Collateral strategic consequences


	January 4, 2002	atimes.com

Central Asia/Russia

ANALYSIS
Collateral strategic consequences
By Marc Erikson

In 1997, a war game was conducted at the US Army War College pitting US forces against a decentralized network of international terrorism cells named "Orange". The US military lost, in part because it didn't know how, in larger part because it didn't want to fight that kind of war.

Much has changed since then. The US hasn't won the war on terrorism it declared after September 11. Principal suspect Osama bin Laden and other Al-Qaeda leaders remain at large. But phase 1 of the war uprooting the Taliban Islamic holy warrior terror regime from Afghanistan has been a resounding success.

Collateral damage from the American military campaign has been bemoaned and castigated by critics; but it's the collateral strategic consequences of the campaign that will prove of lasting significance.

Already in the 1991 Gulf War, the US demonstrated the clear superiority of its military forces - not only over enemy Iraq, but also over its allies. However, the Afghan campaign, expected by many to turn into an extended quagmire, has given proof of far greater US global military dominance than even optimistic US analysts had believed possible.

This has sent the military leaderships of several major powers scrambling to the drawing board to assess the damage to their own military postures and evaluate the consequences of their diminished security policy options. It also spells the end to Clinton era "multilateralism" - US Secretary of State Colin Powell's war on terror coalition-building efforts notwithstanding. Henceforward, as one US analyst puts it, in light of its new freedom of action, American diplomatic doctrine will be: "The mission defines the coalition - and if it doesn't require one, don't waste time building it."

Military assessment
As the Afghan campaign progressed, US-allied Northern Alliance ground forces occupied towns and territory. But that was more of a political than a strict military requirement. Similarly, for political rather than military reasons did the US welcome the military support of the British cousins.

It was, however, US military precision action at a distance that quickly decided the outcome of the war. Over 60 percent of all explosives deployed were smart munitions launched from points out of reach of enemy forces.

During the Gulf War it had been a mere 8 percent. Furthermore, the cost of smart munitions has dropped from an average US$1 million per weapon in 1991 to about US$18,000 today. And most importantly, their delivery is effected by a highly sophisticated information-technology based system of command, control, communications, and intelligence that integrates real-time data collection, processing and distribution from platforms in outer space, in the air, at sea, and on the ground which the US alone has developed to near perfection and which no other power possesses or is likely to replicate in the foreseeable future.

The Afghan war was the first military action that demonstrated the "Revolution in Military Affairs" (RMA) that has taken place over the past several years and which US President George W Bush last January tasked senior Pentagon analyst Andrew Marshall, head of the Office of Net Assessment, to fully integrate into the US force structure. The Marshall report's recommendations to this effect are in part contained in the US Department of Defense's "Quadrennial Defense Review Report" issued on September 30 (see www.cdi.org/issues/gdr). Together with the Bush administration's decision to abandon the 1972 ABM treaty and push ahead with accelerated ballistic-missile defense development and early deployment, they define a new US military and security posture of which the Afghanistan campaign gave a glimpse.

The Russian military, projecting its own Afghanistan experiences onto the present US engagement, had expected and foretold a protracted quagmire for ever increasing numbers of US forces. Moscow's generals must now completely reassess their assumptions - which will have to include painful review of their country's military equipment, training and strategic options.

China, relying on Pakistani military and Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) reports and predictions of a protracted, even unwinnable US Afghanistan campaign, will similarly need to ask itself the hardest of questions regarding its military preparedness. Most notably, the People's Liberation Army (PLA) will have to review and revamp its threat posture vis-a-vis Taiwan. The Afghanistan campaign has rendered much of it obsolete.

Historian Paul Kennedy points out that today the US accounts for 36 percent of global military spending - more than the spending of the next nine nations combined. But it's not just quantity of spending that counts, but the quality of the systems such defense outlays buy. A large portion of the US defense budget is devoted to IT-related research, development and acquisitions. US defense-IT spending is likely in the range of 80 percent of the world total. It can thus be projected that present US military superiority over any foe or combination of foes will not only be maintained, but almost certainly will increase further in coming years.

[Where does this lead in geopolitical strategic terms? We'll have some answers in tomorrow's second installment of this analysis.]

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