> 16 October 2003
>
> by Dr. George Friedman
>
> The Next Phase of the War
>
> Summary
>
> Washington is reformulating its war plans in Iraq -- something
> critics of the Bush administration might view as a sign of
> weakness. The real weakness lies not in that the United States is
> shifting strategies, but rather that it has taken so long to make
> adjustments. However, even with a new strategy, it is unclear
> whether the United States will succeed.
>
> Analysis
>
> The United States is in the process of reformulating its war
> plans in Iraq. Such reformulations are normal in war: Every
> successful war consists of layers of plans that are adjusted as
> opponents change their strategy and tactics and as lessons are
> learned. Indeed, one of the hallmarks of the defeated party is
> the inability to redefine its strategy based on experience. The
> presence of only one plan is a sign of defeat: The French war
> plan in World War II never changed and, therefore, never worked;
> the Japanese, once their initial plan ran into trouble, could
> never generate a rational strategy. On the other hand, the United
> States went through multiple plans, developing and discarding
> strategies on all levels. This is insufficient to guarantee
> victory (the Germans also went through multiple plans), but it is
> one of the necessary conditions.
>
> Critics of the Bush administration, who see the need to change
> plans as a sign of weakness, simply don't understand war. In
> Iraq, where the administration should be criticized is not that
> it changed plans, but that it took so long to do so. For the
> United States, the most significant failure in this war has been
> the length of time it took to recognize that the reality on the
> ground in Iraq was not the reality Washington had expected -- and
> worse, the length of time it took U.S. leaders to think through
> their strategy. Changing plans is the sign of a healthy command
> structure; rigidly adhering to plans in the face of a changing
> reality is a sign of real problems.
>
> U.S. Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld's problem was that he
> was unable to publicly confront the fact that the unexpected had
> happened in Iraq. He might have done so in private, but no shift
> in strategy emerged. From early May, when the guerrilla war was
> launched, until last week, Rumsfeld appeared to be strategically
> paralyzed. He neither had a plan for crushing the Iraqi
> guerrillas, nor did he seem able to conceptualize how the rest of
> the war would proceed. This should not, actually, be
> personalized: Even though Rumsfeld was both secretary of defense
> and the dominant personality in the strategic process, it was a
> failure of the civilian and military command structures in
> general.
>
> Rumsfeld has been adamant in arguing that there are no parallels
> between Iraq and Vietnam. He is correct in all but one sense: One
> of the fundamental failings in Vietnam was the inability of
> senior U.S. civilian and military commanders to recognize that,
> though individual operations were successful, they did not tie
> together into a strategy -- or more precisely, that the strategy
> was not working. This is why many Vietnam veterans are right in
> saying that they won the battles but lost the war. It is the job
> of the strategists to make certain that the battles and strategy
> mesh and, when they don't, to make adjustments. In Vietnam, the
> strategy never meshed with the operations. A similar situation
> has emerged in Iraq, save that the operations didn't add up
> either.
>
> These things happen. The measure of success is how quickly a
> problem is recognized and how quickly adjustments are made. If we
> read the creation of the Stabilization Group correctly, we are in
> the process of seeing those changes emerge. That means that about
> six months have elapsed between the start of the guerrilla war
> and the crafting of a response. That isn't great, but it isn't
> catastrophic either. The timeline is bearable, so long as the
> strategic shifts are effective.
>
> To consider this, we need to recall the two strategic reasons the
> United States had for invading Iraq -- as opposed to the public
> justifications:
>
> 1. Seizing the most strategic country in the region as a base of
> operations from which to mount follow-on operations against
> countries that collaborate or permit collaboration with al Qaeda.
> 2. Transforming the psychological perception of the United States
> in the Islamic world from a hated and impotent power to a hated
> but feared power.
