#35 Crucial Questions on Rules Of Engagement (ROE):

 (Q2/3) Do Commanders Have Discretionary Authority to Change ROE?

 

– Dr Regeena Kingsley

 

This blog will address the second crucial question on Rules of Engagement (ROE) relating to deployed military commanders on operations, and whether or not they have discretionary authority to change or alter their lethal force instructions in any way, as they see fit, based on the conditions on the ground in theatre. 

As outlined in the previous blog ‘#34 Crucial Questions on Rules of Engagement (ROE): (Q1/3) Are ROE Legally-Binding “Military Orders” or Merely Guidelines?’, ROE are highly important and almost sacrosanct political-military-legal instructions from the highest levels of power within the sitting government. They are precise military orders relating to the use of lethal force by military personnel when deployed on military operations. 

ROE contain classified prescriptions on exactly when (use of force) and how (degree of force) military armed forces may employ lethal force against the Enemy while performing tasks towards stated mission objectives (see blog “#9 What are “Rules of Engagement”?‘).  In particular, they contain specific instructions relating to the means (weaponry) and methods (tactics) by which lethal force may be legitimately and lawfully employed on the battlefield by national armed forces, towards achieving these mission objectives, as well as in emergency situations requiring unit or individual self-defence. 

According to the NZDF Operational Law Companion, the legal manual of the New Zealand Defence Force (NZDF), ROE are issued in all circumstances where it may be necessary for members of the armed forces to use lethal force and can cover a variety of force-related matters, namely:

(a) the use of all weapons and weapons systems employed by members of the force;

(b) the use of methods and means such as electronic warfare, illumination and harassment;

(c) the use of non-lethal weapons;

(d) the use of manoeuvres such as interposition or riding-off;

(e) the exercise of powers in assistance to the civil power; and lastly

(f) the search and detention of vessels, vehicles or persons (the latter including prisoners of war, detainees and those rendered hors de combat through illness, injury, capture or shipwreck).[1] 

 

ROE: ‘Defensive’ & ‘Offensive’ Military Orders

Principally, however, all ROE orders contain two classes of instructions, in regard to two issues of critical import to military personnel in the field, namely: (1) Self-Defence; and (2) Mission Accomplishment.

Self-Defence: Defensive Force Instructions

The ROE in the Self-Defence class of instructions or orders are permissive and contain defensive authorisations for use of lethal force in unit or individual self-defence, in response to ‘hostile intent’ and a ‘hostile act’.  When individuals, groups of individuals, or an armed force are declared by a government to be ‘Enemy’ or a ‘hostile force’, it is permissible for force to be used as a matter of course and defensive violence to take place (or in other words, qualified offensive military action for the purpose of self-defence). The Enemy force may be attacked, at the discretion and judgement of the commanding military officer, provided all defensive action is carried out with due regard for LOAC, prescribed Self-Defence ROE, and the orders and operational plan from higher command.[2] 

However, the amount of lethal force that may be used in any military act of self-defence, is also governed and significantly altered by who exactly is and is not deemed ‘Enemy’ or ‘hostile force’ in any conflict (see endnote for two clear examples deriving from this important designation – or rather lack of designation – with regard to American forces during the Obama Administration).[3]

It is usual for sets of ROE instructions issued from government to their military forces to include a list of definitions of key terms used within these instructions, in the interest of aiding understanding, which will demonstrably impact the military actions taken on their behalf by their armed forces. For instance, the list of reference terms will outline or define precisely what, in the government’s view, constitutes a ‘hostile act’, ‘hostile intent’, ‘deadly force’, ‘non-deadly force’, and who constitutes the ‘Enemy’ or ‘hostile force’. 

In situations that occur in the course of operations in conflict theatres abroad, or alternatively in domestic military situations in the home country, where force must be used by armed forces against persons not declared by the government to be ‘Enemy’ or a ‘hostile force’, as per these ROE definitions, the general rule is that minimum force only is to be used.[4]

[These ‘non-Enemy’ persons may include: (a) other belligerent/warring parties (those taking a direct part in hostilities against national forces but are nevertheless not deemed to be ‘Enemy’); (b) bandits; (c) criminals; (d) domestic terrorists, or foreign terrorists abroad, that have not been categorised by government as Enemy operators against the State or its vital interests; (e) saboteurs; (f) protestors; (g) persons seeking to obstruct operations; (h) mobs; (i) rioters; (j) groups of people rushing the armed force to obtain food, supplies, or political asylum; and lastly, (k) foreign forces acting contrary to the interests of the national armed force, as it works towards attaining the objective(s) of its sovereign government.[5] ]

ROE: Defensive ‘Self-Defence’ Authorisations & Offensive ‘Mission Accomplishment’ Authorisations, Limitations & Prohibitions

Mission Accomplishment: Offensive Force Instructions

The lethal force instructions in the Mission Accomplishment class of rules, by contrast, contain offensive authorisations for the use of lethal force in proactive military attacks or assaults, in pursuit of projecting national power and attaining assigned mission objectives (whether strategic, operational or tactical goals).  These crucial military orders can be divided into three distinct subsets or categories of rules: (1) authorisation rules; (2) limitation rules; and (3) prohibition rules.  

The first category of offensive ‘Mission Accomplishment’ ROE concerns authorisation rules (1^st category), which authorise military personnel to employ specific weaponry and tactics, on the proviso that this employment is conducted in full compliance with the body of international law on the conduct of war known as the Law of Armed Conflict (LOAC). 

ROE: Authorisations & ‘National Caveat’ Limitation & Prohibition Restraints

By contrast the second and third categories of offensive ROE concern limitation and prohibition rules respectively. These two latter categories of rules, collectively referred to as ‘national caveats’, specifically constrain where and in what manner military personnel may deploy, what tasks national military forces may do, which tactics are permitted, how lethal force may be utilised and with which weapons, and therefore also how the national contingents may be utilised by Operational Commanders within multinational military missions. 

A limitation caveat (2^nd category) allows certain actions or movements by deployed national forces only after official permission has been applied for and granted by the appropriate government minister at the national Capital in the home country. It requires the senior national commander – the ‘National Commander’ – to apply for and obtain explicit approval and authorisation from the government in the home Capital, before national personnel in a national force contingent can participate in a task, operation or geographical movement required of them from Operational Command, in the theatre to which they have been deployed. In most cases, this government permission must be sought and obtained from the relevant Minister or Secretary of Defence, or in the case of civilian personnel the Minister of Foreign Affairs or Secretary of State.  However, in some cases the caveat may also involve seeking and acquiring permission from the most powerful person in government as well, the acting Prime Minister or President of the nation, who is the ‘Head of Government’ in the home country.

A prohibition caveat (3^rd category), by contrast, is a complete ban which forbids outright specific movements and actions by deployed national forces. Participation of personnel in certain tasks, operations, deployments, communications and intelligence-sharing, and the use of certain tactics, weaponry and even lethal force within the Multinational Operation (MNO), are absolutely prohibited by the national government.

Limitation rules are sometimes referred to as ‘yellow-card’ restrictions, while prohibition rules are commonly known as ‘red-card’ constraints. This is because a simplified but accurate version of limitation and prohibition ROE are frequently printed onto a yellow and/or red colour-coded card respectively, and issued to a national contingent’s senior national officer – the National Commander – prior to deployment. It is this senior commander’s job to deny requests from Multinational Operational Command that are considered to exceed the national mandate provided by his or her government, by producing the appropriate colour-coded caveat card and displaying it to the Operational Commander of the military mission.

The three categories of authorisations, consent-limitations and outright bans contained in this ROE class of offensive ‘Mission Accomplishment’ prescriptions or orders, are the most influential class of ROE orders with regard to effective military operations in pursuit of assigned operation objectives, and far outweigh the import and significance of defensive ‘Self-Defence’ prescriptions.

As a general rule, the more 1^st category authorisation rules, and the fewer 2^nd category consent-limitations and 3^rd category bans, contained in each set of ROE instructions issued to military forces, the more unified, fast, free, flexible and effective the resulting actions of that military force in the field.  

In brief, ‘cause and effect’. The ROE rules will determine the action or inaction, the effectiveness or ineffectiveness, of all deployed national force contingents operating in theatres of armed conflict.

[For more information refer to blogs ‘#10 Rules of Engagement & National Caveats: “Self-Defence” & “Mission Accomplishment” Instructions’ and ‘#2 What are “National Caveats”?’]

 

Power to Change ROE: Who has the Power?

In fact, tangible and powerful constraints on a national military force and the scope and conduct of its military operations already exist in the ‘national mandate’, a pivotal, classified, and jealously-guarded document from government which authorises military action in the name of the national government and on their behalf, towards political and security policy aims and objectives.

These mandate constraints include clear delineations of: the political and operational boundaries of a nation’s participation in a national military operation or multinational security operation; its selected key objectives; its specified tasks; its force strength constraints; organisational force configuration; available equipment; and budgetary limitations; over a set, time-specific, duration.[6]  ROE are additional operational restrictions to these broader, politico-military constraints within the mandate, which are contained as an annex list either in or alongside the mandate document.[7] 

[For information regarding the various kinds of mandates and agreements that regularly govern national forces contributed by governments to MNOs, refer to blog ‘#9 What are “Rules of Engagement”? Military Mandates & Instructions for the Use of Force’.]

National Mandates: The various components of a national mandate.

It is these highly instrumental ‘national mandates’ which will most dramatically impact on the effectiveness of any MNO in the course of its operations, since they contain the potential to empower or impair each national contingent’s contribution to the multinational endeavour.  The ROE instructions within these mandates are the politico-military-legal puppet strings by which the ‘boots on the ground’ are ultimately controlled by national governments, regardless of higher organisational authorities such as Operational Commanders at in-theatre Multinational Operational Command Headquarters (HQ).  

