Shock and awe: Difference between revisions

NASA Landsat 7 image of Baghdad, April 2, 2003. Smoke billowing from Iraqi set fires in an attempt to affect weapon guidance systems.

Rapid Dominance is a military doctrine that has as its main principles "overwhelming decisive force," "dominant battlefield awareness," "dominant maneuvers," and "spectacular displays of power" (also known as Shock and Awe) as a means of destroying an adversary's will to fight and adversely affecting the psychology and the will of the enemy to resist. The doctrine was written by Harlan K. Ullman and James. P. Wade and is a product of the National Defense University of the United States. The military operation named "Shock and Awe" signaled the beginning of the 2003 invasion of Iraq. Debate exists as to whether or not this operation actually was a true Rapid Dominance campaign or truly elicited Shock and Awe.

To some, shock and awe is equivalent to terrorism. To those in the US, such perceptions may be incomprehensible, but they are real and cannot be ignored. Terrorism and shock and awe share in common the use of indiscriminate civilian deaths; for example, the March, 2003 bombing campaign killed more civilians in Baghdad than ever before. Over 8,000 people in Iraq were killed from March 20 to May 1, 2003, when US-led forces carried out their ‘shock and awe’ bombing campaign on Baghdad. The bombing campaign destroyed Iraq's essential civilian infrastructures of electrical power, communications, water, sewers, schools, healthcare facilities, and its economy.

Doctrine of Rapid Dominance

Rapid Dominance is defined by its authors, Harlan K. Ullman and James P. Wade, as attempting "to affect the will, perception, and understanding of the adversary to fit or respond to our strategic policy ends through imposing a regime of Shock and Awe." Further, Rapid Dominance will

"impose this overwhelming level of Shock and Awe against an adversary on an immediate or sufficiently timely basis to paralyze its will to carry on . . . [to] seize control of the environment and paralyze or so overload an adversary's perceptions and understanding of events that the enemy would be incapable of resistance at the tactical and strategic levels."

Introduced in a report to the United States' National Defense University in 1996, Ullman and Wade describe it as an attempt to develop a post-Cold War military doctrine for the United States. Rapid Dominance and Shock and Awe, they write, may become a "revolutionary change" as the United States military is reduced in size and information technology is increasingly integrated into warfare. Subsequent U.S. military authors have written that Rapid Dominance exploits "superior technology, precision engagement, and information dominance" of the United States.

Ullman and Wade identify four vital characteristics of Rapid Dominance: "near total or absolute knowledge and understanding of self, adversary, and environment; rapidity and timeliness in application; operational brilliance in execution; and (near) total control and signature management of the entire operational environment."

Shock and Awe is most consistently used by Ullman and Wade as the effect which Rapid Dominance seeks to impose upon an adversary. It is the desired state of helplessness and lack of will. It can be induced, they write, by direct force applied to command and control centers, selective denial of information and dissemination of disinformation, overwhelming combat force, and rapidity of action.

The doctrine of rapid dominance has evolved from the concept of "decisive force." Ullman and Wade enumerate the elements between the two concepts in terms of objective, use of force, force size, scope, speed, causualties, and technique.

Historical applications of Shock and Awe

Ullman and Wade argue that there have been military applications that fall within some of the concepts of Shock and Awe. They enummberate nine examples.

• Overwhelming Force: The "application of massive or overwhelming force" to "disarm, incapacitate, or render the enemy militarily impotent with as few causualities to ourselves and to noncombatants as possible."
• Hiroshima and Nagasaki: The establishment of Shock and Awe through "instant, nearly incomprehensible levels of massive destruction directed at influencing society writ large, meaning its leadership and public, rather than targeting directly against military or strategic objectives even with relatively few numbers or systems."
• Massive Bombardment: Described as the "precise destructive power largely against military targets and related sectors over time."
• Blitzkrieg: The "intent was to apply precise, surgical amounts of tightly focused force to achieve maximum leverage but with total economies of scale."
• Sun Tzu: The "selective, instant decapitation of military or societal targets to achieve Shock and Awe."
• Haitian Example: The "imposing Shock and Awe through a show of force and indeed through deception, misinformation, and disinformation."
• The Roman Legions: "Achieving Shock and Awe rests in the ability to deter and overpower an adversary through the adversary’s perception and fear of his vulnerability and our own invincibility."
• Decay and Default: "The imposition of societal breakdown over a lengthy period, but without the application of massive destruction."
• Royal Canadian Mounted Police: The selective application of force emphasizing "standoff capabilities as opposed to forces in place" to attain military objectives.

Iraq War

Before the United States' invasion of Iraq in 2003, officials in the United States armed forces described their plan as employing Shock and Awe. During the war, however, Harlan K. Ullman, principal author of Shock and Awe, said the United States did not execute a Shock and Awe campaign.

