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What Happened to Shock and Awe?

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What Happened to Shock and Awe? For three months, it was all the rage. Then its popularity faded fast. What Happened to Shock and Awe? By John T. Correll “ HOCK and awe,” Peter Arnett introduced by a 1996 study aimed Baghdad, March 27, 2003. It intoned over and over. at Pentagon insiders—took it to wasn’t Dresden in February 1945. In S fact, it wasn’t anything like the vast “This is shock and awe.” Arnett was higher levels. Shock and Awe meant air assault of media imaginings. reporting for NBC from Baghdad as an attack so massive and sudden the aerial bombardment lit up the that the enemy would be stunned, night sky on March 21. confused, overwhelmed, and para- It was “A-day,” the beginning of lyzed. full air combat operations in Gulf Harlan K. Ullman, principal ar- War II. As the live television cam- chitect of the concept, explained to eras watched, coalition airpower was the Long Island Newsday in Febru- obliterating Saddam Hussein’s Presi- ary, “What we want to do is to create dential compound on the other side in the minds of the Iraqi leadership, of the Tigris River and other govern- and their soldiers, this Shock and ment and military sites in and around Awe, so they are intimidated, made Baghdad. to feel so impotent, so helpless, that Arnett was not alone in calling it they have no choice but to do what “shock and awe.” That term, which we want them to do, so the smartest had burst suddenly into public aware- thing is to say, ‘This is hopeless. We ness in January, was by then in near- quit.’ ” universal usage to describe the US The Department of Defense did strategy for Operation Iraqi Free- not officially or explicitly endorse dom. Shock and Awe, but traces of it could “Shock and awe” was repeated be discerned in statements by top endlessly. In the week the war be- leaders. gan, more than 600 news reports For example, Gen. Tommy R. around the world referred to “shock Franks, commander of US Central and awe,” according to a count by Command, said at a press briefing in the Washington Post. Qatar March 22, “This will be a cam- Military strategists from Sun Tzu paign unlike any other in history, a to Clausewitz have understood the campaign characterized by shock, value of destroying the enemy’s by surprise, by flexibility, by the will to resist, but Shock and Awe— employment of precise munitions on 52 AIR FORCE Magazine / November 2003 AP photo/Jerome Delay a scale never before seen, and by the keeping their distance and the analy- thentic intellectuals. Ullman was that application of overwhelming force.” sis concentrated mostly on what went rarity, a scholar in uniform, a line Franks said, “Coalition airmen wrong. officer qualified for command at sea, [will] deliver decisive precision shock, also possessed of one of the best, such as you witnessed beginning last Where It All Began most provocative minds I have ever night.” He said that the attack was It started in December 1996 with encountered.” carried out by “shock air forces.” “Shock & Awe: Achieving Rapid The goal of Rapid Dominance, Popular enthusiasm for Shock and Dominance,” published by National the 1996 NDU study said, “will be Awe was high as the war began. Defense University. The authors were to destroy or so confound the will to However, the Iraqi regime was not Harlan K. Ullman and James P. Wade resist that an adversary will have no shocked and awed into immediate Jr. It was a product of Defense Group alternative except to accept our stra- surrender. The war entered a second Inc., a beltway consulting firm headed tegic aims and military objectives. week, then a third. by Wade, who had previously held To achieve this outcome, Rapid The questions were not long in many senior positions in the Penta- Dominance must control the opera- coming. Where was the Shock and gon. tional environment and through that Awe? Was the strategy bogging down? Four retired military officers— dominance, control what the adver- Baghdad fell to coalition forces af- Adm. Leon A. Edney, Army Gen. sary perceives, understands, and ter 20 days, but, by then, Shock and Fred M. Franks, Air Force Gen. knows, as well as control or regu- Awe had dropped precipitously in Charles A. Horner, and Adm. Jon- late what is not perceive, under- public opinion. athan T. Howe—took part in the stood, or known.” Among the disillusioned was Pe- study, but the principal author was Four defining characteristics of ter Arnett, who told state-controlled Ullman. Rapid Dominance were listed: knowl- Iraqi television in a cloying inter- Colin Powell, who met Ullman at edge of the battlespace environment, view March 30 that “the war plan the National War College, heaped rapidity, control of the environment, has failed because of Iraqi resis- praise on him in his autobiography, and “operational brilliance in ex- tance.” When NBC fired him, Arnett My American Journey (1995). “A ecution.” expressed—what else?