NON-STATE WARFARE IN BATTLEFIELD OPERATIONS
10.01.2017
I.
In contemporary dialogue or debates on the Russian Art of Modern
Warfare, there is the fashionable use of “Hybrid War” or “Hybrid Threat” to
define such friction of engagements on the battlefield. Therefore, I have
created a term which I call Non-State Warfare which I feel is
more appropriate to such a war state condition. This definition which I wish to
employ when discussing contemporary engagements between Russia and her
political advisories. the United States and its ally, NATO nations is due to
the essential fact that in such a war or wars, there is no admittance of
contained or small warfare that has a hidden political and social strategic
goal to be achieved by another means, in this case “NON-STATE WARFARE”.
It can be argued that such a war as NON-STATE WARFARE is a prerequisite kind of
guerrilla urban warfare which is the first initial stage to the eventual
confrontation in symmetrical warfare, or what is commonly known as
conventional, modern warfare. The political struggle between nation-states like
that of the class struggle inevitably is one of violent friction that is war,
with all the variants of war that have been a part of human history. As Lenin
wrote so judicially and without the language of false illusions about war “We
Marxists differ from both the pacifists and the Anarchists in that we deem it
necessary historically (from the standpoint of Marx’s dialectical materialism)
to study each war separately. In history there have been numerous wars which,
in spite of all the horrors, atrocities, distress and suffering that inevitably
accompany alt wars, were progressive, i.e., benefited the development of
mankind by helping to destroy the exceptionally harmful and reactionary
institutions… Therefore, it is necessary to examine the historically specific
features of precisely the present war”. i With
this quote about war and its modern day development in mind, I would like to
discuss or make some commentary on Captain John Chambers’ essay “An Analysis of
Russia’s ‘New Generation Warfare’ and Implications for the US Army, which can
be found in MODERN WAR INSTITUTE At West Point, published in October 18, 2016.
There is a curious complex among Western military science academics,
particularly American military analysis about so-called “Open –Warfare Threats”
verses a type of engagement called “Gray-Zone Hybrid Threats”.
As perceived in the essay by Captain John Chambers’ “The Army must
adequately define Hybrid threats and the gray zone in order to achieve shared
understanding amongst strategists, leaders, and policy makers. When doing this,
the Army should consider that the gray zone is not as specific type of conflict
but an operational environment as defined in Joint Publication (JP) 1-02,
Department of Defense Dictionary of Military and Associated Terms. Finally, the
Army must recognize that there is a distinct difference between hybrid threats
in the gray zone and open-warfare hybrid threats… Criminal Organizations and
Networks and (5) Using Laws and Cultural Norms as a Weapons System. Open
warfare hybrid threats are what are commonly thought of today as hybrid
tactics/warfare”.ii
I would emphatically state that there is no such thing a “Gray-Zone
Hybrid Threats” in the subject sense of the military term, but that all known
Non-State Warfare will be a merger of tactical warfare using all kinds of tools
or weapons, be they conventional or even personalized weaponry to engage the
enemy in regional or internal conflicts, as well as in a civil war, not
excluding revolutionary insurgency as well. In the early 21st century,
there is a conscious understanding among the most astute thinkers of military
theory and science, that the friction of combat between nation-states will not
be always a ‘build-up to war’ in the traditional sense as we have known it, but
that there is constant war in place between nation-states due to nationalistic
and economic interest, since the dissolution of the Soviet Union.
This kind of warfare, which Captain Chambers describes as “operational
environment” tactical warfare is actually more of a deep arts operation that
should be well-planned ahead of time to merge within a larger tactical
operation that is turn part of an overall strategy. It is known from reading
the West Point analysis that the concern is from the United States adversaries
such as Russia, China and Iran, and that there is a deep anxiety among US Army
military personal as to how to act and destroy such kind of ‘operational
environment’ warfare through a more efficient military This process that can
override a pyramid political bureaucracy. What should be understood is that the
US Army operations will be hampered not only by political bureaucracy, but by
its own political backwardness as well. Actually what is not admitted by either
Western Imperialist nation-states or some Eastern nation-states is that in
order to achieve military victory, you must be able to achieve a political and
psychological fraternity among the people in the non-state area of engagement.
