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Tactical Victory and Defeat in a War Against Terror

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Tactical Victory and Defeat in a War Against Terror Tactical Victory and Defeat in a War Against Terror Aryeh Nusbacher* In the South African war of 1899-1904, the British army was shocked by the indecent tactics used by its enemies, the Boers – the Dutch farmers in two of South Africa’s states. Shocked, because they used irregular cavalry tactics. They used machine guns – British-built machine guns – to tremendous effect against the British army. They did not wear uniforms – they wore their own clothes. They could easily present themselves as innocent members of the public – neutral, pro-British – without any trouble at all. The British were outraged. Their tactics at the time were absolutely unsuited to dealing with the enemy in the South African war. Britain could not cope with what the Boers were doing. Afterwards, Ernest Swinton (later a professor of the history of war at Oxford University) and others led a reform of tactics which resulted in a much more ‘modern’ approach to tactics. In a similar vein, we are currently faced with systematic menacing, maim- ing and murdering of the innocent in order to inspire terror and thereby achieve a policy aim. We are outraged, frustrated and repulsed by this, but we must find ways of reforming our approach to tactics that can take into account the reality of fighting a war against terror. Armed forces have, largely uncharacteristically, run away from the task – uncharacteristically, because there is a tremendous amount of funding attached to the task, as the security service discovered by reaching forward, seizing the task of defending the country from terrorism and finding itself financially enhanced. Armed forces, with a few exceptions, notably in Israel, have disclaimed responsibility for fighting a war against terror. The defence of the realm against this most imminent danger becomes homeland security. It is given to intelligence officers (those whose job it is to collect, analyse and disseminate intelligence), * Dr Aryeh Nusbacher, Senior Lecturer, Sandhurst. 61 62 ARYEH NUSBACHER not those whose job it is to confront the state’s enemies with force. One result of this has been that the priorities attached to fighting terrorism in much of the West are those of intelligence agencies rather than those of the armed forces. This is not to denigrate intelligence agencies. It is just not their purpose. Their culture is not designed for confronting armed force. One result of this is that the discipline that the study of war has lent to wise armies over many years is, to some extent, absent. In analysing the Vietnam War in a very prob- lematic but interesting book called On Strategy, the American colonel David Hapworth says that the ‘root of the American difficulties in Vietnam was that they did not have a clear policy, did not have clear strategy and therefore tactical action in Vietnam was not especially likely to result in achieving victory. If victory had been achieved, it would have been serendipitous – brute force applied without reason.’ I would suggest that as we look for tactics, the application of the currency of war, of fighting and destruction to achieving a strategic aim, we rapidly find that we do not have clear strategic aims in this war against terror. If we are still fighting the global war against terror, we are fighting what is more or less a declared war, but we are fighting it, depending on what coun- try you look at, with a variety of strategies and non-strategies. Are we trying to make everyone in the world who would adopt terrorist tactics choose other tactics? Is this struggle against terrorism like the struggle the United States led against piracy – which was a tactic for state policy and making money – in the early nineteenth century? Is it like the British struggle against the slave trade in the early and mid-nineteenth century? Are we just offended by the tactic and therefore seek to direct people to choose other violent tactics that we find more acceptable? Do we seek to push the terrorist into guerrilla war so that we can embrace the struggle with the terrorist on terms more favourable perhaps to ourselves, more suitable to our view of right and wrong? We are not really fighting a war against terror. We do not really abominate the terrorist so much as the idea that the terrorist might blow up somebody we think ought not to have been blown up. We are not fighting an offensive war against terror in which, in the big picture, we must seek out those who practice terror wherever they may be and make them stop. If we were, UK Foreign and Commonwealth Office spokesmen would not announce that they were restricting discussions with Hamas to members of the Hamas political wing who had been elected to office in the West Bank. For years, in order to enable governments to talk to terrorists they said they were not talking to, they invented the idea of the ‘political wing’. I am sure that everyone at .
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