Future of war

In the 18th century, uniformed soldiers fought wars with ‘massed manpower using line and column tactics’. A century later, second generation warfare was fought with ‘rifled muskets and breech-loaders’. Third generation warfare is about bypassing the enemy’s lines and collapsing their forces from the rear using fighter aircraft, tanks and artillery. Third generation warfare is about three things: ‘speed, stealth and surprise’.

Chief of the General Staff of the Armed Forces of Russia General Valery Gerasimov conceived the ‘Gerasimov doctrine’. The doctrine rests on five pillars: ‘wars are no longer declared; noncontact or remote engagement; reduced spatial and temporal distances between opponents; use of robotics, unmanned aerial vehicles and weapons based on new physical principles; changes in the nature of conflict require new support systems and new forms and methods for employing the means of struggle’.

The ‘Gerasimov doctrine’ further asserts that “war is now conducted by a roughly 4:1 ratio of non-military and military measures.” According to Jack Lew, the 76th US secretary of treasury, the United States Department of Treasury now has a national security role. According to Jack Lew, “instead of fighting countries militarily, the US can now cripple them financially.”

To be certain, whether our Ministry of Finance realises it or not it also has a national security role because “the principal objective behind economic warfare is to weaken the target country’s economy so that the target country is unable to allocate sufficient resources to its armed forces.”

General Stanley McChrystal has been the commander US Joint Special Operations Command (JSOC), commander United States Army Central and commander International Security Assistance Force (ISAF). According to General McChrystal, “For the foreseeable future what happens on social media will be crucial to the outcome of any debate, battle or war.”

Old wars were about three things: destructive technologies, destructive means and weapons of mass destruction. The future of war is about disruptive technologies, disruptive means and weapons of mass disruption. The weapons of the old war caused blood on the streets. The war zone has now expanded to Facebook, Twitter, WhatsApp, YouTube, TikTok, WeChat, Instagram, Weibo, Tumblr, Baidu Tieba, Linkedin, QQ, Quora, Telegram, LINE, Snapshot, Pinterest, Reddit, Discord, VK, QZone, Weibo, Viber and Microsoft Teams. The weapons of war have changed – there’s no blood on the streets.

The war of the future has gone online with weapons of mass disruption and minds at war, 24/7. The war of the future is about three things: speed, scale and cost. Imagine, 60 million Pakistanis are already online going up at the rate of four million a year. The war of the future is about ‘entering enemy territory’ and ‘getting behind enemy lines’.

The war of the future is also about ‘demoralisation warfare’-disinformation, propaganda and political warfare. According to Napoleon Bonaparte, “In war, three-quarters of victory is down to morale, only one-quarter to the balance of military forces.” To be sure, the new threats to Pakistan – in addition to the military one – are three dimensional: economic, societal and political.

The writer is a columnist based in Islamabad.

Email: farrukh15@hotmail.com Twitter: @saleemfarrukh