Indeed, government instructions within national mandates take precedence over those issued by various multinational headquarters at higher levels within the MNO’s command structure.  This is quite simply because the first responsibility of national armed forces deployed to an overseas theatre is to obey the politico-military-legal instructions issued from their political masters within their own national government at home – regardless of whether these instructions bypass the official MNO command structure, or even overtly contradict strategic and tactical plans and policies issued by Multinational Operational Command HQ in theatre.

As I outlined in the previous blog, #34, even if government-issued ROE are inappropriate or frustrating for the purposes of the military mission in which they are taking part, unless ROE orders are manifestly unlawful under the LOAC, military personnel are sworn and duty-bound to obey – no-matter the cost incurred in either military or human terms.

This raises the question, if ROE restrictions prove to be inadequate, counterproductive or dangerous for deployed national military contingents in the course of conducting military activities towards assigned mission objectives, and need to be altered or changed in some way in the midst of an operation, who has the power to change them?

There are only two answers to this question, namely: (1) national governments; and (2) military commanders.

(1) The Political Government in the Capital

Normally only the political authority over military forces – that is, the national government – has the power to change the existing ROE issued to national force contingents acting in theatre on their behalf.

Governments may alter their approved ‘Standing ROE’ (SROE) instructions for their own reasons or in reaction to problematic incidents or trends that have occurred, or are occurring, in certain security missions to which they have contributed national armed forces. 

Alternatively, if a government in the home Capital receives a specific request from the high-ranking Operational Commander of a MNO in a conflict theatre to which they have deployed forces, e.g. COM-KFOR, COMISAF etc. (or in rarer occasions sometimes even higher-ranking military or political UN or NATO officials), the government may respond to this specific request by modifying their SROE or ‘lifting/loosening’ certain caveat restraints on the grounds of ‘exceptional circumstances’.

For instance, governments may agree upon request to ‘lift’ or ‘loosen’ a limitation rule (requiring consent before action), temporarily, permanently, or with respect to certain units of their deployed national forces, and render it instead a permissive authorisation rule (moving it from the 2^nd category/tier to the 1^st  category/tier of offensive force ROE orders for Mission Accomplishment).  

In other cases, governments may upon request agree to a prohibition rule (the most constricted, ‘red-flag’ type of caveat in the lowest, 3^rd category of Mission Accomplishment offensive orders) being ‘loosened’ or ‘relaxed’ to a limitation rule (a ‘consent-before-action’, ‘yellow-flag’ rule in the 2^nd  category of offensive instructions), requiring government consent on a case-by-case basis.

Most dramatically – and more desirably for the purposes of improving MNO ‘unity of effort’, ‘unity of action’, ‘freedom of action’, and overall tactical and operational effectiveness – the government may even consent to removing the prohibition caveat ban entirely, and instead issue an authorisation rule in its place (moving the rule from the 3^rd category of a red-flag ban to the 1^st category tier of a ‘green-light’ authorisation).

ROE: 2 classes of rules, ‘Mission Accomplishment’ offensive force and ‘Self-Defence’ defensive force instructions, which are divided further into 3 categories of authorisations, limitations and prohibitions.

In all of these situations, and for all of these temporary or permanent ROE changes, it will fall to the senior national officer, the National Commander, to liaise between the national government in the national Capital and the MNO Operational Commander at the Operational Command HQ in theatre.[8]  

(2) Military Commanders Vested with Discretionary Authority in Theatre

However, some well-informed and situationally-aware politicians in senior roles of government do not wish to be the only or primary decision-makers on the military ROE orders that will ‘command and control’ the actions of their military forces in conflict zones, nor to bureaucratically ‘micromanage’ from the government buildings of their national Capitals vital operations and events taking place thousands of miles away, often in extremely different, poorly-understood, highly-complex, challenging, and dangerous military environments.

To avoid issuing ROE that are inadequate or too constrictive on the ‘freedom of action’ and ‘operational flexibility’ needed by their deployed military forces in conflict theatres – in both the planning and execution of military operations conducted in pursuit of government-set military objectives – and to tangibly enhance in practice the theoretical concept of ‘mission command’ (otherwise known as ‘trusting your subordinates’), national governments sometimes choose to delegate a significant-to-substantial portion of their power and authority over ROE orders to their own highly-trained and operationally experienced military commanders (refer to endnote 3). [3]

In other words, although it is a less commonly found arrangement in militaries around the world today, these authority-delegating governments determine to give a degree of ‘discretionary authority’ to their military commanders with regard to ROE orders in each military mission.  This government-delegated authority enables chosen military commanders to modify the SROE constraints that govern the actions of their military forces on the ground, in the air or on the sea, based primarily on the commanders’ own individual military judgement of conditions in theatre as to: (a) the specific security threats and challenges in the government-assigned mission; and (b) the most pressing needs of national forces as they conduct military operations towards government-set, political and military objectives.

No-matter whether this delegated ROE authority is small or large in scope, these load-sharing governments delegate this discretionary ROE authority and freedom of decision and action to either: (a) one specific person, usually the National Commander as the senior national officer of the nation in the conflict theatre; or (b) in rarer cases, a range or selection of certain high-level, mid-level, and low-level commanders.

Nevertheless, even with discretionary authority to make or alter ROE orders divested to one or more of these well-trained, LOAC-knowledgeable, sometimes educated, but always operationally experienced military commander(s), the national government itself still remains the central and only source of authority to approve changes to SROE instructions made by these military commanders, to govern the actions of national forces under their command.  As the NZDF Operational Law Companion states on the matter:

‘ROE are determined at the highest level, and changes to the ROE will invariably require the approval of that highest level’. [9]

This makes military commanders at all levels both reliant on political decision-makers in the national government, for guidance on the mission concept and ROE direction, as to the constraints placed on their forces, and answerable to this same government for all actions taken outside of the government’s original ROE framework. Indeed, any unreasonable ROE modification made by a military commander that dramatically departs from this crucial government guidance will subject that individual to critical scrutiny and – if he or she is unable to lawfully justify and defend the ROE changes made, based on the security situation and specific circumstances behind the decision – lead to disciplinary action that may even result in the termination of the commander’s career in the armed forces. 

Thus military commanders serving the government in a national contingent deployed to conflict theatres, who are empowered with government-sanctioned ROE discretionary authority, still retain a super-strong, politico-legal incentive to comply with, and remain obedient to, the overarching political, military and legal guidance provided to them from their political masters in government, for the duration of any conflict in which they hold a position of command.

 

Three Degrees of ‘Discretionary Authority’

The amount of discretionary authority  given to the one National Commander, or alternately a number of selected military commanders, with regard to modifying ROE freedoms (authorisations) and constraints (caveats) is a critical factor however.

Based on the interviews and communications I have personally conducted with NZDF personnel with a wealth of operational experience around the globe, in addition to other primary and secondary sources on this issue that are publicly available, there are three ‘degrees’ of discretionary authority given to military commanders by governments around the world today.

(Option A) National Commanders: Authority to Further Restrict ROE Restrictions

The first and lowest level of discretionary authority relates to National Commanders, who are the senior national officers representing their countries in any given MNO in a theatre of conflict.

[*Refer to blog ‘#13 National Commanders: Caveat Mediators’ for more information on the role of National Commanders as ‘caveat mediators’ and ‘middlemen’ standing in the middle of the political and military spheres as the key intermediary between the two.]

Most commonly, when governments delegate some ROE authority downwards to their own military commanders, they do so by granting their National Commander in a given MNO authority to increase or add to the national contingent’s ROE.  The National Commander may impose additional ROE restrictions or tighten existing ones, at his or her own discretion, as long as these changes are more restrictive than the government-approved ROE issued at the start of the deployment (preferably during the pre-deployment training phases).  

For example, when the armed forces of the United States deploy overseas on military operations, whether unilaterally, bilaterally, or multilaterally as the case may be, their issued ROE routinely contain a menu list of numbered ‘supplemental measures’, from which American National Commanders may select additional ROE that they deem suitable for the accomplishment of each mission on which they embark.[10] These senior American National Commanders, that are in leadership command of U.S. forces in multiple conflict theatres around the world, may – if the situation demands and his military judgement deems it right, appropriate or necessary – select one or more of these supplemental measures on the provided list, and implement them forthwith.  They are permitted to do this conditionally by the American government, on the proviso that: (1) the new ROE are more restrictive than those originally approved by the Secretary of Defense prior to or upon deployment; (2) the new ROE are consistent with the directions of higher authority (military high command) and relevant law (e.g. the LOAC); and (3) due notification is given to the Secretary of Defense of the change(s) to ROE as soon as possible.[11] 

Likewise, when NZDF ‘Kiwi’ force contingents deploy overseas as part of a New Zealand government contribution to multinational security operations in conflict theatres, National Commanders are given limited discretionary authority to be able to further restrict SROE orders (not loosen or remove them).[12] For instance, if a NZDF National Commander judges that a certain military situation in theatre requires a further ROE constraint to be imposed on the use of force, degree of force, or Orders for Opening Fire (OFOF) governing the military activity of deployed New Zealand forces, then the National Commander can make the ROE change, provided he requests government approval for this change.[13]  However, given the need and clear military advantage of fast, firm, and effective decision-making in conflict zones, the National Commander does not have to wait to receive official approval from Wellington before he or she can implement the ROE change(s) on NZDF forces, but may make his new SROE have immediate effect by immediately enforcing it, and continuing to do so, before approval is received back from ‘The Beehive’ seat of government in the New Zealand Capital.[14] As New Zealand Army Lieutenant Colonel (LTCOL) Andrew Shaw, Commanding Officer of the NZDF Command & Staff College at Trentham who in 2005 also served as a Liaison Officer with American OEF forces in Nangarhar Province of RC-East in Afghanistan (FOB Salerno with a U.S. Brigade of 82^nd Airborne Division), has stated on the subject:

