Strategies for Asymmetric Threats to US National Security
By Steven Metz

The word "asymmetry" is simple in definition yet rife with implications. In the realm of strategy it means organizing or acting differently than an opponent, either to gain an advantage or because there are no other options. It involves doing things that an opponent cannot or will not. And it is both old and new. Asymmetric conflict has existed since the dawn of civilization. Major states with organized militaries often clashed with tribes, clans, bandits, pirates or the like. Advanced militaries used asymmetries of their own. Like the United States armed forces in the Gulf War, the Mongols under Genghis Khan and his successors exploited superior mobility, operational speed, intelligence, synchronization, training, and morale to crush enemies in lightning campaigns. Romans, Europeans, Aztecs, Zulus, and a host of other conquerors used advanced discipline, training, leadership, and, sometimes, technology. This was the "asymmetry of the strong." Conversely, rebels used the "asymmetry of the weak," relying on guerrilla operations, protracted conflict, terrorism, assassination, subversion, political warfare, and a willingness to sacrifice to confront stronger opponents.

While the US military has long made use of the "asymmetry of the strong" by institutionalizing human and technological superiority over its enemies, the notion of asymmetric threats – that asymmetry could be used against us in a major way – first arose in the 1990s. The basic idea was that the demise of the Soviet Union and the continual improvement in America’s warfighting capability made conventional aggression suicidal. As the 1997 report of the National Defense Panel (NDP) put it, "We can assume that our enemies and future adversaries have learned from the Gulf War. They are unlikely to confront us conventionally with mass armor formations, air superiority forces, and deep-water naval fleets of their own, all areas of overwhelming US strength today. Instead, they may find new ways to attack our interests, our forces, and our citizens. They will look for ways to match their strengths against our weaknesses."

But recognition does not always bring wisdom or effective response. While the US military, the Department of Defense, the defense analytical community, and panels like the US Commission on National Security/21st Century (Hart-Rudman Commission) warned of asymmetric threats, the military continued to focus on conventional warfighting. None of the other government agencies involved in national security even attempted to "transform." Across Washington it was largely business as usual, at least in terms of effort and funding. But September 11 changed everything. Suddenly asymmetric security threats were propelled from the potential to the real. In a paroxysm of effort, the US security apparatus was reorganized and, within the military, the trajectory of transformation adjusted specifically to focus on asymmetric threats.

Today, all agree that asymmetric threats will predominate for the foreseeable future. The high tech, rapid conventional warfighting that the U.S. military has mastered suddenly seems of secondary strategic importance. But are the changes of the past six years enough? Ultimately we should be concerned but not petrified. Using asymmetric methods, our enemies can harm us but not vanquish us. Having adopted asymmetry out of weakness and desperation, they are unlikely to attain strategic success. The question now is whether in confronting the current asymmetric threat, we have set the stage for deeper changes that may erode our security in ways we have not foreseen.

America’s asymmetric enemies, particularly al Qaeda, its allies, and its emulators, seek to avoid our strengths and exploit our vulnerabilities. Some of these come from our form of government and political values. The American political system, as T.X. Hammes often points, was designed by geniuses to not work. Checks and balances protect the public from abusive exercises of political power but also create seams and inefficiencies. As loose networks with autonomous or semi-autonomous nodes, asymmetric enemies can self-synchronize and adapt quickly. The ponderous and compartmentalized US government cannot. Equally important is the emphasis which Americans place on personal freedoms and legal protections. The underside of these vital values is that they allow terrorists the latitude to plan operations, collect information, and raise funds. By rigorously protecting freedom, we may inadvertently enable evil forces.

The American strategic culture – the way we view the global security environment and define our role in it – also creates vulnerabilities and inefficiencies. Americans consider conflict episodic and abnormal. Conflicts have a beginning and an end after which peace returns. Armed conflicts normally have a fairly short life span – most last four years or less, sometimes a matter of days or weeks. Public influence in security policy means that it is often politicized. At times, the national interest matters less than finding a cudgel to bash the other political party. America’s strategic attention span can be short, hindering our involvement in protracted conflict. To resonate with the public, strategic issues must be portrayed or explained in ethical terms. When they cannot, the public and its elected leaders quickly become disillusioned. And American strategic culture is based on the idea that armed conflict happens far away, allowing us to choose when to become involved. Even after September 11, much of the public has not fully grappled with the vulnerability of the homeland. We thus tend to overreact to any hint of violence within our borders.

