Austin Bay Blog

A thank you to the San Antonio Express-News– here’s the full text of my Sunday, August 26, 2001 article on the need for foot soldiers. I encourage readers to “read the whole thing” — the argument I make is a complex one. Building military forces is intricate and involves trade-offs large and trade-offs small.
For more recent background, check out my post from February 9, 2005 on increasing the “end strength” (personnel) in the US Army.

As I glance over the text I note there are a couple of words missing, but I’ll let it go as is.

San Antonio Express-News

Grunt Work ; Foot soldiers are still our best defense
by Austin Bay
08/26/01 Sunday Insight Section page 01G

____________________________________________

It’s 1949. America has The Bomb - and the bombers to deliver it.

With the Bomb’s high-tech edge, World War II’s powerful Army and Marine ground forces are sliced. Army infantry regiments shrink from three to two battalions. Ground divisions seem to have more flags than men and machine guns.

And why not?

As clever strategists and careful budgeteers argue, the Bomb and the long reach of the Strategic Air Command (SAC) will keep enemies at a distance.

War is now fought by “deep strike.” Forget foot soldiers; they’ve no real place on the modern battlefield. Why pay for antiques in The Atomic Age?

It’s now June 1950. The North Korean Peoples Army (NKPA) crosses the 38th Parallel, kicking off the Korean War.

The South Korean army melts. Air strikes slow the NKPA attack, but the Communist tanks and infantry still push south, overrunning U.S. ground forces that arrive piecemeal, poorly equipped and inadequately trained.

And where’s The Bomb? America’s highest tech remains holstered. America dominates the sky and reigns supreme on the sea. However, the guts and determination of ground-pounders provide the crucial edge, not only in the tactical battles at Pusan but at the strategic level.

The Communist architects of the war expected to see U.S. aircraft over the peninsula. They didn’t expect to see American soldiers.

The presence of soldiers, of flesh and blood committed to combat, remains the ultimate statement of political will to persevere and win.

Reflecting on the lessons of the Korean War, San Antonio’s T.R. Fehrenbach observes in his unmatched history “This Kind of War”: “A nation that does not prepare for all the forms of war should then renounce the use of war in national policy. A people that does not prepare to fight should then be morally prepared to surrender. To fail to prepare soldiers and citizens for limited, bloody ground action, and then to engage in it, is folly verging on the criminal.”

Consider Fehrenbach’s point about being prepared to fight “all the forms of war.” In 1949, Washington presumed that a particular kind of technological dominance would, if not assure peace, at least deter serious challenge.

No, history doesn’t repeat itself, but new generations do make old mistakes.

Technology is fundamental

Whether in a Pleistocene cave or a seedy bar, throw a fist at an opponent and you risk breaking your hand– better to throw a stone or a beer bottle.

A laser-guided bomb will - in almost every case - destroy a bunker with little risk to the aircrew that delivered it. An infantry platoon tasked with the same mission may well take casualties. Little wonder grunts love laser bombs.

The next step in the technological even removes the aircrew: a flying robot, an Unmanned Aerial vehicle (UAV) delivers the ordnance. Presto - no pilots at risk. (Which means no voters at risk, or no relatives of voters at risk.)

The new generation of military technology gives the U.S. an extraordinary edge. Spawned by the revolution of microcomputers and miniaturization, the Pentagon is acquiring a useful arsenal of ultra-precise “smart weapons,” intelligence and surveillance assets and communications capabilities.

Unlike the atom bomb, these “smart weapons” won’t remain holstered.

Hi-tech allows the Pentagon to pursue a “rapier and shield” strategy. The “rapier force” will be flexible, agile, fast and offensive-oriented. Precision fires and real-time surveillance systems are key to employing the “rapier.” The “shield” of homeland defense also depends on advanced technology, to include ballistic missile and cyber-defense.

The savviest strategists, however, know the future is, inevitably, the region of surprise. Ask the White House on the morning of June 25, 1950, when the NKPA attacked.

Will underestimated

There is an uncomfortable irony in the digital revolution, one that some of the most energetic high-tech advocates have missed. Failing to understand the paradox of the digital revolution creates a strategic risk for the U.S.

UAVs may substitute for manned-aircraft. Technology is fundamental to success in battle. War, however, is still won in hearts and minds, particularly wars waged by liberal democracies.

The domestic political attraction of “bloodless” push-button battle blinds many western leaders to the fact that technology alone is rarely strategically decisive.

