Shock and Awe — Achieving Rapid Dominance — John Shaqi
Shock and Awe — Achieving Rapid DominanceUllman, Harlan
History
Shock and Awe — Achieving Rapid Dominance
Ullman, Harlan
Rapid dominance (Military science)
The second example is "Hiroshima and Nagasaki" noted earlier. The
intent here is to impose a regime of Shock and Awe through delivery of
instant, nearly incomprehensible levels of massive destruction
directed at influencing society writ large, meaning its leadership and
public, rather than targeting directly against military or strategic
objectives even with relatively few numbers or systems. The employment
of this capability against society and its values, called
"counter-value" in the nuclear deterrent jargon, is massively
destructive strikes directly at the public will of the adversary to
resist and, ideally or theoretically, would instantly or quickly
incapacitate that will over the space of a few hours or days.
The major flaws and shortcomings are severalfold and rest in
determining whether this magnitude and speed of destruction can
actually be achieved using non-nuclear systems to render an adversary
impotent; to destroy quickly the will to resist within acceptable and
probably unachievably low levels of societal destruction; and whether
a political decision would be taken in any case to use this type of
capability given the magnitude of the consequences and the risk of
failure.
It can be argued that in the bombing campaign of _Desert Storm_,
similar objectives were envisioned. The differences between this
example and _Desert Storm_ are through the totality of a society that
would be affected by a massive and indiscriminate regime of
destruction and the speed of imposing those strikes as occurred to
those Japanese cities. This example of shock, awe, and intimidation
rests on the proposition that such effects must occur in very short
periods of time.
The next example is "Massive Bombardment." This category of Shock and
Awe applies massive and, perhaps today, relatively precise destructive
power largely against military targets and related sectors over time.
It is unlikely to produce an immediate effect on the will of the
adversary to resist. In a sense, this is an endurance contest in which
the enemy is finally broken through exhaustion. However, it is the
cumulative effect of this application of destruction power that will
ultimately impose sufficient Shock and Awe, as well as perhaps destroy
the physical means to resist, that an adversary will be forced to
accept whatever terms may be imposed. As noted, trench warfare of the
First World War, the strategic bombing campaign in Europe of the
Second World War (which was not effective in this regard), and related
B-52 raids in Vietnam and especially over the New Year period of
1972-73, illustrate the application of massive bombardment.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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