Risk management, warfare and the unmeasured gaps.
Studies show that states expose their own civilians and soldiers and enemy noncombatants to varying levels of risk. The most known is sociologist Martin Shaw's argument that the new Western way of war in the post-Vietnam era is characterized by the transfer of risk from soldiers to enemy noncombatants to reduce the military casualties and, by implication, the political costs stemming from the growing social sensitivity to casualties domestically.1
However, scholarly gaps still remain. Among them, variations in risk transfer have not been sufficiently measured and therefore conclusions—whether militaries shift or take risks— are largely unsupported empirically.
I tried to partly bridge this and other gaps in my new book, Whose Life Is Worth More?. Using empirical data drawn from the US, Britain, and Israel—democracies involved in prolonged warfare, in which policy-makers confront domestic constraints on the use of force—the book shows how states develop hierarchies of risk and death, an ordered scale of value that they apply to the lives of their soldiers relative to the lives of their civilians and enemy noncombatants. In the most interesting circumstances, states compensate for the aversion to sacrifice by attempting to increase the legitimacy of using aggressive fire to shift risk from their own soldiers onto enemy civilians.
Transfer of risk occurs when forces attack the enemy from a distance by using excessive lethality through artillery, aircraft, drones, and other means, sometimes with limited discrimination between combatants and noncombatants. Alternatively, exercising greater caution to avoid civilian casualties, for example, by adopting more restrictive rules of engagement to better discriminate between combatants and noncombatants, will likely increase the danger to soldiers.
To identify variations in the death hierarchy, the impacts of fire policies can be measured by offering a combination of three categories of fatality ratios. To exemplify the relevance of such analysis, let us focus on the argument that a cautious approach towards enemy civilians was formally adopted by the US military in Iraq in what is known as the surge.2 Since 2005, American commanders in Iraq acknowledged that violence against noncombatants informed by force-protection principles to shift risk away from own troops was counter-productive. Though aimed at quelling the anti-US-led coalition insurgency fueled by nationalist and Islamist religious groups, it embittered the Iraqis and incited the insurgency by creating more enemies whenever locals were killed. Consequently, the military revised the fire policies.
Following this understanding, in January 2007 President Bush announced the initiation of the new surge strategy—the deployment of more troops in Iraq in an effort to “help the Iraqis carry out their campaign to put down sectarian violence and bring security to the people of Baghdad.” The surge was implemented by increasing the presence of military personnel in local neighborhoods and by decreasing firepower to minimize collateral damage, even at the cost of risking American soldiers.
Following the surge that lasted from February 2007 through July 2008, the number of Iraqi civilians killed by any perpetrator dropped significantly in 2008 to 8,315-9,028 from 25,774-27,599 in 2006. However, the decline in violence was not only attributable to the surge, but also to other developments, particularly the defeat of Sunni militias by Shia militias in Baghdad, and the decision by many Sunni leaders to collaborate with the US and rise up against Al Qaeda in Iraq.
The number of fatalities by hostile action among soldiers belonging to the US-led coalition (excluding Iraqi forces) peaked from 747 in 2006 to 809 in 2007, indicating a higher risk associated with an expanded presence in the cities and less risk transfer. For example, the daily patrols in Baghdad conducted by the coalition or Iraqi forces increased from 600 in February 2006 to 4,500 in February 2007.
However, the picture is more complicated, and it is possible that the risk to the troops was not rising significantly. First, most of the casualties, nearly 70 percent, occurred during the first half of 2007. Mounting casualties were explained as a consequence of the troops moving from Forward Operating Bases (FOBs) outside the cities to smaller outposts among the population and conducting operations (in May-June) to take back neighborhoods. Later, the number of soldiers killed dropped steadily from 809 to 230 (189 until July) in 2008, in tandem with decreasing Iraqi civilian deaths.
Second, the overall decline in violence reduced the risk to troops as well. For example, daily attacks by insurgents and militias increased from 110 in February 2006 to 210 in February 2007, but dropped to 80 in November 2007.
Third, despite the new directives, risk was partly transferred, as attested by the study of fatality ratios. The ratio between the coalition together with Iraqi Security Forces (ISF) and insurgents increased slightly, meaning that the troops exacted a relatively higher price from the insurgents and thereby balanced out their risk.
Thus, the counterinsurgency was effective in terms of the deployment of more troops with expanded presence among the population, but less so in terms of taking more risks by restraining the use of force and limiting air support.
Nevertheless, much of this risk was shifted. As the ratio between the coalition combatants to Iraqi noncombatants reveals, the coalition together with ISF almost doubled the ratio from 2006 to 2008. Consequently, discrimination between Iraqi combatants to Iraqi noncombatants—an important indicator of the amount of risk shifted—decreased by 50 percent, as the ratio of Iraqi noncombatants among total Iraqi fatalities killed by the coalition increased accordingly (from about 24 to 36 percent).
For a better indication, a look into Baghdad, where the main surge activity took place, shows that the percentage of those killed by airstrikes in the city more than doubled from about 23 percent in 2006 to about 50 percent in 2007, and 57 percent in 2008. Even during 2007, this increased from about 39 percent in the first half of the year to about 59 percent in the second, despite the declining number of US fatalities. Clearly, the US increased, rather than decreased, the use of these risk-transfer methods.
It follows that US soldiers assumed more risk in absolute terms during 2007 relative to 2006 but shifted part of it to local noncombatants, even in Baghdad. They protected themselves better by raising the price they exacted from the Iraqi insurgents, but As IR scholar Sebastian Kaempf explained,3 the increasing risks caused the troops to fire more aggressively in ambiguous situations with still-permissive rules of engagement, thereby shifting more risk onto Iraqi civilians. Alternatively, they could have assumed much more risk, especially given the impact of the declining insurgency, the troops’ increasing numbers, and even the increased integration of ISF.
Thus, the counterinsurgency was effective in terms of the deployment of more troops with expanded presence among the population, but less so in terms of taking more risks by restraining the use of force and limiting air support.
In sum, leaving aside the dispute over the outcomes of the surge, the conduct of the US troops differed somewhat from the overall image of troops taking risk, as depicted by the new policies. Only the measurement of fatality ratios and analysis of their association with practices on the ground reveal gaps between declared policies and actual conduct. Risk was still shifted onto Iraqi civilians, sustaining the assumption that the lives of our soldiers are worth more.
Start reading Whose Life Is Worth More? »
Notes
1. Martin Shaw, The New Western Way of War: Risk-Transfer War and Its Crisis in Iraq (Cambridge: Polity Press, 2005).
2. The sources are detailed in the book (chapter 8.1). In general, data about combatants killed by hostile action were taken from icasualties, an independent website tracking casualties in the Afghanistan and Iraq wars. Data about noncombatants were obtained from Iraq Body Count. Data about insurgents relied on formal reports.
3. Sebastian Kaempf, Saving Soldiers or Civilians? Casualty-Aversion Versus Civilian Protection in Asymmetric Conflicts (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2018, pp. 232-233).
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