American strategic culture also defines the way that we exercise global leadership. During our time as a superpower, we and our partners faced an evil and aggressive opponent. Even when America was clumsy and heavy-handed, the alternative was worse. Our partners – who depended on us for their security – tolerated much. This, we Americans came to believe, was the natural state of affairs. Throughout history most great powers cared little what others thought of them. Like Machiavelli’s prince, they concluded that "one ought to be both feared and loved, but as it is difficult for the two to go together, it is much safer to be feared than loved, if one of the two has to be in wanting." Americans, though, have clung to the notion that we can be both feared and loved. What our partners think of us matters greatly. This insecurity – the need for open affirmation of the rightness of our policies – grows from our tradition of open governance. We simply do not breed (or, at least, empower) leaders so convinced of the validity of their own positions that they are willing to ignore deep opposition. A policy or position which provokes widespread disapproval, we believe, is probably misguided. Domestically, this is a worthy trait, helping to sustain democracy. Internationally, though, the need for affirmation renders us dependent on the approval of others and susceptible to angst-ridden hesitation. We lack the egotistic self-confidence that characterizes the great imperial powers of the past.

Finally, US policies produce vulnerabilities that asymmetric enemies like al Qaeda can exploit. The most pressing, of course, are our dependence on imported petroleum and our support for Israel. Both can be cast as "anti-Islamic" (petroleum dependence by forcing the United States to seek stability and friendly regimes in oil producing regions), thus providing ammunition for America’s enemies as they seek to shift their conflict to the psychological and political realms.

America’s strengths and vulnerabilities suggest the strategy an asymmetric enemy could adopt. It would seek to divide the United States and its partners, disrupt the American economy, and create conflicts with no apparent end, waiting until we become impatient or decide that it is simply not worth the cost. In fact, this is precisely what al Qaeda has done. In classic insurgent fashion, al Qaeda provoked and goaded the United States to intervene in the Muslim world, used these conflicts to bleed us, and inspired a degree of aggression which alienates many of our partners. Al Qaeda caused massive security spending, much of it funded by debt. Altogether, this is a clever approach indeed, the paragon of an asymmetric grand strategy.

To counter an asymmetric strategy, the United States must also identify the enemy’s weakness. There are many of them. Violent Islamic extremists have few actual power resources (military, economic or political). They control little territory, are incapable of administering what they do control, and produce virtually nothing on their own. They are clever, but in a derivative, parasitic way. Unlike many Cold War-era revolutionaries, they are unable or unwilling to develop allies outside of their own culture. Even the most virulent critics of the United States or the Bush administration deny al Qaeda’s legitimacy. No non-Muslims idolize bin Laden the way that previous generations did Che Guevara or Ho Chi Minh. Because of its rigid and benighted worldview, al Qaeda cannot develop the strategic flexibility that Cold War era communists did in building "united fronts" of diverse revolutionary movements. Islamic extremists can adjust their tactics, alter their psychological themes, and modulate the level of violence they undertake, but that is it.

This suggests that the paramount issue for the United States is not whether it wins or loses the conflict with violent Islamic extremists, but the cost Americans are willing to pay for victory. How many of our personal freedoms and privacy rights, for instance, are we willing to surrender? How much oversight over the Executive branch and the various security agencies will we surrender? Can or will we undertake a fundamental reorganization of our government to better integrate security and intelligence functions? Are we willing to change the policies that most inspire al Qaeda and the other violent Islamic extremists, particularly supporting friendly regimes? Are we willing to wean ourselves off of imported petroleum and simply leave Southwest Asia and other "ungoverned spaces" to fester? How, in the broadest sense, can we avoid a pyrrhic victory in the conflict with Islamic extremism?

Today, the threat from violent Islamic extremists is such that the United States is willing to pay only a moderate price to confront them. We will spend huge amounts on Iraq and Afghanistan, create massive new government agencies, and increase defense spending, but we will not undertake major economic development programs outside Iraq and Afghanistan, or fully control our borders and ports. We will tolerate extreme actions to kill, capture, and interrogate individuals linked to (or suspected of being linked to) terrorism outside the United States, but we will not give law enforcement, intelligence, and the military a free rein within the United States. We will increase defense spending but we will not enact a draft. We will quietly prod authoritarian allies like Musharraf, Mubarak, and the Saudis, but we will not discomfort them beyond a certain point.

Given the nature of the threat, this modulated response is appropriate. Al Qaeda and other violent Islamic extremists – at their current capability level – can kill Americans but cannot attain anything like strategic success. Hardening ourselves (both physically and psychologically), striking at the enemy when it provides targets, and seeking to divide it from its supporters makes sense.

This basic strategic calculus would change, of course, if our enemies increased their own capabilities. If they obtained effective biological or, especially, nuclear weapons and used them on the American homeland, then the restraints and constraints of our current strategy – on spending, on methods, and on aggressive abridgement of civil and personal rights – would fall by the wayside. Al Qaeda and, more importantly, anyone sympathetic or supportive of it, should know that an America victimized by these ultimate asymmetric methods would have few qualms about using its own asymmetric advantages in ways the world has not seen for many years. •

Steven Metz is Chairman of the Regional Strategy and Planning Department and Research Professor at the US Army War College Strategic Studies Institute. The ideas presented here are strictly those of the author and do not represent the official position of the US Army or US Department of Defense.