**Lessons of Post-Cold War Conflict:**

Middle Eastern Lessons and Perspectives

**Anthony H. Cordesman**

**Arleigh A. Burke Chair in Strategy**

**Center for Strategic and International Studies**

**The views expressed in this and other papers associated with the NIC
2020 project**

**are those of individual participants. They are posted for discussion
purposes**

**only and do not represent the views of the US Government.**

**Revised May 27, 2004**

**[Executive Summary]{.underline}**

The United States is so focused on the conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan
that it sometimes forgets that these two conflicts do not necessarily
dominate how either regional military forces or the various extremists
hostile to the US and the West perceive the lessons of recent conflict.
There is an equal tendency to forget the past and the influence of the
military experience of regional wars and the experiences of other
countries such as Israel. Far too often, the "Post Cold War" era is
perceived as a US-centric *revolution* in military affairs when it is
actually a much broader-based *evolution* in military affairs.

This scarcely means, however, that the Afghan and Iraq Wars are not
providing lessons to America's current and potential enemies. Such
lessons include:

1)  **Lessons learned by hostile states affecting their regular military
    or**

> **"conventional forces."** The Middle East and North Africa is a
> region of some 22-24 countries, almost all of which have some mix of
> serious internal security problems, ongoing conflicts and/or serious
> external threats. They all pay close attention to wars in their
> region, as well as to military developments in the US and the level of
> US success and failure in the Gulf War, Afghanistan, and Iraq. The
> Arab-Israeli conflict is another major force shaping regional
> perceptions, and Arab forces and Iran pay close attention to both how
> Israel fights and shapes its forces and how it uses US weapons and
> technology.
>
> With the exception of Egypt, Israel, and Jordan, however, the ability
> to study such lessons is rarely the ability to act upon them with any
> great effectiveness. There is a considerable debate over the reasons
> why most regional countries are slow to react and make effective use
> of new technology and tactics. There is no debate over the fact that
> changes in tactics and technology are rarely balanced or efficient,
> and the end result is typically erratic and unpredictable.
>
> Middle Eastern states face steadily growing pressures on their
> military budgets because of limited economic development, population
> growth, and a youth explosion that demands services and jobs. While it
> is not readily apparent, the total military spending of Middle Eastern
> and North Africa states dropped from \$96.3 billion in 1985 to \$60.5
> billion in current US dollars in 2001 and \$\$57.9 billion in 2002.
> During this same period, total active military personnel dropped from
> 3.3 million to 2.4 million. Some countries -- such as Egypt, Israel,
> and the UAE -- have the aid or wealth to continue to recapitalize
> their present force structure. In broad terms, however, spending on
> arms imports has changed radically and few countries can afford to
> make radical increases in their investments in advanced weapons and
> technology except in the face of the most urgent threat.
>
> The states most likely to be hostile to the US suffer from a number of
> serious problems in force modernization that other MENA countries do
> not. They have lost the Soviet Union as a source of technology and
> cheap or free arms. They have often been subject to sanctions or
> political limits to their purchases of arms, they have mismanaged
> their economies and have limited resources, and they have often been
> slow adopters of new tactics and technology. At the same time, they
> have maintained far larger force structures than they can afford to
> maintain, modernize, train, and sustain. The following data on arms
> transfers illustrate this point, and it is striking that two
> traditional threats -- Iraq and Libya -- are no longer hostile in the
> past sense of the term.
>
> The remaining threat countries -- Iran and Syria -- differ sharply in
> their response to these realities. It is clear that Iran has done a
> better job of learning from the recent US, British, and Israeli
> experience. Its military literature focuses much more clearly on the
> lessons to be learned from such experience, and includes Russian and
> Chinese analysis as well as Western analysis. Iran clearly understands
> its vulnerability to the kind of attack the US led in Iraq and
> Afghanistan and that it cannot compete at the conventional level.
>
> The end result is that Iran has selectively purchased systems tailored
> more to asymmetric warfare than direct conventional conflict, slowly
> modernized its armor, and bought limited "fixes" of items like
> electronics, precision guided and advanced weapons, and RPVs. It has
> also increased its passive defense measures like shelters,
> concealment, and dispersal. These are all steps Iran began as early as
> the third year of the Iran-Iraq War, however, and the lessons of
> recent wars seem to have largely changed the focus of such efforts
> rather than their character.
>
> Syria's military modernization has faced much more severe financial
> pressures than Iran's -- partly because Syria is only a minor oil
> exporter and partly because of its unpaid debt for past arms to the
> FSU. The Syrian armed forces also seem more rigid and less adaptive
> than those of Iran, and more focused on traditional areas of force
> improvement like tanks and anti-armored weapons, more advanced
> surface-to-air missiles, and maintaining force size and mass.

2)  **Lessons learned by hostile states or movements regarding
    asymmetric warfare.** The most important single lesson that both
    hostile and non-hostile Middle Eastern states have learned from the
    US performance in Afghanistan and Iraq -- and from the overall
    pattern of US involvement in Post Cold War conflict -- is to avoid
    conventional conflict with the US. This, however, is a lesson that
    pre dates the end of the Cold War. Iran had every reason to learn
    from its "tanker war" with the US and Britain in 1987-1988, and
    every country had reason to learn from the Gulf War. Arguably, it is
    also a lesson every regional state had reason to learn about US
    capabilities for war by watching Israel's performance in 1967, 1973,
    and 1982. In addition, the lessons of "precision," "speed,"
    synchronicity," "maneuvering" and all of the other buzzwords of the
    revolution in military affairs, may be reinforced by advances in
    IS&R capabilities, jointness, and netcentric warfare. However, they
    are scarcely new.

> Even before the Cold War was over, both hostile states and movements
> learned to detect US and Western vulnerabilities to asymmetric warfare
> and studied them long before the Afghan conflict. These
> vulnerabilities include: sudden or surprise attack; saturation and the
> use of mass to create a defensive or deterrent morass; casualties;
> inflicting casualties and collateral damage; low-intensity combat;
> hostage taking and terrorism; urban and built-up area warfare;
> extended conflict and occupation warfare. They also include exploiting
> the threat or actual use of weapons of mass destruction; proxy warfare
> and false flags; HUMINT, area expertise, and language skills; and
> political, ideological, and psychological warfare. While most of the
> aforementioned vulnerabilities are not new, Post Cold War struggles
> like the Afghan and Iraq conflicts have made hostile and potentially
> hostile states focus even more seriously on such vulnerabilities.

3)  **Lessons learned by Islamist extremist and other hostile
    movements.** A key lesson hostile movements have learned is to
    mutate, disperse, and fragment. The current debate over whether Al
    Qaeda still exercises central control or has "franchised" other
    movements using its name is largely irrelevant. It has done both in
    the past and it is almost certainly doing so now. Moreover, Al Qaeda
    and its affiliates are such a clear and present danger that it is
    easy to forget that Salafi and other violent Islamist movements
    exist and they too will mutate and evolve long after the present
    cells and organizations are broken up.

> Islamist extremist and other hostile movements have learned from Post
> Cold War conflicts there are many cases where they have simply adapted
> old tactics to fighting with the US and its allies. Furthermore, such
> movements have often learned more from their experience in exploiting
> US weaknesses than from the lessons imposed by US strengths.
>
> There are numerous case examples of political, psychological, and
> information warfare lessons that Islamist extremist and other hostile
> movements. These include: co-opt the middle and create links to more
> moderate and popular causes; use Arab satellite television as well as
> traditional media; maintain a strategy of attrition but strike hard
> according to a calendar of turning points and/or at targets with high
> political, social, and economic impact; and push "hot buttons." They
> also include limited actions that provoke disproportionate fear and
> "terror" force the US and its allies into costly, drastic, and
> sometimes provocative responses; use Americans as proxies; attack UN,
> NGO, Embassies, and Aid and foreign business operations; "Horror"
> attacks, atrocities, and alienation: keep "failed states" failed;
> confuse the identity of the attacker; exploit conspiracy theories; and
> to shelter in Mosques, Shrines, high value targets, and targets with
> high cultural impact; exploit, exaggerate, and falsify US attacks that
> cause civilian casualties and collateral damage, friendly fire against
> local allies, and incidents where the US can be blamed for being
> anti-Arab and anti-Islam.

4)  **Lessons learned regarding proliferation.** Ever since the Gulf
    War, it has been clear that local powers and movements perceive
    weapons of mass destruction as a potential counter to US
    conventional capabilities and a way of striking decisively at the
    US. This "lesson," however, needs to be kept in perspective. The
    race to acquire weapons of mass destruction in the region dates back
    to the 1950s. It has been constantly kept to the fore by Israel's
    undeclared deterrent, and was reinforced both by Iraq's behavior
    during the Iran-Iraq War, and UNSCOM's discoveries after the Gulf
    War.

