The analyses of Robert Leonhard, a keen theoretician on urban warfare, are evidence of the vitality of a tendency which was of relatively little significance until the events of 11 September 2001. They attest to the crucial relationship between the phenomenon of strategic globalisation, of which American military action is the vector, and the urbanisation of warfare which has emerged since the end of the bipolar order. He deplores the slowness and reluctance of some of the American military hierarchy to adapt to the changes which the complexity of the urban battle necessarily imposes on the operating methods of land forces. He supports the development of an all-embracing model of civil-military integration, termed ‘interagency integration’, to deal with the chaos of urban combat and ensure the control of conquered territory. According to him, the insertion of this interagency group of forces, combining governmental and non-governmental organisations, private military firms and civilian firms with the initial all-arms force, should constitute the basis for future US Army operations.

From the Decisive Battle to Reconstruction

In a prophetic article, ‘Sun Tzu’s bad advice’,⁽¹⁾ which appeared at the height of the invasion of Iraq in 2003, Robert R. Leonhard, pace Ralph Peters, identified several priority areas which needed fundamental doctrinal re-evaluation: a fundamental grasp of human-source intelligence; a redefinition of the concept of the use of armour against a mechanised infantry force; a cognitive re-writing of the rules of engagement in an urbanised area using reduced-lethality weapons; the concept of simple and easy-to-use robotics on land, intended especially for the dynamic plotting of the urban battle space, far from the over-complicated concept of the multifunction drone; and, finally, a revision of the overall tactics of urban conflict based on the idea of controlled violence (the decentralisation, transversality and flexibility of urban combat). In particular he foresaw that considering ‘the effectiveness of American all-arms operations, an intelligent adversary will go into towns to protect himself. Operations have become so intertwined with larger considerations, and military factors so integrated with diplomatic, economic and cultural ones, that theatre war can no longer be dissociated from grand strategy.’ He continued: ‘In a similar way, the challenge of urban operations will serve to re-define the tactical level of warfare.’

Since then, the soldier has found himself included in a political, economic, diplomatic and media spectrum which nullifies the primacy of operational success–the warfighting dogma–in the definition of the strategic purpose of war. In the case of the Iraq war, the technical result of the invasion phase (OIF-1) and the desired end state–the elimination of the Ba’athist regime–which represented a remarkable operational success, led to no long-term result. On the contrary, it was the post-conquest management phase (OIF-2), in the setting of a long phase of resistance and asymmetric warfare in an urban environment, which really began the conflict. To quote Vincent Desportes,⁽²⁾ ‘technical perfection’ has shown itself ‘incapable of producing the desired end-state by itself . . . Iraq is three and a half weeks of “transformed” war and three and a half years of asymmetric crisis . . . Now, the decisive phase has become the phase which follows the intervention phase, that of stabilisation.’ Contrary to the techno-warrior prophecy which animated the ‘transformist’ vision, the Iraqi conflict has certainly sanctioned a technological revolution but it has, on the other hand, highlighted the persistence of conventional concepts doomed, according to Töffler, to obsolescence. From this point of view, it would nevertheless be over-hasty to declare the demise of transformation in favour of a paradigm of change, or ‘adaptation’, tending over time to replace it in doctrinal thinking. Although the two processes are liable to conflict–‘adaptation’ implying a partial revision of ‘transformation’ seen as a process of permanent technoscientific acceleration–in an analysis of the Iraqi situation they appear as convergent.