In Michaelmas term 2021, CCW sought to examine several major themes that encapsulate the changing character of war and confrontation, the two most prominent challenges for today’s statecraft and strategy. The discussions were played out against a background of three significant global developments. The first was the ongoing and evolving coronavirus pandemic. The second was the Russian build-up of conventional military forces on the Ukrainian border, amid claims from the Kremlin that they intended to prevent Kiev moving into the Western sphere. The third was China’s surprise development of a hypersonic missile capability, as well as heated rhetoric from Beijing that they intended to resolve the Taiwan question. The increase of air and maritime activity around the independent republic led to further discussions in the West about the deteriorating relationship with China and its strategic response.
Some conflicts attract fewer headlines or international interest, such as the Ethiopian civil war, the continued low intensity violence in Democratic Republic of Congo, a coup in Mali, fighting in northern Nigeria, the desultory conflict in Yemen, and the endless violent abuses by gangs, militias, and state authorities stretching from Mexico to North Korea. All of them produce that familiar and tragic cycle of civilian casualties, a culture of fear and oppression, and the desire for revenge, honour, and survival. Such conflicts seem to metaphorically mirror the global pandemic, with waves of new variants, immense human suffering, and intense efforts to mitigate the threat. Unfortunately, the devastating impact of CV19 has not passed unnoticed amongst malign actors who imagine the ways in which biology, through weaponised DNA, could be used in this century as a new generation of biological warfare.
In the UK, as in the US, considerable thought was given to the modernisation of defence to address these, and other, emerging challenges. It was assessed that climatic change would almost certainly produce new humanitarian crises. Unorthodox ways of operating by hostile states or by international terrorists were already manifest. Novel and emergent technologies demanded integration into existing systems, and, in some cases, their complete transformation. Of current interest was the question of information warfare, including the manipulation of data, news, and the electronic environment. Some perennial dilemmas remained, not least in getting government departments to work together, resolving procurement problems, allocating tight budgets, and managing public expectations.
Our first seminar session, a through, candid and professional perspective, investigated offensive or interventionist cyber. The language of cyber ‘attack’ or ‘offensive’ cyber has been a distinct problem for a facility which is largely concerned with intelligence gathering and only occasionally (and in limited duration) a tool of sabotage. There are very few cases of cyber sabotage, in open sources, that permit analysis with any hope of establishing typicality, but the range of outcomes and intentions adds further problems to our evaluations. The fear is of wholesale damage to one’s critical national infrastructure, commercial damage, or undermining confidence in democratic institutions. The reality is that crime is far more prevalent.
There are a host of demands associated with conducting cyber operations: the qualified team, time, stealth, and an up-to-date payload appropriate to its task. There is the need for a robust legal and ethical framework, as for all intelligence work, and some adroit forward planning. In terms of doctrine or concepts, some ideas of the past are inadequate, such as ‘deterrence’, but the notion of persistence (and advanced persistent threats) can be more helpful.
We then turned to review the outcomes of the conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan for the United Kingdom. A deeply honest appraisal exposed the real victor of the Iraq war to be Iran, and that failures in strategic leadership created problems in intelligence, stabilisation, and equipment provision. Some of these failures appear to be unresolved, even 20 years on. There were obviously some successes in these campaigns – the notion of a smart siege (of Basra), the effect of surging military forces to dampen insurgency, the relative success of ‘clear-hold-build’ counter-insurgency, the value of air mobility, and the fighting performance of British and American units. However, there were multiple errors which led to the ignominious failure in Afghanistan. There were plenty of lessons to absorb too. The pace of adaptation must be faster than one’s adversary to have any chance of retaining the initiative and achieving one’s goals. There needs to be critical challenge (a verdict from the Iraq enquiry) to overcome the assumption that the creation of a plan alone will yield success.
There are perennial problems to counter in any conflict: friction, local actors with competing agendas, the adversaries’ skills and determination, and the unpredictability of war. Yet one verdict must be that armies are designed for fighting and not for armed policing or stabilisation. Attempts to use military forces in this way was a misuse of resources, angered locals and frustrated legitimate government and non-government organisations. Special Forces were highly effective at their pursuit of selected actors, but there was often too little liaison with other areas and fields, resulting in counter-productive effects. There is a distinct reminder, from these recent conflicts, that tactics and strategy interact. But, ultimately, the utility of force needs to be aligned appropriately to the strategic demands. Too often, in Iraq and Afghanistan, it was not.
