Warden and the New Progressives

The concept of “the enemy as a system” originated with Colonel John A. Warden III, the modern Air Force’s intellectual heir to the progressive notions developed by Mitchell and the Air Corps Tactical School.21 Warden had flown as a forward air controller in Vietnam, and his frustrations in that restrained conflict caused him to consider a new approach for applying air power to achieve quick success. During the decades that followed he developed ideas that would form the basis of America’s air campaign plan for the 1991 Persian Gulf War—and for much of the Air Force’s planning in subsequent conflicts.

Like Mitchell, Warden stressed air power’s “revolutionary” characteristics, and he fully shared Mitchell’s progressive vision. For both men aerial technology was the key to reforming war. The incredible accuracy possible with an array of precision-guided “smart” munitions was a linchpin of Warden’s ideas. He believed that those munitions, which included bombs with significant pen­etrating power, and the development of stealth aircraft gave the United States a dramatic capability to fight limited wars by rely­ing almost exclusively on air power. He argued that those tech­nological developments enabled American air forces to attack a prospective enemy’s “centers of gravity” directly, which they could do by circumventing its surface forces. “Air power then be­comes quintessentially an American form of war; it uses our ad­vantages of mobility and high technology to overwhelm the enemy without spilling too much blood, especially American blood,” he insisted.22

For Warden, the key center of gravity of a nation—or any or­ganized group capable of fighting—was leadership. That element comprised the center ring of his five-ring model that specified the major components, or systems, essential to war-making capabil­ity. Surrounding leadership was a ring of key production, which for most states included electricity and oil. Surrounding key pro­duction was a ring of infrastructure, comprising transportation and communications, and surrounding it was a ring of popula­tion, which included food sources. Finally, a ring of fielded mili­tary forces surrounded the population.

Warden contended that leadership was the most critical ring because it was “the only element of the enemy. .. that can make concessions” and that attacking it promised “the quickest and cheapest” path to obtaining victory.23 If that ring could not be attacked directly, the goal then became to confound the leader­ship’s ability to direct war-making activities, and air power could target the outer rings. Yet the focus of the attacks remained their impact on the center ring. He cautioned against attacking mili­tary forces, which he labeled “a means to an end,” and urged that they “be bypassed—by strategy or technology.”24 Warden also es­chewed direct attacks on civilians, and his rationale for attacking industry mirrored an Air Corps Tactical School text: “If a state’s essential industries (or, if it has no industry of its own, its access to external sources) are destroyed, life becomes difficult, and the state becomes incapable of employing modern weapons and must make concessions.”25

Warden’s beliefs reinforced the Air Force’s progressive vision, and that vision has meshed well with the war aims of American presidents during the last two decades. Beginning with the 1991 Persian Gulf War, American presidents have consistently embraced air power’s progressive notions in their pursuit of victory. At the time of Saddam Hussein’s invasion of Kuwait in August 1990, Warden was the Air Staff’s deputy director of “Checkmate,” its plans and war-fighting division. A combination of factors led to his ideas forming the basis for the Desert Storm air campaign against Iraq, and chief among them was that his notions comple­mented President George H. W. Bush’s objectives. Bush viewed Saddam’s aggression as a grave threat to the energy needs of the United States and its allies, but he would not condone devastat­ing Iraq to remove the threat. Bush also viewed America’s need to respond as a moral crusade, part of “the burden of leadership and the strength that has made America the beacon of freedom in a searching world.”26 He outlined his war aims as the removal of Iraqi troops from Kuwait, restoration of the Kuwaiti regime, protection of American lives, and conditions that would provide “security and stability” in the region.27 An air campaign that tar­geted Saddam—whom Bush equated to Hitler—or his power base would help fulfill those goals.

Bush intended to remove Iraqi troops from Kuwait in the most effective, inexpensive way possible. Thirty-seven days of bomb­ing by a vast coalition air armada against targets in Iraq and Ku­wait facilitated a four-day ground offensive that liberated Kuwait for a cost of only 148 American combat deaths.28 Although an estimated 2,300 Iraqi civilians died in the forty-one-day air cam­paign,29 the image that much of the world—and, in particular, the U. S. Air Force—took from the war was one of a remarkably effi­cient, high technology air offensive that rapidly produced maxi­mum results for minimum costs.

That image resonated with Bush’s successor. Beginning in 1993 in Bosnia, President William Clinton committed American air power to un and NATO efforts to preserve a multiethnic state in Bosnia and halt Bosnian Serb ethnic cleansing against Mus­lim and Croat populations. He eschewed sending ground forces, convinced that such an option might prove too costly in terms of lives risked and damage inflicted. Air power’s sensational preci-

sion capability promised to minimize both concerns. In Opera­tion “Deliberate Force” against the Bosnian Serbs—twelve days of bombing in August and September 1995 in which 708 of 1,026 bombs dropped were precision-guided munitions—NATO aircraft struck forty-eight Bosnian Serb targets.30 Bosnian Serb leaders halted their attacks against Bosnia’s Croat and Muslim popula­tions, and Clinton declared that “the NATO air campaign in Bos­nia was successful.”31