> The fact that Al Qaeda was found to have conducted extensive studies
> of how to acquire weapons of mass destruction in Afghanistan is an
> important warning; so too are their efforts to attack Jordan in March
> 2004 with chemical weapons, the Ricin discoveries in the UK, and the
> knowledge that designs for reasonably sophisticated devices are
> available from commercial publishers and on the internet. The threat
> of terrorists using such weapons in attacks is clearly present and
> growing. Hostile movements are also aware that the US ability to track
> the source of covert attacks is limited. The failure to find the
> culprit responsible for the Anthrax attacks on the Capital makes this
> all to clear.

[]{.mark}

In short, the US has taught the region both military lessons by its
superior tactical performance in the conventional warfare, and a far
less advantageous set of lessons in regard to its capabilities for other
forms of conflict. It has shown that it does not fully understand the
extent to which it is involved in a broad political, psychological, and
ideology conflict in the region. It has shown that it is inept in
political, psychological, and information warfare, and self-deluding and
ethnocentric in evaluating its own performance. It has shown that its
advantages in defeating conventional forces do not extend to dispersed
asymmetric warfare, and that it is currently vulnerable to strategic
overstretch in trying to carry out "Phase IV" and stability operations
in even one major contingency.

The US cannot ignore regional opponents -- whether states or movements
-- who learn from current conflicts, and then attempt to "mirror image"
its military strengths. They can still kill, and sometimes quite
effectively. Such regional opponents, however, cannot win. The US,
however, really does need to worry about opponents who learn from the
whole mix of regional conflicts -- including political and ideological
struggles -- and then attempt to exploit America's very real combination
of political and military weaknesses.

US military victories in political, ideological, and psychological
conflicts can only be tactical at best. Unless the US comes to
understand that it is fighting a region-wide political, ideological, and
psychological conflict, and adapts to fight this struggle on a
continuing and much more realistic basis, it risks winning military
engagements and losing the real battle. Unless the US makes stability
and nation building a goal and course of action from the first day of
planning through combat to a true peace, its so-called revolution in
military affairs will be a tactical triumph and a grand strategic
failure.

**[The Sources of Military and Strategic Lessons in the Middle
East]{.underline}**

The US is so focused on the conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan that it
sometimes forgets that these two conflicts do not necessarily dominate
how either regional military forces or the various extremists hostile to
the US and the West perceive the lessons of recent conflict. There is an
equal tendency to forget the past history of the region, the influence
of the military experience of regional wars, and the extent regional
powers, Islamist extremists, and insurgents learn from their experiences
with other countries such as Israel. Far too often, the "Post Cold War"
era is perceived as a US-centric *revolution* in military affairs when
it is actually a much broader-based *evolution* in military affairs.

This scarcely means that the Afghan and Iraq Wars are not providing
lessons to America's current and potential enemies, but they must be
kept in the following perspective:

-   **There is a broader war on terrorism**: The US, most Arab and
    Islamic states, and Israel are all fighting some form of struggle
    against Islamist extremists, and the Palestinian Authority has its
    own struggle with Hamas and Islamic Jihad. The Afghan and Iraq
    conflicts are just one set of lessons in such warfare.

> It is also far from clear that the US is winning this broader war on
> terrorism. The situation in Afghanistan and Iraq is still fluid,
> whereas Pakistan remains a question mark. Regional governments have
> done far better, and have generally brought Islamic extremists under
> control, or have defeated them, but there still is fighting at some
> level in Algeria, Egypt, Libya, Morocco, and Saudi Arabia. Moreover,
> extremist cells or movements still exist -- many growing in strength
> -- in virtually every Arab or Islamist country.
>
> For those in the region, this is a struggle about ideology and ideas,
> not about who wins battles: It is a cliché to point out that the US
> won most of its battles in Vietnam, but lost the struggle at the
> political, psychological, and ideological level. That does not make
> the point any less valid. For many Islamist extremists, defeat at the
> tactical or even organizational level is far less important than
> winning what they perceive as political, psychological, and symbolic
> victories. This not only helps explain their actions in Afghanistan
> and Iraq, but throughout the Islamic world and in the West.

-   **The war on terrorism is coupled to a much broader political,
    social, economic, and ideological struggle within the Arab and
    Islamic worlds**. Far more is involved than Islamist extremism. The
    greater Middle East is being driven by a lack of global economic
    competitiveness, slow rates of growth in per capita income, rapid
    population growth, and a virtual "youth explosion" in a region where
    unemployment is already critically high.

> Failed secularism is a problem at the ideological and political level.
> Secular regimes are often repressive and ineffective, and do not meet
> social and economic challenges. Traditional political parties and
> ideologies like Pan Arabism, Arab socialism, Marxism, and free market
> capitalism have failed at the popular level and many turn back to
> Islam and social custom.
>
> The resulting "clash within a civilization" can lead to either
> evolution or revolution, and inevitably interacts with Islamist
> extremism. These forces create an ongoing and much broader-based
> political, psychological, and ideological struggle for influence
> throughout the Middle East.
>
> So far, the US has shown little skill in dealing with this ideological
> struggle. American public diplomacy is weak, underfunded and
> undermanned, and often highly ethnocentric US policy is faltering and
> there often is far too little useful substance to "sell." US attempts
> at political, psychological, and information warfare often do far more
> to build false confidence than defeat Islamist extremists, or
> influence perceptions in the region.

-   **The Arab and Islamic perception that the US is a cobelligerent
    with Israel in its struggle against the Palestinians makes the
    Israeli-Palestinian conflict another critical war**. At one level,
    Americans should bear in mind that the Iranian and Arab militaries
    continually study the IDF, and its use of tactics and technology,
    and have done so for decades. The US is scarcely the only modern
    "Western" force shaping the lessons regional states and militant
    movements learn from warfare.

> At another level, the fact that regional politics and media identify
> the US so closely with the actions of Israel is a far greater factor
> in shaping the overall pattern of regional hostility to the US than
> the relatively small minority that supports Islamist extremist
> ideologies. Long before the US invasion of Iraq in 2003, regional
> media tied the US to their selective and almost uniformly hostile
> coverage of Israel and Israel's military actions against the
> Palestinians. Since the invasion of Iraq, the images of the two
> "occupiers" and their military actions are often coupled together or
> portrayed sequentially.
>
> Public opinion polls throughout the region have repeatedly shown that
> this coupling of the US to Israel at the political and military level
> is by far the greatest single reason for popular anger or hostility to
> the US, steadily fueled by biased news coverage by both print media
> and satellite television.
>
> While US efforts to conduct political, psychological, and information
> warfare suffer from low quality, irrelevance, and inadequate resources
> at every level; Islamist extremists, and hostile states and political
> movements, have steadily learned how to exploit the linkage between
> the US and Israel to undercut US efforts and defeat them at the
> ideological level.
>
> This has been steadily compounded in recent years by a US inability to
> address the problems in the Arab-Israeli peace process with any
> effectiveness, and the failure of both some US policymakers and some
> in the US military to understand that so-called "Phase IV" operations
> were by far the most critical single aspect of the war in Iraq and
> Afghanistan, and that this battle was fundamentally political and
> ideological, and not one that could be won in military terms.
>
> The US needs to understand that the "Israeli-Palestinian conflict" is
> a serious strategic liability, and it is likely to remain one for the
> next decade -- almost regardless of Israeli actions. While it is
> possible to criticize Israel for its approach to the peace process and
> some of its tactics, the fact remains that Israel faces very real
> threats that cannot be dealt with simply by calling for peace.
> Moreover, even success in resuming an effective peace process, or even
> in reaching a full peace settlement, will still occur in a political
> climate where the US will still be the target of substantial Arab and
> Islamic popular hostility for an extended period. Peace can probably
> be won, but not quickly and decisively, not without lingering
> terrorism and violence, and not in ways that prevent the current
> struggle from undercutting the US position in the region for years to
> come.

-   **Proliferation in Israel, North Korea, Pakistan, and India provides
    lessons to Iran and the Arab states of the Middle East on how to
    proliferate**: Like it or not, the success of other proliferating
    states outside the Middle East provides powerful counters to the US
    and British invasion of Iraq. Their "lesson" is that if a nation
    conceals, lies, and appears to comply, it will have the time to
    establish nuclear and other WMD capabilities. Iraq may be a warning
    about being too overt, but it is scarcely the only lesson that most
    regional proliferators -- Iran and Syria --react to.

-   **History does exist:** Americans need to remember that many of the
    patterns of military development in the region were established in
    the 1950s and 1960s, and many of the patterns in terrorism in the
    1960s and 1970s. The US has occasionally introduced important
    changes in tactics and technology, but there is also considerable
    historical continuity

**[The Key Lessons that Come Out of Post Cold War
Conflicts]{.underline}**

All of these points take on a special importance in the light of how
America's current and potential opponents view the Gulf War, Afghan
conflict, and Iraq War. The cumulative military lesson of all these
conflicts is to avoid fighting the US and its allies on their own terms,
and in direct "conventional " conflicts.