—shock and teacher who raised my vision sev- In a Desert Storm-type campaign awe. eral levels was Harlan Ullman, a of the future, Rapid Dominance might Six months later, Shock and Awe Navy lieutenant commander who achieve its objectives “in a matter of had faded badly. It was showing up taught military strategy,” Powell days (or perhaps hours) and not af- as a catch phrase in advertising and wrote. “So far, I had known men of ter the six months or the 500,000 war games, but military people were action but few who were also au- troops that were required in 1990 to AIR FORCE Magazine / November 2003 53 1991,” the study said. (Emphasis Defense Group Inc. (DGI) on the con- line in the New York Times. It quoted added.) cept of Rapid Dominance. We are of “military officials” as saying “the “Shutting the country down would course interested in further develop- plan calls for unleashing 3,000 pre- entail both the physical destruction ing our ability to strike promptly and cision guided bombs and missiles in of appropriate infrastructure and the induce ‘Shock and Awe’ in future ad- the first 48 hours.” shutdown and control of the flow of versaries.” (“I don’t think I ever used the term all vital information and associated ‘Shock and Awe’ myself,” Myers commerce so rapidly as to achieve a The Bubble Rises said in April, but added, “I’m famil- level of national shock akin to the The first public report of Shock iar with the book and the author” and effect that dropping nuclear weapons and Awe was by CBS News corre- “some of those ideas of his have on Hiroshima and Nagasaki had on spondent David Martin, last Jan. 24, been incorporated into this plan.”) the Japanese. Simultaneously, Iraq’s two months before Gulf War II be- Fascination with Shock and Awe armed forces would be paralyzed with gan. An unnamed Pentagon official was approaching frenzy. No news the neutralization or destruction of told Martin that the strategy would report was complete without it. its capabilities. Deception, dis- be Shock and Awe. Martin went for Sony applied for a trademark on information, and misinformation comment to Ullman, who was then a Shock and Awe to use as the title of would be applied massively.” senior advisor for the Center for Stra- a video game, but dropped the appli- Ullman and Wade acknowledged tegic and International Studies and a cation in embarrassment when it was they were building on classic mili- columnist for the Washington Times. discovered by the news media. Oth- tary theories but said that, “in Rapid “We want them to quit. We want ers sought to trademark Shock and Dominance, the principal mechanism them not to fight,” Ullman told CBS, Awe for pesticides and herbicides, for affecting the adversary’s will is explaining that the concept relied on barbecue sauce, and fireworks dis- through the imposition of a regime a “simultaneous effect, rather like plays. of Shock and Awe sufficient to achieve the nuclear weapons at Hiroshima, the aims of policy. It is this relation- not taking days or weeks but in min- Cautions and Concerns ship with and reliance on Shock and utes. ... You’re sitting in Baghdad, Ullman made it clear he had no Awe that differentiates Rapid Domi- and all of a sudden, you’re the gen- direct input to the war plan, but he nance from attrition, maneuver, and eral and 30 of your division head- published his views regularly in op- other military doctrines including quarters have been wiped out. You ed columns and he was interviewed overwhelming force.” also take the city down. By that, I often by both print and broadcast One of the early supporters of mean you get rid of their power, media. He told the Washington Post Shock and Awe was a former—and water. In two, three, four, five days in March that one risk of a bold war future—Secretary of Defense, Donald they are physically, emotionally, and plan was that it might be executed H. Rumsfeld. In fact, Ullman later psychologically exhausted.” too cautiously, and expressed con- said, “Rumsfeld was a rump member Martin reported that not everybody cern that “we may not be sufficiently of the original shock-and-awe group, in the Administration was a believer audacious.” so he knew about the concept.” in Shock and Awe. “One senior offi- Shock and Awe alarmed those who Rumsfeld used the expression in cial called it a bunch of bull, but misinterpreted references to Hiro- an April 1999 statement to CNN, confirmed it is the concept on which shima and Nagasaki.
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