Kort Explores conundrums of the human condition

All of the machinery of war is designed and employed to hurt people and destroy property. Regardless of whether it's an aerial bomb, artillery shell, shoulder fired missile, grenade, or landmine, all of the explosive devices of war are intended to cause death and destruction through blast and shrapnel.

The worldwide experimental exposure of soft human flesh to the violence of explosive devices, endlessly conducted in all possible permutations over the past centuries, has proven all too well that the two do not mix. To most rational people operating from the perspective of calm and peace, close proximity to any explosive device is an undesirable situation, and it seems a reasonable position to want to limit or even eliminate altogether the adverse effects of these devices.

Of all the explosive devices of war, landmines have of late come under particular scrutiny. TV news videos of women and children killed or maimed by unsuspected landmines long after hostilities officially ended have focused public attention and inspired activists to advocate banning the devices. Protecting innocent women and children from unnecessary harm is of course an admirable goal, but will banning landmines achieve that goal, or is it even a realistic concept?

First of all there is the problem of defining a landmine. The newsmedia has focused on the wide variety of purpose-built landmines manufactured by various nations. But any explosive device fitted with an appropriate fuse can be used as a landmine.

Assuming a workable definition of a landmine can be established, we must then consider whether banning landmines is really a good idea. Much as the media would have us believe otherwise, landmines weren't invented solely to kill and maim innocent children years after the war is over. They were developed to serve a specific need within the context of a modern war of movement. What seems to be entirely lacking in the current emotion driven discussion of landmines is a rational consideration of the critical role landmines play in modern warfare - the role in which the majority of landmines have been employed.

The nature of war has changed since the days of ritual slaughter in set piece pageants of violence. Armies no longer line up along miles of extended fronts and charge each other over open ground, each trying to stretch their line around the flanks of the other. This sort of one on one warfare played into the advantages of the defender. Since an attack can come anywhere along the front, the defender must spread his forces along his entire front, stretching and diluting his potential strength at any given point on his line. An attack along the entire front similarly diluted the attacking army, making an attack by basically equal forces an iffy proposition.

Over the centuries, some of the more enlightened military strategists recognized the value of moving their forces around on the battlefield - that there was more to war than grabbing your spear and charging blindly at the enemy. Along the way the idea also emerged that fighting even up was largely a recipe for slaughter on both sides. The key to winning with the least casualties on your side was to have an overwhelming force. Arraigning for overwhelming force along an entire front was usually impossible, but by concentrating one's forces along just part of the front, it was possible to achieve this condition within a limited area.

As armies added armor, mechanized infantry, and air support to their inventories, the modern war of movement became possible. Within this concept, the attacker concentrates the mass of his forces within a limited area of the front. Since the defender doesn't know where the attack will fall, he must keep his forces dispersed along his entire front, and so even with fundamentally equal armies, within the area of the assault the attacker will have superior forces. As armor and infantry punch a hole through the defender's line, air support suppresses the ability of the defender to move reinforcements into the area. Once through the main defenses, the attacker can then destroy the enemy's supply lines and attack the remaining defenders along the front from their far more vulnerable flank and rear.

Since the principles of concentrated forces and the coordinated use of armor, infantry and aerial in a war of movement were proven so effectively by the Nazi blitzkrieg of WWII, they've become the cornerstone strategies of nearly all major armies around the world. However, blitzkrieg is primarily an offensive strategy, and few armies have ever managed to remain entirely on the offensive, never having to defend against counter attacks. History also indicates that blitzkrieg has been used against neutral countries and unwilling combatants. As such, an effective defense against blitzkrieg tactics is a valid and necessary concern.

Consider the difficulties of defending against a blitzkrieg attack. Barring prior knowledge of the location of the attack, the defender must maintain sufficient personnel and weaponry at every point along the border to repel the full force of the enemy's attack - and must maintain that capability for as long as an attack might be possible. Establishing let alone maintaining that level of military preparedness is beyond the ability of any nation - if the manpower demand didn't completely drain the nation all by itself, the cost of equipping and maintaining that many soldiers in the field would be ruinous.

Speed is critically important in a blitzkrieg attack. The attack must break through and keep moving in order to keep the defenders from concentrating sufficient forces to stop the advance and counter attack. As long as the defenders are forced to concentrate on defending their critical resources at risk in front of the spearhead, they can't mount meaningful counter attacks in other areas of the front where the attacker's forces have been drawn down to build up those committed to the attack, or to cut off the spearhead's supply lines by counter attacking along its increasingly extended and exposed flanks.

