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The Strategic and Operational Dynamics of Limited War

Throughout military history, America has engaged in both limited and unlimited warfare.  The Cold War saw the United States pursuing limited objectives rather than the complete destruction of an adversary. The threat of great power conflict and nuclear annihilation frequently had a restraining effect on local conflicts. In the post-Cold War period, the United States returned to unlimited warfare in regional interventions. Military operations and diplomatic pressure are used to overthrow target regimes. But political and strategic failures, fiscal constraints, and the growing military power of other states are prompting a return to limited war. Successful prosecution of limited wars, however, is contingent on a sound understanding of their strategic and operational characteristics.  If the United States wages limited war, it must do so by setting genuinely limited objectives. This essay reviews strategic and operational considerations for the planning of limited war.

Explaining Limited War

Warfare with unlimited goals ends in the destruction of an adversary as a political entity. Destruction need not be total in material character, as regimes have been overthrown without substantial bloodshed. But unlimited war, if prosecuted to its natural extremes, ends with the fall of a given political order and the creation of a new reality. While all war is to some extent characterized by ill intent, unlimited war always involves the escalation of an adversary to an absolute enemy . Such a total enemy is portrayed as dangerous, illegitimate, and criminal. The only remedy for such a foe is political annihilation.

Limited war, in contrast, does not climax in the political annihilation of an opponent. It seeks lesser objectives, such as territory or a shift in political behavior. It is true that limited war still involves enemies and enmity, and certainly it also has become much less genteel since the age of 18 th century maneuver. Furthermore, limited war should not be mistaken as an alternative form of warfare. War has truly one nature, and its character in any given conflict is predominately determined by its political object.

Limited war also is not distinguished by limited means . The means employed to gain the object only loosely correlate with war aims. Decisive operations have enabled limited aims and economy of force operations are often utilized for wars with expansive objectives. The Gulf War was a limited conflict contingent on the expulsion of Iraqi forces from Kuwait, yet it required a powerful combined-arms ground campaign and a massive air war. In contrast, the United States did not take on the hard work of ground combat in Afghanistan in 2001 or slug it out with Muammar Gaddafi’s forces in Libya in 2011. Yet despite the limited character of the means Washington was willing to devote to those conflicts, their objects were the overthrow of adversary regimes.

Limited and unlimited wars are also ideal categories that lie on a general spectrum of violence . While both ideational and material constraints limit warfare, these limits may be perceptible only in hindsight. During the heat of the Korean War, important figures within the American defense establishment contemplated expansion of the war to the Chinese mainland and the usage of nuclear weapons. The United States consistently misjudged the nature of the Vietnam War—it was a total war for both South Vietnam and North Vietnam, but Washington often behaved as it if were a limited campaign.

Political goals, strategic requirements, and political-military effects should be understood as interdependent in practice. If a stated goal is out of sync with its strategic requirements or somehow dissonant with the effects created, it may shift in real time. Policy is produced by politics, and strategy expresses policy through tactics and operations. Both endogenous and exogenous shifts can—and frequently do--shift the delicate policy-strategy balance achieved through the political process to a new equilibrium.

The Libya intervention demonstrates the unstable nature of policy and strategy in practice. Gaddafi’s ability to harm civilians in Benghazi was the ostensible target of Western military forces in Libya. But his bloody efforts were an outgrowth of an active civil war that raised questions of both political and personal survival. The absolute enmity that characterized the conflict dictated that neither side would be satisfied with anything except total victory. Thus, ending the threat to civilians, as understood by Western policymakers looking from afar, led to the destruction of Gaddafi’s armed forces. Because this destruction took place within the context of a civil war, the effect of Western military operations was the destruction of Gaddafi’s regime and the rise of a chaotic, ambiguous, and frequently barbarous new political-military environment.

Even a war that achieves its policy aims cannot guarantee perpetual or even mid-range security. Consider two large-scale conventional wars that ended with operations against the enemy’s capitol and forced territorial exchange--the US-Mexican War and the Franco-Prussian War. Conventional and irregular threats on the US-Mexican border continued right up to the end of World War I, and the Franco-Prussian War’s harsh conclusion triggered decades of French antipathy towards Germany.

Political destruction of an adversary can completely remove a threat. Rome’s destruction of Carthage removed an important challenger to its dominance, and the destruction of the Third Reich put a lethal close to nearly century-long threat of a militarily powerful German state. But the end of one absolute enemy sometimes also creates new security threats or leaves the ground open for otherwise unwelcome shifts in the strategic balance. The destruction of the Saddam Hussein regime removed Iran’s greatest enemy and created an opportunity to direct Tehran’s military planning and covert subversion elsewhere.

Military campaigns should be understood as injections into political systems , and the result of such disruptions cannot be mapped with any real certainty. Whenever an external force—lethal or nonlethal—attempts to alter a political system, the results often confound initial expectations. US work to help counter Haitian gangs , for example, ran into a central problem: the gangs were hired guns for competing political interests. Fighting the gangs—a micropolitical issue—had macropolitical consequences. Military interventions affect not only local but also regional systems. The Libyan conflict, as Alex Thurston argues , had disruptive effects in the North African regional system and substantially contributed to the ongoing instability in Mali. It is impossible for policymakers to operate with the knowledge and time necessarily to make perfect decisions. But the bar for the use of force must be very high.

Strategic Considerations

Policy and strategy in limited war must be genuinely limited .  Disaster frequently awaits those who wage unlimited war with limited resources.  While some military forces have undoubtedly achieved favorable operational outcomes under quantitative disadvantages, the margin of superiority needed to make the impossible possible is often exceptional. The Anglo-American joint operation to overthrow the Iranian government in 1953 was a masterpiece of political subversion, but also would not have been possible if it were not for fortuitous local dynamics and a good helping of luck. Similarly, the overthrow of the Taliban in Afghanistan in 2001 rested mostly on Afghan military land power supported by Western standoff firepower.

Policymakers should consider what is possible to achieve through the use of force before committing American land, sea, or air forces. Objectives should be as specific as possible—phrases such as “teaching a lesson” or “defending the international system” should be banished from the political-military lexicon. A truly limited objective can also be abandoned or altered in response to new strategic circumstances, and a war is certainly not limited if it entraps one or both combatants into a new commitment. When the United States committed itself to containing Saddam Hussein’s Iraq after the Gulf War, it was in fact committing itself to his overthrow. The total character of the sanctions and American policymakers’ casting of his regime as fundamentally illegitimate helped commit the US to a set of circumstances in which US pressure could only be relieved with Hussein’s overthrow.

Thomas Schelling famously described a “diplomacy of violence” in his book Arms and Influence , and both the threat and employment of coercive force in a limited war presumes the continued existence of the opponent as a political entity. In a limited war, the adversary ideally should have a way out that can be justified to domestic audiences and elites.  Most importantly, policymakers must understand that an adversary state may perceive the worth of an objective differently. What one states believes to be a limited objective may be an object of core strategic importance to the opponent. Japan might have believed that it could strike the heart of American military power, retreat behind a fortified line of islands and ships, and wait for the Americans to sue for peace rather than expend large resources fighting far from home. Tokyo’s delusion led directly to the destruction of the Japanese imperial system.

The success of limited war also depends very much on the nature of the adversary. A “ real enemy ” that considers war to be politics by other means is capable of settling for less than political annihilation. However, an absolute enemy that sees politics as war by other means will only cease to be a major security threat after it is no longer a strategically cohesive force. What distinguishes a run-of-the mill tyrant from a Hitler is the totalizing character of the latter’s strategic ambitions. There also are important differences between a local group of partisans animated by local concerns and an international revolutionary organization that fights for abstract goals. The local fighter ceases to be a military concern after disengagement from a distinct area of operations. The international revolutionary considers the globe his battlefield. Embarking on limited war when the adversary seeks to wage a total war is a classic strategic mistake that should be avoided at all costs.

Military force can sometimes deter even total enemies. However much what David Maxwell often dubs the “ Kim Family Regime ” may loathe South Korea, it cannot act on its prejudices without risking annihilation. But North Korea does regard truces and diplomacy as simply tactical pauses, and will continue to trouble what it regards as an absolute enemy with military and covert provocations. This process will likely continue as long as the Kim Family regime exists.

Operational Art and Campaigns

Designing a limited campaign, like any other sort of military effort, is contingent on the military environment, resources available, and the political object. The farther American forces must go, the greater the dependence on local actors. A “ loss of strength gradient ” lessens the impact of military power as it travels from a distant base area to a far-flung target, necessitating local relationships for forward basing. Operating inland in Central Asia created a dependence on a host of unsavory actors, most notably the Pakistanis, and military operations in the Persian Gulf carry their own political costs. Operations closer to one’s natural frontiers, such as India’s riposte of Pakistan in the Kargil war, are obviously easier. Sometimes political considerations will dictate an indirect approach closer to home. The United States also cannot, for example, interfere too much in the affairs of Mexico and prosecutes the drug war indirectly.

Technical considerations also dictate the shape of the campaign. Suppression of enemy air defenses (SEAD) has remained an element of American campaign planning since the expansion of Air Force capabilities allowed military forces to avoid the kind of attrition characterized by the air war over Northern Vietnam. The recent proliferation of battle networks has added suppression of enemy networks to the checklist, and the growing proliferation of guided weapons suggests the potential for adversaries to create their own rudimentary reconnaissance-strike complexes. A proliferation of network-enabled robotic weapons will likely place even more emphasis on the electromagnetic spectrum, cyberspace, and other components of command and control warfare.

However, SEAD and counter-battle network missions pose a dilemma for future campaign planners. Striking anti-ship ballistic missiles placed far into the interior and military satellites raises questions about the ability of the war to remain limited. Suppressing battle networks, especially in the case of computer network operations, also has a high potential for collateral damage to civilian networks. Certain kinds of standoff weapons are also easily mistakable for nuclear forces.

Operational art based on the destruction of regime command and control through operational shock also poses problems for limited war. Recent American operational concepts, such as Effects-Based Operations, Rapid Decisive Operations, and the Five Rings targeting approach, have focused on the rapid destruction of a state’s political-military leadership capabilities. This would ostensibly render the opponent’s military forces supine, particularly if the conventional enemy is sufficiently brittle and can be systemically disrupted. These “magic bullet” methods frequently overpromise, but it is not inconceivable that advanced targeting capabilities might inflict severe—if not fatal--disruptions on command and control networks and render fielded units irrelevant. Such an outcome, however, raises problems of a different sort for limited campaigns.

