The Great Revamp: 11 Trends Shaping Future Conflict
The Great Revamp: 11 Trends Shaping Future Conflict by Frank Hoffman, War on the Rocks
Our thinking about future wars is often held hostage by the tension between continuity and change. We tend to embrace the known past and continuity with it, sometimes too tightly. But thinking about future wars and preparing the Joint Force for success beyond today’s battles has to be based on more than extrapolating from history or clinging to the immutable realities of war. This is not a task for the faint of heart, as Colin Gray notes, “the further away from today one peers and tries to predict, the foggier the course of future events becomes.” Certainly we can benefit from deep immersion in history and its lessons, but we also must peek around the bend into the future. Since warfare often presents changes that are more than cosmetic, per Clausewitz, Joint Force developers must continuously balance their search for relevant lessons from the past while scanning for indicators of trends that will yield change in the future…
When one looks at trends shaping current and future conflict, one must, I believe, look to a similar period in history, for example: (1) American history, (2) cir. the mid-19th Century.
Then, as now, control of the “commons,” per se, was not — in any way, shape or form — considered to be sufficient to provide for our nation’s security.
Rather, then as now, what was deemed necessary — to provide for adequate security — was achieving greater control over the outlying states and their societies.
In mid-19th Century America, these outlying states and societies were to be found in the American South and in the American West.
Here the essential task, then as now, was to subdue, and bring the “rule of law,” to these “different” peoples and places; this, so as to, essentially:
a. Eliminate their way of life.
b. Install, in the place of these, our own way of life and, thereby,
c. Make these populations become dependent upon same.
Then as now, attempts to use our “inspiration and example” (our shining cities on the hill and our not so universal values) to achieve, without violence, these goals and objective — this proved to be pretty much useless.
Why? Because many of these folk, much like those resisting today:
a. Remained inspired by their own traditional ideas and history. And
b. Remained repulsed by our foreign and (in their eyes) often profane concepts.
This failure of inspiration and example, then as now, caused us to have to resort to force of arms — to achieve the necessary state and societal transformations — and, thereby, gain greater control over these regions and their human and other resources.
If one follows Clausewitz’s dictate — that war is simply a means to achieve one’s political objective via other ways and other means — then one might easily find, I believe, what one’s political objective actually is. And, thus, easily understand such things as:
a. Why the United States, in the mid to late 19th Century, resorted to “war” in the then-outlying regions of its realm (the American South and the American West). (Answer: So as to transform these states and societies more along then-modern political, economic and social lines and, thereby, achieve greater control, utility and security.)
b. And why the United States, likewise today, has engaged in and must continue to prepare for conflict — not in the “commons” — but, rather, in those regions where our contemporary outlying states and societies reside. (Many of these folks desiring and/or clinging to — in the present setting — often dangerous and/or incompatible alternative ways of life.)
As to my suggestions here, let us, for the sake of argument, look to one example and ask: If the states and societies of the relevant countries of Africa had — at some earlier time — been transformed (via force of arms or in some other way) more along modern western political, economic and social lines; had this occurred, would our, and other people of the world’s, safety and security be as significantly compromised as they might be today?
Same question re: the Middle East.
To conclude: As re: America in the mid-19th Century — and again today — the “trend” that defined the times was the requirement to transform, often via force of arms, outlying states and societies; this, so as to achieve sufficient security. Then as now, that was/is the job at hand. (Even if we did not/do not, for many different reasons, wish this to be so.) Inspiration and example, then as now, failed. Thus it appears that, then as now, we must prepare — and act(?) — accordingly.