Un escritor mallorquín, el King's College y Sri Lanka (Ceilán): 'guerras híbridas'

Me da razones para el optimismo la aparición de la página informativa Valentí Puig donde el autor mallorquìn sumará su obra publicada en ABC y otros medios. Especialmente estimulante es la sección fija titulada Futuro Estratégico cuya declaración inicial recomiendo leer.

Con el mismo nivel intelectual, el blog Kings of War del Departamento de Estudios sobre la Guerra del King's College de Londres publica el sugestivo análisis What does the destruction of the Tamil Tigers tell us about COIN?.

Se da la circunstancia de que, a toda velocidad, la vieja Ceilán de nuestros textos escolares se está convirtiendo en lanzadera y factoría de los intereses comerciales de China continental sobre la Península Arábiga y, sobre todo, África. Sospecho que saudíes e indios observan la jugada con grande suspicacia. La organización guerrillera Tigers Tamil tiene apoyos en la propia India y los individuos de su etnia sirven como criados en mil y una noches orientales. Los Tigres Tamil, por ejemplo, han usado del ataque suicida personal y con aviones durante el conflicto. Así, asesinaron a Rajiv Gandhi, hijo de Indira, esposo de la italiana Sonia y padre de Rahul, continuador de la dinastía Nerhu en el Partido del Congreso.

La larga guerra parece que ha terminado en Ceilán, pero dudo que ello sea así. Lo que son las cosas; en algún momento la Argentina vendió aviones COIN Pucará a las autoridades cingalesas, tres según recuerdo. Miren foto recuperada del blog Taringa

No me resisto a reproducir íntegra la entrada Hybrid war v postmodern war en dicho blog Kings of War (Saturday, 16, May, 2009 by Kenneth Payne).

Hybrid warfare is in vogue, especially in the Pentagon.

As Robert Gates argues:

[We need] to recognize that the black and white distinction between irregular war and conventional war is an outdated model. We must understand that we face a more complex future than that, a future where all conflict will range across a broad spectrum of operations and lethality.

This definition comes from Frank Hoffman, who developed the concept:

Hybrid wars incorporate a range of different modes of warfare, including conventional capabilities, irregular tactics and formations, terrorist acts including indiscriminate violence and coercion, and criminal disorder. [Conflict in the 21st Century: The Rise of Hybrid Wars - pdf]

The idea, he explains, differs from similar concepts partly in its suggestion that the enemy will apply diverse means simultaneously and with some degree of operational integration.

Hybrid war has plenty of history. Indeed, as Hoffman explained to KoW:

Hybrid wars are not new, but they are different.

That all sounds plausible, but raises important questions: If hybrid war is not new, why all the fuss now? And what is it different from?

The answers lie more with the West than with its enemies.

In 2001, the preface to the US Army’s Operations field manual contained this flawed judgment:

The ability of Army forces to dominate land warfare also provides the ability to dominate any situation in military operations other than war.

The rise of the COINdinistas was a much-needed corrective to this orthodoxy, and was achieved against the weight of conventional military thought. But their ongoing struggle highlights the real issue: it’s not that irregular war is new, nor hybrid war, nor 4GW, nor war amongst the people, for that matter. It’s just that western ways of war are maladapted to cope with it. And they are maladapted not so much because of new types of enemy, but because of trends in their own societies.

The West has evolved a way of war ideally suited for fighting amongst itself. Michael Howard tells the story succinctly: In the first phase, the rise of state bureaucracies, allowing for large standing armies; next the rise of nationalism and the passionate commitment of whole peoples to war, allowing still greater mass; then industry, and a dramatic increase in destructive power.

Finally in recent decades, a new trend, as further societal and technological changes increasingly estranged the wider population from its small, professional military cadre. The resultant postmodern societies are for the most part happily isolated from pre-modern violence, and have the liberty to demand a uniquely liberal way of war. They rightly demand the increasingly stringent use of force by their armed forces, and are able to foot a huge bill for the technology to achieve that. This view of postmodern societies and armies is well described in some of Christopher Coker’s writing.

And so, as throughout recent centuries, much of what is new to warfare is being driven by the West, in particular by the evolving relationship between its citizens, states and soldiers.

As before, western society and western militaries have discovered that they must fight foes who use ‘conventional capabilities, irregular tactics and formations, terrorist acts including indiscriminate violence and coercion, and criminal disorder’. And, being postmodern, their approach will necessarily differ from the colonial and imperial approaches of earlier times.

It is this development of post-modern societies and armed forces, not of hybrid adversaries, that strikes me as the greater novelty in contemporary warfare.

Hay más lecturas que reseñar, pero sigo dependiendo de las indicaciones facultativas respecto del consumo de opiáceos: no sé cómo terminará esto... me refiero, obviamente, a la Estrategia Nacional de Seguridad y Defensa. De momento, 14 detenidos en Bilbao por su presunta relación con Al Qaeda