Fighting for the Future
By Ralph Peters
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About this ebook
Ralph Peters
Ralph Peters is a retired Army lieutenant colonel and former enlisted man, a controversial strategist and veteran of the intelligence world; a bestselling, prize-winning novelist; a journalist who has covered multiple conflicts and appears frequently in the broadcast media; and a lifelong traveler with experience in over seventy countries on six continents. A widely read columnist, Ralph Peters' journalism has appeared in dozens of newspapers, magazines and web-zines, including The New York Post, The Wall Street Journal, USA Today, the Washington Post, Newsweek, Harpers, and Armchair General Magazine. His books include The Officers’ Club, The War After Armageddon, Endless War, and Red Army. Peters grew up in Schuylkill County, Pennsylvania, and studied writing at Pennsylvania State University. He lives and writes in the Washington, D.C. area.
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Fighting for the Future - Ralph Peters
Fighting for the Future
Will America Triumph?
Ralph Peters
STACKPOLE
BOOKS
Copyright © 1999 by Stackpole Books
First paperback edition 2001
Published by
STACKPOLE BOOKS
5067 Ritter Road
Mechanicsburg, PA 17055
www.stackpolebooks.com
All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book or portions thereof in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher. All inquiries should be addressed to Stackpole Books, 5067 Ritter Road, Mechanicsburg, Pennsylvania 17055.
Printed in the United States of America
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
First Edition
Cover photo by Peter Turnley/Corbis
Cover design by Caroline Stover
We gratefully acknowledge the cooperation of the following publications for the production of this book: Parameters, the U.S. Army War College quarterly, whose editor, John J. Madigan, facilitated our use of those essays that had been printed there; editor Abigail DuBois of Strategic Review and Dr. Earl Tilford of the Strategic Studies Institute for the same reason; and the Army Times for permission to use Mario Villafuerte’s photograph of the author.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Peters, Ralph, 1952
Fighting for the future : will America triumph? /
Ralph Peters. — 1st ed.
p. cm.
ISBN 0-8117-0651-6 (alk. paper)
ISBN 0-8117-2805-6
1. War—Forecasting. 2. Military art and science—United States—Forecasting. 3. Twenty-first century—Forecasts. I. Title.
U21.2.P425 1999
RALPH PETERS retired from the U.S. Army shortly after his promotion to lieutenant colonel so that he could write and speak freely. He has served in or visited over fifty countries on five continents, and has published eleven novels, as well as numerous essays on military affairs, strategy, and international relations. Regarded as the most controversial military thinker of our time, his prescient work described the mind and goals of terrorists, warriors, and renegade armies years before they became a reality to America.
From the reviews of Fighting for the Future:
The gut-level understanding of what motivates men and women to fight to the death, and what it takes for us to prevail, is at the heart of this book. Peters came to understand the cultural, religious, historical, territorial, and mythological drives that make men (and women) kill without mercy. Veterans . . . will recognize the hard truths in this book. Our uniformed mavericks and unconventional thinkers, and those with campaign ribbons from service at the cutting edge of our armed diplomacy around the world, will make this a counter-culture classic. If you are not afraid of a contrarian view or new ideas, this [book] is more than worthwhile. It is a must.
—Maj. Gen. W. C. Gregson, USMC, Proceedings
Ralph Peters is quite frankly the most gifted military theorist of his generation. He is a genuine forward thinker who is brutally honest, thoroughly believable, and very often profound. His analyses are solidly grounded in the present, even when he is projecting some alternative and very nasty futures. Peters writes with conviction, integrity, and unusual artistry.
—Lt. Col. Robert B. Adolph, Jr., U.S. Army (Retd.), Special Warfare
"Lt. Col. Ralph Peters does not think we can shrink from tomorrow’s conflicts behind a new Fortress America. Peters has been the most profound, prolific, and provocative essayist on the future of the U.S. military in the past decade. In all his works, Lt. Col. Peters has proven to be a passionate proponent for the individual soldier or Marine infantryman as our nation’s most effective instrument, and a tireless advocate for military reform. In powerful prose . . . Peters predicts we will excite deep hatreds from what he calls ‘anti-states’ (failed states, criminals, terrorists). . . . Fighting for the Future presents a series of strong arguments for change in the way the American military is preparing for war in the next century."