In this sense, the West Point instructor, Captain Chambers is correct when
pointing out that “First, the Army must move to pre-position forces in at-risk
countries and develop unconventional warfare campaign phases…
Secondly, the US Army should work with the Department of State and host
nations to better integrate at-risk ethnic populations into the host country.
These populations are at risk for subversion and coercion by gray-zone
aggressors”.iii When
NATO command and its US military command in Europe decided to move troops along
the Polish border and to strengthen political ties and military ties with Kiev
Junta, it can be argued that both parties already had a military contingency
play to place their troops as either a political provocation as a bait to force
the Russian Government to show its hand regarding its military preparations, or
that it was in fact a pre-positioning of forces due to the political summation
that Ukraine had become one of those “at-risk countries” due to the fact that
the people who lived and thrived in Eastern Ukraine felt marginalized both
politically and economically from the pro-Western Kiev regime. Let us also not
forget that even the Obama regime admitted to having a hand in creating the
pro-junta regime, even working with right-wing or fascist quasi-military groups
to achieve such ends.ivWhat
could lacking in moral substance than the fact that the United States has
already been involved in so-called “Gray-Zone Hybrid Threats” in an
‘operational environment’ known as the Ukraine. Therefore, in the complicated
war of political subversion there was involved two nation-states who maneuvered
to control another nation-state outside their own borders. However, the
question can be asked if one of these nation-states had the moral high-ground
to involve itself in the affairs of Ukraine sovereignty? One can be said as a
fact though certain specialized Russian armed forces did in fact create a
so-called “Gray-Zone” of operational warfare, it was the people of Eastern
Ukraine who revolted against the Kiev oligarch. What remains, however, is the
contradiction that the people of the Donbass region are communist and socialist
in their body politic and therefore they seek self-determination which is
entirely different from Russian Nationalism. Because of these immense political
differences, political and military leaders in Russia must understand through a
studied self-criticism and a diplomatic acceptance that a pragmatic adjustment in
the conflict in the Ukraine must be met, otherwise, they will have no choice
but to enter into an outright invasion of the Ukraine, and such a strategic
decision could play into the hands of United States adventurism with the return
neo-liberalism leadership in Washington or even through impulsive and fascist
betrayal by the Trump regime.
The other military tactic that was mention in the West Point scenario is
a tactic of subduing or eradicating ‘operational environment’ of gray-zone
conflict by winning over the population, particularly ethnic minorities in such
a battle area, not admitting that in essence it is a battle area, regardless of
whether it be of a covert or overt friction of combat.
In an objective analysis of military science, objectivity is of the
utmost importance regardless of whether it falls on the side of the aggressor
or those defending their homeland. Military tactics and strategy is based not
only on the moral value of waging war, but also on the capability to look
dispassionately at every detailed event in the course of waging war. Therefore,
regarding empathy and giving economic and political support to the population
and ethnic minorities in area of a friction of conflict is tactically
reasonable and constructive as long as such support is based on genuine
concern for the welfare of the people. The American regimes during the
modern era have been successful in deploying economic aid and military aid to
governments beyond their borders that they feel they can influence in their
continuous war by other means against nations like the former Soviet Union. We
only have to look at the Peace Corps or the pacification program during the
Vietnam war to understand the kind of propaganda and intelligence war to win
over populations, even if requires an extreme degree of manipulation without
genuine regard for the wellbeing of those people. In many ways, the Russian
military leadership can learn from the more subtle abilities that Western
armies have used to bring the population over to their side, for instance in
the way they supported the resistance movements in France, Yugoslavia, and even
sending military missions that were to contact Chinese leadership in China and
Vietnam during years of foreign occupation in those nation-states during World
War II.
The Russian military leadership should create schools of military
training specifically for understanding the needs and aspirations of national
minorities in the United States, such as the Native American tribes, the
Mexican Americans who are a colonized people, and the African American people
who are still subjected to racist atrocities.
By understanding and showing empathy through such creative and
instructive ways, meaning through even diplomatic means or friendship
organizations, then such ways of communication can counter the callous and
banal methodology of swaying the hearts and minds of the population as envision
by the West Point instructor’s to “integrate at-risk ethnic populations”. In
the undeclared world war we are now engaged in throughout the world, the forces
of fanatical Islamic military armies, Western armies of imperialism and
reaction, and the armies of progress like Russia which includes the Syrian Arab
Army and their other allies, it is the untold war of winning the hearts and
minds of the world’s masses that must be understood in the art of contemporary
warfare.
