Mikkel Rasmussen interview
As the US continues to be mired in the Iraq War, there seems to be a lack of clear thinking -- a smart, strategic approach -- on how we can resolve this difficult situation in the Middle East. Perhaps the answer comes not from America where arguably the problem was exacerbated but in Denmark where the flow of sensible ideas remains vibrant.
In Copenhagen, Mikkel Vedby Rasmussen works with his crack team as Head of the Danish Institute for Military Studies. Dr. Rasmussen's new book "The Risk Society at War: Terror, Technology and Strategy in the Twenty-First Century" lifts warfare strategy from the doldrums to its rightful place, backed by convincing analyses that elevate our consciousness to a new level in how we think about security policies globally given current events and the future to come -- an approach that should be seriously considered not only by Europeans but by Americans as well. A tour de force.
Dr. Rasmussen has previously worked at the Danish Institute for International Studies and at the Department of Political Science, University of Copenhagen. He has taught classes in foreign policy and strategic studies at the Royal Danish Defence Academy as well as the University of Copenhagen. He has lectured at the NATO Defence College, Baltic Defence College, and the OSCE Security Conference in Vienna. In 2003, Mikkel Vedby Rasmussen was a member of the working group which wrote the Danish white paper on defense. He has given testimony to the Foreign Affairs Committee in the Danish Parliament.
For more information, visit the Danish Institute for Military Studies; the English link is on the right. Below is Sonshi.com's interview with Dr. Mikkel Rasmussen. Enjoy!
Sonshi.com: As mentioned in the biography, you are head of the Danish Institute for Military Studies. Please tell us more about the Institute and its purpose.
Rasmussen: The Danish Institute for Military Studies is a brand new research institute, which has set up in the summer of 2006.
In a globalized world, Denmark is faced with a number of defense and security related challenges. Most of our security concerns used to be focused narrowly on the Baltic seaboard, but nowadays we have troops in Kosovo, Iraq and Afghanistan. Parliament set up the Danish Institute for Military Studies to map, analyse and debate these challenges from a research based position. Thus our immediate task is to give inputs to Danish defence policy. Our long term ambition is to become a leading European research institute on strategy. In our offices at Svanemøllen Barracks in Copenhagen, officers and civilian researchers work together on articles, books and concrete reports on subjects with direct relevance to Danish defense. Our reports will be downloadable free of charge from our website www.difms.dk. The website also includes a blog. DIMS academic and policy publications as well as blog comments will occasionally be in English.
Sonshi.com: You have recently written a book called "The Risk Society at War: Terror, Technology and Strategy in the Twenty-First Century." What prompted you to write the book?
Rasmussen: I developed the ideas for ‘The Risk Society at War’ in order to answer questions. The new strategic agenda which was unfolded after the end of the Cold War, but perhaps most visibly after 9/11, has created a great public interest in security issues. When I have been asked to tell about the strategic issues of today to my students at the University of Copenhagen, in public lectures or in the Danish media I found that I had to reassess traditional concepts of strategic studies and develop new understandings of strategic issues. The book is the result.
Sonshi.com: Would you explain further the concept of a ‘risk society’ and how more societies are becoming ‘risk societies’?
Rasmussen: Clausewitz said that ‘every age has its own kind of war’. The wars the West fight at the moment is risk society’s wars. In The Risk Society at War I explore how the fact that Western societies have become risk societies changes the Western Way of Warfare.
It was the sociologist Ulrich Beck who coined the term, and in his definition a risk society is a society where the very way society works become a theme and a problem in itself. Beck uses pollution as the example which guides his presentation of the term: pollution is the product of modern industrial society, and you cannot produce unless you pollute. Discussing pollution is thus discussing the very nature of modern society.
Strategy in risk society is an endless debate about one’s own ability to counter risks – or indeed our responsibility for the fact that a risk has arisen. One reason for this, which I explore in the book, is the revolution in military affairs which entrenches Western military superiority. At this point in time we can choose our wars and how we fight them. This means that whether we win or lose to a large extent depends on our own abilities. The debate about the Iraq insurgency shows this. It is all about how the US-led coalition goes about its business. As Prime Minister Blair has lamented, the responsibility for everything that happens in Iraq is placed squarely on the coalition even if it is in fact the insurgents who are responsible. Our enemies know this and they have used this knowledge in a way Sun Tzu would be proud of.
Strategy is no longer about how to counter threats but about how to reflect on risks.
Sonshi.com: You discussed briefly Sun Tzu’s Art of War in "The Risk Society at War." Are Sun Tzu’s ideas still applicable in today’s global environment, e.g., terrorist approach to warfare?
Rasmussen: Sun Tzu offers a very effective recipe for those who wish to rebel against the West. Exactly because we have become risk societies we are very vulnerable to anyone trying to turn our plans against us. In their book ‘Unrestricted Warfare’, which is clearly inspired by Sun Tzu and traditional Chinese military thinking, two Chinese colonels describe such a strategy. This book may prove to be the first major work on how to fight wars in a world of risk societies and globalisation.
