What does the future of war look like? Why is the world’s most formidable military no longer winning? Is the US military pursuing the wisest course of action in preparing for great power conflict? Two recent books with much in common ask similar questions about what warfare will look like and provide divergent answers regarding where the US needs to go. Written by two professors of PME, both argue that the future of war looks anything but conventional. Indeed, they caution readers to expect more of the same regarding what we have become accustomed to in Iraq and Afghanistan over the last two decades.
Retired Air Force officer Phillip Meilinger’s book Limiting Risk in America’s Wars reflects the influence of his recent time spent at the Naval War College. He borrows much from British military and naval theory to argue for an indirect strategy that entails opening a second front through an expeditionary or amphibious operation. He also argues that the US has deterred the likelihood of conventional conflict, and thus he insists that the US must develop a new strategic paradigm for unconventional conflicts. Some Army and Marine officers will want to hold their noses at aspects of his solution, as he views conventional groundpower not only as increasingly irrelevant but also as harmful in OEF and OIF. Rather, he argues that the US needs to apply force with airpower at the helm, supported by special operations, indigenous troops, and intelligence. In other words, his solution is that we should be doing more of what we have been doing for the last twenty years, just without conventional ground forces. This is a disappointing conclusion, but Meilinger asks many of the right questions while encouraging the US military to think strategically.
Whereas Meilinger mines the past for what has worked in previous conflicts, Sean McFate leans more toward identifying important developing trends and potential solutions. Still, they have much in common. McFate’s New Rules of War targets some similarly sacred cows—mainly conventional forces—but this time he takes on not just the Army and the Marine Corps but the Air Force and the Navy as well.
McFate sees the post-Westphalian era of nation states controlling the means of violence crumbling. Like Meilinger, he thus views the future of conflict as characterized by “durable disorder” (i.e. conflicts like OEF will continue to be the norm). He predicts a world where people identify more strongly with their surrounding area than their nation-state and where capitalism runs amuck in the hiring and firing of mercenary armies. The “illusion of states” will “continue on maps but not in reality,” with wealthy individuals and companies wielding far more power and influence than most nation states (149, 152).
As such, McFate wants to invest far more in special forces at the expense of military technology like carriers and F-35s that he dismisses as irrelevant. Unlike Meilinger, then, McFate challenges what he sees as the technology-centric solutions of the US military, which he characterizes as largely irrelevant in future conflict except to line the pockets of the military-industrial complex. In future warfare, “[s]haping people’s reception of reality is more powerful than mobilizing a carrier strike group” (113).
Thus lethality should be deemphasized because the “utility of force is declining” (107). Since 9/11, for example, McFate claims that SOF has “honed the way of the knife but . . . let other skills dull” (40). By contrast, he highlights Russian success in “weaponizing” Syrian refugees. By intervening in Syria, Russia achieved immense strategic effect by effectively destabilizing much of Europe (104-5). Meanwhile, the US continues to prepare for a “conventional” conflict that will never be fought again, which he defines as “state-on-state fighting” (5, 29).
McFate defines war as “armed politics, nothing more.” In advocating for thoughtful future strategists, he advises that we think of warfare like “smoke: always shifting, twisting, moving.” To have too “rigid” a view of war is to invite “strategic surprise and defeat” (185). Like Meilinger, McFate wants to abandon Clausewitz, for he “curses chaos and ‘the fog of war’ as barriers to victory” even as “Sun Tzu creates chaos and weaponizes it for victory” (205). And anything can be weaponized: “refugees, information, election cycles, money, the law.” Even time (228-229).
Both works suffer from not proving their cases rigorously enough and taking overly extreme stances. For example, McFate is entirely too dismissive of artificial intelligence, claiming it can “barely accomplish basic cognitive tasks” (15). Yet AI continues to stack up victories, most recently at poker. Even worse, he insists, are the cyberwar “doomsayers” who are the “biggest con artists” of all (15). Likewise, Meilinger does not really offer a new solution or connect the means that he repeatedly stresses (airpower, SOF, indigenous armies) to desired strategic ends.
But we need the kind of contrarian views espoused in these books to make us examine our deeply held assumptions. Taken together, both works have much to contribute to larger conversations about warfare’s future, insisting on the need for a coherent grand strategy while casting doubt on how wisely the US military is preparing for what is to come.
Dr. Heather Pace Venable is an Assistant Professor of Comparitive Military Studies at the Air War College and an editor for the Field Grade Leader. Follow her on Twitter at @Heather_at_ACTS