‘Even with the Kiwis [compared to the Americans]…if the tactical situation on the ground dictated a need for something more restrictive, then the senior national officer would almost certainly have the authority to make something more restrictive, and he would feed that back and it would be approved in due course.’ [15]

The fact is, however, that discretionary authority for National Commanders to actually loosen, diminish, or remove ROE (including permission-limitation and prohibition caveats) rather than only tighten or increase them – even on a temporary, time-specific or operationally-specific basis – would be far more highly desirable for modern military commanders today in responding quickly and appropriately to fluid, fast-changing and threatening military situations and for immediately and drastically improving operational freedom of action, unity of effort, and operational effectiveness of national forces.  E.g. if commanders were provided with a list of militarily and legally permissible – and only politically restricted – ROE options and caveats, that could be temporarily or permanently authorised/re-authorised for use (and impeding caveat obstructions suspended or removed), on the basis of the National Commanders’ discretion in the given military situation, in order to enhance operational effectiveness and increase the safety of active military personnel in certain more highly difficult, dangerous or emergency security situations. [See section ‘The Discretion of National Commanders: Power to Decide’ in blog ‘#13 National Commanders: Caveat Mediators’, in which an example is provided relating to the ever-greater authority/freedoms given to successive Canadian contingent National Commanders in RC-South of Afghanistan and the resulting increased ability, effectiveness and global reputation of the Canadian ISAF contingents’ operations in the Afghan South].

However, national governments do not, as a general rule, give this authority to their National Commanders to loosen, diminish, or remove pre-existing, government-approved ROE, except on extreme and rare occasions when authority is specifically granted to their commanders to do so.[16] 

Consequently, even when they are granted limited discretionary power, National Commanders usually are not given this authority and may consequently not loosen, relax or remove ROE constricting the actions and manoeuvres of national armed forces in theatre, including the most freedom-curtailing, action-halting and incredibly frustrating caveat restrictions of consent-limitations and ‘red flag’ bans. 

Example: A Dutch National Commander in Bosnia-Herzegovina, 1995

There is one tangible and infamous example of a National Commander vested by government with this very limited but more commonly granted degree of discretionary authority on the public record.

As I have already recounted previously in blogs ‘#18 Caveats Endanger & Caveats Kill: National Caveats in UN Operations in Angola, Rwanda & Bosnia-Herzegovina’ and ‘#34 Crucial Questions on Rules of Engagement (ROE): (Q1/3) Are ROE Legally-Binding “Military Orders” or Merely Guidelines?’, and described at great length and detail in blogs ‘#20 Betrayal & Barbarism in Bosnia: The UNPROFOR Operation, National Caveats & Genocide in the Srebrenica UN “Protected Area”’ and ‘#21 Srebrenica Aftermath: Serb Guilt & Dutch Liability for the Genocide in the UNPROFOR ‘Safe Area’ in Bosnia’, this example concerns the Dutch National Commander in command of Dutch UNPROFOR forces guarding the Srebrenica UN ‘Protection Area’ in 1995, during an aggressive Serbian campaign of ethnic cleansing by anti-independence army and militia forces against the pro-independence Bosniak population.

When the Dutch national contingent deployed from the Netherlands, the DutchBat III forces were ignominiously and strictly restrained by their government in The Hague, led by Prime Minister Wim Kok, by starkly and obviously inappropriate ROE caveats relating to the use of force, most especially a ban which prohibited the use of lethal force except in individual or unit self-defence.[17] This was a largely politically-driven – rather than operationally- or legally-driven – caveat, which, though recommended by the UN, was selected and approved by the Dutch government at that time in the overriding domestic political interests of Dutch Battalion ‘force protection’ and ‘casualty avoidance’. This caveat totally disenabled the Dutch combat unit, and rendered them powerless as UN combatants to fulfil their own mission towards their own stated UN and Dutch objectives, of protecting the UN Protection Area (‘safe zone’) or defending the lives of the 50,000 civilians sheltering there.

Faced with a grave, urgent, and fast deteriorating military situation, the Dutch National Commander, LTCOL Thomas (“Thom”) Karremans, made the situation worse by ostensibly using his government-sanctioned, limited, discretionary authority to further tighten Dutch SROE, effectively making the Dutch UN forces even more powerless than previously. Namely, Karremans tightened the existing, government-selected caveat forbidding the use of lethal force except in self-defence, by ordering Dutch UNPROFOR forces guarding the Srebrenica Protection Area only to fire the weapons defensively ‘over the heads of aggressors’ (i.e. warning shots, rather than lethal force wounding or kill shots).[18]

The Dutch National Commander’s very poorly-considered, ‘tighter’ ROE order led directly to Dutch forces – armed with weapons that due to SROE they could not lawfully or lethally shoot to kill, even in self-defence – willingly surrendering to the Serb Enemy forces, abandoning their posts on the perimeter of the Protection Area, and handing over all their weapons to the invading, undeterred and unhalted Serb forces, who were bristling with the clear and flagrant ‘hostile intent’ of conducting their campaign of ethnic cleansing in the Srebrenica ‘Safe Area’.  Karremans’ actions also resulted in one of the most horrific commissions of genocide on unarmed civilians on record in modern times since the Holocaust.  

(Option B) National Commanders: Great Authority to Alone Determine Appropriate Mission ROE

In some even rarer ROE-authority arrangements, governments may give their National Commanders a higher degree of authority to alone determine the appropriate ROE for any given operation. This much greater power includes the freedom to ‘tighten’ and – more importantly – to ‘loosen’ ROE, including the authority even to eliminate caveat consent-limitation and prohibition bans.

In these instances, the government relies on the National Commander’s own experience, expertise and judgement while deployed on-the-ground in theatre to determine the appropriate ROE for the evolving situation over time. The commander is given the power not just to add to ROE restrictions, but to suspend or remove rules he or she deems unsuitable, either for the mission at hand, or for the circumstances faced by national forces within the MNO, in the conduct of their duties and operations. 

These far greater freedoms also come with far more relaxed bureaucratic processes and looser ‘puppet strings’ between the Capital and the combat zone.  In these ROE command arrangements, the high-ranking, senior commanding officer has the authority to make what he or she deems to be the appropriate decisions with regard to ROE, changing rules as military necessity requires in pursuit of military objectives and in response to changing security requirements or evolutions, so long as the National Commander keeps the national government informed of all ROE rules selected, modified and enforced on national contingent forces.[19]  According to LTCOL Shaw, the Commander of U.S. Forces Afghanistan (COM USFOR-A) is a good example of this.

Example: A Canadian, ISAF, National Commander in Afghanistan, 2006

In Afghanistan in late 2006, the Canadian National Commander, Brigadier General (BRIG) Tim Grant (November 2006 – August 2007), also enjoyed this more robust discretionary authority, judiciously granted him by Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s government in the Canadian Capital of Ottawa, following some bad ROE-related experiences during Canada’s earlier years in Afghanistan (discussed in blog #13). During his tour as the leading, senior, national commanding officer of the Canadian ISAF contingent in Kandahar Province in RC-South, where Canada was also a Lead Nation by rotation along with Great Britain and the Netherlands (both strong allies boasting caveat-free and extremely robust ISAF contingents of combat, security and stability forces), Grant found that he ‘was empowered to make 99% of the ops-related decisions in theatre’ (and the other one percent never came up).[20]

This meant not only that Grant was able, as the Canadian National Commander, to send Canadian forces out of their assigned AO of Kandahar Province into other parts of RC-South – for instance, to assist allied British forces in neighbouring Helmand Province on their western flank – without having to go through the slow and laborious process of seeking approval from the government in Ottawa for each Canadian operational deployment in Afghanistan.[21]  Even more importantly, moreover, this high power of discretion meant that Grant never had to reject a NATO or COMISAF request (although he did ‘engage in some discussions with his NATO commanders to “achieve the desired effect” ’).[22]

This was and remains today a rare and exceptional feat for Canada, which would rightly be deserving of great international praise and kudos for this robust pattern of conduct in any UN-led or NATO-led MNO around the world. But the achievement is even more exceptional in light of the context of the extremely complex, multifaceted, and Counter-Insurgency (COIN) oriented ISAF mission in Afghanistan, fought by a so-called ‘Coalition of the Willing’ of forces drawn from more than 50 nations, in which, over the course of the mission from 2001-2014, the majority of national contingents ‘willingly’ contributed were nevertheless loaded down with wide-ranging and greatly obstructive caveat fetters for the duration of the mission. [Refer to blog ‘#33 The Problem of “National Caveats” in NATO Operations around the World, 1996-2016’.]

(Option C) High-Level, Mid-Level & Low-Level Military Commanders: Authority to Conditionally ‘Change and Notify’

Lastly, the third ‘degree’ of ROE discretionary authority granted by national governments to their armed forces on deployments abroad occurs when a government empowers more than one individual with the authority to ‘conditionally’ change SROE.

In these extremely rare cases among nations, a range of numerous, high-ranking Commanding Officers (COs) are authorised by government to make new ROE, based on military necessities and security conditions on the ground, if they deem it best or acceptable to give extra direction to the armed forces under their command and control, and need only notify the government of these SROE modifications after the fact.[23]   Unlike in Options A and B, however, mid-ranking and low-level COs are also additionally empowered to make changes to SROE with regard to the units over which they hold command authority and responsibility, and notify government of these changes. 

