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2022 m. rugpjūčio 22 d., pirmadienis

Republicans are falling out of love with America's multinationals

 

US Republicans are falling out of love with America's multinationals

"TO AMERICAN EXECUTIVES, Rob Portman is the ideal politician. Clever, reasonable and experienced, he served as the top trade representative and budget director for George W. Bush, the Republican president from 2001 to 2009, before becoming a senator for Ohio more than a decade ago. Mr Portman has just one shortcoming: he is retiring. The party's nominee to replace him is J.D. Vance, backed by Donald Trump, the most recent Republican commander-in-chief. Mr Vance calls big technology firms "enemies of Western civilisation" and casts elite managers as part of "the regime", with interests anathema to those of America's heartland.

The Democratic Party, with its leftier lean, remains companies' most persistent headache--firms were caught off-guard this month when Senate Democrats approved a rise in corporate-tax rates and new restrictions on the pricing of drugs. But, in the words of an executive at a big financial firm, "We expect Democrats to hate us." What is new is disdain from those on the right. There used to be a time, one lobbyist recalls with nostalgia, when "you would walk into a Republican office with a company and the question would be, 'How can I help you?'" Those days are over. The prospect of Republicans sweeping the mid-term elections in November and recapturing the White House in 2024 no longer sends waves of relief through American boardrooms.

Executives and lobbyists interviewed by The Economist, speaking on condition of anonymity, described Republicans as becoming more hostile in both tone and, increasingly, substance. Public brawls, such as Disney's feud with Ron DeSantis, Florida's Republican governor, over discussion of sexual orientation in classrooms, or Republicans blasting BlackRock, the world's largest asset manager, for "woke" investments, are only its most obvious manifestations. "It used to be the axis was left to right," says an executive at one of America's biggest firms. "Now it is an axis from insiders to outsiders; everyone seems intent on proving they are not part of the superstructure, and that includes business."

Long-held right-of-centre orthodoxies--in favour of free trade and competition, against industrial policy--are in flux. As Republicans' stance towards big business changes, so may the contours of American commerce.

The close partnership between Republicans and business has helped shape American capitalism for decades. Companies' profit-seeking pursuit of free trade abroad and free enterprise at home dovetailed with Republicans' credo of individual freedom and anti-communism. By the 1990s even Bill Clinton and other Democrats embraced new trade deals, giving American multinational firms access to new markets and cheaper labour.

As Glenn Hubbard, former dean of Columbia Business School and an economic adviser to Mr Bush, puts it, "Social support for the system was a given and you could argue over the parameters." The 2012 presidential battle between Barack Obama and Mitt Romney "felt like a big deal at the time", says Rawi Abdelal of Harvard Business School. "But in terms of the business stakes, it wouldn't have mattered at all."

Four years later Republicans were still attracting about two-thirds of spending by corporate political-action committees (PACs), which give money to candidates in federal elections, and a big corporate-tax cut in 2017 went on to be the main legislative achievement of Mr Trump's term. Yet Mr Trump had campaigned on the feeling of ordinary Americans that they were being left behind. Executives hoping that his fiery campaign rhetoric would be doused by presidential restraint had to contend instead with his trade war with China, curbs on immigration and contentious positions on climate change and race. Bosses felt compelled to speak out against his policies, which appalled many of their employees and customers. In the eyes of Trump supporters, such pronouncements cast the CEOs as members of the progressive elite bent on undermining their champion.

After Mr Trump's defeat by Mr Biden, companies wondered if their old alliance with Republicans might be restored. In July 17 Republican senators voted in favour of a bill that provides, among other things, $52bn in subsidies to compete with China by manufacturing more semiconductors in America--which chipmakers such as Intel naturally applauded. This month nearly all Republicans opposed the Democrats' $700bn climate and health-care bill, known as the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA), which raises taxes on large companies and enables the government to haggle with drugmakers over the price of some prescription medicines.

This apparent business-friendliness-as-usual conceals a deeper shift, however. The Republican Party has attracted more working-class voters--an evolution accelerated by Mr Trump's willingness, on paper if not always in practice, to put the interests of the American worker ahead of those of the American multinational.