There are two important corollaries to these lessons:

-   First, current and potential opponents must avoid the development,
    deployment, and use of weapons of mass destruction in ways that can
    be targeted. They must seek to avoid overt military forces where US
    preemption, deterrence, defense, and retaliation, can be an
    effective and politically justifiable response.

-   Second, both regional hostile states and hostile movements
    understand that no amount of effort to adopt US tactics, weapons and
    technology, training methods, and readiness standards can
    significantly limit US capabilities to defeat conventional military
    forces and concentrated guerrilla forces in the foreseeable future.
    Traditional methods of modernization and force improvement can do
    nothing to significantly reduce the probability of defeat.

At the same time, the US has taught the region a far less advantageous
set of lessons in regard to its capabilities for other forms of
conflict. It has shown that it does not fully understand the extent to
which it is involved in a broad political, psychological, and ideology
conflict in the region. It has shown that it is incompetent and inept in
political, psychological, and information warfare, and self-deluding and
ethnocentric in evaluating its own performance. It has shown that its
advantages in defeating conventional forces do not extend to dispersed
asymmetric warfare, and that it is currently vulnerable to strategic
overstretch in trying to carry out "Phase IV" and stability operations
in even one major contingency.

The US cannot ignore regional opponents -- whether states or movements
-- who learn from current conflicts, and then attempt to "mirror image"
its military strengths. They can still kill, and sometimes quite
effectively. Such regional opponents, however, cannot win. However, the
US needs to worry far more about opponents who learn from the whole mix
of regional conflicts -- including political and ideological struggles
-- and then attempt to exploit America's very real combination of
political and military weaknesses.

It is the political and ideological type of threat, and not the current
tactical battles against organized insurgents, Islamists, or hostile
factions, that is the critical challenge today in Afghanistan and Iraq.
It is also the threat that will play out over at least 5-10 years in
both countries, even if pluralistic and modern regimes do eventually
emerge. If the US does not understand this reality, and act upon it
accordingly, political and ideological forces will ensure that
insurgents and instability will endure long after an active US military
presence has ended.

More generally, hostile states and movements have learned more than
enough to make political, ideological and asymmetric warfare an enduring
threat. It is clear from the actions of Al Qaeda, the Taliban fighters,
and Iraqi insurgents that regional fighters and terrorist movements are
flexible and adaptive enough so that the threats posed by terrorist,
extremist, and other hostile movements are certain to mutate and evolve
for at least several decades.

US military victories in political, ideological, and psychological
conflicts can only be tactical at best. Unless the US comes to
understand that it is fighting a region-wide political, ideological, and
psychological conflict, and adapts to fight this struggle on a
continuing and much more realistic basis, it risks winning military
engagements and losing the real battle. Unless the US makes stability
and nation building a goal and course of action from the first day of
planning, then throughout the course of combat, and from the
"stabilization" phase to a true peace, its so-called revolution in
military affairs will be a tactical triumph and a grand strategic
failure.

**[The Detailed Lessons of Current Conflicts]{.underline}**

Any effort to speculate on the lessons of recent wars that will shape
the behavior of Middle Eastern states, Islamic extremists, and hostile
movements through 2020 is necessarily speculative. There are some 22-26
countries in the Middle East, depending on who is defining the region.
They are all very different, and several will probably experience major
political upheavals, and or learn form new wars of their own in the
coming years.

The current obsession with Al Qaeda disguises the fact Islam and
Islamist extremism is splintered and composed of many different and
constantly changing elements whose behavior is often highly localized
and shaped by the political and military situation in a given country.
Other movements may emerge as hostile to the US because of the
Israeli-Palestinian and Iraq conflicts, hard-line Iranian hostility and
the broadly based anger in the Arab world.

At the same time, it is possible to describe on some of the more lessons
that hostile states and movements seem to have learned from recent and
ongoing conflicts, particularly the Afghan and Iraq wars. Such lessons
can be divided into four main groups:

-   Lessons learned by hostile states affecting their regular military
    or "conventional forces;"

-   Lessons learned by hostile states or movements regarding asymmetric
    warfare;

-   Lessons learned by Islamist extremist and other hostile movements;
    and

-   Lessons learned regarding proliferation.

**[Hostile States and "Conventional Forces"]{.underline}**

Like other regions of the world, Middle Eastern military forces are in
rapid transition. The Middle East and North Africa is a region of some
22-24 countries, almost all of which have some mix of serious internal
security problems, ongoing conflicts and/or serious external threats.
They all pay close attention to wars in their region, and particularly
to both military developments in the US and the level of US success and
failure in the Gulf War, Afghanistan, and Iraq. The Arab-Israeli
conflict is also a major force shaping regional perceptions, and Arab
forces and Iran pay close attention to both how Israel fights and shapes
its forces and how it uses US weapons and technology.

Anyone who has visited Arab and Iranian military facilities knows that
they have extensive libraries of US military publications, as well as
Western and Israeli military literature. They make use of US and Western
arms suppliers and technical services, and a considerable amount of
material is translated or provided in English in Arab and Iranian
military publications. At least in friendly countries, this includes
material on force transformation, the revolution in military affairs,
asymmetric warfare, netcentric warfare, and counterterrorism, and a
significant number of officers provide the experience they learned
training in the US. Both Iran and Syria have military publications that
regularly excerpt such US and Western material.

With the exception of Egypt, Israel, and Jordan, however, the ability to
study such lessons is rarely the ability to act upon them with any great
effectiveness. There is a considerable debate over the reasons why most
regional countries are slow to react and make effective use of new
technology and tactics. There is no debate over the fact that changes in
tactics and technology are rarely balanced or efficient, and the end
result is typically erratic and unpredictable.

**[Factors Driving the Pace of Regional Military
Modernization]{.underline}**

Moreover, as is the case in much of the world, the changes taking place
in regional conventional forces are driven by many factors that have
little to do with the lessons of post-Cold War conflict that relate to
the US.

-   Many countries have been fighting a war on terrorism and against
    Islamist extremism far longer than the US. They have developed their
    own approaches to such conflicts, and are inherently better equipped
    than the US to deal with the political, psychological, and
    information aspects of such threats, as well as better able to make
    use of human intelligence and internal security methods.

-   Proliferation is a long-standing problem that has scarcely been
    solved by Iraq's defeat and Libya's roll-back of its efforts. While
    proliferation is partly a counter to US conventional military
    strength, the quiet arms race between Israel and Syria (and Egypt to
    some degree) dates back to the 1950s, and long before the US played
    a high profile military role in the region. Iran's efforts began
    when the main threat was the Soviet Union and that were revitalized
    by the Iran--Iraq War. Iran sees the US as a threat, but also
    focuses on Israel. Indian and Pakistan proliferation have also acted
    to stimulate change in the region.

-   Nations react to their own wars. Morocco is fighting the Polisario,
    which many Moroccan military officers see as a proxy for Algeria.
    Algeria has long been involved in its own civil war. Libya confronts
    a low-level insurgent threat in the Green Mountain area. Egypt is
    still dealing with the threat posed by the AIG and other radical
    elements. Israel is fighting the Palestinians and is a central focus
    of Egyptian, Jordanian, Lebanese, and Syrian military planning. The
    Gulf states have only begun to adapt to the fall of Saddam Hussein,
    and focus on the potential threat from Iran and the ongoing threat
    of Islamist extremism. Yemen still has serious internal stability
    problems, and the Sudan has a seemingly endless aptitude for civil
    conflict.

-   Middle Eastern states face steadily growing pressures on their
    military budgets because of limited economic development, population
    growth, and a youth explosion that demands services and jobs. While
    it is not readily apparent, the total military spending of Middle
    Eastern and North Africa states dropped from \$96.3 billion in 1985
    to \$60.5 billion in current US dollars in 2001 and \$\$57.9 billion
    in 2002. During this same period, total active military personnel
    dropped from 3.3 million to 2.4 million. Some countries -- such as
    Egypt, Israel, and the UAE -- have the aid or wealth to continue to
    recapitalize their present force structure. In broad terms, however,
    spending on arms imports has changed radically and few countries can
    afford to make radical increases in their investments in advanced
    weapons and technology except in the face of the most urgent threat.

> Period (\$US Current Billions) [1987-1990]{.underline}
> [1991-1994]{.underline} [1995-1998]{.underline}
> [1999-2002]{.underline}
>
> Arms Deliveries 79.4 47.1 30.8 35.7
>
> New Arms Orders 93.3 58.7 63.9 46.6
>
> Source: Richard F. Grimmett.

