Chapter 7

Military Operations

After all the strategy and preparation, after all the theory and analysis, comes the moment when force, or the threat of force is to be used. A military which cannot perform well, or a system of command and control which does not function properly, is a waste of money and effort, no matter how neatly it may demonstrate civilian control, or any other theoretical virtues it may possess.

In this chapter, military operations of all types are considered, and two questions, are addressed:

What roles should be played by the military, the political leadership and others?

Is the military on operations merely the blind instrument of politicians?

Proper roles

It is not hard to put down, at least in theory, what the roles are of the different actors in military operations, whether in peacekeeping deployments or all-out war:

At the highest level, that of strategy, the political leadership should set the overall goals for military operations in political terms. In doing so, they will need to consider, of course, what is practical. In turn, this means that they are advised by their military and civilian officials.



At the next level, the operational level, the political objectives have to be translated into military ones. The operational commander should draw up a campaign plan which translates political goals into military ones, but which also takes account of political realities and constraints. He or she will need advice from civilian and military experts in doing this.



At the tactical level, the force commander will take his or her military objectives and devise a plan for achieving them, within certain constraints.

Assuming that all this goes according to plan, the military on the ground will deliver a military outcome which will meet the operational objective, which should mean, in turn, that the political objective has been met. Although it is stressed throughout this section, how difficult the above paradigm is in practice, it is important to bear in mind as an ideal to which military operations of any kind should aspire.

Separation and differentiation

In feudal times in most civilisations, the political and military leadership were closely joined: usually in the same person. The ruler would lead his or her forces into battle and, if the fighting was unsuccessful, might be killed, wounded or captured as easily as any of his or her retainers. Aristocrats were almost always military leaders, in their own right or as royal advisors, and there was, indeed, little distinction between political and military issues. The Samurai of Japan, for example, were both military commanders and the Emperor’s political advisors.

The increasing complexity and specialisation of war began to undermine this unity. It did not happen everywhere at the same speed, because it was linked, more than anything else, to the spread of new military technologies. As mass armies with modern weapons became the norm from the 19th century onwards, in most parts of the world military commanders, even if they also dabbled in politics, started to become a separate caste, distinguished by professional knowledge and training.

The difference in English between policy and politics is again of importance. The former has always been a feature of military operations, as long as the political leadership was capable of formulating a strategy. Although politics has always been present to some extent, for example, in the manoeuvrings which frequently took place in royal courts, it is only since the advent of popular democracy that political leaders have had to take into account public attitudes to the use of military force, and public reaction to any failure. Indeed, in the days when territories and provinces were frequently traded among rulers, victory or defeat did not matter very greatly to the average person. An attempt is made in this chapter to distinguish between policy factors (the overall strategic and international issues on which the national civilian leadership should take the lead) and political factors (which tend to be short-term issues of popularity and presentation).

In a democratic society, or even one where public opinion is represented indirectly, political leaders, if they are to survive, must do popular things. This might involve the use of force in some circumstances, but easy victories over small and powerless enemies are not always possible. It tends to be the political leadership, rather than the military one, which pays the price of an unsuccessful military operation. This leads the politicians, in turn, to demand from the military undertakings it cannot necessarily give, and to interfere in the purely military aspects of the operation. This attitude extends to the actual conduct of the operation as well: the political leader may interfere to veto operations which might involve heavy casualties, for example.

Distance and control

The development of technology has complicated the relationship between policy factors and military factors in a campaign in two ways:

It has produced massive increases in the size and sophistication of forces, in the distance they can be deployed and the complexity of the operations they can conduct.



It has also produced a capability for information about the operations of these forces to be transmitted rapidly everywhere in the world.

With the development of modern armies, military operations began to cover such areas of time and space that centralised control was impossible. Even if a political leadership wanted to be with ‘the army’, it would be, in practice, hundreds of kilometres distant from some of the army’s elements, with no chance of communicating with them. Communication technology lagged far behind the technology of mobilisation and deployment, and there was little that the political leadership could do but to wave the troops goodbye, and hope for the best. In the Russo-Japanese War of 1904-5, for example, it is unlikely that anyone in Tokyo, still less anyone in St Petersburg, had any idea at all what was going on. From World War I onwards, it became steadily easier for national leaderships to communicate with their commanders, even if the latter were in transit at the time. This imposed a new layer of complexity on military operations, since it required the military leadership in the field to justify and explain what they were doing constantly to an anxious political leadership back home.