For most of the past 50 years more Republicans had a lot of confidence in big business than had little or no confidence in it, often by double-digit margins, according to Gallup polls. Last year the mistrustful outnumbered the trusting by a record 17 percentage points, worse than at the height of the global financial crisis of 2007-09 (see chart 1). Republican election war-chests are increasingly filled either by small donors or the extremely rich. Both these groups are likelier to favour ideologues over pragmatists, notes Sarah Bryner of OpenSecrets, an NGO which tracks campaign finance and lobbying.

The result of all this is growing Republican support for policies that are hostile to America Inc. Josh Hawley, a senator from Missouri, wants companies with more than $1bn in annual revenue to pay their staff at least $15 an hour. His colleague from Florida, Marco Rubio, has backed the formation of workers' councils at companies, an alternative to unions. In March Tom Cotton of Arkansas called for Americans to "reject the ideology of globalism" by curbing immigration, banning some American investments in China and suggesting Congress should "punish offshoring to China". Republicans in Congress have co-sponsored several bills with Democrats to rein in big tech. Mr Vance, who has a good shot at joining them after the mid-terms, has proposed raising taxes on companies that move jobs abroad. Mr Trump himself repeatedly promised to lower drug prices.

The fact that Republicans opposed the IRA--and other business-wary Democratic initiatives--may mean simply that they loathe Democrats more than they dislike big business. Many bosses fret that the Republican Party will enact punitive policies once it is back in power. "There is no person who says, 'Don't worry'," sighs one pharmaceutical executive. "You ignore what a politician says publicly at your peril," warns another business bigwig.

That is already evident at the state level, where Republicans often control all levers of government and are therefore free to enact their agenda in a way that is impossible in gridlocked Washington. After Disney spoke out against a law in Florida that restricts discussion of gender and sexual orientation in schools, Mr DeSantis revoked the company's special tax status. Texas has a new law that restricts the state's business with firms that "discriminate against firearm and ammunition industries". Kentucky, Texas and West Virginia have passed similar laws barring business with banks and other firms that boycott fossil-fuel producers; about a dozen other Republican-controlled states are considering doing the same.

Such laws present a problem for companies. In July West Virginia's treasurer said that the anti-fossil-fuel policies of some of America's biggest financial firms--BlackRock, Goldman Sachs, JPMorgan Chase, Morgan Stanley and Wells Fargo--made them ineligible for state contracts. The definition of what counts as discriminating or boycotting is hazy. JPMorgan Chase, which does not lend to firms that sell military-style weapons to consumers, first said that the Texan law prevented it from underwriting municipal-bond deals in that state, then bid for a contract (unsuccessfully). In Texas, Republican lawmakers are threatening to prosecute firms that pay for staff to travel out of state for abortions, which the Texan legislature has severely restricted.

Right-wing culture-warriors have always been part of the Republican Party, but the line between them and their pro-business country-club colleagues has collapsed. These days, worries a business grandee, both parties see it as "acceptable to use state power to get private entities to conform to their viewpoints". " ESG is a four-letter word in some Republican offices," says Heather Podesta of Invariant, a lobbying firm, referring to the practice, championed by BlackRock among others, of considering environmental, social and governance factors, not just returns, in investment decisions. Senator Ted Cruz of Texas has blamed Larry Fink, BlackRock's boss, for high petrol prices. "Every time you fill up your tank," he growled in May, "you can thank Larry for the massive and inappropriate ESG pressure."

Companies are adjusting to this new, more volatile political reality. Some are creating formal processes for reviewing the risks of speaking out on social issues that may provoke a political backlash, including from Republicans. The way firms describe their strategies to politicians is changing, too. Lobbying is no longer confined to the parties' leaders in the two houses of Congress. Because politicians in both parties are increasingly willing to defy the leadership, says an executive, "you have to go member by member". Neil Bradley, policy chief of the US Chamber of Commerce, which represents American big business, says that his organisation has had to redouble efforts to "find people who have interest in governing".