In his thesis on the “Gray-Zone” of hybrid war, the West Point
instructor wrote “Contrary to what many academics and strategists have posted,
the gray zone is actually an operational environment (OE), albeit not a
physical one. Additionally, gray-zone conflicts are those in which nation
states and non-state actors use hybrid threats/tactics, such as fusing political
and information warfare with non-violent civil resistance, to achieve strategic
objectives without violating international norms or crossing established
thresholds and leading to open war”.v
I would argue that violence does occur in such so-called ‘Gray Zone’ of
operations but in more subdued and covert form. For instance in the Ukraine and
Syria, it is well known that the United States regimes and their various allies
used intelligence services as well as special forces to ignite particular
classes, such as the middle and upper classes to agitate and in fact cause
violence during so-called peaceful demonstrations. Such covet military
manipulation in the Ukraine and Syria led to violence in the streets and
eventually to armed uprisings and assassinations of publish and non-public
figures. In Latin America, the United States Government has instigated such
covert subtle, political maneuvers as in Chile, Argentina, to the present time
in Venezuela and Ecuador. For decades regime after regime in the United States
has tried the ‘Gray-Zone’ of so-called hybrid thread without complete success.
What is manifested in the hypocrisy within the theoretical military theory on
hybrid warfare in general by Captain Chambers is the fact what the Russian
intelligence and military services are now doing overseas has already been done
many times over by the United States with destructive consequences to the
people of nation-states that were subjugated to so-called ‘non-violent’
conflicts.
It is nothing new that Russia was involved with cyber space operations
within the US presidential elections in 2016, as the two nation-states have
been in an undeclared war since the end of World War II. Obama with his usual
immaturity retaliated by expelling Russian diplomats and creating more economic
sanctions against the Russian people. For it is the Russian people that will
pay the price for the ongoing clandestine wars as well as the overt wars
between the two nation-states. Such infantile behavior by Obama, as well as the
impulsive and naïve political commentary by the business, oligarch Trump can
only aggravate an open road to war.vi
It can be argued that corporations who work on their own behalf or work
in covert collusion with a nation-state also participate in ongoing forms of
non-state warfare, as it is not mentioned or acknowledged even in propaganda
material or in public mass media. Such ways of creating economic warfare is
nothing new and is again a part of war by another means, except in the modern
world it has global implications that are more hazardous and destructive due to
modern technology which binds covert and overt warfare into an invisible link
that has nothing to do with ‘gray-zone’ conflicts, but which can be of a robust
Machiavellian nature that one can only understand years or even decades
afterwards and which historians sort out through detailed scholarship.
Therefore, so-called ‘gray-zone conflicts have manifestations of
non-violent and violent means or tactics which is implicated in political
environments where there is political and economic instability which can be
manipulated into some form of political unrest leading to both covert and over
military action.
The genius of the Soviet Union was in the way its leadership and the
Russian Communist Party was able to analyze any given nation-state situation
with a calm and unnerving aptitude to forcing an enemy’s hand, and eventually
defeating him.