The only major condition to this delegated ROE-authority arrangement is that if any new ROE instructions are more restrictive orders to military forces, than those originally authorised by government, then the low-level commanders that are tightening or increasing ROE restrictions must seek and obtain government approval for this change (as with National Commanders in Option A), whereas high- to mid-ranking COs do not need to seek approval and may again simply notify the government of the increased constraint. This is because, according to LTCOL Shaw, ROE are very important at low levels of conflict where units are continuously out on security details.  ‘There is more impact where the rubber hits the road, in simplistic terms, but less so the higher you go,’ he explains.

Consequently, it is usually necessary for low-level commanders (e.g. infantry company commanders) to seek and receive official approval for selecting more restrictive ROE orders (though they are permitted to implement and enforce these changes pending a response from military high command), since ‘changes could affect the effectiveness of the unit (e.g. the force configuration)’. [24]  If, in extremely uncommon cases, low-level COs are not explicitly required by their government to ‘seek and receive’ official approval from the Capital for each more restrictive ROE change, then they are required to at least inform or ‘notify’ the leadership of these changes, who, more likely than not, would offer some command direction as to whether that change was acceptable or not.[25]

The United States provides a good illustration of this third and exceptionally free kind of ‘discretionary authority’ arrangement, which existed from at least 2006-2016 between American governments and the armed forces operating in foreign fields on their behalf (current status unknown). I outlined above that American National Commanders are routinely permitted to select additional ROE they deem suitable for the accomplishment of each mission on which they embark, from a list of ‘supplementary measures’ issued to them at the beginning of each military mission.[26] However, it is not just American American National Commanders like the US COMFOR-A, but also U.S. operational and tactical commanders at all levels that are authorised by the U.S. government to add their own supplemental measures to their list of SROE.

In doing so, the only known condition to shape the behaviour of these mid-level operational and low-level tactical commanders is that these American commanders can only make the desired changes to their SROE on the proviso that: (1) they are more restrictive (not freer) than those approved by the Secretary of Defense; (2) they are consistent with the directions of higher authority and relevant law (e.g. the LOAC); and (3) that, for reasons explained above, due notification is given to the Secretary of Defense as soon as possible.[27] This means, however, that instead of having the full ‘third degree’ discretionary authority both to ‘loosen’ ROE and ‘tighten’ ROE with either consent or notification, as high-ranking American COs supposedly do in this arrangement, any and all changes or additions to SROE made by mid-level or low-level American COs are restricted only to ‘tightening’ or ‘adding’ further ‘yellow-flag’ consent-limitation (2^nd category) or ‘red-flag’ prohibition (3^rd category) rules, rather than the military ideal of being able to ‘loosen’ them, remove them, or transform them into ‘green-light’ authorisations (1^st category).  

Consequently, while the U.S. purportedly maintains this third and exceptionally rare ‘discretionary authority’ ROE arrangement between the government in Washington D.C. and its deployed armed forces around the globe, which gives the full range of American military commanders more freedom to change ROE than most of their counterparts in conflict theatres, the arrangement is somewhat hampered, impeded and even endangered at the lower tactical levels by the fact that mid- to low-level American commanders have only limited modification abilities to further restrict ROE restrictions. Changes or additions made to SROE are therefore as limited here, at these lower, friction-fraught and critical levels of conflict, as they were in the first ‘National Commander’ discretionary authority arrangement described previously, with all of its inherent and consequential risks and dangers, as exemplified above and in blog #34 with regard to Dutch UNPROFOR forces in Srebrenica, and the limited government-sanctioned authority – and limited judgement – of the Dutch National Commander Karremans.

So far there are few nations on the world stage who have embraced this entirely logical and practical, but wide-ranging and extensive discretionary authority arrangement, with regard to multiple high-level, mid-level and low-level military commanders modifying ROE in the midst of military operations. 

As a general rule, in most national force contingents deployed in service of their governments’ foreign and security policy aims and objectives, ROE can not, must not, and is not altered by commanders of lower ranks – except in extremely rare and permitted ‘exceptional’ circumstances, where some national governments have, for their own classified reasons, decided to place a degree of trust in the judgement of their low-level tactical commanders in theatre, and have therefore given them a degree of individual discretion in theatre to alter ROE, as they see fit, based on the situation on the ground, in the air, or on the sea. 

Example: A Norwegian F-16 Commander & Staff Officers in NATO’s Libyan Air Campaign, 2011

One tangible example on the public record illustrates this kind of ROE command authority arrangement with regard to many authorised military commanders.  It relates to Norway, a small but important, combat-robust, NATO nation, and its participation in the NATO air campaign over Libya in 2011.

Initially conducted by a somewhat reluctant ‘Coalition of the Willing’, in response to unlawful humanitarian atrocities both committed and threatened against Libyan civilians by the Libyan dictatorship of Muammar al-Gaddafi, the coalition air operation was subsequently converted into a NATO-led operation by an even more reluctant and fractured NATO Alliance (for more information on the background behind the multinational air bombardment campaign in Libya, refer to blog ‘#33 The Problem of “National Caveats” in NATO Operations around the World, 1996-2016’). 

Prior to NATO’s assumption of command over the UN-mandated mission, there were fears expressed by some combat-ready NATO members that the same kinds of combat-averse caveats that had consistently haunted and habitually neutered NATO forces in its previous military operations in Bosnia, Kosovo, Afghanistan, and even the Gulf of Aden around Somalia, would again be imposed by NATO nations contributing to a new Libyan campaign. These abstract fears about ‘operationally inflexible commanders’ unable to execute their missions were borne out in reality by subsequent events, as NATO governments quickly approved numerous, far-ranging and severely restrictive national caveats in the ROE instructions they issued to their respective air forces participating in the Libyan air campaign.[28]

Indeed, once NATO agreed to command the mission and Operation Unified Protector (OUP) commenced (with NATO nations Germany, Poland, Portugal and initially Turkey refusing to participate and ‘opting out’ of the mission entirely, and other members of the collective security alliance refusing to take part in even the less-risky naval arms embargo operation), caveats were imposed by NATO participating nations which limited or banned national forces from participating in flights to enforce the No-Fly Zone, or alternatively limited or banned air force participation in air-to-ground bombing operations against the government or rebel forces conducting attacks against Libyan civilians (e.g. the Netherlands, Spain, and Italy over a 6-week period between March-April when the risk to aircraft conducting airstrikes was high).[29]  

In stark contrast, despite being small nations with small militaries and more narrowly-defined and developed ‘niche’ military capabilities than their larger, more equipped, more militarily capable, but more reluctant NATO peers, NATO nations Belgium, Norway and Denmark distinguished themselves in NATO and concretely ‘punched above their weight’. The small nations made themselves remarkable by the fact that their respective governments not only kept their air force elements caveat-free, but also willingly allowed their air forces to robustly take part in the most kinetic aspects of the mission – the high-risk, air-to-ground bombing missions – limited in their full engagement and cooperation only by their military capabilities or low ammunition supplies.[30] As Frost-Nielsen aptly summarises, by not imposing caveat consent-limitations and bans on its national forces, Norway ‘provided an unconditional contribution’ to the NATO-led operation in Libya.[31] As he explains:

‘With broad support for participation in Libya – both across the parties in parliament and within the three coalition partners in the majority government – no concerns were raised, and no party threatened to veto a decision for Norwegian military participation in the Libya intervention. Thus, there [were] no reasons to expect any caveats. The expectation is consistent with evidence that confirms that Norway did not apply any caveats in terms of restricting the use of its F-16s, or reservations on following coalition ROE.

 

One NATO official emphasized that: “Norway took some of the most challenging missions…this helped Operation Unified Protector execution, especially early on during the operation whereas other nations were most reluctant to accept targeting intelligence and made the targeting process more challenging.”…Throughout the operations, the Norwegian F-16s continued to conduct offensive bombing missions – both in densely populated areas with risk of civilian casualties, and striking military command and control facilities with the risk of unintentionally killing leaders of the Libyan regime.’[32]

However, in an extremely unusual but true event (the saying “the truth is stranger than fiction” certainly applies in this case), it appears that there was one Norwegian officer, one of the commanders of the Norwegian F-16 contingent, who was not at all happy about the continuing caveat-free status of Norwegian air forces, nor the great degree of trust and freedom of action given to Norwegian pilots by the government in Oslo led by Prime Minister Jens Stoltenberg.[33] This individual commander, who not only personally believed that the government had given Norwegian forces too much freedom and too little oversight or ‘monitoring’, but also feared that ‘by simply following orders’ from NATO Operational Command Headquarters ‘we could have exposed our politicians’ to considerable risk, chose to take matters into his own hands.[34] Speculating that ‘just following orders from NATO lacked political backing in Oslo’, he, together with a number of other Norwegian Air Force staff officers (including it seems a military Legal Adviser to the Norwegian liaison team), reportedly used their ROE caveat ‘Red-Card Holder (RCH)’ discretionary authority, granted to them by their political overlords in government, to tighten offensive ‘Mission Accomplishment’ ROE and ‘reject targets with certain risk levels’ because ‘they feared potential negative political consequences in Norway if something went wrong’ during any of the high-risk missions.[35]

Usually government ‘micromanagement’, ‘monitoring’ and ‘over-control’ of their deployed national forces signals clearly that these governments do not trust their own military, nor the judgement or discernment of their own highly-trained and experienced military commanders. Conversely, in this rather odd and perplexing Nordic case, a military commander and other military personnel, vested with the authority to approve or deny bombing missions assigned to air assets, desired greater micromanagement and political over-control because they did not trust their own government.

