The Art of Decisive War
A test for a reborn defense.

By William R. Hawkins, senior fellow for national-security studies at the U.S. Business and Industry Council Educational Foundation
October 9, 2001 12:00 p.m.

n his speech to a joint session of Congress September 20, President George W. Bush laid out his objective for the war against terrorism, saying "from this day forward, any nation that continues to harbor or support terrorism will be regarded by the United States as a hostile regime." Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld has been even more explicit, saying four days earlier, "that the best defense against terrorism is an offense. That is to say, taking the battle to the terrorist organizations and particularly to the countries across this globe that have for a period of years been tolerating, facilitating, financing and making possible the activities of those terrorists."

On October 7, the United States opened the military campaign against Osama bin Laden's Al Qaeda terrorist network in Afghanistan, and the Taliban movement which has sheltered it. This war may be waged with new weapons and tactics, but it marks a philosophical rebirth of the kind of war the United States fought in the wake of Pearl Harbor. This is to be a real war with the goal of remaking the world geopolitical map. And the Bush administration was already thinking in these terms before the suicide air strikes on the World Trade Center and Pentagon.

As a result of the strategic analysis that Secretary Rumsfeld has been conducting since taking office, a new paradigm of "winning decisively" had taken shape. The new Quadrennial Defense Review defines "decisively defeating an adversary" as "the ability to occupy territory or set the conditions for a regime change if so directed." The senior defense official who conducted the first QDR briefing October 1 was more blunt, speaking of how "to decisively defeat an adversary" meant "marching to capitals and overthrowing the regime."

Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz had laid out the historical precedent for this concept at an August 16 briefing, saying "we want to have a major war capability to impose whatever terms — 'win decisively,' I guess is the terminology. It was called 'unconditional surrender' in World War II."

President Franklin Roosevelt spoke of "unconditional surrender" as "the destruction of the philosophies in those countries which are based on conquest and the subjugation of other people." This meant the removal of the Axis regimes and their replacement with democratic governments. It would have been unthinkable to stop at the German border after the liberation of France, leaving Adolph Hitler in Berlin.

Mussolini was executed by Italian partisans after the fall of Rome; Hitler committed suicide in his Berlin bunker. Emperor Hirohito was spared, but General Tojo was hanged. Denazification programs, war-crimes trials, purges of collaborators, and the writing of new constitutions cemented democratic governments which then joined the United States as allies. Western Europe settled into the longest period of peace in its history.

While the U.S. has attempted to impose political change in several small-scale settings (Grenada, Panama, Haiti), it has not done so in any major war since 1945. It tried to unite Korea in 1950, but was unwilling to further escalate the war after China intervened.

In Vietnam, while Hanoi sent an army south to overthrow the Saigon regime; the U.S. only sent bombers north to coerce Hanoi — an asymmetry in objectives that led to disaster. The war only ended when one side was able to impose fundamental political change on the other.

In the Gulf War, the U.S. stopped after liberating Kuwait. Saddam Hussein was left untouched in Baghdad to foment new plots, including a probable role in the attacks of September 11. Indeed, the failure to remove Saddam a decade ago, when U.S. troops were on his doorstep, can be considered the motive for Rumsfeld and Wolfowitz to make "decisive war" the core of future doctrine.

This renewal of strategic thinking indicates a rejection of the "limited war" concept that has generated so much frustration since Korea. In limited wars, adversaries are to be persuaded to change their ways. They are not be presented with mortal threats that would risk escalation and a hardening of their position. This is the view still in vogue at the State Department, which has not undergone the kind of intellectual transformation that has been instituted at the Pentagon.

But what if adversaries are already hard cases, determined to stay their course? What if they cannot be deterred? Then, they must be eliminated if real peace is to be established and maintained.

Promulgation of such a strategy would send a strong signal to any regime that was pondering a challenge to American interests. The risk would no longer be that the challenge might be repulsed, but within the antebellum status quo. The risk would be that the regime itself could be destroyed. Those who decided on aggression could personally pay the ultimate price. It is hoped that even the nastiest regimes will purge their lands of anti-American terrorists to avoid such a fate.

The test of whether "decisive warfare" emerges as new American doctrine, and thus a credible threat to future adversaries, is what happens in Afghanistan. The U.S. ultimatum to Kabul was a demand for unconditional surrender. Not only was the Taliban ordered to turn over all terrorist leaders (not just Osama bin Laden), but to allow American inspectors into the country to confirm al Qaeda's camps have been destroyed. This is similar to the demand made on Iraq for inspection of Saddam's weapons of mass destruction — a demand President Bill Clinton let drop. The Iraqi experience shows how difficult it is to enforce such demands against a hostile regime which still controls the local environment. To get the kind of assurances and verification the U.S. has demanded will require a new, cooperative regime be installed in Kabul.

Imposing such a change of regime requires troops on the ground. It remains to be seen if the Northern Alliance is strong enough to wrest power from the Taliban with American support limited to airpower, special-operations units, arms, and other supplies. If the Northern Alliance falters, Washington will have to decide whether to introduce American troops to bolster its offensive, or settle for the "limited war" objective of reprisals and punishment in hopes that the Taliban will have learned its lesson.

If "decisive warfare" survives its current test, it will require a high priority be given to the development of missile defenses to remain viable for future conflicts. Of the seven states identified by the State Department as sponsors of terrorism, five (Iran, Iraq, Syria, Libya, and North Korea) have ballistic-missile programs. The acquisition of ballistic missiles and weapons of mass destruction by rogue states is seen as an attempt to guarantee regime survival by providing a "death ride" deterrent against a "decisive" thrust towards the capital by superior American conventional forces. Removing that threat and assuring the vulnerability of hostile regimes to overthrow by the projection of U.S. power is crucial to Rumsfeld's new thinking and to America's continued role as world leader.