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A
showcase for Rumsfeld's vision of
warfare
By Jeffrey Donovan
WASHINGTON - United States officials are calling
the war in Iraq a battle unlike any other in history. In
the first few days of fighting, US-led forces sought to
eliminate key Iraqi leadership targets in Baghdad and
elsewhere. The tactic followed a months-long
psychological-warfare campaign aimed at persuading Iraqi
officers to surrender without a fight.
For a
moment at least, observers speculated that the war could
be brief and virtually bloodless, especially if initial
reports that US bombing had killed or injured Iraqi
President Saddam Hussein proved true.
On March
22, US General Tommy Franks boasted during a briefing at
his base in Qatar that the US was waging a brand new
kind of war. "This will be a campaign unlike any other
in history a campaign characterized by shock, by
surprise, by flexibility, by the employment of precise
munitions on a scale never before seen, and by the
application of overwhelming force," Franks said.
But expectations of a quick, mostly "clean" war
culminating in a swift surrender by Iraq appeared to
vanish by the next day, when allied forces suffered
their worst losses of the brief campaign, and the novel
US military strategy was suddenly being tested against
mounting casualties and stiff resistance from Iraqi
forces.
The loss of at least 12 US troops in
fighting in southern Iraq - with another 12 listed as
missing - raised questions about a military strategy
that has targeted the Iraqi regime in an effort to
minimize civilian casualties and spare infrastructure
that will be needed for post-war reconstruction.
Analysts say that the strategy bears all the
hallmarks of US Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld's
bid to revolutionize US military capabilities through
"new thinking" on the battlefield, such as coupling the
latest high-tech weaponry with psychological warfare and
traditional means of fighting.
Radek Sikorski, a
former deputy defense minister and foreign minister of
Poland, is an analyst at Washington's American
Enterprise Institute. He said that the current US
strategy, so different from the initial massive bombing
of the first Gulf War in 1991, is mostly the brainchild
of Rumsfeld. "I think it's been as flexible as the
technology allows, which seems to defy the old saying
that 'generals always fight the previous war'. In this
case, the 'revolution in military affairs' that Donald
Rumsfeld went to the Pentagon to enforce has actually
happened," Sikorski said.
Indeed, to achieve
their goals, coalition forces have used precision
bombing of Iraqi military and government targets,
coupled with a ground attack from Kuwait in the south
that has brought them to the outskirts of Baghdad.
Robert Hutchinson is a founder and spokesman for
the British defense publication Jane's Defense Weekly.
He said that Rumsfeld's approach is, indeed, novel and
that the defense secretary's plans have prevailed at the
Pentagon over those of senior military officers who
argued for sending in far greater numbers of ground
troops.
Rumsfeld's strategy contrasts sharply
with the "Powell Doctrine" - named after US Secretary of
State Colin Powell - which states that Washington should
never go to war unless it uses "overwhelming force" to
achieve its goals. Hutchinson describes the difference
between that idea and Rumsfeld's approach. "I think the
US defense secretary believes more in light forces,
making surgical strikes, than the heavy-armored
offensive across a broad front. But behind it all
probably lies a desire by the US and the British to give
the Iraqis time to depose of Saddam themselves, rather
than the coalition forces doing it by force of arms,"
Hutchinson said.
Yet widespread Iraqi surrenders
have so far not panned out as military planners had
hoped, especially in the Shi'ite south, where there is
strong anti-Saddam sentiment. The result is that the
coalition faces potentially prolonged and costly battles
for the total control of key cities, such as Basra and
Nassiriya.
If that happens, analysts say that
allied forces could be tested further, since they are
tethered to a potentially vulnerable single line of
supplies coming in from Kuwait. And Iraqi civilians
could pay a higher price if coalition forces have to
widen their bombing targets in a bid to take control of
the cities.
Meanwhile, there are warnings that a
humanitarian crisis is looming in the south, where
fighting has delayed entry of much-needed aid. United
Nations Secretary General Kofi Annan has called for
urgent action to get water to Basra's residents. The
city's main water-treatment plant has been disabled
because of a power outage. Washington is promising to
deliver aid as soon as it secures Iraq's ports, supply
routes, and population centers that were bypassed by
invading forces.
Finally, there's Baghdad. With
no sign of Iraq's leadership capitulating in the
capital, US and British forces have struck Iraqi
Republican Guards defending the approaches to Baghdad.
Some analysts warn that the battle for Baghdad may prove
to be prolonged and bloody.
But while US and
British military officials are generally upbeat about
progress to date, even supporters of Rumsfeld's new
vision of warfare, the so-called "revolution in military
affairs" caution that the war is still far from won.
Jeffrey Ranney is a military expert with Federal
Resources, a defense consultancy in northern Virginia
outside Washington. Ranney, an expert on the new war
doctrine, says that he believes the single most
innovative aspect of the coalition strategy is its clear
intent to use a variety of means - psychological and
military - to achieve an "effect", in this case, the
capitulation of large parts of the Iraqi regime.
Coupled with real-time communications in all
aspects of the battle, Ranney said that the Iraq war
appears to be a step toward Rumsfeld's vision of what
the battlefield of the future may look like. But he
insisted it's still far too early to predict an outcome.
"We're only into the fifth day here," he said. "We don't
know if we've won. We don't know [if] this strategy of
the one long line from the coast up to Baghdad - whether
that supply line will hold or not. If it turns out it
doesn't hold, then we're all going to be saying what a
terrible strategy that was. So I would hold judgment as
to whether this is the better strategy because we don't
know yet. It's too early."
Copyright (c)
2002, RFE/RL Inc. Reprinted with the permission of Radio Free Europe/Radio
Liberty, 1201 Connecticut Ave NW, Washington DC
20036
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