McNair Paper 62, The Revenge of the Melians:  Asymmetric Threats and the next QDR, November 2000 

Chapter Two

A Typology of Asymmetry:
What, Who, and When?

Building upon the recurring themes established in chapter one, this chapter will attempt to organize and draw some useful conclusions about the range of potential asymmetric threats that we could face through the year 2010, using the framework of what, who, and when. First, what are the general types of potential asymmetric approaches that we could reasonably expect to see employed? After these have been established, the who will be considered, from a conceptual basis. Last, the question of when will be discussed. Timing is important in asymmetry, and different approaches are more likely to be employed at different times in a crisis. The chapter will end with a discussion of general conclusions that can be drawn from this analysis.

The What: The Range of Potential
Asymmetric Threats

This section identifies a typology of six potential asymmetric threats: nuclear, chemical, biological, information operations, operational concepts, and terrorism. Each potential threat will be discussed and assessed within each of the three levels of war, with a focus within the level of war to which its effects could reasonably be expected to predominate. The most likely concepts for employment of these threats will be discussed and analyzed. Why these six categories of threats? They are logical descendants of asymmetric approaches used throughout history--they all promise disproportionate effect, and all have the potential to migrate effects upward to the strategic level. There are key differences from the past, however: the greatest change at the beginning of the 21^st century is the dramatically increasing effectiveness of technology and its ability to conjure global effect from local events. The most dramatic and potentially lethal threats are those associated with the ugly triad of weapons of mass destruction (WMD). The newest threats arise from the explosion of information technology.

In this six-part typology, the WMD elements of nuclear, chemical, and biological have become the "usual suspects" when discussing asymmetric threats. They are dangerous, to be sure, but there are alternatives open to the asymmetric actor. Information operations involve the manipulation, both offensively and defensively, of data of all types. The term can also refer to the denial of information-intensive operations fundamental the American military's operational doctrine. Operational concepts refer to the broad application of "low technology" and "no technology" approaches to asymmetry, as well as to the innovative application of legacy systems and tactics. Terrorism refers to the actions of nonstate actors, both internal and external, who may apply approaches from the other elements of asymmetry.

Nuclear Weapons

The ultimate expression of power in the world today is the possession of nuclear weapons. Owning nuclear weapons allows a state or nonstate actor to have a seat at the "high stakes" table. This idea has been reinforced by such recent events as the Gulf War and NATO operations over Kosovo. The former Indian Army Chief of Staff, General K. Sundarji, is reputed to have said that a principal lesson of the Gulf War is that, if a state intends to fight the United States, it should avoid doing so until and unless it possesses nuclear weapons.⁴³

Despite the frightening specter of a dispersion of nuclear materials from the former Soviet Union's massive stockpile, nuclear weapons essentially remain the province of states.⁴⁴ Nonstate actors do not possess the combination of skill, focus, and organizational ability to build them (although they could steal or buy them). Nuclear weapons are technically demanding to build, even for moderately industrialized states, and creation of a first-generation atomic capability is a long way from effective weaponization, which implies miniaturization, hardening, effective targeting, command and control, and means of delivery. It is important to note, though, that nuclear weapons can be employed without miniaturization, although the problem of delivery becomes more complex and demanding.

For these reasons, for the next decade or even longer, the number of states that possess indigenously developed, reliably deliverable nuclear weapons will be very small: the United States, Russia, France, England, China, and Israel.⁴⁵ Of these, Russia, France, China, and England have the unambiguous capability to deliver a "conventional" (i.e., ballistic missile) attack against the continental United States. The second circle of states that possess self-developed nuclear weapons that may be--and certainly eventually will be--weaponized is composed of Pakistan and India.

Other states could join this club by obtaining weapons or fissile material from external sources, and the countries and sources are obvious: Iraq, North Korea, and Iran. All may be attempting to obtain either complete weapons or near-assembly-ready components from former
Soviet stocks. It is possible that these states may be closer than we know.

Tactical Employment

On the tactical level, a nuclear weapon could be employed directly against maneuver or support forces in the field. The method of delivery could range from short-range ballistic missile or tactical aircraft delivery to mining or other covert means. In this context, the asymmetry of approach is principally derived from the deterring effect that adversary possession of such a weapon would have on U.S. responses to crises. Actual state-sponsored use of a nuclear weapon against forces in the field is the least effective method of employment of a nuclear weapon--in fact, in many ways it is no more than the ultimate symmetric response.

Adversaries will be hesitant to employ nuclear weapons on the tactical level for several reasons: first, unless the attack is a complete strategic surprise, tactical maneuver forces can disperse rapidly, making it hard to achieve military effect commensurate with political cost. Second, it will be very easy to trace ownership of the attack, particularly if it is delivered by conventional means. Third, use of nuclear weapons against U.S. forces will almost certainly invite a staggering response that might not stop short of the imposition of unconditional surrender. Last, adversaries will not have many nuclear weapons, and targeting fielded forces is surely the least cost-effective method of employment.

If an adversary decides to employ nuclear weapons in this manner, conventional means--ballistic missile, tactical aircraft--are the methods that have the least chance of success, while leaving a clear trail back to the attacker. Missiles and aircraft can be intercepted, and the attacker may not have the technological confidence to hazard such a critical attack with such an unsure means of delivery. The greatest chance of success against fielded maneuver forces may be the employment of either covert means of insertion by special operations forces (SOF) or terrorist operatives, or by the use of nuclear mines. The use of nuclear mines is appealing, particularly in a defensive situation in which the adversary is giving up ground to a U.S. advance. This would permit hardening and the use of various concealment measures that might make the device harder to discover before detonation.

For these reasons, states that have nuclear weapons will be loath to employ them directly against U.S. forces. They may be more likely to employ them against allied or coalition forces, who generally will be less prepared to deal with nuclear attack. They may also be more likely to attempt to target fixed combat support activities, such as airbases.⁴⁶ Another possibility is the targeting of U.S. warships, particularly modern cultural icons like aircraft carriers. The lure of this is complicated by the formidable difficulty of delivering a weapon close enough to damage a carrier.

Nuclear weapons will have the most potential utility in the early stages of a major theater war, when they can threaten or deter U.S. deployment into theater. They will be of less utility after U.S. forces close and the theater matures, but they will again become a significant factor in the endstate of a major theater war, particularly if the adversary sees the possibility of cataclysmic defeat. In this case, the temptation will be strong to use any and all means in a spasmodic response to either change the tide of battle or simply inflict revenge on the United States or its allies.

The use of nuclear weapons against U.S. forces on the tactical level is unlikely at the hands of a rational state actor. The tactical employment of nuclear weapons against forces in the field isn't really a practical asymmetric approach. If executed, it would tend to create a case of "vital national interest" for the United States, where perhaps there wasn't one before. The concept of disproportionality would then be turned upon its head, and high risks would be accrued by the actor with very little gain. The threat of use is more problematic, although threats against fielded forces also carry many of the risks of a deterring strategy while reaping few of the advantages.

Operational Employment

Nuclear weapons can be employed against the deployment and theater support infrastructure in order to deter, slow, or even halt the deployment of forces into an area of responsibility (AOR). Attacks against fixed targets will obviously be easier to plan and execute than attacks against forces in the field. The advantage of employment against fixed, rear area targets is that instead of targeting the most-prepared forces (usually tactical maneuver forces that possess organic mobility), targets can be selected from nonmobile forces that will have less self-protection and little ability to move.

