America has by far the largest conventional military force
in the world, maintained at a huge cost, but probably mostly worth it, because the
wars it prevents would probably cost far more.
BUT the world is changing, and we are faced more and more often with asymmetric
warfare, for which we are not yet really prepared. Two good current examples
are the Israeli-Gaza conflict and the Ukrainian conflict.
In the Israeli-Gaza conflict that seems to be winding down
now, what is asymmetric is first the fact that Israel wins only if it
completely eliminates Hamas, while Hamas wins if it just manages to survive. Of course antisemitism is in play here – the
world press and the UN anguishes over perhaps 1000 Palestinians civilian deaths
(many of the 1800+ claimed “civilian” deaths were actually Hamas fighters) from
Jewish forces, while conveniently ignoring tens of thousands of civilian deaths
occurring from Muslim forces during the same period in Syria, Lebanon, Iraq, Nigeria,
Pakistan, etc, etc. The UN has been
quick enough to label some of Israel’s military mistakes “criminal”, but has
yet to condemn in equally strong terms any of the deliberate atrocities of
Hamas or Boco Haram or the Islamic State or any of the other Muslim jihadist terror
groups.
Second, it is asymmetric because the media battle for world
public opinion matters just as much as the actual fighting, and while Hamas can’t
begin to match the military power of Israel, it takes much less investment to
match the social media power, especially if one plays on the media’s inherent antisemitism and tendency to favor the underdog.
Of course Israel is in an almost impossible position here.
If they do nothing they get barraged with rockets and suicide bombers. If they respond in any effective way they get
world criticism, magnified because Hamas has deliberately arranged to maximize civilian
casualties. If they prevent Hamas from rearming by blockading Gaza, they get
world criticism. If they drop the blockade, Hamas is promptly rearmed by its
supporters in the Arab world. If Israel kills Palestinian civilians by accident,
they get world criticism. If Hamas kills
Palestinians deliberately as it frequently does (remember that when Hamas took over Gaza, they killed
100+ Palestinian Authority officials), it’s not even widely reported. It’s a no-win
situation.
In the Ukraine we are faced with a so-called “rebel” group
fighting a proxy war for Russia, apparently with Russian special forces troops
out of uniform playing key roles. This
is asymmetric again because the perception can be manipulated so easily. Certainly
within Russia the state media seems to have convinced the majority of Russians
that this is a small band of brave Russian rebels fighting a fascist regime. This fiction seems to have been maintained
even while Russia provided heavy weapons to the rebels across the border, and
even fired artillery and rockets from Russian soil to support the rebel
positions.
The lesson for America, I think, is that we need to pay more
attention to these asymmetric conflicts and learn from them. In today’s highly-connected social media world,
world public opinion matters because it directly affects politician’s stands,
and therefore our ability to get and keep allies. Strangely enough, for a nation that has
perfected the art of product advertising, we are not yet very good at managing
our nation’s social media image. Of course we do have a handicap – a free press
means we can’t so easily suppress unflattering material and inconvenient truths the way authoritarian
governments can. Still, we need to learn
to wage the media warfare as well as we manage conventional warfare.
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