I don’t have a full-blown prescription for reform, but what I am sure is needed is a greater focus on basics, on principles, and less focus on the “flavour of the month”. Counter-insurgency — the topic that preoccupied Richard Holbrooke for much of his career — is a good example. It used to be understood that every insurgency was different; what may have worked in Malaya would not work in Indo-China because the insurgents were fighting for different reasons and in different ways and the lessons learned in Indo-China and Vietnam, and many were, would not be readily applied in Nicaragua or Yemen because, once again, the problem was different and none of the “solutions” from Malaya through to the First Gulf War would work in Afghanistan … but generals kept offering “the answer”, even when experience said that every single answer was wrong. There are a few well-tested principles for peacekeeping and low-intensity operations and peace-making and counterinsurgency but there is no “right way”, no process that works and can be taught on a six-week course. Canadian generals need to move all the “process” books to the bottom shelf of the bookcase and put the handful of “principles” books back on top. Ditto for all aspects of training; the tactics that worked in the Gulf War or Grenada are not going to work against China or Russia, and what we expected would “work” against a large, modern, well-equipped enemy in 1969 is unlikely to work against a large, well-equipped enemy now, a half-century later … even if some of the equipment looks almost the same.
The same applies to “cyber” or “information warfare”; there is no doubt that technology has changed the so-called “battlespace”, making it bigger and more complex by, in effect, adding an invisible dimension. We have been conducting “information operations” for decades, even millennia — I would argue that at the end of the Third Servile War (73-72 BCE) when Marcus Licinius Crassus crucified 6,000 of Spartacus’ followers on the Appian Way (it is not clear if Spartacus, himself was among them) that it was psychological warfare which is either a subset of or a near relation to information warfare. But the tools have changed and with them, tactics need to change, too, but some principles will remain as they were 2,000 years ago, or 100 years ago (the Zimmerman Telegram) or 75 years ago (Turing, the Enigma machine and Bletchley Manor).
Ted Campbell, “Following the blind leader (3)”, Ted Campbell’s Point of View, 2019-05-21.
