Some more thoughts on the war in the Persian Gulf
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Hello. I’m afraid this week’s post is going to be short and also quite disjointed. I’m writing it in dribs and drabs in and around weekend travel and the bank holiday for St. Patrick’s Day (March 17th).
I wanted to spend what little time and attention I have on the ongoing Third Gulf War. It’s becoming increasingly clear that, despite the overwhelming military advantages which they possess, the war is not progressing in the way that the USA would have anticipated at the outset. It may not even be progressing the way that Israel hoped, with Hezbollah proving to be a tougher adversary than may have been assumed. It’s almost like decapitation is an ineffective strategy. If only somebody had told us this…
Anyhow, I’m getting ahead of myself. With the war in such an uncertain state, it’s easy to fall victim to breathless narratives from all sides of the argument. Let’s focus on the issues that are becoming clear.
The first, and it’s a slight aside, is to do with the recent fallout between the AI company Anthropic and the US Department of Defense. This spat is relevant to the conflict in the Gulf, and links into the second point I’d like to get into, which is the asymmetry of the war. I’ll spend a bit of time explaining what asymmetric war is (and what it’s not). Finally, I’ll talk about the strategic dilemmas facing each of the major participants in this war. I’m (still) not going to offer a prediction of how it might end, but understanding the strategic objectives and limitations of each “player” might help us understand the bounds of what’s possible.
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Killer robots
If you haven’t been following the news in the US, let me bring you up to speed: Dario Amodei, CEO of Anthropic, the AI company known for its Claude chatbot, refused to remove certain safety guardrails as demanded by the US Department of Defense. In a fit of pique, the President and Secretary of Defense banned all US federal agencies from using the company’s technology.
Anthropic’s objection was less to do with wars in foreign fields (although they did have concerns about removing humans from the loop) and more about the federal government using their tech for mass domestic surveillance. But I guess we don’t have to worry about that anymore, since OpenAI were happy to take up the slack.
I wrote about killer robots a few months back. Robots or language models which directly kill or select targets for humans to kill aren’t necessarily any worse than humans, who are capable of the most staggering cruelties. They do, however, enable the business of killing to proceed at a faster rate, and that has to be something which worries us.
How many targets have the US and Israel hit so far? It’s not easy to determine. I wrote last week that they had hit 4,000 in their first four days of strikes, Al Jazeera report 5,000 in the first eleven days (by 10th March), the FT says 13,000 targets in two weeks, and the Pentagon is claiming a joint 15,000 as of 14th March (15 days).
Whatever the true number (and it’s possible, though not likely, that all of the above are true), it demonstrates a scale of targeting that has to be abetted by artificial intelligence. US and Israeli forces are using AI-generated lists of targets in Iran to determine where to strike next.
Was AI to blame for the horrific strike on the Minab primary school which killed 180 people, mostly schoolgirls? It’s hard to say for certain, given the number of targets, but this is exactly the kind of mistake that an AI system would make. It’s also exactly the kind of mistake that a human analyst would make. The difference, however, is that the person could be held accountable for their negligence and ensuing war crime.
What about Iran? They have launched approximately 1,200 ballistic missiles and 2,200 drones, as per the latest data available. These launches occurred overwhelmingly in the opening few days, before US-Israeli strikes blunted their launch capability by over 90%. Did they use AI to select targets? Unlikely, and this is due to the nature of asymmetric war. Let’s talk about that next.
Asymmetric war
The term “asymmetric war” has been thrown around a lot in recent years, and often used in tandem with terms such as “hybrid war” as a way of describing any conflict that doesn’t fit our neat mental image of two countries which declare war on one another and then duke it out with conventional military forces.
In fact, such a war hasn’t happened since 1945. So, what is asymmetric war? It’s best summed up in a warning which the Provisional IRA sent to British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher after they narrowly failed to kill her1 in the Brighton hotel bombing of 1984:
And yes, it’s been turned into an “inspirational quote”. The full, real, quote, in fact, neatly encapsulates what asymmetric war is all about (emphasis mine):
The IRA claims responsibility for the detonation of 100lb of gelignite in Brighton against the British cabinet and Tory warmongers. Thatcher will now realise that Britain cannot occupy our country, torture our prisoners and shoot our people in their own streets and get away with it.
Today we were unlucky, but remember we have only to be lucky once, you will have to be lucky always. Give Ireland peace and there will be no war.
This quote is so relevant to asymmetric war that I included the famous photo of the attack as the cover image for this piece.
In an asymmetric war, one side has far more power than the other (hence its name). But this doesn’t matter, or doesn’t matter as much as you’d like, because the side with more power is also far more constrained on how it uses its power. This is the other asymmetry.
When I think of asymmetric war, I’m picturing a strong, rich, and powerful kid—think college football star or rugby jock—attacking a destitute drug addict. He’s stronger and better prepared in every way, and might easily “win” the fight, maybe even nine times out of ten.