—Lt. Col. F. G. Hoffman, USMCR, Strategic Review
Every chapter challenges conventional wisdom and its purveyors without sugarcoating. With a style that is at once elegant, abrupt, entertaining, thoughtful, direct, and always thought-provoking, Peters is a man who makes us think. He tells us where, who, how, and why we will fight, but more important gives us the same analysis on those parties likely to be arrayed against the United States. . . . He jets us through the future at almost the same pace that marks his successful novels.
—Dr. John Hillen, Parameters
Arguably the best thinker and certainly the best writer on international affairs in America today.
—Jack Kelly, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
Ralph Peters is fighting for the future of the U.S. armed forces. [Peters insists] the United States must think from the perspective of the religious and ethnic zealot, warlord, cartel chief, terrorist, and transnational criminal. The essays help the reader stretch the envelope of understanding warfare.
—Col. James D. Blundell, U.S. Army (Retd.), Army
Provocative . . . hard-nosed . . . Peters makes a compelling argument that Americans are psychologically unprepared to understand the nature of their future foes.
—Capt. Jan Van Tol, U.S. Navy, Naval War College Review
"A master craftsman . . . Peters has devoted considerable labor to making sense of the real world. In sharp contrast to the predictions of many other futurists, which soon fade into obscurity, Peters’ essays have a long shelf life. The preservative that keeps Peters’ work from going stale is its originality. Possessed of an extraordinarily independent mind . . . Peters’ position on America’s role in the world is likewise unique. Like Kipling, Peters realizes that there is much to admire in the men of deep conviction who present the biggest threat to peace. Like Kipling, he has profound knowledge of and sympathy for, the ordinary soldiers and Marines. . . . Best of all, Peters partakes of the full measure of Kipling’s mastery of the English language. The reader who picks up Fighting for the Future will thus never have any doubt where Peters stands."
—Maj. Bruce I. Gudmundsson, USMCR, Marine Corps Gazette
It seems that retired Army Lt. Col. Ralph Peters could have had a great pitching career. . . . The way he heaves rocks indicates a strong arm . . . unbridled intellectual energy.
—Ernest Blazar, The Washington Monthly
Peters has never been known to shy away from a controversial topic or to abandon an intellectual position just because it wasn’t politically correct. Peters is willing to take on just about any sacred cow, and he does so here with a decidedly irreverent wit. His personal theories of international relations and military conflict are appropriate for a professional [soldier] of any pay grade. I strongly recommend this book.
—Capt. Robert L. Bateman, U.S. Army, Armor
Contents
The Myths of Autumn (2001)
The Background of This Book
The Culture of Future Conflict
After the Revolution
The New Warrior Class
Winning Against Warriors
Our Soldiers, Their Cities
The Future of Armored Warfare
A Revolution in Military Ethics?
Blood-isms
Constant Conflict
Spotting the Losers: Seven Signs of Noncompetitive States
Our New Old Enemies
Fighting for the Future
In memory of
Colonel John J. Madigan III
United States Army, Retired
1936–1999
Patriot, Scholar, Gentleman
The Myths of Autumn
(2001)
History is a bath of blood.
—William James
In the wake of the atrocities of the 11th of September, 2001, the American people reacted with inspiring patriotism and righteous anger. Shocked, they want revenge. As I write, ten days later, our government is saying the right things: We are at war, the war will not be short, and it cannot be waged on the cheap. The nation’s mood is somber and martial. Yet, I do not believe the American people have realized, even now, how merciless, determined, and numerous our enemies are—and will be—in our long war against this new warrior class
at its worst.
