointed as "proof" of the al Qaeda connection, Ansar al-Islam, was in fact a mortal enemy of Saddam Hussein. Since the post-war plans proved to be threadbare or non-existent, we've created many more enemies in Iraq than we should have.

The regional backlash many feared has in fact happened. The invasion gave anti-Western demagogues the chance to depict US soldiers as crusaders in new uniforms. The Abu Ghraib photos, the siege of Fallujah, American running battles with Sadrist forces, and related events have, needless to say, made a bad situation worse. (Bush's loose tongue about his fundamentalist Christian beliefs haven't helped either.)

Every day, American soldiers who had been safely based in Europe, the United States, or elsewhere in the Middle East are now dying in Iraq. American grand strategy, to the extent that it will eventually require shifting of resources out of Iraq to meet other threats, has also been crippled by the botched occupation. Facing down the North Koreans, who actually do have nuclear weapons, is now much harder, given the self-inflicted wound in Iraq. And we've helped make one terrorist group, Ansar al-Islam, more powerful than it once was--including the power to kill Americans.

Unless there's a dramatic change in fortune, the Iraq War will become the defining example of failed theater strategy for generations to come. The Baath regime was effectively contained, according to experts like former weapons inspector Scott Ritter and General Anthony Zinni, the former CENTCOM commander. Theater strategy in the Middle East was working, to the extent that Iraq posed little or no threat. Saddam Hussein had no WMDs to hand over to terrorists or launch against Tel Aviv. We may have been frustrated with Hussein's continued survival, and he certainly was the nastiest of tyrants. He wasn't, however, a factor in our war with al Qaeda--the part of American grand strategy that shot to the top of our post-9/11 priorities.

Not only didn't the Iraq War contribute to our grand strategy, but US plans (such as they were) didn't even bring real victory in the Middle East or other theaters. As billions of US dollars flow into Iraq to keep the situation from disintegrating further, real priorities--such as the surviving threat of the Taliban, or the frightening revelation that the Libyans received nuclear technology from North Korea--suffer.

The wrong war, against the wrong opponent, fought the wrong way, at the wrong time for our war against al Qaeda. The more you view current events through the clarifying lens of grand and theater strategy, the more obvious and profound the failure appears.

The grand strategic level

THEORY
We’ll start at the highest plane of strategy and work our way down. Since the “official posts” on this blog started with the political objectives of warmaking, grand strategy fits into that discussion naturally.

The grand strategy of any combatant includes the core interests and goals, which then guide the general thrust of what the government or group does as a whole. Grand strategy might sound like an extremely vague concept, but if you look at a few case studies, you can see that its contours are actually quite distinct.

Ancient Rome’s grand strategy, for example, consisted of the following components:

• Rome, either as an empire or a republic, saw itself surrounded by hostile powers, including some at an equivalent level of civilization, but also many barbarians.


• Rome could conquer its “great power” rivals, from the weak (Ptolemaic Egypt) to the strong (Carthage).


• Rome seized territories where barbarians were currently settled, but it could not eliminate the barbarian threat altogether (particularly given the frequent barbarian migrations from regions far out of Rome’s reach).


• In the process of making these conquests, Rome incorporated these new provinces into its political, administrative, economic, and even religious structures. From granting Roman citizenship to the elites of newly-conquered peoples to incorporating their gods into the list of officially recognized cults, the Romans gave their former enemies a stake in the defending the ever-growing Roman domain.


• Conquests provided the slaves needed to sustain the Roman economy, and many conquered territories, such as the grain-rich Nile valley, provided other economic benefits.


• The force needed to maintain security, the legions, could be deployed permanently on the borders, or held in reserve to react to any incursions by barbarians (like the Goths) or civilized rivals (like the Parthians). The legions were supplemented by auxiliary troops from conquered peoples (slingers from the Balaeric islands, cavalry from the Sarmatians, etc.), again integrating Rome’s conquest quickly into the imperium.

It was a brilliant formula that worked for centuries, until Rome reached the limits of its expansion. Rome depended on conquests for fresh supplies of slaves; otherwise, the cheap labor the slaves provided became increasingly expensive, upsetting the assumptions under which the entire Roman economy was based. In the late empire, this formula—Rome’s grand strategy—had to change. Rather than focusing on conquest, Rome instead pursued a new policy of turning control of its provinces over to the barbarian leaders oath-bound to Rome. Re-interpreted pieces of Roman law provided a sugar coating for this process of contraction and retrenchment.

