Asymmetric Warfare

Like the young David with his sling-shot, hostile nations armed with cheap but effective weapons pose an increasing threat to the Goliath of U.S. military might.

BY JONATHAN B. TUCKER

A future opponent, for example, might employ nonconventional weapons—nuclear, chemical, biological, or radiological—or conduct terrorist attacks against military or civilian targets on American territory in a bid to deter or impede U.S. intervention in a regional conflict in the Persian Gulf, the Korean Peninsula, or the Balkans. Such an adversary could be selective in its objectives, timing the moment of an attack to maximize its strengths. Although the United States could ultimately prevail, the increased financial and human costs might undermine the political will of U.S. leaders to sustain the conflict or deter allies from providing assistance.2

U.S. Secretary of Defense William Cohen has warned that "a paradox of the new strategic environment is that American military superiority actually increases the threat of nuclear, biological, and chemical attack against us by creating incentives for adversaries to challenge us asymmetrically."3

HYPE OR THREAT?

To what extent is asymmetric warfare a new threat that poses a significant danger to the security of the United States? Three strategic assessments published by the U.S. Department of Defense have called attention to the issue.

The May 1997 Report of the Quadrennial Defense Review stated that a future adversary could "employ asymmetric methods to delay or deny U.S. access to critical facilities; disrupt our command, control, communications, and intelligence networks; or inflict higher than expected casualties in an attempt to weaken our national resolve."4

will seek to disable the underlying structures that enable our military operations. Forward bases and forward-deployed forces will likely be challenged and coalition partners coerced. Critical nodes that enable communications, transportation, deployment, and other means of power projection will be vulnerable.5

Finally, Joint Vision 2010, a study of warfare in the next century by the Joint Chiefs of Staff, asserted that "our most vexing future adversary may be one who can use technology to make rapid improvements in its military capabilities that provide asymmetrical counters to U.S. military strengths, including information technologies."6

In response to these alarming declarations, skeptics have argued that military scenarios focusing on asymmetric threats tend to overstate the vulnerabilities of the United States, and that merely identifying theoretical windows of vulnerability does not necessarily mean that real-world adversaries could climb through them. These analysts allege that the Department of Defense has exaggerated the asymmetric threat in order to justify its inflated budget in the post-Cold War era.7

For example, Iraq foiled intensive Coalition efforts to find and destroy its Scud missile launchers by deploying decoy missiles together with barrels of diesel fuel to simulate secondary explosions when hit.8 A crude Iraqi mine put out of action the Aegis missile cruiser U.S.S. Princeton, one of the U.S. Navy’s most advanced ships.9 Baghdad hampered sophisticated efforts to eavesdrop on its military communications by relying on buried coaxial and fiber-optic landlines that were hard to cut or tap, rather than using radio or satellite communications.10 And Iraq’s extended-range Scud ballistic missiles were so poorly constructed that they broke up under the stress of reentry, effectively creating a swarm of "decoys" around the warhead that confused the guidance system of the Patriot antimissile defense system. As a result, few if any Patriot interceptions were successful.11

A more sophisticated adversary might attempt to jam transmissions from the U.S. Global Positioning Satellite system, which aids many precision-guided weapons, or to sabotage critical command, control, and communications nodes such as satellite terminals and switching stations. Knocking out a few key nodes might disable a larger network of facilities supporting U.S. military operations. Nevertheless, such tactics are essentially defensive. While effective countermeasures might delay a U.S. victory and make it more costly, they would probably not change the outcome of a conflict, given the overwhelming superiority of U.S. military forces.

INFORMATION WARFARE

The Pentagon is concerned that adversaries or terrorists might employ software commands or malicious programs to shut down or disable key military computer systems. The fact that young hackers have been able to break into U.S. Navy and National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) computers suggests that determined cyber-warriors from a hostile nation or a well-financed terrorist group might inflict considerably more damage. Programmable weapon systems may also be vulnerable to attacks by self-replicating computer viruses that erase stored data. According to Defense Secretary Cohen, "We have to spend a good deal more attention to looking at ways in which our reliance upon technology can be undone by a simple interruption."12