The same delivery considerations apply as on the tactical level. Ballistic missiles, manned aircraft, or SOF can all be employed to deliver nuclear weapons against airfields, ports, command posts, logistic areas, or even humanitarian lodgments--all with a greater degree of confidence than at the tactical level, because these targets are, by and large, fixed and nonmobile. To borrow a term from Cold War strategic nuclear doctrine, at the operational level, asymmetric targets increasingly become countervalue, instead of counterforce.

It follows that, for a state actor, the greatest opportunity to employ, or to threaten to employ nuclear weapons, will be in the early stages of a conflict. The intent will be to initially deter and complicate U.S. force deployment considerations, and potentially to destroy critical deployment infrastructure in order to actually prevent physical deployment. If employed early enough, critical aerial ports of debarkation (APODs) and surface ports of debarkation (SPODs) might be destroyed or degraded before U.S. forces even arrive, creating an ambiguous situation for the National Command Authorities (NCA). It seems clear that if nuclear weapons are employed against U.S. forces, the response will be overwhelming and direct; but what if they are employed against an ally, and few, if any, U.S. forces feel the results?

The use or even threat of this may well dampen the enthusiasm of potential U.S. allies for participation in a coalition structure. It may well be that the direct threat of nuclear employment against an ally or potential ally very early in a crisis will have the effect of dissuading that nation from participating with the United States in a coalition. This threat of operational-level employment of nuclear weapons against U.S. regional allies or partners has the greatest promise of strategic effect migrating upward from an operational act for a regional actor. In terms of actual use, targeting both political and military supporting structures instead of fielded forces promises far greater return than direct tactical employment.

Strategic Employment

By definition, this is the threat or the use of a nuclear weapon against the U.S. homeland. In this case, strategic effect is sought by direct strategic attack. In considering the utility of strategic nuclear attack, it seems clear that, for a regional power or rogue state, the greatest asymmetric utility for these weapons is in their deterring effect. A demonstrated, credible ability to strike the U.S. homeland will have a sobering effect on U.S. decisionmakers as they consider bombing a regional adversary's capital, or even deploying forces in the face of threats or warnings when U.S. vital national interests are not at stake. It is even possible that the possession of nuclear weapons, and the demonstrated (or even suspected) capability to deliver them against the American homeland will have the effect of compressing the box within the quadrant marked "U.S. interest is vital" in the asymmetric opportunity table in chapter one. It may require unambiguous vital interest indeed for an American president to attack a state that has the capability to execute a countervalue attack on the United States.

There is another side to this argument, though, and that is when an asymmetric actor crosses the nuclear Rubicon from deterrence and coercion to actual use. It is difficult to conceive of a rational actor electing to employ nuclear weapons against the United States in a direct strategic attack. To do so would invite annihilation. Given this, though, the deterring effect of a U.S. response will certainly erode in a war in which the regional actor sees events going badly against it. If it looks as though the United States and its allies plan to either bomb a country to submission or occupy its capital, then there is little to lose, and in a götterdämmerung scenario, the possibility of actual strategic employment becomes increasingly likely.

Few states have the capability to deliver such a weapon by conventional means (aircraft or missile), and the robust nature of the U.S. strategic warning system is such that even if a successful attack were generated, clear and unambiguous evidence of the source would probably be readily available. Delivery by covert means is a more difficult subject. A nuclear weapon could be brought into this country by any one of a hundred methods, and could be positioned against a countervalue target by competent SOF. If the United States were engaged in a confrontation at the time, the motive and attacker would be clear. Even without strategic forensic evidence, the linkage would probably be enough to allow a massive response. The issue becomes more clouded when dealing with a bolt-from-the-blue attack at a time when identification of the attacker would be difficult to establish. Perhaps even a third party would initiate such an attack with a view to provoking the United States to retaliate against the presumptive guilty party--a false flag tactic.

Targets in the U.S. homeland would almost certainly be countervalue. It is unlikely that any potential adversary would be able to infiltrate or launch enough weapons to achieve significant strategic-level military results from such an attack.⁴⁷ Given the tremendous political considerations of a nuclear attack on U.S. soil against any target, the logic would tend to drive a potential attacker to seek the most lucrative and shocking option. Major urban areas, such as Washington, New York, Los Angeles, or Chicago, would probably lead the list of alternatives. They are also the easiest to target because of their size.

In an extended major theater war, aggressive U.S. efforts to destroy or neutralize a foe's nuclear delivery structure may result in another response from the heart of the Cold War--a "use 'em or lose 'em" reflex. In this case, an opponent cannot stand by and see its strategic trump card taken away. This does not imply that U.S. forces should not attempt to do this, only that we must be prepared for an adversary to use its weapons if we engage in aggressive WMD reduction during a regime-threatening war.

The threat of using nuclear weapons directly against the U.S. homeland is a powerful asymmetric measure. It achieves clear strategic effect and operates directly against the will of the United States. Such an approach might very well tend to make the United States ask hard questions about just where its vital national interests lie. Many of these asymmetric advantages could easily be lost, however, if a threat were actually carried out. A nuclear attack would provoke a powerful and unrelenting response from the United States. There is a fine line between the positive disproportionate strategic effect achievable by the possession of nuclear weapons, and the potentially disastrous consequences of actual use against the United States.

The last consideration is the use of nuclear weapons by nonstate actors against the United States. It is the least likely alternative because of the difficulty of procuring, infiltrating, and emplacing the weapon. It is, however, a possibility, and may ultimately prove the most troubling of all the strategic nuclear threats. Such an attack could be just as damaging as anything launched by a state actor, but it would be difficult to establish responsibility.

Conclusions About Nuclear Weapons

Martin van Creveld has written that the development of the atomic bomb and the concentration camp are together the most significant expressions of the power of the state in this century.⁴⁸ The threat of use of nuclear weapons has the greatest effect on the strategic level, although threats on both the operational and tactical levels will create similar disproportionate benefits. In terms of actual employment, use against regional supporting infrastructures is probably the most effective. This underlines the idea that it will never be a good idea to use nuclear weapons directly against U.S. forces or the U.S. homeland.

For these reasons, it may be that nuclear weapons will pose their greatest threat when used in a technically nonlethal role--as the generators of high-altitude electromagnetic pulse (HEMP) that will threaten our information systems. For that reason, the threat of HEMP attack will be dealt with in the discussion of information operations.

Chemical Weapons

Of the three elements of WMD, chemical weapons are generally considered to be the least damaging. On the other hand, they are also the easiest to procure, and, if history is any guide, less stigma is associated with their use. They have been used extensively by Iraq against not only Iran, but the Kurds.⁴⁹ A large number of states possess some form of chemical weapons. (As of December 1997, 106 states had ratified the Chemical Weapons Convention [CWC] of 1993.⁵⁰ China, Cuba, Egypt, Iran, Iraq, Israel, Libya, Myanmar, North Korea, Pakistan, Syria, Taiwan, Yemen, and the former Yugoslavia are all suspected of maintaining some form of chemical weapons stocks.⁵¹)

Tactical Employment

As with nuclear weapons, the use of chemical weapons on the tactical level against U.S. maneuver forces--the most-ready part of the U.S. force structure--is cost-ineffective. Some of the delivery complications that apply to nuclear weapons are also operative here, although the use of shorter-range artillery and tactical rocket delivery may partially ameliorate this. Chemical weapons will be more effective when used in conjunction with imaginative and potentially asymmetric operational concepts, such as defense in depth in complex terrain. The application of chemical weapons against refugee or other noncombatant populations could be an attractive option that could stress the capabilities of U.S. forces to care for both themselves and a large pool of suffering noncombatants and dramatically cloud the picture of the battlefield.