It is difficult to wage a limited war to coerce an opponent if the operational means involved break the authority of the regime outright. Regime command and control assets direct fielded forces but also help direct paramilitary and military forces maintaining political order. A state under this kind of sustained threat may perceive the stakes to be existential and conclude that the real object of military operations is political annihilation. Destroying a regime while leaving significant portions of its fielded forces intact also poses significant policy problems, as the 2003 invasion of Iraq proved. The Revolution in Military Affairs (RMA) might create better and quicker means of operational annihilation, but low-tech military destruction often is better in instilling a psychological perception of defeat.  

A campaign planner, as T.X. Hammes noted , can also carry out a campaign of exhaustion rather than decisive battle. A campaign may employ a variety of assets to strike economic targets. This style of operations was dubbed “ guerre de course ” in the classical era. The Kargil war featured an analogous style of slow, heavily telegraphed political and military moves designed to gain an advantage without triggering general war. Finally, there is also coercive war, as waged in Kosovo with a multiplicity of political, military, and economic means. These methods, however, are contingent on the adversary playing along. Signaling a lack of willingness to escalate or a fear of risking a larger war to gain an operationally decisive advantage may simply cause the target to double down or escalate in order to achieve escalation dominance. Proxies can also sometimes also be useful as a diplomatic bargaining chip or simply as a means of eroding military power and political reserve. However, proxies also have important practical limitations and sometimes entrap their sponsors into realizing the objectives of the client rather than the patron.  

Limited war against underdeveloped states or non-state groups also poses particular operational problems. A state lacking sufficient political, military, or economic connectivity will present less opportunity for targeting that achieves truly cascading effects. States without developed infrastructure, in general, do not yield a traditionally target-rich environment. The lack of sophisticated air defenses also means that underdeveloped states and regions also present enormous opportunity for the targeting of small groups and individuals. Air power alone is unlikely to eradicate a group heavily situated within a region’s human terrain and also requires the development of local informants for targeting intelligence. The deployment of advanced sensors--particularly unattended ground sensors—has been key to targeted warfare in austere regions since Vietnam-era operations against the Ho Chi Minh Trail.

Non-state actors in control of state or quasi-state territories can sometimes coerced, as the Israeli have in Gaza, by sharp and sudden attacks designed to achieve or regain deterrence. Tenuous truces can be maintained over a period of time by a willingness to strike with overwhelming force against a non-state adversary. Great powers over history—unable to pacify non-state forces in frontier regions—have used a combination of raids, diplomacy, and economic inducements to manage the threat to their heartlands. The United States has a similar power over the actions of irregular foes. The maxim that irregular adversaries cannot be deterred or coerced is empirically unsupportable. Deterrence and compellence will take on a different character , but will not vanish from the scene altogether.

Limited means rather than ends often characterize what American policymakers view as “limited war.” Such categorical confusion only ensures that operations are waged without the resources necessarily to achieve success and larger entrapment in more expansive commitments than policymakers might have necessarily bargained on. Truly “limited” war can only be possible with limited aims and a sound understanding of the dynamics of war under political constraint. 

About the Author(s)

Adam Elkus is a PhD student in Computational Social Science at George Mason University. He has published articles on defense, international security, and technology at Small Wars Journal , CTOVision, T he Atlantic , the West Point Combating Terrorism Center’s Sentinel , and Foreign Policy.

The Limited War Theory Essay

Introduction, the foundation of the limited war theory, the restrictions of a limited war, the korean war, works cited.

War is a conflict of power that involves nations and other parties and it is at times inevitable as conflicting sides usually try to exert their influences on each other and the rest of the world (Clausewitz, 77). To minimize the damage and effects of wars, theorists came up with the limited war theory and a majority of them defined it as the boundary between political resolve and physical authority (Kissinger, 24).

The basic principle of the limited war theory is the avoidance of armed war and the mutual destruction that is brought by it. Several definitions of the limited war exist in the Western world, particularly in the United States. Most of these definitions were made after World War II and seemed to have focused on the actions of the US military to ensure that it did not pose a threat or the instant destruction of the perceived enemies. The major war enemies during World War II were the United States and the Soviet Union. A limited war theory is described as one in which the confrontational parties’ objective is not to seek for the absolute destruction of their enemies.

The theory also puts limits on the use of a given nation’s available resources in war. These resources can be military, human or technological. The conflicting sides should state the reasons for fighting and state tangible, precise objectives which do not require a lot of military actions. The theory postulates that war should be engaged in a defined, local geographical area (Giap, 35).

The rules of the limited war theory might include not firing at the enemy except if the enemy fires at you first or not pursuing an enemy into an area which is termed as neutral. If one of the parties wants to attack its enemy, it can only do so in a particular defined territory so that it can differentiate between the combatants and the civilians (Kissinger, 37). The theory directs that the parties engaged in war must limit themselves to using certain weapons that they may have. The theory defines the kind of military infrastructure that should be targeted by a given enemy (Kissinger 39).

The limited war theory was introduced in the 1950s when military philosophers emphasized the association between political objectives and military means. This fact was made so after the Soviet Union was declared equal to the United States in terms of nuclear power. The theory originated from different viewpoints. The first one was founded on the strategy of the cold war whereby the limitation of war was aimed at improving national security (Kissinger, 26).

The other reason for the limited war theory was focused on keeping the lives of the civilian populations safe. Authorities in charge of security understood that the US and the Soviet Union were in possession of nuclear weapons. The deepening of the conflict to an armed war would bring massive destruction to both sides (Kissinger, 46).

This fact would mean the immediate destruction of the US. This reason defined why the limited war theory was based on the parties’ military capability of inflicting massive damage on each other. The use of weapons with a view of causing deaths became a prerequisite for the use of the limited war approach. This fact meant that a limited war approach would only take place between two rivals who were equal in regard to the weapons that each opponent possessed. The US came up with the limited war theory in order to protect itself from warfare.

The International Committee of the Red Cross feared for massive losses of human life and proposed that the military could carry out its business in certain defined territories. The committee proposed that the military was supposed to carry out its activities away from civilian populations and that its activities were to be restricted to military resources. In addition, the committee suggested the limitation of artillery employed and how it would be used to minimize the harm inflicted on the civilians by war. It was determined that war should be limited due to the misuse of weapons after the automatic warfare advancement during the middle of World War II and the development of nuclear weapons. The possibility of the use of nuclear weapons was dangerous to human existence. The initial motives of a war are usually political ones and should determine the military motives and that of the efforts made by a given party in war (Clausewitz, 54).

The limited war theory ensures that political, social and economic activities continue in the course of the war. The possibility of armed war led to the creation of mechanisms that would assure the safety of the civilians. The creation of nuclear weapons was seen as a way in which certain countries would control the world. (Kissinger, 54). After the Soviet Union obtained nuclear weapons, the threats from the United States of a massive reprisal became futile when the limited war theory was established because nuclear weapons restricted the objective and degree of wars due to their destructive potential.

This fact made the possibility of annihilation of enemies of any given nation difficult as neither parties engaged in war wanted total destruction of the world. The nuclear weapons gave the Soviet Union an advantage over the United States. The theory was established to guard the United States’ strategic interests which included maintaining America’s international reputation especially for the sake of its partners in Europe as well as controlling the Soviet Union. The US and the Soviet Union possessed nuclear weapons meaning that both nations would be destroyed in the eventuality of war between them. Europe feared that in case of an attack of the US by the Soviet Union, the US would be unable to safeguard it.

The US did not also consider it necessary to endanger its citizens’ lives and risk complete destruction of its states due to the warfare going on in Europe. The Soviet Union reduced the nuclear weapon domination that the United States had enjoyed for a long time. The US threats of massive retaliation became less threatening because the Soviet Union was now in a position to match the weaponry of the US (Kissinger 75).

Complete destruction of the Soviet Union would also mean the same for the US. In the event that retaliation took place, the parties engaged in the war would only be left with two options which were to surrender or engage in armed war. However, both of these options would have their disadvantages because nuclear war meant mutual destruction while surrendering would have meant that the national objectives that were being fought for would be forfeited (Giap, 44).

The limited war theory, therefore, removed the burden on the US of deciding whether to engage in armed war or “feel demeaned for retreating” (Kissinger 20). Taking part in armed conflict with the Soviet Union also meant the US would suffer from attacks in its homeland. The US feared that it would give an opportunity to the Soviet Union to establish its communist regime in parts of the United States’ localities which would later spread and prove difficult to control. The US also used the limited war theory to control the alliance between the Soviet Union and its partners thereby weakening them.

The reasoning behind this was that no Soviet ally would compromise on its safety by undergoing the risk of armed war with the intention of defending the Soviet and yet it would not benefit from the action. The Soviet Union would also find it difficult to maintain ties with its allies with the risk of armed war as all its focus and energy would be in trying to avoid the war. By exerting all this pressure on the Soviet Union, the US controlled the action of the Soviet Union. In addition to dealing with the Soviet Union, the US used the limited war theory to increase deterrence from war and should it have failed, then the limited war theory would have created room for negotiations prior to the break out of the war. This fact would have been a better solution for the US than engaging in nuclear war (Kissinger, 33).

Restrictions of the limited war theory include well-defined limited objectives, the will to restrict the use of armed means, proper military policies, a national will and ample economic resources (Giap, 51). The military makes its plans using the structures set by those at the top of its political leadership. The nature of the political objectives of a country should determine how the war is carried out and not the framework of the accomplishment of the military structure (Kissinger, 46).

The parameters are then further divided into seven classes namely the geographical area, the targets, the type and number of weapons, the intensity of the war, its duration, and manpower as well as the number of parties engaged in war conflicts. The most important factors of a theory are the geographical area, the targets and the weapons as they are the ones the parties at war can control. The absence of the factors would make the restriction of war very difficult. The limited war theory entails a sophisticated strategy made with clearly stipulated strategies with the aim of minimizing the costs.