Indeed, according to Frost-Nielsen, a number of mission sorties ‘ordered by NATO’ during the NATO-led Libyan air campaign, and unobstructed by the Norwegian government in Oslo as the highest and most powerful political authority in Norway, were additionally also rejected by the Norwegian military officers themselves due to their more constrictive, self-imposed ‘offensive force’ instructions – instead of by the Norwegian government or their designated National Commander – based on their own personal views and entrusted discretionary authority.[36]

Map displaying the NATO and Partner nations taking part in NATO’s air and naval campaign “Operation Unified Protector” in and around Libya from March-October 2011, including participating airbases and warships.[37]

 

Blowback: Negative Consequences of Overly-Constrained Commanders

Unfortunately the current prevailing norm, described at the beginning of this blog, is that most military commanders today have either little discretionary authority or none at all over the ROE issued by political governments for use in their military operations.

This lack of ROE authority (i.e. delegation and trust) among commanders is a state of affairs shared by most national governments around the world today, in the command and control of their military forces conducting military operations in world security affairs. But it inevitably means that there are multiple instances occurring around the globe in which deployed military commanders, earnestly and energetically seeking to fulfil their specifically prescribed missions, have found themselves obstructed by inappropriate or excessively tight, government-imposed, ROE restraints. These political-military-legal handcuffs not only block their ability to do the specific job assigned to them, but place them and the individual military personnel serving under their command in ridiculous – even absurd – positions, sometimes even positions that hazard not only the mission, but also their very lives.

These almost unfathomable situations make the plight of military commanders – loaded with responsibilities but bound by unyielding caveat bonds – not only pitiable, but worthy of close examination and exposure. Indeed, according to the New Zealand defence academic Joel Hayward, the study of military commanders – their critical role, their value in military operations, their decisions, and their very human experiences as commanders, leaders and protectors of people, in the most dangerous, stressful and life-threatening circumstances – has long and wrongly been overlooked in defence studies departments around the world (see endnote).[38]

Two examples amply illustrate the negative consequences of military commanders being overly-constrained by ROE caveat shackles.

Example 1: New Zealand UNTAET Commanders in East Timor, 2000   

The first example of overly-constrained military commanders, attempting to operate while weighed down with caveat fetters, concerns the New Zealand national contingent participating in the UNTAET ‘peace-keeping’ mission in East Timor at the end of the 1990s, which was led jointly by ANZAC nations in the Pacific – Australia and New Zealand.

On 30 August 1999, East Timor had voted overwhelmingly in a UN-supervised referendum to break away completely from Indonesian rule and begin a transition to full independence as a self-governing, sovereign nation. The vote led to an outbreak of violence in East Timor (also known as ‘Timor-Leste’), situated to the east of Indonesian-controlled West Timor on Timor Island, which included murder, arson, looting and the forced displacement of 500,000 people.[39] A bloody conflict also ensued between pro-Independence East Timorese militia and anti-independence Indonesian militia, the latter supported in part by Indonesian police and military forces.[40] Acts of violence were also committed by Indonesian authorities and anti-independence civilian militias against East Timorese people in neighbouring Indonesian West Timor.

Following Indonesia’s withdrawal of its armed forces from the island, after encountering intense international opposition to its actions in East Timor, the UNTAET ‘peace-keeping’ mission was established on 25 October 1999 to fill the power vacuum that remained, and was mandated to govern and administer the province during the period of its transition to full independence.[41]  One of the UNTAET’s key mission objectives was to provide security and maintain law and order throughout the territory of East Timor, until its official date of independence on 20 May 2002 (for more background information on the origins of this conflict, refer to blog ‘#13 National Commanders: Caveat Mediators‘).[42]

Map of East Timor, occupying the eastern half of Timor Island.[43]

Due to the standard practice of using UN-developed and UN-recommended ROE for certain MNOs as a template for national ROE formulation, as described in an earlier blog (‘#11 How are Rules of Engagement Formed for Military Operations?’), the ROE that the New Zealand government at that time issued to their NZDF contingent were heavily UN influenced – to the detriment of New Zealand military personnel. 

In their recommended UNTAET set of ROE instructions, the UN had placed the emphasis of their ROE only on defensive force instructions relating to the Self-Defence class of ROE for UNTAET personnel, and minimised, avoided, or ignored the essential Mission Accomplishment rules that are required to conduct the ‘other half of the coin’ of military operations, offensive military action, which is necessary for accomplishing all missions towards set objectives.  In other words, the UN-recommended set of UNTAET ROE contained only half (or less) of the necessary content of a full and robust set of ROE instructions for military operations. This was a quasimodo reality that has frequently rendered UN operations around the globe reactive rather than proactive operations, and defensive rather than offensive operations, even in cases where multinational security missions have been explicitly authorised under Chapter VII as ‘peace-enforcement’ operations  (involving UN combatants with combat responsibilities to ‘enforce the peace’), not ‘peace-keeping’ operations (a blend of UN combatants and UN non-combatants charged mostly with security and mediating responsibilities to ‘keep the peace’).

As I have outlined previously and in greater detail in blog ‘#10 Rules of Engagement & National Caveats: “Self-Defence” & “Mission Accomplishment” Instructions’, offensive ‘Mission Accomplishment’ instructions within sets of operational ROE are more important and more consequential than defensive ‘Self-Defence’ instructions.  They have been described as ‘the driving force behind all ROE’ and relate specifically to the attainment of strategic and operational objectives through the defeat of Enemy centres of gravity, while at the same time providing sufficient force protection to minimise casualties.[44] According to U.S. Marine LTCOL Womack, ‘meaningful ROE must strike a balance’ between these two, necessary, classes of orders.[45]

The vast majority of rules within any set of ROE issued to military contingents deploying on operations are supposed to comprise these permissive, mission accomplishment ‘authorisations’, which explicitly permit military personnel to use certain weapons and tactics in the pursuit of achieving mission objectives, provided they are used lawfully in compliance with LOAC obligations.[46] These permissive ‘offensive lethal force’ measures are straight-forward rules for Mission Accomplishment, which generally lead to greater freedom of action on the part of military commanders on the ground, and can be divided into three distinct categories of rules: (1) authorisation rules; (2) limitation rules; and (3) prohibition rules. The majority of ROE orders traditionally belong to the first category and are largely permissive and proactive rules for attack and assault, permitting the immediate use of weapons and tactics, provided they are used lawfully in compliance with LOAC obligations.[47] The second category usually contains a minority of ROE instructions, and concerns limitation rules which allow national forces to use certain weaponry and tactics only after official approval has been sought and given by either the national Secretary or Minister of Defence, or the Combatant Commander of the operation (though sometimes also the Prime Minister or President).[48] Very few – if any – rules  should belong in the third category of prohibition rules, which contain outright bans that forbid absolutely the use of certain weapons and tactics in the conduct of security missions (for more detailed information see blog “#10 Rules of Engagement & National Caveats: “Self-Defence” & “Mission Accomplishment” Instructions”).[49] 

ROE Best Practices: The desired scope of ROE ‘Self-Defence’ defensive force instructions vs. ‘Mission Accomplishment’ offensive force Instructions, in any government-issued set of ROE to national armed forces deploying on military operations.

Despite its obvious – even glaring – flaws, however, the UN’s sorely inadequate set of UN ROE was, nevertheless, largely adopted by the UN-revering, Labour Government of New Zealand led by Prime Minister Helen Clark. [Refer to blog ‘#25 Laws of War Brief (Part 2): The Protections, Rights & Obligations of Civilian Non-Combatants & Military Combatants under the LOAC’ for more information on the Laws of War which govern the two categories of ‘UN Combatants’ and ‘UN Non-combatants’ participating in UN multinational security endeavours.]

In 2000, during the course of the mission, a New Zealand soldier was killed was killed in a cross-border, hill ambush by an anti-independence militia attacking from West Timor (the first New Zealand combat death since the Vietnam War), and his body deliberately mutilated.[50] As a consequence of their inappropriate, heavily UN-influenced, defensive, Self-Defense-biased ROE constraints, New Zealand military personnel could not react effectively to this combatant-to-combatant killing and war crime (corpse mutilation), to hunt down and punish the hostile force that had committed this act against a New Zealand soldier, nor even fulfil part of New Zealand’s own assigned tasking in the UNTAET of adequately securing the southern half of the border between West and East Timor from cross-border, invading, militia groups.[51] So defensive and restricted were these incorporated UN ROE, in fact, that NZDF and other UNTAET forces in East Timor were only permitted to use lethal force, even in self-defence, in response to a ‘hostile act’ – not ‘hostile intent’.  

As LTCOL Nick Gillard, a former Chief of Staff at the New Zealand-led PRT in Bamyan Province of Afghanistan (CRIB 14, 2009) and subsequent Military Advisor at the New Zealand Embassy in London, has stated on this real-life scenario:

‘Because it was a UN operation, you were always reactive. You could only respond if you came under fire.

 

…But if, for example, you raised a pistol in my face now, under UN ROE I wouldn’t even have time to say “Stop! Stop or I’ll shoot! Stop or I’m going to shoot!” [the UN-required ‘three warnings before firing in self-defence’ rule]. And if I needed to say this in Bahasa [the Indonesian language], so you can understand it because you’re Indonesian,…by the time I say that once, I’m dead! 