>
> The most significant impact the guerrilla war has had on the
> United States concerns the second goal. The perception (as
> opposed to the reality) of the war is that the conventional
> forces of the occupying power were helpless in the face of the
> guerrillas. There was certainly truth to that, but only in this
> sense. The guerrilla movement has remained well below critical
> mass -- it in no way threatens either the occupation or the
> operational capabilities of the United States. Total casualties
> relative to the force are insignificant from a military point of
> view.
>
> Nevertheless, the fact that the movement could not be crushed --
> but continued to operate for months -- made it appear that the
> United States had become militarily trapped. The U.S. response
> compounded this perception: Rather than pressing forward with
> regional operations, the United States first tried to crush the
> guerrillas with search-and-destroy missions, and then seemed to
> halt offensive operations and simply take casualties. The result
> appeared to be paralysis, and this appearance undermined the
> second goal: It negated the psychological value of the fall of
> Baghdad.
>
> The solution for the United States rests in the first goal. The
> United States has seized control of Iraq and is capable of
> mounting political, covert and overt operations against
> neighboring countries. The guerrilla war, though irritating, does
> not undermine the United States' operational capability: First,
> the war is primarily confined to one region; second, the tempo of
> operations in that region does not constrain military operations.
>
> Therefore, the key is to use the military capabilities obtained
> through basing in Iraq and exploit the occupation, despite the
> guerrilla war. In a sense, the guerrilla war is irrelevant -- it
> will be there whatever the United States does, at least for a
> while. Whether the United States proceeds with exploitation
> operations or not, the war is a constant. There is no logical
> reason to halt operations.
>
> That appears to be just what is happening. The United States, for
> example, opened a psychological campaign against Syria the
> weekend of Oct. 11-12 by pointing out that the Israelis have
> submarine-, air- and land-based nuclear weapons. Two U.S.
> officials made the point in such a way that the Syrians couldn't
> miss it. This came just days after Turkish lawmakers voted to
> send troops into Iraq. Though those troops are important, the
> real importance of the vote was its declaration of belligerency
> by Turkey, which has moved from a neutral stance established in
> March back into active collaboration with the United States.
>
> The United States used the Turkish shift to create a massive
> coalition against Syria along most of its borders. With the
> Israelis, Turks and Americans all arrayed along its frontiers,
> Damascus has no choice but to reconsider its strategy. The
> alternative is to assume that the United States will be unwilling
> to use its forces -- and those of Israel -- to compel regime
> change in Syria. The Syrians might believe that to be the case,
> but the risk of error is too great.
>
> It is useful to examine Syrian behavior more closely. The Iraq
> campaign ended with U.S. forces dueling Syrian forces along the
> Syria-Iraq border. Damascus, clearly surprised by the U.S.
> victory, seemed to shift their policies in April and May,
> suppressing some Palestinian and Islamist activity within the
> country's borders. Then, as the guerrilla war intensified over
> the summer, Syria seemed to reconsider. Officials clearly
> perceived American weakness in Iraq and concluded that so long as
> the guerrilla war continued, the United States would be
> exceedingly cautious in expanding the conflict. Indeed, during
> the six months of U.S. absorption with the guerrilla war, the
> Syrian perception solidified into the view that the United States
> was trapped in Iraq in a war it could neither win nor exit. Syria
> permitted Palestinian and Islamist activity to resume,
> discounting the U.S. threat.
>
> Thus, the United States' failure to achieve its second strategic
> goal created a situation in which Syria drew judgments that were
> not warranted, since the United States had achieved the first
> goal. The United States was the dominant military power in the
> region; it simply wasn't perceived as militarily powerful. That
> perception was driven by the inability to stop the guerrillas.
> Therefore, the United States had to demonstrate that the
> guerrilla war did not weaken its ability to coerce its neighbors
> in the region.
>
> The United States appears to have decided to treat the guerrilla
> war as a military side show -- not insignificant, but certainly
> not militarily decisive. Given this, there is no reason for
> Washington to halt aggressive actions in the region to force
> change in behavior toward al Qaeda and associated groups. By
> doing this, the United States not only exploits the military
> advantage it has won, but also shifts back the psychological
> perception to something that more reasonably matches U.S.