The parties engaged in war have to inform each other of their definition of the limited war theory and the restrictions that they would maintain. Limitation of a geographical area translates to keeping the size of the war territory at a minimum geographical scope. In the case of the US and the Soviet Union, this implied leaving out Europe from the power crisis and main nuclear power countries (Giap, 42). The limited war theory used by America to justify its participation in Vietnam was faulty in the sense that its leaders did not realize that war could only take place if both parties were willing to control their means of engaging in war (Kissinger, 52).

This fact was because the theory failed to recognize the important roles that people played in enhancing the possibility of war. The biggest mistake that the US made was to employ the military as the basis of its political predicament given that its main objective in Vietnam was to control the influence of communism. The reason for the invasion of Vietnam by the US was not about Vietnam itself (Giap, 34).

This theory was of international importance as it aimed at maintaining the objective of the control of power by the Soviet Union. (Clausewitz, 76). The United States was overconfident in its war against Vietnam.The US did not consider it necessary to formulate concrete strategies and to allocate a lot of resources in the war against Vietnam. The top-ranking officers of the US military only considered focusing on the size of manpower to be deployed in Vietnam instead of discussing how it would fight in the war. A few examples of limited war theories can be captured in the Korean, Vietnam, El Salvador and Falklands wars. This essay will evaluate the limited war theory and its significance on the Korean and the Falklands’ wars.

At the end of World War II in 1945, Korea which was previously being ruled by the Japanese was divided into two along the 38th parallel with the forces from the United States taking over South Korea and those from the Soviet Union taking over North Korea. The Soviet Union then went ahead to establish a communist rule in the North and the United States became the South’s major financial and military supporter. Five years later, on the 25th of June, 1950, the conflict deepened after troops from communist North Korea invaded South Korea with the intention of uniting the people of South Korea who were opposing the communist rule. The surprise attack almost led to the defeat of the US army and that of South Korea. However, the United States which was an ally of the South Koreans in collaboration with the United Nations intervened by sending troops to defend South Korea.

This fact happened at the same time when Russia was boycotting the United Nations Council. When the US set the agenda for resolution and called for military support for South Korea, the Soviet Union was not in a position to support it which would have worked in its favor by denying the South reinforcement. The then president of the United States Harry Truman with the aid of Gen Douglas MacArthur devised a counterattack plan that drove the North Korean troops back across the 38th parallel and simultaneously made it possible for the US to access the North Korean territory. The president called this move a “police action” because it had the patronage of the UN.

The North Koreans also called for reinforcements from the Republic of China which pushed the American forces and South Koreans back into their territory and the warfare took the form of a stalemate leaving the defensive struggle where it was before the war started. The war came to an end three years later in 1953 when the United States and North Koreans agreed to sign a peace agreement. The division which was supposed to be a temporary one soon became permanent (Giap, 25).

This war was the first in which the limited war theory was practiced because, for the first time, the US went into war in full knowledge that its adversaries had nuclear weapons hence ruling out the armed war strategy. This fact was because the US could not engage in armed struggle with the use of nuclear weapons as it could cause a catastrophe and possibly start World War III. Its plan was limited to defending the South rather than totally defeating the North and it did not also want to use all its resources in a single war. This move to use the limited war gave the Korean War its fame as the Americans were used to achieving victory in armed war. They always did anything and everything in order to win an all-out war. The Korean War was stopped by limiting the use of nuclear war.

The United States learned that through the loss of thousands of its troops, its power was not devoid of limits and that in the nuclear era, the attainment of war victory would almost be impossible. Both the United States and the Soviet Union did not encounter each other directly in the war but by supporting their preferred allies, they somehow engaged in war. The limitations were not only in terms of weaponry but also geographically as the war was restricted to the Korean peninsula so as to avoid other nations being affected indirectly. The US also wanted to control the war by blaming it on North Korea to maintain its reputation in case it faced direct attacks in future in a territory that was considered significant. The war would have attracted international attention and put the US’s global standing at risk if it had expanded the war territory to other nations or states.

The targets in the Korean War were limited. In particular, aerial targets were restricted. No assaults were permitted close to the Soviet borderline or the Chinese one by the Americans and in return, the Chinese limited their aerial assaults on South Korea. The Falklands war The Falklands war began on the 2nd of April, 1982 and ended in June the same year. It was fought between Great Britain and Argentina and was as a result of the two nations’ disagreement over the control of the Falklands islands. The British sent their troops to attack the Argentines’ navy after the Argentinean troops had marched into the Falklands and South Georgia islands and taken them over.The British army retaliated in an effort to repossess the islands. Overwhelmed by the British forces, Argentina resulted in conceding defeat and the islands were once again put under the British rule.

The war came to an end in June 1982 and afterward in 1989 while in a meeting in Madrid, the two nations gave a united declaration although it clearly did not change the stand of each of them on the issue regarding the control of the islands. Several hundreds of both Argentinean and British troops lost their lives as well as a few islanders. The limited war was practiced during this armed conflict as the warfare was restricted to the Falklands Islands and surrounding South Georgia along with the South Sandwich Islands. Neither country sought to attack the others’ mainland. The Argentinean troops would not have attacked the British troops and vice versa if they met outside the defined war territories. The limitations achieved their goal of shortening the duration of the war, cutting expenditure as well as limiting the death toll of the army and civilians.

In the effort take over the Falklands Islands, the Argentineans used the limited aim policy which heavily relied on suppositions. However, if the suppositions had been wrong, then the strategy would have been bound to fail. The limited war strategy can only be successful under certain conditions. The first one is that the attackers have to surprise and overpower the defendants’ troops before the latter can call for reinforcements, take over the territory and set up defenses in preparation for retaliation from the defenders. In this situation, the attacked people can assume that the defenders will not retaliate making the war a limited one.

Argentina lost the Falklands War because of its inaccurate assumptions. The British had earlier not showed a lot of concern for the islands and so Argentina believed that after invading the island and taking it over, the British would not counterattack. This assumption had assured Argentina that the war would not escalate to an all-out war. However, the British did the exact opposite and retaliated. Argentina also made another grave mistake of attacking days after a small conflict took place between them and the British which prompted the British to send more troops to the island (Ilana and Bard, 23).

This action reduced the effectiveness of the surprise aspect. The plans of Argentina were not to attack early as they were still waiting for the armaments they had ordered to be delivered but the British reinforcements forced them to invade early as they saw no chances of victory if more British troops were to attack them. The other factor that led to Argentina losing the war was the fact that the British had advanced firepower. Argentina would not have employed heavy artillery in the war against the British due to the little care they had for the islands. They had also assumed that the Americans would come to their aid which did not happen.

The limited aim strategy assumes that with a surprise attack and a successful capture, the aggressor can set up his defense and leave the defenders with the difficult task of deciding whether to retaliate and start an all-out war. The defenders, on the other hand, are assumed that they cannot retaliate so as not to be underrated in the international scene. Limited war calls for the restricted use of resources be it technological, human, natural or otherwise.

Argentina chose to follow this. Before the war, it had sent General Mario Menendez to the island to act as the defense commander but when the war began, Argentina chose to continue utilizing the less aggressive Menendez as their commanding officer instead of sending an experienced officer to war. Argentina also chose to limit its human resources in terms of military personnel. Rather than sending its best military unit known as III Brigades, this unit was retained in Argentina’s homeland so as to protect Argentina from Chile which posed potential aggression on Argentina along the channel of Beagle (Henry and Hart, 13).

The limited aim strategy mostly appeals to nations with feeble militaries as they rely on the stronger nation’s hesitance to retaliate. This hesitance as mentioned before is due to the stronger nations’ fear of losing their reputation on the international scene by being regarded as aggressors for starting a war.

The limited war theory has in certain cases proved to be useful in minimizing costs and loss of time as well as the chance of armed conflict. However, as seen in certain of the wars, the success of the limited war depends on common interests to avoid a total war and the will of the enemies to limit their means.

Clausewitz, Carl. On War. Eds. Howard, Michael and Paret, New Jersey, USA: Princeton University Press, 2006. Print.

Giap, Vo. People’s War, People’s Army, New York, USA: Frederick A. Praeger, 2002. Print.

Henry, Basil, and Hart, Liddell. The Revolution in Warfare , New Haven, USA: Yale University Press, 2002. Print.

Ilana, Kass, and Bard, O’Neill. The Deadly Embrace, London, UK: University Press of America, 2006. Print.

Kissinger, Henry. Nuclear Weapons and Foreign Policy , New York, USA: Council on Foreign Relations, 2003. Print.

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IvyPanda. (2020, June 26). The Limited War Theory. https://ivypanda.com/essays/the-limited-war-theory/

"The Limited War Theory." IvyPanda , 26 June 2020, ivypanda.com/essays/the-limited-war-theory/.

IvyPanda . (2020) 'The Limited War Theory'. 26 June.

IvyPanda . 2020. "The Limited War Theory." June 26, 2020. https://ivypanda.com/essays/the-limited-war-theory/.

1. IvyPanda . "The Limited War Theory." June 26, 2020. https://ivypanda.com/essays/the-limited-war-theory/.

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3 Doctrines of Limited War

• Published: April 1988
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This chapter discusses the doctrine of limited war. It describes how wars can be limited in a number of distinct ways. Wars can be limited in terms of the objectives that are sought, the geographic scope of the conflict, the weapons employed, and the targets against which hostilities are directed. The chapter also analyses various forms and motivations employed in the development of theories of limited war. It furthermore compares just and limited war and examines the area of overlap between the two.

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• RUSSO-UKRAINIAN WAR
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Ukraine and the Art of Limited War

“You Can’t Always Get What You Want”

-Rolling Stones, Let it Bleed album 1969

In a piece published in War on the Rocks last March, and in an extended version by the journal Survival in May, I considered Ukraine and the art of crisis management . My aim was to explore the relevance of the strategic concepts of the Cold War in relation to the unfolding drama of Ukraine, particularly the challenge of securing essential interests without triggering a wider war. I judged the crisis to have been badly managed by Russia, not particularly well by the West and with great difficulty by Ukraine. The consequences of the failure of crisis management lay not so much in expanding the area of conflict but instead in continuing and unsettling violence within Ukraine and a sharp deterioration in relations between Russia and the West. The death toll is now in the region of 3,500 and still rising.

