The Context of Future Operations

Colonel Michael C. Ryan, USAF

Defense Advisor, US Mission to the European Union

Rome, Center for High Defense Studies, 25 September 2006

 

(USAF photo)

Understanding context is understanding what is possible. The context of future operations will be shaped by politics, by events and by globalization. The future context so defined leads me to the conclusion that militaries won't shape the future battlefield – domestic politics and the international political system will shape the future battlefield.
 
The international system needs time to work. It works in a very predictable fashion.  Bad people know how to manipulate the international system for their own benefit.  So, by the time the military is authorized to intervene, the political reaction to the situation will have defined the circumstances.
 
Therefore, one can expect that:

• Crisis response operations will be the rule as real conflict prevention is generally beyond our political grasp -- For the military, conflict prevention is a paradox:
   
  
  • Correct military intervention in a conflict prevention role means that nothing happens.
    
  • How do we know we did the right thing if nothing happens?
    
  • What would the media say if we intervened in a sovereign country and nothing happened?  And what would the voters say?
    
     
• Because crisis response operations are reactive, there will be no treaty or agreement between the parties involved – if there were, there would be no crisis.
   
• The environment will be hostile for military forces and most probably the military forces will find that a great deal of physical and psychological damage has already taken place.
   
• The military response will be multinational, possibly multi-organizational, and hopefully multi-functional as military and civilian tools are ever-more closely intertwined.
   
• The many actors participating in the international response will all have differing agendas.
   
• Trust among those responding to the crisis will be the essential element for success.
  

Events are the trigger that unleashes our international political system. The former UK prime minister Anthony Eden said, "Events dear boy, events drive politics!". Globalization will determine who is involved. Future military operations will be one aspect of any potential solution and will occur along a crisis timeline that existed before the military operation and that will continue long after the military operation has ceased.  Viewing a military operation as a step in an overall approach to preventing or solving a conflict will require a high degree of political-military sophistication. The decision making agility, which I call "political interoperability," required to pursue such an approach in the international community does not yet exist – a NATO with Global Partners and an improved NATO-EU relationship are two steps toward achieving the requisite level of continuous strategic dialogue.  Until that time, future military operations will most likely remain disconnected from other aspects of any international approach to crisis management.
 
Political interoperability is required if we are to have the right tool doing the right job at the right time. No organization or nation has all the required tools nor can any nation or organization sustain a leading effort in responding to a major crisis across the entire conflict spectrum. As a crisis plays out, as it did in Bosnia, the leading organization will change according to the demands of the situation. Therefore, future military operations will be best served by supported – supporting arrangements between the participants of a crisis response / crisis management effort.  NATO now supports the EU leading role in the Balkans and more and more the EU is supporting ISAF's effort across Afghanistan.  This is a good and correct development. Increasingly, future military operations will need to work across organizational boundaries as well. The NATO headquarters in Sarajevo co-located with the EUFOR HQ is one example of this level of cooperation.
 
Generally speaking, there are two types of military operations:  band-aid operations and surgeries – both can be useful. The UN operation in Lebanon is a band-aid operation; it gives the parties involved time to heal the wound. Hopefully, politicians will take advantage of the time to work toward a solution while preventing any infection. Surgeries, on the other hand, seek to cut out the cause of the illness in order to give the patient a chance to recover.  Afghanistan is a surgery.  Both types of operations are increasingly going to have the following characteristics:

• They will be joint, combined (i.e. multinational) and often multi-organizational.
   
  
• They will need to be sustained at strategic distance in difficult environments.
   
• They will occur in a politically-sensitive, media-friendly way.
   
  
  • If Clausewitz was right then the reverse must also be true "Politics is the continuation of war by other means".
  • So the effort will be to get the fight off the battlefield and into the board room as quickly as possible.
    

• Which means, all things considered, political desires for future operations will require:
   
  
  • High tech, fast-pace, night, precision, perfect information, no friendly fire, no collateral damage, and a sophisticated yet honest information operations campaign.
     
    
• Which in turn will require money for technology and R&D for C4ISR, UAVs, space, strategic lift, aerial refueling, precision weapons, soldier systems, training and education.
   
  

The enemy on the other hand will try to use the perceived weakness of our democratic system against us by attacking what they think is our Achilles heel – an uninformed or under-informed population. As our democratic war efforts are ultimately underpinned by our political system, asymmetric information operations based on manipulation of the media will be rampant. We've seen this already – placing weapons bunkers in or under schools, making exaggerated claims of civilian casualties, and even going so far as to fake collateral damage incidents. Their aim is to win the war in the media. In this environment, we need boots on the ground at the same time as or right after high-speed warfare.  Soldiers conducting painstaking and methodical stabilization and reconstruction efforts for and with the local populations and with myriad international actors are the key to long-term success, but their presence makes us politically vulnerable – exactly the type of vulnerability that our military planning seeks to avoid through the use of high tech weaponry. Political commitment to sustaining right-sized operations will be, therefore, the center of gravity of future military operations. Once engaged, effective crisis management is the best way to prevent the next conflict. The flip side of the conflict prevention paradox is this:  If we don't have the resources to do crisis management right the first time, we'll need to find the resources to do it again.

 

 
 
 

52 ATA General Assembly

Athens, December 5-10. NATO's Challenges in 21st Century.  >>

Riga Summit

November 28 - 29. Think Tank representatives, Researchers and Young Political Leaders, will meet in Riga in parallel meetings and educational programs that will be addressed by the NATO Heads of State and Government.  >>

Atlantic Council of Albania

Tirana, November 18. Educational Seminar on Euro-Atlantic Values and the Cooperation for Security.

International Seminar in Milan

October 19 - 21. A three days Seminar, organized by the Catholic University and promoted by the Italian Atlantic Committee, brought together researchers, students and academicians, that analyzed NATO and the New Challenges to the Military Force and Diplomacy.