The established counter to a blitzkrieg attack is a defense in depth. Multiple defensive lines are created that each likely lack the power to fully stop the attack, but can slow down the speed of the advance and hopefully reduce the enemy's forces. It's not unusual for an effective defense in depth to stretch for 20 miles or more behind the front lines.

If the attack is even moderately successful, the penetration into the defender's territory creates a situation where the flanks of the spearhead are far longer and exposed than the spearhead itself. As the enemy is delayed fighting his way through all the defensive layers, the defenders have time to shift reinforcements into the area to stop the advance, and mount counter attacks into the now exposed flanks of the enemy spearhead. Shifting into defense is difficult for a stalled attack. The Battles of the Bulge and Kursk illustrate all too well how an initially successful blitzkrieg can turn into a disaster when faced with a successful defense in depth. Desert Storm illustrates how well blitzkrieg works against shallow human-intensive fixed defenses - the kind of defense to which most nations would be limited if all landmines were banned.

Consider the role of minefields within a defense in depth. While the locations of individual mines and the safe routes through the field are hopefully unknown, the existence of the minefield is often marked and known to the attacker. The individual landmines in the field act as force equalizers and surrogates for the soldiers the defenders can't afford to keep on station. A landmine can wait patiently for an attack for years at little or no ongoing cost to maintain the deterrent. The bulk of the defender population is free to go about its business while the landmines guard their border.

Dealing with the landmines or suffering increased casualties crossing an uncleared minefield impacts the attacker in much the same way as increased human-intensive defenses, allowing a dispersed or demobilized defender to temporarily counter a superior attacking force. Without landmines, humans would have to take their place, standing guard in depth day and night, year after year, waiting for a possible attack. Defense in depth wouldn't be possible without belts of landmines to form the critical impact absorbing and attack delaying defensive barriers at a cost the defending nation can afford.

Unfortunately, the at least moderately logical, controlled, and usually fairly obvious use of landmines in a traditional defense in depth is not the only way landmines have been used. A case can be made that the problem hasn't been so much the existence of landmines, but the intentions of those who use them.

While millions of mines were laid in Europe during the two world wars, the method of their use made it relatively easy to remove them after the fighting was over. The extensive and highly complex minefields that have repeatedly crisscrossed Europe during the last century have proven not much more of a problem than the rest of the tons of unexploded munitions still being uncovered on a daily basis fifty years after the last shot was fired.

The kind of vicious wars against man and nature that have dragged on for decades in South East Asia and Afghanistan have plumbed a new low in the value of human life. Often representing only a tiny minority of the population and invariably lacking the personnel and equipment to engage in traditional warfare, guerrilla movements resorted to attacking the life support infrastructure and social fabric of their targets. As such, landmines become useful surrogates and force multipliers, allowing a limited number of guerrillas to inflict maximum psychological and emotional damage on a superior opponent.

It's important to remember that the guerrillas and terrorists were using landmines in an attempt to destroy a nation's infrastructure and terrorize the civilian population. The sole intention in laying these landmines was to kill or injure unsuspecting civilians, making them reluctant to venture into their fields or onto the roads. With the citizenry immobilized by a well founded fear of landmines, the economy was expected to collapse allowing the takeover by the minority guerrillas. In this application, instead of being laid in concentrated minefields designed to obstruct the passage of massed military units, individual landmines were intentionally concealed where they would cause unexpected harm to noncombatants. Not surprisingly, these landmines did what they were intended to do, and continue to perform their intended function today.

Even if the likely targets of aggression can be convinced to abandon the critical defensive functions of landmines, does the banning of weapons by treaty ever really work? During the Cold War both sides maintained the ability to use chemical and biological weapons with the well founded assumption that the other side would not respect the ban. The Soviets, Iraqis, Afghanis, and various despots in Africa even used poison gas and biological weapons repeatedly in regional conflicts. In spite of substantial evidence of the illegal use of these proscribed weapons, the rest of the world ignored the evidence and never even once enforced the prohibition. At best the paper prohibition against the use of chemical and biological weapons has proven to be yet another meaningless exercise in futility. At worst the prohibition has increased the harm caused by their continued use and crippled the ability of their victims to effectively defend against them.

The advocates of the current landmine ban appear to be completely unaware of the total failure of every prior effort at prohibition ever tried in human history. The sole possible effect of an official ban on landmines will be to deny their use to those with a legitimate need to defend against invasion by hostile neighbors. Those who will respect the ban are exactly those who are most unlikely to abuse the technology. Those who misused landmines in the past and intentionally created the current tragedy will continue to build and misuse landmines in exactly the same manner has they always have. Once again, measures officially intended to protect the innocent will in practice work against the best interests of exactly those whom the measures are officially intended to protect.