The grand strategy of the United States during the Cold War was also easy to define. The mobilizations needed to fight the Axis powers gave both the United States and the Soviet Union new strength on the world stage. At the same time, the war created a European power vacuum previously filled by other great powers—England, France, and Germany—now devastated by the war. American and Soviet power filled that vacuum. According to many historians of the Cold War, the frictions of these two new superpowers were as natural as those between Athens and Sparta (as Thucydides observed, the inevitable rivalry between a great land power and a great sea power). The ideological conflict between democratic capitalism and totalitarian socialism deepened the conflict. The introduction of nuclear weapons made the mutual anxieties absolute.

The United States, therefore, had a clear grand strategy to pursue:

• Continue the traditional pursuit of American prosperity, liberty, and security.


• To protect security, the United States must prevent a nuclear war.


• To preserve prosperity and liberty, and to keep the balance of power from tipping in the wrong direction, the United States must contain Soviet political and military expansion. The Iron Curtain, therefore, could not move one inch further into Europe.


• As George Kennan famously argued in the X telegram, the United States then had to play the waiting game. Eventually, the Soviet Union would implode from its own “internal contradictions” (to borrow a bit of Marxist terminology), and the Cold War would come to an end.

Different presidents tinkered with the details of American containment strategy, and certainly they fought this conflict at the lower levels of strategy in different ways. However, policies as different as Eisenhower’s New Look and Kennedy’s flexible response differed never really challenged the grand strategy of containment.

Grand strategy for Rome explains how the Romans defined their interests and responded to threats. If you’re curious why the Romans bothered to invade the British Isles, but looking at the grand strategy of Rome, it made sense. Grand strategy for the United States during the Cold war helped the nation adapt to important changes like the Chinese Revolution, and then later, the Sino-Soviet split. Whatever happened in Asia, the same grand strategic principles applied.

As a vessel of important strategic decisions that needs to be filled, grand strategy has a definite shape and purpose. What may not be altogether clear, however, is if anyone has bothered to fill this vessel.

PRACTICE
Many foreign policy analysts like John Lewis Gaddis and John Mearsheimer said, in the 1990s, that we would miss the Cold War. Given the constant nuclear threat under which Americans had lived for generations, that was a shocking statement to make. Their point, stated provocatively, was that Americans would miss the clarity of the Cold War. No one really struggled to understand the correct grand strategy for dealing with the Soviet threat; grand strategy in the new, post-Cold War age was a lot harder to figure out.

It might even be fair to say that, after the collapse of the Soviet empire, the United States had no grand strategy. If we use the terms national security and grand strategy interchangeably, which would be fair to do, the national security policy of the Bush and Clinton presidencies didn’t clearly define what national security really meant. Both Administrations tried to sell a new national security policy to the American public, but it’d be hard to make a convincing case that they succeeded. (In fact, I’d argue that the lack of a national security policy helped Clinton win the 1992 election. Bush may have won the Gulf War, but it didn’t seem like a great victory in an even larger struggle.)

Events conspired against Bush and Clinton. After the recession of the early Nineties, the United States enjoyed a level of prosperity that didn’t inspire much insecurity. Neither did the minor conflicts in the Balkans, Somalia, Haiti, and elsewhere. These seemed like the “little wars” of the 19th and early 20th centuries: however well or poorly we handled these affairs, they seemed clearly peripheral to us, easily kept at arms length from anything really vital. The one major conflict that did threaten our core interests, the war with Iraq, was such a seemingly easy victory for the United States and its allies that we believed we could rest on our superpower laurels, having established the supremacy of American military power. The 1993 attack on the World Trade Center didn’t succeed, and two years later, the Oklahoma City bombing made terrorism seem like an unavoidable part of both international and domestic politics—worth policing, but not worth elevating to a higher level of threat. Until 9/11, terrorists did not replace the Soviets as the new enemy.

According to many analysts, 9/11 forced clarity on us. We suddenly realized our blind spot for a very serious threat. International terrorist groups like al Qaeda could hurt our core national interests, of which the security of life and limb was the most basic. At the same time, we breathed a collective sigh of relief that the attack wasn’t worse than it already was. Americans realized that hijackers could have hit a target of supreme economic, military, or political importance, such as the White House—and, if they had been even luckier, more people could have died.

