October 23, 2005
Posted in Strategy at 17:24 by Graham King
The term sea power covers the control of international trade and commerce, the operation of navies in war, and the use of navies as instruments of diplomacy, deterrence, and political influence in peacetime. The importance of a navy rests on its ability to affect events on land and to control use of the sea. Armies control territory, whereas navies control access; to territory, international movement, and trade.
Unlike the concept of land and air power which are generally defined only in military terms sea power can never quite be separated from its geo-economic purposes. Over 90 percent of international trade by weight and volume travels by water. The majority of the world’s major cities and urban population lie within 200 kilometres of a coastline.
Sea power is seen as essential to globalization. A global navy alows a nation commited to global trade to guarantee the free use of trade routes. If international trade is secure from threats to its disruption, trade can expand.
Sea control and sea denial involve struggles over the use of sea lines of communication (or commerce). These are the world’s trade routes and routes for military movement at sea. The world’s geography affords three strategic choke points: The Strait of Hormuz at the mouth of the Arabian Gulf through which much of the world’s oil supply passes; the Straits of Malacca in south-east Asia, and the Panama Canal.
The only global sea power today is the United States of America. All other sea-faring nations concentrate on being local or regional sea powers, controlling their littoral region and maintaing a small expeditionary force which can be sent to areas of strategic interest when needed.
Posted in Strategy at 17:23 by Graham King
A maritime blockade, strategic bombing or guerilla warfare are coercive techniques to achieve a particular objective. By bring about economic ruin, large scale destruction, or a campaign or terror, aggressors seek to induce their opponent to give them their objective. Land warfare, by contrast, obtains objectives by seizing them directly; it is brute force.
The First World War
The First World War was the first war to be fought since the industrial revolution. This brought huge changes in the size and firepower of armies. For example in 1812 Napoleon’s Grande Armee numbered 600 000, and each soldier had time to fire two musket bullets before an approaching unit closed to bayonet range. By 1912 the French army had 1.6 Million troops, yet was only the third largest in Europe. Each soldier could fire two hundred bullets before the attacker closed to bayonet range. Bayonet charges became suicidal and tactics had to be altered dramatically.
The Boer War (1899-1902) and the Russo-Japanese War (1904-5) had provided early experience of this new type of war, and two decisive tactics emerged almost immediately; the use of cover and concealment to reduce attackers exposure while advancing, and suppressive fire to keep the defenders heads down while the attackers were exposed.
These two tactics were difficult to execute. The first required the massed line attacks to be replaced by small groups making short dashes between areas of cover. This put more distance between leaders and led which made it hard for officers to keep their troops moving. The second required good infantry (advancing) / artillery (providing the covering fire) co-ordination. If the covering artillery barrage fell short or continued too long it would hit their own troops; if it fell long or stopped too early it wouldn’t be effective.
These problems prevented decisive victories in the early days of the First World War, and the troops rapidly became bogged down in trench warfare. Artillery could destroy trench defenses outright, and it became the dominant arm of the army. Massive preparatory artillery barrages would destroy the opposing trenches, and the infantry would simply move in, mop up the dazed survivors, and take over.
The scale of artillery bombardment was unprecedented. For example, the ten-day Allied bombardment around Messines in July 1917 dropped 1200 tons of explosives on every mile of German defenses. These attacks were successful and ground was taken, but proved much harder to hold. The week long preparatory barrages alerted the opposition as to where the attack would take place. They would mass reserves and artillery just behind the front line, and attack their own front positions as soon as they had been taken, forcing the enemy to retreat. It proved impossible to advance beyond the reach of artillery. This was called ‘war on a tether’.
Over the course of the long trench stalemate both sides eventually overcame the technical and tactical problems of a combined arms approach. They limited artillery barrages in time so as not to alert the enemy, and replaced the massed infantry charge with several small well trained units armed with portable light machine guns and grenades. The Germans developed these tactics first, using them at Caporetto on the Italian front in November 1917.
