The New Rules of War
Think of warfare like smoke: always shifting, twisting, moving.
War and just about any type of armed conflicts are going to be controversial. No matter your opinion or what side you’re on, you will always find someone on the other side, contradicting you and maybe even willing to die for their position. Sean McFate, current strategy professor at the National Defense University and former paratrooper and officer in the US Army, exposed how the American way of war is not only becoming obsolete, it also cost the Vietnam, Afghanistan and Iraq wars. In his book, The New Rules of War, he examines the changes in not only how we fight wars, but how we classify them.
To begin, he lays out strategic atrophyas the reason the US (and other western countries) didn’t win, or fully achieve their goals in recent wars. Their failure stems from a combination of becoming complacent, a gradual decline in overall effectiveness and ultimately losing military superiority. The US Army fought Vietnamese soldiers in the same way they fought Nazis in WWII. Trillions of dollars are invested in the development of technology, weapons and machines of war, but threats like ISIS with seemingly far less capabilities persist. Non-trained soldiers and farmers in Vietnam were able to avert the much more powerful United States, how? McFate lays out the 10 new rules of war that have been used by terrorist groups and mercenaries, in order to exploit the weak point of US Army - its obsolete war strategy.
Rule 1: Conventional War Is Dead
Nobody fights the way the used to. In fact very little is done the exact way it was done in the past. War is no different. It is constantly changing and requires adaptation to stay ahead of your enemy. Many nations still turn to past successes of war for strategy. Despite the lessons of Vietnam, Somalia, the Balkans, Iraq, Afghanistan, Syria, and so on, the United States maintains a military designed to thwart enemies who fight conventionally. The West’s perception of war still follows the same thinking as it did during World War II, where technological developments played a principal role and brute force determined the winner.
The military keeps most of its conventional firepower - tanks, fighter jets, troops on active duty ready. By contrast, support units that perform tasks related to intelligence, engineering, medical support, logistics, and a myriad of highly technical skills needed to sustain the warfighter, remain in the reserves and mobilize only when there is a national emergency. This arrangement of active and reserve components is backward. Conventional warfighters should be sent into the reserves and only called upon when required. The support functions, which consists of far less number of people needed, should be moved to active duty.
McFate also says that new forms of fighting are required including: “Other instruments of national power must be cultivated, such as information dominance, pinpoint sanctions that financially strangle enemy elites, strategic messaging to win the battle of the narrative, public diplomacy that speaks directly to populations, force that provides plausible deniability, and bribes to change adversaries’ minds so that we don’t have to shoot them.”
Rule 2: Technology Will Not Save Us
The United States fiscal year 2019 budget exceeded $683 billion. Astronomical amounts of money are invested in the development of new weapons, technologies, machines. We worship new gadgets and sophisticated gear, while officers lack fundamental training. Over $1.5 trillion have been lost into Lockheed Martin’s F-35 Joint Strike Fighter Jet alone - more than Russia’s GDP. But war is armed politics, and seeking a technical solution to a political problem is useless. Ultimately, brainpower is superior to firepower, and we should invest in people, not platforms.
Future wars will be low-tech as future weapons will be easier to obtain and harder to detect.
Rule 3: There Is No Such Thing as War or Peace - Both Coexist, Always
You behave differently in war as you do in peace. However, China has been able to mask their war with the US. Their plan is to drive the US from Asia and become the world’s next superpower. First, they have the US war switch flipped to “off” for the US to remain docile and at peace. China masks its ongoing conquest using nonmilitary tools, so its actions don’t look like war to conventional warriors. Little by little, China continues to take and steal and rebrand. They grow stronger, and continue to develop, innovate and evolve.
The bigger the falsification, the more China defends its legality—over and over again—believing that with repetition, people will finally accept it. Hitler had a name for this technique. He called it the “Big Lie.”
Rule 4: Hearts and Minds Do Not Matter
Saving the population, being the good guy, freeing the helpless from their evil suppressors may “win” the war, but it rarely works. Legitimacy in societies like Iraq and Afghanistan is not conferred by a democratic social contract but rather by political Islam. Piety to God and observance of sharia law matters most. Al-Qaeda, ISIS, and the Taliban sell this.
The West’s current strategy requires a long-term presence in zones of disorder to prevent problems from turning into crises and crisis to full-blown conflicts. Troops are needed to root out the enemies in the shadows, where they breed, before they develop into more problematic insurgencies or mature into terrorists.
