Isegoria

When Failure Thrives was the inaugural publication by the Army Press, back in 2015:

Regardless of how revolutionary they are at the time of their introduction, all military innovations gradually lose their utility as they are overtaken by further technical and societal developments. For example, while the Prussian drill regulations and tactical ordre oblique introduced by Frederick II (“the Great”) of Prussia in the mid-18 Century were revolutionary for his time, they became a liability a mere generation after Frederick’s death when battlefield developments during the French Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars led to the diffusion of new models of military organization. However, Prussia proved too slow in responding to these new developments until, after an existential defeat in 1806, policymakers finally discarded the institutions and practices they had inherited from Frederick. This case and others like it demonstrate the validity of Joseph Schumpeter’s axiom that innovation is a process of “creative destruction.”

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For this reason, military innovators oftentimes advocate abolishing organizations considered impediments to reform. For example, Soviet Marshal Nikolai Ogarkov, an early advocate of a Military Technical Revolution, passionately (yet unsuccessfully) lobbied for his government to shift resources from armored forces to digital command-and-control networks and long-range precision-guided munitions.

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Airborne forces are an ideal case for exploring the survival and evolution of a military capability of decreasing utility because of both the nearly universal creation of such forces by the great powers between 1928 and 1941, and their subsequent development along disparate lines in different states.

In this context, although the spread of integrated air defenses, armored vehicles and surface-to-air missiles gradually reduced the utility of airborne forces, states adapted to these developments in different ways.

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As both scholars and military professionals have long understood, military innovations occur when armed forces establish autonomous or semi-autonomous organizational structures (either a separate service, branch or unit) to explore new technologies and doctrines. However, the same qualities of organizational autonomy and institutional power that promote innovation in new organizations foster organizational inertia as an institutions’ favored tactics and technologies become obsolete.

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In effect, airborne forces suffered cutbacks in countries, such as the United Kingdom, where they did not enjoy a high level of institutional strength or autonomy to begin with. Contrarily, they proved largely immune to cutbacks in the Soviet Union, where they were originally endowed with a great deal of organizational clout and independence before the war. Finally, airborne forces remained large, but were obliged to engage in frequent and sustained efforts to reinvent themselves in the United States, where the airborne community’s institutional strength was substantial, yet not so great as to enable airborne forces to entirely neglect the implications of technical and tactical developments.

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The invention of tanks in 1916 and subsequent improvements to their performance created opportunities for land warfare to be waged in radically new ways.

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In many great powers, including Britain, France and the United States, the responsibility for employing tanks was assigned to two traditional service branches — the infantry and the cavalry. Contrary to certain misconceptions, both of these branches viewed tanks as potentially very useful. Nevertheless, they narrowly defined the tank’s role and technical requirements in terms of supporting preexisting infantry and cavalry missions. This meant that the infantry demanded tanks and armored units that were heavily armored, slow moving and optimized for supporting infantry assaults. Meanwhile, the cavalry developed tanks and armored units designed to substitute for the traditional horse cavalry missions of scouting and reconnaissance. In the American case, the cavalry even insisted on combining tanks and horses in hybrid units.

Unfortunately, entrusting the infantry and cavalry branches with tank development squandered their revolutionary potential. This became apparent when Germany launched its blitzkrieg campaigns in 1939-41. Rather than subordinating tanks to existing branches, the Germans created a dedicated armored branch, the Panzerwaffe, to exploit the new technology. In sharp contrast to the approach taken by existing branches, these special-purpose organizations exploited the full potential of armored vehicles for deep maneuvers and causing chaos in opponents’ rear areas. Consequently, although Germany’s armored forces were actually numerically inferior to those of their opponents in 1940 and 1941, they nevertheless dominated the battlefield and won remarkable victories.

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The rapid development of military aircraft in the early 20thth Century sparked just such a development of independent air services, beginning with the British Royal Air Force’s creation in 1918. However, because the creation of new armed services is costly owing to their many support and administrative services, policymakers frequently prefer to create new branches within existing services.