U.S. forces are generally well prepared to fight and win in a chemical environment, both as a legacy of decades of preparation to fight the Soviets and as a function of a renaissance of tactical chemical awareness in the past five years. Even so, the use of chemical weapons on the tactical battlefield will tend to slow the tempo as units are forced to don protective overgarments and conduct chemical reconnaissance and frequent decontamination. Slowing the tempo of operations will be a key component of any attempt to counter U.S. dominance.

Allied forces may be less well prepared, and this is the critical weakness that may be exploitable through asymmetric approaches on the tactical level. Attacks against allied forces will require the United States to provide support for less capable forces, stretching thin our capability to provide adequate chemical defense coverage for our own forces. At the same time, the use of chemicals against allies instead of the United States in a coalition may avoid a massive U.S. response. At a minimum, it will create an element of ambiguity when weighing responses.

The bottom line is this: using chemical weapons against tactical U.S. maneuver forces will not change the basic dynamic of a campaign. The use of chemical weapons will slow the pace of fighting, but it will not change the formula of victory. Since this is the application of a weapon of limited effectiveness against a strong and prepared opponent, it is hard to consider chemical employment against U.S. forces in the field as a potentially effective asymmetric approach. Used in this manner, it really isn't an asymmetric approach. It doesn't achieve disproportionate effect, and there is little possibility for upward migration of effect. It may also spark a massive U.S. response.

On the other hand, employment against allied units or a civilian population remaining on the battlefield may prove to be far more effective. Such an approach may bring an adversary huge political dividends as well, if the United States is unable to rapidly correct potential deficits in allied chemical defense training and equipment, and provide succor to threatened civilians. This approach does promise disproportionate effect, and may well be able to achieve significant strategic effect through an aggressive information operation.

Operational Employment

Many of the considerations regarding nuclear weapons apply also to the use of chemical weapons on this level. The most likely targets will be the deployment infrastructure that allows U.S. forces to enter a theater, command and control facilities, and the combat support and combat service support infrastructure that support the operations of U.S. and allied air forces. Another potential target will be the host nation population in the theater service area, with the intent of stressing host nation, allied, and U.S. medical support systems as well as political unity.

There are a number of potential delivery options, ranging from ballistic and cruise missile to SOF, aircraft, and terrorists. The most cost-effective option may be cruise or ballistic missiles. This choice of delivery systems will be dictated by the relatively inefficient size-to-lethality ratio of chemical weapons, as well as the probable difficulty of manned aircraft penetrating deep into a theater area (although this may be more attractive in an immature theater, before a comprehensive U.S. integrated air defense system is in place). Special operations forces can be used to employ chemicals on the operational level, but the size of the mixture needed to be effective, as well as the difficulty of efficient dispersal, will tend to reduce the effectiveness of this approach. As with nuclear weapons on the operational level, the threat of employment of these weapons can be effective in splitting alliance partners away from the United States in the early stages of a regional crisis.

Strategic Employment

Chemical weapons can play a role in strategic attack, which, as with nuclear weapons, means an attack on the U.S. homeland. While they are less lethal than biological agents and not as destructive as nuclear weapons, they are inherently more stable (an important consideration when dealing with less well-trained operatives) and can still be very effective, particularly when employed against indoor and point targets.

Chemical weapons do not have the shock and horror cachet of biological or nuclear ones, but that is a relative consideration--a few pounds of VX or SARIN deposited into a busy subway station in New York or Washington would have a tremendous psychological effect. The example of Aum Shinriko's attack in the Tokyo subway, incompetently executed and with diluted SARIN, is cautionary.⁵² Perhaps the greatest distinction between chemical weapons (and biological weapons) and nuclear weapons is that it may prove more difficult to trace the origin of a strategic chemical or biological attack. For this reason, the threshold of employment may be lower than with nuclear weapons.

Conclusions About Chemical Weapons

Chemical weapons are the least potent of the WMD triad. They do not have the open-ended potential for disaster that haunts both nuclear and biological weapons. They are easier to produce than nuclear weapons but require a larger and more visible infrastructure than that required for biological agents.⁵³ They have a track record of use throughout this century, which probably means that we will continue to see them employed.

Across the spectrum, chemical weapons offer the most asymmetric effect when employed as threats against regional allies. A regional aggressor can normally expect to be able to threaten the homeland of adjacent states with these weapons. Employment in this manner promises strategic effect at a relatively small cost. Even if an actor is forced to carry through on its threats to actually employ these weapons, scrupulous attempts to avoid U.S. forces may make it very difficult for the United States to respond forcefully, while possibly crumbling a regional alliance.

Biological Weapons

An interesting historical parallel may be developing. In the first decade of the 20^th century, the all-big-gun Dreadnought battleship became emblematic of national power. These ships were built (or ordered) not only by leading powers like England, Germany, and the United States, but also by lesser powers like Chile, Greece, and Turkey, which had no obvious compelling reason for their use. Even as the numbers of these ships grew, though, the hidden dynamics of war at sea changed their utility, and they were supplanted by the aircraft carrier as the ultimate weapon. Few of these magnificent weapons were ever employed. In much the same way today, even as lesser states pursue the nuclear totem, it may well be that in the 21^st century nuclear weapons will be relegated to secondary status behind biological weapons. The latter are cheaper than nuclear weapons, easy to move or hide from prying inspectors, and, most importantly, profoundly lethal. They can be employed in a manner that might make it hard to trace sponsorship of an attack.

A key distinction needs to be established at the beginning of any discussion of biological warfare. While there are many different types of biological agents, they may be catagorized as either contagious or noncontagious agents. The former can be passed from one human host to another, either directly or indirectly. The latter cannot be passed in this manner. This has no bearing on lethality or infectiousness; noncontagious agents like anthrax could have lethality rates in excess of 80 percent in an unprotected population, which indicates a high degree of infectious reliability.⁵⁴ A contagious agent such as plague has the potential to ultimately reach a much larger proportion of the targeted population. Minimal contagiousness generally has been a desired characteristic of biological weapons, although there are contrary views.⁵⁵ In World War II, the Japanese developed plague, a highly contagious agent that also had high lethality and infectious reliability, and planned to employ it against the United States.⁵⁶

The Biological Weapons Convention (BWC) of 1972 outlaws the possession of such capabilities.⁵⁷ Despite this, there is compelling evidence that the Soviet Union and its successors continued to work on an offensive biological warfare program "at least until 1992."⁵⁸ Other states, including China, Iran, Israel, Libya, North Korea, Syria, and Taiwan, are believed to have produced operational quantities of biological weapons.⁵⁹ Iraq is believed to possess a capability as well, despite the best efforts of United Nations inspectors in the wake of the Gulf War.⁶⁰

Tactical Employment

Biological weapons, like all WMD, are less effective on the tactical level, for many of the same reasons that pertain to chemical weapons. Biological agents are even more volatile and susceptible to biodegradation and corruption than chemical agents. They are also more difficult to disperse over a wide area. The most likely dispersal options for an opponent would include rocket artillery, artillery, aircraft, and SOF. The principal problems would be devising methods to protect the biological cargo during transit to the target and ensuring adequate area coverage in an open environment. Weather and time of day are of fundamental importance in selecting attack profiles.

