This blog has moved

Hi there, this blog is now defunct. Please visit my new blog Kings of War which rather than an individual blog updated erratically and episodically by me alone is a War Studies department faculty group blog. At present its contributors are me, Professor Theo Farrell and Dr Patrick Porter from the Joint Services Command and Staff College. More will join presently. If you enjoyed this blog you'll enjoy Kings of War as much or more. Thanks for visiting.

London editor prays for nuclear attack on Israel | Jerusalem Post

London editor prays for nuclear attack on Israel | Jerusalem Post: "Talking about Iran's nuclear capability on ANB Lebanese television on June 27, Abd Al-Bari Atwan, editor-in-chief of Al-Quds Al-Arabi newspaper, said, 'If the Iranian missiles strike Israel, by Allah, I will go to Trafalgar Square and dance with delight.'"

It would be lovely if the next time the BBC has Mr Al-Bari Atwan on as a guest on a Mideast topic they would note this bloodthirstiness.

Considering a war with Iran: A discussion paper on WMD in the Middle East

IranStudy082807a.pdf (application/pdf Object)

Just published by Dan Plesch and Martin Butcher of SOAS, an open-source analysis of the prospects of war with Iran. In a nutshell: a large air and missile attack is likely if not imminent.

Conventional Wisdom concerning any US attack on Iran:
a) Any attack will be limited to suspect Weapons of Mass Destruction sites and associated defences.
b) Iran will then have options to retaliate that include:
-interference with the Straits of Hormuz and oil flows, destruction of Gulf oil industry infrastructure;
-fire missiles at Gulf States, Iraq bases and Israel;
-insurrection in Iraq;
-attacks by Hizbollah and Hamas on Israel;
-insurrection in Afghanistan;
-use of sleeper cells to carry out attacks in the Gulf, Europe and the US; and
-destabilisation of Gulf states with large Shi’a populations.
c) This analysis is not convincing for the following reasons:
-Elementary military strategy requires the prevention of anticipated enemy counter-attacks. Iranian Air Force, Navy, Surface to Surface Missile and Air Defence systems would not be left intact. Although one option may be to leave regular Iranian armed forces intact and attack to destroy the regime including Revolutionary Guard, Basij and religious police. In this way regime change might be encouraged.
-President Bush will not again lay himself open to the chargeof using too little force.
-US policy is regime change by political means and prevention of nuclear weapons acquisition by all means. The only logic for restraint once war begins will be continued pressure on Iran to acquiesce to US demands through intra-war deterrence.
-Long term prevention of Iranian WMD programmes may require regime change and the reduction of Iran to a weak or failed state, since all assumptions concerning attacks on WMD sites alone conclude that Iran would merely be held back a few years.
-US military preparations and current operations against Iran indicate a full-spectrum approach to Iran rather than one confined to WMD sites alone.

Read the whole thing.

Report of views of UK troops

BBC NEWS | UK | Troops argue Iraq is 'unwinnable'

Does no one at the BBC have any sense at all of their power? 'BBC Declares War is Over. Government to Report Later.'

You voted for this ridiculous war, Reid. So go fight it | Martin Samuel - Times Online

You voted for this ridiculous war, Reid. So go fight it | Martin Samuel - Times Online: "As it stands, this is the British Army in the centre of some of the most inhospitable terrain on the planet, saying, for reasons that have long ceased to be understood: “Come and have a go if you think you’re hard enough.” And come they do: from Pakistan, from Iran, from Chechnya, even from the budding martyr community of Britain. There is a jihadists’ convention taking place in Helmand valley, and British soldiers are hosting it."

Guantanamo Bay Chief Prosecutor defends military commissions

The Yale Law Journal - In Defense of Guantanamo Bay

There's an article in the Yale Law Journal on Guantanamo Bay written by the Chief Prosecutor, Col Morris David, which is interesting reading on its own terms and as a rare example of its type: when was the last time you saw a pro-Guantanamo piece? I have always thought the problem with Guantanamo was more about presentation than substance. So this part off the article rang home with me:

