Iraq war forces Western military rethink: report

By David Clarke

LONDON (Reuters) – Western military powers are being forced
to rethink strategy because conflict in Iraq has shown the
limits of their conventional armies, the International
Institute of Strategic Studies said on Thursday.

In its annual report on global military might, “The
Military Balance,” the London-based think-tank said strategists
had hoped new technology would let them target enemies
accurately from ships and planes, avoiding protracted ground
battles.

But it said conventional armies have been sucked into messy
conflicts, often in towns, where they face enemies invulnerable
to the advanced gadgetry that was supposed to dissipate the fog
of war and herald a new era in warfare.

“Iraq, Afghanistan and Chechnya demonstrate the limitations
of modern conventional forces in complex environments that
demand more of them than traditional warfighting,” wrote Editor
Christopher Langton in the introduction.

The United States has some 137,000 troops in Iraq more than
two years after crushing Iraq’s conventional army in a ground
invasion. Nearly 2,000 U.S. soldiers have been killed in Iraq
since March 2003.

The Military Balance said that rather than winning
“network-centric warfare” using electronic sensors to find
targets and direct fire, Western forces were enmeshed in
“netwars,” based on “agile and adaptive human networks.”

“The conflict environment of the early 21st century
certainly does represent a new era in warfare: but not the era
that Western military planners expected,” it said in its
handbook which lists the size and capabilities of the world’s
armed forces.

INERTIA IN U.S.

Using suicide bombers and roadside bombs, Iraqi insurgents
have killed U.S. and British soldiers and thousands of
civilians. U.S. campaigns to dislodge fighters embedded in
Iraqi towns have also involved losses.

“Dealing with this new conflict environment has caused a
rethink for many Western forces,” the institute said.

It said British and Australian special forces and the U.S.
Marines were adapting to the new era of “asymmetric” conflict
used by non-state actors such as al Qaeda by creating smaller
fighting groups.

But it said there was unlikely to be any major shift in
U.S. strategy, or spending, for two reasons. First, because it
feared the rise of large conventional armies in countries such
as China and wanted to maintain air and sea supremacy.

“China’s military is rapidly modernizing. This is of
concern to the U.S. and some countries in the Asia-Pacific
region as the modernization of the People’s Liberation Army is
no longer directed solely against Taiwan,” Langton wrote.

The second reason was the immense inertia of the industrial
groups that helped build U.S. military might and the fact that
it would take time to move away from decades of strategic
thought.

The institute said one bright spot for Western conventional
armies was that they were still unrivalled in their ability to
respond quickly to natural disasters, such as the Tsunami.