Small/Weak Doesn’t Always Beat Big/Strong
by James Na ~ February 15th, 2006. Filed under: America, Geopolitics, Terrorism.Combating Terrorism Center at West Point released a brand new study today, titled Harmony and Disharmony: Exploiting Al-Qa’ida’s Organizational Vulnerabilities (also available in pdf form).
Lately it has been fashionable to bandy about terms like asymmetric warfare and 4th generation warfare in context of the so-called War on Terror, with the implication that traditional constraints of conventional warfare are disappearing.
Martin van Creveld of Hebrew University, the author of the highly influential Transformation of War who has been lauded (including by me) as a leading prophet of military transformation, even went on to suggest that the small/weak would always beat the big/strong in a long war. (The stronger side is more constrained in methods; it also loses morale more rapidly from inability to defeat the weak completely over a long period of time; on the other hand, the weaker side often enjoys a more flexible, networked organization, and has a faster decision making cycle, i.e. the OODA loop).
Yet, the new CTC study shows that the smaller/weaker side in the War on Terror, namely al-Qaida, also suffers from significant constraints. Far from an amorphous, seamlessly networked, invincible terrorist organization, it too suffers vulnerabilities in organization, personnel and, most importantly, human nature. As the study notes, al-Qaida suffers from a serious “agency problem“:
Refrain from actions that encourage preference alignment. Al-Qa’ida members who appear less committed should not necessarily be removed from the network if they can be reliably observed, even if they present easy targets. By leaving them in place, the probability that the group will identify agency problems and hence adopt security-reducing measures increases. Consider the February 11, 1999 e-mail by Ayman al-Zawahiri to a Yemeni cell leader:
“With all due respect, this is not an accounting. It’s a summary accounting. For example, you didn’t write any dates, and many of the items are vague. The analysis of the summary shows the following:
1–You received a total of $22,301. Of course, you didn’t mention the period over which this sum was received. Our activities only benefited from a negligible portion of the money. This means that you received and distributed the money as you please…. 2–Salaries amounted to $10,085–45 percent of the money. I had told you in my fax…that we’ve been receiving only half salaries for five months. What is your reaction or response to this? 3–Loans amounted to $2,190. Why did you give out loans? Didn’t I give clear orders to Muhammad Saleh to…refer any loan requests to me? We have already had long discussions on this topic… 4–Why have guesthouse expenses amounted to $1,573 when only Yunis is there, and he can be accommodated without the need for a guesthouse?” [5]
The individual on the receiving end of Zawahiri’s ire increases agency problems and organizational dysfunction that may arguably contribute more to degrading al-Qa’ida’s capabilities if he is allowed to remain in the organization than if he were selected out. Importantly, it is the perception of financial inefficiency that is important not the inefficiency itself. This can be achieved by pursuing measures that incriminate financial agents and add to suspicions of graft and corruption in the eyes of their leaders
In the past, al-Qaida has been remarkably successful in infiltrating various national liberation movements with Islamic ties. These insurgents, desperate for money, training, weapons and attention, welcomed al-Qaida assistance and links, allowing the latter to influence, and in some cases take over, struggles that were previously national liberationist in character rather than Islamic fundamentalist.
According to the logic of the CTC study, however, the reverse could also be true. The agenda of local guerilla/terrorist groups could override al-Qaida’s global agenda and use up resources of the latter, thus breeding internal resentment and even conflict.
This revelation provides a welcome antidote to the mainstream media’s coverage of al-Qaida as an ephemeral, illusive, bogeyman-like foe that appears to transcend the boundaries of nation-state and traditional warfare, and demonstrates that it too suffers serious vulnerabilities of human nature that can be profitably exploited by the big/strong, i.e. the United States.
P.S. What is also interesting about the CTC study is that it make extensive use of the “Syrian experience” in generating its lessons. Attentive readers may recall that this historical episode encompasses the event that led Thomas Friedman to formulate his “Hama Rules.”
[Cross-posted in Guns and Butter Blog]
February 15th, 2006 at 7:05 am
“the small/weak would always beat the big/strong in a long war.”
That theory is supported by the Vietnam War and the current situation in Iraq. The next US President may decide to bring most of the troops home, and America will just have to leave Iraq in a mess.
During the 3 years in Iraq, America has not been effective in preventing suicide bombs and roadside bombs. Those tactics make reconstruction impossible, and that’s why America is never going to succeed in Iraq.
Islamic terrorists have a vast pool of people to recruit from. Therefore, the War on Terror may drag on for decades. America will not have an easy victory.
February 15th, 2006 at 7:33 am
“… America is never going to succeed in Iraq.”
I’ll take that bet. Also you should be reminded that Iraq has actually been two distinct wars; the invasion against a standing army (the one we won), and now the insurgency (the one I will argue we are winning).
Some of the predictions about the first war were that we’d lose tens if not hundreds of thousands, that the Iraqi army would fight to the last man, that the entire region would erupt in war, etc. All wrong.