-   These resource problems are further compounded by the fact that many
    countries now have long backlogs of deliveries -- most dating back
    to the aftermath of the first Gulf War -- and are already
    experiencing serious conversion and absorption problems, compounded
    by maintenance, sustainability, and training problems. This does not
    mean countries cannot change. In fact, the MENA region placed \$13.1
    billion worth of new orders for arms imports during 1995-1998 and
    \$27.0 billion during 1999-2002. This, however, does mean that there
    are growing limits to what most countries can do.

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-   The states most likely to be hostile to the US suffer from a number
    of serious problems in force modernization that other MENA countries
    do not. They have lost the Soviet Union as a source of technology
    and cheap or free arms. They have often been subject to sanctions or
    political limits to their purchases of arms, they have mismanaged
    their economies and have limited resources, and they have often been
    slow adopters of new tactics and technology. At the same time, they
    have maintained far larger force structures than they can afford to
    maintain, modernize, train, and sustain. The following data on arms
    transfers illustrate this point, and it is striking that two
    traditional threats -- Iraq and Libya -- are no longer hostile in
    the past sense of the term.

> Period (\$US Current Billions) [1987-1990]{.underline}
> [1991-1994]{.underline} [1995-1998]{.underline}
> [1999-2002]{.underline}
>
> [Iran]{.underline}
>
> Arms Deliveries 7,800 3,900 2,100 700
>
> New Arms Orders 10,200 2,700 1,700 1,000
>
> [Iraq]{.underline}
>
> Arms Deliveries 16,500 \* \* \*
>
> New Arms Orders 10,500 \* \* 200
>
> [Libya]{.underline}
>
> Arms Deliveries 2,900 500 100 300
>
> New Arms Orders 3,500 200 200 800
>
> [Syria]{.underline}
>
> Arms Deliveries 5,200 1,400 400 400
>
> New Arms Orders 5,600 900 500 300
>
> Note: \* = less than \$50 million.
>
> Source: Richard F. Grimmett.

In any case, one needs to be careful about assuming that nations act in
predictable and well structured ways, act on the basis of military
lessons, or act in ways that lead to predictable scenarios and forms of
war fighting. Conflict and escalation are rarely deliberate in ways that
are predictable in peacetime or carried out by "rational bargainers" in
a mutually transparent environment. In the real world, events tend to be
far more random and chaotic than strategic analysts would like to
believe.

**[The Iranian Case Study]{.underline}**

The remaining threat countries -- Iran and Syria -- differ sharply in
their response to these realities. It is clear that Iran has done a
better job of learning from the recent US, British, and Israeli
experience. Its military literature focuses much more clearly on the
lessons to be learned from such experience, and includes Russian and
Chinese analysis as well as Western analysis. Iran clearly understands
its vulnerability to the kind of attack the US led in Iraq and
Afghanistan and that it cannot compete at the conventional level.

At the same time, Iran so far has not been able to react to many of the
lessons it learned during the Iran-Iraq War, much less later conflicts.
It sought advanced surface-to-air missile defenses like the S-300 as
early as the late 1980s. It also tried to modernize its air fleet,
sought more advanced armor, and to upgrade and replace its ships in ways
it could not afford and/or could not obtain the arms it wanted. It has
tried to compensate by developing its own production capabilities, but
these have severe limits. While Iran seems to have developed several
modernization plans since the Iran-Iraq War, and to have at least
discussed major deals with Russia and other potential suppliers, it so
far has been unable to offset the overall aging and deterioration of its
conventional forces -- much less react effectively to the lessons
provided by the Iraq and Afghan conflicts.

The end result is that Iran has selectively purchased systems tailored
more to asymmetric warfare than direct conventional conflict, slowly
modernized its armor, and bought limited "fixes" of items like
electronics, precision guided and advanced weapons, and RPVs. It has
also increased its passive defense measures like shelters, concealment,
and dispersal. These are all steps Iran began as early as the third year
of the Iran-Iraq War, however, and the lessons of recent wars seem to
have largely changed the focus of such efforts rather than their
character.

**[The Syrian Case Study]{.underline}**

Syria's military modernization has faced much more severe financial
pressures than Iran's -- partly because Syria is only a minor oil
exporter and partly because of its unpaid debt for past arms to the FSU.
The Syrian armed forces also seem more rigid and less adaptive than
those of Iran, and more focused on traditional areas of force
improvement like tanks and anti-armored weapons, more advanced
surface-to-air missiles, and maintaining force size and mass.

Like Iran, Syria has bought limited "fixes" of items like electronics,
precision guided and advanced weapons, and RPVs. Syria has attempted to
upgrade its T-72 tank force, and create better mechanized infantry. It
has attempted to work around the inherent limits of its aging mix of
radars, SAMs, and C^4^I facilities with some better radars and "black
box" fixes. It has obtained some of the most modern FSU anti-tank guided
weapons.

Once again, however, it is unclear from recent Syrian actions that Syria
is doing more than simply modifying lessons it learned about
conventional force improvements that it learned during its limited
participation in the Gulf War and by watching Israel. Syria has focused
thereby on allowing its overall force structure to deteriorate more so
than has Iran on tank buys, advanced ATGMs, and light to medium weight
surface-to-air missiles. It seems to have become more static, defensive,
and mass-oriented at a time Israel should have taught it all it needed
to know about the need for a more modern approach to warfare without any
Syrian attention to the US. Even Syria's elite Republican Guard, Special
Forces, and attack helicopter units seem to reflect a relatively slow
rate of adaptation of new tactics, weapons, and technology.

**[Other Arab "Wild Cards"]{.underline}**

Any regional analysis of the risks posed by the lessons of the Iraq War
should note that several countries friendly to the US have done a much
better job of improving some aspects of their conventional forces than
Iran and Syria, and so could pose a much more serious threat if they
ever become hostile. Egypt and Jordan are case in point. Saudi Arabia
and the UAE have also paid close attention to the lessons of the
conflict, and still have significant discretionary resources to make
major arms buys.

**[Hostile States and Asymmetric Warfare]{.underline}**

It seems likely that the most important single lesson that both hostile
and non-hostile Middle Eastern states have learned from the US
performance in Afghanistan and Iraq -- and the overall pattern of US
involvement in Post Cold War conflict -- is to avoid conventional
conflict with the US. Once again, however, this is a lesson Iran had
every reason to learn from its "tanker war" with the US and Britain in
1987-1988, and every country had reason to learn from the Gulf War.
Arguably, it is also a lesson every regional state had reason to learn
about US capabilities for war by watching Israel's performance in 1967,
1973, and 1982.

**[Reinforcing the Lessons of the Past]{.underline}**

Each new conflict reinforces the lessons taught regarding the importance
of a major qualitative edge in technology, tactics, training, readiness,
and sustainability. The lessons of "precision," "speed," synchronicity,"
"maneuvering" and all of the other buzzwords of the revolution in
military affairs, may be reinforced by advances in IS&R capabilities,
jointness, and netcentric warfare. However, they are scarcely new.

The response of hostile states is evolutionary. Syria, for example, has
used Lebanon as a proxy for war with Israel since 1970. It has used
various Palestinian extremist and terrorist movements as proxies for at
least as long. Iran has been using Lebanon as a proxy since the early
1980s, and first made major use of a revolutionary movement against a
state at the time of the Shah -- when the Shah used the Kurds against
Iraq with US backing.

Finding alternatives to direct military confrontation with the US has a
long history. At least part of the Iranian effort to build-up a major
capability for asymmetric warfare in the Gulf is a product of the
"tanker war," although the Iran-Iraq War did at least as much to drive
Iran to build-up the naval branch of the Iranian Revolutionary Guards,
strengthen its capability to operate off islands near the main shipping
channels, acquire mines and anti-ship missiles, and buy submarines.
Similarly both Iran and Syria found that transfers of money and weapons
to Shi'ite movements in Lebanon could be effective counters to the US
presence there after 1982, and ways of forcing a costly proxy war on
Israel that still threatens Israel's northern front.

Both countries have a long experience with "wars of intimidation" in
which saber rattling or quiet threats are used to achieve objectives in
dealing with their neighbors without active conflict. Iran has used such
techniques off and on, and with some skill, against its Southern Gulf
neighbors under two totally different types of regimes since the British
withdrawal from East of the Suez. Syria quietly pressured Saudi Arabia
for aid using such methods from the 1960s onwards. The game board and
the color and shape of the pieces may change, but not the essence of the
game.

Similarly, there is nothing new about the effort to acquire long-range
missiles and weapons of mass destruction as possible counters to
superior conventional strength and US and Israeli possession of nuclear
weapons. The Shah attempted this as a counter to the Soviet Union in the
1970s, and Khomeini revitalized a program directed against Iraq, Israel,
and the US in the 1980s. Syria has sought weapons of mass destruction
since the 1960s, and its missile forces date back to the late 1960s.

