Lawrence Freedman Case
Lawrence Freedman generally believes that the war on terrorism is not a war by definition. When we think of terrorism, we think of the Taliban or Al-Qaeda. Freedman asserts that Al-Qaeda is a unique case, in that wars do not have to always involve states. Even before the World Trade Center incident, the US and al Qaeda had engaged in a low level fighting. With Al Qaeda attacking US embassies in 1998, the US was prompted to respond with cruise missile strikes against suspected terrorist targets primarily in Sudan and Afghanistan. Because al Qaeda is comprised as being a stateless group, the US has ended up fighting against them in not only in Afghanistan and Sudan, but Pakistan and Iraq as well.
Freedman asserts that information technology has not cleared the fog of war like many people believe today, and I tend to agree with him. One of the big issues today is that there is so much information around, on the Internet and through various forms of media, that judging its reliability is increasingly difficult. I consistently relate to this whether I’m researching information for a school paper, or reading online news articles. There is so much information out there which makes it extremely difficult to judge what’s reliable and what is not. So in this instance, I agree with Freedman’s view that information technology has not cleared the fog of war.
Freedman believes that all future warfare will be asymmetric, meaning that no two opponents will have identical resources or structures. Geography is especially important in this case, because where a war is fought can have significant advantages or disadvantages for a nation. An example of this is seen in Afghanistan. Afghanistan has such an extreme geography with various mountains and climate, which made it extremely difficult for the US to invade. In this way, we could say that al Qaeda had a sort of advantage in that they knew the geography of their country better than their invading