(UAVs), the United States currently owns regular warfare. But this happy condition for
Washington has its limitations. First, American domination of regular battle in the
Information Age obliges prudent enemies to decline to fight on America’s terms. In other
words, the US armed forces are developing an excellence in aggressive decisive manoeu-
vre assisted by precision fire from the overhead flank that they are not likely to be able
to exploit fully. As Clausewitz insisted, and as we must keep reminding ourselves, ‘War
is nothing but a duel on a larger scale’ (Clausewitz, 1976: 75). Second, in the wars that
America is waging currently in Iraq and Afghanistan, the technical tools provided by the
Information Age are of only limited value. Decisive manoeuvre is generally impractical
against an irregular enemy who declines to stand and fight. Furthermore, the ability to
deliver firepower with great precision is useful only if one has equally precise political
intelligence as to the identity of the enemy, an enemy who, as often as not, is hiding
‘amongst the people’ (R. Smith, 2005: Part 3).
This commentary on the state of the art in regular warfare, which is to say the
American way of warfare as it has evolved since the end of the Cold War, is not intended
to be wholly critical. The United States seems to have succeeded in achieving a new level
of excellence in regular warfare – although, as noted above, it is hard to be certain in the
absence of combat experience against a competent enemy. However, the largely
technological RMA that the US forces have been pursuing, a process more recently
described as one of transformation rather than revolution, does prompt a basic sceptical
question. Is the righttransformation being sought?
If one grants the utility of the sole superpower’s enhanced prowess in regular warfare,
next one must ask whether that expensive project has been pursued with inadequate
attention paid to the challenges posed by irregular enemies. From the evidence of Iraq
and Afghanistan in the 2000s, one might argue that the United States – the hegemon (and
guardian), by default, of the contemporary world order – has a shortfall in grand-strategic
competence in combating irregular foes. The US Army, in particular, is more in need of
a transformation that privileges counter-insurgency and counter-terrorist skills than one
which enables it to rise to yet greater heights of proficiency in regular warfare.
The last word in this historical discussion must pertain to the unprecedented
significance of the now global media, particularly the electronic visual media. The
technologies of the Information Age probably are having more influence upon warfare
through their enabling of almost real-time media monitoring than by their enhancement
of fighting power. For soldiers in warfare of any kind, regular or irregular, today there is
no escape from media scrutiny. The details of a lethal incident in Basra can be shown
world-wide, thanks to satellite video links, before they are known to, let alone assessed
by, local military commanders. This is something new in strategic history. Some scholars
believe that over recent decades this development has led to a transformation in public
attitudes towards both the military and war itself, a shift towards a less permissive view
of the use of force (Kurth, 2003).
Conclusion
War has a dominant political context, but it also has a socio-cultural context which will
constrain, or sometimes energize, the political context. States can be slow to recognize
and act upon the reality of the pervasively political character of warfare. They may tend
242 War, peace and international relations