6: Chapter Military Force and Terrorism
* Conventional Forces
-State leaders apply leverage to influence outcomes of conflict
* Nonviolent: foreign aid, economic sanctions, personal diplomacy
* Violent: army marches, suicide bombers, missiles
- Military force slowly declining in relation to nonmilitary means
- Security dilemma => devote large resources to military capabilities
- Purposes of military development:
* Deter attack by having means to retaliate
* Compel states to behave in certain ways, through threats
* Humanitarian assistance after disasters
* Peacekeeping
* Surveillance of drug trafficking
* Repression of domestic political dissent
- Great Powers together: 2/3 world military spending
* Types of Forces
- Most wars involve struggle to Control Territory
- Military: to take, hold, defend territory
* Armies
- forces with armed foot soldiers that occupy a territory militarily
- Infantry: foot soldiers with assault rifles and light weapons
- Artillery: most destructive
- Armor: tanks, armored vehicles
- Counterinsurgency: an effort to combat guerrilla armies, often including programs to
win the hearts and minds of rural populations so that they stop sheltering guerrillas
* Most complex: military strategy and political gains
- Land mines: small, cheap containers of explosives with a trigger activated by contact or
sensor
* Conference to ban land mines from use in 1997
* 2007: 40 million destroyed, 80 countries eliminating stockpiles
* Navies
- Control passages through the seas and attack land near coastlines, sealift logistical
support
- Blockade empty ports
- 2008: faced mission to deter piracy from major shipping waters
- Challenge: size of ocean, ships cant be everywhere
- Power projection: aircraft carriers: mobile platforms for attack aircraft
* Very expensive and only 9 countries possess one (small)
- Surface Ships: rely on guided missiles, game of radar surveillance and electronic
countermeasures
- Marines (part of NAVY) move to battle in ships, but fight on land (amphibious warfare)
* Air Forces
- Strategic bombing of land or sea targets, close air support, interception of other
aircraft, reconnaissance, airlift of supplies, weapons, and troops
- Aerial bombing: great destruction, no discrimination: smart bombs = more accurate
- Very expensive bc of increasing sophistication of electronic equipment and highperformance requirements of attack aircraft
- Key to success of ground operations, especially in open terrain
* Logistics and Intelligence
- Fuel, food, ordnance (weapons and ammunition)
- Global-reach capabilities: long-distance support with various power-projection forces
* Allow great powers to project military power to distant corners of the world and
maintain military presence in most of worlds regimes simultaneously
* Only United States: worldwide alliances, air and naval bases, troops stationed
overseas
- Space forces: attack from outer space
* Development of space weapons deterred by technical challenges and expense of
space operations, norms against militarizing space
** Intelligence Gathering
- Global Positioning Systems
- Electronic monitoring of telephone lines
- Reports from Embassies
- Information in the open press
- Spies
- National Security Agency: US military intelligence agency, intercepts information from
undersea phone cables
* 2nd largest electricity consumer in Maryland, budget larger than CIA, most
powerful computer facility in the world
* Evolving Technologies
Technological developments
- Resort to force in international conflicts more profound costs and consequences
- military engagements now occur across greater standoff distances between opposing
forces
- Great powers cant settle disputes amongst themselves with risking massive destruction
and economic ruin
- Electronic warfare (information warfare):use of electromagnetic spectrum in war
- Electronic countermeasures: counteract enemy electronic systems
- Stealth technology: special radar-absorbent materials and unusual shapes in design of
aircraft, missiles, and ships
- Cyberwar: disrupting enemy computer networks to degrade command and control
- Revolution in Military Affairs: rapid change in conduct of war, combine applications
of new technology with changes in military doctrine, organization, or operations
- Unfortunately, aid terrorists as much as governments
* Terrorism
- 44 foreign terrorist organizations (2008): religion, class ideology, ethnic conflict, and
nationalism
- Political violence that targets civilians deliberately and indiscriminately
- One persons freedom fighter is anothers terrorist
- Demoralize a civilian population to use discontent as leverage on national governments
to a conflict
- Effect of terrorism: psychological, cause drama to catch attention (randomness)
- Classic Case: nonstate actor uses attacks against civilians by secret nonuniformed
forces, operating across international borders, as leverage against state actors
- By radical factions of movements that have not been able to get attention, tactic of
desperation
- Do NOT reliably achieve political ends