 

…The whole UN thing of being defensive, of being a peace-keeper – peace-keeping is the wrong term by definition.  It’s peace-enforcement. Peace-keeping is diplomatic, it’s pre-conflict, it’s what you do to stop things from happening by pure definition. So we’re not in fact “peace-keepers”.’[52]

In addition, the New Zealand National Commander of the contingent had also been given no ROE discretionary authority at all by the New Zealand government, and was therefore not empowered to make his own judgement calls regarding altering ROE, but instead had to seek and obtain permission and approval from the Minister of Defence in Wellington for every single change to ROE.[53] 

In this politically- and military-bound situation, and unable to change the far too restrictive ROE binding their military actions, the only thing the New Zealand National Commander and his subordinate commanders could do was to reinterpret the defensive ROE that had been issued to them. Instead of changing the poorly-made and sorely inadequate ROE rules, the NZDF commanders opted to ‘look at the ROE slightly differently’ and change how they executed their ROE.  As LTCOL Gillard explains:  

‘With [Private Leonard] Manning’s death and the follow-up, some different interpretations were made of the ROE. The ROE didn’t change. It was a case of saying to those of us who were on the ground that followed…. you wanted to have an influence on the militias coming across from West Timor, killing New Zealand soldiers, mutilating their bodies and then disappearing, because we couldn’t proactively go after them.

  

But you just had to look at the ROE slightly differently. The ROE didn’t change, but how you executed those ROEs changed…I mean, you could fire if you felt that you were in danger, you know, if there was a threat to your life.  So what happens if you then deliberately put yourself in danger? You know what I mean?

 

So if the militia are over here, 600 metres away from you, and they get spotted. Why don’t you put yourself in a position so you are within a very close proximity to the militia? So therefore, under the ROE you felt that you were being threatened.  Then of course you play the – “If it looks like a duck, if it walks like a duck, it probably is a duck”…So if you sort of looked at the duck and said, “It’s carrying weapons, it’s moving in a tactical manner, by night, it’s carrying heavy weapons, it’s militia”, then you put yourself in line with that militia group, and then you engage it – legitimately under your ROE.

 

… That’s how we gain success…You’re becoming proactive, using defensive ROE.’

With this clever and legally-permitted reinterpretation of their severely restrictive ‘self-defence only’ lethal force instructions (also tacitly permitted by NZDF high command and even the government at the Beehive), units of the New Zealand UNTAET contingent were subsequently able to robustly and successfully achieve their mission of securing the border and reducing hostile military activity from invading militia in their vicinity of the AO.  To summarise the positive outcome of this smart thinking (“Kiwi ingenuity”), in Gillard’s words:

‘We ended up getting into a number of contacts and killing a number of militia as a result of this, which had a significant effect on the militia. Essentially, it stopped. Timor worked because of things like that. The militia went away. What you did to execute the ROE…within all of the legal requirements of the ROE…changed your actions.’[54]

Example 2: Danish ISAF National Commander in Afghanistan, 2006

The second example took place in Afghanistan in September 2006. During the ISAF’s first major offensive to eject Taliban forces from Helmand and Kandahar Provinces in Regional Command South (RC-South) known as Operation Medusa, a combined British-Afghan combat unit including ANA and ANP personnel found themselves heavily outnumbered and trapped while conducting their mission of taking back from the Taliban the town of Garmsir, a critical insurgent hub in Helmand Province.[55]  Running alarmingly low on both ammunition and food, the unit made a distress call for emergency reinforcement and, following two failed COMISAF requests for emergency aid from two caveated ISAF allies in the area (the Dutch pre-Riga and the Australians), a Danish reconnaissance squadron was eventually – after slow and lengthy discussions in Prime Minister Anders Fogh Rasmussen’s government in Copenhagen – deployed eight days later to render assistance to the besieged unit in the raging gunfight. [56] 

The 2006 Garmsir Crisis: Caveated allies fail to cooperate in order to reinforce a British-ANA-ANP unit, trapped in a heavy gun battle with Taliban forces.[57]

However, when the Danish rescue force did in fact deploy to reinforce their overwhelmed British allies, the Danish rescue force arrived bound by a government-imposed ROE prohibition caveat that forbade Danish personnel from participating in ‘war-fighting’ offensive combat operations, preventing them from ‘actually fighting the Taliban’, meaning the Danish ‘emergency reinforcements’ could in fact give little, practical, real-world assistance or reinforcement at all to the battle-weary and desperate British-Afghan unit in the battle raging around them.[58]

With the offensive fighting ability of the Danish combat troops politically castrated by this unreasonably absurd ROE caveat made in Copenhagen, the shocked and exhausted British-Afghan unit was forced to hold out for help another six days – with only sporadic U.K. and U.S. air support.[59]  Eventually as the days of battle passed by, the situation became so critical that the Danish commander was compelled – like the New Zealanders years before in East Timor – to begin ‘interpreting their rules of engagement loosely’, and the Danish unit commenced clearing Enemy-held buildings with grenades and machine guns.[60] The joint British-Afghan combat unit was finally relieved by British Royal Marines on the 14^th day of battle, but only after enduring two full weeks of intense combat with the Taliban.[61] 

It is as yet unknown the fate of the Danish commander who took the critical step of ‘re-interpreting’ and/or ‘loosening’ his assigned but inappropriate ROE, on the basis of his own discretionary judgement under these dire, emergency circumstances, though undoubtedly his actions were both logical and necessary, and saved many lives. [For more information on this particular incident in Afghanistan, refer to blog #13.]

 

Ridiculous ROE: The Result of the Political-Military Disconnect

Absurd but true incidents such as the two described above are the tangible, real-world consequences of the ‘grey area’ intersect – or disconnect – between the political and military spheres.

Namely, there exists a significant political-military gap in thinking between military leaders and their political masters, that are exposed most starkly by this device known as ROE.  Civilian leaders do not always understand the nature of war or the business of conducting warfare, thereby imposing constraints that, militarily-speaking, do not allow for the best course of action. The constraints embodied within ROE can cede opportunities, surprise, momentum, and the overall advantage to Enemy forces, much to the chagrin of military commanders on the ground who have been asked to do what may often seem impossible: to achieve specific military objectives with a very limited range of means and methods.  Through ROE, politicians might quite plausibly be sending military personnel into harm’s way with their hands operationally tied behind their backs.

Nevertheless, all military deployments take place to advance national policy in pursuit of a specific political aim.  Politics thus not only forms an operation’s genesis, but also governs its execution and signals its termination via political agreements or treaties, thereby proving the veracity of the assertion made by Karl von Clausewitz that war is in reality:

‘Not just a political act, but a true political instrument, the continuation of political interaction, and the carrying out of the same by other means…the political object is the goal, war is the means, and this means can never even be thought of without a goal’.[62] 

Since war is an expression of politics – and merely an instrument of the political realm – it is evident that political factors must always prevail over the security domain.  As Clausewitz argued on the matter, if in reality war is innately an extension or tool of policy, military leaders must be subordinate to political leaders, and military strategy to political policy.[63]  Indeed, according to Clausewitz: ‘He who maintains, as is so often the case, that politics should not interfere with the conduct of a war has not grasped the ABCs of grand strategy.’[64] 

Clausewitz (1780-1831) was a realist, Prussian, military commander, veteran, theorist, philosopher, and author of the famous book on military strategy and theory ‘On War’ (‘Vom Krieg’). He learnt great and important lessons from his wartime experience in 7 war campaigns, especially from his experience of suffering two devastating and colossal Prussian then Russian military defeats in war (the 1806 Battle of Jena-Auerstadt with 41,000 Prussian casualties and the 1812 Battle of Borodino with 40-45,000 Russian-Prussian casualties respectively), against aggressive and expansionist ‘Revolutionary’ Napoleonic French forces in Europe from 1806 until the Battle of Waterloo in 1815.

‘To achieve victory we must mass our forces at the hub of all power and movement: the enemy’s ‘Center of Gravity’ [or greatest point or area of strength in Enemy forces]… The best strategy is always to be very strong, first in general and then at the decisive point (Centre of Gravity).’

– Karl von Clausewitz

For Clausewitz, who spent much time reflecting on the difficult ‘friction’ and conflicting realities in war, the only solution to this struggle of opposing forces – politicians advocating restraint in view of policy aims, on the one hand, and military commanders requiring freedom of action to achieve these aims through military means, on the other hand – lies in ‘dualism’.  As he concluded on the matter:

‘The military instrument must be subordinated to the political leadership, but political leaders must understand its nature and limitations. Politicians must not attempt to use the instrument of war to achieve purposes for which it is unsuited. It is the responsibility of military leaders to ensure that the political leadership understands the character and limitations of the military instrument. There is thus a gray area between soldiers’ subordination to political leaders and their professional responsibility to educate those leaders in military realities.’[65]

This ‘grey area’ remains a great and increasingly-urgent challenge of our time, especially in the context of modern warfare in an age of global terrorism, and even more so, modern counter-insurgency campaigns in which the political and military spheres are inextricably intertwined. 

 

* For more analysis on the issue of “national caveats” and their impact on the effectiveness of multinational military operations conducted in the interest of establishing and maintaining international peace and security, see Dr Regeena Kingsley’s original doctoral research in Defence & Strategic Studies (2014) entitled: “Fighting against Allies: An Examination of “National Caveats” within the NATO-led International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) Campaign in Afghanistan & their Impact on ISAF Operational Effectiveness, 2002-2012”.

Dr Kingsley’s full Thesis and its accompanying volume of Appendices can be viewed and downloaded from Massey University’s official website here:

http://mro.massey.ac.nz/xmlui/handle/10179/6984

 

Endnotes:

[1] New Zealand Defence Force (NZDF), Directorate of Legal Services, ‘Annex A to Rules of Engagement, Draft-Rules of Engagement Manual for the New Zealand Defence Force’, ‘11.0 Rules of Engagement’, in NZDF Operational Law Companion, May 1999.