One of the most important reasons for this political nervousness was the greatly increased availability of information, through technological advances, to the ordinary person back home. Increasing literacy and the spread of democratic practices in the 19th century gave public opinion a practical force in politics which it had not had before, and at a time when the carnage of battlefields, in the days when the technology of killing had massively outstripped the technology of healing, must have been particularly awful. Thus, reports of the slaughter on the battlefields of Lombardy in 1859, rather than the slaughter itself, were largely responsible for the establishment of the International Committee of the Red Cross in 1864. The technology of news-gathering continues to grow, often in advance of the capability of governments to receive and process information themselves. In recent times, this has often led to the primacy of political factors over policy factors in the national leadership’s direction of a war.

The public mind of many nations, while it may be prepared — or even eager — to contemplate death and destruction in the abstract, is often unprepared for the reality. This may be in the form of its own troops, with names and families, being killed; it may even be the realisation that the enemy, no matter how professionally vilified, also consists of ordinary people. Likewise, coverage of wars and atrocities is often episodic and even random, and the availability of material will usually take precedence over the importance of the event itself. The first televised massacre of a civil war, for example, will generally establish in the popular mind who the heroes and villains are, and it may be extremely difficult for a government to pursue a sensible policy thereafter. Moreover, few people enjoy seeing television footage of atrocities, and the public demand will too often be to do something to remove the offending images from the television screen, even if action is itself debatable, and may even make things worse.

Reasons for military operations

Military operations will tend to be launched for one of a fairly small number of reasons, and each of them implies a different relationship between the policy/political factors and the military ones. Some of the most common types of motivations are:

defence of national territory against attack;

defence of wider economic and political interests;

protection of borders and economic assets;

internal security and counterterrorism;

playing a part in UN operations; and

improving the nation’s international or regional profile.

The first of these, strictly speaking, does not amount to a motivation, since the only choice a government would have is to surrender or not. Even here, political factors will tend to bulk large. For example, the military may want to withdraw to a more defensible line which would involve giving up the capital, but the government may not allow the military to do so.

As motivations for the use of military force become more complex, and have less to do with national survival, the political constraints on the use of force become greater. What makes sense militarily can easily sabotage the whole operation from a political point of view. In 1982, for example, the Argentinean government recognised that, if its troops inflicted any casualties on the tiny British contingent on the Falklands during the invasion, international — and especially British — reaction might be strong enough to undermine the advantage which had been gained. Similarly, the British decided not to mount any attacks on the Argentine mainland, since, despite the considerable military advantages of destroying aircraft on the ground, for example, international support for the British cause — limited at best — could well disappear entirely. In each case, short-term military gains had to be subordinated to long-term political advantage.

Something similar happened in the Gulf War. The longer term political aims of the West were essentially limited to securing oil supplies under politically sympathetic regimes. Although the destruction of Iraq and the occupation of Baghdad would have been within the capability of US forces, it would not have helped the primary objective, since the West could not have administered a conquered Iraq, still less determined its future development. Indeed, the destruction of Iraq would have produced, in the eyes of many, a worrying vacuum in the region for Iran to exploit. Likewise, although there was widespread fury in the West at Hussein’s disrespectful attitude to his former sponsors, it was decided that his removal by force would be too politically controversial in the region, where political support was required for the prosecution of the war.

As the level of expected violence goes down, so, by an apparent contradiction, the level of policy and political complexity frequently goes up. For example, all nations patrol and protect their air and maritime borders, but the forces which do so are under the strictest possible orders about the use of force. Even military aircraft which violate a country’s own airspace, for example, are likely to be shepherded away rather than shot down, because everyone is aware of the violent and far-reaching repercussions which would then follow.

