Terrorism, 'surgical' strikes and unmanned systems

What the specification asks for

“Impact of terrorism, especially 9/11. New wars and high-tech warfare, the importance of 'surgical' air strikes in the 21st century wars in the Middle East. The development of drone wars in Pakistan and unmanned land vehicles in Iraq and Afghanistan.” — examined through change and consequence. Incandio is aligned to specification 4HI1; it is not published by, endorsed by or affiliated with Pearson.

1 · Understand it

An attack that was not made by a state

On 11 September 2001 hijacked airliners were flown into the World Trade Center in New York and the Pentagon, and a fourth aircraft crashed in Pennsylvania. Almost three thousand people were killed. The attack was carried out by a network rather than by a country, using no weapons that a state had supplied, and it produced the largest reorientation of Western military policy since 1945.

That is the change this key topic is built on. Every framework in the preceding eighty years — deterrence, alliance, arms control, the laws of war between states — assumes an opponent with a territory, a government and something to lose. A network has none of those, so deterrence has nothing to threaten, and the response took the form of interventions in Afghanistan from 2001 and Iraq from 2003 against states held to be connected with or comparable to the threat.

Surgical strikes and unmanned systems

The wars that followed were fought with a much higher proportion of precision-guided munitions than in 1991, with satellite navigation rather than laser designation in many cases, and with real-time video surveillance of the target area. Governments described the results as surgical, a word that promises the removal of a specific thing without damage to what surrounds it.

The unmanned aircraft is the sharpest instance. Remotely piloted aircraft carrying missiles were used in increasing numbers over Pakistan from 2004 onwards, controlled from bases thousands of miles away, and by the end of the decade they had become a routine instrument. On the ground, remotely operated vehicles were used in Iraq and Afghanistan chiefly to deal with improvised explosive devices, which were the principal cause of casualties in both campaigns.

Two consequences follow and both are examinable. First, the political cost of using force fell for the side with the technology, because no aircrew could be captured or killed. Second, the frequency of use rose, and strikes took place in countries where no war had been declared. A technology that reduces casualties on one side can increase the total quantity of war, which is the option's closing paradox.

What 'surgical' can and cannot be shown to mean

The evidence problem here is real and should be stated rather than dodged. Casualty figures for drone strikes in Pakistan come from governments with an interest in low numbers and from monitoring organisations working from press reports in areas journalists could not safely reach. Published estimates of civilian deaths differ by large multiples, and no candidate should present one as established.

That uncertainty is itself the historical point. A form of warfare conducted without troops, in territory outside a declared conflict, produces very little of the evidence that historians normally use — no unit war diaries in the public record, no press pool, no independent count. Assessing new wars means assessing a record that the method itself keeps thin.

The other twenty-first-century change in the record runs the opposite way and should be set beside it. The wars of this decade generated an enormous quantity of unofficial evidence — video recorded by participants on both sides, material published by insurgent groups for recruitment, and the private accounts of soldiers circulated without any censor. A historian of 1916 has letters that a censor read; a historian of 2006 has footage that nobody approved and cannot verify. Both are difficult sources and they are difficult in opposite ways.

So the closing judgement of this option is about the relationship between a method of war and what can afterwards be known about it. The most heavily recorded conflicts in history are also, in the places where the strikes were actually carried out, among the least independently documented, and a candidate who notices that has understood something about twenty-first-century warfare that no list of weapons systems would supply.

2 · Learn it — the notes

The dates that earn marks

11 September 2001

Attacks on New York and Washington kill almost three thousand people. Why this date: It is the point at which a non-state network produced a strategic effect previously available only to states, which is what reorients policy.

October 2001

Intervention in Afghanistan begins. Why this date: It starts a campaign that outlasts this specification's period and shows the limits of high-technology force against dispersed opponents.

2003

The invasion of Iraq. Why this date: A conventional campaign won quickly is followed by an insurgency, which is the clearest instance of the difference between defeating an army and controlling a country.

2004–11

Drone strikes in Pakistan expand substantially. Why this date: It marks the arrival of routine armed action outside any declared war, which is the change of category this key topic is about.