Sometimes that means supporting more Democrats. In 2020 the chamber endorsed more vulnerable freshman Democratic incumbents, who were mostly moderates, than in previous years. That prompted Kevin McCarthy, the leading Republican in the House of Representatives, to say he didn't want the organisation's endorsement "because they have sold out". So far this year corporate PACs have funnelled 54% of their campaign donations to Republicans, down from 63% in 2012. Firms' employees have beaten an even hastier retreat, with just 46% donating to Republican candidates, compared with 58% ten years ago, according to OpenSecrets (see chart 2 on previous page).

If the upshot is divided government, that would suit American business just fine. As one executive remarks, "We might not have improvements, but we won't get more cataclysmic policies."” [1]

1. "The elephant in the boardroom; Business and politics (1)." The Economist, 20 Aug. 2022, p. 56(US).

Piktos gatvės; miesto karas

 „Visiškas sugriovimas, vadinamas taika

 

    Žvelgdamos į ateitį, Vakarų kariuomenės iš naujo mokosi kovoti miestuose

 

    „Praktiškai per visą istoriją generolai bjaurėjosi galimybe kovoti miestuose ir stengėsi to išvengti“, – Teksaso nacionalinio saugumo apžvalgoje rašo Davidas Betzas iš Londono King's College ir pulkininkas leitenantas Hugo Stanford-Tuckas, britų karininkas.  Tačiau nori jos tai ar ne, šiuolaikinės kariuomenės vis labiau priverstos tai daryti. Jos ieško patarimų praeityje ir svarsto, kaip miesto mūšius geriausia būtų kovoti, naudojant šiuolaikinius ginklus.

 

    Liepą Didžiosios Britanijos generalinio štabo viršininkas paskelbė, kad Didžiosios Britanijos kariuomenė, kuri pastaruosius du dešimtmečius daugiausiai kovojo su žemų technologijų maištininkais, ateityje „svarbiausią dėmesį skirs miesto kovai“. Gegužės mėn. kalboje Jungtinių Valstijų karo akademijoje vyriausias Amerikos karys generolas Markas Milley sakė baigusiems kariūnams, kad jie turės persitreniruoti miestams. Jis perspėjo, kad tai pakeis armijas ir turės „didžiulių padarinių“ viskam – nuo ​​maskavimo modelių ir ginklų iki transporto priemonių dizaino ir logistikos.

 

    Šis augantis susidomėjimas turi keletą priežasčių. Tam tikra prasme armijos tiesiog reaguoja į naujausią istoriją. Mūšiai dėl miestų buvo daugelio šiuolaikinių karų pagrindas. Kova už Shusha miestą ginčytinoje Kalnų Karabacho teritorijoje buvo lemiamas 2020 m. Armėnijos ir Azerbaidžano karo etapas. Mosulo Irake ir Rakos užkariavimas Sirijoje pažymėjo Islamo valstybės (IS) triumfą 2014 m.; JAV vadovaujamos koalicijos įvykdytas džihadistų išvarymas iš tų miestų po dvejų metų reiškė džihadistų žlugimą.

 

    Prie to prisideda ir gilesnės tendencijos. Iki XXI amžiaus pradžios kaimo vietovėse gyveno daugiau žmonių, nei mieste. Dabar daugiau, nei pusė pasaulio gyventojų gyvena miestuose ir tikimasi, kad iki 2050 m. šis skaičius išaugs iki dviejų trečdalių. Kai kuriose vietose šis skaičius dar didesnis. Jei Kinijos invazija į Taivaną įvyktų, Liaudies išlaisvinimo armija turėtų slampinėti per salos miestus ir miestelius, kuriuose gyvena 80 proc. jos gyventojų.

 

    Ta pati istorinė tendencija reiškia, kad miestai tampa didesni. 1950 m. tik Niujorkas ir Tokijas buvo pripažinti „megamiestais“ – tie, kuriuose gyvena daugiau nei 10 mln. Šiandien Jungtinės Tautos skaičiuoja 33. Nors karai miestuose ir aplink juos vyksta nuo seniausių laikų, tokių didelių ir sudėtingų miestų viduje kariavo nedaugelis.

