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The world has changed, and our view of warfare must change with it. Our approach to the globe is colored by our understanding of the state, in its Clausewitzian form, as the principal actor in world politics.1 This convention is beginning to pass away. History is turning back on itself. The world we know will start to look more like the world before the rise of nationalism and the ascendancy of the state. The prime forces in the world can no longer be observed by looking at a political map. One is better served to peruse a cultural atlas, which more accurately delineates the wills that struggle with each other today.

As the paradigm of international relations shifts to an earlier model, so must our understanding of warfare change to fit the new circumstances. More than ever soldiers must understand the complex nature of the conflicts that surround them. The days of the apolitical duty-driven martinet are certainly over. Today’s soldiers are taught to be unemotional and detached from the forces that rage around them. Their approach to war is supposed to be clinical. This derives from the “modern” notion that war, as practiced by a legitimate state, must be constrained by rational armies who pit themselves against each other in contests that are mitigated by rules and laws. The soldier and state became this way to escape the perceived brutality of warfare before the state, when civilizations, cultures and religions tried to eradicate their opponents. Our rationalization, as evidenced by the Geneva Convention and the Law of Land Warfare2 , was supposed to prevent a reoccurrence of the travails that swept the world before the Treaty of Westphalia. It only produced the 20th Century; one choked with war on a tremendous scale. The future will not necessarily be more violent – we can hardly exceed the organized violence of the world wars – however, it will be violence prosecuted under a system that none of our generation have ever seen, but which is not new to the world. In fact, what we are returning to is much more familiar to mankind than the national wars of the past few hundred years. As Martin Van Crevald aptly noted, “Designed, financed and maintained by one state for the purpose of fighting another, present day armed forces are dinosaurs about to disappear…”3

Due to the diminishing relevance of the national army and the rising tide of cultural struggle, state-based armies, most notably the American, will have to undergo massive changes loosely categorized into two broad stages, after which, these forces will have to become highly elite or prematurely irrelevant. Eventually, to counter the threat to Western culture, any effective “army” will have to be organized across national lines and appeal to broader cultural similarities.

Conflict as shaped by the “Civlizational” paradigm4

More noticeable now than ever, conflict in the world is assuming an extra-national character. As Samuel Huntington demonstrates in his book The Clash of Civilizations, the world is more appropriately viewed as collection of seven distinct civilizations rather than the old convention of state-based geopolitics. These “civilizations” are those nations that share common religion, values, and habits – in essence, culture. The coalescing of the Islamic world, emotionally if not politically, evidences this trend, as does the growing cooperation in East Asia. Increasingly, the major areas of instability are those that sit astride cultural rifts.

Naively, the West – Europe, North America, and Australia – believed that its ideals of liberal democracy and individualism would reshape the world. This has not come to pass. The other cultures of the world have shown that they are all too willing to take from the West what is useful and happily discard the rest. The technological links that seemed to bring the whole world together have only highlighted the differences between people who had previously not known each other. In addition to highlighting the differences, the emergence of the “civilizational” paradigm has led the non-West peoples of the world to reassert the value of their own distinct cultural achievements. Along with lauding their own cultures, they have decidedly rejected the legacy of the West. Conflict has and will continue to reflect this tension.

The West has, to some extent, taken note. Western powers are drawing closer together, however they do not yet fully perceive the nature of the challenge. The threat of international terrorism is clear and does not coincide with one specific state. Currently, the West is ill suited to respond. If we accept that the state has ceased to be the nexus of conflict than we must accept radical change in the structure of our fighting force.

Growing Irrelevance of the State-based military

The Army, as we know it, is based on a model of warfare with the state as the only legitimate purveyor of armed violence. The state’s monopoly over violence is the central feature of the modern international system.5 To escape the horror of struggles like the Thirty Years War, the leaders of Europe sought to impose on their successors a system of organized conflict in which only states could legally prosecute war. The hope was that war would become civilized, even rational. The hope was unfounded and was unable to stop the titanic struggles of the 20th century. Through this hope we also deceived ourselves as to the fundamental irrational underpinnings of war itself.