As I’ve argued earlier, 9/11 made us angrier, but it didn’t necessarily make us smarter. Because we feel that 9/11 forces us to have a better grand strategy, doesn’t mean that we do. National security, as someone once famously observed, merely identifies what makes us feel insecure. We can easily misidentify the things that should inspire insecurity (as we did with terrorism), or we may feel too much or too little of this emotion.

Some consensus about the new American notion of national security has formed, and I do think it makes sense at its most basic level. This new grand strategy looks something like this:

• As we did at the beginning of the Cold War, we must continue our traditional quest for American prosperity, liberty, and security.


• Unfortunately, the very things that make modern societies like ours highly successful—openness, mobility, communications, interdependence—also make them vulnerable. Just as the New York blackout in the Seventies showed how the failure of one moving part, the electrical grid, could bring all the machinery of modern society to a standstill, a deliberate attack on some part could threaten everything and everyone.


• Anti-American terrorist groups seriously threaten us. They understand our vulnerabilities as well as we do.


• The very nature of these groups—tied to no place in particular, clever and ruthless, organized in ways that make it difficult to assault them root and branch—make it imperative that we devote more attention to them.


• Given the terrorists’ modus operandi, it’s hard to believe that they wouldn’t use “unconventional weapons”—nuclear, chemical, and biological—if possible. The Aum Shinrikyo sarin attack on the Tokyo subway is, according to this view, the harbinger of worse things to come.


• Therefore, the United States needs to move quickly, not just to contain or eliminate terrorist groups. but to deprive them of these doomsday weapons.

We can debate all these points, but for sake of this discussion, I’m going to take them as a given. If these points define the new US grand strategy, whatever we do at the lower levels of strategy have to conform to these guidelines. Whether they do, of course, will be the subject of the next several postings.

Levels of strategy

THEORY
Nearly every book about the Vietnam War written in the last twenty years includes the following exchange between Harry Summers, an Army colonel, and one of his counterparts in the North Vietnamese Army. "You know, you never defeated us on the battlefield," Summers said. The North Vietnamese colonel tartly replied, "That may be so, but it is also irrelevant."

The fact that the United States won all the battles it fought, but still lost the Vietnam War, was the inspiration for Summers to write On Strategy, a Clausewitzian critique of US strategy in the war. This observation about the Vietnam War is also an inspirational point for starting a discussion of the levels of strategy. As in Vietnam, what we're doing today in Iraq and Afghanistan may be successful at one level, but a complete disaster at the higher levels--the ones that ultimately determine whether we win or lose.

There's a lot about Summers' analysis that's flawed (for example, he got Clausewitz's notion of friction all wrong). It's a good book, but there's a better one for the topic at hand: Strategy: The Logic of War and Peace by Edward Luttwak, A must-read books for anyone interested in the subject of this blog. Strategy is a distillation of many classic ideas about military strategy, and Luttwak mixes in some very thought-provoking observations of his own.

This subject deserves a lot of explanation, but I don't want to write one overlong post about it. Instead, I'll break the discussion into one level per post. That approach fits the blog medium better than a mega-post, and I'll actually get the whole thing written faster and better in small chunks. So stay tuned, Dear Reader, for this series of critical postings. Believe me, once you digest these concepts, you'll never look at warfare the same way again.

The levels of strategy are...

• Grand strategic.


• Theater.


• Operational.


• Tactical.


• Technical.

I'll explain each in turn, and I'll provide a running series of examples to illustrate them. Since the Chinese civil war provides an excellent overall example, I'll wrap up things up with that case study.

For now, keep in mind the following point: the difference between victory and defeat often turns on whether efforts at one level actually contribute to the other levels. The success story of the blitzkrieg wasn't just a story of fine German engineering, manifested in the panzers that slashed through Poland, the Low Countries, and France. The blitzkrieg depended not only on the tank, but also how it fit into a combined arms approach that linked armor, infantry, and air power through radio communications. In the first two years of the Russo-German conflict, the Wehrmacht actually faced an enemy with better tanks. Aficianados of WWII armor will tell you that the Soviet T-34 was easily superior to the German PzKW III and IV, as measured by firepower, speed, and protection. However, the Germans fought better with their tanks than the Soviets did, which made it possible for the Wehrmacht to stop just short of Moscow in 1941, and just short of the Volga in 1942.

Every science starts with classification. Putting names to things, identifying the differences among them, is a critical exercise whether you're a student of entymology, astronomy, or military history. Since classification makes the overall picture of what you're studying more clear, it's often the catalyst for inspiration. Classifying the differences among birds in the Galapagos Islands gave Darwin the mental nudge the theory of evolution. Classifying the different species of military strategy can also inspire Big Thoughts, as we'll see.