The tendency since the end of the Cold War has been for military forces to be used in what are called ‘operations other than war’. These operations are often violent, or occur in violent situations, but the violence is generally sporadic and unco-ordinated. Nations have entered many of these conflicts for reasons which are political, rather than as a result of national policy. They are important for many countries in that they demonstrate a continuing utility for their armed forces after the end of the Cold War: this is particularly the case for those countries which over-invested in threat-related concepts at the time. Such operations are also very fashionable and generally uncontroversial, since they have a humanitarian gloss to them. They are, nonetheless, operations which are extremely difficult to carry off successfully, and pose particular problems for co-ordination between the military and political leaderships. The urge to take part is often stronger than the ability to provide the resources. A number of nations, notably in Asia, find such operations a useful way in which to remind others that they are regional or global actors, and gain experience of deployment outside the home country. Even quite sophisticated nations, coming to these operations for the first time, however, find all sorts of logistic, doctrinal and command problems which they did not expect.

Moreover, the military task is often unclear. It usually flows from the political need to do something, and while it is frequently called ‘peacekeeping’, or alternatively ‘peace support’ or ‘peacemaking’, there is often, in fact, no peace to keep. A common scenario is that of a multinational force which is despatched into an environment where the various combatants have been persuaded to stop fighting, by threats or bribery or both, and is intended essentially to try and fulfil a political rather than a military objective. This objective may be one or a mixture of the following:

demonstrate that a nation or group of nations is responding to a crisis;

demonstrate that an international organisation is responding to a crisis;

respond to domestic pressure;

respond to international pressure; and

gain international attention and credibility.

In singling out selfish and political motives, the idea is not to be cynical, but rather to stress the practical difficulties which arise when (as is common) nations deploy troops abroad for these kinds of reasons. In such a situation, the political objective is often as simple as:

make sure lots of good publicity result; and

do not get anyone hurt.

Sometimes, however, motives can be genuinely mixed. Deployments of Japanese forces on UN missions during the 1990s, for example, have certainly done no harm to the nation’s ambition to have a permanent seat on the UN Security Council. But, there are wider policy issues as well, to do with showing the Japanese public, as well as other nations, that Japanese troops, in spite of their country’s history, can perform a valuable international role.

Operations

The modern tendency to use military forces, in a complex and very political fashion, in operations which are not warlike in any real sense, raises issues of civil-military relations in a very acute form. All modern military commanders have recognised that the political leadership, for good or bad reasons, will place restrictions on the plans they might make and the way they conduct an operation.

Sometimes, this is simply a reflection of the fact that the military, understandably, tends to see its task as fighting, whereas the political leadership will have wider objectives. In fact, military forces, campaigns and victories mean very little in themselves. But, the military, preoccupied as it is with technique, and with a practical and quantitative outlook, is inclined to overlook this fact. The fact is that military victory may lead to political victory, but it just possibly may not.

A good example is the October 1973 Middle East war. The Israelis did not expect an attack, because they did not believe that the Arab nations could win, and assumed that Arab political and military leaders shared this view. As late as July 1973, a number of the most senior generals, when interviewed, were “overwhelmingly optimistic”, and thought a decisive victory “inevitable.”29 But, the Israelis’ military culture was Western in origin, and they thought in terms of military victory alone. The Arabs, likewise, did not expect a conventional military victory (although they would undoubtedly have liked one), but their concept of victory was political, and their objective was to regain a sense of pride after the 1967 defeat and to reclaim some of the territory then lost. Operationally, this involved a move back into the land lost in 1967, such that they held more of this land at the end of the war than at the beginning. Tactically, this meant a defensive posture and lots of anti-armour and anti-aircraft systems. This plan was mostly successful, although the Arabs did not win a military victory in the classic sense. The kind of self-delusion on the part of the Israelis, which brought about this result, is more common in countries where the military has a high status, and where politicians themselves are often former soldiers.

It was argued elsewhere that the process of converting military success into political benefit is complex and difficult, and seldom accomplished in the way intended.30 A fixation on the means of success, often found in the military, can be at the expense of forgetting what the end is actually supposed to be. This happened to the Americans in a significant way in Vietnam, where technique and the statistical measurement of battlefield success became ends in themselves, and largely took over the debate about the running of the war. No wonder one US general described his army’s military doctrine as "more bombs, more shells, more napalm ... ‘til the other side gives up."31 This is what is often called attrition warfare, and is seldom successful unless a smaller and weaker enemy tries to play the same game as well. Attrition warfare is the default mode in the military mindset, whereas politicians, interested in final results rather than transitory victories, and wanting them now rather than later, are more open to ideas of manoeuvre warfare, which emphasises the achievement of the objective, rather than the destruction of the enemy by firepower. Much of the friction which has existed in the relationship between politicians and the military during operations goes back to this fundamental divergence.

