War on the Cheap

War is brutal, unforgiving and recurring. No Americans except for the 3,000 dead soldiers have seen the end of today’s Iraq war. Yet even though war occurs with (disturbing) frequency, leaders still fail to grasp two hard truths: 1.) more troops win more wars, and 2.) more technology will augment troops, not replace them.

1.) More troops, not less

People have a hard time understanding large numbers. In Vietnam, Defense Secretary McNamara was famous for wanting body counts, ostensibly in the name of attrition against North Vietnamese forces to the point where they could no longer fight. Today, news reports from Iraq and Afghanistan eagerly report numbers of insurgents killed, as if some tangible aggregate number of enemy was being reduced with each felled terrorist. This is problematic.

It is virtually impossible to kill the enemy fast enough for complete attrition. In Iraq alone, approximately 385,000 males will turn the age of 18 this year (a similar number will turn 17 and 16 respectively). Approximately 256,000 Syrian males will have their 18^th birthdays this year, as will 660,000 Iranian males, and some 38,000 Palestinian males (see the CIA Factbook and "Palestinian People" on Wikipedia for age demographics). Were America to go to war with Iran, looking simply at attrition rates America would have to kill 660,000 Iranian soldiers in one year just to keep the number of fighting-age Iranians from growing. That is nearly 2,000 combat kills per day.

Clearly the above is a simplification. Yet the point should be clear that counting kills is a fanciful game of misdirection. Unfortunately, America’s move towards a smaller, more mobile army subtly pays heed to this philosophy of enemy kills rather than enemy coercion. The small army hopes that by mere attrition of enemy forces the enemy will capitulate. But the smaller army is solely reactionary, and cannot hope to raise the costs of resistance to terrorist forces. “Small and mobile” overlooks the hard costs that the enemy is willing to sustain to reach his goals (autonomy, religious rule, new territory, etc.). Currently, to envision America’s forces in Iraq, imagine a small brigade of well-equip firefighters, racing around a vast wilderness trying to fight a thousand different brushfires at once.

More troops per square mile, even if the troops are less mobile, can raise the immediate cost of resistance to terrorist forces in a specific area (by making their goals too costly). The cost of resistance must be raised to exceed the enemy’s value of obtaining his goals. Without proper ground-force size, enemy forces can identify locales where troop-strength is weak and can concentrate their activity in these regions, less likely to be disrupted. There must be overwhelming friendly troop concentration in the area of attention; splotch and blotter strategies are short-sighted and flawed.

Obviously, these lessons are now painfully apparent to the American military planners regarding Iraq. But these lessons often must be relearned, and that is costly.

2.) Technology the (un)replacement

It seems appetizing, due to a public distaste for war, to reduce the size of infantry forces. Leaders need to resist this pressure, because humans are better at identifying enemy forces (especially guerilla ones) than machines due to a superior adaptability and sensory platform. Bombs, once a cutting-edge technology, destroy more things than they need to. Cruise-missiles, a newer advancement, are still fired from distant platforms and insurgent targets are often gone before the missile arrives at its destination. Enemy forces learn to conceal their weapons and fighting positions, strategies in Iraq that render bombs and missiles less effective because of fear of collateral damage, incorrect target-identification and the time-lag between target identification and target destruction.

It seems difficult for leaders to learn the value of a large ground-force element. Israel this summer embarrassingly attempted to cripple Hezbollah via air power, a strategy doomed to failure due to the time-lag element of air weapons-platforms, the difficulty with target-identification, the risk of collateral damage and the guerrilla-like strategies employed by Hezbollah (blending with and living on the local population, and primarily using rudimentary weapons).

The airplane is an interesting analogy when discussing the substitution of technology for infantry. The aircraft was introduced as a cutting-edge fighting vehicle in World War I, hailed as humane replacement for the bloody trenches that marred the western front. Battles would be fought and won in air; armies would be superfluous. In 1939, after Hitler invaded Western Europe, western tacticians concluded that a strategic bombing campaign would coerce Germany to surrender. This didn't work; although 300,000 German civilians were killed and over 1 million rendered homeless, and despite attacks on factories, rail yards and oil fields, the German war economy actually peaked between the end of 1944 and 1945 and the German morale did not “break.” Instead, industrial production was spread out, substitute products were found for "necessities" (German engineers nearly eliminated ball bearings from plane designs), and Hitler's oil supplies were only eliminated after ground forces captured the Romanian oil fields, despite numerous bombing attempts to put them out of action. Successful bombing operations only occurred mainly in conjunction with friendly ground forces, like strafing enemy troops, bombing rear-area supply networks, and destroying front-line communications and transportation hubs to impair enemy troop movement.




The Serbian engagement of 1999 is another interesting example. It took the United States, along with its NATO allies 78 days to force a very limited conditional agreement on a small, third-world country (Yugoslavia). Over 1,000 F-16s, F-18s, F117 stealth fighters and B2 stealth bombers didn't have the overpowering effect despite just a couple B2 bombers having a net worth of more than Yugoslavia's GDP. These expensive platforms are often described as making “war on the cheap,” in reference to the value saved in human lives. The lack of proper conflict resolution, leading to future conflict, is always overlooked in these calculations. Unfortunately, it seems unlikely that the reality of war’s expense will ever be learned soon, despite America’s failures in Iraq.

