National Experiences - British Commission for Military History

In t r o d u c t I o n • Av I At I o n A n d te c h n o l o g I c A l su p e r I o r I t y between new co n f l I c t s A n d dI p l o m A c y 27
Algeria and Indochina, in the’50s and ’60s we had witnessed the «growing inability
of Western peoples to allow for the dimension of physical fatigue, sacrifice and finally
death, which on the contrary is typical of pre-industrial societies» 7 .
In Vietnam, overfed and over equipped American soldiers, bombardments with
napalm, sensors dropped in the forests, didn’t manage to eliminate the Vietcong, who
survived with an handful of rice, penetrated through the «Ho Chi Minh’s path» and,
unlike the Americans, were convinced of the righteousness of their cause. Already
at that time the dichotomy was evident between the Western-type technological war,
which aimed to minimize the risks for its soldiers, and the “dirty” wars of the tribes,
the ethic, political and religious groups of the “other world” (which may be located
also in Europe, as in Bosnia and Kosovo!), where human life has little value and may
be spent easily for one’s values and interests, anti-personnel mines, the Kalashnikov
or even the machete still dominate the battlefield.
The first Gulf War (1991), NATO interventions in Bosnia (1994), Kosovo (1999)
and Libya (2011) reproposed the question, already debated after the Second World
War 8 , if Aviation alone may win a conflict. Evaluating for example the Kosovo campaign,
military historians (as John Keegan), scholars of strategy (as John Chipman)
and General Michael Short himself, commander of the Alliance’s air forces, discussed
the lessons learned form an operation performed without employing land
troops and without casualties for NATO forces. Some stressed the support given in
the field by UÇK guerrillas, who forced the Serbs to come into the open and then
be hit and by NATO, and by special forces infiltrated in the territory and also that
Serbia’s decision to surrender was heavily influenced by the increasing threat of a
land invasion.
The advantages, but also some possible risks of the exclusive employment of
Airpower are indicated in the following remarks: «The most publicized advantage of
air power in restricting adversary countermoves is the relative invulnerability of U.
7 E. Galli della Loggia, Il mondo contemporaneo (1945-1980), Bologna, 1982, pp. 266-68. The Western
soldiers, through modern weapons, try «not to contact bloodshed» (Qiao Liang-Wang Xiangsui,
Guerra senza limiti. L’arte della guerra asimmetrica fra terrorismo e globalizzazione, Gorizia,
2001, p. 75).
8 Also the Italian magazine Rivista Aeronautica entered the debate on the importance of Airpower in
the Second World War, publishing, among others, an article by General Carl Spaatz, Commander of
the United States Army Air Force (as we know, the U. S. Air Force was created as an autonomous
service only in 1947), who supported the thesis of Airpower as only instrument of global power
projection and the «planned and ready air offensive» as the «only real defence» in the atomic age,
while according to his compatriot Admiral Ernest J. King, Chief of Naval Operations during the
war, maritime power still played a determinant role, since only the Navy had actually guaranteed
the control of the bases to launch the atomic attack against Japan. Another subject debated was the
evaluation of the impact, more or less important, of allied bombardments against Germany (see M.
de Leonardis, The Debate in the Military Press and in the Public Opinion on the Lessons Learned
and the Recorganization of the Italian Armed Forces after the Second World War, in Aa. Vv., War,
Military and Media from Gutenberg to Today, Acta of the XXVIII th International Congress of Military
History, Bucarest, 2004, pp. 492-502).