The Second World War
The inter-war period brought mechanization – tanks, trucks, aircraft and radio communications. These had all featured in the First World War, but not in any significant role. Out of 414 tanks starting at Cambrai on 8th August 1918, only 145 were running on the second day. The physical hardship and unreliable technology meant that after a day of fighting neither men nor machines were much use. Aircraft were too light to carry a payload and were mostly reserved for reconnaissance or counter-reconnaissance. Wireless sets had been too bulky and low powered.
Most Allied strategists saw the tank as key to future wars, and envisaged them as the navy of the land, operating independently. The Germans by contrast were the most conservative. They developed the Panzer division, a combined arms formation of tightly co-ordinated tanks, infantry, artillery and engineers. They combined movement, use of cover, and suppressive fire to overcome defenses in an all-arms assault.
The civil-military tension in France produced a short service unskilled conscript army unable to master the combined arms tactics developed in the last stage of the First World War. England’s class-conscious officer corps ostracized the skilled technicians they needed for in an effective mechanized army, and many of them moved on to civilian jobs. In the Soviet Union ruthless political purges stripped the army of its competent officers.
The hard lessons of 1917-18 has taught defenders to thin their troops, extend their defenses into great depth, and keep much of their force in reserve. Although this yielded ground initially it forced attackers to fight the decisive battle deep within enemy territory after an advance of thousands of yards which would of frayed their combined arms co-ordination. It also gave defenders more time to prepare for the battle. Yet at the start of the 1939 hostilities French and Russian defenses were shallow and forward focused; this made them easier for an inexperienced officer corps to command, but also easier for the German Panzer divisions to punch through.
As a result the opening period of the Second World War was marked by a series of German ‘blitzkrieg’ victories. By 1941 the Allies re-learnt the importance of deep elastic defenses, integrated fire and movement, and combined arms, and slowly started re-gaining ground.
After the initial success of the Panzer divisions, tanks did not prove decisive. Operating alone they are loud, hard to hide, and have great difficulty seeing concealed targets. Dug-in anti-tank guns or infantry with short-range portable anti-tank weapons can wait for a tank to pass and attack its vulnerable flank and rear. Infantry were needed to act as their eyes and ears and artillery to provide high volume suppressive fire during extended operations. Tanks proved most successful in open country once defenses were breached, or for close situations were artillery fire had too high a risk of hitting friendly forces.
The 1973 Arab-Israeli war
In the 1956 and 1967 conflicts against Arab opponents, Israel’s limited mechanized forces had produced results disproportionate to their strength. This convinced senior Israeli leaders to focus almost exclusively on mechanized units, neglecting infantry and artillery. As they were to discover however, their previous successes, particularly 1967, had been mostly due to the poor performance of Egyptian troops. In the 1967-73 years Egypt taught its infantry to defend against tank charges by concealing their positions, standing fast, and hit their targets.
In October 1973 the Egyptians caught Israel off-guard, crossed the Suez canal, overwhelmed the unprepared garrison of the ‘Bar Lev Line’, advanced four kilometers into the Sinai and dug in. Israel quickly counter-attacked, impaling a series of unsupported tank charges on the Egyptian defense and losing almost three full brigades.
Faced with a failure of their pre-war tactics and almost no infantry, the Israelis improvised a combined arms style. A few tanks would move forward cautiously to draw fire from the Egyptian infantry’s portable wire-guided missiles, while other tanks in over-watch positions would look for the puff of smoke signalling the missile launch and fire on that position. Meanwhile the forward tank sought cover and maneuvered evasively. These new techniques eventually allowed the Israelis to break through Egyptian defenses, were the war was rapidly won.
The 1991 Gulf War
Between the 17th January and 28th February 1991, a US led coalition destroyed a defending Iraqi army of hundreds of thousands of soldiers, thousands of armored vehicles and tens of thousands of artillery pieces, for the loss of only 240 attackers. This represented less than one fatality in 3000 soldiers, an incredibly low coalition casualty rate.