I’m placing your prediction with the rest of those as you really don’t understand – failure is not an option.
You and those who spout the same rhetoric also fail to observe the ‘big picture’ effects, like budding democratic movements in the ME (however badly the people choose, they have the choice, re: Hamas), and Libya giving up WMD. Those were not unanticipated repercussions (generally though not specifically).
History is going to mark GW as the one who started it all, while those on the left yammering about pre-war intel mistakes will be forgotten.
February 15th, 2006 at 7:51 am
Now why do you suppose so many historians like to gloss over the Boer War?
February 15th, 2006 at 9:47 am
It’s posting like this that make me glad me merged our blogs. I’ll print out the full paper for later reading.
The Boer War is of interest to me because I briefly lived and worked in South Africa–a summer job in a gold mine that began 3 months after Nelson Mandela left his cell in Robben Island. Today’s Boers are still very bitter about British tactics in those days. I became curious enough to visit an excellent Boer War museum in Pretoria–which I could recall the name.
Like Iraq, it was in two phases. The Brits won the initial, conventional campaign. The also won the second, guerrilla campaign, although that proved long and bitter, as guerrilla wars tend to be.
No question, the Boers waged a fierce guerrilla campaign, and Lord Kitchener used some ruthless tactics to end it. No “hearts and minds approach” there–the Brits built a string of concentration camps (first use of the term, btw) and put the entire civilian population, including African servants, in them. 50,000 died. At the same time, they put a chain of blockhouses all across areas where the Boer guerrillas operated. The blockhouses impeded the guerrillas’ movement so much that they were really defeated more by hunger than by force of arms.
February 15th, 2006 at 4:01 pm
Herein lies the problem. The end can no longer justify the means…we must be nice to bad guys nowadays for a variety of reasons, and thus the new paradigm that the small/weak shall defeat the big/strong.
Public opinion, international law, and mass media are to this war as the officials were to this past Super Bowl. If we lose, it was their influence which will prove to have been the proximate cause.
February 15th, 2006 at 4:20 pm
Boer War is one of those under-studied events that deserve so much more attention (for me the Boer War and the Malaya Emergency form the LIW bookends of a long period of high-intensity global total wars).
The Boer War was “first” in many things (e.g. concentration camps, as Joshua already mentionied).
The term “commando” also originates from the Boer term “Kommando” (a command), indicating a small command of irregular forces on horseback that engaged in excellent hit-and-run tactics.
It was also because of the nasty experience of the Boer War that the British army began to emphasize individual marksmanship (prior to that the Napoleonic style volley-firing was still vogue), which served the BEF so well in the early months of WWI.
I disagree. That depends entirely on what the means are and what the ends are.
As an open, civil society, we are bound by our own laws and “civilized” rules of war, but the point of my entry was to point out that, despite much hysteria of the supposed invincibility of small, “shadowy,” networked force, the big still hold tremendous advantages while the small still face exceptional constraints.
Our goal, obviously, is to fight where we are strong and they are weak (and that needs not necessarily be the conventional battlefield, where we’re obviously strong, but the other side simply refuses to engage).
February 15th, 2006 at 5:31 pm
I agree with James, and am glad he cited the Malaya example, where a guerrilla force was defeated without concentration camps. What made the difference there (in contrast to Viet Nam) was good government. VN, in contrast, initially lost the political war during a string of coups in the early 60’s (and arguably regained the advantage during the Tet carnage in 1968). It’s for this reason that I’m encouraged by the U.S. emphasis on good government in Iraq, despite the history of corruption and authoritarianism in that region.
Must-reading on the Malaya example: Defeating Communist Insurgency by Sir Robert Thompson. I can’t understand why this book is so hard to find, considering its influence over U.S. military thinking.
February 15th, 2006 at 7:05 pm
This may a bit off the beaten path of this thread, but I’d like to bring up one topic that was brushed upon by Mark. This war is a huge media war. There is no way the enemy can beat the US and its allies in Iraq by military means or terrorist actions. Our own inventions–the Internet, satellite communication, cable news–are being used agaist the US and its allies. The US media is only too happy to fan the flames by playing the latest Abu Graib panty-party or sob-story from a released Club Gitmo vacationer. But in no way will they fan the flames by showing still images of Muhammad cartoons on TV.
During and since Vietnam our media has actively worked to undermine the US military and its operations in the theater of war. Unlike WWII where reporters with the troops we an asset for morale back home, they’re now choosing to report only the bad and never the good actions our soldiers perform. Why? Because the have no patriotic feelings, no care for the troops, and they think it’s their job to make things right where Iraq is concerned (meaning: We must force the US and allies to surrender). We can’t count on patriotism and love of country in journalism anymore.