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How too little institutionalization can impede innovation is illustrated by the case of United States special operations forces prior to the creation of the Special Operations Command. Before 1986 special operations forces existed as discrete units within each of the services. Because they neither possessed large staffs nor could offer appealing career prospects, special operations forces failed to attract officers of the needed quality, were neglected in national-level debates, and were unable to develop specialized equipment for their missions.15 As a result, American special operations forces did not provide the strategic value that had been anticipated at the time of their creation—a fact illustrated in the dramatic failure of the 1980 Iranian hostage rescue operation, Desert One. It was in light of these shortcomings that policymakers eventually created an institutionally robust Special Operations Command.

While the case of special operations forces illustrates the perils of under-institutionalizing a capability, the example of Soviet/Russian National Air Defense Forces (the PVO-Strany) illustrates the inverse error of over-institutionalizing a capability. Impressed by the technological promise of integrated air defense networks—combining radars, aircraft, anti-aircraft guns and surface-to-air missiles—Soviet leaders established the National Air Defense Forces in 1948 as an independent armed service on a par with the nation’s ground, air and naval forces.17 This entailed endowing the National Air Defense Forces with a sizeable bureaucracy, educational institutions (a military academy and staff colleges), and training facilities that replicated many of the functions already performed by the other armed services.18 To make matters worse, the National Air Defense Forces procured costly aircraft and surface-to-air missiles that were similar to, yet different from those procured by the air force and army. Over time, this unnecessary duplication of effort came to be seen as an excessive drain on the state’s scarce resources, leading to the National Air Defense Forces’ abolition as an independent service in 1998.

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Because warfare is a matter of life and death for individual combatants — and national survival for states — it is mistakenly assumed that military professionals are ruthless and unsentimental when it comes to discarding old technologies and tactics. However, one tends to find more examples of clearly obsolescent tactics and technologies in military organizations than in many other fields of human behavior. In one extraordinary case, horse cavalry survived in even the world’s most industrialized states until the 1950s, a half-century after they ought to have been abolished. There are, however, many more examples of this kind of obsolescence. The Swiss military maintained carrier pigeons into the early 1990s, long after the advent of electronic communications. The United States Army has retained a sizeable Chemical Corps since the First World War despite the declining importance of chemical warfare. Military forces in states such as France (the Spahis), Spain (the Regulares) and the United Kingdom (the Gurkhas) all retain regiments whose traditions and recruitment reflect the exigencies of long-vanished colonial empires.

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One reason for greater inertia in military organizations lies in the incomplete and intermittent nature of how military organizations are tested.

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It is, therefore, almost always possible for military organizations to ignore unpleasant truths by arguing that the circumstances of future wars will be more favorable to their preferred tactics and technologies. For example, in one particularly brash example of a military professional drawing biased conclusions from contemporary conflicts, British General John French summarily dismissed the need for reevaluating the cavalry’s role after their poor performance in the Boer War. To this end, French wrote, “It passes comprehension that some critics in England should gravely assure us that the war in South Africa should be our chief source of inspiration and guidance…we should be very foolish if we did not recognise at this late hour that very few of the conditions of South Africa are likely to recur.”

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Driven by necessity, military organizations emphasize tradition, continuity and the value of received tactics as a means of instilling the confidence needed to perform difficult tasks amidst the chaos of battle. Put another way, Edward Katzenbach argued in a classic study that, “Romanticism, while perhaps stultifying realistic thought, gives a man that belief in the value of the system he is operating that is so necessary to his willingness to use it in battle….But faith [in a weapons system or tactic] breeds distrust of change.” Thus, a degree of bias and resistance to change is a natural by-product of military organizations’ efforts to develop élan and esprit de corps.

In addition to these unconscious biases, military professionals also develop conscious biases as a result of career incentives. Because officers are promoted within well-defined military organizations, they have a natural interest in seeing those organizations prosper.

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In recent times, no better example of this phenomenon can be found than the US Marine Corps’ steadfast defense of the V-22 Osprey program. Because Marine leaders considered the V-22 Osprey essential to the service’s amphibious assault mission, Marines (and former Marines) successfully lobbied to save the program in the face of grave technical problems, sustained cost overruns, and politicians’ repeated efforts to cancel the program.