 

    Ir net išsipūtus miestams, kariuomenės sumažėjo. Anksčiau „masinės armijos užgriūdavo miestus, aplink juos ir per juos suformavo didelius frontus“, – pažymi Anthony King iš Warwick universiteto, knygos „Miesto karas dvidešimt pirmame amžiuje“ autorius.

 

    Prieš aštuoniasdešimt metų beveik pusė milijono vyrų kovojo dėl Stalingrado, kuriame prieš karą gyveno apie 400 000 gyventojų.

 

    Šiandien „miestai apgaubia ginkluotąsias pajėgas“.

 

    Vos 100 000 karių užpuolė Mosulą, 1,7 mln. miestą, siekdami atsikratyti IS 2016 m.

 

    Miesto karas turi destruktyvumo ir žiaurumo reputaciją. Užstatytose vietose yra daug vietų pasislėpti, todėl kovos kyla staiga ir iš arti. Pastatai gali būti prikišti minomis ir spąstais. Būtinybė būti nuolat budriems gadina karių nervus. Kovos džiunglėse ar miškuose kelia panašių sunkumų, tačiau miestuose civilių buvimas viską apsunkina. „Galiu sunaikinti mišką“, – sako vienas Europos armijos karininkas, paklaustas, kur mieliau kovotų. „Aš neturėsiu leidimo sugriauti miesto“.

 

    Betono džiunglės

 

    Viena iš sumažėjusių armijų, kovojančių didesniuose miestuose, pasekmių yra ta, kad miestų karas dažnai baigiasi „lokalizuotų mikroapgulų“ serija, sako ponas Kingas, kartais dėl atskirų struktūrų. „Vienas pastatas gali suvalgyti visą batalioną [iki 1000 karių] per dieną“, – sako Peteris Mansūras, išėjęs į pensiją pulkininkas, 2003 m. vadovavęs 1-ajai Amerikos 1-ajai šarvuotosios divizijos brigadai Bagdade.

 

    Šiuolaikiniai sprogstamieji ginklai daugiausia buvo skirti šaltojo karo mūšiams Europos lygumose. Kai jie naudojami apgyvendintose vietovėse, mažiausiai devyni iš dešimties aukų gali būti civiliai, pažymima tokius dalykus sekančios NVO Action on Armed Violence ataskaitoje.

 

    Net išmaniosios bombos gali sunaikinti miestą. Mosule amerikiečių oro antskrydžiai į pastatus smogė nepaprastai tiksliai, tačiau sukilėliai tiesiog pabėgo į kitus pastatus, kurie savo ruožtu nukentėdavo. Rezultatas, pažymi Amerikos armijos majoras Amosas Foxas, buvo toks, kad bombos tiesiog sekė priešą iš vieno namo į kitą.

 

    Mosule žuvo daugiau, nei 10 000 civilių, apie trečdalį jų žuvo dėl Amerikos vadovaujamos koalicijos veiksmų.

 

    O miesto gyventojai ne visada yra pasyvūs stebėtojai.

 

    Kita miestų ypatybė – jie linkę išsitęsti po žeme. Marko Bulmeris, Didžiosios Britanijos armijos mokslininkas ir rezervistas, aprašo, kaip IS išnaudojo smegduobes ir urvus aplink Mosulą ir pastatė naujus tunelius, kai kurie pakankamai dideli transporto priemonėms, naudodama viską nuo rankinių įrankių iki improvizuotų  gręžimo mašinų. Įmantriausiuose buvo įrengti bendrabučiai, ligoninės ir vėdinimo sistemos. Izraelio ginkluotosios pajėgos teigia, kad pernai per karą su „Hamas“ sunaikino 100 km tunelių po Gazos ruožu.