But every so often the underdog, the David to his Goliath, will surprise him by fighting “dirty,” i.e. by playing to a different set of rules. Or perhaps law enforcement will catch the stronger party in the act and convict him, despite his expensive legal defence. You get the picture, I’m sure: the side with the most capability also has the most to lose and has a broader set of constraints.
The 1994 film Surviving the Game is based on exactly this premise:
This is where we return to Iran and their roughly 3,500 weapons fired since the outbreak of war. Do they need to target each weapon precisely? Hell, no. The vast majority will be intercepted by the best air defences in the world. But a handful of weapons getting through the “net” wreak havoc in the Gulf states. They don’t have to kill many people (though they have definitely killed quite a few), just enough to disrupt normal life and put political pressure on the countries’ leaders to behave in a way more in line with Iran’s strategic goals.
It’s the same with killing US servicemen and women. Iran doesn’t need to—and frankly, hasn’t a hope of—killing a comparable number of them as it’s lost. But, because the war is a war of choice for the USA, a small number of deaths will have a large political effect and may (in Iran’s calculus) deter the US from escalation.
The Third Gulf War is an asymmetric war, like the Second Gulf War and the Afghanistan Wars (both the US’s and Soviet Union’s). The ongoing Russo-Ukrainian War is not an asymmetric war, despite some commentators painting it with that label.
Let me explain. Although Russia is much stronger than Ukraine in economic, population, and military terms, the actual engagement on the battlefield is close to being peer-to-peer.
When Ukraine use novel drone tactics, or better defence in depth, this isn’t “asymmetric,” any more than the British introducing tanks in 1916 was “asymmetric.” It’s just better tactics against a peer opponent.
If the Ukrainians had been completely overrun and then started a resistance campaign against the occupying Russian forces, then this would be “asymmetric.” Note, however, that no-one in their right mind would choose asymmetric warfare when the regular ol’ “symmetric” kind is available to them. After all, one of the main reasons to fight is to protect the people and the country you love from enemy occupation: asymmetric war presupposes some level of defeat.
Of course, Iran isn’t (at the time of writing) occupied by American or Israeli forces. So, it’s not a total asymmetry, if we can split hairs like this. But in terms of air power, the USA and Israel have total dominance over Iran. It is asymmetrical.
A final point on asymmetrical war is that, even though it’s hard for the “Goliath” / American side, it’s far, far worse for the “David” / Iranian side. Already you can see that the casualty figures (civilians included) are stacked 10:1 against Iran. It’s the same story throughout history. The underdog sometimes wins, but it’s never easy, and it’s never assured. I recommend reading ACOUP’s “Fremen Mirage” series for an in-depth look at this.
Conclusion: Strategic dilemmas all round
We’ve seen from the last section that this asymmetrical war serves nobody well. If we look at all the main players, they face different strategic dilemmas. Remember that a dilemma, in proper usage, is a choice between two bad options. There are no good ones.
The most important strategic imperative for almost all parties is the re-opening of the Strait of Hormuz, the narrow channel through which a fifth of the world’s liquefied natural gas and a quarter of its seaborne crude oil passes. Nobody wants it to stay closed, but it’s one of the only levers that a desperate Iran can pull in a wildly asymmetric war.
The best strategy, and the only one that would avoid the dilemmas described above, would have been for the US and Israel to never start this war. Now, having done so, they’ve opened Pandora’s Box and need to choose between several different bad options.
More expensive gas at the pumps, or more flag-draped coffins flying home? Unconditional Iranian surrender after months of fighting, or a dirty deal with a murderous regime?
I’m still unwilling to make a short- or medium-term prediction on how this will turn out. But I will stick to my long-term assessment which I floated last week: the opening days of this war will come to be seen as the high water mark of American techno-military power.
To sum up and take a step back, it’s clear to me that you can evaluate the war differently, depending on what level you pitch the analysis at:
- Tactical. At the lowest level of analysis, the war has been a stunning series of successes for the US and Israeli forces. As I wrote last week, they are proving their unmatched dominance in the air and can target anything they want to within Iran.
- Operational. At the next level up, it’s a mixed picture. Some are calling it an operational success already, while others talk of operational “progress,” with challenges remaining. I take a more cynical view. Without a strategic objective, can you have a successful operation? I think the US is fighting to achieve several operational aims at the same time, e.g. degrading ballistic missile capability, destroying energy infrastructure, killing leadership. The operational level is about prioritisation, but you can’t prioritise in the absence of strategic purpose.
- Strategic. As you might have gathered from the point above, the strategic direction for this war seems entirely lacking from the US side. The main strategic goal at this stage seems to be re-opening the Strait of Hormuz, a goal that would be unnecessary had the US and Israel not launched this war of choice.
Tactical triumph, operational obscurity, and strategic shambles. What do you think? Thanks to everyone who shared their opinion last week, it was great to get such diverse views. I’ll be watching what happens closely. Until next time, take care.
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Cover picture: The Grand Hotel in Brighton 12 October 1984, following an IRA bomb attack, D4444n at the English Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons
- But managed to kill, in a most gruesome manner, five people whose only crime was to be members of a political party or their immediate relatives. ↩︎
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