It is absolutely possible we will lose this war by way of the fifth column media. It was the media that has renamed the enemy from a vicious Islamic terrorist to a mildly annoying insurgent. It was the media that created furor over a Marine doing his damned job in Iraq into a supposed war crime. It was the media that propogates lies about flushed Korans. It was the media that pumped in Abu Graib videos to our TVs 24/7 but not videos of torture on Iraqis by Saddam’s goons. When was the last time you saw the video of the jets hitting the Twin Towers? It’s been at least a year or so for me.
I have no trouble calling for the complete muzzling of media in Iraq if that’s what it takes to win this war. And no, I am not calling for the crushing of dissent. I am calling for the crushing of lies and enemy propoganda. I do not want my nation’s military to surrender. Surrender not to the Islamic terrorists, but to the fifth column media.
February 15th, 2006 at 7:06 pm
Arg, we need a “Preview” button for comments.
February 15th, 2006 at 7:38 pm
Historically, big-strong crushes small-weak. But always pay attention to who is really engaged in the conflict. Vietnam’s “small-weak” was a psyop tactic. In essence, the only national interests the United States had there was to stop the spread of international communism, something that once really existed. Vietnam may have been physically relatively small, but it relied upon two giants for support and assistance, and one of these giants shared a land border with it. Without that proximity, and the ever present danger of “widening the war”, i.e., bringing China openly into it as in 1950 Korea, Ho Chi Minh’s war would have gone into the trash bin of history. I must partially disagree with Joshua on “good government”. More importantly is a government that enjoys unity of effort. The North enjoyed exactly that for a variety of reasons, to include policy, ethnic, and cultural. Whereas the North had a single political party, the South had myriad parties, mostly at each other’s throats. (We’ll omit discussion on ethnic Cambodians and Montagnards versus the “Kinh”, and Hoa Hao, Cao Dai, Binh Xuyen, Khmer Kampuchea Krom, Khmer Serai, Cham, and the Catholic-Buddhist question, all of which contributed to a noticable lack of unity of effort.) Vietnam was quite unlike Malaya, where the terrs all tended to be Chinese. However, the point of corruption is well taken. Robert Herrington notes in his “Silence was a Weapon”, a look at the real Phoenix program, that the Viet Cong targeted competent, dedicated, and honest government representatives, while leaving the highly unpopular and corrupt alone. This discouraged the former, and multiplied the latter, who backhandedly furthered the communist cause.
ps. “Goodbye Dolly Gray” was an excellent account of the Boer War. The only account I ever tried to read in Afrikaans was Barnard’s “Generaal Louis Botha opt die nataalse front”
February 15th, 2006 at 7:54 pm
Lirelou, Praat u Afrikaans? Tien jaar gelede ek ook kon maar vanaand ek het baie vergeet.
Cheers if you can understand any of that!
February 15th, 2006 at 8:21 pm
Americans who defend the Danish cartoons should not complain about unfair coverage of Iraq. Free speech and free press can cut both ways.
In this age of instant global communications, it’s impossible to block media access from Iraq. The media will always be a factor in world affairs, especially in the hot spots.
“The end can no longer justify the means”
That’s right. Bush pledged to bring democracy and freedom to Iraq, so that precludes military rule or prolonged martial law.
February 15th, 2006 at 10:00 pm
Martin van Creveld of Hebrew University may have a bias for favoring the small/weak. After all, Israel is the timeless example of the small/weak triumphing over the big/strong - Moses and the Pharaoh, David and Goliath, winning the Arab-Israel Wars.
February 15th, 2006 at 10:02 pm
Americans who defend the Danish cartoons should not complain about unfair coverage of Iraq. Free speech and free press can cut both ways.
There are really two distinct issues there; free speech and journalistic responsibility/integrity. And the fact that you said “unfair coverage” shows you’re at least aware of the fact.
Anyone can defend Danish free speech and still be righteous in complaining about left-wing media distorting the news with one-sided reporting to help influence events as they see fit, and there is absolutely nothing hypocritical about that.
February 16th, 2006 at 1:49 am
I sympathize you frothing about the media (I do too), but the cat’s out of the bag. Hostile media made up of self-loathing elites is now a given part of the war. It’s best just to deal with that reality rather than try to suppress it.
Not in long wars. Hence the saying “big countries don’t do small wars well.”
By the way, I am generally optimistic about the progress in Iraq, but one area that concerns me is corruption. The CPA spread a lot of money around in the beginning and unfortunately set a very bad precedent for a country that was already pretty corrupt.
But not “death squads” for terrorists, eh?
Zing! Think again. Van Creveld is thinking in terms of Israel (strong) and Palestinians (weak).
I am beginning to see, Mi-Hwa, that you reflexively turn to certain prejudices you already hold.
February 17th, 2006 at 12:42 am
Joshua, Nee, mijn vrient, ek praat geen Afrikaans nou. Maar wanneer in die leer gewees (vyf een dertig jaaren), ek die Afrikaans taal gestudeert. I’ve long forgotten mine also. Pity, such an interesting language.