The Media and GI Joe

How the press gets the military wrong -- and why it matters.

Chris Bray from the February 2002 issue

(Page 4 of 5)

And so we're left with the question of what might be different -- of how the dimensions of U.S. military power might have changed against the changing dimensions of irregular types of military power. We're left to decide -- put it this way -- whether the emerging revolution in military affairs might bring stability to a world undermined by the growing threat of asymmetric warfare.

It is, for now, a decision we have to make in the dark.

John Arquilla teaches at the Naval Postgraduate School in Monterey, California, and is a consultant to the RAND Corporation. I call him at home on a weekday evening, and listen as his children ask for permission to watch Get Smart on cable. Then we get down to the subject at hand. He speaks quietly.

"This is not a surprise to most analysts, that this kind of warfare would emerge," he says. He is emphatic about calling it that: Terrorism, he says, has become a form of warfare. "Something wholly other is striking at us."

That something other has been developing for a long time, and in a number of particular dimensions. The recent trend is an increase in the lethality of small groups. Chechen fighters have demonstrated that against Russian troops, as have Hezbollah in Southern Lebanon.

Beyond a sharp upward spike in the killing power of small groups, Arquilla adds, the ability of terrorists to sustain prolonged campaigns -- their strategic ability, along with their tactical reach -- has grown with the emergence, globally, of "small, distributed networks." And they want something different from what terrorists have always wanted: They want casualties first, and publicity second. They are driven by the body count. "Many terrorism experts were reluctant to accept that," Arquilla says. "There's this old idea that terrorists want people watching, not people dead." The old idea hasn't caught up to emerging realities, he argues. Arquilla, among others, has been sounding this alarm for years -- and sounding it from within the defense establishment, as a teacher of senior officers. But to what effect?

"What I see is a familiar pattern of awareness, but also dismissiveness," he says. "Our greatest enemy is our own habits of mind."

Those habits of mind are the product, in part, of victory. It's not a new story. Germany lost World War I on the weakness of the too-old Schlieffen Plan, and was driven to develop the blitzkrieg; France won, and settled down behind the Maginot Line. U.S. military officers are similarly comfortable with their place in the order of things. They have tended to win, and how can the winner be wrong? How can Desert Storm suggest a desperate need to bolt away in a new direction?

More than that, though, there is a deeply rooted problem of doctrine -- one that is driven by culture. U.S. military thinking rests on the idea of the decisive victory won with overwhelming force. The emerging war of "hiders and finders," Arquilla says, is "not as soul-satisfying." And so we remain prepared to defeat the military of a major industrial enemy, in big set-piece battles. That preparedness comes at the expense of being prepared to fight nimbly in a world of small, quick players. The heavily industrialized U.S. military is also driven, in planning and budgeting, by the weight of its hardware. An infantry sergeant once explained this to me: "Our doctrine," he said, "is that we have a lot of stuff."

Arquilla agrees, and keeps hoping for change. "Keeping up our conventional military now is like keeping the landing lights on for Amelia Earhart," he says. He argues, for example, for a shift away from massive aircraft carrier groups to a shifting network of lighter craft -- the "small and the many" -- that will strike more quickly and require fewer assets in the service of platform defense. Whether or not this is what Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld was getting at with his vague pre-Sept. 11 talk of military reform remains to be seen.

I mention Unrestricted Warfare, the book by the Chinese colonels, and we get to the heart of another big problem: Despite much reporting to the contrary, the kind of attack we've just seen isn't the exclusive property of a particular enemy. "To try to buttonhole this into the Islamic world is a dangerous illusion," Arquilla says, adding that we have to consider a world in which these kinds of attacks are "common, not rare."

That's a remarkable thought. It implies a national security infrastructure that is stuck in such a deep rut that it knows about the cliff but can't turn the steering wheel to avoid it.

"When I go to the Pentagon, I feel physically the locus of American power in the world," Arquilla says. "And yet every officer I meet there feels powerless to effect change."

Arquilla repeats my most important question back to me before answering. "What can accelerate the process? The experience of defeat."

Mike Meese and Russ Howard detail for me, at length, the steps they've taken at West Point to prepare their cadets for the new challenges they face. We discuss not just broad notions of doctrine and the face of future warfare, but also details regarding the course catalog, graduation requirements, and new approaches to teaching about different cultures and governments. And then I talk to several of their cadets.

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