The target of a tactical biological weapon attack may well be inoculated against the most common agents. In short, on the tactical level, the use of biological weapons is another case of an attack against the strongest part of the defense, something that is counter to asymmetric warfare. The same considerations that apply to the tactical use of chemical weapons apply here--this isn't an asymmetric approach, although the use of biological weapons against a civilian population within a battlespace could create problems even more significant than those caused by chemical weapons. The medical stresses in particular could prove far more complex and long term.

Operational Employment

The use of biological weapons against theater-level targets offers the most lucrative and cost-effective employment option of all forms of WMD use. Biological weapons enjoy the same deterring effect as chemical weapons on the operational level, but they can be far more potent in effect. The threat of anthrax, tularemia, or Venezuelan Equine Encephalitis (VEE) against a theater APOD or SPOD that depends upon host nation support could have a crippling effect on the flow of U.S. forces into theater. They are more attractive than nuclear weapons because it is more difficult to trace sponsorship of an attack.

Many airlines, including those mobilized in support of U.S. deployments (the Civil Reserve Air Fleet, or CRAF), may not fly into areas with reported biological weapons attacks.⁶¹ Without these critical enablers, it may not be possible to complete the deployment of U.S. forces into a theater of operations. The use of anthrax (for example) in even small quantities might cause heavy casualties and tie up medical and other infrastructure; even the hint of its use, coupled with an aggressive information warfare campaign, might turn our strategic deployment structure on its head. Additionally, theater infrastructure, such as command posts, logistics nodes, and other key elements of the combat service support backbone, is vulnerable to these attacks.

It might be very difficult to establish clear culpability in the case of the employment of a biological weapon. Unlike the nuclear or chemical weapon that is delivered via a cruise or ballistic missile, biological agents, by virtue of their extremely favorable weight and cube to lethality ratio, lend themselves to covert application by SOF. While we are certainly not defenseless against these threats, clear evidence to trace ownership may not be available.

Biological weapons offer many of the same coercing virtues of nuclear weapons within a regional environment. The principal advantage of biological weapons will be the potential for employment without clear responsibility. If introduced by SOF or terrorists, it might be very difficult to link a regional actor to a specific attack--however strong the motive and our suspicions. For this reason, they represent ideal asymmetric approaches. While the attack will be operational, the effect will be strategic.

Strategic Employment

A host of recent movies and books, such as The Cobra Event by Richard Preston, have highlighted this threat, and it joins nuclear attack at the most-dangerous end of the scale. When considered for its potential coercing or deterrent value against the United States, this threat enjoys every advantage of the strategic nuclear threat, but it can be delivered in a more covert manner. For this reason, the firewall between deterrence and use may not be as strong as in the nuclear case. There may be a greater likelihood of employment. As outlined in the operational and tactical discussions above, biological weapons are much easier to deliver than nuclear weapons, and, depending upon the agent used, the attack might not even be recognized until well after the fact. Biological attack also is more deniable than nuclear attack.

Biological weapons become even more of a threat when considering nonstate actors, particularly terrorists, although the likelihood of use decreases. While not minimizing the threat, it is useful to consider that no "mainstream" terrorist organization has ever elected to pursue this method of attack.⁶² On the other hand, increasingly radical terrorist organizations, including those with millenarian views, may not have this restraint. It is reassuring that the organizational skills, scientific knowledge, and cool heads (and hands) required for the conceptualization and delivery of a biological weapons attack are not normally associated with radical terrorist groups.

Conclusions About Biological Weapons

Nuclear and biological weapons share an unfortunate commonality: they can end the world as we know it. Biological weapons are easier to produce and easier to hide than either nuclear or chemical weapons.⁶³ The method of attack can be circumspect and difficult to trace. When employed to deter, they can achieve strategic effect, and, like nuclear weapons, cause the United States to compress the "vital national interest" box. If a bluff is called, they can offer the advantage of forensic ambiguity. For these reasons, in the short to mid term, biological weapons will increasingly become the tool of choice for both state and nonstate actors contemplating asymmetric approaches. The likelihood of actual employment is higher in a regional theater of operations than directly against the continental United States. At the same time, the implicit threat of use as a deterring or coercive tactic against the continental United States will only rise.

Information Operations

The modern U.S. military's concept of fighting is built upon the rapid, efficient exchange of vast amounts of information.⁶⁴ In this, it mirrors the cultural and business explosion of information exchange unleashed in the last 20 years by the power of the personal computer and the worldwide web. This global system supports not only the financial well-being of the United States, but also the operation of an increasing proportion of the physical infrastructure necessary for day-to-day life in the United States, from air traffic control to hydroelectric plant management. Allied with this is the growth of a global culture that fosters the rapid exchange of information on a bewildering variety of subjects. This is the environment, ripe with both promise and danger, for information operations.⁶⁵

Tactical Employment

It is difficult to compete with the United States technologically on the tactical level. Tactical combat information systems are generally well protected and resistant to direct attack. The best asymmetric approaches will probably be passive: camouflage, clutter, and concealment--techniques that will make it hard for U.S. intelligence-gathering systems to gain a clear picture of the battlespace. This could be coupled with aggressive deception operations and a psychological warfare campaign that seeks to magnify U.S. missteps. This means taking advantage of the fact that in a world of near-instantaneous global communications, a tactical event can have immediate strategic effect. The bombing of the al Firdos command and control bunker in downtown Baghdad during the Gulf War while it contained civilians, and the mistaken bombing of an Albanian refugee convoy during Allied Force, are but two examples of U.S. tactical actions with adverse implications that were magnified immensely by adversarial manipulation of information--and by our own clumsiness in responding.⁶⁶ Denial or degradation of our superior battlefield vision, coupled with relentless attempts to gain strategic effect from U.S. tactical missteps, will characterize adversary tactical information operations.

Operational Employment

On the operational level, it will become easier to enter and conduct computer network attack (CNA) against the family of systems, both classified and unclassified, that support the U.S. deployment infrastructure. This is because an increasing percentage of information traffic will be carried on systems external to the Department of Defense (DOD). Our allies and coalition partners will be at least as vulnerable. Even the well protected U.S. defense internet systems are dependent to some degree upon unclassified routing and vulnerable public domain structures as they go through what has been called the "last mile" between the DOD maintained NIPRNET (nonclassified internet protocol router network) and the end user.⁶⁷

At the same time, adversaries will target regional allies and any coalition structure with psychological operations and propaganda. When conducted in conjunction with the threat or actual use of other asymmetric approaches (i.e., WMD), a powerful synergy can be obtained, linking information operations with events on the ground, whether real or imagined. Charles Dunlap, writing in How We Lost the High Tech War of 2007, outlines an extreme but thought-provoking scenario: a regional opponent might elect to employ nuclear weapons against his own population, blaming the United States for the attack.