The role of Russian forces within Ukraine was evident from the start of the crisis but gradually became even more overt as indigenous separatist forces were unable to cope. This resulted in a shift in the character of the crisis over the course of 2014. It moved from an externally sponsored insurgency in eastern Ukraine to a limited war between Ukraine and Russia, albeit one with some unique features. This was not a total war: Vast armies did not move against each other. Most capabilities were held in reserve. Diplomatic communications continued throughout the fighting.. A shaky cease-fire was announced on 5 September. This was perhaps better described as a de-escalation, because the fighting did not stop. It was, however, sufficient for attention to be given to the consequential political steps.

In this essay I take up the story from early May to the start of October and consider what, if any, strategic lessons might be drawn from this most recent stage in the conflict. Like my last essay on the subject, I will expand this into a longer reflection in Survival . The next stage in the conflict over the political future of Ukraine will depend on how the issue of the governance of territory currently occupied by separatists is handled. If the conflict bursts out of its current limits then the next essay in this series will have an even more alarming topic.

Commentary on the most recent stage of the conflict has stressed the originality of Russian tactics, with regular reference to “hybrid war” – combining overt and covert operations. My argument in this essay is that once Ukraine was able to put regular forces into its “anti-terrorist operation” in East Ukraine, this approach failed. This obliged President Putin to introduce superior Russian regular forces (albeit with their status denied).

Until more is revealed about Russian decision-making during the courses of this crisis, any analysis relies on inferences about Putin’s objectives and calculations. My view is that the wider conflict with the European Union and NATO had reached an uncomfortable stage for Putin. So while he could have taken more Ukrainian territory, he chose to accept a cease-fire that enabled him to retrieve some political advantage. At the same time, by exuding menace towards Ukraine and Western Europe he sought to resist further pressure. Russia’s position depended on the possibility that it was prepared to continue escalation. The West’s response was shaped by an evident reluctance to escalate and anxiety about moving into a less contained conflict. This was despite the fact that in the end the power balances were still in the West’s favor. In terms of the theory of limited war, the case of Ukraine confirms the observation that in disputes over territory, the most effective forms of control involve regular armed forces and superior firepower. Control, however, does not ensure a functioning economy and society.

The concept of limited war has an even longer history than that of crisis management. It requires that the belligerents choose not to fight at full capacity, and so prevent a conflict gaining in intensity and expanding in both space and time. This is different from the need to accept natural limits imposed by resources and geography. Nor is it relevant when a strong state employs only limited forces to deal with opponents with inferior capabilities. Against such opponents complete victories can still be achieved, as the rise of colonialism demonstrated. The concept comes into play only when the limits have been chosen and accepted by both parties.

As a distinctive concept, limited war depended on a contrast with total war, a term popularized by the First World War, when the parties would push war to its extremes. This appeared as the logical conclusion of the transformation of war begun during the Napoleonic period with the departure from the inherently limited conflicts of the eighteenth century. The old routines became obsolete with the expectation that the full resources of states would be pitted against each other in Darwinian struggles for survival. Once nuclear weapons were introduced, total war pointed to an absurd and tragic result: mutual destruction. If both sides could accept that whatever was at stake was not worth an all-out confrontation then any effort to protect interests through the use of armed force would be governed by some sense of how far they were really prepared to go.

The conundrums this created were first thrown into relief during the Korean War of 1950-53. Although this conflict was hardly limited for the people of Korea in its effects or stakes, the United States neither extended the war into China nor used nuclear weapons, and in the end accepted an outcome that could be characterized as stalemate rather than victory. A number of the new generation of civilian strategists sought to explain why this was a good rather than a bad outcome, a compromise that left one half of Korea under communist rule (where it has remained since) but the world intact.

If the United States was prepared to fight only total war and lacked a capacity for limited war, normally understood as strong regular forces, it would face a dilemma with a limited Soviet advance. The danger was of “salami tactics,” whereby each slice of the salami would appear not to be worth a major conflict, although, cumulatively, the successive slices would eventually turn into the whole. Limited war capabilities therefore meant being able to respond to a challenge in the terms in which it was posed and so dare the enemy to take the risk of escalating to the next and more dangerous level.

The word “escalation” entered the lexicon during the 1950s as a warning about why wars might not stay limited. Once forces of great size and complexity began to clash, it would be hard to exert control over the course of the conflict. Actions might be taken because of confusion, misapprehension, panic and passion. Once a conflict began, more would soon be at stake than the original matter in dispute. As the prospect of loss raised questions of reputation, credibility and pride, the effort might have to be increased to levels well beyond the original stake. Escalation therefore could describe a tragic process whereby belligerents ramped up the action in responses to each other. Hence the original metaphor derived from the moving staircase that took you up to a place you might not want to go because you could not get off. The theorists of escalation, such as Herman Kahn , resisted the idea of a loss of control, suggesting instead that it might be possible to find a level at which a war might be fought which suited one side’s capabilities but not the other, posing for them the problem of accepting defeat or moving to yet another more dangerous level. This was called escalation dominance .

The issue of proportionality was always present in any discussion of limited war. It was also complicated, for military commitments must reflect not only the value of whatever was in dispute but also the logic of combat and the commitments being made by the enemy. In addition, somehow limits must be recognized, agreed to and enforced. This required some sort of shared understandings about thresholds and boundaries. There might be natural lines – set by geography or types of weaponry or targets – but to serve the purposes of limitation they would still often need to be confirmed through forms of communication. Some diplomatic activity would be necessary if a conflict was to be kept limited.

Another issue was whether the rhetoric necessary to mobilize public opinion behind any operation could be scaled down when a threshold was reached or a deal had to be made. In the end the essence of a limited war is compromise, and this was always going to be difficult when the enemy has been described in the darkest terms and the stakes raised to an existential level.

With the end of the East-West confrontation, the issue of limited war became less pressing. The wars fought by western countries were inherently limited, and only rarely with another state. There were challenges in terms of keeping these conflicts limited in terms of time taken and resources expended, but their discretionary nature meant that if the demands of a campaign exceeded the value of the objective than an intervention could be drawn to a close.

This year’s developments in Ukraine revived the question of limited war as the confrontation morphed into an inter-state war with high stakes, and with one side a nuclear power. NATO of course was not directly engaged in the fighting, but it had to consider whether and how it might get involved, assess Russian objectives, advise Ukraine on how to respond and examine the implications for any conflict that might develop between Russia and a NATO member in the future.

President Putin has sought to shape what he considers to be Ukraine’s historic choice: Is it going to become part of the West’s expansion into the former Soviet space by joining the European Union or become a Russian partner, as a member of the Eurasian Union, loosely modeled on the EU?

Once the crisis broke, the immediate focus was on first Crimea and then the southeast of Ukraine, the­­ most Russian part of the country. This was reflected in the revival of the historic name of Novorossiya as proclaimed by the leaders of the self-proclaimed Donetsk and Luhansk People’s Republics. Putin expressed astonishment that this area had been allowed to join Ukraine in 1922, along with the transfer of Crimea and Sevastopol to Ukraine in 1956. While such claims directly challenged Ukraine’s sovereignty and territorial integrity, they also implicitly wrote off a large part of Ukraine as being beyond Russian influence. Yet if the rest of the country were left alone, then the EU’s, and even NATO’s, enlargement could continue. This pointed to a fundamental tension in Russian objectives from the start, between carving out a chunk of Ukraine that would be effectively controlled by Russia or even annexed by Russia, and gaining influence over Ukrainian decisions to prevent moves inimical to Russian interests – what used to be called “ Finlandization .”

The issue had was also cast in wider terms by Putin when he spoke about Moscow’s special responsibilities to protect the rights of Russians unfortunate enough to live outside the borders of the Russian Federation, which generated a right to intervene in countries in its “near-abroad.” This was already present with the frozen conflicts in Moldova and Georgia, and the position of the Baltic States , notably Estonia. Some of Putin’s rhetoric even unnerved his notional partners in the Eurasian Union, Belarus and Kazakhstan. From that there could be further worries that once Russia moved into expansionist mode there would be few limits on its aggression, with Poland, Sweden and Finland soon coming into the frame. “If I wanted”, he is reported to have told Ukraine’s President Poroshenko in mid-September, “in two days I could have Russian troops not only in Kiev, but also in Riga, Vilnius, Tallinn, Warsaw, and Bucharest.”

Yet Russia’s capacity is limited. It is a great power by virtue of its nuclear arsenal and permanent seat on the Security Council. It rebuilt its armed forces during recent years of economic growth, but it would struggle to cope with a multi-front campaign or a prolonged occupation of a substantial hostile population. Should NATO’s Article V commitments be triggered, Russian forces would be outnumbered and face superior air power from the United States and other allies. Its GDP is close to that of Italy and its per capita GDP less than Poland’s. In no sense is Russia an economic superpower. It is already struggling with Crimea and none of its frozen territories are economic success stories. Putin’s dreams may be irredentist but for the moment, practicalities limit that dream. As we shall note below, he has not (yet) gone for broke in Ukraine.

In 1787, when Empress Catherine II visited Crimea after a devastating war, the region’s governor, Grigory Potemkin sought to create an erroneous impression of a vibrant settlement. This was achieved by fabricating villages on the banks of the Dnieper, populated by Potemkin’s men. These would exist only as the Empress’s barge passed and would then be dismantled to be reconstructed further down the river. While this story may well be apocryphal, its essence has been a feature of Russian practice, even during the Cold War, to hide weakness by seeking to create an impression of strength.

A brief account of the pattern of Russian intervention in Ukraine demonstrates that it has been driven by weakness as much by strength. Putin’s determination to set the future direction of Ukraine was obtained through an old-fashioned bribe in November 2013 when President Yanukovich rejected an association agreement with the EU and opted instead for the nascent Eurasian Union. This, however, led to an uprising centered on Kiev, concluding with Yanukovich’s flight in February, and the likelihood of the whole country pulling away from Russia.

An attempted counter-revolution fizzled out in Eastern Ukraine .The protesters lacked widespread support. Only in Crimea could Russians take control. Russia’s annexation of this territory, however, further reduced Russia’s influence over Ukraine, including the eastern parts. Those who wished for greater autonomy feared that the end result would be incorporation into Russia.