The by-product of this arrangement was the Geneva Convention and, for the U.S. military, the subsequent Law of Land Warfare. Today these documents border on bad comedy. Viewed from our current state of affairs, the Convention’s discussion of “High Contracting Parties” is necessarily impertinent. Terrorists do not respect or listen to any legal arrangement, especially one established and enforced by the West. Nor does any terrorist claim primary allegiance to any state that might be a signatory of that agreement. In a war without armies there are no “combatants” and “non-combatants.” Even the discussion of such a thing is now inappropriate in the legal sense. The very idea of “combatants” as separate from the rest of society is a fairly recent legal construct that is rapidly coming undone. This is not to say that the War Convention will pass away altogether. It will simply change as it has done in the past, reflecting the realities of today rather than the hopes of a bygone era.

The industrial armies of the West were designed, built, and trained to exude sheer force. In those armies are wrapped up all the technological and industrial might of their respective nations. They are trained to overthrow a similar opponent. No such opponent now exists. The U.S., currently, is the only superpower in the world. Similarly, the U.S. Army is easily the most powerful conventional army in the world. To fight the U.S. head on is to lose. Any potential enemy knows this. They know that they cannot compete symmetrically with the U.S., so they won’t. Along with power come constraints. While powerful, the state-based military is woefully unprepared to deal with non-conventional forces. The whole architecture of these forces were shaped to plan, fight and win against a large mechanized adversary. Elaborate staffs, cumbersome support units, and unwieldy vehicles are all now a hindrance to those efforts. The current situation in Iraq dramatically demonstrates this inadequacy. The Army is certainly struggling in Iraq. Its efforts are analogous to a doctor performing eye surgery with a machete. Given clear technological and material superiority it is certain that the terrorist cells of the world will not ride out to meet the U.S. Army in the open. They will hide, wait, and then strike when conditions are entirely favorable to their efforts. Any state capable of matching the U.S. in this conventional showdown also has the money and resources to produce a nuclear weapon and the U.S. has shown that it will not fight a nuclear power. Disenchanted members of the world community are aware of this fact.

The emerging essentials to future war are not technology, wealth or industrial capacity. Instead the key components are commitment, patience, and a steadfastness born of belief in the fight. Short of obliterating the countries that house terrorists the U.S. will be unable to defeat its opponents quickly. Soldiers reared to think that all they need do is fight a climatic battle and then return home are of no use anymore. The principle feature of future war will be length. Because the enemy does not fight under the flag of any nation it is infeasible to elicit his formal surrender. Extra-national terrorist groups will not “surrender” until they are eliminated all together. This will take much time.

The state-based army is further hindered by its slow response time. The impedimenta associated with the modern conventional army defy swiftness of action. Conversely, the terrorist group prides itself on quickness and deception. It is largely impossible for an armored division to sneak up on a terrorist training camp in the wilds of the Iraqi desert. To send a conventional army into action also requires an immense outlay of funds that must usually be authorized, at some point, by some representative body. An effective response to a terrorist act cannot wait on the deliberative process that would surely ensue. By the time a representative democracy6 has reached a decision the response is slow and its direction is too discernible to those who wish to avoid its coming.

The natural counter-argument is that Special Forces or covert operatives working within the traditional state-centered formula can wage this kind of war and are, in fact, doing so already. These agencies are fighting, but not in an optimal manner. Both Special Forces and covert agencies are constrained by the same geo-politics that encumber the traditional state-based military. It is true that they are not hamstrung logistically, yet they are still subject to the protracted politics of a democracy. Additionally, these organizations cannot rapidly follow their extra-national rivals from country to country because many times their presence constitutes an act of war. Furthermore, cooperation between countries is still restricted by the disunity of international organizations. Tactically, Special Operations units are better equipped to deal with terrorists, but politically they are still lacking. Bearing this in mind, these types of elite groups are still closer to the future than the tank battalion of yesteryear.