The management of publicly released information will remain a core competency for any crisis. What people see, read, and hear both in the United States and abroad will ultimately shape their perceptions of the rightness or wrongness of our cause. While this effort will feature a number of high technology aids, the fundamentals remain the same as they were during World War II: "This was total war, and total war required the calculated circulation of facts, which were a weapon more deadly than bullets and bombs."⁶⁸

Strategic Employment

A potential cyber attack against the U.S. homeland has probably received more recent media attention than any other form of asymmetric warfare. As a society, the United States is both relatively and absolutely more dependent upon computer systems for activities ranging from personal banking to management of highways than any other nation in the world. Some of these systems are protected, most are not, but virtually all are interlinked to some degree that increases their vulnerability.⁶⁹ Our ability to identify and defend against these potential attacks is fragmented--to some extent simply because of the breathtaking scope of the threat. It may prove very hard to identify attackers, and the line between criminal activity and state-sponsored attack will be blurred.

This will remain one of the most potentially effective domains for an asymmetric opponent. An attacker will be able to maintain a high degree of deniability, and the potential for damage is unlimited. The nearest analogy is to strategic biological warfare, where an open-ended threat is coupled with a target-rich environment that is only partially protected.

HEMP--The Underestimated Threat

Perhaps the most dangerous and misunderstood form of information warfare attack is the high-altitude electromagnetic pulse (HEMP) threat: a combination of nuclear weapons and information warfare that can challenge the very heart of our operational doctrine and national stability. For this reason, it will be dealt with under this heading, although it has obvious application at other levels of war.

HEMP is a principal byproduct of the explosion of a nuclear weapon detonated above the earth's atmosphere, typically above 30 kilometers. The environments produced by a nuclear explosion can be considered direct (e.g., mechanical) and indirect (e.g., electrical). For an explosion at or near ground level, the direct environments are the most obvious, and are the results of the conversion of the bomb's potential energy into thermal and kinetic forms, resulting in fire and blast damage.⁷⁰ Thus, the obvious physical environments of a nuclear explosion--the fireball, blast, light, and heat--are direct environments. One indirect effect of a nuclear explosion is the electromagnetic pulse that results from the conversion in the earth's atmosphere of gamma-ray energy to radio frequency energy that propagates toward the earth's surface.⁷¹

The higher the altitude of the explosion, the less the direct effects (blast) of the weapon, and the greater the indirect effects (HEMP) will be; an exoatmospheric burst would be optimum. A burst at an altitude of 300 kilometers, for example, would have several important impacts: first, a greater altitude would expand the line-of-sight coverage of the burst (and HEMP is a line-of-sight effect), but would also reduce the HEMP fields over what could be produced at lower altitudes (each weapon has an optimum burst height to produce the largest HEMP fields). At 300 kilometers, a burst centered over central Nebraska could generate HEMP environments over 90 percent of the continental United States.

Space systems are uniquely vulnerable to nuclear radiation outputs and dispersed EMP, which is a derivative environment produced by HEMP, as well as exposure to delayed radiation effects, resulting from potential enhancements to the Van Allen belt following high altitude explosions above 40 to 50 kilometers (a lower burst height will not have as much effect).⁷² A particularly ominous aspect of the danger to space systems is the fact that an exoatmospheric explosion anywhere over the surface of the earth could affect satellites. A nation seeking to threaten satellite systems might choose to detonate the warhead over its own territory, for example, with the goal of "pumping" the Van Allen belt. It has been estimated that in 1995 there were over 40 declared satellites on low earth orbit (LEO) performing "a variety of military, commercial, and scientific missions that would be threatened."⁷³ Ongoing launch programs since then have added large numbers of Teledesic, Orbcomm, and Globalstar communications satellites. All of these systems are potentially vulnerable to trapped radiation belts and dispersed EMP from high-altitude bursts. While it is likely that not all satellites would "go down" as the result of "single event effects," the increase in the total ionizing radiation accumulation at satellite altitudes will dramatically shorten effective service life. As an example, the Hubble space telescope, a satellite that is on LEO, could have its effective service life shortened from 15 years to 22 months as a result of an increased accumulated ionizing dose caused by a 50-kiloton exoatmospheric explosion.⁷⁴

Virtually all electronic systems in the United States today are potentially vulnerable to HEMP, ranging from televisions to mainframe computers, and from telephone systems to aircraft and satellites.⁷⁵ When HEMP enters a system, it can cause a variety of adverse effects. These include transient, resettable, or permanent upset of digital logic circuits and performance degradation or burnout of electronic components. The collected energy itself can cause malfunction or device failure directly; or it can trigger the system's internal power sources in unintended ways, causing damage by the power sources within the system itself.⁷⁶

This applies to many military communications systems as well. Over time, modern electronic systems have become increasingly vulnerable to HEMP as a result of transistorization and the use of solid-state and integrated-circuit technologies, which operate at very low voltages. Of course, the major issue for vulnerability is the level of the HEMP-induced transients that reach the sensitive electronics.

Systems can be protected by creating a barrier between the EMP field (which can produce short circuit currents in the area of 10 kiloamperes on power transmission lines) and the system to be protected. The most conservative approach is the creation of a "Faraday cage," a completely closed and perfectly conducting shell. This metallic shield will provide absolute protection against virtually any conceivable HEMP threat. The problem, of course, is that the protected system is useless, because it has no input or output capability. The current approach to shielding is based on integral shielding with penetration control, which attempts to provide shielding, yet retains penetrations into the protected area that are managed by surge protectors for input power lines, wire mesh or transparent conductive-film coatings for windows where visibility is required, metal honeycomb for ventilation ports, and conducting gaskets for doors and hatches.

There are also new possibilities on the horizon: silicon carbide, for example, used instead of silicon in semiconductors, is tolerant to a much broader range of both temperature and voltage.⁷⁷ Extended systems, such as the integrated electronic banking system across the United States, will always be much harder to protect, since the weakest link in the system will allow entry to other components.

Despite shielding, relatively little of either the commercial or the military world is effectively and verifiably protected. Within the Department of Defense, tactical military communications systems are probably the most vulnerable, followed closely by theater command and control architecture. The threat, of course, extends even farther, to tactical aircraft and, in fact, to any system that uses advanced solid-state electronics to perform basic functions. This encompasses most of the systems in the U.S. military today--from wheeled vehicles to helicopters.⁷⁸

The satellite constellation, both military and commercial, with the exception of certain systems related to the Single Integrated Operation Plan (SIOP), is potentially vulnerable to HEMP. According to one observer, "Quite simply, the use of commercial satellites is now so tightly woven into the fabric of our commercial and military endeavors that the consequences of the loss of these assets is unthinkable, yet such loss is a very real possibility."⁷⁹

What is shielded? The systems related to strategic command and control are protected.⁸⁰ The weapons systems associated with SIOP execution are also presumably protected. Not much else is definitely safe. As a general principle, our strategic command and control is better prepared for the potential effects of EMP than are our tactical forces.⁸¹

While the world of HEMP is little known and even arcane, there is one notable source of serious study and analysis. The Soviet Union embraced HEMP as an integral part of its strategic warfighting concept during the Cold War and devoted a significant part of its strategic order of battle to achieving decisive HEMP effects in a general nuclear war.⁸² It is reasonable to assume that others have studied Soviet analyses.