The use of professional soldiers in uniforms without markings (the so-called “little green men”) was first noticed in Crimea. They were deployed again in April, as Russian special forces acted with indigenous separatists to seize administrative buildings and other facilities in the Donbas area, with the efforts centred on the cities of Donetsk and Luhansk. At first these operations were successful, in part because the local response by Ukrainian security forces was weak. Even with Russian backing, however, the rebellion struggled to establish itself because of a lack of popular backing. An attempt to hold referenda in support of separatism was farcical and soon barely mentioned. Resistance from workers in the Donbass helped push out separatists from weak positions in cities such as Mariupol.

After the election of President Poroshenko at the end of May, the Ukrainian military stepped up its effort against the separatists. As their “anti-terrorist operation” made inroads into separatist territory, Russia began to move in more advanced equipment, including GRAD rockets and anti-aircraft weapons. These did shoot down a number of Ukrainian military aircraft but then caused an international scandal when a Malaysian Airways flight was downed on 17 July by a missile fired from a Russian BUK system , causing the death of 281 passengers and crew. The furor that followed added to Russia’s isolation, not helped by Moscow’s refusal to accept any responsibility. Western sanctions, first introduced after the annexation of Crimea, were intensified. It also distracted the separatists’ attention from the defense of their positions. Slowly but surely Ukrainian forces pushed the rebels back to about half of their original holdings. It looked likely that they would be pushed out of first Donetsk and then Luhansk.

At this point, a decision seems to have been taken in Moscow to get a grip on the situation. The separatist leadership changed, with the more obvious Russian placemen removed, and local figures inserted, although the internal politics of the Donetsk and Luhansk Peoples’ Republics remain murky. In late August, Russian armed forces became involved in a more overt way. The starting point was an argument over a so-called humanitarian convoy to deliver assistance to the areas under siege. Soon far more important were the tanks and troops moving into position to re-supply Luhansk, where they took the airport. More seriously, they seized the border town of Novoazovsk and threatened the port of Mariupol on the Sea of Azov, thus raising the possibility of a land corridor to Crimea. The prime minister of the “Donetsk People’s Republic,” Alexander Zakharchenko, told Russian media in late August that among the 3000-4000 Russian citizens fighting with the separatists, were “many military men” on their “summer holidays.” Denials of direct Russian involvement in support of separatists had long been implausible but now they had little credibility. A further problem was opened up as Russian soldiers were killed fighting in Ukraine, leading to subterfuges to hide the real cause of death or explain their presence in a neighboring country. Nonetheless, the Ukrainian Army buckled under the new onslaught. It gave back ground in the Donbass and was forced to suspend the anti-terrorist operation to concentrate on defense. Ukrainian forces were pushed back towards the coastal city of Mariupol.

The cease-fire agreed on Sept. 5 with rebel leaders used ambiguous language originally proposed by President Poroshenko to promise some autonomy for the territory held by the separatists, but within Ukraine’s current borders. Later, an agreement on Sept. 20 proposed a buffer zone to separate the forces. There were reports of a more private Putin-Poroshenko agreement with harsher terms. Although the positions held by separatists created a serious problem for Ukraine, with important territory out of its control, the borders at the time did not guarantee that Russia would achieve its main aims. There was no land corridor to Crimea and the territory controlled by the separatists was too small to make much sense as a stand-alone entity, incoherent both economically and politically, yet large enough to require a substantial subsidy if it was not to collapse internally. Some 350,000 people were reportedly displaced by the conflict: It would be surprising if they returned while there was still a possibility of open warfare. The separatists continued to expand their area of control after the agreement. In practice, it was not so much a cease-fire as an agreed de-escalation that concentrated the fighting in specific places, notably around Donetsk airport. This was held by government troops and thus undermined the separatist claim to be in charge of the city. It is unlikely that without a return to even greater and more overt Russian support than before that cities such as Mariupol, necessary for a land corridor to Crimea, can be taken.

The conflict therefore has not yet been “solved.” Ukrainian elections scheduled for 26 October are likely to see Russian sympathisers in the Kiev parliament marginalised. Ukraine finds itself severely weakened, with its economy in freefall and key territories out of its control. Poroshenko has accepted the need for compromise, in terms of more autonomy for the troubled regions and respect for Russian concerns. But he will not satisfy demands for complete separation or abandon closer relations with the EU. For its part, Russia therefore must decide on its own priorities: To protect Crimea, to prevent the integration of a truncated “Novorossiya” into Ukraine or to keep Ukraine away from the EU.

This uncertainty about the future confirms President Obama’s proposition that there cannot be a “ military solution .” This became something of a mantra among NATO leaders up to and around the alliance’s Cardiff summit of early September 2014, taking place at the same time as the cease-fire negotiations in Minsk. Its effect at the time was to signal to both domestic audiences and Ukraine that NATO members were not going to get militarily involved. Combined with heavy combat losses, this may well have convinced Poroshenko not to continue to push back militarily against Russia and the separatists, and accept a cease-fire. At most, NATO countries have been prepared to supply forms of military assistance to help the Ukrainians resist further Russian advances.

This mantra was at one level self-evident but at another missed the point. Wars are political struggles and therefore any solution will be marked by a political settlement. The military situation on the ground, however, will hardly be irrelevant. In this case, September’s tentative settlement was far more advantageous for the Russian position as a result of its direct intervention than it would have been without it.

In discussion of this intervention, commentary has focussed on two distinctive though related features of the Russian campaign. The first was the development of so-called “hybrid warfare” , involving the integration of local agitators along with both irregular and regular “volunteers” from Russia. The second was the reliance on information operations. A constant challenge was mounted to the claims made by Ukrainian and western opponents of Russian action, and a competing narrative was developed based on the illegal and fascistic nature of the Kiev government. This narrative pushed the notion that the Kiev government was solely responsibility for the conflict and for particular tragedies, such as the shooting down of the Malaysian airliner and the shelling of civilian areas.

The term “hybrid warfare” gained currency after Israel was said to have been surprised and discomfited during the 2006 Lebanon War by the combination of guerrilla and conventional tactics adopted by Hezbollah. As with many similar concepts, such as asymmetric warfare, once adopted as a term of art it has tended towards a wider definition. It does not refer to a new phenomenon, for there are many examples in military history of combination of regular and irregular forms of warfare. Frank Hoffman, who has done much to publicize the concept, defined hybrid threats in a recent War on the Rocks as: “Any adversary that simultaneously employs a tailored mix of conventional weapons, irregular tactics, terrorism and criminal behavior in the same time and battlespace to obtain their political objectives.”

The question begged by this is the one of political control and the presumption of a unified adversary. It can be challenging enough to meld together different units of the same army, for example special forces and infantry battalions, but even more difficult where the forces coming together not only have different military tasks and methods but also distinct command structures and possibly diverging political interests. If not quite comparable with the traditional challenges of coalition warfare, such problems have been faced by the Russians and separatist forces in Ukraine.

The purpose of the force structure has been to deceive (recalling the old Soviet concept of Maskirovka or masking), geared to the pretence that the fighting force is wholly indigenous and supplemented by no more than some friendly volunteers from over the border. Some observers have drawn attention to a speech from early 2013 by Valery Gerasimov , newly appointed as chief of Russia’s general staff. Reflecting some of the Western debate, he described how in conflict in the Middle East there had been a progressive erosion of the distinctions between war and peace and between uniformed personnel and covert operatives. Wars are “not declared but simply begin,” so that “a completely well-off and stable country” could be transformed into “an arena of the most intense armed conflict in a matter of months or even days.” In these circumstances, military means became more effective when combined with non-military means, including “political, economic, information, humanitarian and other measures.” These could be supplemented by covert and thus deniable military measures as well as offers of peace-keeping assistance as a means to strategic ends. “New information technologies,” would play an important role. As a result “frontal clashes of major military formations … are gradually receding into the past.” They now involve “the broad use of political, economic, informational, humanitarian and other non-military measures.” All of this, he said, could be supplemented by firing up the local populace as a fifth column and by “concealed” armed forces.

This may well have been the approach adopted by Russia during the first months of the crisis in Ukraine. It appears that preparations had been made for this contingency for some time. The separatist forces, however, had a complex structure, including local agitators, militants who had learned their trade in Chechnya and Georgia, and some Russian special forces, Coordination was often poor and political leadership at times eccentric. Their methods alienated local people and used the sophisticated Russian-supplied equipment recklessly. They could not cope with regular Ukrainian forces once they were organized and prepared to deploy firepower more ruthlessly and so eventually had to be rescued by progressive and eventually quite overt Russian intervention. This case therefore shows some limits of hybrid warfare, and in particular the difference between combining different approaches in the same force and combining forces which are different not only in approach but in political interests and organizational structures.

The issue of information operations is more complex. Russian strategists judge these to be important as a means of challenging the claims made by opponents and shoring up support at home. Assertions were made about a fascistic and illegitimate Ukrainian government along with a larger narrative about the greatness, exceptional quality, and legitimate interests of Russia. Economic sacrifices and the risks being run in Ukraine were justified as enabling a shift away from links with Western Europe to intensified links with Asia. The increasing control over national media and internet providers, along with intimidation of dissenters, made it possible to shape Russian opinion. For example, after the Committee of Soldiers’ Mothers in St. Petersburg expressed concern about Russian casualties in Ukraine, the Ministry of Justice declared the nongovernmental organization to be a “foreign agent.” Enormous efforts were made to harass perceived opponents of Russia, including an army of trolls with a mission to contradict and abuse those taking anti-Russian positions on social media, and the use of Russia Today, a Russian-controlled news network with branches across the West. The defection of some of Russia Today’s reporters in the West, and the absurd nature of some of its claims, did little for its credibility (although it is important to note that in some parts of Europe, Russia media sources are widely used).

There are four issues connected with this propaganda campaign. The first lies in the contrast between its effectiveness at home and abroad. Putin became extremely popular at home, and rode a wave of nationalist sentiment, particularly with regard to the annexation of Crimea. Outside of Russia, its positions taken in a series of awkward Security Council sessions were widely disregarded and derided. Its attempts to shift blame for the downing of the Malaysian airliner failed. Although the starting point for Russian operations was plausible deniability, after a while it was as if Moscow no longer cared even for plausibility. Ukrainians did not rally en masse to the separatist cause. Russia’s international standing has fallen.

The second issue lies in the consequences for a government that insists on fictional descriptions of situations. It can get itself caught in what Jeff Michaels has called a “ discourse trap ,” whereby consistency with the fiction means that it must be upheld even when the result is to push policies to counter-productive and absurd positions. It also means that there is no agreed foundation for diplomatic intercourse. When an interlocutor insists on an alternative reality, it is hard to engage even on minor issues.

