CIAO DATE: 05/02

The Revenge of the Melians: Asymmetric Threats and the Next QDR

Kenneth F. McKenzie, Jr.

Institute for National Strategic Studies
National Defense University

November 2000

Introduction

In 416 B.C., the Athenian-led Delian League, then the dominant naval power of the Hellenic World, was locked in a death struggle with its rival, Sparta, and its Peloponnesian allies. In the wake of the battle of Mantinea, and on the eve of the ill-fated naval expedition to Syracuse, the small island of Melos in the northern Cretan Sea had become an object of strategic concern to Athens which south to force Melos to join the Delian League and pay tribute. The Melians refused and claimed the moral right of a state to remain neutral. "Right, as the world goes, is only in question between equals in power," answered the Athenians; The strong do what they wish and the weak suffer what they must." ¹

One may admire Melian principles and courage, if not strategic acumen. Their heroic stubbornness cost the Melians their existence. The Athenians slaughtered all adult males and sold the women and children into slavery.

The Melian Dialogue by Thucydides, an account of the exchange recorded between the Athenian negotiators and the Melians, has been a locus classicus for the realistic study of international relations for millennia — especially the notorious Athenian refusal to be constrained by the unenforceable dicta of hypothetical international law. Weak states have long sought to counter the overwhelming political, economic, and military superiority that great powers can bring to bear. Melos, treading a familiar path, sought succor against one power through an alliance with another, Sparta, which failed.

Absent a powerful ally, the most effective responses from weaker states have been those that sought to counter the hegemon’s power indirectly through superior military organization, crafty diplomacy, wily espionage, or terror. Modern counterparts of the Melians can add weapons of mass destruction with a long reach to this traditional arsenal.

The Melians might have survived, had they been able to raise the cost to the Athenians of attacking their island. Weak nations today can do what Melos could not — inflict severe damage on attacking forces or a distant homeland. As weak nations, and even nonstate groups, contemplate intimidating or punishing a dominant power on a scale inconceivable 2,500 years ago, we might speak metaphorically of the revenge of the Melians and hear far-distant applause of those islanders.

Indeed, in the aftermath of the Cold War, Americans are in some sense the modern analogues to the ancient Athenians. Because the United States is the world ’s strongest power, it is inevitable that hostile nations will seek ways to undermine its great strength by asymmetrically attacking its vulnerabilities.

The central thesis of this essay is that the ability of the Department of Defense to execute its portion of U.S. national policy in the near to mid-term is based on the ability to maintain clear and unambiguous conventional military superiority in the face of emerging asymmetric threats, coupled with the ability to defend the homeland. ² Today, the interest of the defense establishment in asymmetric threats is nothing more than a modern recognition of an enduring truth: weaker powers, both state and nonstate, will relentlessly seek ways to mitigate the dominance of the strong.

This analysis will adopt a three-part approach to analyzing asymetric threats:

• What is asymmetric warfare?
• What are the asymmetric threats we face?
• What can we do to counter asymmetric threats?

This introduction will establish the broad framework for the subsequent analysis. Chapter one will attempt to answer the question "wht is asymmetric warfare?" What does the term means? More particularly, what does it signify for the defense establishment? In establishing this relationship, current definitions of asymmetric warfare will be examined, and a more nuanced concept will be proposed. Five characteristics of asymmetric warfare will be introduced. As part of chapter one, illustrative asymmetric approaches will be examined within their historical operational contexts. Finally, some conclusions about measures of effectiveness for different asymmetric approaches will be advanced.

Chapter two will begin the process of answering the second question by posing a typology of asymmetric approaches and organizing the current range of asymmetric threats facing the United States. This chapter will build upon the historical analysis of chapter one, but will turn its focus to contemporary and future threats. Chapter three will operationalize the range of potential asymmetric threats by comparing potential asymmetric threats against two systems: the operational principles embodied in Joint Vision 2010 and the ciritical infrastructure of the United States. In chapter four, the range of asymmetric threats will be evaluated in terms of potential danger, and threats likely to pose the greatest danger will be indentified. A series of future case studies are included in this chapter to give a sense of immediacy and granularity to the threats.

Chapter five represents the policy component of this study. This chapter will evaluate the current United States initiaitives against asymmetric threats, assessing the effectiveness of existing policy. A set of specific policy recommendations will then be advanced for consideration suring the 2001 Quadrennial Defense Review. Some of these will be outside the purview of the Department of Defense, requiring action across the Federal Government, as well as by state and local governments.

Before we begin this analysis, we must address the skeptic’s question: is the new found lure of asymmetric warfare nothing more than defense faddism? This is a reasonable suspicion given the rapidity with which this term has sprung up and spread within defense circles. Is there,in other words, less here than meets the eye?

It will become apparent in the following pages that increased attention to asymmetric warfare is justified and timely. Throughout history, nations in conflict have attempted to take advantage of the weaknesses of their adversaries while maximizing their own strengths to achieve a disproportionate effect — one of the characteristics of what we now call asymmetric warfare. This study, however, recognizes a new aspect of the asymmetric dimension of war; that the incontestable global conventional military superiority of the United States, coupled with the proliferation of we a pons of mass destruction and the death of strategic distance, have made the Armed Forces uniquely vulnerable to asymmetric threats.

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Notes

Note 1. Thucydides, The Landmark Thucydides,A Comprehensive Guide to the Peloponnesian War, ed. Robert B. Strassler, trans. Richard Crawley (New York: Free Press, 1996), 352. Back

Note 2. For the purpose of this study, Alaska, Hawaii,and U.S. territories and mandates are explicitly considered to be part of the homeland. Back