PRACTICE
If you've read the earlier posts on theory and practice, you've seen that I don't have much patience with the notion that Do something! is a good guide to action. Nothing we'll discuss on this blog will put a stake through the heart of that great fallacy than this discussion of the levels of strategy. Do something! is meaningless, once you see that doing a fantastic job at one level of strategy may be irrelevant to the ones that ultimately decide victory or defeat. In fact, success victory at one level can blind you to the real problems brewing at other levels, as the Vietnam example illustrates. It's natural for people to look for signs of hope when American soldiers are dying, but the signs may be pointing in the wrong direction.

US and allied forces did a stellar job invading Iraq. The list of what made this victory possible at the theater level of strategy is long and familiar: superior equipment, outstanding training and organization, experience fighting the Iraqi army in Operation Desert Storm...Reading or listening to the news, we've heard the pundits run through this list over and over again.

But what did we win? I hope this discussion of the levels of strategy will help answer that critical question.

"A war like no other"

THEORY
Now that we're nearing the third anniversary of 9/11, we've certainly had enough time to think more clearly about some of the assumptions we've made about what that tragic event actually signified and justified.

Most of all, we're overdue for a re-examination of the following statement:

"And the truth is, this will be a war like no other our nation has faced." (Donald Rumsfeld, 09/18/01)

We've heard echoes of this sentiment ever since 9/11. Most people assume that the war--whatever it is--has no precedent, either for us, or for the entire world.

Because 9/11 was sui generis, many would argue, preventing future 9/11s requires abandoning old assumptions and tools. When someone says this, they're usually talking about are (1) using violence, or its threat, much more freely and intensely than we have in the past, (2) removing legal, Constitutional, and traditional restraints on when and how we use force, and (3) removing these same comstraints when dealing with prisoners accused of being terrorists.

In a way, the consequences of this philosophy circle back on its justifications. If we invade other countries without our traditional allies, aggressively pursue and assassinate terrorist leaders, and detain people without counsel (or even contact with the outside world), we have indeed created a new reality.

But was 9/11 the trigger for "a war like no other?"

Since this notion sloshes around in an inchoate stew of unstated assumptions, it's hard to say. What made 9/11 unique, and for whom, isn't a rhetorical question. The United States since the end of the Cold War already had almost no clear concept of its own national security. It's more than a bit reckless, therefore, to think that a single event, however dramatic or horrifying, made the hard outlines of our new national interests absolutely clear. Our rage, shock, and need to respond certainly were clear--but that's it. These same passions may also blind us to reality: in our towering and justifiable rage over 9/11, we may be less able to see our real interests.

What then might the statement, a war like no other, mean?

The world has never seen a terrorist attack like what happened on 9/11.
This isn't true. Bombs have gone off in London tube stations and Paris shopping malls--attacks designed to kill innocent civilians, not military targets. Red Brigade terrorists kidnapped and killed a former Italian prime minister, Aldo Moro, in 1978. At the 1972 Olympics in Munich, Palestinian terrorists took the Israeli Olympic team hostage and slaughtered them. No one had successfully used airliners as flying bombs before, but certainly, terrorists recently tried at least once to crash an airliner into Paris. And terrorists tried to blow up one of the World Trade Center towers in 1993, with the expectation that it would topple into the other tower, destroying them both.

The United States is no longer safe from terrorist attack.
Aside from the 1993 World Trade Center attack, the United States has already suffered several incidents of terrorism, both inside and outside US borders. The FBI thwarted the "Millennium plot" in 2000. During the 1960s and 1970s, American citizens were hostages in several airline hijackings. The worst incident prior to 9/11, of course, was the 1995 bombing of the Murrah Building in Oklahoma City, in which 168 people died, including a large number of children in a day care facility. Since 1995, other domestic terrorists have continued to plot attacks. Some were successful (abortion clinic bombings, the Atlanta Olympics bombing, etc.), others not. Whatever the fate of Timothy McVeigh or Mohammed Atef, domestic and foreign terrorists have attacked the United States before 9/11, and continue to plan attacks since 9/11.