The third issue concerns the durability of Moscow’s narrative in Russia. Nationalists have already been unnerved by possible betrayals of the separatists (a factor which may have encouraged Putin in the more overt intervention) and if the separate territories are in any way re-integrated into Ukraine, allegations of betrayal may surface again. More seriously, the prospects for the Russian economy remain grim, with living standards squeezed as the country faces a recession and inflation. The decline in oil and gas prices and the current inability of Russia to attract inward investment will add to the challenges. Some Russian responses to sanctions, notably banning some agricultural products from the EU or reducing gas supplies to Poland and Slovakia, are damaging to longer-term Russian interests. A combination of sanctions and self-harm suggests that the Russian economy is about to enter a period of severe turbulence .

The fourth issue is that Russian propaganda effort successfully created a sense of menace that probably had an effect (although this is hard to measure) in deterring the West from supporting Ukraine as much as it might have done. This effort has combined not only rhetorical threats, such as regular reminders of Russia’s nuclear strength , but also staged incidents, such as kidnapping an Estonian officer and regular violations of Western airspace . By way of contrast to Russian bluster and braggadocio, instead of challenging the foundations of the self-promotion, Western commentary has often accepted it at face value and compared it unfavourably with the feebleness of the Western support . While the hawks have exaggerated Russian power, the doves have shown sympathy for its stance, accepting that the origins of the crisis lie in Western expansionism rather than Ukrainian self-determination.

Nonetheless, the crisis over Ukraine has reshaped the European security debate. Far more attention is being paid by NATO to tangible forms of reassurance to the Baltic states, while neutrals such as Sweden and Finland are getting closer to the alliance. NATO adopted a “Readiness Action Plan” to establish military bases in Eastern Europe and a rapid response force to protect its members from Russian incursions. It also committed financial and material support to Ukraine and regular military exercises on its territory. There are suggestions of a new Russian doctrine that would “ re-establish NATO as Russia’s primary threat and effectively set Russia’s defense policy toward combatting it.” If nothing else, NATO has an answer to the question of what it needs to worry about as it leaves Afghanistan.

Energy security is on the agenda and that will lead to a gradual reduction of dependence upon Russian sources. For its part, Russia will wish to reduce its dependence on Western markets by looking to Asia. But China is largely taking advantage of its weakness to achieve attractive deals on oil supplies, while Japan has also imposed sanctions. Over time, Russia will need to re-engage with the EU. The Russian foreign minister even recently floated the idea of a new “reset” with the United States .

Limited wars are by definition contained. This requires that both sides accept a new reality as preferable to the risks involved into trying to move to an even better reality. There is therefore a degree of compromise. Both sides must convince themselves that they can live with the outcome. The problem with the position reached in September 2014 is that it is not durable. The crisis is not yet over because the future of Ukraine remains uncertain. There are profound constitutional questions still to be resolved. Although the annexation of Crimea will not be recognized, not much will be done about this, so the focus will remain on Donetsk and Luhansk. The dilemma for Putin remains the risk of losing real influence over these territories should they be re-integrated into Ukraine, or of losing influence over Ukraine if they effectively become part of Russia. Either way a dilemma is created for Ukraine, especially as it struggles with its own dire economic situation, aggravated by the costs of war, and the need to deal with problems of chronic corruption and incompetence left over from the old regime. It remains the case that the most important task for the West is to strengthen Ukraine economically while helping it rebuild its armed forces. Although there appears to be a view in western capitals that the worst of the crisis is over, this is not yet a frozen conflict along the lines of those in Moldova and Georgia. The situation remains unstable.

Russia has damaged but not defeated Ukraine. By sticking to economic rather than military sanctions, NATO and the EU have damaged but not defeated Russia. In a contest between these two forms of hard power, in the first instance, the advantage sits with the military. But if a definitive solution cannot be imposed, as in this case, then over time the advantage will swing to the economic. It is one thing to occupy territory with superior force, but it is another to administer and reconstruct, as the United States and its allies have learned in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Russia has sustained a weak position and boosted its bargaining position by conveying a readiness to escalate. This has been a constant of Russian rhetoric, including reference on occasion to nuclear capabilities. From the start there were menacing deployments of Russian forces along the border. The menace was validated to a degree by the invasion of Ukrainian territory. The threat of escalation certainly had an effect on Ukrainian calculations, reinforced by Kiev’s awareness of its own limited ability to escalate. While the Russian threats were not quite Potemkin Villages, in that they had real substance, they were still exaggerated. Claims that Russia could march with ease to Kiev or turn off gas supplies without a thought for the consequences or pivot to China could all be challenged on the basis of the underlying economic realities of its position. The gloomy prognostications by many Western commentators on how Putin was determined to take on all neighboring states in some ways boosted this aspect of Russian strategy, making the country appear to be more powerful than is actually the case.

Putin’s power play in Ukraine has been impulsive and improvised, without any clear sense of the desired end state. It will serve neither Ukraine nor Moscow if Donetsk and Luhansk fall into disrepair and disarray, left in some separatist limbo, but it is not clear that either have the capacity to provide a viable future. The separatists will not allow its re-integration into Ukraine while Russia cannot afford to annex. The first stage of this crisis demonstrated poor crisis management. The second stage proved that in a struggle over territory, superior force makes a difference. However, without popular support, along with economic and administrative capacity, Russia will struggle to transform seized territory into a viable political entity. After many months of effort Russia has achieved limited gains but at high cost. In limited war you don’t always get what you want. Nor do you get much satisfaction.

Lawrence Freedman has been Professor of War Studies at King’s College London since 1982. His most recent book is  Strategy: A History  (OUP, 2013). He is a Contributing Editor at War on the Rocks.

Photo credit: www.kremlin.ru

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Limited war and limited states

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All peaceful states may be alike, but warring states each fight in their own way. Wars reflect the political and social idiosyncrasies of the states that fight them. The structures and habits of political life obviously help shape the manner in which a society practices war. Consider the contrast between the hoplite armies of the Greek city-states and those of imperial Persia. The first was characterized by individual prowess woven into a powerful strategic weapon by the discipline of shared citizenship and constant training. The other, while physically impressive, was often rotten at the core and unable to withstand adversity. A millennium later, Machiavelli despondently compared the mercenary armies of the Italian city-states with those larger and more homegrown varieties that appeared to enjoy an unbeatable advantage on the battlefield. In the 1790s, the French Revolution gave birth to the first true national army of citizens, which militarily and politically transformed the rest of Europe. The world wars of the twentieth century may be seen as products and producers of the contemporary regulatory welfare state. In short, armies reflect their societies and help in turn to shape them through their demands and socializing influences. We are, at least partly, how we fight. This essay argues that the particular form of interstate warfare seen in Latin America is closely related to the social, fiscal, and political bases of these states.

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• mercenary Social Sciences 43%
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AB - All peaceful states may be alike, but warring states each fight in their own way. Wars reflect the political and social idiosyncrasies of the states that fight them. The structures and habits of political life obviously help shape the manner in which a society practices war. Consider the contrast between the hoplite armies of the Greek city-states and those of imperial Persia. The first was characterized by individual prowess woven into a powerful strategic weapon by the discipline of shared citizenship and constant training. The other, while physically impressive, was often rotten at the core and unable to withstand adversity. A millennium later, Machiavelli despondently compared the mercenary armies of the Italian city-states with those larger and more homegrown varieties that appeared to enjoy an unbeatable advantage on the battlefield. In the 1790s, the French Revolution gave birth to the first true national army of citizens, which militarily and politically transformed the rest of Europe. The world wars of the twentieth century may be seen as products and producers of the contemporary regulatory welfare state. In short, armies reflect their societies and help in turn to shape them through their demands and socializing influences. We are, at least partly, how we fight. This essay argues that the particular form of interstate warfare seen in Latin America is closely related to the social, fiscal, and political bases of these states.

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• Limited vs. Total War in American Military Doctrine

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In 1953 General Mark Clark signed the peace document ending the Korean war , even though the official goals had pretty much been achieved he stated later “I cannot find it in me to exalt at this hour.” (Clark was the first U.S. commander to agree to an Armistice without victory)…

For over 150 years the United States officially held a philosophy of warfare that emphasized total victory at all costs. War was to be avoided whenever humanly possible but once embarked upon it should be fought with crusade-like vigor; it was an all-or-nothing proposition that took on a kind of religious aura– more than just a vehicle for political gain war was instead viewed as a life and death struggle between the forces of good vs. evil. It followed that in times of war military leaders should be unencumbered by politics and left to their own devices to win by any means necessary. The politicians and civilians were expected to provide the materials and manpower and then get out of the way.

We came to think that way as a result of our geographical and political detachment from the old world– in other words our isolationism was a primary influence in dictating our military doctrine for well over a century. This strain of absolutist thinking was vastly different from the balance of power arrangement that had existed in Europe since the Congress of Vienna following the Napoleonic wars. Carl von Clausewitz was not in vogue on this side of the pond.*

As time passed it became increasingly clear that the European model was not worth emulating, it had produced a series of continental wars that finally culminated in the carnage of WWI and WWII. By the end of WWII in 1945 there was no doubt that the American approach– war as crusade– embodied in FDR’s insistence that “there is no substitute for victory,” provided much of the crucial resolve required for the allies to prevail (with a big assist from our massive production capacity and superior scientific ingenuity).

The defeat of Germany and Japan signaled the highpoint for America’s absolutist war doctrine– it was the greatest achievement in human history and required an all out effort on all fronts. Ironically the crowning moment for the policy of total victory achieved through total war, the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki , also signaled its fall from prominence. With the advent of the Atomic Age and the Cold War the rules of the game were suddenly altered significantly. In Korea and Vietnam the spectre of the nuclear genie forced a new kind of warfare to the forefront– limited war. Put simply, limited wars were fought because total war was no longer conceivable in the shadow of possible nuclear annihilation. Destroying communism on the battlefield in one epic confrontation was not an option.

So the US would have to do it through tough policy backed up with the threat of force. The creation of the UN ushered in a new era of collective security, weighted in favor of the west. Through ingenious foreign strategy making such as the Marshall plan, the Truman Doctrine , and the creation of NATO the US embarked on a policy of containment aimed at checking the advance of world communism. It was a strategy of attrition aimed at slowly bleeding the communists to death.