In August 1990 Iraq invaded Kuwait. Over the next five months a US-led coalition gathered forces in Saudi Arabia, Turkey and the Persian Gulf. On the 17th January they launched a six week air campaign, rapidly gaining control of the air and destroying the air defense and large parts of Iraq’s command and control network. This gave them uncontested air supremacy for almost a month of bombing attacks. On the 24th February two divisions of US marines attacking from the center and left, and two corps on the extreme right flank, rapidly defeated the Iraqi ground forces. The war was halted on 28th February, just 42 days after it started, and only four days after the start of the ground offensive.
This unprecedented success is attributable to a combination of superior coalition technology and flawed Iraqi tactics. New information gathering, precision guidance and air defense suppression technologies were all used by the coalition for the first time or in a newly mature form, and not used by the opposition. The Iraqis tactical flaws were the usual combination of poor combined arms co-ordination, inability to integrate manoeuvre and suppressive fire, and poor exploitation of cover and concealment.
The Iraqi conscript infantry was neither skilled nor motivated and even the Republican Guard were remarkably unskilled. Fighting positions for tanks and troops were haphazardly prepared. For example many Republican Guard armored vehicles were left perched on the desert surface behind loose sand berms which offered neither concealment (they were the only prominent feature on the flat desert landscape) nor cover (piled sand cannot stop 120mm depleted uranium shells). US tanks crews, by constrast, dug fighting positions as ramps which conceal the entire vehicle below ground until the weapon is to be fired. This way they cannot be seen by thermal sights and are not vulnerable to enemy fire (even 120mm DU).
Further Iraqi tactical mistakes include counterattacks launched by armoured vehicles advancing in the open without accompanying fire support; poor marksmanship; and little regard to equipment maintenance. The were not the first to make such mistakes. The technical demands of modern war are exacting, but as technology becomes more sophisticated the consequences of such errors become greater.
The coalition attackers had all-weather, day/night thermal tank sights, stabilized 120mm guns effective on the first shot at 3 kilometres, attack helicopters with 5 kilometre range missiles, and aircraft armed with precision guided missiles and complete command of the sky. Against such weapons tactical slip-ups became very lethal very quickly to a very large number of defenders.
Since 1900 there has been a continuous, rapid growth in the reach, lethality, speed and information-gathering potential of armies. Military strategy has developed and repeatedly proved a key set of tactics: combined arms, tight integration of movement and suppressive fire, aggressive use of cover and concealment, and defensive depth and reserves. Technology punishes tactical mistakes with increasing severity. Technological change in land warfare can thus be thought of as a wedge, driving apart the real military capability of armies that can, from those that cannot, implement the complex canon of orthodox modern tactics and doctrine.
Posted in Strategy at 17:23 by Graham King
Although there is no judiciary or policing capability at the international level (aside from the limited actions and powers of the United Nations), there is a still an influential body of international law, respected almost all the time by almost all nations. The times when they don’t usually make the news.
A key point of procedure to bear in mind when dealing with international law, which means the law of the United Nations, is that decisions are voted upon by the fifteen members of the Security Council. To pass, a decision must have at least nine votes, including the votes of all five of the permanent members (China, France, the United Kingdom, the United States and the Soviet Union). This means the five permanent members may veto any decisions and are hence exempt from UN sanctions. This decision was taken in 1945 in San Francisco at the conference where the UN was created. Any attempt to police the behaviour of the permanent members of the Security Council would almost inevitably lead to major conflict and the destruction of the United Nations.
The composition of the Security Council permanent members and their veto powers means that the UN was largely incapacitated for the duration of the Cold War.
Day to day international law
International law ensures that day-to-day interstate relations proceed in a regular and ordered fashion. Like all good law, it is designed not to prohibit those actions which states (or individuals in a domestic setting) would normally choose to undertake, but rather to codify accepted modes of behavior; good law is facilitative, not prohibitive. It is a mechanism through which societies seek to achieve political objectives, particularly that of maintaining order.
The difficulty in setting down international law is in it being sufficiently conservative as to be of benefit to the powerful nations that will enforce it (and that would suffer limited consequences in breaking in), and sufficiently broad that most smaller states will deem it in their interest to abide by it.