**[Post-Cold War Military Vulnerabilities]{.underline}**

Many current US and Western vulnerabilities to asymmetric warfare
emerged before the Cold War was over, and were being discussed in the
Middle East long before the Afghan Conflict. These vulnerabilities may
be summarized as:

-   **Sudden or surprise attack***:* Power projection is dependent on
    strategic warning, timely decision making, and effective
    mobilization and redeployment for much of its military
    effectiveness.

-   **Saturation and the use of mass to create a defensive or deterrent
    morass***:* There is no precise way to determine the point at which
    mass, or force quantity, overcomes superior effectiveness, or force
    quality --- historically, efforts to emphasize mass have been far
    less successful than military experts predicted at the time. Even
    the best force, however, reaches the point where it cannot maintain
    its "edge" in C4I/battle management, air combat, or maneuver warfare
    in the face of superior numbers or multiple threats. Further,
    saturation may produce a sudden catalytic collapse of effectiveness,
    rather than a gradual degeneration from which the Israeli Defense
    Force could recover. This affects forward deployment, reliance on
    mobilization and reliance on defensive land tactics versus
    preemption and "offensive defense."

-   **Taking casualties***:* War fighting is not measured simply in
    terms of whether a given side can win a battle or conflict, but how
    well it can absorb the damage inflicted upon it. Many powers are
    highly sensitive to casualties and losses. This sensitivity may
    limit its operational flexibility in taking risks, and in sustaining
    some kinds of combat if casualties become serious relative to the
    apparent value of the immediate objective.

-   **Inflicting casualties and collateral damage***:* Dependence on
    world opinion and outside support means some nations increasingly
    must plan to fight at least low and mid-intensity conflicts in ways
    that limit enemy casualties and collateral damage to its opponents.

-   **Low-intensity and infantry/insurgent dominated combat***:*
    Low-intensity conflict makes it much harder to utilize most
    technical advantages in combat --- because low-intensity wars are
    largely fought against people, not things. Low-intensity wars are
    also highly political. The battle for public opinion is as much a
    condition of victory as killing the enemy. The outcome of such a
    battle will be highly dependent on the specific political conditions
    under which it is fought, rather than RMA-like capabilities.

-   **Hostage taking and terrorism:** Like low-intensity warfare,
    hostage-taking and terrorism present the problem that advanced
    technology powers cannot exploit their conventional strengths, and
    must fight a low-level battle primarily on the basis of infantry
    combat. HUMINT is more important than conventional military
    intelligence, and much of the fight against terrorism may take place
    in urban or heavily populated areas.

-   **Urban and Built-Up Area Warfare***:* Advanced military powers are
    still challenged by the problems of urban warfare. In spite of the
    performance of US forces in the Iraq War, cases like Fallujah and
    Sadr's urban operations have shown that truly pacifying a hostile
    city or built-up area can be extremely difficult. It also is not
    clear what would happen if a more popular regime -- such as the
    government of Iran -- tried to create an urban redoubt. Moreover,
    most western forces are not trained or equipped to deal with
    sustained urban warfare in populated areas during regional combat
    --- particularly when the fighting may affect large civilian
    populations on friendly soil.

-   **Extended conflict and occupation warfare***:* Not all wars can be
    quickly terminated, and many forms of warfare --- particularly those
    involving peacekeeping and peace-enforcement --- require prolonged
    military occupations. The result imposes major strains on the US
    politically, economically, and militarily.

-   **Weapons of mass destruction***:* The threat or actual use of such
    weapons can compensate for conventional weakness in some cases and
    deter military action in others.

-   **Proxy warfare and false flags***:* As the Lockerbie case
    demonstrated, states can successfully carry out major acts of
    terrorism through proxies without having their identity quickly
    established or suffering major military retaliation. Al Khobar is a
    more recent case where Iran's full role still remains uncertain and
    no retaliation has occurred. Similarly, the various charges that
    Iraq was the source of the first World Trade Center attack, and the
    conspiracy theories that follow, indicate that false flag operations
    are feasible. So do the number of terrorist incidents where unknown
    groups or multiple groups have claimed responsibility, but the true
    cause has never been firmly established.

-   **HUMINT, area expertise, and language skills***:* US and Western
    capabilities to conduct operations requiring extensive area
    knowledge and language skills are inherently limited. Similarly,
    high technology IS&R assets have not proved to be a substitute for
    HUMINT sources and analytic skills, although they can often aid
    HUMINT at both the operational and analytic level.

-   **Attack rear areas and lines of communication**: The US talks about
    "swarm theory" and discontinuous battlefields, but Iraqi regular and
    irregular forces quickly learned---as Iraqi insurgents did
    later---that US rear area, support, and logistic forces are far more
    vulnerable than US combat elements. Such "swarming" may be slow, if
    irregular forces are not in place, but potential opponents
    understand this and can fight discontinuous battles of their own.

-   **Political, ideological, and psychological warfare**: As has been
    discussed earlier, the US is vulnerable to such attacks on the
    grounds of ethnicity, religion, its status as a superpower active in
    the region, and its ties to Israel, Ironically, some can exploit its
    ties to moderate and conservative regimes on the grounds it fails to
    support reform, while others can exploit its efforts to advance
    secular political and economic reforms on the grounds they are
    anti-Islamic.

While most of the vulnerabilities on this list are not new, Post Cold
War struggles like the Afghan and Iraq conflicts have made hostile and
potentially hostile states focus more seriously on such vulnerabilities.
In fact, they have made them the only options that offer some hope of
deterrence and victory, particularly if they can be used in ways that do
not lead the US to attack with large-scale military forces.

It is important to note that it is extremely difficult for states to
exploit any mix of such vulnerabilities successfully *in actual military
combat* if the US has a serious strategic stake in a conflict. Some of
these vulnerabilities do reduce US ability to use military power quickly
and decisively against some targets. Some increase the intensity of
conflict and the cost in dollars and casualties to the US.

At the same time, they do not provide any hostile or potentially hostile
state with a clear way of defeating the US *if* the US determines that
stakes are worth escalating to decisive military action. No Middle
Eastern state is now strong enough to exploit such "lessons"
successfully in major conflict.

Moreover, such efforts can sharply increase the cost of combat to
regimes that use them, as well as to the US, and greatly increase the
risk the US will escalate to removing the regime involved -- if this is
not part of the original war plan.

This may not, however, mean that the states will necessarily avoid
force. It can rather be an incentive to support violent extremist groups
and use them as proxies, to carry out covert attacks, and/or to attempt
false flag operations.

**[Islamist Extremist and Other Hostile Movements]{.underline}**

Hostile movements face fewer problems in exploiting such vulnerabilities
than states. The Afghan and Iraq conflict have already shown they can
hide and disperse, and are willing to take serious losses to achieve an
ideological or political goal. The course of the Iraq and Afghan
conflict, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, and a host of terrorist
incidents have all shown how difficult it is to deter and defeat true
ideologues, those who are willing to be "martyrs," and those who believe
their cause is predetermined to win and will survive even if they and
their movement are destroyed.

More narrowly focused non-state actors may also emerge as a rising
threat to the US. The most immediate examples are movements like the
Hezbollah, PIJ, and Hamas, because of US ties to Israel. The US also can
also become the target of operations by more secular groups -- as was
the case with hard-line Palestinian groups in the 1960s and 1970s.

**[Winning by Losing]{.underline}**

In fact, one of the most important aspects of Post Cold War conflict in
the Middle East is not what Islamist and other extremist movements have
learned from the US, or what new tactics they have adopted, but rather
the change in their character from relatively clearly defined pragmatic
political goals, and an emphasis on survival, to behavior based on
eschatological warfare.

As a result, even the most successful US strikes and tactical victories
can often be turned into reasons for calling the US an enemy, getting
media coverage hostile to the US, and recruiting new cadres. At risk of
a terrible pun, post-cold War conflicts and terrorism have shown that
the US is culturally vulnerable to eschatological warfare, and has
serious trouble in countering extremist ability to climb the
"eschatological ladder."

**[Mutate, Disperse, and Fragment]{.underline}**

Hostile movements have learned they can survive and even enhance their
capabilities if they mutate, disperse, and fragment. The current debate
over whether Al Qaeda still exercises central control, or has
"franchised." other movements using its name is largely irrelevant. It
has done both in the past and it is almost certainly doing so now.
Moreover, Salafi and other violent Islamist movements have shown they
can mutate and evolve long after their initial cells and organizations
are broken up.

**[Tactical Lessons]{.underline}**

Hostile non-state actors, like hostile states, learn from a full range
of sources and not just from the US. It is clear that regional Islamist
extremist and insurgent movements constantly study the history of past
terrorist/asymmetric warfare/unconventional warfare attacks, and have
long memories. They remember a long menu of options, and often try to
repeat past successes. The movement also learned long ago to only keep
repeating successful tactics until they fail, to then use surprise where
possible, and to take innovative risks. One does not have to be a Middle
East or modern guerilla warfare expert to understand that analysts who
insist that terrorist and insurgent movements cannot rapidly change
their tactics, or are unwilling to use drastic forms of surprise, are
part of the problem and not the solution. One only has to read Sun Tzu.