Limited bombing began on 19 March 2003 as United States forces unsuccessfully attempted to kill Saddam Hussein. Attacks continued against a small number of targets until 21 March, when at 1700 UTC the main bombing campaign of the Coalition began. Its forces launched approximately 1700 air sorties (504 using cruise missiles). Coalition ground forces had begun a "running start" offensive towards Baghdad on the previous day, attempting to strike quickly. Coalition ground forces seized Baghdad on 5 April, and the United States declared victory on 14 April.

Whether or to what extent the United States fought a campaign of Shock and Awe is unclear by contradictory post-war assessments. Within two weeks of the United States' victory declaration, on 27 April, the Washington Post published an interview with Iraqi military personnel detailing demoralization and lack of command. According to the soldiers, Coalition bombing was surprisingly widespread and had a severely demoralising effect. When United States tanks passed through the Iraqi military's Republican Guard and Special Republican Guard units outside Baghdad to Saddam's presidential palaces, it caused a shock to troops inside Baghdad. Iraqi soldiers said there was no organization intact by the time the United States entered Baghdad, and that resistance crumbled under the presumption that "it wasn't a war, it was suicide."

In contrast, in an October 2003 presentation to the United States House Committee on Armed Services, staff of the United States Army War College did not attribute their performance to Rapid Dominance. Rather, they cited technological superiority and "Iraqi ineptitude." The speed of the Coalition's actions ("rapidity"), they said, did not affect Iraqi morale. Further, they said that Iraqi armed forces ceased resistance only after direct force-on-force combat within cities.

The operation "shock and awe" described the initiation of the Iraqi campaign and not the fight against the insurgency.

Criticism of execution

The principal author of "Shock and Awe: Achieving Rapid Dominance," Harlan Ullman was one of the most vocal critics of the "Shock an Awe" campaign. Ullman stated "The current campaign does not appear to correspond to what we envisioned."[1] In addition, "the bombing that lit up the Baghdad night skies the next day, and in the following days, did not match the force, scope and scale of the broad-based shock-and-awe plan, Ullman and U.S. officials say."[2] In a quesiton directed to Ullman, asking if "it too late for shock and awe now?" Ullman responded "We have not seen it; it is not coming."[3]

The original "shock and awe, as planned, was supposed to be a short but ferocious and nonstop bombing campaign simultaneously directed across a broad number of targets – from command-and-control centers in Baghdad to the Baath Party headquarters there to the Republican Guard divisions in the field. More firepower was to be unleashed on Iraq in just the first few days of the operation than in the entire 38-day air campaign of the 1991 Gulf war – with the goal being to stun Saddam's regime into surrendering."[4] Ullman noted that plan called for "an attack into the center of Baghdad, taking it over, followed by successive takeovers expanding from the center of the city."[5] Also the "bombing campaign did not immediately go after Iraqi military forces in the field, particularly the Republican Guard divisions and political levers of power, such as the Baath Party headquarters."[6] Instead Ullman, states that the "shock and awe" implementation was more of a seige.[7]

Apparently, the "Bush administration throttle[d] back on the Iraqi bombing"[8] and the original plan was scrubbed days before its implementation on "political concerns over civilian casualties factored into the decision."[9]

Media descriptions

Prior to the war, the Guardian webpage wrote: "shock and awe that television and newspaper coverage of the war has adopted unanimously to describe the unprecedentedly heavy aerial bombardment unleashed on Baghdad" http://www.guardian.co.uk/Iraq/Story/0,2763,921286,00.html Shock tactics]", The Guardian, 25 March 2003.</ref>. Left-wing extremitsts from the webpage "alternet.org" compared the plans of the United States to the bombing of Guernica during the Spanish Civil War,

Popular culture

Following the United States' invasion of Iraq in 2003, the term "shock and awe" has been used for commercial purposes. The United States Patent and Trademark Office received at least 29 applications using "Shock and Awe." The first came from a fireworks company on the day the United States started bombing Baghdad. The video game manufacturers Midway Games and Sony have attempted to use "shock and awe" in titles, but met with criticism. Miscellaneous uses of the term include golf equipment, an insecticide, a horse and a set of bowling balls called Shock & Awe and Total Shock & Awe by the company MoRich. Neil Young's 2006 album "Living With War" features a song titled "Shock and Awe." The album largely represented Young's response to the invasion of Iraq (Operation Iraqi Freedom).

See also

• Blitzkrieg

Further reading

• Blakesley, Paul J. "Shock and Awe: A Widely Misunderstood Effect". United States Army Command and General Staff College, 17 June 2004.
• Branigin, William. "A Brief, Bitter War for Iraq's Military Officers". Washington Post, 27 October 2003.
• Peterson, Scott. "US mulls air strategies in Iraq". Christian Science Monitor, 30 January 2003.
• Ullman, Harlan K. and Wade, James P. Shock And Awe: Achieving Rapid Dominance. National Defense University, 1996. PDF available here (4.4MBs).
• Ullman, Harlan K. and Wade, James P. Rapid Dominance: A Force for All Seasons. Royal United Services Institute in Defense Studies, 1998.

External links

Text:

• Shock and awe, from SourceWatch