US citizens are now vulnerable to attack by enemies from within.
Aside from domestic terrorists, the United States has weathered many sources of violence from within its own borders, or on its frontier. Clashes with Native Americans, from the first Powhatan War to the ghost dancers, have been a sadly consistent feature of American history. After the British surrender at Yorktown, American colonists still feared Tory sympathizers whom they suspected of providing information about US troops and warships to a vengeful Britain. The Shays Rebellion was one of many incidents that made Americans fearful that the new republic would be torn apart in riot and revolt. Gang violence--the Molly Maguires' bare-knuckled intimidation of coal minors, Prohibition-era mob wars, clashes among rival Vietnamese or Cuban gangs--has also been a recurring theme in American history. And, of course, the United States fought a bloody civil war over slavery, but emerged as an intact nation.

US citizens are now vulnerable to attack from enemies from without.
That's not exactly true either. The "atom spies" cases of the 1950s were scandalous both because Americans were passing secrets to the Soviets, but also the Soviets were using these secrets to sharpen the nuclear sword against us. Foreign enemies have attacked US territory, and even burned the White House during the War of 1812. Throughout the 19th and early 20th centuries, US marines landed in China, Nicaragua, Haiti, and elsewhere to protect American citizens during uprisings like the Boxer Rebellion. American civilians, therefore, faced a far larger threat to life and limb during the Cold War, and frequently came under fire during "little wars" in Asia and Latin America.

Al Qaeda represents a new kind of enemy.
Terrorism is hardly new. Al Qaeda might be more ruthless, clever, and organized than previous anti-American terrorist groups, but they're hardly the first. And other countries with whom we have close working relationships in counterterrorism, such as the United Kingdom, France, Russia, Egypt, Colombia, and Israel, have experience with terrorist groups as ruthless as al Qaeda, if not moreso.

Americans didn't see terrorism as a threat.
Whether or not Americans missed the warning signs, they were there. This statement--we didn't understand the terrorist threat before 9/11--condemns our own ignorance. It doesn't identify anything truly new that's a threat to us. It's the fault of the American public or American politicians that terrorism--from foreign groups like al Qaeda, or from homegrown terrorists like Timothy McVeigh--consistently appeared lower on our list of imminent dangers than perhaps it should have.

And, in spite of the feeling that we've risen to the challenge that terrorism poses, we still might not understand the threat. We may be overrating the significance of 9/11, or of al Qaeda relative to other dangers we face. Or we may misunderstand the terrorist threat altogether--correctly identifying the danger, but mistaking its sources and the best ways to fight it. 9/11 may have frightened the hell out of us, but it didn't necessarily make us smarter.

PRACTICE
I've started the discussion of "the spectrum of conflict" with this question--was 9/11 the Year Zero for the United States--because it's both an important question to address on its own, and it launches us directly into some of the critical issues about military strategy. We'll get to that second point soon enough, but for the moment, let's stick to the Year Zero idea.

As I said earlier, for many people, the break from the past that occurred on September 11, 2001, took the following form:

Because we are now fighting "a war like no other," we have to abandon old ways of fighting wars, old ways of thinking about the threats we face, even hallowed legal and Constitutional principles, in the face of the hard reality of this "war like no other."

You can question whether the second part of that thesis--counterterrorism requires not just a different American way of warfare, but almost a different America--on at least two grounds. The effectiveness of these "new ways" is highly questionable, whether or not they're justified by some new reality.

However, the "new reality" is sheer poppycock. 9/11 wasn't anything new, and it didn't signify the worst threat that we've ever faced. We've faced threats before that resembled some of the shocking aspects of al Qaeda's attack. We faced down a nuclear-powered enemy who could kill not thousands, but millions of Americans, and we patiently waited until the Soviet Union self-destructed and we exited the Cold War with our cities, military, alliances, and Constitution intact. During the early years of the republic, we feared British sympathizers and insurrectionists from within, and both Native Americans and British troops from without. Americans weren't sure the fragile republic would survive its first few decades, and the Civil War almost did wreck the nation. Terrorists are nothing new, and many of our best friends, new (Russia) and old (Britain), can (and do) tell us a lot about their own experiences fighting terrorists.

The sentiment that 9/11 signalled "a war like no other" is understandable. We were in shock, mourning both our dead and the safety we used to feel. That safety was, to some extent, illusory. But at the same time, we weren't at the mercy of dark forces, defying our understanding, capable at any moment of inflicting more pain and suffering at unthinkable levels. We made a mistake, both in downplaying the threat before 9/11, and exaggerating it since then. It's time, now, to start thinking and behaving like adults.