Am I ashamed of the picture I see of Guantanamo Bay and the military commissions? Absolutely not. There are those who want to sell a false and ugly picture of the facilities and the process, and they have been very successful in manipulating public opinion while we on the other side have been largely ineffective. If they continue to succeed in generating a false sense of collective shame, then perhaps public pressure will become so great that the political process will bend and cause a change of course. In my opinion, that would be unfortunate and unnecessary. Even some of the most vocal critics claim they are not soft on terrorism and do not want to set terrorists free, but they believe Guantanamo Bay and military commissions have become such liabilities that we need to look for other alternatives. Perhaps if we do a better job of educating the public about the truth, we will demonstrate that there is nothing wrong with the alternatives currently in use. We have a good story to tell, and we should not be ashamed to tell it. I see in Guantanamo a clean, safe, and humane facility to detain enemy combatants and a fair process to adjudicate the guilt or innocence of those alleged to have committed crimes defined by Congress and the laws of war.

Clearly the legal issues surrounding the Guantanamo Bay camp are complex. I'd put myself in the camp of those who think whatever the legality Guantanamo has become a massive liability. (I wonder if just constituting field tribunals of two captains and a major in the field and shooting those judged unlawful combatants would have caused less damage. Bad public diplomacy to be sure; but straightforward, cheap and legal.) That being the case, either the facility is shut down or something is done to push back on the the popular perception of it. The article in question seems an attempt to do that. Too little too late?

Information Warfare

The cyberwar against the United States - The Boston Globe Interesting article here.

From Estonia to Tampa, recent events teach us that cyber-warfare is indeed a war. It must be fought harder and smarter and within the context of the broader struggle against Islamist extremism.

I am not so concerned about hacker warfare using mass denial of service attacks which this article focusses on. I think the network of information systems is robust enough to handle it. What should be concerned about is that the proliferation of Jihadi websites is a measure of the fact that we are losing the War of Ideas with Islamism. The recent book by J. Michael Waller Fighting the War of Ideas like a Real War is a more sophisticated discussion of the problem; his receommendations are quite provocative. Worth reading.

Army Reports Brass, Not Bloggers, Breach Security

Army Reports Brass, Not Bloggers, Breach Security

War and Anthropology

Professors on the Battlefield - WSJ.com

Also see this post by Sharon Weinberger on Danger Room 'When Anthropologists Go to War'

I think on balance this is a very good development, though Patrick Porter's recent piece in Parameters 'Good Anthropology, Bad History: The Cultural Turn in Studying War' points out that it's not all straightforward. At the end of the day why should the role of academics in war be confined to standing outside the Pentagon waving placards screaming 'You suck!'?

I love the comment at the end of the Danger Room post though: 'Doh! You just shot our anthropologist! How are we going to find a new one way out here???'

The Future of War: Attack of the Killer Robots - International - SPIEGEL ONLINE - News

The Future of War: Attack of the Killer Robots - International - SPIEGEL ONLINE - News

Interesting article on the hastening introduction of armed 'robots' on the battlefield. The phenomenon is more advanced in the air and at sea. On land the technical challenges are much greater and the ethical dilemmas of allowing the autonomous use of deadly force vastly more prevalent. Strictly speaking with the exception of the South Korean device which may have a degree of autonomy none of these are real robots--they all have human operators. But that would seem unlikely to remain the case for long. As it says in the article:

The Pentagon also wants to give the robots more freedom, arguing that the only way to enhance the fighting power of US troops is to enable a soldier to use several unmanned systems at the same time. This is only possible if the machines are allowed to make many of their decisions independently.

Can't fault the Pentagon's logic. As so often these days I find reality is catching up with ideas explored in science fiction . In this case the Bolo novels by Keith Laumer are very relevant. The interesting thing, to me anyway, is not how the technology will impact the battlefield per se; rather it is how we will think of war when we start to share the battlefield with robots. On the one hand you have the potential for remorseless inhuman killing machines. On the other hand you have 'soldiers' whose emotional reaction to being insulted, attacked, or frightened would be nil; they wouldn't suffer psychological strain of combat and while they certainly could commit atrocities as human soldiers sometimes do why would they? In fact as the clever thing about the Bolo novels is that they explore how these huge fightng machines become progressively more sentient they actually seem to understand concepts such as duty and honour better than the humans around them.

As we come to the last weeks of summer break wind down to the start of the new school year I recommend adding a Bolo book to your summer reading.