As a way to counter Russian, Chinese or even Iranian so-called hybrid
wars, but which I would state is none other than engagements by non-state
operations, that is sanction conflicts, but not admitted through the classical
mask of Maskirovka in modern military terminology, is
something that the US military leadership is constantly pursuing in its war
college school and in the various, studious rooms at the Pentagon and West
Point. The author of the essay “COUNTERING GRAY-ZONE HYBRID THREATS” has set
out a proposal in which he states “In order to be effective in countering
hybrid threats in the gray-zone, the Army must do three things: (1) adequately
define hybrid threats and the gray zone; (2) identify and adapt to challenges posed
by gray-zone hybrid threats due to laws, norms, and processes; and (3) improve
capacity to counter gray-zone hybrid threats. These three lines of effort will
effectively posture the US Army to counter gray-zone hybrid threats and achieve
its strategic objectives as outlines by US defense policymakers”.vii As
is well understood in both East and West, the ‘policymakers’ of the US defense
are not only interested in containment of its perceived enemies, but also to
expand its goal of world hegemony. What is lacking in the West Point paper is a
lack of understanding that war, whether it be of a covert or overt form of
engagement on and off the battlefield is one of moral and political élan and
creativity that meets the needs of the people. It is not simply that one can
define a so-called hybrid war of any color, shape or form. It is not enough
that one can identify or even create forms of military and intelligence service
tools to contain an adversary. One must develop a military theory of war based
on the given nature of a nation state’s political ideology and its form of
government without rationalizing about the corruption or the insidious base of
the body politic of that given country. Even if one attacks another advisory’s
ally which is a criminal organization or implements political networks among a
given people, or creates various cultural and law norms that breakdown or
impede an enemy from a given Space and Time, that does not means that the a new
Time and Space will not emerge among an operation of battle, unless there is
genuine respect towards one’s own political nation-state, and that others
respect it as well. It is with caution about overly summarizing a perceived
enemy’s aggression without looking at one’s own political and military domain,
that I quote Machiavelli who stated about such conflicts as I have written
about in this paper that “Therefore, a prince who has a strong city, and had
not made himself odious, will not be attacked, or if anyone should attack he
will only be driven off with disgrace; again, because that the affairs of this
world are so changeable, it is almost impossible to keep an army a whole year
in the field without being interfered with. And whoever should reply: If the
people have”.viii In
a world, those who lead a nation-state, even those in military leadership,
should consider first their own political climate and whether it is “odious” or
not among the people. At the present time in the United States it is a nation
divided, a nation torn by a few hundred years of intense class and racial
violence that no amount of countering ‘gray-zones’ of non-nation state can
justify to a people without the spirit for engagement with any enemy perceive
in reality or otherwise.
In the second part of my essay, I shall purpose a concept of battle that
will infect could play a role in mitigating or destroying so –called non-state
warfare which in reality is a stage to none other than eventual open warfare.
II.
The art of battlefield operations, although seemingly going through
revolutionary change in the 21st century, has actually become
primitive and barbaric in the pursuit of creativity in the art of war. From the
American Pentagon’s strategy and tactics there proceeded a form of asymmetrical
warfare or a modern blitzkrieg attack battlefield formation that was first
institutionalized during the Persian Gulf War and then was mutated in the
Afghanistan and Iraq wars though a combination of special forces strikes and
the hiring of corporate mercenary forces, as well as creating clandestine
political upheaval in those nation-states though blatant political lies as,
when the United States George W. Bush regime accused the Sadam regime of having
weapons of mass destruction, which was not the case. The United States military
also combined a methodology of war of attrition as was demonstrated in Afghanistan,
and in a way it allies destroyed piece-meal through massive air strikes the
infrastructure in Libya. On the other hand, he Russian art of warfare has gone
through a combination of asymmetrical warfare that is wedded to massive air
strikes, and has also shown an expansive refined art in warfare, as when see
how it dealt with the Islamic fanatics in Syria, particularly Aleppo which has
been named by some military thinkers as the “Stalingrad of Syria”. With
military ground forces and systematical air strikes by modern Russian jets and
bombers, Russia and the Syrian Government has been able to contest the area of
Palmyra in Syria, while the Syrian Arab Army and the Russian air attacks, along
with limited ground Russian troops were taking Aleppo. You cannot with one hand
grab the throat of the enemy to end his life, while with the other hand allow
it to fall to your side, allowing your adversary to take out his weapon again
to disarm you, or end your own life. In other words, each battle situation must
be measured with a political and military science of analysis, or one can have
a set-back like what took place at Palmyra, when the Daesh forces re-emerged in
that famous and ancient city. Regardless of the hidden strategic or diplomatic
position that is occurring in Syria against the Islamic fanatics and the
American imperialist with their renegade ‘moderate’ rebels, there must be
consistency in completing the battle at hand.
One must conclude that both adversaries have not achieved a defining
modern concept of the total annihilation of the enemy, but rather have offered
an asymmetrical conceit to combat operations that leave much to be desired in
the ongoing procedures to achieve a dominate and deceive victory over an enemy.
