Volume 2, Issue 2, Spring 2012
Infinity Journal
Dear IJ subscribers,
Welcome to Infinity Journal’s 2nd Issue of Volume No. 2
It is perhaps one of the mysteries of our time that an extremely well respected British General wrote a book questioning the
“Utility of Force.” Rupert Smith’s Utility of Force is perhaps the most famous “new strategy” book of recent years, and almost
everyone has strong opinions about it.
While I have the greatest respect for General Smith as an operational commander and military thinker, I find it impossible to
agree with most of the ideas the book advances.The destruction/defeat/ and/or deterrence of the armed opponent to policy
lies at the heart of all we do, regardless of the war being “amongst the people!”
U.S. Colonel Gian Gentile, recently reduced strategy to “achieving policy aims at the least cost in blood and treasure.”
Assuming the premise that military force was required, because diplomacy could not gain you the policy aim, Colonel Gentile
is not wrong. Blood and treasure are the expenditure that war creates.They are the cost of strategy and that, which defines the
value of the policy. Policy may not be a tyrant, but policy sets the problem as well as setting the cost to solve it.
Does General Smith’s argument evaporate if the need to gain the policy becomes overwhelming? No one cared too much
about the people of Afghanistan after the attacks on September 11, 2001. If the policy really matters, people will pay high and
extract high prices in blood and treasure. Nothing is changing. If one political entity really fears for its well-being or existence,
then it will care very little about the people who live in another political entity.
Getting the enemy to quit or want to give up is still central to all we do. If the policy does not allow that, then the policy is wrong.
If someone wants to suggest that a lot of modern policy aims are simply not worth dying over, or worse; not worth killing over,
then a lot of what General Smith said is right.The book might have been better titled, the “Utility of Bad Policy.”
As it seems increasingly unlikely that anyone is gaining the policy outcomes they wanted in Iraq,Afghanistan, or even Libya,
General Smith may well have been ahead of his time, in accidentally suggesting that by and large the policies the “West”
seeks to advance may well not be those that can be effectively advanced via violence, and thus if violently resisted, have little
or no hope of success.
War isn’t changing.Warfare will change only slowly and in no way that we cannot comprehend. Politics will alter faster than we
can often cope with. If anyone doubted that then the recent slew of uprisings in the Arab world should demonstrate it pretty
clearly.The people of Libya and Syria may have some quite plain views on the utility of force, in terms of gaining the political
conditions they are prepared to die and kill for.
William F. Owen
Editor, Infinity Journal
April 2012
A Note From The Editor