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One strategy, the preferred one of military organizations under pressure, is to invest in technological innovations that promise to restore the validity of the organizations’ core missions.

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Having obtained its status as a separate service in 1947 by arguing that air power could independently win wars, the Air Force has repeatedly faced criticism when it either failed to destroy targets considered essential or failed to achieve the anticipated strategic objectives. However, such shortcomings have never prompted the Air Force to fundamentally question the dogma of strategic air power.

Rather, the Air Force has consistently sought to develop new tactics and technologies capable of reinvigorating its preferred strategic mission. Such was the case, for example, when the Air Force encountered grave difficulties during the Vietnam War as a result of both North Vietnam’s sophisticated Soviet-provided air defense system and the Air Force’s own difficulties destroying precision targets. However, rather than renounce the strategic air campaign against North Vietnam, the Air Force instead concentrated its efforts at developing new technologies and tactics. Within this context, the Air Force developed a host of electronic warfare equipment, precision-guided munitions, drones, and airborne early warning systems. Tactically, the Air Force also implemented revolutionary new training and exercise methods (eventually culminating in the “Red Flag” exercises) shortly after the war. These costly efforts at resolving the Air Force’s tactical and technical problems bore fruit later in the Vietnam War and in subsequent conflicts. Nevertheless, the service’s goal of achieving victory through airpower alone has proven elusive.

Besides seeking innovative remedies for the technical and tactical challenges ailing them, another strategy military organizations under pressure can adopt is to seek new roles and missions. In effect, even if developments render a military organization’s original mission impossible or irrelevant, the organization can nevertheless survive if it identifies and fulfills another mission vital to national security. A good example of this phenomenon can be found in the United States Marine Corps’ conversion from imperial policing to amphibious warfare in the 1930s. Because the Marine Corps had hitherto justified its size and autonomy by spearheading the United States’ frequent interventions in Latin America, many openly questioned whether there was any reason to preserve the service once President Franklin Roosevelt promulgated the “Good Neighbor Policy” in 1933, which curtailed the interventions (the “Banana Wars”) that previously constituted the Corps’ raison d’être.

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Assistant Commandant John Russell, therefore, urgently initiated reforms to transform the Marines from an imperial policing organization to an amphibious assault force as soon as the “Good Neighbor Policy” was announced. In short order, the Marines constituted the embryo of an amphibious force — the Fleet Marine Force — in late 1933 and suspended teaching at the Corps’ schools in 1933-34 to allow the schools’ personnel to devote their undivided attention to crafting amphibious doctrine.

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In addition to innovating to preserve an existing role or adapting to accomplish a new mission, military organizations can also protect themselves by arguing that past contributions to national defense constitute an argument for future survival.

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Within this context, the Green Jackets were founded in 1800 as a unit of skirmishers and long-range marksmen and the Bersaglieri were formed in 1836 to execute the gymnastic and high-mobility infantry tactics that were favored by certain tacticians at that time.

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Moreover, the units were able to perpetuate their elite status because their reputations drew their countries’ best officer cadets and most qualified recruits to join them, enhancing these units’ effectiveness relative to functionally identical “ordinary” infantry formations.

Saddam Hussein feared a U.S. nuclear strike during the Gulf War — and not without reason:

Washington indeed hinted that nukes were on the table.

“I know if the going gets hard, then the Americans or the British will use the atomic weapons against me, and so will Israel,” Hussein told his advisors one month before his troops stormed into Kuwait, according to analysis of hours of audio tape by the Conflicts Records Research Center.

“The only thing I have are chemical and biological weapons, and I shall have to use them,” Hussein added. “I have no alternative.”

Ironically, Hussein’s willingness to even consider deploying his non-nuclear weapons of mass destruction was the major reason the Americans raised the prospect of deploying their own WMDs.

In April 1990, the Iraqi dictator had openly threatened to “burn half of Israel” with his chemical weapons in the event of an Israeli attack on Iraq.