As military historian and a military theorist grounded from my youth in
the Soviet Art of War, I believe that any participation on the battlefield
should not be a cumbersome and useless participation in militarism, but instead
a steady advancement in creativity that is always seeking the quickest and most
decisive way towards defeating an enemy. In a word, the operations art of war
is not simply an encounter or friction of mass causalities and butchery on any
given battle field, but rather a deeper concept of forward and residual movement
of troops and the available tools that accommodate an army in a time of war.
With these thoughts in mind, an incident or euphony occurred to me during my
viewing of an art exhibit of a modern French painter’s works, in which I
noticed a critic’s words next to a landscape created by the painter. The critic
alluded to the fact that what made the painter’s landscape and even interior
paintings so unique was the way in which the foreground and background of the
paintings were combined in such a way that there were no boundaries, but
instead a disseverment or defusing of boundaries all together as if the
landscape was one whole, organic work without linear lines, but instead a
spatial of movement taking place in the whole painting which brought about a
revolutionary visual movement not seen before.
As I stood looking at the landscape with a calm and steady eye, I
thought with a sense of imagination how modern warfare could also achieve such
results in terms of movement over a battlefield with an army or specialized
forces along moving forward and retreating when necessary that would breakdown
the rigid barriers of exterior and interior lines of battle. In other words,
Operational art as it is now understood in both East and Western military
thought is that of utilizing nuclear weapons, armies, along with contemporary
cyberspace warfare and drone attacks, with that of surgical fighter jet and
bomber strikes which is a fixed form of war. It is this kind of cautionary
build-up of warfare, even if in its initial stage it is one of a so-called
hybrid war which becomes the first scenario to an eventual all-out war. What is
left out of this kind of strategic or tactical thinking of warfare is a
surprise of spatial warfare that does impede itself with exterior or interior lines
of attack and defense. Taking a maxim from Napoleon in which he wrote or said
“It should be adopted as a principle never to allow intervals through which the
enemy can penetrate between the different corps forming the line of battle,
unless you have laid a snare into which it is your object to draw him”ix, I
would emphatically state that by dissolving the lines of battle within the time
and space of operational art there ensues a more genuine creativity which is
enhanced in terms of movement in advancing or retreating and even creating “a
snare” that Napoleon alluded to in his commentary about “intervals” in battle
of an army and open gaps. With the U.S. armed forces since the time of the
Korean War, to their adventurous wars in Vietnam, Afghanistan, Iraq along with
its proxy battle groups in Syria, it is has always been a commitment to
operational art that was always a dogmatic art of war. The US Armed Forces uses
a build-up of friction with massive air force bombings, along with what the
French would call Bluffant in order to make an enemy succumb
to their imperialist demands. Their generals or military thinkers never are
able to conceive warfare without static lines of battle, and therefore never
know the concept of “Surprise” on the battlefield.
The Syrian Arab Army has shown a deeper creative insight into battle
operational art that moves forwards and then retreats only when necessary, but
has also shown how to merge into a spatial like dissolvent of no fix battle
lines, as when they fought in Aleppo against the Jeish al-Fatah (formerly
Al-Nusra)and divisions which were made-up of division or brigade rebel groups
that eventually became nothing but proxy battle formations for America and her
allies’ political and economic interests. When I say “no fixed battle lines”, I
do not mean the kind of dissolving of fixed battle boundaries in operational
art that I advocate. The Syrian Arab Army improved on breaking out of
traditional forms of modern battle in their victory at Aleppo which did not
rely on fashionable ‘hybrid’ warfare which is superfluous in nature, for it
never completes the object of war which is to destroy the enemy through
piece-meal destruction or through rapid and non-negotiable war of annihilation.
Thus it is my contention that the art of war have no fixed boundaries in battle
formation in the modern art of war so as to create many multiple forms of
attacks and withdrawals, but always with the strategic intention of
annihilation of the enemy.
iii Ibid, p. 7
ivhttp://www.globalresearch.ca/washington-was-behind-ukraine-coup-obama-admits-that-us-brokered-a-deal-in-support-of-regime-change/5429142
v Ibid, http://mwi.usma.edu/wp-content/uploads/2016/10/Countering-Gray-Zone-Hybrid-Threats.pdf,
p. 13
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