The cyber-terrorist threat also extends into the civilian sector. As the most computerized country in the world, the United States relies on a vast number of networked processors and databanks for the operation of its critical infrastructure—the system of interdependent industries and institutions that provide a continual flow of goods and services essential to the nation’s security and welfare.13 Such systems include energy distribution, transportation, banking and finance, water supply systems, emergency services, telecommunications, and continuity of government. This dependence makes the United States potentially vulnerable to deliberate cyber-terrorist attacks against critical government or corporate computer networks, with the intent to create massive disruption and chaos. According to the President’s Commission on Critical Infrastructure Protection, "We must learn to negotiate a new geography, where borders are irrelevant and distances meaningless, where an enemy may be able to harm the vital systems we depend on without confronting our military power."14

Some analysts have argued that cyber-attacks targeted at computerized systems for air-traffic control, the switching of commuter trains, or the control systems of a nuclear power plant or a chemical factory could kill large numbers of people. This threat appears to have been exaggerated because air-traffic, train, and power-plant and industrial control systems are not accessible through the Internet but have their own internal networks. For those networked computers that are potentially vulnerable to information attacks, defenses can be enhanced by investing in greater redundancy, encryption, electronic firewalls that insulate classified computers from the outside world, tagging of data to detect outside manipulation, and compartmentalization of computer systems so that they fail gracefully rather than catastrophically.15 The challenge is not the lack of available defenses but rather the will of government and industry to invest in them.

PUBLIC-RELATIONS WARFARE

A potentially more effective form of information warfare in the military context is an enemy’s manipulation of the mass media to influence American public opinion, thereby restricting the U.S. government’s ability to employ its overwhelming military superiority. During the Vietnam War, the enemy’s use of asymmetric guerilla tactics and its ability to endure massive firepower while continuing to inflict American casualties gradually turned public opinion against the war and undermined the political will of policy-makers to sustain the conflict.

According to one analysis, "Iraq…[has] taught the world how to put the most powerful military in history on a leash...by convincing America’s leadership that political defeat will be the price of military victory.... The lessons of America’s recent failure of nerve will not be lost on future opponents who lack its wealth, but possess the strength of will to fight with unconventional means."16

MILITARY TARGETS

With the spread of chemical and biological weapons to states that sponsor terrorism — such as Iran, Iraq, Libya, Syria, and North Korea—the Pentagon is increasingly concerned about the potential for nonconventional attacks against U.S. forces.17 To be effective, such agents would not have to be delivered by missile or tactical fighter. Instead, they could be spread by low-tech delivery systems such as a modified agricultural sprayer mounted on a moving truck, boat, or aircraft.

During the Gulf War, U.S. military planners feared Iraq might employ its chemical and biological weapons against coalition forces deployed in Saudi Arabia, but fortunately these attacks did not materialize.18

A fictional scenario included in a 1997 Pentagon-sponsored study envisions an asymmetric attack by a future enemy with small amounts of chemical and biological agents to impede the U.S. ability to project power to a regional theater in a timely manner.19 In this scenario, Iraq again invades Kuwait, this time with the assistance of its erstwhile enemy Iran. Both countries recognize that if the invasion is to be successful, U.S. military intervention must be delayed, and covert chemical and biological attacks are seen as potentially effective for this purpose. Baghdad and Tehran decide to disrupt U.S. airlift and sealift operations by using a persistent chemical-warfare agent to contaminate key troop-deployment ports and airfields in the continental United States. They also release an incapacitating biological agent upwind of U.S. naval ships and other facilities on the island of Diego Garcia, the Indian Ocean base that was used in the 1991 Gulf War and in Operation Desert Fox. The attack is timed to trigger a major outbreak of incapacitating illness among American troops on the day of deployment.

This scenario is plausible in that airlift and sealift operations from U.S. bases at home and abroad are a potential Achilles’ heel. Particularly vulnerable are civilian support personnel such as stevedores and data-processing specialists working at ports and control centers, since few of them have been trained or equipped with protective gear against chemical or biological attacks. At the same time, some of the assumptions underlying the scenario appear unrealistic. How likely is it that Iraq would form a military alliance with Iran—its archrival for hegemony in the Persian Gulf and former adversary in a bloody, eight-year war—or that both countries would be capable of coordinating a complex series of political, military, and terrorist attacks?