The new cat and mouse strategy eschewed the total war doctrine. As a result it was wildly unpopular at home during both Korea and Vietnam; politicians and citizens alike, especially on the Right, called the Administrations’ positions everything from appeasement to outright conspiracy. That the fervent opposition was so strident should come as no surprise– after the total victories against Germany and Japan millions of Americans still clung to the absolutist view of total war for total victory (that we should use all means at our disposal to defeat an enemy, even atomic weapons). And still do today.

The argument over these competing war philosophies, balance of power vs. no holds barred, goes right to the heart of the wrenching division in opinions about the Country’s war experience since Korea. The battle lines, so famously drawn back in 1951 when the confrontation between Truman and MacArthur nearly caused a crisis in the republic, persist right down to today.

Its true, if you separate the two wars from the larger context and just look at the military side of things the crusaders have a valid argument, there is no denying that we didn’t prevail absolutely on the battlefield in either Korea or Vietnam. It is also true that outcomes surely would have been different had politicians made different geopolitical calculations and unleashed the full fury of the American arsenal. But looking back from the vantage point of today, the farsighted containment experiment championed by Marshall, Truman, Kennan, Acheson, Kennedy etc. has stood the test of time and has been somewhat vindicated– after all most of Asia and Europe is now democratic and solidly capitalist. These men realized that total war was no longer an option, that political considerations would frequently outweigh military ones in modern wars, and therefore the prosecution of military strategy shouldn’t be left exclusively in the domain of the Generals.

In Korea and Vietnam, for the first time in American history, our wars were prosecuted in the spirit of von Clausewitz–as a powerful extension of politics by other means where advancement of national interests depended on bargaining from a position of strength, morally, militarily and most of all politically. We didn’t win those wars but our soldiers’ sacrifices weren’t in vain– they held the battle lines and then we won the peace– who knows what would have happened had we blockaded and bombed China, or used nukes, like some were advocating?

The absolutist tradition of war, most famously personified in General MacArthur , has remained very much alive over the years– in Washington and on Main Street USA. It’s a distilled view of politics and war verging on eschatology that employs a nomenclature stocked with broadly brushed generalizations and easy to remember labels. Its proponents tend to want to paint a single face on a many headed beast so the threat can be more easily defined. In Korea for example the Soviets, the Chinese and the North Koreans were incorrectly believed to be a monolithic bloc– the Communists– with all strings leading back to Moscow. The same portrayal was popular in Vietnam when Ho Chi Minh was frequently presented as a mere vassal of Peking and Moscow. With the luxury of hindsight we now know these interpretations were off the mark and may have contributed to the lengthening of both wars.

* Carl von Clausewitz in On War teaches that war is a powerful extension of politics by other means, emphasizing balance of power strategies.

Further reading:

Korea: The Limited War. David Rees. 1964. St. Martins. New York

The Best and The Brightest. David Halberstam. 1969. Random House. New York

The Wise Men. Walter Isaacson and Evan Thomas. 1986. Simon & Schuster. New York.

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Most Israelis dislike Netanyahu, but support the war in Gaza – an Israeli scholar explains what’s driving public opinion

Director of Security Studies and Professor of Criminology and Justice Studies, UMass Lowell

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Arie Perliger does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

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Eight months after Israel invaded the Gaza Strip, some critics observe that the Israeli military hasn’t met either of its goals of destroying Hamas and rescuing all of the remaining 133 hostages Hamas is holding.

Yet two-thirds of Israelis still support their military’s aggressive approach in Gaza – including limiting humanitarian aid to Palestinians.

While many Israelis support the military’s war in Gaza, most Israelis have also lost confidence in Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s government and would like to see new political leadership.

As someone who has studied Israeli politics for almost three decades , I believe it’s important to understand what elements contribute to Israelis’ collective mindset to explain these seemingly contradictory dynamics and views.

A familiar feeling of persecution

Hamas militants killed an estimated 1,200 people in Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, and took 240 hostages back to Gaza.

The brutal Oct. 7 murders and the extermination of entire communities in southern Israel left Israelis feeling shocked, vulnerable and insecure. The attacks reminded Israelis that the country faces existential threats, which they believe need to be eliminated in any way possible .

Jewish people have long been persecuted, dating back from the biblical era to the Holocaust during World War II. Some scholars call this feeling of a constant, looming risk of persecution the “Masada syndrome .” Masada, an ancient fortification in southern Israel, was where the ancient Kingdom of Israel waged a final battle against the Roman army in A.D. 73 . Masada was eventually destroyed and all its Jewish inhabitants committed suicide in order to avoid becoming enslaved by the Romans. Jews then lost their political independence for almost 2,000 years, until Israel was established in 1948.

The story of Masada is still taught and remembered in Israel as a constant reminder that Jewish people cannot ever fully rely on the mercy or help of other countries – and that Jewish identity and independence are always at risk of persecution. For a long time, the Israeli Defense Forces held induction ceremonies atop Masada, which is also a popular tourism site.

As a ceremonial text used during the Jewish holiday of Passover says, “ Each and every generation they rise up against us to destroy us .”

The Masada syndrome has been less pronounced among most Israelis in recent decades. This is partially because, up until recently, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict has been relatively muted since the second intifada , a violent uprising by Palestinians in the early 2000s. Israel also signed peace treaties with Arab countries including the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain and Morocco over the past several years.

The Oct. 7 attacks resulted in widespread national trauma and pushed many Israelis to re-adopt the Masada mentality .

Alone again

The global response to Oct. 7 is another important factor that pushed many Israelis to retreat to old feelings of persecution and a perceived need for self-defense.

While the United States, the United Kingdom and France expressed strong support for Israel shortly after Oct. 7, other countries , like Russia and China, did not condemn the Hamas attacks .

It also took United Nations experts about five months to recognize the systematic sexual violence committed on Oct. 7 .

Further isolating Israelis was their widespread rejection that Israel is committing war crimes , as the International Criminal Court recently alleged in a request for arrest warrants for Netanyahu and Israel’s defense minister, Yoav Gallant . Some Israelis have also questioned the accuracy of information about civilian death tolls in Gaza.

Most Israelis see these allegations of genocide as an example of global bias against Israel and as a new form of antisemitism.

Netanyahu has exploited these feelings of persecution to both legitimize Israel’s war in Gaza and to downplay any criticism of his own leadership.

Netanyahu’s downfall

Since the beginning of the war in Gaza, polls consistently reflect Israelis’ declining support for the conservative political parties that make up Netanyahu’s ruling coalition .

A May 2024 poll shows that if elections were held today, Netanyahu’s party would lose almost 40% of the seats it has in the Israeli Parliament. The same poll also found that just 35% of Israelis think that Netanyahu is fit to be a prime minister.

In January, just 15% of Israelis thought Netanyahu should stay in office .

Several factors help explain Israelis’ overall support for Netanyahu’s policies in Gaza, but their growing distrust of him as a politician and leader.

First, most Israelis blame Netanyahu’s government for Oct. 7 . They see Netanyahu as primarily responsible for the fact that Israel did not address Hamas’ strengthening military capabilities in the past decade, including its creation of underground tunnels in Gaza.

There are also damaging issues that predate Oct 7. Netanyahu has tried to undermine the independence of the country’s judicial branch and passed legislation in 2023 that limited courts’ judicial review powers over legislation and government policies. This sparked widespread protests in Israel .

Israelis are also concerned that Netanyahu’s approach to the war – and inability to reach a hostage deal or agree to some kind of cease-fire – may be affected by his desire to stay in power. Netanyahu is facing several corruption-related charges and wants to delay these criminal trials – his defense team has said that the war leaves him with little time to attend the trials. Netanyahu also wants to appease his radical right-wing supporters, who want the war to continue.

Israelis’ concerns about Netanyahu over the past few months manifested in an outbreak of mass demonstrations in different Israeli cities. These protesters, including families of the hostages, are demanding that Netanyahu reach a deal that will free the remaining hostages – even if that means agreeing to a long-term cease-fire.

But it is not clear if these protesters make up the majority of the public opinion – and it is important to not confuse this protest with most Israelis’ desire to see Hamas defeated.

Israel’s dilemma

Israel’s path forward is unclear, and it will be influenced by a few issues. An increase in public pressure on Netanyahu may force him eventually to take responsibility for not preventing the Oct. 7 attack and resign.

The growing intensity of Israelis’ demonstrations demanding his resignation show the increasing possibility of such a scenario.

At the same time, growing international pressure on Israel to end its war in Gaza may lead Netanyahu to have more conflicts with far-right members of his coalition, eventually causing the disintegration of his administration and his fall from power.

Finally, the possibility of the war expanding into a broader regional conflict would dramatically change the region’s current dynamics in ways that are difficult to predict. Nonetheless, this development could force Israel to end the war in Gaza in order to address other emerging military threats.

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UN court order demanding that Israel halt its Gaza offensive further isolates the US position

FILE - Smoke rises following an Israeli airstrike on buildings near the separating wall between Egypt and Rafah, southern Gaza Strip, Tuesday, May 7, 2024. An order by the top United Nations court for Israel to halt its military offensive in the southern Gaza city of Rafah deepens its disconnect with the United States. (AP Photo/Ramez Habboub, File)

Presiding Judge Nawaf Salam reads the ruling of the International Court of Justice, or World Court, in The Hague, Netherlands, Friday, May 24, 2024, where the top United Nations court ruled on an urgent plea by South Africa for judges to order Israel to halt its military operations in Gaza and withdraw from the enclave. (AP Photo/Peter Dejong)

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WASHINGTON (AP) — A U.N. court’s order that Israel halt its offensive in the southern Gaza city of Rafah has deepened a disconnect with the United States over a military operation that faces mounting international condemnation but that American officials describe, at least for now, as limited and targeted.

The decision Friday by the International Court of Justice in The Hague adds to the pressure facing an increasingly isolated Israel, coming just days after Norway, Ireland and Spain said they would recognize a Palestinian state , and the chief prosecutor of a separate international court sought arrest warrants for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu as well as leaders of Hamas.

The Biden administration stands apart from the global community — though it is opposed to a major offensive in Rafah, the administration also insists that the steps its close ally Israel has taken so far have not crossed red lines.

