This brilliant article from Military Review printed in 2007 is a must read.
Fighting Identities – Why we are losing our wars [PDF 1.4MB]
Two snapshots in history: two “non-state actors” seizing the greatest states of their day by the throat—and taking what they want. For all of its unpalatable irony, this is our world today.
We Americans, 21st-century Romans, find ourselves ineffective against the barbarians we call non-state actors. The non-state fighters are like Melville’s Moby Dick: they “heap” us, they task us. Yet we can achieve nothing against them.
Something is happening here, and we need to take it onboard. But doing so means throwing off our narcissism and certainty of entitlement. It is a heavy burden to shrug off. But shrug it we must.
the “American Way of War” enshrines triumph through military “transformations”. They are divine tokens of our superiority. Even better, “like-us” challenges from others are met by all-out U.S. out-performance. German combined arms innovation between the world wars led to “Patton beats Rommel.” Ditto Japanese carrier aviation. Ditto Soviet atomic rockets. Ditto too the Soviets’ vaunted “military-technical revolution.” how we outdid them! But our paradigm of military “revolution” is steadfastly both technology-driven and self-focused. The American way of war is all about “like-us” or “kin-enemies” also doing like us. We always win out in the end, and win big.
Today’s transformation, however, has nothing to do with us, except perhaps in how the new innovators take on our technologies—and target our vulnerabilities. the innovators here are emerging societies and alternative
