The Future of War Is Humility?

Pretty good crowd for a last session

We had good reception

 I am in Amsterdam, spending several days at The Future of War conference hosted by the Netherlands Defence Academy and Oxford University.*  It is quadrennial and much has happened apparently since the last one (which I did not attend).  I was very much drinking from the firehose as I only do a small sliver of defense/war stuff--civ-mil--and there is much, much more out there.  I gave my take on oversight over democratic militaries (there isn't much) on one panel and then attended heaps of panels on various topics--hybrid war, the future of SOF, learning from Ukraine/Russia, strategic foreign, Russian active measures against Europe, and more.

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  I was volunteered for the last plenary session--what lessons are there from the conference for teaching war.   Here's basically what I said, with some elaboration that time did not allow on the roundtable:I was reminded a bit of a conference long ago when I was in grad school--where I was sent to be a rapporteur for a bunch of talks by phycissts who had all kinds of cool projects but ignored the political ramifications.  It was not so deaf or blind here, but there was a bit of it.  How do our political systems, where most democracies are now fighting populism and far right efforts (and Russian interference, accept riskier strategies?  Who has the guts to take risks when governments are on the edge?  I am reminded of a book that got stuff wrong--Barry Posen's Sources of Military Doctrine.  He argued that militaries mess around via bureaucratic politics until threats get high and then the civilians somehow embody the imperatives of the international system and force appropriate adaptations.  Debbi Avant's diss and first book dismantled that nicely, but here, I just want to suggest that threats are high but the ability to react to them depends on the politics of the places.  France couldn't adapt well in the 1930s as Germany got increasingly menacing because France's domestic politics were a mess.  So, um, deja vu?

• We don't really know that much.  The session on strategic foresight emphasized that it is very contingent.  Indeed, heaps of Clausewitz's friction and such was all around us.   

  

  Best military mural?

• Adaptation is key, of course.  The war in Ukraine has demonstrated so much adaptation by both sides.  One of the sessions addressed the defence industry dynamics--outsiders trying to use Ukrainians to test their weapons and then sell their wares elsewhere, how decentralized innovation is in Ukraine, which presents challenges of scope and scale.  How do we teach imagination and adaptation and how do we organize to facilitate but then harness the sharp ideas from those closer to the battlefield?
• Which leads to how do we do mission command?  How do we delegate. Emilie Berthelsen has a forthcoming European Journal of International Security that I will be looking out for on this stuff.  My bias in all of this is that civs can delegate more to the military folks if they can trust them--which requires a couple of things--greater civilian expertise on military matters and militaries that are comfortable with being overseen and being transparent.  
• I think this group was much more skeptical about the Americans helping out in any crisis compared to, say, the Canadian armed forces.  But, no, they aren't making much progress on being capable sans Americans.
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  SOF's moment maybe over--the panel on Special Operations Forces noted that these units are supposed to have strategic effects, but didn't that much in the irregular wars but did have a role.  In conventional, peer to peer wars, unless they are out in the Sahara operating behind enemy lines, they are mostly highly capable assets that are expended on key missions.  That is, they will fight and die for specific tactical efforts.  Given that I have been a critic of the valorization and imitation of SOF, I should be happy about this. But I am not--because I don't want folks to die.
• I missed the keynote on AI as I, well, overslept.  Jet lag caught up to me.  
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  There is a debate about whether Ukraine teaches us that maneuver warfare is dead or not--that the terrain and technology makes it hard to exploit success on the battlefield. So, we may be stuck with positional warfare, which means more of a grind and fewer dramatic breakthroughs and quick victories.  I don't know much about this, but I do agree with one of the speakers that the western militaries need to think about this possibility and prepare for it--stockpile heaps of ammo, for instance.  And invest in combat engineering to create and break obstacles.
  

  *  I also attended a meeting focusing on academic exchange with other MA in Defence stuff programs in Europe and am giving a talk tomorrow at the Free University on the Dave/Phil/Steve stuff on legislatures and defence oversight.