The statement attributed to Indian General Sundarji about the need to have nuclear weapons when confronting the United States does not go far enough--not only are nuclear weapons needed, but also a delivery system capable of lofting a nuclear weapon to an altitude of 100­300 kilometers in a regional battlespace. The ability to do this will threaten to drive a stake through the very heart of the operational principles that drive U.S. warfighting doctrine. We are now, and will be increasingly in the future, reliant on secure information systems to deploy our forces and to employ them effectively in a theater. HEMP threatens at least to disrupt our ability to do this, and at worst to prevent us from developing the "information synergy" fundamental to Joint Vision 2010 (JV 2010). Allies and coalition forces will probably have lower levels of protection than U.S. forces and a commensurately greater risk.

An exoatmospheric nuclear detonation offers a regional state the ability to apply nuclear weapons in a nonlethal application (a 20-kiloton burst at 150 kilometers altitude will produce no visible radiation, blast, or fire effects on the ground) that will still have profoundly disruptive effects on U.S. space, air, ground, and sea operations. It could change the character of a theater war from that of a Desert Storm to a Verdun, namely, from an information-rich environment to one in which fused intelligence will be local in nature and very hard to pass both laterally and vertically. Most importantly, the use of nuclear weapons in this manner avoids crossing the nuclear Rubicon--a direct attack upon U.S. forces that would bring a clear, unequivocal response. A HEMP attack is a sideways swipe that will force the NCA to think long and hard. Is an exoatmospheric nuclear explosion--in which no U.S. personnel die as a direct result--serious enough to warrant a nuclear response against a Baghdad, Tehran, or Pyongyang? Of course, many personnel will be in grave danger after such an attack, even if no one dies from blast, heat, or radiation. Planes and helicopters may fall from the sky, fire control architecture and tactical radios may not work, and vehicles may not move.

Is this an overstatement of the threat? The use of HEMP will affect adversary as well as friendly systems, and those societies that have moved directly to cell phones as their basic communications architecture may be more vulnerable than societies (including some of our potential theater-level adversaries) with modern fiber-optic cabling. Despite this, as a general principle it is reasonable to say that HEMP effects will tend to have more negative effects on organizations that are reliant upon electronics, and that almost uniquely describes the U.S. approach to warfighting--an approach that will become accentuated further as we move into the 21^st century.

An attack against the U.S. homeland using HEMP remains the most potentially disruptive and dangerous possibility. An effective attack could cause incalculable consequences, seriously retarding if not reversing U.S. capabilities in the information age. The ability to deliver this kind of attack will require the ability to deliver an intercontinental ballistic missile to an altitude of between 100 and 500 kilometers over the center of the North American continent (or alternatively the orbital placement of a satellite). This is hard to do covertly. The "strategic forensics" will be clear and unambiguous, and a regional actor that chose this option would be risking its very national survival. Unlike the thrust of Soviet Cold War scenarios, national decapitation would be impossible to achieve, and the strategic forces of the nation would be largely protected and available for a response.

Even so, a regional state with the capability to deliver such an attack would possess a qualitatively higher order of deterrence than one limited to regional attack. Several regional powers seem to understand this concept clearly and are working feverishly to develop an intercontinental missile capability. This remains a less likely but overwhelmingly dangerous alternative. The "panic element" that would attend even a credible threat to launch such an attack would have to be taken into account by U.S. planners in a crisis.

Alternative Operational Concepts

At the end of the millennium, the United States remains intent on harnessing technology as the engine that drives our vision of warfighting. As recently as November 1999, the Commander of the Army Materiel Command, General John Coburn, posited that "The history of warfare is the history of technology."⁸³ There are many who would disagree with this assertion. Perhaps seduced by our own cultural limitations, we have been slow to recognize that others, either through choice or by necessity, may not follow the same path. A recently released series of interviews on the Chinese book No-Limit Warfare quotes one of its authors, Senior Colonel Qiao Liang, as saying "If we were to try to use high technology to counter U.S. high technology, that would in fact land us in the U.S. trap. We could never catch up to them on that track. So for a poor and weak country to try to use high technology to counter the United States would in fact be like throwing eggs against a rock."⁸⁴

In choosing not to compete directly against the United States technologically, other nations can choose to reject the dialectic that is the "Western Way of War." In the operation of the Hegelian dialectic, thesis competes with antithesis, resulting in synthesis, which subsequently incorporates elements of both competing approaches. This approach tends to produce military organizations that converge in doctrine and hardware, mirroring each other to some degree. This convergence is at the very center of Western military history. As Senior Colonel Qiao Liang argues, potential adversaries may make a conscious attempt to reverse this process and avoid mirroring Western military organizations and approaches to war.⁸⁵ Clearly, some of this rhetoric is the response of a weaker state that must make the best of the hand it has been dealt, and even the most imaginative alternative operational concepts may not prove effective when called upon to operate against our conventional superiority.⁸⁶

A refusal to adopt Western approaches may go well beyond questions of operational convergence and military effectiveness. The most lucrative potential approach could be to seek advantage by operating well outside the moral framework of the traditional Western approach, rejecting what we see as universal norms of behavior. The writings of Ralph Peters (The New Warrior Class) and Charles Dunlap (How We Lost the High-Tech War of 2007) brilliantly highlight these possibilities.⁸⁷ Of course, such approaches bring their own limitations and cultural biases in viewing U.S. society and resolve. In particular, there is a widely held view that U.S. society is preternaturally sensitive to even minor casualties, yet recent evidence indicates this may not be so.⁸⁸

Regional aggressors or rogue states may choose to view their populations as assets to be expended, using what has been called the "operational maneuver of starving women and children."⁸⁹ If innocent civilians are starving, left exposed to the elements, or attacked in any one of a number of ways available to a modern state, their condition will become of intense interest to the theater commander. The regional commander-in-chief (CINC) will have to take their well-being into account in his operational plans and be prepared to allocate scarce assets to care for them. Anyone who asserts that this will not become a competing priority with ongoing military operations is unfamiliar with the power and political sophistication of nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) and the pressures exerted by the "CNN effect."

Asymmetric actors may also choose to disregard the concept of victory and defeat, illustrated in the conversation between an American and a North Vietnamese officer, Colonel Harry Summers and Colonel Tu, in Hanoi on 25 April 1975: "You know you never defeated us in the field," said Summers. "That may be true," replied Tu, "but it is also irrelevant."⁹⁰

Since the end of the Gulf War, Saddam Hussein has attempted to execute just such a strategy, whereby, over time, just remaining in the game against a superpower, regardless of the beating his forces are taking at the hands of Northern Watch, has conferred political credibility in many parts of the world (not least of all, in Iraq).

The Iraqis may understand Clausewitz better than we do: "War, however, is not the action of a living force upon a lifeless mass (total nonresponsiveness would be no war at all), but always the collision of two living forces. The ultimate aim of waging war must be taken as applying to both sides. Once again, there is interaction. So long as I have not overthrown my opponent I am bound to fear he may overthrow me. Thus, I am not in control; he dictates to me as much as I dictate to him."⁹¹

Tactical Employment

While a combination of technological approaches and innovative tactics can be used against U.S. forces, the best counter of all may rest in battlespace selection. If an opponent can force the fight to complex urban, mountain, or jungle terrain, U.S. sensors and weapons accuracy will be degraded, and the potential for U.S. casualties will rise. Choosing the right ground may well prove to be the most significant advantage resting with an adversary, and U.S. forces may not be able to refuse to enter these killing grounds.⁹²

Other supporting tactical asymmetric approaches can include the use of the civilian population as hostages, as human shields, and as weapons with which to overstress U.S. and allied medical systems. All of these factors will tend to reduce the effectiveness of precision engagement systems, clouding the picture of the battlefield, and requiring greater exposure by U.S. forces. If nothing else, they always invite the opportunity for tactical mistakes, which an effective information operations campaign would then turn to great effect. On the other hand, it is important to recognize that positive tactical results may have negative strategic implications. The event itself may be of less importance than how it is presented on the global stage.