His announcement omitted the likely impact of a fast-moving hundred-thousand-man offensive from the Croatian army against the northern areas of Serb-held Bosnia, as well as an invasion from the south mounted by the Muslim-Croat forces of the Bosnian Federation. Those ground assaults reclaimed significant chunks of Bosnian territory that the Serbs had controlled and threatened to take more.32 To the president, though, air power rapidly achieved success and eliminated the need for American ground forces. The air attacks risked few American lives—only one aircraft was shot down and its pilot rescued—plus enemy civilians emerged rela­tively unscathed—the Bosnian Serbs claimed that bombing had killed just twenty-five noncombatants.33

Clinton’s perception that air power had coerced the Bosnian Serbs caused him to return to that formula in response to Serb ethnic cleansing in Kosovo, and his motivations for bombing in 1999 paralleled his 1995 objectives. “Why are we in Kosovo?” he asked rhetorically during the midst of the air campaign desig­nated Allied Force. “Because we have a moral responsibility to oppose crimes against humanity and mass ethnic and religious killing where we can. Because we have a security responsibility to prevent a wider war in Europe, which we know from our two World Wars would eventually draw America in at far greater cost in lives, time, and treasure.”34

Although the 1999 Kosovo conflict was a periodically waged guerrilla struggle unlike the conventional war that Bosnia had be­come by 1995, Clinton believed that air power offered the best chance to accomplish his Kosovo goals at a minimum cost. He fur­ther thought that bombing was a more acceptable solution than a ground invasion not only to the American public but also to the nineteen states comprising NATO, and he placed a high premium on preserving the alliance. Yet he understood that maintaining NATO support—as well as an endorsement from the global com­munity at large—would be difficult “at a time when footage of airstrikes is beamed to homes across the world even before our pilots have returned to their bases, a time when every accidental civilian casualty is highlighted.”35

The seventy-eight-day Allied Force air campaign produced mixed results, but the impression of a rapid, efficient application of air power persisted with many observers. Much of the bomb­ing targeted Serb installations in the vicinity of Belgrade. Ameri­can aircraft flew the bulk of the sorties and dropped most of the twenty-eight thousand munitions expended, 38 percent of which were precision-guided.36 The war did not end, however, until the Serbs had expelled eight hundred thousand Kosovar Albanians from Kosovo, and Serbia’s loss of Russian backing and the threat of a NATO invasion may have contributed to Serbian President Slobodan Milosevic’s decision to stop fighting.37 Precision bomb­ing also did not guarantee infallibility, as b-2 pilots mistakenly bombed the Chinese embassy on the evening of 7 May, and sev­eral instances occurred in which bombs injured civilians. Still, the bombing killed just five hundred Serb noncombatants, and only one American aircraft—and no pilots—were lost.38 Given that air power was the sole instrument of military force used, some onlook­ers, like the distinguished British military historian John Keegan and Dartmouth professor Andrew Stigler, claimed that bombing had achieved a dramatic solo victory.39 “There are certain dates in the history of warfare that mark real turning points,” declared Keegan. “Now there is a new turning point to fix on the calen­dar: June 3, 1999, when the capitulation of President Milosevic proved that a war can be won by airpower alone.”40

Such seemingly antiseptic displays of air power led President George W. Bush to rely on bombing as a significant component of his military ventures in Afghanistan and Iraq. Bush’s father had relied heavily on bombing to liberate Kuwait, and the elder Bush’s use of air power likely heightened his son’s perception that bombing could achieve dramatic results. Against Taliban and al Qaeda forces in Afghanistan, U. S. Air Force and Navy aircraft in Operation “Enduring Freedom” were by far the dominant com­ponents of American military force marshaled in the aftermath of the 11 September terrorist attacks. Bush relied on twenty thou­sand troops of the Afghan Northern Alliance for support on the ground, supplemented by small numbers of American and nato Special Forces.41 The collapse of the Taliban regime in December 2001 after two months of bombing, and with only twelve fatali­ties suffered by American ground forces, further vindicated Bush’s belief that air power could achieve a quick, inexpensive victory.42 He commented in December 2001 that precision-guided muni­tions offered “great promise” and “have been the majority of the munitions we have used. We’re striking with greater effectiveness, at greater range, with fewer civilian casualties.” Thus, he insisted, America was “redefining war on our terms.”43

The president concluded from the destruction of the Taliban re­gime that air power could help in deposing a recalcitrant Saddam Hussein thought to possess weapons of mass destruction. Bomb­ing provided the initial thrust of Operation “Iraqi Freedom” in March 2003. When intelligence reports indicated the Iraqi dic­tator was in a farm near Baghdad, Bush ordered an air strike on the facility. The attack by two F-117 stealth fighters with laser – guided bombs failed, but precision bombing remained the cen­terpiece of the “shock and awe” air campaign that began on 21 March. More than 1,500 bombs and cruise missiles struck Iraqi governmental and military installations that night in a fantastic display of American military prowess. Although the raids caused few civilian casualties, they garnered widespread media atten­tion, and much of the coverage from around the globe was highly critical.44 Bush was upset that many observers failed to appreci­ate the American ability to apply lethal doses of air power pre­cisely. He later remarked that “it was not understood that the United States had found a way to wage war that as much as pos­sible spared civilians, avoided collateral damage and targeted the leaders and their means to fight and maintain power. Wars of an­nihilation, carpet-bombing, and fire-bombing of cities should be a thing of the past.”45