Administration officials so far have appeared determined to press on with military and political support for Israel following the deadly Hamas attack it endured last October , while also pressuring its ally to avoid a full-scale military operation in densely populated Rafah.

“What we have seen so far in terms of Israel’s military operations in that area has been more targeted and limited, has not involved major military operations into the heart of dense urban areas,” national security adviser Jake Sullivan told reporters at a White House briefing this week.

But, he added, “We now have to see what unfolds from here.”

A State Department official, speaking on condition of anonymity to describe the administration’s internal assessment of the situation, said the operation in Gaza had “not yet moved into the core heart of Rafah that gets us to the densest of dense areas.”

Earlier this month, the White House announced it was pausing a shipment of some 3,500 bombs , including massive 2,000-pound explosives that the Biden administration said were leading to civilian deaths. President Joe Biden warned during a CNN interview that “if they go into Rafah, I’m not supplying the weapons that have been used historically to deal with Rafah.”

U.S. officials in pressuring Israel had suggested that a major operation was a red line that would undermine stalled negotiations on a deal to return Israeli hostages taken by Hamas and would lead Biden to further dial back what weaponry he would send Israel.

But the tone at the White House seemed to take a notable shift this week after Sullivan returned from a visit to Israel , where he said he had been briefed on “refinements” in the Israeli plan to root out Hamas in Rafah, and to Saudi Arabia.

During Sullivan’s talks with Netanyahu and other officials during the trip, the Israeli side addressed many of Biden’s concerns about its plans for Rafah, according to a senior administration official who requested anonymity to discuss the sensitive matter.

The official said the administration stopped short of greenlighting the Israeli plan but Israeli officials’ altered planning suggested they were taking Biden’s concerns seriously.

That assessment may be of little consolation to Palestinians still trapped in Rafah — the southernmost part of the Gaza Strip on the border with Egypt, and the site of a critical crossing for aid. More than 1 million people sought refuge there in recent months after escaping fighting elsewhere but some 900,000 have since fled the city.

Israel has brought hundreds of trucks in through the other main border crossing, Kerem Shalom, but the U.N. and aid groups say Israeli military operations make it dangerous for them to pick up food, water and other supplies for starving Palestinians.

The U.S. Agency for International Development says Gaza requires a steady flow of 600 trucks a day of food and other aid to reverse the onset of what the heads of USAID and the U.N. World Food Program call famine in the north and to keep it from spreading to the south.

Even with a U.S. pier starting to bring in a small amount of aid by sea , Gaza has received only a fraction of the amount of supplies needed since the start of the Israeli offensive.

Leading international humanitarian groups welcomed the ICJ ruling for the pressure they hoped it would bring. Doctors Without Borders said it was confirmation of how “catastrophic” the situation had become for Palestinian civilians in Gaza and “the desperate need for humanitarian aid to be scaled up immediately.”

There’s no practical mechanism to force Israel to comply with the court order, which, in addition to ordering a halt to the offensive, also mandates an increase of humanitarian aid to the region and access to Gaza for war crimes investigators.

Israel showed no signs that it intended to change course after Friday’s ruling. The war in Gaza followed an Oct. 7 attack on Israel that killed roughly 1,200 people, about a quarter of them soldiers, with another 250 taken captive. At least 35,000 Palestinians have been killed in Gaza, according to the Health Ministry , which doesn’t distinguish between combatants and civilians.

The court’s demands go beyond what the U.S. has asked of Israel at the moment, though Washington has nonetheless signaled that it remains opposed to a more intrusive operation in Gaza.

“When it comes to Rafah, we’ve made known for a long time our concerns about a full-on military assault of Rafah and the damage that that could do to civilian population absent a clear and credible plan to protect it,” Secretary of State Antony Blinken told the House Foreign Affairs Committee on Wednesday.

Blinken also reiterated that the administration does not believe a major offensive would achieve the results that Israel is looking to achieve, “which is to deal effectively and durably with Hamas.”

“Our concerns about a full-on military assault in Rafah remain,” he said. “We have other ways of dealing with the challenge posed by Hamas that we believe can be more effective and more durable.”

Associated Press writers Ellen Knickmeyer and Matthew Lee contributed to this report.

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Aid Starts Entering Gaza Through U.S.-Built Pier, but Officials Say It Isn’t Enough

Israel said Friday that it was facilitating the flow of aid and that its operations in Rafah, which have caused 630,000 people to flee, were ‘limited and localized.’

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By Victoria Kim ,  Aaron Boxerman and Raja Abdulrahim

Trucks of humanitarian aid began moving ashore into Gaza early Friday via a temporary pier built by the U.S. military , the first supplies of aid to be sent into the enclave by sea in two months. But the new shipments of food and other supplies fall far short of what humanitarian groups say is needed to meet the staggering levels of hunger and deprivation in Gaza.

A day earlier, the U.S. military said it had anchored the floating pier and causeway to the beach in Gaza, a key step in completing a maritime corridor that the Pentagon announced in March . U.S. officials and international aid groups have said that sea shipments can only supplement deliveries through land crossings, not replace them.

No U.S. troops entered Gaza on Friday, the U.S. military said, emphasizing that it was providing only logistical support for delivery of the supplies, which were donated by a number of countries and organizations.

The war-torn territory of 2.2 million civilians is more reliant than ever on humanitarian aid. The devastation after seven months of Israeli bombardment, strict Israeli inspections and restrictions on crossing points had already severely limited what could enter. And over the past week and a half, since Israel began a military assault around the city of Rafah, the flow of supplies through the main land crossings in southern Gaza had been reduced to a trickle.

Aid agencies continued to report increasingly dire conditions in Gaza. Janti Soeripto, president and chief executive of Save the Children U.S., told The New York Times on Friday, “We have never ever seen anything like this anywhere in the planet.”

Israel has come under pressure from the Biden administration and other allies to do more to ease the entry of aid, with Secretary of State Antony J. Blinken warning this week that recent improvements in relief delivery were being undercut by fighting in and around Rafah.

More than 630,000 Gazans have fled Rafah since Israel began its military offensive there on May 6, according to the main U.N. agency that aids Palestinians. Many have been displaced to the central city of Deir al Balah, which the U.N. agency, known as UNRWA, said on social media was now “unbearably overcrowded with dire conditions.”

This week, top diplomats of 13 countries — including every member of the Group of 7 industrialized democracies except the United States — said in a joint letter, a copy of which was seen by The New York Times, that Israel must take “urgent action” to address the humanitarian crisis in Gaza. The letter, addressed to Israel’s foreign minister, calls on the Israeli authorities to expand the amount of aid entering the territory, take “concrete action” to protect civilians and work toward a “sustainable cease-fire.”

On Friday, at a hearing at the International Court of Justice in The Hague, lawyers representing Israel defended the military operation in Rafah as “limited and localized,” arguing that the judges should not seek to restrict Israel’s actions in Gaza.

The hearings at the court, the U.N.’s highest judicial body, are part of a case filed by South Africa in December that accuses Israel of committing genocide against Palestinians in Gaza. In late January, the court ordered Israel to do more to prevent acts of genocide, but it is not expected to hear the main case over whether genocide is being committed until next year.

Last week, South Africa asked the judges to issue an emergency order aiming to prevent wide-scale civilian harm in Rafah. Lawyers for South Africa argued at the court on Thursday that Israel’s Rafah operation was “the last step in the destruction of Gaza and its Palestinian people.”

On Friday, Gilad Noam, the Israeli deputy attorney general for international law, repeated Israel’s fierce rejection that it was committing genocide in Gaza. He said the Israeli authorities were working to facilitate the flow of humanitarian aid and to protect civilians amid fierce combat across the enclave, including in Rafah.

“Israel is taking steps to try and contend with the massive complexity that such a situation presents,” Mr. Noam told the judges. “That is why there has not been a large-scale assault on Rafah, but rather specific, limited and localized operations prefaced with evacuation efforts and support for humanitarian activities.”

Israel’s military has said it is working with the U.S. military to support the temporary pier project as a “top priority.”

The supplies that began arriving Friday were a fraction of the need in Gaza: food bars for 11,000 people, therapeutic food for 7,200 malnourished children and hygiene kits for 30,000 people, according to the U.S. Agency for International Development. The British government said it had sent 8,400 temporary shelters made up of plastic sheeting.

“More aid will follow in the coming weeks, but we know the maritime route is not the only answer,” Prime Minister Rishi Sunak of Britain said in a statement .

It was not immediately clear where in the enclave the aid would be delivered or when. The U.N. World Food Program said in a statement that it would handle logistics in Gaza for aid coming through the pier, including coordinating trucks, overseeing the loading of supplies, dispatching them to warehouses and handing them over to “humanitarian partners.”

Pentagon officials said they were initially aiming to deliver about 90 trucks of aid by sea each day, increasing that to about 150 trucks when the operation reached capacity. Some 500 trucks of commercial goods and aid arrived in Gaza each day before the war began last October.

Defense Secretary Lloyd J. Austin III spoke about the maritime corridor in a call with his Israeli counterpart, Yoav Gallant, on Thursday, according to the Pentagon. Mr. Austin stressed the need to “surge” humanitarian assistance to Gaza through land border crossings in addition to the pier, according to the department.

Vice Adm. Brad Cooper, deputy commander of the Central Command, said the pier would only complement the flow of aid through land crossings, which he emphasized were “the most efficient and effective pathway to move the necessary volume of assistance.”

One of Gaza’s two main crossings for aid, in Rafah on the border with Egypt, has been closed since Israel began its military operation against Hamas fighters there. Israel shut down the second major crossing, at Kerem Shalom, after a Hamas rocket attack nearby killed four Israeli soldiers last week. That crossing has since reopened, Israel says.

An aid group, World Central Kitchen, built a makeshift jetty in mid-March to deliver aid by sea to Gaza for the first time in nearly two decades. But those efforts came to an abrupt stop in early April after seven of the group’s workers were killed in an Israeli strike .

Victoria Kim is a reporter based in Seoul and focuses on breaking news coverage across the world. More about Victoria Kim

Aaron Boxerman is a Times reporting fellow with a focus on international news. More about Aaron Boxerman

Raja Abdulrahim is a Middle East correspondent based in Jerusalem covering the Levant. More about Raja Abdulrahim