Firepower Backfires

Tanks and artillery and jet fighters are great - when you're fighting someone else's tanks and artillery and jet fighters. In tackling an insurgency, however, relying on mega-firepower actually increases your already high chances of failure.

There's a new study out making this very point. From the Washington Post:

"Two political scientists recently examined 250 asymmetrical conflicts, starting with the Peninsular War. Although great powers are vastly more powerful today than in the 19th century, the analysis showed they have become far less likely to win asymmetrical wars. More surprising, the analysis showed that the odds of a powerful nation winning an asymmetrical war decrease as that nation becomes more powerful.

"The analysis by Jason Lyall at Princeton University and Lt. Col. Isaiah Wilson III at the U.S. Military Academy at West Point shows that the likelihood of a great power winning an asymmetrical war went from 85 percent during 1800-1850 to 21 percent during 1950-2003.

"The same trend was evident when the researchers studied only asymmetrical conflicts involving the United States. The more industrialized a powerful country becomes, the more its military becomes technologically powerful, the less effective it seems to be in an asymmetrical war.

"Essentially, what Lyall and Wilson are saying is that if you want to catch a mouse, you need a cat. If you hire a lion to do the job because it is bigger and stronger, the very strength and size of the lion can get in the way of getting the job done."

"While the findings are of immediate interest because of the situation in Iraq, the social scientists are really trying to address a systemic issue: America has gotten stuck in the Hollywood notion that a military with ever more powerful armaments is a more effective military.

"Reversing that view will be difficult because it calls into question the utility of giant defense projects, Lyall said. Also, the findings lend credence to the politically unpopular notion that successfully prosecuting an asymmetrical war, such as the one in Iraq, requires a large fighting force and, possibly, high casualties as troops asked to blend in with local populations become vulnerable targets for insurgents."

The Lyall and Wilson analysis is useful if only for restating a reality that's been heard repeatedly before - by everyone, it seems, except our political and military leaders. The most important weapon in fighting an insurgency is a massive number of boots on the ground - not tanks, or fighter jets or artillery - but enough soldiers to actually secure the countryside. So long as the insurgents can come and go relatively unmolested, they're almost guaranteed to win.

You can't control, you can't secure a territory the size and nature of Kandahar province with a battle group of 1,000 soldiers. It can't be done. That's why we wind up calling in air strikes and artillery on civilians, unnecessarily handing a tactical victory to our enemies. That's why we wind up dependent upon corrupt, local security forces whose main contribution seems to be to drive the population into the arms of our enemy.

The latest American manual on counter-insurgency warfare says we need 25-soldiers for every 1,000 locals, living where they live, keeping them safe from the insurgents day and night. In Kandahar province we need a force of 22,000 minimum. Oh well, only 21,000 left to go, eh?