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December 31, 2006
War Is Not A Physics Problem
Some people have the idea that all wars are optional. Or at least a vast majority are for America. This especially includes Iraq. Some wars are matters of survival. i.e. it is not always possible to choose your enemy. Sometimes the enemy chooses you. It is possible to choose how to fight the enemy. Boots vs. bombs. However, boots can discriminate targets better than bombs can. They can also perform other useful tasks such as making friends and gathering intel. However, boots are limited by those in the military age range in any year. In the US we get about 1 million men entering that age range every year (which forms the main recruiting pool). The military gets about 10% of that pool every year. About the maximum possible in an all volunteer force. To increase the size of the force moderately rapidly (20,000 a year say), you would need to greatly increase retention rates. For that to be feasable you would need that many adequate performers who would like to be retained but are not due to Congressional force size limitations. Which I do not believe is the case. Then you have the question of punitive expeditions vs transformative expeditions. One is quick, but often leaves a mess with the high likelyhood of having to cover the same ground repeatedly. Our you go in for a transformative expedition where your time horizon is much longer. All this affects troop man days spent in the field. And lots of similar questions. Some political, some military, some economic, some cultural, some turning on social structure, some logistical, some technological, some related to infrastructure, etc., etc., etc. All of this is complicated by the need to keep the oil flowing so civilization doesn't collapse. On top of that there is reaction. The enemy is always adjusting strategy, tactics, and war aims in response to our moves as we adjust same in response to his. And then there is the problem of keeping alliances together and disrupting enemy alliances. Which is what makes the whole question a wicked problem. You can't easily isolate the factors the way you can in a physics problem. Cross Posted at Power and Control posted by Simon on 12.31.06 at 02:40 PM
Comments
Of course if an opponent is already destabilizing their OWN oil production, while funding terrorism and supporting a regime that is seeking WMDs (not necessarily in the same country) you really are stuck. That is, unfortunately, Iran. And Syria which appears to be going for the 'full monty' of chem/bio/nuclear WMDs along with its SCUD-B/C/D suite of rockets. Given that UK intelligence places a collection of ex-Saddam Iraqi nuclear scientists in Syria with Syrian, Iranian and ex-Russian Republic scientists, one gets the feeling that Iran is trying to play a deep game in which its apparent work on nuclear capability is actually a misdirection on the real nuclear finishing group that is being supported in Syria. Syria, by being so feeble economically with or without outside support and continually, may be relatively immunized against an Iranian infrastructure collapse as it will retain the expertise and processing equipment for all WMD capability. Funny how that goes, isn't it? The radical Islamists throw money liberally for terrorists in Lebanon, Iraq, Chechnya, and South America, while the nasty little secular regime in Syria plays the 'weak sister' game of having no real conventional capability and yet will have a full suite of WMD capability suitable for blackmailing anything its missiles can reach. Economically that includes: the Suez Canal, Bosporous straights, Saudi oil fields. Put a center in Syria and draw a wide circle including those things and you get an idea of what that means for civilian/military/economic targets. This could simply be blindness on the part of the Mullahs in Iran, long-term conniving on the part of the Assad family and Syria or, most likely, both. The chances of this being just chance are, basically, nil. So with Iran commiting a strange form of economic suicide, Syria committing to WMDs in a long-term fashion and al Qaeda doing the 'break-up/take-over/exploit/destabilize/break-up' routine to get power, we are faced with a multi-pronged threat that is a bit difficult to discern until you take a look at all the parts. Then it gets nasty. ajacksonian · December 31, 2006 07:32 PM "Some people have the idea that all wars are optional." Nobody thinks that. "Or at least a vast majority are for America." The percentage would depend on how many optional wars we engage in. "This especially includes Iraq." That was obviously one. "Some wars are matters of survival." Obviously. But also obviously, not the Iraq war. "It is possible to choose how to fight the enemy." Really? "blah, blah, blah,..."You can't easily isolate the factors the way you can in a physics problem." Wow. You mean reality is different than theory? Great. Maybe you guys are actually learning something! Giuseppe Blow · January 1, 2007 04:39 PM Giuseppe Blow, If you think Iraq is optional you do not understand the problem. The problem is the coming economic collapse of the Middle East. Look at what A. Jacksonian has to say in the above comment. Political democracy and capitalism are the answer to that question. There is no way such a system would happen on its own. A seed needed to be planted. What better place to plant it than Iraq a country we have been at war with since 1991 and the broken cease fire agreement? Oil socialism is a failed experiment. Bush has done well to not just see the problem quite ahead of the curve, but also to act on it. Islam is dying. What we are seeing is just the early twitches. Iraq is of course centrally located in the middle of the mess. A good place to be if we are going to contain and possibly reverse it. I think, Giuseppe, that it is you who do not see the wickedness of the problem. The looming mass starvation in the Arab world and the destabilization that will cause. I never understood why liberals were so weak in their beliefs that Bush could turn liberals into reactionaries. The man does have amazing powers. M. Simon · January 1, 2007 10:48 PM |
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To add to your fine post ...
If someone declares war on you, do not let him pick the battlefield.
(that's what 9/11 was)