*For written NZDF authorisation permitting the use of these sections within the NZDF Operational Law Companion, refer to p.  xxiii-xxxiv of Volume I: Thesis in my doctoral research, accessible here: http://mro.massey.ac.nz/handle/10179/6984.

[2] NZDF, ‘Annex A to Rules of Engagement’, ibid.

[3] To exemplify the point, during the course of Operation Resolute Support (ORS or RSM) in Afghanistan from 2015-present, the mission that succeeded and replaced the ISAF, American RSM forces operated throughout the year 2015 under a ‘red-flag’ national caveat ban that forbade them from ever engaging in kinetic, lethal, offensive operations against ISIS fighters, alongside their Afghan ANSF/ANDSF counterparts, except in rare cases of unit or individual self-defence. This was because, for the duration of the first year of the mission, the Obama Administration had not designated the growing Afghan branch of ISIS (IS/ISIL/Daesh) terrorists as a ‘hostile force’ (also the situation in Libya from 2011-2016).  The absence of this important designation meant that American forces in Afghanistan were compelled by their extremely unsuitable and outdated ROE to treat ISIS terrorists as a ‘non-Enemy’ or ‘non-hostile’ force in the conflict theatre and could only apply or respond with ‘minimum force’ to both their terror attacks and bombings, and military planning, preparations, manoeuvres and assaults. This prohibition caveat was in place despite the fact that the primary function of U.S. forces in the RSM was to train, advise and assist indigenous Afghan forces in the conduct of all of their security and combat operations – which included waging war against anti-Government ISIS terrorists and fighters.  It is no surprise that this caveat proved to be counterproductive to the intent and operations of RSM in Afghanistan and was therefore removed, by the Administration that had imposed it, a year later in January 2016 (C. Savage, ‘Obama Relaxes Rules for Striking ISIS in Afghanistan’, The New York Times, 20 January 2016, http://www.nytimes.com/2016/01/21/world/asia/obama-relaxes-rules-for-striking-isis-in-afghanistan.html?ref=topics&_r=1, (accessed 30 January 2016)).

Likewise, in OEF’s successor mission of Operation Freedom Sentinel (OFS), the same decision not to designate the Afghan branch of ISIS as a ‘hostile force’ throughout the year 2015 resulted in a consent-limitation caveat being imposed on parallel American OFS counter-terrorist forces in the same theatre of war. In the course of their Counter-Terrorism (CT) operations, American OFS forces had to apply for and gain approval from the American government in Washington D.C. before they could lawfully strike ISIS targets operating in Afghanistan.  Not only did they have to ask for permission each and every time they wanted to target ISIS forces, however, but in order to gain government approval to strike ISIS forces, American OFS personnel had to verifiably prove that the selected ISIS target in question had ‘significant ties to Al Qaeda’s remnants in the region’. Although the ‘Al-Qaeda in Iraq’ (AQI) terrorist cell had originally devolved and mutated in Iraq to form ISIS after the 2003 multinational ‘pre-emptive’ war to remove Saddam Hussein’s dictatorship from power, and then rapidly grew and expanded following America’s premature withdrawal from the young, stabilising, democratic and multi-ethnic Iraqi State in 2011 – after 8 long and gruelling years of U.S. and allied investment in effort, blood, lives and treasure, Al-Qaeda was by this time in modern history, in 2015, an entirely different, if parallel, terrorist network operating in Afghanistan.

The Obama Administration had purposely narrowed the ‘freedom of action’ of American forces in Afghanistan and further afield around the globe (e.g. in Libya), by imposing this ‘Al-Qaeda-Connection’ restraint into American ROE with regard to ISIS, because the U.S. government at that time reportedly only wished to carry out offensive attacks against ‘significant terrorists’ rather than ‘bomb groups “willy-nilly”’. In other words, the Obama government only wished to attack Al-Qaeda terrorists and those connected with or supporting Al-Qaeda, rather than the newly-emerged ISIS terrorists, who were flowing from the chaotic power-vacuum of Iraq to Afghanistan, after the withdrawal of the United States and its other democracy-supporting and freedom-loving allies. This decision was based on two considerations. Firstly, the fact that only Al-Qaeda terrorists – not ISIS terrorists – had been the perpetrators of the multi-pronged 9/11 terrorist attack of 2001, that had been the catalyst for America going to war in Afghanistan to permanently remove from power the Al-Qaeda-hosting and terror-supporting Taliban totalitarian regime. And secondly, President Obama’s desire and endeavours to decisively bring to an end – including through the mere act of a verbal public media announcement – the so-called ‘Global War on Terror’ campaign against terrorists and terror-supporting State entities, that since 2001 had been continuing to commit terrorist crimes around the world (C. Savage, ‘Obama Relaxes Rules for Striking ISIS in Afghanistan’, op. cit.).

The increasingly restrictive ROE constraints imposed on American forces by the Obama Administration over the period of 6 years between 2010-2016 remained in force until the early months of 2017, when they were removed – and American ‘mission command’, ‘freedom of action’, and operational effectiveness massively increased – by the incoming Trump Administration.

The whole concept of ‘mission command’ is in fact a critical and greatly discussed subject in military circles. Mission command concerns commanders trusting subordinates to perform the tasks delegated to them. Commanders exercising mission command give their subordinates the required parameters of a mission – e.g. Intent, Resources and End-State – and then allow them without any further interference from above to do their jobs and simply ‘get on with it’.  As New Zealand Army LTCOL Nick Gillard, has pithily expressed on the subject: ‘We have a term we use – “mission command”… I’ll give you my intent, I’ll give you my resources, and I’ll give you an end-state.  Now go away and do it.  It’s called trusting your subordinates. We talk about it until the cows come home…In fact we exercise mission command pretty well in New Zealand. We trust our subordinates to do things…I’d give it to those patrols who went out in Afghanistan: Intent, Resources, End-state. That’s all you need. Now go and do it. You know, I’m not going to tell you how to go and do it’ (NZDF Lieutenant Colonel (LTCOL) Nick Gillard, Interviewed by Regeena Kingsley, 1 September 2010, New Zealand High Commission, London, United Kingdom).

[In fact LTCOL Gillard, who was formerly the Chief of Staff for the New Zealand PRT based in Bamyan Province of Afghanistan (RC-East under American Lead Nation command], was purposely selected for tribute in 2010 by Her Majesty, Queen Elizabeth II. He was one among a small number of military personnel from British Commonwealth countries, who was chosen to be honoured with the ‘Order of Merit’ award, primarily for his effective practice of mission command at all times during his service in Afghanistan, which allowed his NZDF staff the freedom to conduct operations to best effect during their tour in Bamyan between April-October 2009 (CRIB 14).] 

Carl Higbie, a former Navy SEAL, has also spoken of this important mission command concept with relation to U.S. military forces, stating in April 2017: ‘That’s what’s been lacking under Obama’s 8 years – the autonomy to fight war as we see fit. I mean, look – you’ve had people, these bureaucrats, running war scenarios that have never experienced war and don’t understand what they are doing. Trump said, “Hey look – Mattis, you are the expert here, you do what you got to do, and I got your back”…You gotta have the ability to make a decision as a commander in theatre, and that’s what President Trump is giving to his commanders…When I was there in 2007 under Bush, we were able to drop bombs whenever we saw fit, whenever we said that our lives were in danger and we needed to. When we were there under Obama, there was an approval process where if you were in a gunfight, you had to call upward, who had to call upward, who had to call up…and then it had to come back down the same way. So you couldn’t get the munitions on the ground. By that time the firefight was over.  Guys were dying in the middle of it!…I mean, you can’t say that’s exactly why ISIS grew, but definitely the Rules of Engagement, the lack of fortitude from President Obama was a huge contributing factor’ (Carl Higbie, Interview with Pete Hegseth, Ainsley Earhardt & Brian Kilmeade, ‘FOX & Friends’, FOX News, New York, 14 April 2017).

[4] NZDF, ‘Annex A to Rules of Engagement’, op. cit.

[5] Ibid.

[6] NZDF Lieutenant Colonel (LTCOL) Andrew Shaw, Interviewed by Regeena Kingsley, 23 November 2009, NZDF Command & Staff College, Trentham Military Camp, Wellington, New Zealand.

[7] NZDF LTCOL Shaw, Interviewed by Regeena Kingsley, ibid.; NZDF Brigadier (BRIG) Roger Mortlock (Ret.), Personal communication with Regeena Kingsley, 3 November 2009, Centre for Defence & Security Studies (CDSS), Massey University, Palmerston North, New Zealand.

[8] NZDF Major (MAJ) Steve Challies, Interviewed by Regeena Kingsley, 1 December 2009, Centre for Defence & Security Studies (CDSS), Palmerston North, New Zealand.

[9] NZDF, ‘11.0 Rules of Engagement’, ibid.

[10] NATO Partnership for Peace (PfP), ‘Rules of Engagement in Multinational Operations against Terrorism’, Generated from a PfPLMS 0.2 learning object, NATO Partnership for Peace Forum (PfP ADL-WG, 2006), p. 4, http://pfpdev.ethz.ch/SCORMcontent/112363/scos/5/index.pdf, (accessed 8 October 2009).

[11] Ibid.

[12] NZDF LTCOL Shaw, Interviewed by Regeena Kingsley, ibid.

[13] Ibid.

[14] Ibid.

[15] Ibid.

[16] NZDF, ‘11.0 Rules of Engagement’, ibid., paragraph 11.14, p. 11-2. 

[17] ‘U.N., Dutch Complicity in Srebrenica Genocide’, 5 June 2007, Srebrenica Massacre, https://srebrenicamassacre1995.wordpress.com/tag/dutch-state/ (accessed 14 September 2017).