In operations other than war, attrition warfare is especially dangerous. Indeed, once an operation of this type becomes defined as a firepower contest, objectives will almost certainly not be met. In such operations, military defeat, even if it can be accomplished, is unlikely to be enough to cause the opposition to give up, since they will not usually see themselves fighting a military battle, but a political one. Military defeat or heavy casualties may be acceptable, even welcome, if they produce international sympathy. Operations other than war are consequently a severe test of a nation’s politico-military decisiontaking apparatus.

As a generic example, a UN multinational force is sent in to supervise elections and protect aid convoys in a country wracked by civil war. The side which was winning (but expects to lose the election) has accepted the UN force grudgingly. Their opponents have welcomed the force. Each side hopes to exploit the presence of the UN for its own purposes. How should a responsible state plan and conduct an operation?

The first thing to bear in mind is that perceptions of what the force is intended to do can be very different, both among those agreeing on the mandate, and among those contributing troops. There may be divided sympathies for the combatants, and a variable degree of willingness to become involved and suffer casualties. The mandate, which will be the outcome of much bargaining and compromise, will reflect this. Domestically, the enthusiasts for doing something in some countries may have assumed, without reading the mandate in detail, that more is expected of the force than is actually the case. In such a situation, it is very important that, at the strategic level, a nation has its own idea of what it wants to or will help to to accomplish. If this is not done, reaction to unexpected events and to ‘mission creep’ (the tendency for forces to become imperceptibly involved outside the original mandate) will be hesitant and confused.

At the operational level, the most important requirement is for thoroughly thought-out rules of engagement (ROE). These provide general guidance to the force as a whole about how it should conduct itself, and when violence can be used. ROE themselves are unlikely to be produced by the military alone; they are heavily political, and will reflect many of the same hesitations and differences of view which will have emerged in discussions about the mandate. They are essential because of the potential for disaster and misrepresentation in operations other than war, where the wrong decision by a junior commander can set off an international incident, broadcast around the world. Sometimes, ROE may not make much sense from the military perspective, but a sensible country will make sure that members of the military are involved in the drafting, so that civilians know what is practical and what is not. A simple example would be an ROE which sets out what is to be done if a force protecting an aid convoy comes under fire. This, in turn, is involved in the complex issue of what kind of escort force to send. If the concept is that the force should retire, if opposed by an armed group, and take its aid convoy home, then a few men in a jeep will be adequate, with orders not to open fire. A company of armoured vehicles turning tail after a few shots could be politically disastrous. Likewise, if muscular ROE are adopted, with the option of fighting through, then adequate forces must be made available to enable this to happen.

Uniquely, perhaps, in operations other than war, the actions of a single soldier can be on the television news that evening, and derail the whole operation. The commander of a national contingent must therefore ensure that, at the tactical level, NCOs have a good grasp of the limitations they are working under. While they need to know what the mandate and the ROE say, the important thing is to ensure that they are told, in simple terms which they can commit to memory and recall under stress, exactly what they are to do. (Nations with much experience of these operations have generally learned this lesson the hard way.) In the case of an ROE which allows the force to return fire if attacked, for example, a national contingent may provide each of its soldiers with a card with the following on it, for example:

You may return fire if:

you come under armed attack, and


your life or that of a comrade is threatened, and


you can identify without a doubt the source of the attack

You must

fire only single, aimed shots, and


cease firing once you have hit the target

You must not

look for other targets, or


fire if it would endanger bystanders.

It is part of the professionalism of the soldiers concerned, of course, to be able to maintain discipline under fire, and not shoot back unless authorised to do so. Indeed, the difference between trained troops and irregulars, however brave, is that the former can be ordered not to shoot back, even at risk to themselves, with the confidence that they will follow orders.

Military operations and military obedience

So far, the primacy of the political objective has been emphasised, and the importance of the military following orders from politicians, even when they do not represent, militarily, the best course of action. But, the question will inevitably arise whether there are any limits to this obedience.