Operational Employment

The use of antiaccess concepts can deter, slow, or prevent U.S. forces from entering an AOR. The technologies for antiaccess are not new, but how they are employed and "advertised" will determine effectiveness. They range from high-tech to low-tech, from conventional sea-based mines to shoulder-fired surface-to-air and surface-to-surface missiles (SAMs and SSMs). When combined with unfavorable terrain, and against a backdrop of low to moderate U.S. interest, these approaches may gain powerful advantage. They will tend to be less effective when a vital U.S. national interest is at stake.

Antiaccess measures can be grouped into four broad and overlapping categories: deterring measures, coercing measures, antideployment measures, and anti-invasion measures. They can be either conventional or WMD. While the specifics of potential WMD antiaccess measures have been covered in detail earlier in this chapter, they will also be briefly discussed in this section, since they represent the "high end" of access denial.

Deterring measures are those actions and systems that are designed to prevent the United States or our allies from deploying forces or other forms of politico-military assistance to a region in a crisis. This would be accomplished through a display of force or diplomacy that makes the cost of the proposed action appear too high, when considered against the level of U.S. national interest at stake. These normally are pre-hostility measures, although deterrence can operate even after a conflict begins.

The display of military hardware and the calibrated use of rhetoric about potential employment would be deterring measures. The backdrop to this would, of course, be the adversary's calculations about the level of U.S. national interest at stake, balanced against the contemplated action. The availability of WMD, and more particularly, the demonstrated ability to deliver a WMD attack against the continental United States, would probably be the highest expression of this form of deterrence.⁹³

Coercing measures combine military threat and diplomacy and are aimed at regional states to cause them to refuse or limit U.S. basing or deployment. This is the implicit or explicit capability and resolve to strike at nations within a region that would be necessary to support the deployment of U.S. and allied forces. The highest expression of this form of coercion would be the possession of ballistic missiles that could reach population centers of the countries in question, coupled with WMD. Less obvious but equally effective operational capabilities would include a credible SOF threat for employment of WMD, surface-to-surface cruise missile threats, the ability to interdict economically critical lines of communication, and the potential to incite destabilization operations against the regime in power. There are many more. In fact, virtually any weapon or technique discussed below can be employed to this end. The ultimate intent is to drive a wedge between regional and extra-regional states (presumably the United States with its allies) by demonstrating that the cost of siding with America will be too high.

Antideployment measures are the military weapons systems and the tactics, techniques, and procedures, both active and passive, that could be employed to prevent or slow the deployment of U.S. and allied forces by air or sea to friendly ports and debarkation airfields in an AOR. They are also the measures undertaken against forward-deployed U.S. Navy and allied warships to deny or limit their freedom of movement and action in contiguous ocean areas.

Anti-invasion measures are the military weapons systems and the tactics, techniques, and procedures, both active and passive, employed to deny U.S. and allied forces the capability to execute sea control, amphibious, airborne, air assault, air superiority, and air-to-ground missions within an AOR. Many of them are the same systems and tactics that are used for antideployment, but there are some significant differences. The principal difference is that the state in question is now defending its own borders and the area it may have invaded, instead of projecting power into neighboring states (although this will surely continue).

Understanding the distinction about the level of U.S. national interest at stake is fundamental to analyzing antiaccess approaches. If the United States seeks access and a vital national interest is at stake, then it will be difficult to stop us. The loss of a carrier or a number of B­2 bombers, for example, might be acceptable--if the objective is important enough. Conversely, the threat of losing a carrier or a large number of manned aircraft may be enough to deter the United States in situations where our interest is very low. There is also a hidden and dangerous dynamic at work for the state that makes these calculations--a shocking and successful attack on a U.S. asset may well prove to be the catalyst that drives U.S. interest to a far greater level than it might have otherwise been. These calculations of deterrence will need to be very carefully undertaken by potential foes, and the risks of getting it wrong are substantial.

Strategic employment on the tactical level that is well beyond accepted norms (such as the state-sanctioned raping of captive U.S. servicewomen depicted by Charles Dunlap in How We Lost the High Tech War of 2007) can have direct strategic application on either softening or hardening U.S. national will. Some defense thinkers take the position that such potential future atrocities would have a softening effect.⁹⁴ This is not an uncontested hypothesis; Americans both in and out of uniform may prove resilient in the face of warrior tactics.⁹⁵

The possibilities inherent in alternative operational concepts cross the levels of war and are tightly wound into a cycle of action-reaction with potential U.S. counters. For this reason, it is necessary to discuss some United States concepts and operational constructs while examining this form of asymmetry. Two arguments active among U.S. defense thinkers today must be considered. The first is concerned with the types of forces and the operational approaches that the United States should adopt in the face of the growing WMD and access-denial threat. The second deals with how we should deal with the vast areas of urban complex terrain that are expanding to cover much of the populated world. This terrain presents a dramatically more difficult operational environment for U.S. forces, who have long avoided fighting in cities when they have had the choice.

The WMD and antiaccess argument: This argument asserts that the lethality of theater ballistic missiles, armed with various WMD, will make it precarious to deploy ground, naval, and tactical air forces to a theater in a crisis.⁹⁶ The potential gain we will enjoy from their deployment will be offset by the vulnerability that attends their presence in the theater within range of enemy weapons. The alternative? More cruise missiles and strategic bombers deploying directly from the continental United States or other distant regional bases and armed with precision weapons and other standoff munitions.

This argument has some attractions, to be sure. If our ground, naval, and tactical air forces aren't there, then they can't be attacked. The problem with this approach is that it ignores the shaping component of the national military strategy by drawing down on forward-deployed forces. We deploy forces forward on permanent and rotational bases in order to demonstrate interest, build closer ties to friends, and demonstrate resolve to potential enemies. This approach would largely ignore this vital component of current U.S. strategy, and substitute for it something more akin to "Fortress America." This would be a "New Look" for the early decades of the 21^st century that would, in fact, share many of the disadvantages of the Eisenhower administration's strategy. The most notable similarity is a lack of flexibility and a very limited capability to apply

discriminate measures tailored to specific situations below the threshold of employment of WMD. This is an example of worst-case planning driving all other scenarios, even those that are far more likely to occur. It also minimizes the large number of actions that can be taken by forward-deployed forces both in peacetime (as part of a CINC's Theater Engagement Plan, or TEP) and in crisis.

The avoidance of cities: It is vital to recognize that there are places--the "dark and bloody ground"--where U.S. forces will need to be able to fight and prevail. It will not always be possible to engineer scientific and technical solutions to all of these problems. There is a trend, based on our love affair with technology, that may lead us to seek to avoid going into environments--particularly urban complex terrain--that will tend to degrade and minimize our maneuver, firepower, and information advantage. This could lead us to develop powerful yet brittle forces that cannot prevail across the potential spectrum of engagement. At a minimum, it would invite obvious asymmetrical responses to an overwhelming yet narrowly based conventional advantage.

