Introduction

The importance of competent headquarters and coherent planning to military success is demonstrated most clearly by the numerous historical occasions when command has failed. Notoriously, during the Franco-Prussian War, although the forces were broadly matched in terms of weaponry and numbers, the French Army suffered a series of catastrophic defeats culminating in Sedan on 1 September 1870. While the Prussian Army was co-ordinated by a potent and capable staff system, which disseminated clear and actionable orders to its corps, the French headquarters, under the now calumniated General MacMahon, was paralysed. Only hours before the final collapse, MacMahon sent out orders – unopened by at least one of his corps – which recommended that his forces should rest on the following day, even though the Prussian Army was at that very time encircling Sedan (Howard 2000: 206). The fractured corps of the French Army were quickly surrounded and destroyed. The Franco-Prussian War demonstrated the critical requirement of military forces: effective headquarters able to plan and command operations.

One of the most decisive changes to the armed forces in Europe since the end of the Cold War has occurred at the level of headquarters. In contrast to the Cold War, military headquarters and their commanders must now deploy and sustain forces, often at short notice, on complex global emergencies. They differ profoundly from military command during the Cold War, although, as we shall see, important operational continuities exist.

Introduction

Since the end of the Cold War, empowered brigades have become a central element in defence postures across Europe. The rise of these elite forces seems almost self-evident. In the face of new wars around the world, Europe's armed forces need troops that can deploy rapidly to potentially hostile situations. The requirement for rapid deployment disadvantages heavy armoured forces that can be transported by plane at best only with great difficulty. Light forces are easier to deploy and sustain. In many of the stabilisation situations which European forces have encountered, heavy armour has been unnecessary. Consequently, light forces have offered European governments the opportunity to insert a robust early presence in crisis regions and, consequently, their steady advance in military importance is explicable in rational operational terms. The advantages of light forces in the current era seem clear. Moreover, with strained public finances elite forces seem to represent the best value for money; they provide the most capabilities, especially the critical ones of deployability in an era of global operations for the least investment. For instance, New Labour's Strategic Defence Review in 1997 stated: ‘In the Cold War, we needed large forces at home and on the Continent to defend against the constant threat of massive attack. Now, the need is increasingly to help prevent or shape crises further away and, if necessary, to deploy military forces rapidly before they get out of hand’ (Directorate of Defence Policy 1998a: 21).

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).