Rule 5: The Best Weapons Do Not Fire Bullets
Cunning strategies can weaponize almost anything - refugees, election cycles, the Internet, the public, the law and money.
Weaponizing influence and gaining information superiority has three components:
Monitoring: intelligence agencies identify all information that is disseminated.
Discrediting: pinpointing fake news, alternative facts, bots, trolls, false narratives, viral memes, and negative frames, and then exposing them.
Counterattacking: and this is where Western countries are weak.
There is a lack of weapons in the influence arsenal.
Rule 6: Mercenaries Will Return
Mercenaries are much more economical. The Congressional Budget Office, a watchdog agency, found that an infantry battalion at war costs $110 million a year, while a comparable private military unit totals $99 million. It is easier to pay someone to do your dirty work, while you keep your hands clean. Even terrorists hire mercenaries, including jihadi extremists.
Armed contractors sit on “arsenal ships” in pirate waters and chopper to a client’s freighter or tanker when called. Once aboard, they act as “embarked security,” hardening the ship with razor wire and protecting it with high-caliber firepower. After the ship passes through pirate waters, the team returns to its arsenal ship and awaits the next client.
There are even mercenaries in cyberspace. Individuals and even credible companies that attack hackers, or “hack back” against assailants of their client’s networks.
Rule 7: New Types of World Powers Will Rule
Billions of people live in countries that are in danger of collapse, but that doesn’t mean anarchy. According to the World Bank, the top one hundred economies comprise thirty-one countries and sixty-nine corporations. Various groups and institutions will wage battle across borders and compete for your interests, thoughts, follows, money and loyalty.
Rule 8: There Will Be Wars Without States
The West has seen the “drug war” as a law enforcement challenge rather than a real war, and continue to have no answer in the never-ending carnage and drug abuse. It is a vicious cycle that has been fought with the same overlying tactic, to stop the flow and use of drugs, but it never works. Cartels are not street gangs. They are regional superpowers that wreak havoc over the neighborhoods and people that they control. When cartels wage war, they fight like empires. They are fighting for not only power, but their survival with everything to lose.
Experts don’t know what war is. They bicker over hybrid warfare, nonlinear war, active measures, police actions and conflicts in the “gray zone.” There is no consensus about what these terms mean, other than that they refer to aspects of unconventional war. There is no such thing as conventional versus unconventional war—there is just war.
And while every front line for war may be different, the goal remains the same. The war in the Middle East stretches from Israel across the Shia Crescent to Yemen. It is a single war, with many fronts. However, the conventional war mind views each country’s conflict as a discrete war. Instead of making one strategy to combat a single war, it takes multiple strategies, without relating them together. Few war experts study Africa, yet Africa shows us the future of war. There are no conventional interstate wars there.
The rise of mercenaries coupled with new kinds of nonstate powers will produce private war. It is literally the marketization of war, in which military force is bought and sold like any other commodity. This will change warfare as we know it as private-war has it’s own logic. For-profit warriors are not bound by political considerations or patriotism. There are lower barriers to entry to conduct some form of warfare. This private warfare breeds war.
Rule 9: Shadow Wars Will Dominate
In a shadow war, cloaking is a form of power, and information can be weaponized. If you twist your enemy’s perception of reality, you can manipulate him into strategic blunders that can be exploited for victory. It’s also a great defense.Shadow wars are armed conflicts in which plausible deniability, not firepower, molds the basis for truth. The ability to tell what is real from what is fake will decide the winners and losers. Warriors will be masked and offer good plausible deniability.
Moscow-controlled media organizations spin the facts at such a high RPM that even Russia experts are confused. The West will not risk a war with Russia if it cannot establish the basic facts of the conflict. It’s a brilliant strategy by the Russians, in a diabolical sort of way. By the time the international community figures it out, the perpetrator is on to the next thing.
Rule 10: Victory Is Fungible
Fungible means to replace or be replaced by another identical item; mutually interchangeable. War is armed politics, means victory is as much political as military.
By acting as trusted sources it is possible for governments, groups and even individuals to manipulate society by feeding the media and press misinformation.
T. E. Lawrence, well known as Lawrence of Arabia, a british military theorist during World War I, believed the printing press to be the greatest weapon in the armory of the modern commander. In today’s information age, this statement can be extrapolated to the fullest extent.
"Think of warfare like smoke: always shifting, twisting, moving. Strategists who cling to rigid views of war will be blindsided by its mutable character, resulting in strategic surprise and defeat."
Tyler Krebeck
Chief Content Manager
November 30, 2019