As a result, when it comes down to the tactical lessons that Islamist
extremist and other hostile movements have learned from Post Cold War
conflicts, there are many cases where they have really just adapted old
tactics in fighting with the US and its allies.

The US often misinterprets the end result, simply because Americans do
not have the same collective memory as states and movements in the
region. Hostile actors can draw on a long historical menu of past
tactics and their results, and adapt them to specific tactical
circumstances. The US often ignores both the existence of this menu and
the adaptiveness of its opponents, and the end result is often surprise
where no surprise should take place.

**[Political, Psychological, and Information Warfare
Lessons]{.underline}**

There are so many case examples of "lessons" that mix pre and post Cold
War lessons and methods of struggle that it is only possible to touch
upon some of the more specific lessons involved. In broad terms, such
lessons can be divided into two sets: those that affect political,
psychological, and information warfare; and those that affect the way in
which terrorist and insurgent movements attack or fight US forces in the
field:

-   **Co-opt the middle; create links to more moderate and popular
    causes**: Linking extremist action to popular causes, like the
    Israeli-Palestinian conflict has become a more common tactic in
    large part because the conflict has continued to escalate and has
    had such visibility. Many movements, however, have found additional
    ways to broaden their base. These include creating humanitarian and
    political wings; claiming to be pro-democracy and reform, attacking
    failed governance and corruption; calling opponents anti-Islamic; or
    invoking terms like Crusader, Zionist, imperialist, etc.

-   **Exploit Arab satellite television as well as traditional media**:
    Islamist movements, Palestinian groups, and many others, have
    learned how to capture maximum exposure in regional media, use the
    Internet, and above all exploit the new Arab satellite news
    channels. In contrast, US officials often confuse their occasional
    presence with successful impact.

-   **Maintain a strategy of constant attrition, but strike hard
    according to a calendar of turning points and/or at targets with
    high political, social, and economic impact**: Insurgents and
    Islamists in Afghanistan and Iraq (and in the Israeli-Palestinian
    conflict and other regional struggles) have learned the importance
    of a constant low-level body count and creating a steady climate of
    violence. This forces the US into a constant, large-scale security
    effort and ensures constant media coverage.

> At the same time, insurgents and Islamists have shown a steadily more
> sophisticated capability to exploit holidays, elections and other
> political events, and sensitive targets both inside the countries that
> are the scene of their primary operations and in the US and the West.
> Attacks on Kurdish and Shi'ite religious festivals, and the Madrid
> bombings are cases in point.
>
> Terrorists and insurgents know that such targeted and well timed
> attacks can successfully undermine the Israeli-Palestinian peace
> process and can help drive the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. A handful
> of terrorists in Hamas and the PIJ, and the Israeli who killed Rabin,
> effectively defeated both Israel and the Palestinian Authority.
> Dramatic incidents of violence in Beirut and Somalia have also created
> political and psychological conditions that have helped catalyze US
> withdrawal.

-   **Push "hot buttons:" Try to find forms of attack that provoke
    disproportionate fear and "terror" force the US and its allies into
    costly, drastic, and sometimes provocative responses**: Terrorists
    and insurgents have found that attacks planned for maximum political
    and psychological effects often have the additional benefit of
    provoking over-reaction. Hamas and the PIJ exploited such tactics
    throughout the peace process.

> The US response to the attacks on the World Trade Center and Pentagon
> led to US over-reactions -- particularly at the media and
> Congressional level -- that helped alienate the Arab and Islamic
> worlds from the US. At a different level, a limited Anthrax attack had
> a massive psychological impact in the US, inflicted direct and
> indirect costs exceeding a billion dollars, drew immense publicity,
> and affected the operations of a key element of the US government for
> several weeks.

-   **Game Western and outside media**: Use interview access, tapes,
    journalist hostage takings and killings, politically-led and
    motivated crowds, drivers and assistant to journalists, and timed
    and targeted attacks to attempt to manipulate Western and outside
    media. Manipulate US official briefings with planted questions.

-   **Externalize the struggle**: Bring the struggle home to the US and
    its allies as in the cases of the World Trade Center, Pentagon, and
    Madrid. Get maximum media and political impact. Encourage a "clash
    between civilizations." Avoid killing fellow Muslims and collateral
    damage. Appear to be attacking Israel indirectly. Undermine US ties
    to friendly Arab states.

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-   **Use Americans as proxies**: There is nothing new about using
    Americans as proxies for local regimes, or attacking them to win
    support for ideological positions and causes. There has, however,
    been steadily growing sophistication in the timing and nature of
    such attacks, and in exploiting softer targets such as American
    businessmen in the country of operations, on striking at US and
    allied targets in other countries, or in striking at targets in the
    US. It is also clear that such attacks receive maximum political and
    media attention in the US.

-   **Attack UN, NGO, Embassies, and Aid and foreign business
    operations**: Attacking such targets greatly reduces the ability to
    carry out nation building and stability operations to win hearts and
    minds. Attacking the "innocent," and curtailing their operations or
    driving organizations out of country has become an important focus
    of insurgents and Islamist extremist attacks.

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-   **"Horror" attacks, atrocities, and alienation**: Whether or not the
    tactics were initially deliberate, insurgents in Iraq have found
    that atrocities like desecrating corpses and beheadings are
    effective political and psychological weapons for those Islamist
    extremists whose goal is to divide the West from the Islamic world,
    and create an unbridgeable "clash of civilizations."

> Experts have long pointed out that one of the key differences between
> Islamist extremist terrorism and previous forms of terrorism is that
> they are not seeking to negotiate with those they terrorize, but
> rather to create conditions that can drive the West away, undermine
> secular and moderate regimes in the Arab and Islamic worlds, and
> create the conditions under which they can create "Islamic" states
> according to their own ideas of "Puritanism."
>
> This is why it serves the purposes of Islamist extremists, as well as
> some of the more focused opponents of the US and the West, to create
> massive casualties and carry out major strikes even if the result is
> to provoke hostility and anger. The goal of Bin Laden and those like
> him is not to persuade the US or the West, it is rather to so alienate
> them from the Islamic and Arab world that the forces of secularism in
> the region will be sharply undermined, and Western secular influence
> can be controlled or eliminated. The goal of most Iraqi insurgents is
> narrower -- drive the US and its allies out of Iraq -- but involves
> many of the same methods.
>
> Seen in this context, the more horrifying the attack the better.
> Simple casualties do not receive the same media attention. They are a
> reality of war. Killing (or sometimes releasing) innocent hostages
> does grab the attention of the world media. Large bombs in crowds do
> the same, as does picking targets whose innocence or media impact
> grabs headlines. Desecrating corpses, beheadings, and similar acts of
> violence get even more media attention -- at least for a while.
>
> Such actions also breed anger and alienation in the US and the West
> and to provoke excessive political and media reactions, more stringent
> security measures, violent responses and all of the other actions that
> help provoke a "clash of civilizations." The US and the West are often
> provoked into playing into the hands of such attackers.
>
> At the same time, any attack or incident that provokes massive media
> coverage and political reactions, appears to be a "victory" to those
> who support Islamist extremism or those who are truly angry at the US
> -- even though the actual body count is often low, and victory does
> not mean creating stronger forces or winning political control. Each
> such incident can be used to damage the US and Western view of the
> Arab and Islamic worlds.

-   **Keep "failed states" failed. Attack nation building and stability
    targets**: There is nothing new about attacking key economic
    targets, infrastructure, and aspects of governance critical to the
    functioning of the state in any effort to disrupt its economy,
    undermine law enforcement and security, and encourage instability.
    The Al Qaeda and Taliban attacks on road works and aid workers;
    Iraqi insurgent and Islamist attacks on aid workers and projects;
    and their role in encouraging looting, sabotage, and theft does,
    however, demonstrate a growing sophistication in attacking stability
    efforts and tangible progress in aid and governance. These tactics
    also interact synergistically with the above tactics.

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-   **Confuse the identity of the attacker; exploit conspiracy
    theories**: Insurgents and Islamists have learned that a mix of
    silence, multiple claims to be the attacker, new names for attacking
    organizations, and uncertain levels of affiliation both make it
    harder for the US to respond. They also produce more media coverage
    and speculation.

> As of yet, the number of true false flag operations has been limited.
> However, in Iraq and elsewhere, attacks have often accompanied by what
> seem to be deliberate efforts to advance conspiracy theories to
> confuse the identity of the attacker or to find ways to blame
> defenders of the US for being attacked. In addition, conspiracy
> theories charging the US with deliberately or carelessly failing to
> provide an adequate defense have been particularly effective.

