Network operations

By the end of the 1980s, an operational renaissance was apparent in Europe. Twentieth-century mass, lineal combined arms warfare had, at the intellectual level at least, been displaced by a ‘manoeuvrist’ approach, prioritising operations which sought to fight deep, simultaneous battle in the enemy's rear. In the 1990s, the American forces, already oriented to a manoeuvrist approach, underwent a so-called ‘revolution in military affairs’ (RMA) promoted primarily by Admiral William Owens and Andrew Marshall, director of the Department of Defense, Office of Net Assessment (Metz 1997: 185; Owens 2002). The term RMA was enshrined in the 1997 Quadrennial Defence Review. Despite the very significant criticisms of the concept of the RMA (Biddle 2002; Farrell and Terriff 2002; Freedman 1998; Gray 1997), scholars have broadly accepted that in the 1990s fundamental military reformation was evident in the United States. This transformation is generally conceived to consist of three elements: intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance technology (ISR): command, control, communication, computers and interoperability (C4I); and precision-guided munitions (PGMs) (Gray 1997: 14; Latham 2002). Through new ISR technology, the US armed forces aspired to gathering near perfect and immediate situational awareness of the battle space throughout its depth. The development of C4I capabilities then allowed commanders to co-ordinate their forces across time and space. Above all, the new C4I capabilities allowed US forces to disperse across wide areas, converging on designated points. Finally, by the 1990s, America had developed PGMs to a high degree.

ISAF IX

Rapid reaction corps headquarters constitute an important part of the new ‘milieu of operational innovation’. However, in order to demonstrate how this milieu operates and how these headquarters are in fact innovating, it is necessary to examine them in action. It is not easy to do this comprehensively. The headquarters are geographically dispersed, conducting exercises and operations at different times and places, to which it is not always easy to gain access, especially as a foreign national. Borders have become porous in Europe but they still operate and, especially in the military sphere, issues of state sovereignty can be sensitive. Consequently, in order to provide a detailed picture of operational art in practice, it has been necessary to focus on one rapid reaction corps in action: the ARRC.

In 2006, ARRC took over command of the International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) Headquarters in Kabul. ISAF was originally established in 2002 primarily on peace support missions in the north and east of the country, eventually becoming a NATO command in 2003. As part of NATO's strategic plan, the south and east of the country, originally under United States' command as part of their Operation Enduring Freedom, came under unified ISAF control between July and October 2006. ARRC was tasked to form the core of the new ISAF headquarters and to administer the transition to full NATO responsibility for Afghanistan.

Afghanistan

On 18 August 2008, a company of French paratroopers, recently deployed to Afghanistan by President Sarkozy, were patrolling in the Sorobi district some 40 miles east of Kabul when they were caught in an ambush by insurgent forces. The ambush developed into a running battle which lasted 36 hours and was eventually terminated after US air strikes. Ten French soldiers were killed and a further twenty-one were wounded in the ambush and the fighting which followed. Disturbingly, four of those killed seemed to have been captured and executed. It was the single worst loss of French forces for twenty-five years, and the greatest loss of life for NATO forces in Afghanistan caused by enemy action since 2005. On 21 August, the soldiers, all awarded the Légion d'Honneur, were buried in France with full military honours. It was of immense significance that the funeral service was not only attended by (a visibly shaken) President Nicolas Sarkozy and other senior ministers, but took place at Les Invalides in Paris, the site of Napoleon's tomb. In this way, the paratroopers' deaths were linked with a grand tradition of national sacrifice and honour. After the ceremony, Sarkozy affirmed France's commitment to Afghanistan: ‘We don't have the right to lose over there, we cannot renounce our values.’ A month later, Paris Match published an interview with the insurgents responsible for the attack.

Europe's new wars

Since the 1990s, scholars have begun to analyse the appearance of new kinds of conflict and its implications for the armed forces. Among the more prominent of these contributions was Mary Kaldor's concept of ‘new wars’ (1999) which, she claimed, had ‘to be understood in the context of the process known as globalization’ (1999: 3). The subversion of state authority through new global economic flows has differentially advantaged and disadvantaged certain groups, precipitating friction, hostility and ultimately conflict. Decisively, ‘new wars arise in the context of the erosion of the autonomy of the state and in some extreme cases the disintegration of the state’ (Kaldor 1999: 4). The concept of identity politics is central to Kaldor's concept of the new war, and she distinguishes between the identities around which modern conflict was organised and the new identities which fuel postmodern war. ‘Earlier identities were linked either to a notion of state interest or to some forward-looking project – ideas about how society should be organized’ (1999: 6). Modern wars were fought between state armed forces on the basis of national identity and affiliation. The population was mobilised by a unifying state. By contrast, ‘the process of globalization, it can be argued, has begun to break-up these vertically organized cultures’ (1999: 71). In the light of this fragmentation, ‘identity politics’ involve ‘movements which mobilize around ethnic, racial or religious identity for the purpose of claiming state power’ (1999: 76).

Introduction

Europe's operational network, in which the rapid reaction corps headquarters hold a decisive position, represents a concentration of military capability and authority. However, the fact of concentration does not reveal precisely what role these new headquarters perform. As described in Chapter 4, the operational level refers to the co-ordination of tactical military activity into a coherent campaign in order to achieve strategic goals. The operational level refers, then, to the planning and command of these campaigns and operational art refers to the skilful design and organisation of military activity. Rapid reaction corps were created in order to address the new strategic pressures which NATO – and Europe – faced in the post-Cold War period. They were specifically designed to plan and command the new requirement to deploy troops at short notice to areas potentially outside those of traditional NATO responsibility. Although designated as tactical level commands, rapid reaction corps headquarters, therefore, represented an operational approach. They were specifically developed to plan operations, selecting how, when and where to deploy forces in line with strategic goals. Europe's operational network and, especially, its rapid reaction corps represent the institutional embodiment of operational art. It is necessary to explore the precise nature of this practice.