But it is important to note that while Western societies are risk societies, China probably isn’t. The Sun Tzu recipe for fighting the West described by the Chinese colonels might be applicable for fighting China itself in some respects but not all.
Sun Tzu is thus relevant as a counter-strategy, but, as many American officers have noted, Sun Tzu’s ideas also come into play in a RMA-environment. At its conceptual core the RMA is all about achieving perfect information – about yourself and the enemy. If that is your goal, then the battle for information becomes the centerpiece of armed conflict. This is of course an area in which Sun Tzu has much to say. Thus one might argue that while the RMA-enthusiasts aim at realising the perfect Clausewitzian battle they are in fact leading the way for a Sun Tzu strategy.
Sonshi.com: What do you think are some differences and commonalities between Western and Asian strategic approaches to conflicts such as war?
Rasmussen: In my view the most fundamental difference lies in the concept of victory. As Victor Hanson, John Keegan and others have pointed out the Western Way of Warfare focuses on a decisive victory whereas the Asian approach to warfare seeks to elude and obscure a clear cut decision on the battlefield but rather uses combat as one element to negotiate a settlement.
Sonshi.com: Based on your research and analyses, if you can change one aspect of the CURRENT strategy in the war in Iraq, what would it be?
Rasmussen: The US-led coalition’s greatest weakness is its need to achieve a favourable outcome as soon as possible and its stated intention to withdraw the moment this is achieved. This means that the coalition has to give in on its aims even before it is even close to achieve the desired end state, simply because it is running out of time. President Bush should thus have tried to achieve a bipartisan agreement on Iraq-policy which clearly signaled that the US would stay after the Presidential election. The failure to do so means that the US forces are under a time pressure which can only be used against them and which must make the Iraqis doubt whether it is a sound investment to support the US efforts.
Sonshi.com: We asked prominent military historian Dr. Martin van Creveld this question, and thus we will pose it to you. Do you think wars will be with us for another thousand years? If so, what do you think will be the consequences and what can we do to curb them?
Rasmussen: I’m sure Professor Creveld had a better answer, but I agree with Kenneth Waltz that we have wars because there, in the final analysis, is nothing to prevent them. Violence is one way of human beings solve their differences and that is also true on the macro level – war. I think the best we can hope for is a realistic assessment of the true costs of war and hope that this serves as a deterrent against ill informed campaigns. At the same time it is important to realise that in a world where war and violence is a political option the only way to achieve justice and security might be to resort to armed force.
[End of interview]
In Copenhagen, Mikkel Vedby Rasmussen works with his crack team as Head of the Danish Institute for Military Studies. Dr. Rasmussen's new book "The Risk Society at War: Terror, Technology and Strategy in the Twenty-First Century" lifts warfare strategy from the doldrums to its rightful place, backed by convincing analyses that elevate our consciousness to a new level in how we think about security policies globally given current events and the future to come -- an approach that should be seriously considered not only by Europeans but by Americans as well. A tour de force.
Dr. Rasmussen has previously worked at the Danish Institute for International Studies and at the Department of Political Science, University of Copenhagen. He has taught classes in foreign policy and strategic studies at the Royal Danish Defence Academy as well as the University of Copenhagen. He has lectured at the NATO Defence College, Baltic Defence College, and the OSCE Security Conference in Vienna. In 2003, Mikkel Vedby Rasmussen was a member of the working group which wrote the Danish white paper on defense. He has given testimony to the Foreign Affairs Committee in the Danish Parliament.
For more information, visit the Danish Institute for Military Studies; the English link is on the right. Below is Sonshi.com's interview with Dr. Mikkel Rasmussen. Enjoy!
Sonshi.com: As mentioned in the biography, you are head of the Danish Institute for Military Studies. Please tell us more about the Institute and its purpose.
Rasmussen: The Danish Institute for Military Studies is a brand new research institute, which has set up in the summer of 2006.
In a globalized world, Denmark is faced with a number of defense and security related challenges. Most of our security concerns used to be focused narrowly on the Baltic seaboard, but nowadays we have troops in Kosovo, Iraq and Afghanistan. Parliament set up the Danish Institute for Military Studies to map, analyse and debate these challenges from a research based position. Thus our immediate task is to give inputs to Danish defence policy. Our long term ambition is to become a leading European research institute on strategy. In our offices at Svanemøllen Barracks in Copenhagen, officers and civilian researchers work together on articles, books and concrete reports on subjects with direct relevance to Danish defense. Our reports will be downloadable free of charge from our website www.difms.dk. The website also includes a blog. DIMS academic and policy publications as well as blog comments will occasionally be in English.
Sonshi.com: You have recently written a book called "The Risk Society at War: Terror, Technology and Strategy in the Twenty-First Century." What prompted you to write the book?
