The Rise of Alien Warfare

In an article from the National Interest, Dominic Tierney, Foreign Policy Research Institute senior fellow, writes, ‘The rise of alien warfare has crippled America’s capacity at both waging war and making peace.”

Dominic Tierney concludes, ”The solution may seem obvious: less war and less nation building. And indeed Washington should set a higher bar before using force.”

I have long suggested the original Weinberger/Powell Doctrine as a place to start in terms of war making realism.

Yesterday Debbie and I watched Clint Eastwood’s excellent American Sniper. It occurs to me that if every American watched Sniper in conjunction with Black Hawk Down, Americans would have a much clearer picture of what Alien Warfare is all about. I think most will agree that such warfare indeed makes America less safe, less prosperous and less free.

Tierney writes:

IN 2011, the United States launched a new television show in Afghanistan called Sesame Garden. It was an Afghan-themed version of Sesame Streetdesigned to win local hearts and minds. Unfortunately, the producers had to cut the Count von Count character because Afghans had not heard of Dracula and could not comprehend the fangs.

The fate of the Count epitomizes the new Age of Alien Warfare—defined by U.S. military operations in culturally unknown environments. From the War of 1812 to today’s campaigns in the Middle East, both Washington’s enemies and the local populations have become steadily less familiar in terms of language, religion and social traditions. Alien warfare reached its apogee with the post-9/11 mission to refashion Afghanistan—a landlocked country seven thousand miles away, with a largely unknown culture and a literacy rate lower than that of America in 1650.