¶ … U.S. MILITARY TODAY

The most serious issue facing the United States military today is the prospect of asymmetric warfare in connection with ongoing so-called guerilla wars such as those in Iraq and Afghanistan. That is because the U.S. Armed Forces was originally designed and has evolved ever since primarily to address the threat of traditional wars with nation states. Meanwhile, the greatest contemporary threats to U.S. interests are much more likely to arise in connection with non-state actors and terrorists.

Guerilla warfare in urban environments poses a tremendous difficulty for the U.S. military because it does not lend itself to the application of military force of the kind relied upon by modern military superpowers. Moreover, while U.S. military strategists must always consider civilian casualties and keep any collateral damage to an absolute minimum, the insurgents and terrorists have no such compunction and purposely target civilians and infrastructure.

Like the militaries of other nations, the U.S. military is designed to respond to and counter other militaries rather than small groups of embedded insurgents who have the capability of blending in with the local population. In many respects, the duties now being performed by U.S. military personnel in Iraq and Afghanistan are much better suited to urban police forces than to national militaries.

Unfortunately, this problem is likely to increase in the near future rather than to decrease, because of the spread of al-Qaeda insurgents and their supporters in Afghanistan into Pakistan in areas that are equally difficult to patrol by military forces designed to address bona fide military threats. The fact that U.S. military forces are also designed for large deployments only further complicates the prospect of continually responding to insurgencies and terrorist threats as they spread to multiple regions capable of destabilizing peace throughout the entire Middle East.