- Suicide bombings: frequently against democracies
- Narrowest definition: exclude acts either by or against uniformed military forces rather
than civilians
- State-sponsored terrorism: use of terrorist groups by states to achieve political aims
* Weapons of Mass Destruction
- three types: nuclear, chemical, biological weapons
- Proliferation: possession of weapons of mass destruction by more and more states
- Purpose: deter attack by giving state leaders means to inflict great pain against a wouldbe destroyer
* Nuclear Weapons
- worlds most destructive weapons: fission weapons and fusion weapons
- Fission weapon explodes, one type of atom is fissioned (split) into new types with less
mass and converted into energy through E = mc(squared)
- Fissionable material: elements: uranium-235 and plutonium
- Invented during Manhattan project
- Work by subcritical masses of fissionable material and compressing them into critical
mass, which explodes as splitting atoms in a chain reaction
- fissionable materials often difficult to come across
- Fusion weapons: two small atoms fuse together into a larger atom, releasing energy, at
high temperatures, use fission weapons to create high energies and trigger explosive fusion
reaction
- Effects of nuclear weapons:
* blast of explosion
* heat => self-sustaining firestorm
* Radiation => cancer and other health problems
* electromagnetic pulse: disrupt and destroy electronic equipment
* Ballistic Missiles and Other Delivery Systems
- Delivery systems: basis of states nuclear arsenals and strategies
- Strategic weapons: hit enemys homeland (long range)
- Tactical weapons: designed for battlefield use
- Ballistic Missiles: main strategy delivery vehicles, carry warhead up along trajectory
and drop on target
* fixed sites or mobile
- Intercontinental ballistic missiles: longest-range missiles
- Short-range ballistic missiles.
- Cruise missile: small winged missile that can navigate across thousands of miles of
previously mapped terrain to reach a target, with help of satellite
- Missile Technology Control Regime: industrialized states try to limit the flow of
missile-relevant technology to states in global south, but with limited success
- US container security initiative to prevent weapons of mass destruction from reaching
shores in seaborne shipping containers.
* Chemical and Biological Weapons
- chemical weapon: releases chemicals that disable and kill people
* protection against: protective clothing, gas masks, and decontamination
procedures
- and indiscriminate hard to protect civilians against
- banned in 1925 Geneva protocol after WW1, but did not ban production and possession
=> many countries have a stockpile
- Chemical Weapons Convention: ban production and possession of chemical weapons
(1992): strict verification provisions and threat of sanctions against violators including nonparticipators
- Biological weapons: resemble chemical but use deadly microorganisms or biologically
derived toxins (never used in war)
- Weapon could cause epidemic in population but too dangerous => less contagious
microorganisms preferred
- Biological Weapons Convention (1972): banned development, production, possession of
weapons, but no provision for inspection
* Proliferation
- spread of weapons of mass destruction into the hands of more actors
- Two Sides:
* world where the use of military force could lead to mutual annihilation, there
would be fewer wars
* more and more nuclear actors could lead to use of weapons of mass destruction
- Great powers side with 2nd, tried to restrict weapons to great powers
- Fear weapons fall into hands of terrorists who are immune to retaliation
- Prevent buying a weapon to build one: covert intelligence, tight security measures,
safeguards to prevent stolen weapons from being used
- Development by states of nuclear complexes to produce their own nuclear weapons on
an ongoing basis
- Non-Proliferation Treaty: International Atomic Energy Agency charged with inspecting
the nuclear power industry in member states to prevent secret military diversions of nuclear
materials
- Typically go against going nuclear for norms against nuclear weapons, fears of
retaliation, practical restraints including cost
* Nuclear Strategy and Arms Control
- Nuclear strategy: decisions about how many nuclear weapons to deploy, what delivery
systems to put them on, what policies to adopt regarding circumstances of how they would be
used
- First strike: attack intended to destroy states nuclear weapons before they are used
- Second-strike capabilities: weapons that can take a first strike and still strike back
- Mutually assured destruction (MAD): possession of second-strike capabilities
- Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI): develop defenses that could shoot down incoming
ballistic missiles
- Arms control: effort by two or more states to regulate by formal agreement their
acquisition of weapons, using reciprocity principle to solve the collective goods problem of arms
races that ultimately benefit neither side.
- Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty: prevented either side (US-Soviet) from using ballistic
missile defense as shield from which to launch a first strike
- Strategic Arms Limitation Treaty (SALT)
- Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty (CTBT): halt all nuclear test explosions (1996), but
only ratified if all 44 nations signed it, which did not happen
* States and Militaries
* Military Economics
- forces depend on connection between military spending and economic health
- war stimulates high military spending, destroys capital, causes inflation
- Govt pay for through borrowing, printing more currency, raising taxes
- Benefits: short-term stimulation, acquire territory, stir up populations patriotism
- After Cold War, US cut military spending => $ for cities, education, environment
- Burden Sharing: countries pay more for maintaining military troops of another state
- Economic Conversion: use of former military facilities and industries for new civilian
production
* Control of Military Forces
- Chain of Command: running from highest authority through hierarchy spreading out to
lowest soldier.
- Military units rely on soldiers sense of group solidarity, motivation: loyalty to
immediate group
- Military governments: military forces control the government, mainly poor countries
where military only large modern institution
- coup dtat: (blow against the state), seizure of political power by domestic military
forces change of political power outside states constitutional order
SUMMARY
1) Military forces include a wide variety of capabilities suited to different purposes.
Conventional warfare requires different kinds of forces than those needed to threaten the use of
nuclear, chemical, or biological weapons.
2) Control of territory is fundamental to state sovereignty and is accomplished primarily with
ground forces
3) Air war, using precision-guided bombs against battlefield targets, proved extremely effective
in the U.S. campaigns in Iraq in 1991, Serbia in 1999, Afghanistan in 2001, and Iraq in 2003.
4) Small missiles and electronic warfare are increasingly important, especially for naval and air
forces. The role of satellites is expanding in communications, navigation, and reconnaissance.
5) Terrorism is effective if it damages morale in a population and gains media exposure for the
cause
6) The September 2001 attacks differed from earlier terrorism both in their scales of destruction
and in the long reach of the global al Qaeda terrorist network. The attacks forced dramatic
changes in the US and worldwide security arrangements and sparked US military intervention in
Afghanistan to overthrow the Taliban regime and destroy the al Qaeda bases there.
7) Weapons of mass destruction nuclear, chemical, biological have rarely been used in war
8) The production of nuclear weapons is technically within the means of many states and some
nonstate actors, but the necessary fissionable material (uranium-235 or plutonium) is very
difficult to obtain.
9) Most industrialized states, and many poor ones, have refrained voluntarily from acquiring
nuclear weapons. These states include two great powers, Germany and Japan.
10) More states are acquiring ballistic missiles capable of striking other states from hundreds of
miles away. But no state has ever attacked another with weapons of mass destruction mounted on
ballistic missiles.
11) Chemical weapons are cheaper to build than nuclear weapons, they have similar threat, and
their production is harder to detect. More middle powers have chemical weapons than nuclear
weapons. A new treaty bans the possession and use of chemical weapons.
12) Several states conduct research into biological warfare, but by treaty the possession of such
weapons is banned.
13) Slowing the proliferation of ballistic missiles and weapons of mass destruction in the global
South is a central concern of the great powers.
14) The United States is testing systems to defend against ballistic missile attack, although none
has yet proven feasible and withdrew from the ABM treaty with Russia to pursue this program.
15) The United States and Russia have arsenals of thousands of nuclear weapons; China, Britain,
and France have hundreds. Israel, India, and Pakistan each have scores. Weapons deployments
are guided by nuclear strategy based on the concept of deterrence.
16) Arms control agreements formally define the contours of an arms race or mutual
disarmament process. Arms control helped build confidence between superpowers during the
Cold War.
17) Political leaders face difficult choices In configuring military forces and paying for them.
Military spending tends to stimulate economic growth in the short term but reduce growth over
the long term
18) In the 1990s, military forces and expenditures of the great powers, especially Russia, were
reduced and restructured
19) Except in times of civil war, state leaders control military forces through a single hierarchical
chain of command.
20) Military forces can threaten the domestic power of state leaders, who are vulnerable to being
overthrown by coups dtat.