Technology doesn’t win wars. Why the US pretends it does.
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Wars of the future will not even look like wars to the traditional mind. The worst threat is systemic. It's growing entropy in the global system.
Today, when Russia wants to shake up Europe — the world — its operatives weaponize refugees. That is, by bombing civilian centers, they create an avalanche of refugees, which, in turn, creates Brexit and the rise of right-wing national parties that want to disembowel the European Union.
High-tech is not the savior that many futurists pretend it is when it comes to warfare. As a matter of fact, McFate contends, much of our investment in it is ludicrous. "You know, we have not fought, we have not had a strategic dogfight since the Korean War. So why do we need more fighter jets? I do not know. . . . We've spent $1.5 trillion on the F-35. That's more than Russia's GDP."
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SEAN MCFATE:
Dr. Sean McFate is an adviser to Oxford University's Centre for Technology and Global Affairs, as well as a professor of strategy at the National Defense University and Georgetown University’s School of Foreign Service in Washington, DC. Additionally, he is the author of several books, including Shadow War, The New Rules of War, and The Modern Mercenary.
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TRANSCRIPT:
SEAN MCFATE: War is getting sneakier. War is going underground. And we have to go underground with it. We have to fight in the shadows. Otherwise, we will be left behind. So for example, you know, in this type of new environment, some of the best weapons do not fire bullets. In the old days, the old rules of war, when the Soviet Union wanted to arrest the West, wanted to sort of freak out NATO, what it would do was hold a huge military exercise on the border of Germany, East and West Germany. 150,000 troops. And NATO and the United States wasn't sure, like, well, is this an exercise or could it be a real invasion? And that would shake things up. But that's the old days, the innocent days.
Today, when Russia wants to shake up Europe, what they do is they weaponize refugees. They deliberately bomb civilian centers in Syria, creating an avalanche of refugees into Europe, which creates Brexit, which creates the rise of right-wing national parties that want to disembowel the European Union. The Soviets wish they could do that, if they could only have done that. So I think this is an example of how wars of the future will be fought. They will not even look like wars to the traditional mind, and a few heads will explode in the Pentagon. Sure. When people think of the threats that face our country today, they think of Russia, China, terrorism, pandemics, et cetera. But those are not the worst problems.
The worst threat is systemic. It's growing entropy in the global system. It's persistent conflict. It's something I call durable disorder. What durable disorder is and what durable disorder means is that we have an emerging global system that can contain problems but not solve them. Meanwhile, we have this post 1945 idea of a liberal world order that the US sort of champions and rules upon, but that world has gone away, and we're not prepared for what follows next. For the United States, the last successful war was World War II. We won decisively in 1945. The world ran on vacuum tubes, yet the idea of conventional war is still the strategic paradigm of which the Pentagon, the military, the modern national security establishment is built around, and this is dangerously wrong.
When you ask people to think about the future of war, often what they tell you is something that looks like World War II with better technology. But there is nothing more unconventional today than conventional war. Nobody fights this way. When people think about what warfare is they think of John Wayne or Saving Private Ryan, they think of killing more enemies, taking more territory, and flying your flag over the enemy's capital. They think of Berlin in '45. They think of Japan's surrender on the battleship, the USS Missouri. And then they wonder why there's not a USS Missouri moment against the Taliban, against ISIS. The reason is nobody fights this way of war anymore, yet we are mired in the past. And as long as we're mired in the past, and war has moved on, we will be left behind. And even an undefeated So if there's one maxim for the last 70 years of war, it's that technology is not decisive in warfare. If you look at big, powerful, technologically advanced militaries go up ag...
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