CIVILIAN TARGETS

The United States, the sole remaining superpower, has become a prominent terrorist target because of its global military presence, repeated interventions in distant conflicts, and prominent role in security alliances and peacekeeping operations. These activities have incurred the wrath of countries and groups that resent America’s power and perceived arrogance, its tendency toward unilateral action, its loyal support of Israel, and the corrosive effect of American popular culture on social and religious values. Thus, terrorist outrages against U.S. targets often represent a lashing-out against America’s predominant military, economic, political, and cultural influence.

Biological or radiological attacks on U.S. citizens could have delayed effects that might not be detected for days, giving the perpetrators time to escape and the state sponsor a chance of avoiding identification. Some have argued that if terrorists were to conduct an attack in a nonattributable manner, it would be politically costly for the United States to retaliate without compelling evidence of complicity.20

NEW DIRECTIONS

In short, the primary aim of asymmetric warfare is to constrain the ability of the United States to intervene rapidly and at relatively low cost. It is important, however, to distinguish among the various asymmetric strategies, which range from low-tech to high-tech. Only relatively developed countries with extensive technical and financial resources have the potential to mount sophisticated attacks on U.S. weapon systems and computer networks. Yet few such countries currently have hostile or aggressive intentions toward the United States that would lead them down this path. Other adversaries, such as Iraq or Yugoslavia, may desire to bloody the United States’ nose, but they do not have the capability to carry out sophisticated attacks. By conflating these various actors and scenarios, the Department of Defense has tended to exaggerate the strategic significance of asymmetric warfare. It is therefore necessary to disaggregate these various threats if we are to assess them realistically.

Third, the United States should enhance its ability to prevent and mitigate the consequences of chemical and biological attacks. On the prevention side, the intelligence community should upgrade its technical and human resources for monitoring enemy and terrorist acquisition of relatively small quantities of chemical or biological warfare agents. To mitigate the consequences of a possible attack, the armed services should develop and deploy improved sensors to detect and identify battlefield contamination, including low-level exposures to chemical nerve agents, which have cumulative toxic effects.21 The armed forces also need to provide protective training and equipment to key civilian defense workers. If the United States enhances and publicizes its ability to cope with the medical consequences of chemical or biological warfare, this capability would help deter such attacks.

Fourth, it is not clear that in the post-Cold War era, military intervention is always desirable or in the national interest. In the past, unilateral U.S. involvement in a regional conflict—particularly on behalf of one side in a civil war as in Vietnam, Nicaragua, and Somalia—has often proved counterproductive, eliciting widespread hostility on the part of those who resent perceived U.S. arrogance. Thus, one way to minimize the future threat of asymmetric warfare would be for the United States to employ greater restraint towards intervention in regional conflicts. Some analysts contend that by disengaging from secondary military commitments around the globe, the United States could reduce the incentive for terrorist attacks against Americans at home and abroad without adversely affecting its core security interests.22 Obviously, an activist U.S. foreign policy requires overseas bases and operations. As the world’s sole remaining superpower, the United States should be prepared to intervene when necessary to prevent genocide, to halt massive violations of human rights, or to contain regional aggression. Wherever possible, however, Washington should act as a member of a multinational coalition.

Finally, not all security threats are best addressed through military means. By strengthening nonproliferation treaties and export-control regimes designed to halt the spread of nuclear, chemical, and biological weapons, and by promoting diplomatic settlements of the festering conflicts in Yugoslavia, the Middle East, Southern Africa, and the Korean Peninsula, the United States can minimize the need for military intervention in the future. This diplomacy-centered strategy would require a much greater investment in nonmilitary instruments such as negotiation, foreign assistance, the promotion of democracy, and the effective use of the United Nations—including the full payment of back dues—backed up existentially with the big stick of U.S. military power.n

Jonathan B. Tucker is director of the CBW Nonproliferation Project at the Monterey Institute of International Studies, Monterey, CA.

4. US Department of Defense, Report of the Quadrennial Defense Review, "Section II: The Global Security Environment" (May 1997).

22. See Christopher Layne, "The Unipolar Illusion: Why New Great Powers Will Rise," International Security 17 (4) (Spring 1993), pp. 5-51; and Eugene Gholz, Daryl G. Press, and Harvey M. Sapolsky, "Come Home, America: The Strategy of Restraint in the Face of Temptation," International Security 21 (4) (Spring 1997), pp. 5-48.

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