Changing Military Technology and Public Expectations
William Saletan in his Slate blog on the war has a piece on the changing technology of war, specifically on the widespread adoption of precision munitions, and what that means for wars fought by liberal democracies.
Basically, the ability to put a bomb on a specific target has gotten so good, war can be waged very specifically on the pillars that support a repressive regime — the loyal military, the security services, other apparatuses of state control. Regimes can be “tipped” over; it may no longer be necessary to “crush” them, actions that may lead to many civilian deaths.
We don’t have to roll tanks into their towns to show them our firepower. They know about it from television, radio, or their neighbors. We can win by “tipping,” not crushing. We spent centuries developing the ability to kill people. Now we’re developing the ability not to. Regime change is no longer a euphemism.
Saletan notes that this works best with repressive regimes: “If the people support the regime, it’s much harder to separate the two.” Further, repressive regimes depend more on the tangible instruments of state power to remain in control: break their links with the military and secret police, and they cannot hold on.
This actually follows with Gregg Easterbrook’s article in The New Republic about the historic lack of success in using air power to “shock and awe” regimes into surrender. He observes that the instances in which this was tried, the regimes have been repressive ones which didn’t give a damn about the fates of their people: “In order for shock to prevail, there must be consciences capable of being shocked. Leaders must care about their followers.” But what if we can very specifically target the leaders itself, as we did on Wednesday in the openning volley of this war? And do so with relatively low chances of harming others?
(As a side note, Easterbrook’s blog-of-sorts (he posts almost with the frequency of those calling themselves bloggers, but these postings are close to essays, not off the cuff comments about current events) is an excellent run down of various topics somewhat tangential to the war, but interesting in themselves.)
Saletan sees the primary flaw with this new era of precision munitions and the expectations of accuracy. That is, the military is goddamn powerful: “Just because we have the ability to spare people’s lives doesn’t mean we have the will.” The US military can turn any small country into a slag heap in a matter of days. What prevents it from doing so?
Fundamentally, what constrains the US is the American people. In the early 21st Century, we have the expectation, built over the past decade, that our military will fight wars as cleanly as possible, with a conscious an attentive regard to civilian casualties. The deaths of bystanders is probably unavoidable, but we expect the military to do what it can to avoid it. This then would be a function of the antiwar movement: protests should be directed at keeping military action transparent — we should help the media and human rights groups monitor the battlefield. War protests that give a repressive regime hope that they can survive may in fact prolong the war, and compel the military to use “crushing” to achieve its objectives. War protesters, however, have not recognized this new reality, and, in part, operate under the assumption that the US can only carpet bomb cities.