Iraq war forces Western military rethink

LONDON - Western military powers are being forced to rethink strategy because conflict in Iraq has shown the limits of their conventional armies, said the International Institute of Strategic Studies.

In its annual report on global military might, "The Military Balance", the London-based think-tank said strategists had hoped new technology would let them target enemies accurately from ships and planes, avoiding protracted ground battles.

But it said conventional armies have been sucked into messy conflicts, often in towns, where they face enemies invulnerable to the advanced gadgetry that was supposed to dissipate the fog of war and herald a new era in warfare.

"Iraq, Afghanistan and Chechnya demonstrate the limitations of modern conventional forces in complex environments that demand more of them than traditional warfighting," wrote Editor Christopher Langton in the introduction.

The United States has some 137,000 troops in Iraq more than two years after crushing Iraq's conventional army in a ground invasion. Nearly 2,000 US soldiers have been killed in Iraq since March 2003.

The Military Balance said that rather than winning "network-centric warfare" using electronic sensors to find targets and direct fire, Western forces were enmeshed in "netwars", based on "agile and adaptive human networks".

"The conflict environment of the early 21st century certainly does represent a new era in warfare: but not the era that Western military planners expected," it said in its handbook which lists the size and capabilities of the world's armed forces.

Inertia in US

Using suicide bombers and roadside bombs, Iraqi insurgents have killed US and British soldiers and thousands of civilians. US campaigns to dislodge fighters embedded in Iraqi towns have also involved losses.

"Dealing with this new conflict environment has caused a rethink for many Western forces," the institute said.

It said British and Australian special forces and the US Marines were adapting to the new era of "asymmetric" conflict used by non-state actors such as al Qaeda by creating smaller fighting groups.

But it said there was unlikely to be any major shift in US strategy, or spending, for two reasons. First, because it feared the rise of large conventional armies in countries such as China and wanted to maintain air and sea supremacy.

"China's military is rapidly modernizing. This is of concern to the US and some countries in the Asia-Pacific region as the modernization of the People's Liberation Army is no longer directed solely against Taiwan," Langton wrote.

The second reason was the immense inertia of the industrial groups that helped build US military might and the fact that it would take time to move away from decades of strategic thought.

The institute said one bright spot for Western conventional armies was that they were still unrivalled in their ability to respond quickly to natural disasters, such as the Tsunami.

- REUTERS