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'Operational pause' in Iraq

By V.R. Raghavan

An ill thought phrase by a senior field commander in the Iraq war has left everyone — the White House, the Pentagon, the Central Command headquarters and the British military command — breathless trying to explain the meaning of the term "operational pause"... All are busy interpreting its implications, its purpose and its need.

The speed of modern global communications and the reach of the media have given the spoken word a power to influence opinion unlike anything known before. The ongoing war in Iraq is different in scope, military conduct, public response and political consequences.

A war that is 12 days old at the time of writing, was expected to be shorter, but in fact is going to be much longer.

How did military calculations go so wrong? We are witnessing the famous adage that no military plan, however good, survives the first contact of arms.

The imponderables of war are so numerous and complex that the best techniques of Operational Research, brought into Pentagon by Robert McNamara in the Kennedy era, have failed to predict the way this war would go.

Military strength, firepower, dominance of skies, control of seas, coercion of allies and monetary costs can be calculated with some degree of accuracy. What cannot be calculated is the outcome of the clash of wills.

The former is in the field of science while the latter remains firmly in the realm of human spirit. Human resolve and the will to fight have no barometer to measure and no weathervane to point a direction.

The error which the political and military high leaders of the coalition in Washington and London made was one of judgment.

The Anglo-American military combine has outstanding abilities in war planning and fighting.

What put it on the wrong path is the dominant American military theology that relies overwhelmingly on military hardware.

A belief that more powerful weapons will always prevail is at the heart of what is proudly termed the "American Way of War".

The dramatic phrase "shock and awe" is a product of that thinking. Consequently, battles are always won by the U.S. military power but peace has rarely been won by its wars.

There is the apt story of a U.S. officer saying to his Vietcong counterpart at a meeting: "You never defeated us in a single battle", to which the Vietcong commander replied: "That is true, but we won the war".

The belief in Washington was that Iraq's unequal army could not conceivably stop the coalition invasion. The power of modern combat aircraft combined with precision-guided munitions has placed in the hands of modern military commanders amazing flexibility and reach.

That notwithstanding, even as modern war cannot be won without an air force, it cannot also be won by it alone.

Wars are won by occupying territory and not merely by destroying tanks from air. Nor are they won by bombing cities.

Saddam Hussein has traded the space of his deserts for gaining time and putting the coalition leadership under pressure. He has learnt the lessons of 1991 and not exposed his Republican Guards to the coalition air power.

He has decided — wisely — to contest the possession of his capital and major cities.

He knows his regime cannot be changed as long Baghdad and other major cities are in his hands.

He hopes that the delays and the costs in casualties in taking and occupying Baghdad would bring forth immense pressures on the Bush-Blair combine.

He hopes domestic political costs and international reaction would force the coalition to look for ways to terminate the war on terms other than his removal from the scene.

He knows the odds are against him but hopes, like the great gambler he is, that he can pull off one more escape from destruction.

Iraq's cities have been made into Saddam Hussein's defence lines. Instead of Republican Guards digging in to defend the desert, Iraq's cities and their defence potential have been placed in the path of the coalition advance.

The concerted battle for Baghdad will depend heavily on a long logistic chain that would depend heavily on the road arteries from Kuwait and Basra.

The coalition's advance to Nasiriyah has been fast and assured. However, the massive armoured and tank forces have been halted by the need to clear the city.

The operational dilemma of whether to force an entry into and occupy the cities or to bypass them has been turned into a strategic question for the Bush-Blair duo to decide.

There are human, hardware and time costs to be paid for either option. There are greater costs involved in political and prestige terms. Operational pause is really all about rethinking strategic choices.

(The writer, a former Director-General of Military Operations, has first-hand experience of Iraq's army and operational conditions.)

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• Maintaining communal harmony
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• The naked emperor
• The Judiciary and the Legislature — II
• 'Operational pause' in Iraq
• Catastrophic war
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