 

    Daugelis naujesnių technologijų, nuo kurių pradėjo priklausyti Vakarų pajėgos, tiesiog neveikia po paviršiumi, įskaitant palydovinę navigaciją ir stebėjimą bepiločiais orlaiviais. Jos taip pat gali duoti neryškius rezultatus mieste paviršiuje. „Miesto kanjonai“ tarp aukštų pastatų gali trukdyti radijo signalams. Civilinė televizija ir radijas užplūsta eterį. „Pagrindinė problema yra ta, kad tokioje perpildytoje, apgyvendintoje ir sudėtingoje vietovėje matome tik tai, ką galime pamatyti“, – sako į pensiją išėjęs Izraelio brigados generolas Galas Hirschas, vadovavęs daliniams Vakarų Krante ir Libane. „Tiesiog nematome daugumos grėsmių, nes nuo mūsų slepiami dideli priešo segmentai.

 

    Tokie sunkumai iš dalies paaiškina, kodėl Amerikos armija iki šiol vengė per daug galvoti apie miesto kovas, teigia Liamas Collinsas, išėjęs į pensiją pulkininkas ir kartu su majoru Spenceriu išleistos knygos „Understanding Urban Warfare“. "Tai netinka karo modeliui, kurį norime kariauti. Mes norime vėl kovoti su Persijos įlankos karu [kurio didžioji dalis vyko atviroje dykumoje]". Dabar, kai ginkluotosios pajėgos padarė išvadą, kad miesto kovos greičiausiai taps dažnesnės, jos svarsto, kaip kai kurias jos savybes būtų galima panaudoti savo naudai.

 

    Britų armija analizuoja, kaip atrodytų Europos karo pradžios mūšiai ir kaip juos būtų galima laimėti. Generolas majoras Jamesas Bowderis, atsakingas už šias pastangas, birželio mėn. Londone vykusioje konferencijoje Karališkajame Jungtinių paslaugų institute, ekspertų grupėje, apibūdino kariuomenės darbo hipotezes.

 

    Jis perspėjo, kad kariuomenėms bus sunku manevruoti virš atviros žemės, nes „daugiaspektriai“ jutikliai – palydovai, galintys matyti per debesis, arba dronai, kurie mato infraraudonuosius spindulius – tampa vis dažnesni, o jų nukreipta ugnies galia tampa mirtingesnė.

 

    Todėl judėjimas tarp miestų ir miestelių sukeltų „precedento neturintį pavojų“, sakė generolas Bowderis. Kita vertus, miesto teritorijos taps „pagrindiniu prizu“ ne tik dėl savo politinės ir ekonominės vertės, bet, ne mažiau svarbios, kaip prieglaudos nuo priešo sugebėjimo surasti dalinius ir smogti į juos. Tai reiškia, kad tokios vietos, kaip Talinas, Ryga ir Vilnius, nors ir palyginti nedideli miestai, taptų citadelėmis, siūlančiomis prieglobstį armijoms, kai jos puola priešo tiekimo linijas ir ruošiasi kontratakoms.

 

    Be aukšto lygio diskusijų apie strategiją, kariuomenės galvoja ir apie taktiką. Viena iš galimybių yra mokytis iš tų, kurie turi daugiau patirties kovoti mieste. Didžiosios Britanijos ir Izraelio architektas Eyalas Weizmanas aprašė, kaip 2002 m. Palestinos Nabluso mieste kovoję Izraelio kariai taikė „vaikščiojimo per sienas“ strategiją. Tai apima maršruto sprogdinimą per pastatus, o ne ėjimą pro duris ir keliais – šį metodą pirmą kartą pastebėjo prancūzų karo teoretikai, rašydami apie XIX amžiaus mūšius dėl Paryžiaus.

 

    „Ar alėją interpretuojate, kaip vietą, pro kurią reikia eiti, kaip tai daro kiekvienas architektas ir kiekvienas miesto planuotojas, ar alėją interpretuojate, kaip vietą, pro kurią eiti draudžiama? – klausia Izraelio generolas Avivas Koshavi. „Priešas interpretuoja erdvę tradiciniu, klasikiniu būdu, ir aš nenoriu paklusti šiai interpretacijai ir patekti į jo pinkles. Rezultatas, sako ponas Weizmanas, yra beveik postmoderni karo forma: „miesto samprata, kaip ne tik vieta, bet ir kaip pati karo priemonė – lanksti, beveik skysta terpė“.

