Commanding Anti-Terrorist Coalitions: A Mid-East Illustration
Abstract
Every campaign or engagement is both a physical conflict and a psychological confrontation. The psychological confrontation is won when the other party submits to our will i.e., we change their intent. Changing intent by methods other than War Fighting becomes the commander's Main Effort as we move along the spectrum of military operations from total war toward peacekeeping. A support system based on Confrontation and Collaboration Analysis is required to assist commanders in this task of psychological confrontation. This is of great importance for the War Against Terrorism. A War Against Terrorism operation aims to arrest or destroy terrorists after isolating them and depriving them of support, which requires forming and maintaining an antiterrorist coalition. This is the nature of a War Against Terrorism operation at every level. At Grand Strategic Level, nations are brought into coalition. At Strategic Level, War Against Terrorism operations to be carried out by coalitions of nations are planned and Intelligence is pooled and analyzed. At Operational Level, operations varying from assistance to civil authorities (in the European and US theatres) to leading coalition forces (in theatres such as Central Asia or the Middle East) are conducted; sensitivity to needs of civilian players as well as military partners is essential to building, maintaining and motivating the widest possible coalition and thereby isolating terrorists. At Tactical Level, a War Against Terrorism commander's primary task is to arrest or destroy terrorists; however, doing so involves maintaining a maximum coalition of local players, civilian and military, in order to isolate and locate the terrorists.
Document Details
- Document Type
- Technical Report
- Publication Date
- Jun 01, 2002
- Accession Number
- ADA467631
Entities
People
- Andrew Tait
- Nigel Howard
- Rupert Smith