WME? WTF?

I seriously wonder about the state of military education in the Joint Staff sometimes. You know, you expect certain things, such as a small cadre of civilians, contractors, and military personnel working directly for the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff should be motivated and educated enough to provide some really good cutting edge material. And on an individual basis, the overwhelming majority are pretty sharp and motivated. However, bureaucracy interferes. All the military personnel know that, sooner or later, their service is going to want them back, and any sins against the service in the name of "jointness" will be remembered. Second, because of the joint staffing process, it's all too easy for good ideas to be watered down or just buried. It's also possible to manipulate the staffing process to cut out critical analysis by people that might shoot your "good ideas" down. That lets the occassional turd loose in the punch bowl.

The Joint Staff has a new website for future joint warfare, hosted by the Joint Experimentation, Transformation, and Concepts Division (JETCD). This division works for the Director J7, Operational Plans and Joint Force Development, a.k.a. the guy that oversees joint doctrine, training and exercises, to include the transformation efforts. I heard that a new Joint Operational Environment (JOE) document is on the street (dated August 2005) - curious, I run over to the site and check it out. You'll find it under the "Strategic Guidance" button. It says the author is US Joint Forces Command (JFCOM), so maybe I shouldn't be slapping the Joint Staff - yet - unless this got through the Joint Staff without comment. What I'm referring to is the latest and greatest acronym, Weapons of Mass Effects (WME). The document reads thusly:

WEAPONS OF MASS DESTRUCTION/EFFECTS.  The proliferation of WME will empower potential opponents to challenge the United States.  Weapons of Mass Destruction offer a degree of deterrence, prestige, and regional influence and adversaries will use them if, from their perspective, time, circumstance, and outcome appear appropriate.  These weapons also provide a situation in which the merger of tangible (blast, number of people contaminated or systems degraded) with intangible (fear, malaise, and morale) is possible, and indeed, probable.  Weapons of Mass Destruction (WMD), a subset of WME, will be particularly effective for our future nihilistic adversaries who have death, destruction, and mayhem as their only creed and doctrine.  Nuclear, biological, and chemical weapons will be increasingly sought by individuals and organizations (military, commercial, and NGO) alike.  Other WME capabilities, such as computer and communications network attack capabilities, will spread as people and machines become smarter and as people and organizations become increasingly dependent on machine capabilities and intelligence.  Moreover, dispersed non-state actors having access to WME will frequently threaten America’s national interests as they advance terrorist causes, promote crime (including drug trafficking), and destabilize regional security.

Now the document is interesting reading, if not just to catch the train of thought of what our military thinks they're going to be doing in 2020 or so. The three scenarios they focus on appear to be Iran, North Korea, and Baghdad (although this is just speculation - no countries are named). But this paragraph in particular, due to my particular area of interest, really makes me want to puke. It's one thing to acknowledge that the term "WMD" isn't working for you anymore - it's another to say that it's a subset (?!?!) of something you call WMEs, which the JOE defines in the appendix as "weapons, such as chemical and biological types, that may cause mass casualties without destruction of human life." So small chem-bio hazards that do not create large numbers of dead people but may cause lots of sick people are WMEs, and the heavy use of chem-bio weapons to cause large numbers of dead are WMDs, but WMDs are a subset of WMEs. Hmmmm.

That's actually my minor nit, the utter lack of logic and incapability to get rid of the term "WMD" as a catch-all for all unconventional weapons. But the stilted and dated statements such as "adversaries will use them if ... time, circumstance, and outcome appear appropriate." No shit? you mean to say, they'll use chem-bio weapons just like reasonable opponents would judge the utility of any other common weapon system? And what is this crap about "future nihilistic adversaries who have death, destruction, and mayhem as their only creed and doctrine"? This kind of moralistic jingoism is just so at odds with the facts behind why nation-states (such as Israel, Egypt, Syria, China, Russia, Tawain, etc. etc.) develop chem-bio weapons - BECAUSE THEY WORK as combat multipliers to defeat the enemy in a short period of time. Instead we get this crap.

I'm disappointed in the authors' cut and past of "WME" where older documents have said "WMD."

• Multiple forces ... will have significant implications, such as ... widespread proliferation of Weapons of Mass Effect ...
• Means of disruption will run the gamut from information operations ... to WME.
• Catestrophic challenges are posed by the surreptitious acquisition, possession, and possible terrorist or rogue employment of WME or methods producing WME-like results.
• [Terrorists] will be forced increasingly toward ... development of a WME capability to deal with more advanced opponents.
• [Adversaries] will employ niche technology (WME, for example) capable of defeating key systems and providing inexpensive countermeasures to costly systems.
• Land attack cruise missiles will proliferate ... with conventional or WME payloads.
• Global terrorism and WME no longer makes the continental United States or overseas staging areas havens of security.
• WME, artillery, rockets, and terrorism will be the weapons of choice [in force protection scenarios].

It's all so TwenCen in mindset. Why is it that these bright military analysts can't do a bit of original thinking or at least make some logical, independent assessments based on history? The future nation-state adversary is not going to build chem-bio weapons to use against the United States, because they don't want to be wiped out like Iraq. They build them for security purposes for use against their neighbors. They aren't going to have arsenals like the former Soviet Union - they'll be small, select uses of chem-bio weapons for specific military purposes, to win battles quickly against unprotected troops. Similarly, terrorists aren't stupid - they like conventional bombs and guns because they work just fine. Only apocalyptic cults and lone gunmen have dreams about using chem-bio against civilian targets and governments. The idea that using the term "WME" can get us away from the falacy that chem and bio weapons are just as bad as nukes is good, but we aren't going to get there with this paper.

JFCOM, Joint Staff - you get a "C" for addressing future use of chem-bio weapons. Your paper needs more original thought and deductive reasoning rather than rote recitation of past historical mindsets of future battle.

UPDATE: I should have seen this coming - the Joint Staff is mimicking the National Defense Strategy language as announced by Doug Feith in March 2005. I blogged on the new term "WMD/E" and promptly forgot about it. Old age, I guess.

Comments

[Kingdaddy]

Excellent discussion, my friend! I posted my praise for it over at my blog.

[CKR]

My diagnosis is that the consultants had to come up with something, and their mental wells were dry. In those circumstances, a new acronym is always a good thing.

But there may be more to this business of WME than just that. Let me cogitate on it a while...