-   **Shelter in Mosques, Shrines, high value targets, and targets with
    high cultural impact**: Again, exploiting facilities of religious,
    cultural, and political sensitivity is not a new tactic. However, as
    operations against Sadr and in Fallujah have shown, the tactics
    raise the media profile, create a defensive deterrent, and can be
    exploited to make the US seem anti-Islamic or to be attacking a
    culture and not a movement.

-   **Exploit, exaggerate, and falsify US attacks that cause civilian
    casualties and collateral damage, friendly fire against local
    allies, and incidents where the US can be blamed for being anti-Arab
    and anti-Islam**: Terrorists and insurgents have found they can use
    the media, rumor, and conspiracy theories to exploit the fact the US
    often fights a military battle without proper regard to the fact it
    is also fighting a political, ideological, and psychological war.

Real incidents of US misconduct such as the careless treatment of
detainees and prisoners, and careless and excessive security measures
are cases in point. So too are careless political and media rhetoric by
US officials and military officers.

> Bin Laden, the Iraqi insurgents, etc., all benefit from every Western
> action that unnecessarily angers or frustrates the Arab and Islamic
> worlds. They are not fighting to influence Western or world opinion;
> they are fighting a political and psychological war to dominate Iraq
> and the Arab and Islamic worlds.

**[Lessons About Methods of Attack and Combat]{.underline}**

There is no tight dividing line between tactics focused on the political
and psychological nature of war and military tactics. Individual
Islamist extremist and insurgent movements are also generally highly
"localized" in character and adapt to the specific conditions they must
operate it. However, some of the major adaptations that insurgents and
terrorists are making in terms of warfare and modes of attack include:

-   **Mix Crude and sophisticated IEDS**: Hezbollah should be given
    credit for having first perfected the use of explosives in well
    structured ambushes, although there is nothing new about such
    tactics -- the Afghans used them extensively against the Soviets.
    Iraq has, however, provided a unique opportunity for insurgents and
    Islamist extremists to make extensive use of IEDs by exploiting its
    mass stocks of arms. The Iraqi attackers have also learned to
    combine the extensive use of low grade IEDs, more carefully targeted
    sophisticated IEDs, and very large car bombs and other devices to
    create a mix of threats and methods that is much more difficult to
    counter than reliance on more consistent types of bombs and target
    sets.

-   **Suicide bombs:** The use of such tactics has increased steadily
    since 1999, in part due to the high success rate relative to
    alternative methods of attack. It is not always clear that suicide
    bombing techniques are tactically necessary outside struggles like
    the Israel-Palestinian conflict, where one side can enforce a very
    tight area and perimeter, and point target security. In many cases,
    timed devices might produce the same damage.

> Events in Iraq have shown, however, that suicide bombers still have a
> major psychological impact and gain exceptional media attention. They
> also serve as symbols of dedication and commitment, can be portrayed
> as a form of Islamic martyrdom, and attract more political support and
> attention among those sympathetic to the cause involved.
>
> At the same time, regional experts must be very careful about
> perceiving such methods of attack as either a recent development or as
> Islamic in character. For instance, Hezbollah used suicide bombings in
> the 1980s, with an attack on the US Embassy in Beirut in 1981 and in
> six attacks in 1983 killing 384 people-- including 241 US Marines.
> Moreover, Hindu terrorists and the Tamil Tigers made extensive use of
> suicide bombings long before the Palestinians. In fact, Hindu
> terrorists still lead in the amount of suicide bombings committed by a
> particular group. The Tamil tigers have carried out 168 such attacks
> since 1987 versus 16 for the Hezbollah versus Israel (1983-1985), 44
> for the Palestinians (1999-2004), and 28 for Al Qaeda (1999-2004. A
> profiling of the attackers in some 168 attacks also found that only a
> comparative few could in any sense be called religious fanatics rather
> than believers in a cause.[^1]

-   **Attack LOCs, rear area, and support activity**: Iran and
    Afghanistan have shown that dispersed attacks on logistics and
    support forces often offer a higher chance of success than attacks
    on combat forces and defended sites, and makes the fight wars based
    on "deep support" rather than "deep strikes" beyond the FEBA.

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-   **Better use of light weapons and more advanced types**: While much
    will depend on the level of insurgent and Islamist extremist access
    to arms, Iraq and Afghanistan have seen a steady improvement in the
    use of systems like mortars and anti-tank weapons, and efforts to
    acquire Manpads and ATGMs. The quality of urban and road ambushes
    has improved strikingly in Iraq, as has the ability to set up rapid
    attacks, and exploit the vulnerability of soft skinned vehicles.

-   **Create informal distributed networks---deliberately or
    accidentally**: Like drug dealers before them, Islamist extremists
    and insurgents have learned enough about COMINT and SIGINT to stop
    using most vulnerable communications assets, and to bypass many --
    if not most -- of the efforts to control cash flow and money
    transfers.

> The use of messengers, direct human contact, and more random methods
> of electronic communication are all cases in point. At the broader
> level, however, insurgents in Iraq seem to have adapted to having
> cells and elements operate with considerable autonomy, and by loosely
> linking their operations by using the media and reporting on the
> overall pattern of attacks to help determine the best methods and
> targets.
>
> Smuggling, drug sales, theft and looting, and direct fund transfers
> also largely bypass efforts to limit operations through controls on
> banking systems, charities, etc. Under these conditions, a lack of
> central control and cohesive structure may actually be an asset --
> allowing highly flexible operations with minimal vulnerability to
> roll-up and attack.
>
> The existence of parallel, and not competing, groups of hostile
> non-state actors provides similar advantages and has the same impact.
> The fact that insurgent and Islamist extremist groups operate largely
> independently, and use different tactics and target sets, greatly
> complicates US operations and probably actually increases overall
> effectiveness.

-   **Adapt technology to terrorism and insurgency; GPS as an aid to
    dispersal, hideouts, rendezvous, smuggling and caches -- "virtual
    garrisons in the sand"**: GPS coordinates provide a way of creating
    caches and coordinate points in mountain and desert areas with
    little of the complexity and confusion experienced in past
    conflicts. What were once largely special forces methods are now
    common place insurgent methods.

-   **Make cities and towns urban sanctuaries and defensive morasses:**
    Iraqi and Palestinian insurgents have both found that cities with
    supportive and/or accepting populations can be made into partial
    sanctuaries and centers for defensive fighting and ambushes, and
    that tactical defeat can normally be dealt with by dispersal and
    hiding among the civilian population. Such tactics combine well with
    attacks on local authorities and security forces friendly to the US,
    efforts to block nation building at the local, and efforts to
    exploit religion, ethnicity, tribalism, etc.

-   **Use of tunnels, shelters, mountain areas, and friendly groups and
    territories:** If Iraq has been the area training hostile insurgents
    and Islamist extremists in urban warfare and MOBA, Afghanistan and
    Western Pakistan have provided virtually the opposite set of
    lessons**.** So far, it is important to note that insurgents and
    terrorists have learned that IS&R assets normally have only had a
    significant impact on their traditional advantages in knowing the
    terrain and concealment when they are deployed in very high
    densities in local areas, and there is a significant hostile troop
    presence on the ground.

-   **Use neighboring states as partial sanctuaries:** While scarcely a
    new tactic, the Taliban and Al Qaeda have repeated a standard lesson
    of guerrilla warfare and have expanded their area of operation into
    Western Pakistan and Central Asia, expanding the area of operations
    beyond national boundaries and creating a partial sanctuary. Iraqi
    insurgents have used cross border operations and taken advantage of
    the difficulties in securing the Syrian, Iranian, and Saudi borders.
    The Vietnamese used the same tactic in Cambodia and Laos, however,
    and so have many other insurgent forces. The idea of securing a
    nation based on securing the territory within its tactical
    boundaries is often a tactical myth.

-   **Exploit weaknesses in US battle damage assessment (BDA) and damage
    characterization capabilities:** Al Qaeda, the Taliban, Iraqi
    insurgents, and other Islamist extremists have all learned that US
    intelligence is optimized around characterizing, counting, and
    targeting things, rather than people, and the US has poor capability
    to measure and characterize infantry and insurgent numbers, wounded,
    and casualties. They exploit these weaknesses in dispersal, in
    conducting attacks, in concealing the extent of losses, and in
    manipulating the media by claiming civilian casualties and
    collateral damage.

-   **Carry out sequential ambushes**: Increasingly carry out complex
    mixes of sequential ambushes to draw in and attack US and Allied
    responders to the initial or previous follow-on attacks.

-   **Exploit slow US reaction times**: Learn to exploit the delays in
    US response efforts, and rigidities in US tactical C^4^I behavior,
    to attack quickly and disperse.

-   **Exploit fixed US patterns of behavior**: Take advantage of a US
    tendency to repeat tactics, security, movement patterns, and other
    behavior; find vulnerabilities and attack.

-   **Use "resurgence"**: Disperse under pressure or when defeat seems
    likely. Let the US take an "empty" city or objective. "Resurge" when
    the US tactical presence declines.

