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Decapitation (military strategy)

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Military strategy

Decapitation is a military strategy aimed at removing the leadership or command and control of a hostile government or group.

In nuclear warfare

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In nuclear warfare theory, a decapitation strike is a pre-emptive first strike attack that aims to destabilize an opponent's military and civil leadership structure in the hope that it will severely degrade or destroy its capacity for nuclear retaliation. It is essentially a subset of a counterforce strike but whereas a counterforce strike seeks to destroy weapons directly, a decapitation strike is designed to remove an enemy's ability to use its weapons.

Strategies against decapitation strikes include the following:

  • Distributed command and control structures.
  • Dispersal of political leadership and military leadership in times of tension.
  • Delegation of ICBM/SLBM launch capability to local commanders in the event of a decapitation strike.
  • Distributed and diverse launch mechanisms.

A failed decapitation strike carries the risk of immediate, massive retaliation by the targeted opponent. Many countries with nuclear weapons specifically plan to prevent decapitation strikes by employing second-strike capabilities. Such countries may have mobile land-based launch, sea launch, air launch, and underground ballistic missile launch facilities so that a nuclear attack on one area of the country will not totally negate its ability to retaliate.

Other nuclear warfare doctrines explicitly exclude decapitation strikes on the basis that it is better to preserve the adversary's command and control structures so that a single authority remains that is capable of negotiating a surrender or ceasefire. Implementing fail-deadly mechanisms can be a way to deter decapitation strikes and respond to successful decapitation strikes.

Conventional warfare, assassination and terrorist acts

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Decapitation strikes have been employed in as a strategy in conventional warfare. The term has been used to describe the assassination of a government's entire leadership group or a nation's royal family.

In recent warfare, unmanned aerial vehicles, or drones, are popularly used for decapitation strikes against terrorist and insurgent groups. Drones are most effective in areas with inadequate air defense. There are mixed scholarly opinions whether or not decapitation strikes via drones effectively degrade the capabilities of these groups.

Some military strategists, like General Michael Flynn, have argued that the experience gained by the American and Coalition military experience from fighting the Taliban insurgency in Afghanistan was in support of kill or capture operations, but that they would be ineffective without a full understanding of how they would affect the local political landscape in the country.

Robert Pape has argued that decapitation is a relatively ineffective strategy. He writes that decapitation is a seductive strategy as it promises "to solve conflicts quickly and cheaply with... little collateral damage, and minimal or no friendly casualties", but decapitation strikes frequently fail or are not likely to produce the intended consequences even if successful.

Counterterrorism theorists Max Abrahms and Jochen Mierau argue that leadership decapitation in a terrorist or rebel group has the tendency to create disorder within the group, but find decapitation ineffective because group disorder can often lead to politically ineffective, unfocused attacks on civilians. The two conclude that "his change in the internal composition of militant groups may affect the quality and hence selectivity of their violence."

One tactic that is sometimes used to inform the target selection for decapitation strikes is social network analysis. This tactic involves identifying and eliminating higher ranked members in a hierarchically arranged rebel or terrorist group by targeting lower members first, and using intel gained in initial strikes to identify an organization's leadership. Some strategists, like Generals David Petraeus and Stanley McChrystal, have also called for dedicated task units that are non-hierarchical and can be reorganized, in order to face similar distributed or decentralized terrorist groups. Others, however, argue that decapitation strikes combined with social network analysis are more than unproductive, but can prolong a conflict due to their habit of eliminating rebel or terrorist leaders who are the most capable peace negotiators or have the potential to advance communities hardest hit by terror campaigns after the cessation of hostilities.

See also

References

  1. Wittmann, Anna M. (2017). Talking Conflict: The Loaded Language of Genocide, Political Violence, Terrorism, and Warfare. Santa Barbara, California: ABC-CLIO. p. 92. ISBN 978-1-4408-3424-0.
  2. Blair, Christopher W.; Horowitz, Michael C.; Potter, Philip B. K. (2022). "Leadership Targeting and Militant Alliance Breakdown". The Journal of Politics. 84 (2): 923–943. doi:10.1086/715604. ISSN 0022-3816. S2CID 236227864.
  3. "Words of Intelligence: An Intelligence Professional's Lexicon for Domestic and Foreign Threats", Jan Goldman. Scarecrow Press, Jun 16, 2011. ISBN 0-8108-7814-3, ISBN 978-0-8108-7814-3
  4. "Documents on Predelegation of Authority for Nuclear Weapons Use". Archived from the original on 2020-12-18. Retrieved 2015-05-17.
  5. "U.S. Launches 'Decapitation' Strike Against Iraq; Saddam Personally Targeted". Fox News Channel. 20 March 2003. Archived from the original on September 9, 2013. Retrieved 9 September 2013.
  6. "Cruise missiles target Saddam". CNN. 20 March 2003. Retrieved 9 September 2013.
  7. "Airstrikes on Iraqi leaders 'abject failure'". New York Times News Service. 13 June 2004. Retrieved 27 August 2017.
  8. Shinkman, Paul D. "Obama: 'Global War on Terror' Is Over". U.S. News & World Report. Retrieved April 4, 2017.
  9. "Hezbollah Pager Attack Looks Like a Decapitation Strike". Bloomberg.com. 2024-09-17. Retrieved 2024-09-18.
  10. Horowitz, Michael C. (2020). "Do Emerging Military Technologies Matter for International Politics?". Annual Review of Political Science. 23: 385–400. doi:10.1146/annurev-polisci-050718-032725.
  11. Coll, Steve (2018). Directorate S : the C.I.A. and America's secret wars in Afghanistan and Pakistan. New York. pp. 437–440. ISBN 978-1-59420-458-6. OCLC 1049576269.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: location missing publisher (link)
  12. Pape, Robert A. (1996). Bombing to Win: Air Power and Coercion in War. Cornell University Press. p. 253. ISBN 978-0-8014-3134-0. JSTOR 10.7591/j.ctt1287f6v.
  13. Abrahms, Max; Mierau, Jochen (2017-09-03). "Leadership Matters: The Effects of Targeted Killings on Militant Group Tactics". Terrorism and Political Violence. 29 (5): 830–851. doi:10.1080/09546553.2015.1069671. ISSN 0954-6553. S2CID 146507596.
  14. Knoke, David (2013). ""It Takes a Network": The Rise and Fall of Social Network Analysis in U.S. Army Counterinsurgency Doctrine". Connections. 33: 2–10. CiteSeerX 10.1.1.431.3800.
  15. Wilner, Alex S. (2010-03-15). "Targeted Killings in Afghanistan: Measuring Coercion and Deterrence in Counterterrorism and Counterinsurgency". Studies in Conflict & Terrorism. 33 (4): 307–329. doi:10.1080/10576100903582543. ISSN 1057-610X. S2CID 109972592.
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