State-based militaries, whatever their ilk, are at a disadvantage in one other respect – public opinion. Tied closely to the vagaries of democratic politics, public opinion can dismember a military operation. The Western public, to a large extent, demands speedy victory and deplores loss of life. The public also places pressure on elected officials when military operations become unseemly. This is clearly evidenced by Spain’s recent withdrawal from operations in Iraq.

The civilizational wars that are emerging will require a degree of ruthlessness not before deemed acceptable by the Western public. When these operations are carried out by a state, that state will immediately come under criticism by fellow nations and, more importantly, by the members of the body politic. The protracted nature of civilizational warfare will further heighten this discomfiture until such time as the Western democracy must extricate itself from the now untidy situation. The extra-national terrorist group is not subject to this kind of pressure. Its leaders are not elected and no nation can directly effect the course of their operations. They are free to be ruthless, deceptive and…effective.

The Initial Tension

In response to the changing world system, the state-based militaries, as the sole guarantor of global security, will be forced to take steps to combat the new threat. In general these changes will begin the transformation of armies into elite, non-industrial, fighting forces that are additionally inculcated with an appreciation for their cause.

Firstly, to combat the opponents of the new century will require a warrior who regards himself as elite. The concept of elite is not defined by those included as by those who are excluded. Any army which groups shooters with finance officers, postal clerks, and fuel handlers will never regard itself as elite. The zealous soldier of today (candidate for soldier of tomorrow) will not long stay in an organization that denudes all its participants under the same inauspicious title – “soldier.” The zealous soldier entered the service to be apart from his peers, to elevate himself from the rest. He did not join the Army to become part of a uniformed micro-society. If the zealous soldier is not made to feel elite he will seek better opportunities somewhere else.

The seed of its own destruction has already been sown in many forces. Soldiers are increasingly uninterested in the cause that dictates the course of their service. It is often aptly noted that the U.S. does not have a “volunteer” army, but a “recruited” army. This army, by design, has recruited soldiers by offering them job training, life experience, and marketability outside of the army. In effect, the American Army has not recruited professional soldiers. Owing to this, the Army is forced to pay ever-higher bonuses to keep soldiers in uniform. The warrior spirit is fading at an alarming rate. Service is too often an economic stopgap. Despite the distastefulness of the expression, these tepid soldiers are actually mercenaries, and mercenaries whose pay increasingly does not, in their minds, cover the cost. This mode of soldiering was acceptable during the reign of the state-based army. The state’s vast war machine could be counted on to fight titanic battles and war was relatively short in relation to the clarity of the goal. As this method of violence becomes less prevalent, so will this kind of soldier become less useful. With money as his raison d’ etre, soldiers will find greener pastures as war becomes protracted. Already private security firms are filling in where the state will not or cannot provide security. The second great danger is that a mercenary has no moral commitment to his employer’s cause. The U.S. Army has been forced to recruit by offering incentives that are patently unrelated to an effective army. This kind of army will quickly come unraveled when it faces an inveterate opponent. The Army’s recruiting efforts have been buoyed by the patriotic outburst that followed the terrorist attacks of 11 Sept 2001. Even so, the war in Iraq is steadily undoing that fervor. In the future the U.S. Army will find it nearly impossible to fill its rolls given its current recruitment strategy. To a lesser degree this problem may begin to afflict other Western countries as well.

In no way should armies attempt to retain soldiers who are not willing. Retention of numbers is not important. Industrial warfare is over. War of that sort reached its apogee in 1945 and has quickly sunk to its nadir. With the umbrella of nuclear catastrophe curtailing truly massive conventional conflict in the future, it will be quality that is decisive, not quantity.