Frank Stanton

Frank Stanton, a pioneer of network television, a champion of the press' rights to oversee government, and a businessman who sometimes got in the way of the newsmen under him, passed away on Christmas Eve at 98 years old. Like the old guard of diverse, albeit opinionated and sometimes wrong newsmen, Stanton refused to depart life in the 80s and 90s despite the evolution of television into a more specialized and personalized form of entertainment. Now in 2006, the 6 o'clock news is dead.

This isn't necessarily a bad thing, because the internet provides more accurate information (via the ability to check multiple sources instantly) and because not all stories interest all people. With the internet, podcasts, specialized TV/radio channels and a plethora of other information vehicles, we can pay attention to the stories that interests us, and not waste time watching overconfident newsmen tell us their spin (or more accurately, their network's spin) on that same story. But the quest for personally gratifying information can also be problematic.

The one time I met Mr. Stanton, a lunch in Boston with him and my mom, he asked me what newspapers I read. I thought it a funny question; at that time, my newspaper was the sports section and the rest was recycling. I stuttered out a smattering of newspapers and magazines I figured were important (but didn't read), recognizing that I didn't read enough to meet his standards but not realizing why it mattered. Now I think I know why this question is important.

The question had nothing to do with newspapers; the question had to do with interests and information. By only reading the San Francisco Chronicle sports section, I was educating myself plenty about the Oakland A's, San Francisco 49ers and college sports, but I was narrowing my focus so that everything else was a blur. I knew nothing about business news (I found the topic boring), cared little about international affairs (except for what my teachers at school told me), had a scant knowledge of art (despite playing classical piano for over 14 years), etc. etc. Why? Because I wasn't interested. I was more interested in whether Jason Giambi would win the MVP for my beloved Oakland A's, and so I read about it.

There is something to be gained from having knowledge of other fields besides our "interests." First, we can't really know what else interests us if we never try. I cared little about Latin American politics, and never read about them - until one day this summer in China, exhausted from studying and no-one I could speak English with, I opened my crumpled Economist magazine and grudgingly read my final two unread articles about Latin America because it was better than another four hours of writing Chinese characters. Now, I look forward to the "Americas" section.

However, more importantly there is good to be gained when a lot of people know a little about a lot of things. In passing, conversations can be more fun and it's easier to learn faster. Most importantly, however, it helps people understand other people better. It's easy to simplify without knowledge; it's hard to have knowledge and be simpleminded. The marvel of ignorance is helped along by the boring cliche about bliss (yet contradicted by knowledge and power); however, it's my opinion that stupidity is not a prudent life-choice nor an achievement to be admired.

Unfortunately, there is little knowledge to be gleaned nowadays from watching network or cable news. It is narrow-minded, safe and boring - an ironic kudos to Fox News notwithstanding, not for good coverage, but for giving the downward spiral of news a sideways kick in the knees - with predictable stories and solemn, robotic anchors (juxtaposed with eccentric, loud and crooked statistics-wielding "news" pundits). Network and cable news resembles an old, unrefreshed page of AP or Reuters news that has been stuck on your web browser for half a day: World coverage of gruesome death tolls, outbreaks, disasters; national news of politicos and their scripted statements to the press; local news of the recent shootings, robberies, and girl scouts. No analysis, superficial facts. Pundits resemble the opposite; screaming caricatures with obvious agendas, who will predictably rant about whatever news was on earlier seen through the lens of their political leaning.

There is an audience waiting for the return of real news. The explosion of NPR is an ironic return to broad-based news coverage with ample analysis and opinionated, yet scholarly, discussion. It's ironic because NPR itself is a niche existing with thousands of others; it's a return because as it grows it will leave behind the title "niche."

What we choose read/watch/listen to/whatever beyond our envelope doesn't really matter; as long as we remind ourselves that we put ourselves at a disadvantage by only caring about what we're "interested" in, and tuning the rest out. Because "interests" are often used as a rationalization and excuse for a single course of action that is a zero-sum game. Knowledge is not. Frank Stanton saw that the "interests" of news subscribed to this theory of knowledge, a theory that hasn't disappeared but has long since departed the television box.

See: Frank Stanton, in the New York Times article about his passing

Crossroads

A year ago, I was asked to write an international relations article about China, a country I had lived in for a year and had taken a serious interest in. I wrote about China's human rights abuses and relative gains, about China's one-party government that had done so much bad and recently so much good for its people, about China's crackdown on internet usage, about jailings and abuse of dissidents, and I came to the conclusion that the paradoxical country was at a crossroads. I don't rescind that idea. But I've been thinking lately, and I think I was missing the point to even write about China's crossroads in the first place. China is the hype now, but oftentimes hype supersedes substance. My point isn't to belittle or deny China's, India's or any other country's rise or issues. My point is to say that the ball still rests firmly in America's court, and I think it is America who is at a crossroads.

