The Utility of Force?

In the summer of 2006 my squadron deployed to Incirlik AB, Turkey. We were in high spirits, looking forward to a fun summer flying cargo missions in and out of Iraq, and spending our off days hanging out by the pool or shopping and eating chicken tava in town (my Army brethren can spare me any sarcastic comments about Air Force deployments). A few days after we arrived, we got drawn into history when Hizballah launched a raid across the Israeli border, killed three soldiers, and wounded two others. One thing led to another, and within a few days we were watching Israel's punishing retaliation against Lebanon on CNN and Fox News. Our squadron was tasked with supporting the massive evacuation of American citizens. I was on the desk that week so didn't get to fly, but as a squadron executive officer, I had a wonderful opportunity to watch my squadron commander at work as the situation evolved. There was a sense of euphoria in the squadron that comes with "being a part of something." I'll admit that I felt it too. After years of flying identical missions in and out of Afghanistan and Iraq, we were also happy for a simple change of pace. As for the war itself, opinions were mixed. Some of my right-leaning colleagues were cheerful; they were happy to see Israel finally giving Hizballah what it deserved. I felt quite the opposite. I have no love for Hizballah, but I was sick with dread. My liberal heretic friends and I watched the news and quietly wondered how this could end well. I thought hard about the Israeli Army Chief of Staff's famous promise to "turn back the clock in Lebanon by 20 years" and wondered how that would possibly be in Israel's strategic interests. I spent a couple hours a day poring over reports from organizations like International Crisis Group and the Council on Foreign Relations, trying to understand what was unfolding.

The war, of course, was a debacle. The Winograd Commission--which was tasked by the Isreali government to investigate--reported that the war was a grave and serious failure. Hizballah emerged from the war a clear winner, and the ensuing instability nearly drove Lebanon to collapse. A year or so later, I flew my one and only mission into Lebanon. When we broke out of the clouds, I had one good glimpse of Beirut before I had to set up for the approach. It was tragic, looking out over this beautiful city that had once been the Paris of the Middle East, knowing how much it had suffered in the decades since. Once on the ground, we taxied over patched bomb craters from the recent war. The gloomy airport staff was not happy to see an American Air Force plane loaded with ammunition intended for their country; I imagined them as they probably were a year ago, hunkering down in this same office while the bombs fell around them.

Since the 2006 Lebanon War I've read and heard many different "lessons learned" reports. Still smarting from its failures, Israel was determined to perform better in the future. The US was also eager to learn from its ally's mistakes. I felt wary whenever I read these reports; they largely seemed to focus on tactical and operational lessons. I wondered if anyone was asking the questions I thought mattered the most: how do wars like the 2006 Lebanon War serve political interests? These questions surfaced again when Israel launched Operation Cast Lead in December to halt rocket fire from Gaza. A lot of people were eager to see whether or not the IDF had taken the right lessons away from Lebanon. To me, these questions were almost irrelevant. Once again, I felt sick to my stomach, wondering what strategic objectives the war was supposed to serve. They were never articulated. Looking back, the only positive outcome I see is that Israel reestablished some level of deterrence by scaring the hell out of everybody. Like one foreign ministry official told Wired's Danger Room, "The Arab view is now that Israel is a crazed animal, locked in a cage, fuming to get out all the time." Is that a good reason to go to war? An American friend who works with the IDF thinks so, given the failure of other options to stop the rocket flow. I'm not so sure--at least, not unless the war is accompanied by simultaneous efforts to address the root political problems.

I've been picking on Israel because these two wars were short, distinct cases that have seriously shaped my thinking. But let's talk about the United States. We have gotten ourselves into a hell of a mess. It's terrifying how fast Afghanistan is unraveling. The upsurge of violence in Iraq suggests Tom Ricks may be right; the events for which Iraq will be remembered have not yet happened. The country indeed may be unraveling. We employed the most powerful military the world has ever seen and easily toppled two regimes, but we have achieved no political victories.

What is going on here? Why is violence consistently applied in today's world with so little utility?

The Utility of Force by General Rupert Smith is the book I've been searching for for years--I just didn't it know until I read it. Smith draws on his vast experience as a senior military commander to explain how and why war has changed forever. This is heavyweight stuff that will melt your PME instructor's heart--full of Clauswitzian triangles, following a historical arc from Napoleon on up to the present day. Smith's thesis is bold. Industrial war no longer exists and violence alone is no longer a sufficient of deciding political outcomes; we are in a new paradigm of war amongst the people that has radically changed force's utility. "The ends for which we fight are changing from the hard objectives that decide a political outcome to those of establishing conditions in which the outcome may be decided." That sentence is key for me; it illuminates everything I've struggled to understand in Afghanistan, Iraq, Lebanon, and Gaza.

The book explores the utility of force. Why has war changed? In today's wars when does force have utility, and when does it not? Why do modern governments so consistently apply force without utility, and how can we restructure force to effectively meet the challenges of today's world? I still love my Amazon Kindle 2, but after I read General Smith's book on it, I immediately ordered a hardcopy. It's a book that deserves to be highlighted, underlined, dog-eared, and hauled around on every future assignment in my career.

Even the title is seared into my mind now. It haunts me when I read the news and when I read analysis of the dire foreign policy dilemmas we face. The Utility of Force. It implies that force does not necessarily have utility; that it only has utility under the right circumstances. It implies the existence of an opposite, that force can be used without utility. When I tried explaining the book's contents to my wife she quipped, "Shouldn't it be called The Futility of Force?" That's not quite what General Smith was trying to say, but my wife has a point.

I don't want to give up on Afghanistan and Iraq prematurely, but I am dismayed by how little utility force has actually had when it was employed during my military career thus far. The one glowing exception--at least, if you believe the commonly accepted narrative--is the time period during and following the Surge, when American and Iraq civil and military leaders finally found a way to employ force with utility. In fact, the stated goal of the Surge--to create a secure environment in which political reconciliation could move forward--dovetails almost exactly with Rupert's language: using force to establish "conditions in which the outcome may be decided." Unfortunately, if Tom Ricks is right, the Surge was a political failure. The military played its hand exactly right and created the breathing space necessary for a decisive outcome, but the necessary political reconciliation never happened.

Have we learned our lesson? Are we employing force with utility now? There's no question we've grown more competent at employing force at the tactical and operational level. But for force to have utility, it must have utility at the strategic and political level. Also, if General Smith is right, force is not sufficient to decide political outcomes; it only creates the space in which strategic political are decided. Attaining political objectives, then, requires close coordination between various government agencies and instruments of power. Our ability to succeed at this kind of endeavor is much less certain.

I'm glad to see that the debate raging around Afghanistan is now focusing on these strategic and political questions. A lot of people realize that we need to step back and look at the big picture of where the United States is heading. Likewise, Israel is having a vibrant internal debate about its future and about the future of Palestinians. There is a growing understanding that force has dwindling utility in managing the conflict.

Perhaps we are learning to adapt to the new paradigm General Smith describes. I certainly hope so.