After the Afghani Mujahedeen toppled their Soviet invaders back at the end of the 1980s, they turned their nifty stash of American and other Western weapons systems – smuggled into Afghanistan with the complicity of Pakistan’s intelligence agency – on the West. The Taliban eventually seized power in the nation, and they as well as the local war lords and al Qaeda operatives were well armed by that time. We politely refer to the application of our own weapons against us as “blowback.”
And it this same fear that has relegated rebellious Syrians to small arms fire, rifles and modest automatic weapons, that are ill-suited to taking out malicious tanks and malignant helicopter gunships and strafing jet aircraft. The United States and her allies have been loath to supply antitank and antiaircraft shoulder-fired missiles and rocket launchers to the rebels for fear that in a post-Assad Syria, these same weapons will be used by Muslim extremists against local minorities (including the Syrian Christian population) or worse, in the eyes of military strategists, against Israel, the United States and the West. Can the rebels win without more? Will they forget and forgive if they do get in power that the United States and the West were the ones who blocked other Arab nations from shortening their war and reducing their casualties by supplying these more appropriate weapons?
The very nature of war has changed across the board as well. Even without declared wars or even official conflicts, battles and attacks ripple above and beneath the surface. Small guerilla forces, often affiliated with a religious extremist philosophy, apply hit-and-run tactics, striking at military and civilian targets alike, slowly wearing down their victims, escalating the government cost of defeating them to horrific levels (what exactly has Homeland Security and the additional Defense Department allocations to fight terrorism cost each and every one of us?). Indeed it is the economic costs that seem to be providing the greatest degree of destabilization. If nothing else, terrorists have managed to embroil the United States in its two most recent “unwinnable wars” literally contributing trillions of dollars to our deficit, seemingly bringing our economy to its knees. Massive bombings of U.S. targets could never have inflicted such long term damage to the system.
But even stealth attacks from cyberspace have increased our vulnerability, and some of the results of such cyber activities, most probably from Iran, have inflicted spectacular damage. “In a[n October 11th] speech… on cybersecurity, Defense Secretary Leon E. Panetta described as ‘probably the most destructive attack that the private sector has seen to date’ the Shamoon computer virus that in August virtually destroyed 30,000 computers belonging to the Saudi Arabian state oil company Aramco.” Washington Post, October 15th. Yeah, well, U.S. and Israeli intelligence seem to have deployed the Stuxnet virus against Iran’s nuclear program rather successfully, such that the Iranian government admitted in February of this year that they lost 16,000 computers. Not to mention our use of the Flame malware that trolls an enemy’s computers for information. You can shut down entire nations if you can kill the Web, infect their computers and turn off the power grid. You can destabilize their plans if you know their every move.
Everybody is now developing drones. On October 6th, Hezbollah launched a drone from within Lebanon and directed that aerial miscreant towards Israel’s Dimona’s top secret nuclear weapons facility in the Negev desert. How much video was that drone able to transmit before an Israeli F-22 shot it down (pictured above)? The U.S. has been using drones for years, but such programs are now globally commonplace. “Tehran already had a bustling drone production program, even publicizing in January a new model that it said could fly at 10,000 feet for two hours and carry an 11-pound payload… Iran is one of many countries in the business. A Jan. 3 Congressional Research Service report noted that last year there were 680 drone programs worldwide, up from 105 in 2005. The United States has about 7,000 drones.” The Post.
Bottom line: the biggest genuine threats in the world come less from large powers using big and easily-targeted weapons systems… but more from small attacks and suicide bombers and vicious stealth intrusions into critical infrastructure. Will wars be fought primarily from remote control? Can you intimidate without mass killings and major conquests? The answer appears to be yes, and if there has to be an emphasis in military expenditures, it cannot be the same-old/same-old of big ships and big planes carrying massive troop levels ready to be deployed anywhere on earth. We need to narrow-focus and address the threats that are likely to disrupt our lives for many years to come.
I’m Peter Dekom, and massive new military strategies require a ground-up rethink of our entire defense program and its priorities.
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