Several of our seminars examined the UK’s 2021 Integrated Review of Security, Defence, Development and Foreign Policy. We first interrogated the drive towards integration, which has been commonplace in the discourse for much of the past decade. The inspiration for this concern is the emphasis often placed on AI and ‘integrating everything’ as the next generation’s solution to its strategic and data problems.
It is natural for humans to seek a singular explanation for complex problems, and at times we forget that, as Edmund Lorenz observed, a small interaction or intervention can change a condition entirely. This is a reminder that humans, even when equipped with advanced computing cannot predict effectively, even with ever more sensors. Randomisation continually defeats efforts to forecast. In simulations, what is being predicted is based on a set of known conditions. Worse, as humans, we are conditioned to not to see certain things and we have to be trained to see and not see. By way of example, Robert McNamara was dependent on metrics in the Vietnam War. Vast data sets were accumulated. It was hard not to see that metrics were not enough, and conditioning meant that certain choices were made.
The Integrated Review (IR) took on a new significance after the fall of Afghanistan in the summer of 2021. The assertiveness of China in economic and military terms heightened the UK government’s emphasis on the Indo Pacific ‘tilt’ (a largely economic programme, but one which included the maiden deployment of its Carrier Strike Group). There was therefore an examination of the IR in practice, as well as the making of it, as an illumination on strategy making. My own paper examined the past record of defence reviews, and offered some reflections. The verdict on the result is that there was a welcome uplift in defence spending, a modernisation of the UK nuclear deterrent, a commitment to the modernisation of the armed forces, a welcome attempt to fuse policymaking, and a stronger emphasis on informational and cyber threats. As criticisms, the IR leaves the UK armed forces too small and jeopardises the notion of a credible conventional deterrent. All three services are too small while strategic command has not yet delivered on an expanded Special Forces, a digital and cyber agile force, or a modernisation programme that can match the private sector in terms of AI and other technological developments. Indeed, in some areas the lack of progress is alarming.
Another paper in the term examined the process of making the IR in much more detail, showing where there was successful collaboration, red teaming, external engagement, continuities, and where, regrettably, other agendas intervened, such as budgetary constraints, the covid pandemic, the ‘fog of governance’, and competing departments or ministers.
This theme continued, with an examination of Grand Strategy, in global and comparative terms. The paper examined the concept, the methods of conducting comparative study of grand strategies, and the prominent cases or themes (scale, resources, control). Amongst the findings, we observe that domestic politics is far more influential than often assumed. There is a combination of objective and subjective factors at work (such as ‘prestige’ and threat perception). There are goals and there are different aspirations, enduring ends, behaviours, and resources. Above all, grand strategy appears to act as a guiding thread, consciously or subconsciously, on decision making.
During the term, we examined the posture of Iran and its relations with two other actors hostile to the West, namely China and Russia. The Iranian perspective appeared to be one that assumed Russia and China are prepared to support Iran and therefore prevent the isolation of Tehran. Technology transfers are a subsidiary benefit. Yet there is very little trust between these states. Neither Russia or China have backed Tehran in international fora. While Iran is a full member of SCO, its discussions on counter-terrorism are awkward for Tehran. There are regional problems too. Many Iraqis resent the Iranian influence. Turkey backed Azerbaijan in its war with Armenia in 2020, leaving Iran without influence. Its only compensation was a dispute between Turkey and Israel, and the Gulf States. Iran continues to believe it can maintain its influence through local networks, such as support for Hezbollah. While the US withdrawal from Afghanistan has come as a relief, the Taliban may prove a difficult neighbour. Currently, Iran feels that its tactics against the Gulf States has forced them to engage in talks or disrupted them, including in Yemen.
While the ‘security dilemma’ is well known (the more one increases security measures, the more other actors grow anxious and increase their own, forcing further measures), CCW had a presentation on dispute inflation, that is, where perceptions and emotions take over from escalation, and indeed, induce it. The paper focussed on how disputes are projected upon, extrapolated from, and made into abstractions towards escalation (such as domino theory). The exacerbating factors were domestic incentives, the security dilemma itself, a power transition (such as shifts of power to another actor), or broader climates (such as a sense of irredentism). The insights can be applied to the issue of the Senkaku islands or to the South China Sea.
Midway through the term, we had a detailed examination of space defence, investigating a variety of ASAT systems, and the various ways in which one can exercise space situational awareness. The presentation was extremely timely, given Russia’s use of an ASAT missile days beforehand, with all the resulting debris; the challenges of cataloguing debris objects; and the Chinese completion of their own global position satellite network in November 2020.
