8246 Lecture 7: Lecture 7 - Professor Peter Leahy
5 Jun 2018
School
Department
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Professor
National Security – Lecture 7
The Changing Nature of War and Conflict
The Utility of Force
• "War no longer exists."
• Conflict and confrontation remain but war as a massive deciding event in as dispute in
international affairs no longer exists.
War No Longer Exists
• Industrial interstate war has given way to war among the people.
• Criss-cross between confrontation and conflict with no predefined sequence - peace
may not necessarily be the start or end point.
Generational Warfare
1. Massed armies of the state
2. Armies of the state with weapons of increased range and accuracy.
3. Firepower and manoeuvre to achieve speed and surprise.
4. The lines between war and conflict, the state and non-state actors are blurred.
The Four Generations of Modern War - William S. Lind
• The state has lost the monopoly on war.
• States are fighting non-state opponents such as al Qaeda, Hamas, Hezbollah and the
FARC
The Sling and the Stone - Thomas Hammes
• Unconventional war will be the war of choice of those seeking to take on the military
might of the US.
• Directly attacks the minds of enemy decision makes to destroy the enemy's political
will.
• The United States has already lost 4th Generation Wars in Vietnam, Lebanon and
Somalia.
Asymmetric Operations
• Relative strengths of standing armies
• The proliferation of weapons of all types beyond the nation state
• The rise of international conflicts such as ethnic, religious and socio/political conflict
• Global scale
• Pervasive and persistent
• Impact on all aspects of society
• Negate the advantages of technology to the nation state (technology has brought power
to the powerless)
• Involved the active manipulation of a pervasive media
• Will be the norm and activity is about the psychological rather than the physical. Their
aim is to psychologically confront the society with a moral battle of ideas.
Asymmetric Warfare
• The 9/11 terrorist attacks and the war in Afghanistan are among the best-known recent
examples of asymmetric warfare: conflicts between nations or groups that have
disparate military capabilities and strategies.
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• RAND investigates political and military responses to - and the impacts of -
counterinsurgency, terrorism, and other forms of irregular warfare.
Hybrid War
• Multiple types of warfare used simultaneously.
• "The categories of warfare are blurring and no longer fit into neat, tidy boxes. One can
expect to see more tools and tactics of destruction --from the sophisticated to the simple
-- being employed simultaneously in hybrid and more complex forms of warfare." -
Robert Gates
NATO Allies Come to Grips with Russia's 'Hybrid Warfare'
• NATO allies are scrambling to protect vulnerable Baltic partners from the threat of
hybrid warfare, a Russian tactic that officials and experts say is based on deception
rather than formal declaration of war.
• Russian President Vladimir Putin's use of anonymous "little green men" to slice Crimea
away from Ukraine last year sent alarm bells ringing throughout the three small Baltic
NATO and EU members.
• While a full-scale invasion is improbable now, hybrid meddling and destabilisation
tactics designed to test NATO's commitment to collective defence are not.
• Putin's brand of hybrid warfare also relies on "misinformation, bribery, economic
pressure," which are designed to "undermine the nation," according to Latvian Defence
Minister Raimonds Vejnois.
6 Major Trends
• The ends of war are changing to malleable objectives to deal with individuals and
societies that are not states.
• The media are taking a central role as they are taking the war to the people.
• Conflicts tend to be timeless eg. Northern Ireland.
• We have begun to fight so as not to lose rather than use all resources to win.
• New uses are being found for old weapons.
• The sides are mostly non-state and we are arranged into coalitions or alliances.
Success
• War reflects the technological, political, economic, cultural and information
environment of our time.
• Success will belong to those who can adapt to the changing environment.
Other Changes
• Globalisation
• Consequence
• Victory
• Persistent
• Dense
• Full spectrum
• Complexity
• Threat
• Asymmetry
• Mission Creep
• Detection Threshold
• Urbanisation
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