US Army War College Press

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  • USAWC professors and esteemed guests discuss topics ranging from military strategy to geopolitical issues. The US Army War College Press produces “Decisive Point” as a companion series to the quarterly journal Parameters. In “SSI Live,” professors discuss wide-ranging military topics. Conversations on Strategy sheds light on topics relevant to contemporary strategy and Landpower issues.
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  • Strategic Insights: The Assad Regime and Chemical Weapons

    Strategic Insights: The Assad Regime and Chemical Weapons
    May 18 2018
    Dr. Robert J. Bunker On April 7, 2018, insurgents and civilians in a rebel enclave in Douma, east of Damascus, Syria, were subjected to a chemical weapons attack during an offensive conducted by Assad regime and allied Russian and Iranian-linked ground forces. At least 42 individuals were reported to have been killed in the attack due to suffocation—primarily in their homes—with more than 500 additional individuals seeking medical attention.1 Local reports from the encircled enclave suggest that during the late afternoon and evening hours, Assad regime helicopters dropped two barrel bombs containing a substance with signatures consistent with that of chlorine.2 Chlorine—an industrial hazardous material (HAZMAT) chemical with many commercial uses—can also be utilized in chemical warfare as a choking agent. Upon dispersal, this chemical—in its gaseous form—is greenish-yellow in color and heavier than air, which allows it to settle in spots such as basements and other low lying areas, slowly suffocating those to which it comes in contact. The use of chemical warfare agents—and dual-purpose HAZMAT agents such as chlorine with regard to the recent Douma incident—is prohibited under international law. The Syrian Arab Republic, as a Chemical Weapons Convention (CWC) signatory, is bound under such laws not to engage in chemical warfare attacks, but has repeatedly ignored its legal and moral obligations in accord with that treaty. The timing of this new chemical warfare incident has come at a highly inopportune time for the present U.S. Presidential administration vis-à-vis its recently declared intention to begin to disengage from Syria.3 This incident has resulted in pressure being brought upon the Trump administration to take some form of punitive action against the Assad regime, as took place earlier in response to that regime’s Khan Sheikhoun sarin gas attack on April 4, 2017. All the while, Russian, Iranian, and Hezbollah news outlets and social media have been actively promoting an ongoing propaganda narrative focusing on Western (read liberal democratic) lies and fabrications surrounding the recent Douma incident.4 From the perspective gained from past research on the Assad regime’s relationship to chemical weapons and their domestic use against regime-challenging insurgent forces within Syria, this new incident blatantly appears both premeditated and calculated in the manner in which it was conducted. To gain an appreciation of this strategic insight, a discussion of the Assad regime’s chemical weapons program, earlier chemical weapons use, and the lessons learned from them are provided in this essay. CHEMICAL WEAPONS PROGRAM Given the sensitive nature of this subject matter related to the Syrian Arab Republic—it exists within a highly classified state program—its chemical warfare capabilities are opaque at best. The Assad regime—then under Hafez al-Assad— initially acquired chemical weapons, most certainly sulfur mustard (a blister agent) and possibly sarin (a nerve agent), as early as 1972 from Egypt prior to the start of the Yom Kippur War. Russia, during the same period, provided defensive equipment for Syrian military personnel that would be fielding these chemical weapons.5 As a result of the Yom Kippur War defeat, the subsequent defeat in June 1982 in Lebanon by Israel, and ongoing regional security concerns with Iraq, the Assad regime continued to develop its chemical warfare program primarily with Russian support. Sporadic, limited glimpses of, and at times contradictory information related to the Syrian chemical weapons program have since been reported on for more than 4 decades. An overview of this information can be found in the Syrian Chemical Chronology spanning December 1968 through March 2008.6 When more authoritative program information has been provided—such as a declassified Top Secret Central Intelligence Agency intelligence assessment published in November 1985 on this subject (released in November...
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  • Strategic Insights: After the Smoke Clears in Syria: Dilemmas for U.S. Strategy Remain