 

    Praeities pamokos

 

    Vakarų kariuomenės taip pat intensyvina mokymus. Neseniai Lidse (Šiaurės Anglijoje) vykusiose pratybose Didžiosios Britanijos 21 inžinierių pulko kariai brido miesto tuneliais tvankiomis sąlygomis, esant silpnam apšvietimui ir, iki kelių siekiančiame, vandenyje. Paskutinį kartą britų karo inžinieriai tokio masto požeminį judėjimą vykdė Korėjos kare, sako pratybose dalyvavęs seržantas Dale'as Mottley.

 

    Treniruotė davė keletą pamokų. Dėl visiškos tamsos naktinio matymo akiniai tapo nenaudingi, nes jie priklauso nuo silpnos aplinkos šviesos, kuri yra virš žemės net naktį, sustiprinimo. Trikdant stovintį vandenį, į orą gali išsiskirti nuodingos dujos, o kariai gali greitai išnaudoti visą turimą deguonį. Taip pat šalčiau, net dešimčia laipsnių Celsijaus. „Jūs suprantate, kad jei nesate tinkamai treniruotas ir ilgai ten praleidote, judate ne taip greitai“, – sako seržantas Mottley.

 

    Seni būdai dažnai yra geriausi. Seržantas Mottley sako, kad kasybos įranga, naudojama nuo septintojo dešimtmečio, perduota kariuomenei iš ugniagesių, buvo naudingesnė, nei koks nors naujesnis, įmantresnis rinkinys. Tačiau kai kurie senieji būdai dabar yra uždrausti. Metodai, kurie kažkada buvo naudojami valyti tunelius – Amerika naudojo ašarines dujas Vietname; sovietams tiko įvairios cheminės medžiagos Afganistane – „šiandien tikriausiai būtų laikomi neteisėtais“, sako Daphné Richemond-Barak.  „Požeminio karo“ autorius. (Nepaisant to, kad ašarinės dujos dažnai naudojamos prieš protestuotojus šalies viduje, kare jos, dažniausiai, yra nelegalios.)

 

    Didžiausias klausimas yra, ar nepakankamas susipažinimas su miesto kovomis pernelyg sustiprino jo niūrią reputaciją. Christopherio Lawrence'o iš Dupuy instituto atliktame tyrime, kuriame renkami istoriniai duomenys apie karą, buvo analizuojamos miesto operacijos Antrojo pasaulinio karo pabaigoje. Turbūt nenuostabu, kad miestai sulėtino armijas: pažangos tempai laukuose buvo trečdaliu ar puse didesni, nei miesto kovose.

 

    Tačiau miestai nebūtinai buvo pavojingesni už kitus mūšio laukus. Užpuoliko aukų skaičius mieste nebuvo didesnis, nei ne mieste, o transporto priemonių nuostoliai buvo tokie pat arba mažesni. Naujausiuose miesto mūšiuose – 2004 m. vykusiuose mūšiuose dėl Faludžos Irake arba Maravyje Filipinuose 2017 m. – užpuolikų aukų buvo nedaug – vos daugiau, nei po vieną žūtį per dieną ir daug mažiau, nei gynėjų.

 

    Taip pat neatrodo, kad tokios kovos būtų išskirtinai traumuojančios (bent jau tiems, kurie nešiojasi ginklus). Amerikos ekspertų grupės „RAND Corporation“ ataskaitoje daroma išvada, kad kovinio streso, kuris kažkada buvo vadinamas „sviedinio šoku“, lygis nebuvo didesnis nei įprastai mūšiuose dėl Bresto 1944 m. Bretanėje ir Maniloje Filipinuose 1945 m. arba Hue Vietname 1968 m. (nors dauguma civilių išmintingai išvyko, prieš prasidedant kovai). Ataskaitoje teigiama, kad miesto kovų intensyvumas paradoksaliai suteikė kariams didesnį iniciatyvos, kontrolės ir tikslo jausmą, nei kovojantiems atviroje vietovėje.