Besides its personnel flaws, conventional armies also waste resources unnecessarily. Built on the industrial model, the U.S. Army consumes resources at a rate designed to outfit a large mechanized force locked in mortal combat with a mirror image of itself. This circumstance no longer exists and the U.S. cannot keep up this feeding frenzy for an indefinite period of time. Huge arrays of support units are massed into various camps around Iraq. They exist now to equip mostly themselves and they encumber legions of combat soldiers with taxing guard requirements.

In the near future these formations must disappear. No longer necessary to fight back the Russian horde, the tank will step out of the spotlight. Without this material-consuming monster support units will become streamlined. The vast sea of cargo and fuel trucks necessary to haul the tank’s accoutrements will become unnecessary. The endless bureaucracies that once tracked parts and ammunition for the mechanized army can finally be undone and discarded.

Those that remain should not exist as they once did. All functions that are not exclusive to the fighting man must become the function of contracted agencies. Any role not exclusive to the professional soldier7 will cease to be a soldier’s role. By maintaining these non-professional aspects of military service the army degrades the quality of its members and can never pursue an elite status. If an army is not exclusive it is not elite. If it is not elite, it will not be capable of winning its wars.

Western armies must also stop thinking about combat in terms of vehicles. Technology is not the decisive factor in war. Our technological prowess has merely engendered an adversary who will not fight in the open. What can a tank company or a fighter squadron do against four or five men building improvised explosives in the basement of a mosque? Tankers cannot think of themselves as tankers; field artillerymen cannot only focus on “steel rain.” They are all now simply soldiers. Soldiers must find tactical solutions apart from their parochial specialty. They must step out of the Cold War era and deal with the ubiquitous, faceless violence that confronts the modern fighting man. Military Occupational Specialties should be consolidated. Make every soldier a smart, agile, multi-skilled master of his art. A similar consolidation will occur for those support duties that remain. Mechanics will step away from their over-specialization just as truck drivers and fuelers should not stay separate jobs. They will exist separate from any piece of technology. Our reliance on gadgets is becoming a serious flaw. Is it not ironic to note that as the smart bomb reaches the apex of its perfection, it has also become perfectly useless?

The need for this change should have been presaged by the rising tide of bureaucratism in the state-based army. An army, as an organization, is constantly suspended between the poles of “professional” and “bureaucratic.” Of late, we have slipped ever closer to the latter of the two. When discussing the seemingly arbitrary actions of those above them, soldiers often use the meaningless pronoun, “they.” More often than not, the soldier cannot personify “they” or decide at which level of command “they” exists. “They” is the evidence of an overly bureaucratic body. “They” comprises everyone and no one at the same time, because “they” is the bureaucracy.

Decisions in a national army, carried out by cumbersome nameless staffs, do not hold any notion of responsibility. As in the state itself, the army suffers from its own bureaucratic inertia. Driven by unaccountable staffs and large disembodied agencies, directives are introduced that are unknown to their “official” proponents or, in some cases, directly contrary to their intent.

As an army inexorably apes after the bureaucratic perfection of the state, it becomes ever more repellent to the “professional” soldier. Wishing to exercise authority freely, the “professional” soldier will become increasingly frustrated by the torpidity he must fight to exact change within the bureaucracy. As the bureaucracy faces adversaries not similarly encumbered, it will retreat upon itself. The obvious answer would be to eliminate “red tape,” but bureaucrats have a special skill at entrenching themselves in times of crisis. Instead of accepting change readily, the bureaucracy will seek to more exactly regulate what falls within the scope of its achievable, and therefore legitimate, aims. Compelled to do more, the bureaucracy will justify why it can only do less. This state of affairs will prove to be anathema to the truly “professional” soldier.

To parry the danger posed by bureaucratization, professionals within armies must force change. Many administrative functions, once designed to manage an abundance of material, will have to be eliminated directly. Staffs built to plan the next Battle of Kursk should be removed completely. Ungainly agencies with nothing to plan or coordinate are necessarily bureaucratic and will look for inventive ways to be distracting. At one point in time many bureaucratic functions came into being because they promoted efficiency and promulgated some sort of effective system. For many of these agencies, staffs, and organizations, the days of their usefulness have long past. The “professional” soldier must decide that whenever the complexity or burdensomeness of a system outweighs its importance, it should be discarded wholesale. If the state-based military is unable to do this, as an organization, than it will more rapidly reach the end of its days.