    Strategic Insights: After the Smoke Clears in Syria: Dilemmas for U.S. Strategy Remain
    May 18 2018
    Dr. Christopher J. Bolan In the wake of recent U.S. and Israeli military strikes, the potential for expanded U.S. military engagement in the Syrian civil war is growing and U.S. policymakers will need to plot a smart strategic course ahead. In doing so, they will need to conduct an honest appraisal of America’s interests in Syria and wrestle with the many strategic dilemmas confronting them. Israel and Iran are clearly testing each other’s limits in Syria raising the prospect of a broader regional confrontation. Iran reportedly sent an armed drone into Israeli airspace in mid-April1 and in early May approved the launching of scores of rockets targeting forward-deployed Israeli forces in the occupied Golan Heights.2 Israel responded with overwhelming military force targeting virtually all known Iranian military facilities in Syria.3 Although it now seems ages ago, it is also worth recalling that the United States, Great Britain, and France conducted direct military action in Syria the early morning of April 14, 2018, by launching over 100 missile strikes destroying 3 facilities associated with Syria’s chemical weapons production and storage capabilities. These attacks were launched in response to Syria’s use of chemical weapons in Douma on April 7th outside the capital of Damascus in which over 40 Syrians were killed. At that time, U.S. President Donald Trump made it clear that the strategic purpose of U.S. missile strikes was to deter the future use of such weapons vowing, “We are prepared to sustain this response until the Syrian regime stops its use of prohibited chemical agents.”4 Secretary of Defense James Mattis made it equally clear that these strikes represented the beginning of neither a broader U.S. military campaign nor a larger shift in U.S. strategy or objectives in Syria. Secretary Mattis specifically noted, “We confined it [the missile strikes] to the chemical weapons-type targets. . . . We were not out to expand this; we were very precise and proportionate.”5 Nonetheless, neither these limited U.S. military strikes nor the tit-for-tat Israeli military exchanges with Iran are likely to significantly impact the basic contours of Syria’s civil war. As the smoke clears from these attacks, U.S. policymakers and actions will continue to be constrained by several grim strategic realities of the conflict in Syria. First, the Syrian crisis will need to be managed within the broader context of many other global security challenges that are of greater consequence to the United States. These include addressing the nuclear threat posed by North Korea, managing the longer-term competition with an increasingly assertive China in Asia, confronting a resurgent Russia in Eastern Europe, and preventing Iran from developing a nuclear weapons capability. American military engagement in Syria has been primarily motivated by one central concern: the immediate terrorist threat posed by the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS). At its peak in early 2015, ISIS dominated a taxable population of some 11 million people spread over 100,000 square kilometers, which is slightly larger than the territory of South Korea.6 That threat, however, has been significantly degraded through an aggressive U.S. coalition air campaign backed on the ground by a combination of Syrian Kurdish militia and Arab partners. The so-called ISIS “Caliphate” is now in tatters with its territorial holdings reduced by more than 98 percent according to Pentagon estimates.7 With ISIS a much-diminished threat, Syria will only temporarily and periodically resurface to compete for the attention of U.S. policymakers and the expenditures of U.S. resources. Furthermore, President Trump’s basic instinct in Syria remains to declare victory over ISIS and withdraw U.S. forces as soon as practical. In early April, the President openly declared his intent to bring U.S. troops back home within months: “I want to get out, I want to bring the troops back home,
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  • Strategic Insights: Proxy War Norms

    Strategic Insights: Proxy War Norms
    Dec 18 2017
    Dr. C. Anthony Pfaff Current trends in international relations suggest the United States will place a greater reliance on international partners in securing vital national interests. Growing assertiveness by regional state actors, increasingly capable nonstate actors, and a “war-weary” American public suggest the emergence of a “polyarchic” world order that will strain the United States’ ability to maintain sufficient forces overseas, where it currently exchanges defense commitments for access and basing.1 Rather, the United States may have to commit to a strategy broadly described as “off-shore balancing” that would rely on regional partners to uphold the balance of power in their own neighborhood, exchanging indirect U.S. support for the partner’s willingness to act in the interests of the United States.2 Even if it does not commit to such a strategy, current events suggest working through others to achieve strategic ends will be a feature in any future approach to international relations. Such a strategy will not only encourage proxy relationships, but as these state and nonstate challenges arise, they encourage proxy wars as well. In fact, there are a number of proxy wars underway in places like Yemen, where the United States supports Saudi Arabia’s efforts to contain Iranian influence; Syria, where the United States, Iran, and Russia support different factions to achieve a variety of foreign policy goals; Iraq, where the Government of Iraq relies on militias to confront the Islamic State on its behalf; and Ukraine, where Russia backs a separatist movement ostensibly to protect Russian citizens, but more likely to keep Kiev off balance and prevent Ukraine’s drift toward the West. Surprisingly, there is little written on the norms of proxy wars. While there is some international law that governs state sponsorship of foreign nonstate actors,3 the default position is if the proxy war is just, then so is the proxy relationship. However, entering into such relationships creates massive opportunities for moral failure. These opportunities arise because the introduction of the benefactor complicates already complex and somewhat subjective decisions made with regard to resorting to war and introduces a corrupting influence that risks distorting the reasons that drive those decisions. Because benefactors bring these moral complications, they bear the greater burden to address them. This point does not entail proxies have no responsibilities. What it does entail is that most moral decisions regarding proxy wars are often in the hands of the benefactor, without whom there would be no proxy relationship to judge. Since proxy wars are wars, moral analysis should start with the traditional provisions of jus ad bellum, but also reflect the potentially corrupting influence a benefactor brings. In what follows, I will first discuss how the character of proxy war impacts its ethics, and then I describe that impact through the application of jus ad bellum conditions, as well as examine the kinds of moral hazards proxy wars give rise to even when those jus ad bellum conditions are met. THE CHARACTER OF PROXY WAR Andrew Mumford defines proxy war as “indirect engagement in a conflict by third parties wishing to influence its strategic outcome.”4 It is the indirect nature of the benefactor’s involvement that distinguishes a proxy relationship from other supportive relationships, such as, for example, an alliance.5 This point does not suggest that direct action by the benefactor is incompatible with proxy relationships. In Libya, for example, the international coalition provided support to rebel forces while at the same time directly attacked Gaddafi’s forces from the air. So, while air strikes did contribute to Gaddafi’s defeat, the coalition limited its risk—as well as its costs—by supporting proxies on the ground that acted as a surrogate for ground forces it would have otherwise had to commit.
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