Series on: Insurgency and Fourth Generation Warfare: Unveiling the Wars We Live
Section V. Sun Tzu and Boyd on the Utility of Military Force
Sun Tzu recommends two options as superior to battle for using military force to triumph in war. The best way to defeat an enemy is by “attacking his strategy.” This could mean to attack early, while the enemy’s plans are being laid. Others find a deeper meaning, to employ unusual methods to “seize victory without even battling,” which seems more in harmony with the maxim that “to win without fighting is best.” Should this prove impossible, Sun Tzu then recommends disrupting his alliances. Some say that this means to attack early, before the enemy can solidify his alliances. Others suggest it means isolating potential enemies from sources of support, or intimidating them through strong alliances of your own. Boyd takes a similar approach. He begins “Patterns of Conflict” with an observation on human nature, that we strive to:
Survive on own terms, or improve our capacity for independent action.
The competition for limited resources to satisfy these desires may force one to:
Diminish adversary’s capacity for independent action, or deny him the opportunity to survive on his own terms, or make it impossible for him to survive at all.
He insists that the use of armed force by the US (and other imperialist) governments must be carefully thought out so that it does not cause more problems than it solves. (14.) For this, he expands on Sun Tzu’s first two courses of actions through his concept of “grand strategy,” which serves to:
1. Support national goals
2. Pump up one’s own resolve, drain away the adversary’s resolve, and attract the uncommitted to one’s cause
3. End the conflict on favorable terms
4. Ensure that the conflict and peace terms do not provide the seeds for (unfavorable) future conflict.
For insurgents more and bloodier violence is usually a desired accomplishment.
Neither Boyd nor Sun Tzu saw war as the solution to all of humanity’s problems, or even that armed conflict was the best way to prosecute war once it had become necessary. Both would agree that the goal of war, once it is unleashed, is more than just to achieve victory, but to accomplish it:
1. In the shortest possible time
2. At the least possible cost in lives and effort to one’s own side
3. With the infliction on the enemy of the fewest possible casualties
Contemporary Justifications for Military Forces
Today, one finds many justifications for U.S. military force, all of which can be included within three broad categories:
1. Defend homeland from attack
2. Enforce “Pax Americana” (15.)
3. Protect vital U.S. interests abroad
Americans agree with the goal of creating a safer, more peaceful world. The issue is whether such an objective should guide the sizing and organization of U.S. military forces. On the surface, this seems to have support from Sun Tzu, since he noted that, “the superior militarist strikes while the schemes are still being laid.” However this observation is really advice on how to conduct operations once the decision to do so has been made. It does not address the larger question of the role of military operations in national policy. The Tao Te Ching, however, takes the problem on directly:
If a nation is centered in the Tao
if it nourishes its own people
and doesn’t meddle in the affairs of others
it will be a light to all the nations of the world. (16.)
Enforcing worldwide peace is a large job. Many of the 40 major armed conflicts active in the world involve longstanding ethnic or tribal disputes. It is not clear how entry of U.S. armed forces would resolve them. This suggests a policy of selective intervention, which is usually phrased as “protecting U.S. vital interests.” As with the Pax Americana, most Americans agree with the idea that the US should employ its armed forces to protect vital interests. U.S. leaders will commit enormous forces to protect such things as access to crude oil, and given the dependence of the U.S. economy on imported resources, practically any part of the world could become a “vital national interest” in the future.
To make “protection of vital interests” useful for creating forces, however, the US would have to determine in advance what its specific vital interests are. There are at least two problems one runs into when attempting to put this idea into practice. First, “vital interests” change and often faster than weapons or forces can. Who, as late as 1994, would have thought that Bosnia-Herzegovina and Kosovo would have represented “vital American interests”? Because development cycles for major weapons often exceed one human generation, the US will protect its vital interests with the forces it has, or even select these interests based in part on what the forces can do. (17.)
The other problem inherent in the vital interests approach to force creation is the range and sheer number of potential areas and scenarios that could involve “vital interests.” Today, the range extends from incidents, such as rescue of U.S. citizens, to assisting allies (especially those with sizable voting diasporas in the US) in everything from terrorism and guerilla warfare to repelling a conventional attack to a “major theater war” against some as yet undetermined, but large and capable, conventional opponent. It follows that potential theaters of operations could range from desert to jungle to teeming Third World metropolis.