We are opposed by men who, if they could push a button and destroy the United States, killing every man, woman, and child, would push that button and call it a good day’s work well done. They do not hate us as individuals, but that is irrelevant. They hate the perverted vision of America they have constructed for themselves, a vision that, above all, excuses their own failure and the failure of their culture. Attacking the predatory, corrupt, immoral America of their imaginations is the only purpose left to them. Their impulse is toward immolation, of themselves and us, toward annihilation, toward apocalypse. Armageddon junkies to a man, they imagine their god is whispering in their ear, and that he is telling them to kill. Theirs is the jubilation of massacre, a side of mankind we cannot wish away. Do not look for reason. Expect hatred.
The key to fighting such human monsters is not military power, or wealth, or good intelligence, or diplomatic skill, or building robust alliances, or even clever police work, although all of these things certainly matter. The key to destroying them is strength of will. If we cannot maintain the resolve to fight them to the death, they will be the victors. And they will keep on killing us.
This is not—yet—a clash of civilizations. But if we are to be honest, it is a clash between Western civilization and the most violent, obsessed extremists of the Islamic world. We must not talk ourselves into fear or false guilt. It is not up to us alone to prevent this crisis from becoming a contest between civilizations—it is, largely, up to the Islamic countries. Their moment of truth has arrived. They must decide between barbarism that perverts religion, and the path of greater openness, tolerance, and modernity. Despite the events of September 11, the crisis is more theirs than ours, and the coming years will change the Islamic world, for better or worse, far more than they will change the West.
Meanwhile, we are at war, and we must sweep aside the illusions upon which professors and pundits have built their peacetime careers. Consider just a few of the myths that surfaced—or resurfaced—after the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon:
Myth # 1: If we kill terrorists, we only turn them into martyrs. Nonsense. The way to make a terrorist into a martyr is to apprehend him, try him, convict and imprison him, leading his followers to stage hijackings, kidnappings, and other acts of terror as they attempt to set him free. Further, we are at war with networks that span much of the globe and whose members number into the tens of thousands. In what prisons should we put them? In war, you kill your enemy until he quits. In this new variety of war, we will have to kill terrorists and their supporters until the hardcore terrorists are exterminated and their remaining followers and the governments that succor them bend to our will in fear.
Myth # 2: We dare not kill innocent civilians. Certainly, we should never seek to kill the innocent, but imagine how inept our efforts would have been if, at the outset of World War II, we had decided that we must fight without harming any civilians. It is time for a new realism—not cruelty, but cold realism. As for alienating civilian populations, in the key countries that harbor terrorists, the populations already hate us, far more profoundly than Americans understand. Regarding the argument that civilian casualties embitter the enemy population, remember that we terror-bombed the Germans and Japanese on a colossal scale—and today they are our close allies. The world is more complex than well-meaning idealists would have it. We should not be wanton, but we must do what it takes to win. Thereafter, we must be willing to help the defeated rebuild their societies and their humanity, as we did at the end of World War II. Today, we must not succumb to false restraint in the application of our military power. But tomorrow we must not abandon the defeated to a new misery that only begets a new generation of madmen. Today, we must study the lessons of 1941. Tomorrow, we shall have need of the lessons of 1945.
Myth # 3: We should use the minimum force required, relying on surgical strikes. No. If any military doctrine is discredited by now, it should be the myth of the surgical strike. We will require large operations and small operations, but whatever the scale we should apply overwhelming combat power relative to the projected need. Our raw power is a tremendous advantage—why on earth should we cripple ourselves to spare our enemies? Our military is superb, but it is a blunt instrument. If you want finesse, send a ballet troupe. We may conduct highly-skilled, micro-operations, but the sledgehammer should always be raised and ready to drop, if necessary.