It's simple human nature to assume the future will be similar to today, yesterday and for as long as we can remember from looking at pictures in our photo albums and from hearing stories that our grandparents told. Many things we've faced as a nation and as a world, we have overcome. Accomplishments like winning the Cold War and landing men on the moon, and conflicts like World War II helped us get to where we are today, propelling hope for this still imperfect world that there is room for opportunity, awareness and maturity. Yet success from these accomplishments; walking on the moon, defeating Communism, halting Nazi Germany and imperial Japan of the notable many, these successes serve more today as drying leaves on a majestic ivy that once grew much fuller. Like the caretaker who himself grows old after tending the ivy for so many years, America has forgotten what fortitude it took to accomplish such great things, and how commitment, determination and responsibility should be more than campaign speech punch-lines.

This is not a "good ol' times" article. I believe the future will be better than it is now. Society is not in decay; the world is not in decline; humans have similar values as they did 100 years ago, just with different jargon and manner of expression. Family and friends are still dear to most. However, it is up to Americans as to who will lead this better future, and this rests on Americans' abilities to realize that not all good things come easily.

In the vacuum of power after the Cold War, America was and still is the world's sole superpower. Yet without a legitimate check on its ability to wage war or mediate conflict, America has been a free spirit, especially in the years since 9/11 when the president was afforded much political capital to use as he saw fit. Before 9/11, during the massive boom (and eventual bust) of the 1990s stock market and economy, pessimism was defined as not making as much profit as the guy next door. Yet since 9/11, America has been grounded in a bulge of genuine pessimism; about terrorism, the replacement of America as a superpower, Iraq, illegal immigrants, gays and culture. While troublesome some of these topics may be (and how unnerving it is that some even made the list), they are not America's greatest challenge today. Terrorism and Iraq can be overcome. The real challenge is the challenge of finding good leaders once again.

It is America's responsibility to lead the world. Yet in America, we can't find leaders to lead ourselves. What do I mean by that? I mean that many leaders are gone, replaced by politicians. The consummate "politician" has always been a favorite insult by pundits from both the left and the right, but it's important to make a distinction because today a legitimate one can be made. A politician, if we are to judge politicians by the last six years of congress, is someone who engages in politics not to lead but to win. A leader is someone who ignores partisanship in the name of his people and country. Democrats gave a big hoorah when they won the recent congressional elections, but that hoorah wasn't because they actually had done anything; it was because they had won an election. This gerrymandering, CNN-watching "sportsification" (yes, I made that word up) of politics is embarrassing. Karl Rove may not be as evil as a man as he is made out to be; instead, he filled a terrible role (and did his job well), a role that had been created by a system hell-bent on winning elections instead of actually leading people.

Politicians have forgotten that America is an idea. It is an idea that encourages hard work and innovation, while simultaneously taking in those who need help the most. America is not a nanny state, but we must accept immigrants who work hard to make their children's lives better. Not bothering with arguments to the contrary, it is simply in America's benefit to accept people who will live a lifetime of indebtedness to a country that didn't care who they were, what they looked like or how they lived their lives as long as they worked hard and improved their own lives while allowing others to do the same. It is also in America's benefit to tackle global warming - which could dramatically change in unknown ways the only place we live - and to solve the Palestine/Israel crisis, an excuse for terrorists worldwide and an open wound that can bridge the gap between the West and the Middle East. These are the real issues of today and tomorrow.

If we as Americans are to solve the real problems of tomorrow; global warming, Palestine and Israel and immigration; we need real leaders. No more partisans, no more "left-wingers" or "right-wingers." Liberals who have little understanding of economic issues, and who either fail to realize or blatantly ignore the serious environmental and social consequences of their radical ideas on points like immediately pulling troops from Iraq or massive taxes on corporations are both a distraction and a danger. I am equally terrified of those on the other end; hypocritical conservatives who cannot compromise, who rationalize fuzzy economics and see the political sphere as a winners' circle (see Bob Ney, Tom DeLay, Jack Abramoff, Randy Cunningham, Grover Norquist et al), and even more hypocritical religious folk (Mark Foley, Ted Haggard, Rick Santorum) who care more about regulating my life and raising money for the hypocritical conservatives than they do about addressing poverty.

We can only hope that the democrats now running both arms of congress will stop cheering for themselves and address real issues. Don't follow Republicans by pandering to voters, and start leading the voters. Address the real issues like global warming, Israel and Palestine and immigration. Continue to combat terrorism, but acknowledge you can't defeat a strategy. These tenets are they keys to success in the future.

Coming full-circle, Americans should stop worrying so much about China and start worrying about America. China will specialize in what it's good at and the hype won't be for naught. China's government recently declared its goals were to have a harmonious society and civil stability. China will have that, China's economy will be prosperous and stable, and China will be successful. But America needs to re-specialize in what it's good at. Inspiring hope and creativity, innovation and adaptiveness. Americans must continue to work hard, but also must acknowledge that as our fathers and grandfathers worked for us, we must work hard for our children. Nothing can be taken for granted, and certainly nothing is owed to us. In short, America needs to re-specialize in being a leader. The ball is in America's court.