Dear Reader:
I appeared on several television programs lately:
Yours sincerely,
Daniel Pipes
How
Much Can Air Power Achieve?
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Suddenly, wherever you look in the greater Middle East, you find air
forces bombing guerrillas:
- Syria: The government
air force attacks the rebels, mostly Sunni, with notorious use of
barrel-bombs. The U.S. air force attacks ISIS, minus the
barrel-bombs.
- Iraq: Government
forces rely partially on air power to attack ISIS forces.
- Libya: Egyptian jets
attack ISIS and other Sunni Islamist forces.
- Yemen: Saudi jets
attack Houthi positions.
- Somalia: Kenyan
planes just started to attack the Shabaab forces.
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Barrel bombs dropped
by the Syrian air force inflict great destruction.
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One can imagine similar campaigns starting in Afghanistan and Lebanon.
Will these limited campaigns succeed? I doubt it. Although control of
the air offers great advantages, it does not translate into control of
land; for that, ground forces are essential. But infantry and cavalry
soldiers tend to take more injuries and deaths than do pilots, so their
use is politically riskier.
Governments unwilling to insert ground forces, cannot expect to
prevail. They can bomb the landscape back to the proverbial stone age
without effecting their will. (Recall the Americans' Vietnam and the
Russians' Afghanistan.)
The conclusion is simple. I call it my iron
rule of war: "Never initiate fighting unless prepared to do what
is needed to win. (I.e., don't in advance rule out ground troops.)"
A readiness to deploy ground troops is the requisite sign of seriousness
of purpose. (April 6, 2015)
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text may be reposted or forwarded so long as it is presented as an
integral whole with complete and accurate information provided about its
author, date, place of publication, and original URL.
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