Hussein had also prepared to target Saudi and Israeli cities with his country’s arsenal of Scud missiles. All of the missiles were armed with conventional explosive warheads.

According to internal Iraqi discussions that CCRC documented and translated, Hussein responded to an inquiry about potentially fitting some of the Scuds with chemical payloads. “Only in case we are obliged and there is a great necessity to put them into action,” Hussein consented.

Before the coalition launched its campaign to liberate Kuwait on Jan. 17, 1991, U.S. Secretary of State James Baker warned Iraqi foreign minister Tariq Aziz against using biological or chemical weapons. Baker reminded Aziz that the United States had the “means to exact” vengeance and eliminate the Iraqi regime.

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In destroying Iraq’s biological and chemical weapons infrastructure by conventional means—albeit at high cost—the coalition deprived Hussein of his main rationale for ever deploying the weapons of mass destruction.

It helped that Hussein clearly feared the Americans could use their own WMDs against Iraq if Iraq introduced chemical and biological weapons to the conflict.

In May 2010, Baker declined to state clearly that he had meant to imply to Aziz that America might nuke Iraq. “Of course, the warning was broad enough to include the use of all types of weapons that America possessed.”

Still, the vague threat worked. “Years later, when Saddam Hussein was captured, de-briefed and asked why he had not used his chemical weapons, he recalled the substance of my statement to Aziz in Geneva,” Baker said.

“It was not wise to use such weapons in such kind of war, with such an enemy,” Aziz told PBS in 1996. The interviewer asked if Aziz meant to imply that America could have dropped an atomic bomb on Iraq. “You can … make your own conclusions.”

Dominic Cummings discusses some theories of regime change and civil war:

Inside the intelligence services, special forces (themselves under attack from the Cabinet Office and NI Office as they operate as our last line of defence, see below), bits of Whitehall, and those most connected to discussions away from Westminster, there is growing, though still tiny, discussion of Britain’s slide into chaos and the potential for serious violence including what would look like racial/ethnic mob/gang violence, though the regime would obviously try to describe it differently. Part of the reason for the incoherent forcefulness against the white rioters last year from a regime that is in deep-surrender-mode against pro-Holocaust marchers, rape gangs and criminals generally, is a mix of a) aesthetic revulsion in SW1 at the Brexit-voting white north and b) incoherent Whitehall terror of widespread white-English mobs turning political and attracting talented political entrepreneurs. They’re already privately quaking about the growth of Muslim networks. The last thing they want to see is emerging networks that see themselves as both political and driven to consider violence. Parts of the system increasingly fear this could spin out of control into their worst nightmare. In No10 meetings with the Met on riots, I saw for myself a) the weird psychological zone of how much order rests not on actual physical forces but perceptions among a few elites about such forces that can very quickly change, and b) how scared the senior police are at the prospect of crucial psychological spells being broken. We can see on the streets that various forces have already realised the regime will not stop them. What if this spreads? Whitehall’s pathology has pushed it to the brink of this psychological barrier and many of them know it.

Aspects of the situation are tragi-comic. E.g if you talk to senior people in places like UAE, they tell you that bigshots in that region now tell each other — don’t send your kids to be educated in Britain, they’ll come back radical Islamist nutjobs! Our regime has spent thirty years a) destroying border control and sane immigration (including the Home Office’s jihad against the highest skilled, whom they truly loathe discussing and try to repel with stupid fees etc) and b) actively prioritising people from the most barbaric places on earth (hence immigration from the tribal areas most responsible for the grooming/rape gangs keeps rising) and c) funding the spread of those barbaric ideas and defending the organisations spreading them with human rights laws designed to stop the return of totalitarianism in Europe. In parallel, they’ve started propaganda operations with the old media to spread the meme that our ‘real danger’ is the ‘far right’ (code for ‘white people’). As Tories and Labour have continued their deranged trajectory, they have provoked exactly the reactions they most feared including the spreading meme that our regime itself has become our enemy and the growing politicisation of white English nationalism.