States obey international law for several reasons:
- Reputation: States seek to avoid acquiring a reputation as a law breaker (‘rogue state’) as they will then find it difficult to enter into legally binding agreements with other states. They will be cut of from the interactions of world trade and diplomacy.
- Inherent value: States obey laws whose underpinning political rational is clear and which they agree with. For example rules on territorial integrity and inviolability of borders are of benefit to all nations.
- Functional value: States obey the law because its overall contribution to maintaining international order is considered to be of value.
- Interia: States become use to behaving in a fashion enshrined by law. Governing elites and bureaucracies becomes socialized into behaving in that way. Often principles of international law also feature or are incorporated into domestic law. In countries where those that formulate policy are answerable to wider public and media scrutiny policies that violate international law may be perceived as non-viable.
Even when states dis-obey international rules, they often maintain that they are acting within the law. Hitler entered Czechoslovakia in the name of self-determination; the USSR invaded Afghanistan claiming to be invited in by a newly established regime; the United States used force against the Dominican Republic claiming to be acting on behalf of the Organization of American States; and the United States attacked Iraq in 2003 claiming to be enforcing a UN resolution.
Repeated violations of international law can only undermine an order in which both the strong and the weak have a vested interest. For the former it en-shrines their dominant position although it often limits the blatantly self-interested policies they may pursue. For the weak it preserves their very existence since their survival is dependent not on defensive military capabilities but on the acquiescence of others. Given its dominant economic and military position it is remarkable not how often the Unites States of America exercises its influence on others, but how rarely.
International law and the use of force
The laws of armed conflict can be separated into jus ad bellum (the law towards war) which seeks to avert or limit the use of armed force in international relations, and jus in bello (the law in war) which governs and seeks to moderate the actual conduct of hostilities.
The jus ad bellum is founded primarily on Article 2 and Chapter VII (articles 39-51) of the United Nations charter. This insists that All Members shall settle their international disputes by peaceful means (Article 2(3)) and that All Members shall refrain in their international relations from the threat or use of force against the territorial integrity or political independence of any State (Article 2(4)). It allows for the inherent right of individual or collective self-defense (Article 51).
Many states claim that humanitarian intervention constitutes an exception to the prohibition on the use of force. However a 1973 study on humanitarian interventions found that most have occurred in situations where the humanitarian motive is at best balanced, if not outweighed, by a desire to [...] reinforce socio-political and economic instruments of the status quo. Thus ‘humanitarian intervention’ is often used as cover for a breach of Article 2(4).
The jus in bello does not seek to diminish or obstruct the efficacy of fighting forces (which would be impossible), but to limit the barbarity of the conflict. Wars occur within the context of international relations, and a more ‘humanely’ conducted war will give the victor: An enemy that is less afraid of surrender, better relations with other states after the war and an easier task in the reconstruction of the disputed territory. However it should be obvious that a law of war can be no more than mitigatory in effect.
A criticism commonly leveled at the jus in bello is that in its attempt to humanise war it encourages it. This argument has a major flaw; the inherent cruelty of war does not prevent its occurrence. If this were so it is difficult to imagine how war could be contemplated after the carnage of Verdun, the Somme and Passchendaele. That war continues to occur is a reflection of the fact that rarely do those who start wars have to fight in them or otherwise become their victims. To deny humanitarian mitigation to those who find themselves engaged in combat would be cruel logic indeed.
The jus in bello is also called international humanitarian law. A division is often seen between Geneva law and Hague law. The Geneva is concerned with the protection of the victims of armed conflict. It is based primarily on the four 1949 Geneva Conventions. Hague law is concerned with the methods and means of warfare. It is based primarily on the 1899 and 1907 Hague Conventions.
Steps were taken in Rome in 1998 to setup an International Criminal Court, whose primary function would be the prosecution of crimes against the Geneva and Hague laws. The United States of America has indicated that it does not recognise the authority of this court, so it’s future is uncertain.
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