> capabilities.
>
> Therefore, we expect to see more aggressive U.S. moves in the
> coming months. The situation facing the Syrians is a paradigm
> created by the U.S. strategy at this point: Washington is using a
> coalition of regional powers to put Syria in an untenable
> position. The Bush administration accepts the fact that the
> United States will be seen as collaborating with Israel -- under
> the valid theory that whatever the United States does, it will be
> seen as Israel's collaborator and therefore might as well enjoy
> the benefits of collaboration. Finally, Washington is using the
> real threat of action to create a situation in which Damascus
> either must comply with Washington's wishes or place a life-or-
> death bet that the United States will refrain from action.
>
> The Saudis at this point are not an issue for the United States,
> but Iran is. The United States is open to a deal with Iran, but
> the Iranian perception that the United States is desperate for a
> deal must be changed, from Washington's point of view. Iran, like
> Syria, has perceived the U.S. position in Iraq as causing
> strategic paralysis for Washington. That has made closing the
> deal with Tehran impossible. Iran's high expectations of what it
> would get from the deal kept rising as the sense of American
> vulnerability increased. Washington's intent is clearly to change
> that perception and reconfigure the negotiation process. The test
> case will be Iran's response to the International Atomic Energy
> Agency (IAEA) on its nuclear weapons program.
>
> The United States is now trying to accept the guerrilla war as a
> semi-permanent feature of its occupation of Iraq. It is trying to
> restart its strategic engines in spite of that reality. From a
> strictly military point of view, there is no reason why this
> can't happen. From a strategic point of view, it is a logical
> necessity. From a domestic point of view, the administration must
> demonstrate that Iraq was a means toward an end and not an end in
> itself. It must return to the strategic principles that drove the
> invasion.
>
> Many things can go wrong with this strategy -- and they might.
> All strategies are vulnerable to reality, expected and
> unexpected. The Syrians might not buckle and the United States
> might not have the ability to coerce them. The Iranians might
> trigger a massive rising among the Shiites that the United States
> cannot control. The guerrillas might increase their operations
> and become strategically significant. And most important,
> something totally unexpected might happen.
>
> The United States decided to climb aboard the tiger when it
> invaded Iraq. That is not a bad strategy; the problem is there is
> no safe way to climb off the tiger. For six months, the U.S.
> response to the unexpected guerrilla war was to hang onto the
> tiger and hope he would fall asleep. Hasn't happened. Won't
> happen. Being on the tiger's back leaves the United States only
> one option: Ride the tiger.
>
> It is interesting to note the paradox in Rumsfeld. Having been
> perceived as an enormously aggressively strategist, he turned out
> to be remarkably passive in the face of unexpected countermoves.
> This has happened to many strategic planners: Effective in
> planning a war, they become ineffective in dealing with the
> unplanned and unexpected. The most dangerous point in a war comes
> when the unexpected happens and the old plan must be thrown away
> and a new one devised on the fly. That's what happened in Iraq.
> The challenge facing the United States is defining a plan to deal
> with the unexpected and unwelcomed. If the United States succeeds
> in doing so -- and in a long war, it will have to do this over
> and over again -- it can succeed. If the United States behaves as
> France did in 1940 -- paralyzed by an opponent behaving
> unexpected -- the outcome can be grim.
>
> It is unclear whether the United States will succeed. The issue
> is not to deal with the guerrillas in Iraq, but to redefine the
> entire strategy of the war against al Qaeda -- to revive the link
> between the Iraq campaign and the effort to destroy the primary
> adversary. It appears to us that the United States now has begun
> to do that. However, it is unclear whether it will succeed. The
> first crisis of the war that began Sept. 11 is being addressed,
> but it is unclear whether it will be solved.
> .................................................. ...............
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