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across the Taiwan strait is an open question. More certain is the effect that China s effort
to develop asymmetric capabilities and strategies will have on the asymmetric problem
confronting U.S. forces more generally. In the coming years it seems highly likely that
Strategic Modernization: Implications for the United States (Carlisle, Pa.: Strategic Studies Institute,
1999).
30
Stokes, China s Strategic Modernization. See also Manning, Montaperto, and Roberts, China, Nuclear
Weapons, and Arms Control (New York: Council on Foreign Relations, 2000).
31
As a part of this project, IDA convened a symposium to explore China s potential role as an asymmetric
adversary. A classified summary of the discussion is available as Brad Roberts, China and Asymmetric
Warfare, IDA Document D-2525 (Alexandria, Va.: Institute for Defense Analyses, 2000).
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Chinese military thinkers will emerge as a leading force in the effort to define and exploit
U.S. weaknesses, as they interact with their counterparts in other countries concerned
with the possibility of U.S. intervention.
E. THE EMERGING COMPOSITE PICTURE OF ASYMMETRIC WARFARE
In sum, four quite different ways of thinking about the asymmetric problem have
taken shape over the last decade. There is a natural tendency to ask which of the four is
right. Is it:
1. A major theater war against an NBC-armed rogue?
2. A major theater war where the adversary attacks civilians in the United States,
perhaps with CBW?
3. A prolonged war of attrition that sees no use of WMD?
4. A U.S.-PRC confrontation over Taiwan but under the shadow of nuclear
exchange?
The alternatives to the canonical view (number one above) have emerged in part
because we have not seen adversaries make use of the chemical and biological weapons
available to them since the Persian Gulf war. Yugoslavia did not use such weapons to try
to dissuade the coalition from acting or from escalating as the war unfolded (just as Iraq
refrained from the uses of CBW that apparently were available to it in the Persian Gulf
war). Nor have others used such weapons in the myriad smaller-scale contingencies in
which the United States has been engaged since the end of the Cold War. Surveying this
experience, some are skeptical that the NBC construct is the right one. On the other hand,
with the exception of the Persian Gulf war, none of these wars was a major theater war
involving the massive U.S. use of both air and ground forces. Moreover, in none of these
wars did Washington pursue removal of the regime as an explicit goal.
This absence of consensus about the nature of the asymmetric problem is
unavoidable. With the end of the Cold War, we have moved into an era in which the
potential military adversaries of the United States cannot be predicted with confidence
and thus known in detail. The defense planner may lament this fact, as it frustrates
prioritized and focused investment strategies to reduce vulnerabilities. But for the
moment at least, the absence of consensus about the nature of the asymmetric problem is
probably helpful. Systematic exploration of the multiple asymmetric strategies and
techniques available to potential U.S. adversaries helps to illuminate the range of possible
military (and political-military) challenges that the United States may confront in the
decades ahead. As U.S. military planning shifts from an emphasis on threat-based
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approaches to one emphasizing capabilities, a healthy debate among U.S. analysts about
the basic parameters of the asymmetric problem and of the range of tactics and
techniques available to less-than-peer powers to prosecute asymmetric strategies against
the United States is essential for bringing into better focus the types of capabilities
required of U.S. forces.
This points to the utility of Red-Teaming approaches at a time when the threat
cannot be well defined. Such approaches can help if they knit together technical,
operational, and political expertise in order to define the tactics and strategies as an
adversary might devise them. But they will fail unless they incorporate some notion of an
adversary s core strategic objectives, his interests and values, his propensity to run risks,
and his ability to innovate. Without such a notion, Red-Team approaches can only
produce insights into how an inventive adversary might exploit new technological
possibilities. With such a notion, such approaches can produce insights into how a
thinking, adaptive adversary would likely employ technically feasible capabilities in
ways suited to his purposes. A cumulative assessment of the types of threats posed by
such actors should provide a sound basis for the capabilities-based approach to the
requirements process that has been adopted in the post-Cold War years. Such an
assessment would permit definition of a  threat envelope encompassing the most likely
threats against which military planning must be undertaken.
In constructing such a picture of the likely motives, capabilities, and thus
strategies of potential U.S. adversaries in asymmetric conflicts, it is important to guard
against two tendencies evident in the defense planning community. One tendency is to [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]