Consider the Zapatistas’ January 1994 rebellion in the Mexican state of Chiapas. Many Mayan guerrillas carried wooden guns (talk about low-tech weaponry!). Of course, Subcommandante Marcos waged his real war with Mexico City via fax machine.

The strategic war he fought was remarkably potent. His pitch was more than “masked man with a pipe.” Marcos was a portrait of willpower in being, a symbol of armed defiance in the face of oppression.

He knew that at the strategic level, political mastery and public perception can trump an opponent’s military success or survive one’s own military failure.

Though managing public perception in war is not new, instant global communications, TV, and internet connectivity - the modern media and its degree of penetration - now fundamentally shape strategic warfare.

Leaders who understand this phenomenon, leaders who can demonstrate the will to sustain and sacrifice, who can use “the communications connectivity” to shape the perceptions of their own people, their opponents, and the global community, can achieve 21st-century victory. High-tech weaponry will further that goal, but certainly won’t guarantee it.

Consider how this principle plays out in Macedonia’s current conflict.

On May 27 the ethnic Albanian guerrillas attacked the village of Matejce (north of the capital of Skopje) and occupied a mosque and a monastery.

Ask a grunt - holing up inside a monastery’s thick walls makes tactical sense. It also exhibits strategic savvy. Occupying the mosque and monastery means a Macedonian government attack (particularly one with heavy weapons) risks damaging the religious sites. So keep the camera ready. Pictures of a damaged mosque shape the perception that “Orthodox Macedonian Slavs hate Muslim Albanians.” On this emotional edge, the war moves from the nowhere of Matejce into hearts and minds around the world.

The Macedonian government was wise to the gambit. Skopje wanted to avoid a “Hue situation” (during the Vietnam War’s 1968 Tet offensive) where Macedonian villages are “destroyed in order to save them.” Burned churches and civilians slain by “friendly fire,” even though the guerrillas suffer defeat in the field, seed a rebel political victory.

A tedious low-level siege and house by house “clearing operation” becames the most strategically appropriate military means of defeating the guerrillas while minimizing civilian casualties.

Smart bombs, robots, and digital whiz - by no means dismiss their combat edge. However, the U.S. will inevitably confront situations where technologically superior weapons aren’t strategically decisive.

Advanced weapons can, with great precision, “hold a target at risk.” The technology cannot, however, “seize and hold” a “key position.” Only trained and capable ground forces “seize and hold.” It’s a paradox only a few old troops and a handful of strategists fully appreciate. On the media-shaped strategic battlefield, trained ground pounders are often the most politically decisive military force. In the battle for hearts and minds and in the demonstration of the will to win (to sustain and sacrifice in order to defeat the enemy’s will), robots and smart munitions do not substitute for boots on the ground

Technological hubris could well be the root of future American strategic failure. Any Pentagon “reform” that fails to recognize the strategically potent role of well-trained and numerically sufficient ground forces isn’t reform. It’s ignorance and delusion. It verges on repeating the mistakes of 1949, setting the conditions for the strategic surprise of 1950.

To paraphrase Fehrenbach, the on-going Pentagon “reform” will fail unless we field a force competent across “the spectrum of conflict.” That means fielding both competent Private E2s and B-2 bombers, a force trained to use the bayonet as well as the brightest smart bomb.

——————————————————————————–
Austin Bay is a nationally-syndicated columnist and author specializing in security issues and global affairs. His third novel will be published next year by Putnam/Berkley. He lives in Austin .

——————————————————————————–
(1) U.S. soldiers of 502nd infantry regiment lower the U.S. flag at Camp Able Sentry base at the Skopje airport. ; (2) U.S. Marine troops land on a Korean Beach. ; (3) Ground troops from the U. S. First Cavalry Division move across the Saudian Arabian desert during the Gulf War. ; (4) President George W. Bush shakes hands with U.S. soldiers during a visit at the U.S. base Camp Bondsteel in Kosovo. ; (5) A pall of smoke lingers over this scene of destruction in Hiroshima, Japan, on August 7, 1945. Ground troops, not atomic weaponry, proved decisive in the Korean conflict six years later. ; (6) Laser technicians at a test site in Southern California verify the alignment of several key components located inside the megawatt-class Alpha chemical laser, designed and built for the military.

(1) PHOTO BY SRDJAN ILIC/STF AP ; (2) ASSOCIATED PRESS ; (3) J. SCOTT APPLEWHITE / ASSOCIATED PRESS ; (3) ASSOCIATED PRESS ; (4) J. SCOTT APPLEWHITE / ASSOCIATED PRESS ; (5) ASSOCIATED PRESS ; (6) ASSOCIATED PRESS