There is no straight answer to this question in the terms in which it is posed. If considered carefully, it will be found to be, in effect, the same as the list of proper roles which were given at the beginning of the chapter. Healthy civil-military relations depend on something like the roles set out above being performed, and this, in turn, means that each actor must confine itself to its own area of expertise. The military should get the job done in a way which is consistent with the policy objectives, and civilians should allow it to do so. When these roles are not respected, proper civil-military relations are violated, but, more importantly, the task will not be carried out properly. Such activities are a constant temptation for politicians during a war or crisis: they know that they will be the first to suffer if anything goes wrong, and they are inclined to fiddle compulsively with things they do not understand. Before the 1962 war with China, for example, Nehru and Menon, the Indian defence minister, "directly supervised the placement of individual brigades, companies and even platoons, as the Chinese and Indian forces engaged in mutual encirclement of isolated outposts."32 Equally, there are cases where the political leadership has shirked its responsibility, and has allowed, in effect, the military to usurp a political role.

In essence, the system will work best if the military concentrates on military issues, the politicians on policy issues, and the two both know the difference. As elsewhere, this is not a case of rigid separation, but rather an awareness of where one’s own type of expertise gives way to someone else’s. One of the themes of this monograph is that, if the background structure of civil-military relations is sound, then the behaviour of the actors involved will tend to be correct as well. What is much more difficult is to lay down rules which would define when — if at all — the military should decline to follow orders. A few of these hypothetical cases are discussed below, but it should be remembered in each case that the only real solution is to ensure that the system works well in the first place.

Clearly, the political leadership should not give detailed operational and tactical orders to the military. The leadership operates properly at the strategic level. It should not try to make an operational plan, but its civilian advisors should be involved in the work, and the leadership should have the plan presented to them in outline so that they can be sure that it has observed the political limitations they have placed upon it. But, the leadership must be extremely careful not to try to dictate military aspects of the plan. If a particular unit is chosen for a particular task, then politicians might query its use on political grounds. But, they should never do so on military grounds. Likewise, the leadership should never demand from the military something which it clearly cannot perform. There may be cases where the danger to the nation is so extreme that even hopeless expedients have to be tried, and the military must do its best to deliver. But, it equally has a duty to be honest to its leaders about the chances of success. In the end, the military has a duty to put into effect any operational order of a duly constituted government, despite what it may feel about its chances of success.

There is, finally, the very tangled question of whether all orders given to the military should be obeyed, even if they appear to run counter to moral or ethical principles. In theory, the position is clear enough. A government is bound by the principles it has signed up to. It may not therefore order its troops to carry out operations which violate the Geneva Conventions, or other provisions of international law, any more than it can order them to break the domestic law of the land. Indeed, in such a situation, the military would not so much have the right as the duty to disobey. In practice, however, the situation is a little more complicated.

The question of ‘military honour’, an excuse sometimes used by the military when it does not want to do something, must be dealt with briefly. Military honour is an elastic concept which has not prevented, in practice, the military in different countries at different times from doing some unspeakable things. If a legitimate government is faced with a general declining to obey legitimate orders on the basis that his or her military honour is thereby impugned, they should sack him or her, and keep on sacking his or her replacement, until a more reasonable one is found. It is true, of course, that individuals have made genuine moral stands on the issue of honour (refusing to take part in massacres, for example), but this is a conclusion to which morality and international law, rather than some abstract sense of honour, are the real pointers.

Practical difficulties arise, however, because almost all military conflicts involve incidents which take place in moral and legal grey areas. For example, it is accepted that, while soldiers who have surrendered are legally protected, the use of force, even lethal force, is permissible to prevent them from escaping. It is also accepted that those who fight without uniforms or are involved in terrorist or guerrilla activity, cannot take for granted that they will get the same protection as soldiers in uniform. Yet, it is obvious that both of these excuses can be — and have been — misused to excuse atrocities and violations of legal norms. Much of the problem arises from the fact that, of course, few orders to commit atrocities are ever put directly in these terms. Politicians and the wiser senior commanders know better than to have any permanent record of some of the more dubious orders they might give. It is also true that there are certain informal rules of engagement which have operated from time to time in war. Some special cases — mercenaries, snipers, operators of feared weapons like the flame-thrower, and soldiers who have surrendered too late — can be and are sometimes despatched violently even after surrendering.