Continuing the theme of technology and its impact, another presentation examined the changing character of war and tech’, challenging the usual revolution in military affairs approach. The paper examined the impact of time, as sequencing, surges in developments, the compression of decision making, and the potential impact on time of AI (and multi-domain integration where sensors/weapons ‘talk’ to each other, potentially). The paper also evaluated the importance of space, as physical space but also as vertical space, with a greater dependence on space itself. The third area the paper explored was the changing perception of self, given the likely impact of AI on physical and cognitive human integrity. Looking to the distant future, one can foresee significant changes being incentivised in how humans enhance themselves.
From these developments, we asked: are our strategic concepts fit for the future that lies ahead? Do deterrence, compellence or a credible commitment work when a state possesses only conventional forces against an AI-enabled system? Are shaping and influence operations central to the outcomes, and how does artificial intelligence make that decisive? The solutions lie in matters such as civil-military fusion, better data management, an awareness of proliferation in AI technologies (including to non-state and hostile state actors), systems integration, legal parameters and even the motivation of soldiers and elites. Crucially, military education is now vital, and must include technical training, specialisations (just as were demanded in the 19th and 20th centuries), and combined civil-military education.
We concluded the term with the formal launch of the edited volume Military Strategy in the 21st Century. This work examines, thematically and through selected NATO countries, how military strategy is perceived and utilised, within the alliance. The volume indicates that a specifically military strategy is downplayed, and frequently misunderstood, by political leaders eager to retain maximum freedom of action, minimise the costs and burdens of defence, and preserve civil primacy over policy. The panel discussed the overarching challenges and limitations for NATO, but also the threat that the Western world now faces in contrast to the situation just a decade ago. It examined the specificity of the high north, and relations between civilian and military authorities.
The CCW Annual Lecture, much delayed by the global pandemic was very well attended and gave us the opportunity to reflect on UK defence reviews and UK foreign policy since the early 1980s. This 40 year period was marked by changes in the strategic environment, to which the UK had to respond and prepare as best it could, often with diminishing resources. Perhaps all the reviews underestimated the speed at which changes could occur, from the invasion of the Falklands in 1982 to the fall of the Berlin Wall and the collapse of the Soviet Union. There were sometimes bold cuts, but generally attempts to maintain the same shape of defence on a smaller budget rather than a radical shift. There were many continuities, such as membership of NATO, a nuclear deterrent, bilateral relationships, a presence in the Middle East, and steady upward costs in personnel and equipment. Criticisms can be levelled at the results. Too often service chiefs got locked into a struggle to preserve particular equipment programmes. There was an abundance of commitments but without the commensurate increase in mass, and threats were often wrongly couched in terms that were manageable or palatable. Cyber, for example, is largely an intelligence threat, but traditional defence structures do not protect data. National resilience is given less attention than traditional expeditionary armed services even though it is a critical defence issue. This was exposed most starkly by the covid pandemic, as well as Russian threats to undersea communications cables. Moreover, China’s economic and political warfare, and its informational campaigns, now accompanied by a vast rearmament programme, appears to outmanoeuvre or dwarf the UK’s own defences. In the future, climatic and political stability challenges will take on a new significance.
In addition to the seminar series, CCW supported some other initiatives, examining the future of nuclear deterrence, information warfare courses, assisting the All Party Parliamentary Group for New Tech in Defence and Security with a new report (APPG III), and work on subthreshold threats. CCW also completed a report for the Australian Army on future warfare in December 2021, examining the future operating environment and the responses, in strategic terms and in the operational dimension. A second paper was given to the Australian security community at the ‘How Wars End’ conference. CCW offered a typology on wars, illustrating how the various categories we use are formulated, the differences in disciplinary interpretations, and their influence on how wars are concluded. Both papers will be published in 2022.
Finally, in the autumn of 2021, CCW provided insights on theories of decision and strategic thinking for the UK government, and gave a number of lectures and papers to NATO, UK defence personnel at Wilton Park, and the CENTCOM team in the United States.
Tribute must be paid to the research team of the term. There were papers and discussions on command and control for air forces, naval strategies, on cyber, and information warfare in the various research team meetings and the working group in CCW.
Taken together, the intensity of activity and the outcomes indicate just how much richness and vitality there is in CCW, and how extensive the interest in our work is within the University of Oxford and the wider community. It is also, perhaps, an indication of the seriousness and urgency of our work. Many of the issues addressed in the term’s programme are of immediate relevance and utility to those in government and the armed forces. Given the stark nature of the threats that have emerged (or re-emerged in some cases) in recent months and years, CCW continues to provide a critical role in rigorous, thoughtful, original, and in-depth analyses.