The problem of cohesion

Selection processes, insignia and collective memories are all central to the military effectiveness of Europe's empowered brigades; they are signifiers of elitism. Yet elitism alone seems unable to explain the level of performance which is typical of effective military organisations. It does not, in itself, constitute military competence, it merely enables operational performance, which encourages greater effort from members of these organisations and stimulates higher levels of unity. The empowered brigades are not effective organisations simply because they are symbolically united or because they feel themselves to be elect. Rather, they are able to conduct operations which other forces, especially Europe's old conscript armies, could not perform. They have been successful in performing military operations. The question is how are relatively large-scale organisations, such as these empowered brigades or the small sub-units of which they comprise, able to perform the new missions on which they are being deployed. In this, the performance of these brigades connects with long-standing concerns in military sociology about the issue of cohesion.

Military institutions depend on a level of social cohesion which is matched in few other social groups. In combat, the armed forces are able to sustain themselves only as long as individual members commit themselves to collective goals even at the cost of personal injury or death. The point about the armed forces, which perhaps differentiates it from civilian spheres, is that cohesion in and of itself is critical to this prosecution of violence.

Introduction

The appearance of a transnational operational complex is both a notable and novel development for Europe's armed forces. This new network of military expertise is likely to be profoundly significant for Europe's military capabilities in the future. Yet operational headquarters in themselves serve only a co-ordinating and directing function. However sophisticated their plans and however brilliant their commanders and staff, they require tactical forces to prosecute their campaigns. Ardant Du Picq noted the priority in his famous treatise on combat in the nineteenth century:

European military capability and effectiveness are, therefore, not solely determined by operational level developments. Operational developments are a necessary but not sufficient dimension of military reform. The success of Europe's military operations relies on the troops actually conducting operations in theatres from the Balkans to Afghanistan. Transformation at the ‘tactical’ level among those forces that actually engage with hostile and friendly populations is indispensable. The development of these military forces is central to any account of European military development.

Overview

Reflecting the decline of state power, the armed forces of Europe diminished in size in the course of the late twentieth century. From their apogee during the Second World War, the armed forces have steadily shrunk until they are smaller now than they have been since before the Napoleonic Wars and the levée en masse. With the massive increase in Europe's population in the intervening two centuries, Europe's armed forces are minuscule in comparison with their historic forebears. It is possible that increased strategic pressure within Europe and Afghanistan may reverse this trend, but it is unlikely. Budgetary pressures do not suggest that any augmentation of military force will be possible; politically it is unlikely that European states will be willing or able to increase defence budgets. However, the armed forces of Europe today are not simply smaller, they are fundamentally different from their mass forebears of the twentieth century. Today's forces are smaller in number than the mass forces, but in many ways they are more potent. The fundamental dynamic of European military transformation today is not so much down-sizing as concentration.

The trajectory of European military transformation is becoming clear. Europe's militaries are much smaller than their twentieth-century predecessors, but in many ways they are more potent. By concentrating resources on elite forces, they are more mobile tactically and strategically than NATO's armoured divisions. They can deploy globally but, crucially, once deployed, they are able to manoeuvre around a dispersed and relatively empty battlefield.

Military reformation is, predictably, taking place primarily within the framework of European nation-states. States have directed and funded military reforms and sanctioned increased transnational interaction between their forces on operations. However, although European states remain substantially autonomous in the realm of defence policy, military reforms within each nation have not occurred in isolation. On the contrary, European military transformation has been facilitated by wider institutional frameworks which transcend the state. In particular, national military development has occurred within existing international structures and, above all, NATO and the EU. States have not autonomously developed their own military reform strategies. On the contrary, they have interacted through NATO and the EU and sought actively to converge with each other on the basis of cues from other member states and alliance partners. Britain and France have conducted a number of autonomous missions since the end of the Cold War but, for the most part, European nations have conducted operations as part of a coalition. In order to gain an accurate perspective on European military development, the relative importance of NATO and the EU for European military development must be ascertained. It is necessary to establish where the key international influence for military reform lies and which of these international organisations has been primary in encouraging European militaries to converge on a similar expeditionary form for global stabilisation missions.

I was born too late to remember where I was on the day JFK was killed in Dealey Plaza. Of course, there are other random more or less historic moments which remain unforgettable: the shooting of John Lennon; the Argentine invasion of the Falklands; Thatcher's resignation; the start of the Gulf War; Eric Cantona's kung-fu kick; Princess Diana's death. Yet none remotely approaches the intensity of 11 September 2001. I was working in my office at Exeter and, since it was a warm, late summer afternoon, I rang a friend to ask whether he wanted to come out climbing on Dartmoor that evening. He was incredulous that I had not heard the news, ‘It's all going off; you need to get yourself to a television set now.’ I checked the Internet and was startled by the images of the Twin Towers. Later that evening I did go out to Dartmoor, bouldering on the harsh granite of Saddle Tor. The evening was limpid with long views over the moor to the west and out east over the shining sea; sky larks sang above. There I met some other friends who were also out climbing. ‘It is a beautiful evening,’ I said as we talked in the car park. ‘Except if you are in New York,’ replied one of the climbers. In that tranquillity, the turmoil in Manhattan was quite unimaginable. It was inconceivable to think that 3,000 people had just died in a deliberate attack.