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-   **Use Incident numbers and tactics that strain or defeat US
    intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance (IS&R) assets**: There
    is no question that assets like RPVs, aircraft, SIGINT systems, etc.
    can provide significant capability *when they are available*. It is
    unclear whether it is deliberate or not, but the geographic spread
    and daily incident count in Iraq indicates that insurgent movements
    and actions often reach numbers too large to cover. In fact, the US
    averaged some 1,700-2,000 patrols per day during May 2004. While it
    is nice to talk about netcentric warfare, it is a lot harder to get
    a big enough net.

> Hostile movements also have learned that the US has far less ability
> to track and characterize irregular forces, insurgent/terrorist teams,
> and urban and dispersed infantry than forces using mechanized weapons
> or significant numbers of vehicles. Blending into the civilian
> population has worked well for local insurgents and Islamists in both
> Afghanistan and Iraq, and they seem to be learning that they can
> exploit rules of engagement where the US and its allies do not have
> soldiers or agents on the ground to perform targeting and IFF
> functions. As valuable as IS&R assets are, they do not provide some
> critical kinds of situational awareness with any reliability.
>
> These lessons do, however, need to be considered in light of the fact
> the Hezbollah was able to use carefully structured ambushes, bombs,
> and other methods of attack to counter a much denser system of IS&R
> assets in South Lebanon. In practice, IS&R has proved to be a major
> aid to, and not substitute for, troop presence and active HUMINT.

-   **Choose a vulnerable US center of gravity**: Deny the US a large,
    cohesive enemy while attacking small or dispersed elements of US and
    friendly forces, facilities, or targets.

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-   **Counter US IS&R capabilities by adapting new techniques of
    communication and interaction**: The steady leakage of details on US
    and allied intelligence collection methods has led Islamist
    extremist and terrorist movements to make more use of couriers and
    direct financial transfer; use electronic communications more
    safely; screen recruits more carefully, disperse better, and improve
    their hierarchy and cell structure.

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-   **Counter US IS&R assets with superior HUMINT**: Developments in
    Iraq indicate that the US faces a repetition of its experience in
    Vietnam in the sense that as various insurgent factions organize,
    they steadily improve their intelligence and penetration of
    organizations like the CPA, CJTF-7, the Iraqi government and
    security forces, and the Iraqi factions backing nation building.

> The fact that the North Vietnamese had a decisive advantage in HUMINT,
> particularly once the US began to pull out, is often ignored in
> studies of the Vietnam War, as is the fact that the USG in Washington
> ignored repeated warnings from intelligence officers in the US embassy
> and PACOM that the hostile HUMINT network was vastly larger than the
> US would officially admit, and included many supposedly safe and loyal
> sources supporting the Embassy, US units, and the US media.

This became all too clear after the fall of Saigon. The HUMINT
penetration was near total, the number of agents was about three times
what the USG officially acknowledged, and an almost incredible number of
drivers and others supporting the media turned out to have some ties to
the North Vietnamese. Many other Vietnamese were loyal to the US -- and
we abandoned them when we pulled out. Loyalty was a very mixed bag.

> Like Vietnam, Iraq is a warning that hostile HUMINT sources are often
> pushed into providing data because of family ties, a fear of being on
> the losing side, direct and indirect threats, etc. In Iraq\'s case, it
> seems likely that family, clan, and ethnic loyalties have made many
> supposedly loyal Iraqis become at least part time sources, and that US
> vetting will often be little more than either a review of past ties or
> checks on the validity of data being provided. The end result may be
> an extremely high degree of transparency on US, other Coalition,
> Governing Council, and every other aspect of US operations. This will
> often provide excellent targeting data on key US and allied officials,
> events, etc. It can include leverage and blackmail, and vulnerability
> data, as well as warning of US and other military operations. Dual
> loyalty and HUMINT penetration of Iraqi security and military forces
> may be the rule, rather than the exception.

**[Key Overarching Lessons]{.underline}**

No lists of this kind can begin to be complete, or serve as a basis for
predicting future changes. Rather, it portrays the fact that hostile
movements are adaptive, they learn from experience, they find new ways
to fight asymmetrically, and they find new US and allied vulnerabilities
over time. It is also a further illustration of the fact that guerrilla
wars can rarely be won by battles of military attrition if the guerrilla
movement has a strong political and ideological component and is not
defeated in political and ideological terms.

If there are any broad counter lessons that the US should learn from
such changes in Post-Cold War tactics, the first is that US efforts to
use political, psychological, and information warfare are at least as
critical as US military operations in direct combat.

Second, and more importantly, the concepts of Phase IV, "stability," and
"nation building" the US employed during the first states of the wars in
Afghanistan and Iraq were fundamentally wrong and self-defeating. Such
activities were perceived as phased, secondary priorities that
essentially wasted skilled manpower and resources. Winning the war was
given a far higher priority than winning the peace. They should have
been seen as having more ultimate strategic importance than defeating
"conventional" enemy and insurgent forces.

The US should have made shaping hearts and minds a key priority from the
start of combat. The US should also have carried out stability
operations from the first day of combat, and understood that only
successful Phase IV, "stability," and "nation building" operations can
achieve successful grand strategic results against determined and highly
motivated Islamist extremists and other insurgents with strong popular
support.

The US and the West must understand they are fighting a region-wide
political and ideological struggle at the same time they are fighting
conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan. They must do everything possible to
avoid being trapped into helping to create a real "clash of
civilizations." The US and the West must reach out to Arab and Islamic
moderates and intellectuals, to strengthen ties to friendly regional
regimes, and concentrate on defeating the real enemy: Islamist
extremists, terrorists, and insurgents who are just as much the enemy of
reform and progress in their own countries and cultures as they are of
the US and the West.

**[Lessons and Non-Lessons Regarding Proliferation]{.underline}**

Ever since the Gulf War, it has been clear that local powers and
movements perceive weapons of mass destruction as a potential counter to
US conventional capabilities and a way of striking decisively at the US.
This "lesson," however, needs to be kept in perspective. The race to
acquire weapons of mass destruction in the region dates back to the
1950s. It has been constantly kept to the fore by Israel's undeclared
deterrent, and was reinforced both by Iraq's behavior during the
Iran-Iraq War, and UNSCOM's discoveries after the Gulf War. It doesn't
take US military success to stimulate proliferation. In practice, North
Korea's transfer of missile technology, and Pakistan's willingness to
sell P2 centrifuge technology and Chinese fissile weapons design may
also be a more important recent stimulus.

The fact that Al Qaeda was found to have conducted extensive studies of
how to acquire weapons of mass destruction in Afghanistan is an
important warning; so too are their efforts to attack Jordan in March
2004 with chemical weapons, the Ricin discoveries in the UK, and the
knowledge that designs for reasonably sophisticated devices are
available from commercial publishers and on the internet. The threat of
terrorists using such weapons in attacks is clearly present and growing.
Hostile movements are also aware that the US ability to track the source
of covert attacks is limited. The failure to find the culprit
responsible for the Anthrax attacks on the Capital makes this all to
clear.

At the same time, the first novels describing the potential benefits to
terrorists in using weapons of mass destruction appeared in the 1960s.
The US took the possibility of covert state-sponsored Spetsnaz attacks
using such weapons seriously from the 1990s on. The perceived
vulnerability of US theater nuclear weapons in Europe from threats like
Palestinian extremists, Badr-Meinhof, the Red Brigades, etc, was taken
seriously enough to make major new efforts to protect such weapons in
1973 -- an effort that began long before the October War. The idea of
terrorist and proxy attacks is scarcely new, or a post-Cold War
development.

Several other points:

-   **Simply acquiring weapons of mass destruction is not the same as
    knowing how to use them or what their effects will be.** There are
    many scenarios in which the nation or movement acquiring such
    weapons will have no real way to test their effectiveness, know
    little about targeting, and have to use uncertain delivery methods.

-   **Lethality and effect differ radically by type of weapon of mass
    destruction**. Chemical and radiological weapons generally have
    limited lethality except in very large quantities. Biological
    weapons can have limited to "nuclear equivalent" lethality. Nuclear
    effects alter radically according to yield and factors like height
    of burst.

-   **Having or using such weapons justifies response at almost any
    level**: While acquiring such weapons may have a deterrent value, it
    also fundamentally changes the military response likely to be used
    against the holder. At present, however, it seems likely that many
    Middle Eastern states and radical movements have not really thought
    much beyond the acquisition phase and to the war fighting/use phase
    and its aftermath.

In short, it is all very well to talk about proliferation as a "lesson"
to regional states, Islamist extremists, and insurgent movements, but a
lesson to do what? And, with what probable consequences?

[^1]: ^1^ See Col. Ernie Howard, "The Strategic Logic of Suicide
    Terror," Air University Warfare Studies Institute, April 2004.