Myth # 4: If we fight back, we will only provoke more attacks. This is the argument of the sheep awaiting the butcher’s knife. The terrorists are going to come after us, whether we fight back or not. We have long allowed them the initiative. Now we must take it back, wherever possible, and keep after them relentlessly and without compromise. Yes, there will be more terrorist attacks. But if we fight effectively and resolutely, there will be far less of those attacks in time. A decisive phase of the struggle will come when the terrorists realize we are turning the tide against them. There will be a wave of desperate efforts that seek to unnerve us. But we must not confuse desperation with strength. The desperate betray vulnerabilities, and we must be prepared to exploit them. Appeasement never works for long, and cowardice is never a useful option.
Myth # 5: If we fight as brutally as our enemies fight, we will become as bad as them. This is the most pernicious—and preposterous—myth of all, betraying both an ignorance of history and a shameful lack of faith in the American people. In World War II, we responded to Japanese and German savagery with indescribable brutality of our own. We firebombed the cities of our enemies and ended the war by dropping atomic bombs. On bitterly-contested Pacific islands, our G.I.s did not read Japanese soldiers their rights before burning them to death with flamethrowers. Yet, the men and women of the Greatest Generation
did not come home to stage a military coup. They came back, gratefully, to liberal democracy, the G.I. Bill, and, a decade later, Brown vs. the Board of Education.
A great task lies before us: The first war of the twenty-first century,
as our President has described it. In this longest of America’s wars, there will be no surrender ceremony on the deck of the U.S.S. Missouri, only milestones along the way. But it is a war that must be fought, a war that has been forced upon us. Now it is a question of campaigns, strategies, logistics, alliances, innovation, leadership, and, as ever, the bravery and fortitude of the soldier. It will be a war of fits and starts, in which it will be difficult for a rich nation, at peace in its homeland, to maintain its focus. Domestically, counter-terrorism will remain primarily a law enforcement challenge. But abroad, in the dark corners of the earth, this war will fall upon the shoulders of the Army and Marine infantryman, the Air Force or Navy pilot, the sailor, the mechanic, and the supply clerk. The men and women of our armed forces will rise to the challenge. They need only bold leadership and the faith of their fellow citizens.
We, the People, must not waver in the task before us. If we are unwilling to instill fear in our enemies, we must be content to live in fear ourselves.
Ralph Peters
September 20, 2001
The Background of This Book
The notion that the pen is mightier than the sword is a fantasy. Try waving a book at the man who comes after you with a machete or a gun. Yet the pen can inform the sword. That is the aim of these essays.
An unusual military career and a compulsion to keep moving took me to more than forty countries. I served in Cold War Europe as an empire failed. While the Soviet Union lay dying, I explored its guts. I listened to butchers’ lies over tea in the offices of Moscow’s security services and saw the suffering of remote wars. Other assignments took me to the Pentagon and the Executive Office of the President, to the Andean Ridge, to Southeast Asia, and to America’s broken cities. Personal fascination drew me to the eastern Mediterranean world again and again, and luck brought me to the banks of the Indus. I saw the world through my own eyes, not refracted by libraries. In these travels, official and not, it became clear to me that our government’s understanding of the world does not extend much beyond our embassy grounds and hotel lobbies.
My sector of our government was the U.S. Army. I enlisted as a private after the Army had been broken by Vietnam. I became an officer through the back door. I loved the Army passionately and served in it for over two decades before the fire faded from the romance. I am loyal to it still, much as one might care for an old lover felled by drink and bad decisions. For much of my career, the Army was dynamic, creative, and honest. Sic transit veritas mundi, to twist a cliché. Increasingly, though, I saw our military avoiding hard thought and difficult decisions, hypnotizing itself with empty mantras. After Vietnam, anger had saved the Army. A generation of bloodied crusaders rebuilt the force and unleashed it in Desert Storm. I watched those heroes from the trenches with awe. And now they are gone. Today, I see apathy and confusion and mediocrity. We still have the greatest army in the world, but it is greatness by legacy.
Two misfortunes struck our military during my career. First, the Soviet system collapsed, robbing us of a cherished, vivid enemy. Second, the U.S. armed forces performed magnificently in and above the deserts of