Terrorism as an Outgrowth of Asymmetric Military Relations

In a brief piece in the Financial Times, Paul Kennedy argues that, as the US extends itself militarily and increases expenditures, terrorism is more likely to occur, not less. He elaborates,

...many strategic experts today have described the changes in the art of warfare in recent times as a new military revolution...

This military revolution is almost entirely driven by the US - that is, by the peculiar interaction of its Pentagon planners, its military/industrial complex and Silicon Valley high technology, together with the political desire to be successful in war without taking heavy casualties. The key element is a massive investment in new, precision weaponry, supported by detection and command-and-control systems.

We are now familiar with the fact that the Pentagon's budget is equal to the combined military budgets of the next 12 or 15 nations - in other words, the US accounts for 40-45 per cent of all the defence spending of the world's 189 states. Furthermore, as a gloomy Russian military expert observed to me recently, the Pentagon's research and development budget may be as much as 70-80 per cent of all the globe's defence-related R&D.

It is no wonder, then, that the more pessimistic forecasts of likely US troop casualties before the Gulf war, and before the recent Afghan campaign, proved to be so wrong. For the Pentagon was not planning to fight a conventional slug-it-out land battle in the Gulf (despite sending vast numbers of ground forces to the region). Nor was it planning to get trapped in a struggle akin to the Vietnam war in its campaign against the Taliban...

Is this new face of warfare - a sort of video-game conflict fought by technicians watching a screen and pressing a "send" button - the only form of organised violence that the 21st century will witness? Surely not. There will still be sanguinary wars of the Iran-versus-Iraq sort, in which neither side has a great technological advantage and their respective armies have to battle on the ground. It is hard to believe that atomic bombs, or other weapons of mass destruction, would not be deployed if a regional conflict such as that between India and Pakistan ran out of control.

...there is [also] that other face of conflict that the present revolution in military affairs is not designed to deal with: the use of force by clandestine means, through terror, by those prepared to kill civilians and disrupt society to achieve their ends. Here is a dreadful irony, for Americans in particular. For the more that the Pentagon's spending on R&D makes the country's forces superior to anyone else's armies and navies, the more America's enemies will turn to unconventional methods to hurt her.

...today's American military revolution, astounding though it is in so many ways, is of limited application when fighting a war among the shadows. The current armed power of the US is the apogee of that process of state-controlled violence that emerged a half-millennium ago. Yet, ironically, in today's fractured, war-torn, neo-medieval world it is quite inadequate to guarantee lasting peace and security, even in the American homeland itself, let alone in the protection of US interests abroad. One wonders how many of George W. Bush's talented strategic advisers fully realise that fact.