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• 6 THE PITFALLS O F ARROGANCE AND THE LIMITS O F MILITARY POWER How Might a Technologically Inferior Adversary Gain an Advantage? Threats from enemies that think in unorthodox ways and employ unconventional weapons have surfaced lately in defense lexicons and analyses. Such threats, commonly referred to as "asymmetric," are as old as warfare itself. Said Sun Tzu in The Art of War (c. 500 B.C.), a manuscript discovered in the West only in the late eighteenth century, "As flowing water avoids the heights and hastens to the low lands, so an army avoids strength and strikes weakness." He also observed that "rapidity is the essence of war; take advantage of the enemy's unreadiness, make your way by unexpected routes, and attack unguarded spots." Some of the most alarming threats, in other words, involve attacks against the blind side, the employment of indirect strategy, and attempts by an enemy to be as unconventional and as unpredictable as possible in order to upset (not necessarily defeat) a foe's superior armed forces—to disorient or weaken them just enough to achieve a political or strategic object.1 This is a "thinking challenge" more than it is a tangible capabilities problem. The military requirements presented here represent more a tax on our military and strategic imaginations than on our resources and technological ingenuity. Solutions begin at the top and are fundamentally the business of policy makers, strategists, and defense planners. The energetic and innovative fighter will use asymmetric tactics to circumvent the strengths of opposing forces, exploit vulnerabilities, or attack in ways that cannot, or will not, be matched. Present-day discussions of asymmetric tactics by U.S. defense officials is bald recognition that future wars are unlikely to emulate the experience of the 1991 Persian Gulf War.2 As long as the United States is a great military power, its enemies probably will not rely on conventional forces, using 176 In the Arena massed armored formations and air and naval forces to impose their will—that is, they are not likely to rely on these forces in the same manner as the United States. Indeed, a cunning and bold enemy will not face the United States' overwhelming military superiority head-on. Rather, he will strive to force upon U.S. commanders alien terms of combat and deterrence, introducing early on a discontinuity that could wreck a canned or otherwise predictable military strategy. The failure to allow for, if not entirely account for, such unexpected occurrences could have very serious military consequences and, ultimately, undermine national interests. Although by definition we cannot know the unexpected, we can expect the unexpected (if not its specific content) and make judgments about our weaknesses and the risks attendant in any given situation. Finding and exploiting an enemy's weakness is not new to our age, nor does it necessarily require all-encompassing intelligence capabilities or "dominant battlespace knowledge." The United States' potential vulnerabilities, after all, are not too difficult to identify. The country and its allies, for example, invest in programs to improve defenses against nuclear, biological, and chemical weapons, as it is generally recognized that the use of these weapons could have tremendous physical and psychological consequences on and off the battlefield. An enemy may choose to employ ballistic or cruise missiles, taking advantage of the fact that in the early twenty-first century the United States will deploy only very shallow active defenses against short- and medium-range ballistic missiles and no homeland missile defense whatsoever. Information warfare techniques would exploit the United States' heavy reliance on computers by aiming to undermine segments of its vulnerable information, communications, and command infrastructures. A military adversary also may seek to degrade the U.S. advantage in long-range and precision strike weapon capabilities by fighting in urban centers or under the cover of jungle foliage. Another approach involves the exploitation of foreign and commercial space capabilities by U.S. adversaries and disruptions in the flow of critical information available to U.S. and allied armed forces. Space, in other words, represents one avenue by which an enemy may surprise the United States. Americans rightly view their prowess in space to be unmatched by any other country. Yet even a halfhearted adversary will attempt to nullify or overcome his opponent's advantage. It may be that supreme confidence turns into overconfidence, as U.S. commanders are led to believe that the satellites they rely on are invulnerable and will always be available. Sever those...

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