[ The president, in his June 1 graduation address at West Point,

By Bruce B. G. Clarke

Special to The Capital-Journal

The president, in his June 1 graduation address at West Point, announced a new strategic perspective for the United States --- a strategic perspective whose implications have not been thoroughly considered nor analyzed.

The president said, "... the war on terror will not be won on the defensive. We must take the battle to the enemy, disrupt his plans, and confront the worst threats before they emerge...

"In the world we have entered, the only path to safety is the path of action. Our security will require transforming the military you will lead --- a military that must be ready to strike at a moment's notice in any dark corner of the world. And our security will require all Americans to be forward-looking and resolute, to be ready for preemptive action when necessary to defend our liberty and to defend our lives."

The United States has traditionally waited until it has been hit and then it rallied public support and brought its resources to bear on an obvious enemy. The sinking of the Maine, Pearl Harbor, the North Korean attack on the South, the invasion of Kuwait and 9-11 make this point clearly. Each had wide public support, at least initially.

Public support for preemption, in the wake of 9-11, is obvious. But will it be when we hit the wrong target or kill innocent civilians because a weapon has missed its intended target? How long will the American people tolerate such unintended or collateral damage? How long will other sovereign countries tolerate unannounced U.S. attacks on their territory? They will probably only be tolerated to the extent that they are successful without local injury and collateral damage has been avoided.

The furor following each such preemptive attack will die down quickly if the local government has plausible denial of duplicity in the attack and the U.S. has a pre-coordinated media plan to highlight what could have happened if a given target hadn't been attacked and the terrorist activities that were occurring there hadn't been at least thwarted, if not destroyed. Proof of destruction will require immediate on-the-ground follow-up.

For us to achieve deterrence through a strategy of preemption the opponents, real and potential, must believe that they have a low probability of not being attacked before they can bring their plans to fruition. This requires a high level of success in preemptive actions and associated public realization of these successes.

Conversely, the opponents of the preemption strategy will seek to highlight any and every mistake that is made. Every instance of collateral damage or attacking the wrong target will be publicized in an attempt to make the United States look irresponsible and use the power of world opinion to terminate the strategy.

This reinforces the requirement for high confidence that every preemptive attack will be successful. The media cannot be given failures to exploit. This is especially true in the early phases before the strategy matures.

To create this high success rate, the military and intelligence communities must develop new methodologies that ensure the desired target will be engaged with a very high degree of confidence that civilians will not be inadvertently or accidentally harmed.

The implications of these requirements have not been truly considered and the methodologies for providing the combatant commander with the confidence he must politically have, have not been developed.

Intelligence accuracy must be of a magnitude higher than it is today. How many times can we strike the Chinese Embassy or any other embassy because of flawed intelligence? Can we develop targeting techniques that will ensure that we can exploit real-time intelligence and deliver the right munition to the right target at the right time?

To the extent that real-time engagement is not possible, techniques must be developed to ensure that the opponent is encapsulated until he can be successfully neutralized.

Achieving successful preemptive attacks will require thinking about what level of confidence the commander requires to ensure that the engagement is successfully completed.

This in turn will also be a function of the nature of the target and the degree of encapsulation that has been achieved. How time sensitive is the target? How important is the target? What means of attack gives the highest confidence of success? These are just some of the questions that will have to be answered.

A successful strategy will also require a political understanding on the part of the combatant commanders that civilian causalities and collateral damage are not acceptable. In this regard we will need near-term successes, not the firing on wedding parties, to ensure continued public support for a concept that is alien to our traditional values. Destroying the target at any cost will, in most cases, not be an acceptable approach.

Preemption of threats before they can be realized is an important component of any defense of the United States, but before it can be a successful strategy, a rethinking of the execution of the strategy will need to occur.

Bruce B. G. Clarke, Topeka, is a retired U.S. Army colonel.

Copyright 2002
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