The figures, and how far to trust them

• Almost 3,000 — Deaths in the attacks of 11 September 2001. (Usually given as just under 3,000; the number is well established.)
• Estimates differing by several times over — Civilian deaths from drone strikes in Pakistan, 2004–11. (Government figures and independent monitoring differ enormously, and no single figure can be presented as agreed. Naming the disagreement is the honest form.)

The people to place

• Osama bin Laden — Leader of the network that carried out the attacks of 11 September 2001.
• Tommy Franks — Commander of American forces for the Afghanistan and Iraq campaigns of 2001 and 2003.

How historians disagree

Attributed interpretations, never voiced — the AO4 seam.

• The 'new wars' reading: Twenty-first-century conflict differs in kind from state warfare: the opponents are networks, the objectives are political and territorial control rather than victory over an army, and the fighting is continuous rather than declared and concluded. Contested by The reading that this is the same asymmetric warfare seen in Spain, Vietnam and Afghanistan, conducted with better sensors, and that calling it new obscures how much of it a student of 1965 would recognise..

What students say — and what is actually the case

Not this: Drones were a new invention of the twenty-first century.

This: Unmanned aircraft had been used for reconnaissance for decades. The change after 2001 is arming them and using them routinely for strikes outside declared wars.

Not this: Surgical strikes did not kill civilians.

This: Precision improves the chance of hitting the intended point; it does not establish that the intended point was correct. Estimates of civilian deaths in the drone campaign differ by large multiples and none is agreed.

Two things students merge

Blurred: Precision and discrimination.

The distinction: Precision is a property of the weapon: it lands where it is aimed. Discrimination is a property of the decision: it is aimed at the right thing. A precise weapon aimed on faulty intelligence is precise and indiscriminate at once.

Blurred: Winning the conventional campaign and controlling the country.

The distinction: Iraq's army was defeated in weeks in 2003 and the insurgency ran for years. The distinction is the same one Vietnam taught, which is why the new wars claim is contested.

What a Grade 9 answer holds here

A Grade 9 answer treats the word surgical as a claim to be tested rather than a description to be repeated, and notices that the same technology that made strikes possible without troops also removed the witnesses, the war diaries and the press access that historians rely on. The method changed the war and the record of it at the same time.

3 · How it is examined

This strand is genuinely set through: Paper 2 Section B (a) (6 marks — “Explain TWO ways in which … was different from ….”); Paper 2 Section B (b) (8 marks — “Explain TWO causes of ….”); Paper 2 Section B (c)(i) or (c)(ii) (16 marks — “How significant was … in …, in the years …? / How far were … responsible for …, in the years …? You may use the following in your answer: • [prompt] • [prompt]. You must also use information of your own.”).

What earns marks: The paradox stated in one sentence — lowering the cost of using force raised the frequency of using it — with the drone campaign dated 2004 to 2011 as its evidence.

4 · Prove it — the questions

Answered inside Incandio, where a marker checks what a correct answer must contain and tells you which half was missing. The marking stays in the app; the questions are here.

1. Explain TWO ways in which warfare in 2011 was different from warfare in 1991. [6 marks · Paper 2 Section B (a)]
2. Explain TWO causes of the growth of drone warfare after 2001. [8 marks · Paper 2 Section B (b)]
3. Explain TWO causes of the difficulty faced by conventional forces in Iraq and Afghanistan after 2003. [8 marks · Paper 2 Section B (b)]
4. How significant was terrorism in changing the nature of warfare, in the years 1976–2011? [16 marks · Paper 2 Section B (c)(i) or (c)(ii)]
5. How far were developments in technology responsible for the changing nature of warfare, in the years 1919–2011? [16 marks · Paper 2 Section B (c)(i) or (c)(ii)]

Carry on through the option

• Previous lesson, in key topic 4: Afghanistan, 'Star Wars' and the end of the arms race
• Key topic 5 · Changing methods of warfare at the beginning of the 21st century, 2000–2011 · The changing nature of warfare and international conflict, 1919–2011 · the option's timeline · Incandio History
• The other key topics of The changing nature of warfare and international conflict: The changing nature of warfare, 1919–39 · Changing methods of warfare by land, air and sea, 1939–45 · New forms of conflict – nuclear and guerrilla war versus conventional war, 1945–75 · Conventional war and the development of 'new' wars, 1976–2000