The Radical Shift

Even an army reborn elite, purged of its awkward size and useless bureaucrats, is still an army based on the state. The state’s monopoly on violence has been broken. For centuries the state’s justification for existence was its role as the guarantor of security. Now new actors, unconstrained by “rational” politics have entered the fray. Their activity defies the notion that there are legitimate national interests worthy of war and that the rest is crime or rebellion. War – their kind of war - predates the state. War will not continue only in our false rubric any more.

The state-based military, even if it was reformed to remove its more serious shortcomings, will still fall short in a civilization conflict. It is not only a question of equipment and organization, but of the quintessential way in which we define ourselves. The state does not recognize emotion, religion, or personal motives as legitimate or “rational” objectives for war. It has divorced itself from these ideas even though they are inescapably a part of human nature. Because of this separation between the state as a corporate body and the myriad forces that drive men to act, the state is necessarily hamstrung. Forces, such as religious zealots, are not similarly handicapped. They may cross international boundaries, strike “civilian” targets, engage in assassinations or kidnappings, and torture their opponents to exact information.

These forces, indiscernible from the surrounding “non-combatants,” cannot be bombed to death or crushed under the tread of a tank. Even if the reformed elite army of the near future were to find one of their lairs in a daring commando raid, the enemy will surely escape across some international boundary or into a mosque protected by our hypersensitivity to political missteps. These clandestine soldiers will strike cities at home or embassies abroad. They will attack what cannot be protected and yet, the state-based military will have to grant them inviolate sanctuaries, allowing them to always gain the upper hand. The state-based military is powerless, abject and weak, before this onslaught. It can neither respond effectively nor seek to gain the initiative. The enemy will bomb a plane and we will make stirring vows of revenge. He will assassinate an official and we will appeal to international law. He will furtively skate from one country to the next and we will decry him for not “following the rules.”

What can the state or its contracted killers do against this nebulous enemy? Increasingly little! The enemy has inaugurated a nearly forgotten war. It is a war of peoples, not of countries. The lines of this conflict will be drawn based on ancient allegiances and by cultural affinity. At some point, this tension will produce similar counter-organizations. Its ultimate allegiance or responsibility of these groups will not be to any country but to the idea of the West as a civilization separate from its detractors. The members of this group, hearkening back to earlier wars, will come from the West, not America or Britain or France or Germany. For a millennium Europe knew nothing of countries or politics as we know them now. Truly they fought amongst themselves, but there was the over-arching idea that they were all part of one kingdom, then loosely defined as Christendom. This connectivity has been sustained through time by common culture, values, societal norms, and religion. These counter-groups will recognize and appeal to this kinship. Allied to no one single state, these fighters will appear, perhaps disturbingly, analogous to their terrorist adversaries. Their leadership, organization, and discipline will be more akin to the crusading orders of the Middle Ages than the armored division of World War II. Their appearance will be the result of war trying to balance itself again. They will become the “army” of the new age. In the end they may take on many of the trappings of the terrorist themselves; different mainly in that their cause is, at least nominally, ours.

International terrorism poses a dire threat to the continued viability of the state itself and that is why this entire discussion is so important. The state exists, primarily, to provide its citizens with security. Its whole claim to legitimacy and sovereignty rests on the assumption that only the state, with its vast retinue of military and financial might, can guarantee stability for the individual. The fundamental covenant of the “social contract” is that the individual gives his loyalty to the state and, in return, the state furnishes peace of mind. As we have seen, the state is failing to keep up its end of the bargain. In time, as individuals look elsewhere for their security, the state will lose claim to their exclusive allegiance. The logical conclusion is fairly obvious. International terrorism, if continued unabated, may precipitate the end of the post-Westphalian world system.

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