[18] A. Schröder, ‘Dealing with Genocide: A Dutch Peacekeeper Remembers’, Spiegel Online, 12 July 2005, http://www.spiegel.de/international/dealing-with-genocide-a-dutch-peacekeeper-remembers-srebrenica-a-364902.html, (accessed 26 April 2018); United Nations (UN), ‘The Fall of Srebrenica – Report of the Secretary-General pursuant to General Assembly Resolution 53/35’, UN Secretary-General Report to the UN General Assembly, 15 November 1999, p. 102, https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/324578-un-report-on-srebrenica-nov-1999.html (accessed  28 May 2018).

[19] NZDF LTCOL Shaw, Interviewed by Regeena Kingsley, op. cit.

[20] D.P. Auerswald, S.M. Saideman & M.J. Tierney, ‘Caveat Emptor! National Oversight and Military Operations in Afghanistan’, a paper presented at a conference of the American Political Science Association, Chicago, United States, (September) 2007, p. 23.

[21] Ibid.

[22] Ibid., p. 24.

[23] NZDF LTCOL Shaw, Interviewed by Regeena Kingsley, ibid.

[24] Ibid.

[25] Ibid.

[26] NATO PfP, ‘Rules of Engagement in Multinational Operations against Terrorism’, op. cit., p. 4.

[27] Ibid.

[28] J. Joyner, ‘NATO Libya Roundtable: Command and Control’, Atlantic Council in the United States (ACUS), 28 March 2011,  http://www.atlanticcouncil.org/blogs/new-atlanticist/nato-libya-roundtable-command-and-control, (accessed 30 March 2011).

[29] S. Saideman, ‘Coalitions Are Not So Convenient’, Political Violence @ a Glance, 27 August 2013, http://politicalviolenceataglance.org/2013/08/27/coalitions-are-not-so-convenient/, (accessed 17 February 2016); S. Saideman, ‘Who is Doing What in Counter-ISIS Campaign?’, Political Violence @ a Glance, 8 December 2014, http://politicalviolenceataglance.org/2014/12/08/who-is-doing-what-in-counter-isis-campaign/, (accessed 17 February 2016); D. Auerswald & S. Saideman, NATO in Afghanistan: Fighting Together, Fighting Alone, Princeton: Princeton University Press, USA, 2014, pp. 199, 201.

[30] Auerswald & Saideman, NATO in Afghanistan: Fighting Together, Fighting Alone, ibid., pp. 201, 208-209, 211.

[31] P. M. Frost-Nielsen, ‘Conditional commitments: Why states use caveats to reserve their efforts in military coalition operations’, Contemporary Security Policy, 10 April 2017, p. 14.

[32] Ibid., pp. 14-16.

[33] Ibid., p. 16.

[34] Ibid., p. 16-17.

[35] Ibid., p. 16.

[36] Ibid.

[37] Modification of a map taken from ‘2011 Military Intervention in Libya’, Wikipedia [image], 21 March 2011, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2011_military_intervention_in_Libya, (accessed 7 May 2020).

[38] J. Hayward, ‘Explaining Command’, in G. Harper & J. Hayward (eds.), Born to Lead? Portraits of New Zealand Commanders, Auckland, Exisle Publishing Limited, 2003, p. 22-23.

As Hayward states: ‘There is much value in understanding war in terms of the everyday experiences, views and feelings of ordinary soldiers, sailors and airmen. After all, along with some junior officers, they do the fighting, risk their lives, suffer wounds and die. But they do so within societal systems and formal hierarchies that place decision-makers over them. Those decision makers – the commanders – organise their lives and shape their battles. They order their advances, attacks, withdrawals and retreats. They assume responsibility for their safety, welfare and morale. This is a heavy burden, seldom treated casually. One should not, then, shy away from trying to understand the behaviour of commanders, at all levels’

 ‘…Sophisticated and jargon-filled theoretical constructions are more popular nowadays than the study of past and current human experiences. By shifting the emphasis almost entirely away from people and the role of individuality, command has lost its true meaning and become a system or method that can supposedly be learnt in isolation.

In  many defence studies departments, command is now taught mainly via the study of sophisticated management paradigms – of which there are a plethora – that are purportedly as applicable to the boardroom as they are to the battlefield. Even a cursory glance at the conflicts of the last half-century should dispel this nonsense.

Command in war is a remarkably complex, almost indescribable, deeply human relationship between those who lead and those who follow in circumstances usually dangerous, chaotic and frightening.

Command in war requires a leader to do things never required of the most ambitious and competitive businessman or woman: to remain functional in the face of mortal peril; to inspire subordinates to act with courage and aggression; to carry out the violence necessary to ensure victory; to provide restraints on violence in order to meet decent standards of morality, justice and legality; to assume direct responsibility for the lives and health of all involved’ (J. Hayward, ‘Explaining Command’, in G. Harper & J. Hayward (eds.), Born to Lead? Portraits of New Zealand Commanders, Auckland, Exisle Publishing Limited, 2003, p. 22-23).

[39] ‘East Timor – UNTAET Background’, Official Website of the United Nations, http://www.un.org/en/peacekeeping/missions/past/etimor/UntaetB.htm, (accessed 5 June 2017).

[40] Ibid.

[41] Ibid.

[42] ‘East Timor – UNTAET Mandate’, Official Website of the United Nations, http://www.un.org/en/peacekeeping/missions/past/etimor/UntaetM.htm, (accessed 5 June 2017).

 [43] Map taken from ‘File: East Timor map mhn.jpg’, Wikipedia (Wikimedia Commons) [online map], 12 December 2006, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:East_Timor_map_mhn.jpg, (accessed 5 June 2017).

[44] S. M. Womack (LTCOL.), ‘Rules of Engagement in Multinational Operations’, Marine Corps Gazette, Vol. 80, no. 2, February 1996, p. 22.

[45] Womack, ibid.

[46] NATO PfP, ‘Rules of Engagement in Multinational Operations against Terrorism’, op. cit., p. 3.

[47] Ibid.

[48] Ibid., p. 4.

[49] Ibid.

[50] NZDF LTCOL Nick Gillard, Interviewed by Regeena Kingsley, op. cit.; ‘New Zealand soldier killed in Timor-Leste’, NZ History, 24 July 2000, https://nzhistory.govt.nz/new-zealander-killed-in-timor-leste, (accessed 12 March 2021).

[51] Ibid.

[52] Ibid.

[53] NZDF MAJ Steve Challies, Interviewed by Regeena Kingsley, op. cit.

[54] NZDF LTCOL Nick Gillard, Interviewed by Regeena Kingsley, op. cit.

[55] United States Library of Congress, V. Morelli & P. Belkin, Congressional Research  Service (CRS), 3 December , 2009, p. 11, http://www.fas.org/sgp/crs/row/RL33627.pdf, (accessed 20 February 2013); Brophy & M. Fisera, ‘“National Caveats” and it’s impact on the Army of the Czech Republic’. Univerzita Obrany, 29 July 2007, http://www.vabo.cz/stranky/fisera/files/National_Caveats_Short_Version_version_V_29%20JULY.pdf, (accessed November 18, 2009); ‘Makeshift ‘Rorke’s Drift’ unit of medics and engineers holds out Taliban’, This Is London, 26 November 2006, http://www.thisislondon.co.uk/news/article-23376029-makeshift-rorkes-drift-unit-of-medics-and-engineers-holds-out-taliban.do, (accessed 4 August 2010).

[56] ‘Makeshift ‘Rorke’s Drift’ unit of medics and engineers holds out Taliban’, ibid.

[57] Modified map created from a close-crop of an unclassified ISAF Map of Afghanistan, ‘Afghanistan ISAF RC and PRT Locations’, NATO HQ, SITCEN Geo Section [online map], 22 October 2009, http://www.isaf.nato.int, (accessed 1 December 2009), combined with elements of a map provided in International Security Assistance Force (ISAF), ‘ISAF Placemat’, About ISAF – Troop Numbers and Contributions  [online map], 23 July 2009, http://www.isaf.nato.int/, (accessed 22 February, 2010).

[58] ‘Makeshift ‘Rorke’s Drift’ unit of medics and engineers holds out Taliban’, ibid.

[59] Ibid.

[60] Ibid.

[61] Brophy & Fisera, ‘“National Caveats” and it’s impact on the Army of the Czech Republic’, op. cit.;  ‘Makeshift ‘Rorke’s Drift’ unit of medics and engineers holds out Taliban’, op. cit.

[62] Own translation from German: ‘…dass der Krieg nicht bloß ein politischer Akt, sondern ein wahres politisches Instrument ist, eine Fortsetzung des politischen Verkehrs, ein Durchführen desselben mit anderen Mitteln…die politische Absicht ist der Zweck, der Krieg ist das Mittel, und niemals kann das Mittel ohne Zweck gedacht werden’ (C. von Clausewitz, ‘Erster Teil. Erstes Buch’, Vom Kriege – Hinterlassenes Werk, Ungekürzter Text’, Berlin, Ullstein Buchverlage GmbH & Co. KG., 1999, p. 45.)

[63] C. Bassford, ‘Clausewitz and His Works’, Paper for the U.S. Army War College, 2008, http://www.clausewitz.com/readings/Bassford/Cworks/Works.htm#Politik, (accessed 9 November 2009).

[64] Clausewitz, (‘Betrachtungen über einen künftigen Kriegsplan gegen Frankreich’ (c.1830), in Moltkes Militärische Werke, Teil I: Militärische Korrespondenz, Teil 4 (Berlin, 1902), p. 181­-197), cited in Bassford, ‘Clausewitz and His Works’, ibid.

[65] Bassford, ‘Clausewitz and His Works’, op. cit.