Rasmussen: I developed the ideas for ‘The Risk Society at War’ in order to answer questions. The new strategic agenda which was unfolded after the end of the Cold War, but perhaps most visibly after 9/11, has created a great public interest in security issues. When I have been asked to tell about the strategic issues of today to my students at the University of Copenhagen, in public lectures or in the Danish media I found that I had to reassess traditional concepts of strategic studies and develop new understandings of strategic issues. The book is the result.
Sonshi.com: Would you explain further the concept of a ‘risk society’ and how more societies are becoming ‘risk societies’?
Rasmussen: Clausewitz said that ‘every age has its own kind of war’. The wars the West fight at the moment is risk society’s wars. In The Risk Society at War I explore how the fact that Western societies have become risk societies changes the Western Way of Warfare.
It was the sociologist Ulrich Beck who coined the term, and in his definition a risk society is a society where the very way society works become a theme and a problem in itself. Beck uses pollution as the example which guides his presentation of the term: pollution is the product of modern industrial society, and you cannot produce unless you pollute. Discussing pollution is thus discussing the very nature of modern society.
Strategy in risk society is an endless debate about one’s own ability to counter risks – or indeed our responsibility for the fact that a risk has arisen. One reason for this, which I explore in the book, is the revolution in military affairs which entrenches Western military superiority. At this point in time we can choose our wars and how we fight them. This means that whether we win or lose to a large extent depends on our own abilities. The debate about the Iraq insurgency shows this. It is all about how the US-led coalition goes about its business. As Prime Minister Blair has lamented, the responsibility for everything that happens in Iraq is placed squarely on the coalition even if it is in fact the insurgents who are responsible. Our enemies know this and they have used this knowledge in a way Sun Tzu would be proud of.
Strategy is no longer about how to counter threats but about how to reflect on risks.
Sonshi.com: You discussed briefly Sun Tzu’s Art of War in "The Risk Society at War." Are Sun Tzu’s ideas still applicable in today’s global environment, e.g., terrorist approach to warfare?
Rasmussen: Sun Tzu offers a very effective recipe for those who wish to rebel against the West. Exactly because we have become risk societies we are very vulnerable to anyone trying to turn our plans against us. In their book ‘Unrestricted Warfare’, which is clearly inspired by Sun Tzu and traditional Chinese military thinking, two Chinese colonels describe such a strategy. This book may prove to be the first major work on how to fight wars in a world of risk societies and globalisation.
But it is important to note that while Western societies are risk societies, China probably isn’t. The Sun Tzu recipe for fighting the West described by the Chinese colonels might be applicable for fighting China itself in some respects but not all.
Sun Tzu is thus relevant as a counter-strategy, but, as many American officers have noted, Sun Tzu’s ideas also come into play in a RMA-environment. At its conceptual core the RMA is all about achieving perfect information – about yourself and the enemy. If that is your goal, then the battle for information becomes the centerpiece of armed conflict. This is of course an area in which Sun Tzu has much to say. Thus one might argue that while the RMA-enthusiasts aim at realising the perfect Clausewitzian battle they are in fact leading the way for a Sun Tzu strategy.
Sonshi.com: What do you think are some differences and commonalities between Western and Asian strategic approaches to conflicts such as war?
Rasmussen: In my view the most fundamental difference lies in the concept of victory. As Victor Hanson, John Keegan and others have pointed out the Western Way of Warfare focuses on a decisive victory whereas the Asian approach to warfare seeks to elude and obscure a clear cut decision on the battlefield but rather uses combat as one element to negotiate a settlement.
Sonshi.com: Based on your research and analyses, if you can change one aspect of the CURRENT strategy in the war in Iraq, what would it be?
Rasmussen: The US-led coalition’s greatest weakness is its need to achieve a favourable outcome as soon as possible and its stated intention to withdraw the moment this is achieved. This means that the coalition has to give in on its aims even before it is even close to achieve the desired end state, simply because it is running out of time. President Bush should thus have tried to achieve a bipartisan agreement on Iraq-policy which clearly signaled that the US would stay after the Presidential election. The failure to do so means that the US forces are under a time pressure which can only be used against them and which must make the Iraqis doubt whether it is a sound investment to support the US efforts.
Sonshi.com: We asked prominent military historian Dr. Martin van Creveld this question, and thus we will pose it to you. Do you think wars will be with us for another thousand years? If so, what do you think will be the consequences and what can we do to curb them?
Rasmussen: I’m sure Professor Creveld had a better answer, but I agree with Kenneth Waltz that we have wars because there, in the final analysis, is nothing to prevent them. Violence is one way of human beings solve their differences and that is also true on the macro level – war. I think the best we can hope for is a realistic assessment of the true costs of war and hope that this serves as a deterrent against ill informed campaigns. At the same time it is important to realise that in a world where war and violence is a political option the only way to achieve justice and security might be to resort to armed force.
[End of interview]