It has been argued that we should surround complex terrain, and then let cities "wither on the vine."⁹⁷ Unfortunately, we will not always have the luxury of doing this. As the bank robber said when questioned about why he robbed banks: "Well, that's where the money is." Cities are the centerpiece of virtually all cultures, both east and west, and the growing urbanization of the world means that we must learn to master the skills required to prevail in this environment.⁹⁸ This is not a refutation of technology, for the answer to the problem will require the most sophisticated and capable technology available--but it is ultimately a problem of human will and skill. Our potential opponents see this; we should not ignore it.

The Army, Marine Corps, and Air Force are studying the problem of urban warfighting: the Army through a series of Advanced Concept Technology Demonstrations (ACTDs) and the Marine Corps through its Urban Warrior series of experiments. The Air Force is studying the role of airpower in the urban environment.⁹⁹ While none of the series of experiments or research to date has yielded a breakthrough idea for success in the dangerous urban environment, many small and very cheap incremental improvements have been identified.

The need to master the urban environment may be more important in small-scale contingencies (SSCs) than in major theater wars. In a major theater war, the theater commander may have the luxury of being able to maneuver away from urban terrain while achieving his objectives. In an SSC, many of the most likely scenarios for the employment of U.S. forces will require entry into urban complex terrain--we will not be able to pick and choose where evacuations, embassy reinforcements, and humanitarian operations will occur.

What does this mean? As we design the forces that will execute the national military strategy, we need to avoid creating forces effective against a band of scenarios too narrow and optimistic, overly reliant on technology.¹⁰⁰ In some future war we do not want to find ourselves in the position RAF Bomber Command found itself in 1942: unable to effectively attack critical targets, the RAF attacked the city of Lubeck because it would burn well, rather than for any significant operational consideration.¹⁰¹

Terrorism

Terrorism is included in this matrix of threats even though it is an uncomfortable fit. Terror can be a means chosen by a state actor, and in that interpretation, it fits more or less into all of the previous categories. For this categorization, though, the intent is to highlight the danger of nonstate sponsored groups that operate outside the framework of international relations. Their financial and scientific base will be narrower than state-sponsored organizations, but this is compensated for by their readiness to select more radical techniques that would be suicidal for groups linked to states.

As has already been highlighted, the rise of the United States as the global lightning rod for everything that happens in the world today tends to attract would-be attackers. The global reach of American culture only reinforces this. When coupled with the growing availability of weapons that promise massive and visible results with minimal outlay, the potential for nonstate actors to invoke weapons formerly reserved for states is clear and growing. The Cold War formula of "least likely = most dangerous" is fast eroding, and many unsavory scenarios can be imagined that are all reasonably likely to occur.

The Who: Regional, Rogue, and Nonstate Actors

A peer competitor is the least likely opponent to emerge within the time frame of this analysis (through 2010). For this reason, it is not included here. A regional adversary¹⁰² is possible, and even likely. The representative goal of such a regional opponent would be the pursuit of regional hegemony. The United States would most likely face this adversary in a coalition of some form. An opponent of this nature could reasonably expect some limited international support, which would tend to narrow asymmetric options--at least from the more egregious WMD and warrior alternatives.

Few if any inhibitions will act to brake the asymmetric strategies selected by a rogue state. Such a state can expect to act with little or no international support, so there is less incentive to avoid extremes of behavior. At the same time, such a state may gamble that the only way to gain international support will be by self-inflicted attacks, coupled with an aggressive strategic IW campaign that would attempt to pin the blame for such an attack on the United States and its allies.

The nonstate adversary spans a very broad variety of threats, ranging from the most plausible (handbills nailed to telephone poles) to extreme (anthrax releases in subway stations). For this reason, generalizations about these organizations are difficult.

In examining potential adversaries, the more ties a state has to the existing international community, the less likely such a state will be to select an asymmetric strategy that would place it beyond the pale of the society of nations. This can be restated in another manner: the more a state has to lose, the less likely it will be to adopt a strategy that could produce unlimited liability if unsuccessful.

The When: Likelihood During Phases of a Crisis

Table 5 presents the relative likelihood of different potential opponents choosing to employ asymmetric approaches as a function of time. The opponents--regional, rogue state, and nonstate actors--are arrayed down the left-hand column. Within each row are arrayed the most likely forms of asymmetric alternatives that have already been discussed (nuclear, chemical, biological, information operations, operational concepts, and terrorism). The five columns represent the potential phases of a crisis. Each phase would present distinctly different options and alternatives for an adversary to consider the use of an asymmetric approach. Peace represents a noncrisis state of international relations in which there is no particular focus on a state or region. A crisis represents a heightened state of diplomatic focus on a particular state or region, including potential alliance or coalition diplomatic mobilization. Deployment is the movement of U.S. and allied forces to an AOR. Employment is the execution of combat operations in an AOR. The deployment and employment phases may overlap. Termination represents the endgame of a major theater war or small-scale contingency; for purposes of this analysis it is assumed that the termination is occurring on terms favorable to the United States and its allies.

Several conclusions emerge from this table. First, WMD are "bookend" options. They are more likely to be useful either as coercing measures or as actual weapons at the very beginning or the endgame of a conflict. At the beginning, even the threat of their employment may slow or stop U.S. deployment into a theater. A lesser-included outcome of this will be the political fragmentation that can occur among a coalition structure when faced with such a scenario, particularly when there are widely disparate levels of NBC preparedness among allies. At the end of a major theater war or small-scale contingency that is going badly for the aggressor, the temptation will be to "use 'em or lose 'em," and this will be more pronounced if there is a chance of regime replacement. The more decoupled a state is from the international community, the more pronounced the possibility of a blind and potentially disastrous use of WMD.

Second, it is very hard to draw conclusions about how a nonstate actor might choose to time the employment of asymmetric alternatives, but the activities of a regional actor or a rogue state might increase the opportunities for a nonstate actor to conduct operations. It is conceivable that such an operation might be intended to have a "false flag" effect that would prompt the United States to take action sought by the nonstate actor against a regional opponent.

Third, the specifics of the situation will always carry more weight than any generalized theory. In particular, this applies to the category of concept-based asymmetric approaches. Terrain, cultural considerations, and the level of national interest at stake are ultimately of more importance than anything else in determining these relationships.

Conclusions

Two principal conclusions can be drawn from this examination of the what-who-when of asymmetry. First, a number of potential adversaries are exploring strategies, the most dangerous and threatening of which are usually based on the acquisition of WMD, that may narrow certain gaps with the United States, but at a potential grave overall cost to their own states. These strategies also tend to produce unbalanced militaries that cannot function effectively in a traditional manner, as they focus on the asymmetric approaches that seem to offer the most promise of fast results against the United States and its allies.

The second observation deals with the relative importance of weapons of mass destruction within the typology of asymmetry. It is inviting to reduce the asymmetric argument to a discussion of the strategic WMD threat to the United States homeland. This is a dangerous oversimplification, because, while it captures the most destructive and frightening end of the asymmetric spectrum, it also ignores a number of far more likely applications of asymmetry. Weapons--regardless of the type--are themselves of less importance than the effect they create in the mind of the attacked. There is a powerful congruence, to be sure, between WMD and immediate strategic effect, but there are also other, less dangerous ways to achieve similar effects. We should not limit our thinking about how to defend against asymmetric approaches to too narrow a band that encompasses only the most dangerous.

Table of Contents  |  Chapter 3  |  Endnotes