 

    Jei miesto karas nebūtinai kruvinesnis, tai jis bent jau sunkesnis? Įprasta karinė išmintis yra ta, kad puolime armijos turi tris prieš vieną viršyti savo priešininkus, kad galėtų įveikti ginamą poziciją. Liepos mėnesį Amerikos kariuomenės ir jūrų pėstininkų paskelbtame vadove pažymima, kad miestuose šis rodiklis gali pakilti iki 15:1.

 

    Teoriškai šie santykiai turėtų reikšti, kad mažesnės pajėgos turi didesnę galimybę sulaikyti daugybę užpuolikų. Tačiau tai ne visada veikia taip. Juk miestų gynėjai susiduria su savomis dilemomis. Vienas batalionas gali apginti saujelę pastatų, bet kiekvienam daliniui bus sunku pamatyti už savo aplinkos ribų, pasiūlyti paramą kitiems arba papildyti atsargas ir evakuoti aukas. Taigi, daug gynėjų gali būti prispausta nedaugelyje vietų – „užfiksuota“, karine kalba kalbant – ir sunaikinti arba apeiti.

 

    „Daugelyje miestų mūšių, kuriuos išnagrinėjome, – sako Didžiosios Britanijos gynybos mokslo ir technologijų laboratorijos miesto ekspertas Stuartas Lyle'as, – užpuolikas laimi. Ponas Betzas ir pulkininkas Stanfordas-Tuckas atkreipia dėmesį į 1944–1945 m. mūšius dėl Acheno, Groningeno ir Medicinos, kur mažesnės atakuojančios pajėgos nugalėjo didesnius gynėjus, dažnai su labai mažais nuostoliais, o pastaruoju atveju – per kelias valandas.

 

    Visais šiais atvejais reikalai buvo mažiau susiję su miesto reljefu, o su teisinga taktika, kuri taikoma tiek už miestų ribų, tiek juose. Greitas, galingas ir daugialypis smūgis gali paralyžiuoti priešo sprendimų priėmimą. Kombinuotų ginklų karas, glaudžiai bendradarbiaujant pėstininkams, šarvuočiams, artilerijai ir orlaiviams, yra gyvybiškai svarbus.

 

    Tankai, kurie, dažnai manoma, kad jie netinkami siauroms, nuolaužomis užsemtoms miesto gatvėms, dažnai yra būtini. Pulkininkas Mansūras primena, kad kovoje už Sadro miestą Bagdade šiitų kovotojai per savaitę raketinėmis granatomis sunaikino šešias lengvąsias šarvuotas mašinas „Stryker“. Amerikiečių vadai buvo priversti atsiųsti daug didesnius „Abrams“ tankus, „kurie suteikė persvarą, reikalingą JAV kariams likti rajone“. Ir staigmena kaip niekad svarbi: Amerikos doktrina su niūria pagarba atkreipia dėmesį į Viet Cong įsiskverbimą į Hue 1968 m. prieš Tet puolimą.

 

    Galų gale tie, kurie miestus laiko lemiamais kito didelio karo mūšio laukais, ir tie, kurie laiko juos pražūtingomis šalutinėmis aplinkybėmis, kurių reikia vengti bet kokia kaina, paprastai sutaria dėl vieno: nors per pastaruosius du dešimtmečius daug kas buvo pamiršta, miesto karo pagrindai nėra naujiena. Miestai buvo griaunami, pasikasami tuneliais ir ginami nuo senovės. Sovietų ir Vakarų armijos giliai galvojo apie galimą mūšį dėl Berlyno, jei šaltasis karas taptų karštas. „Viskas buvo išmokta anksčiau“, – sako pulkininkas Collinsas. „Bet mes to tiesiog nemokome ir nestudijuojame, ir tai tikriausiai yra didžiausias nusivylimas“" [1]


1. "Mean streets; Urban warfare." The Economist, 20 Aug. 2022, p. 53(US).

Mean streets; Urban warfare.

 

"A desolation called peace

With an eye on the future, Western armies are re-learning how to fight in cities

"For practically all of history, generals have loathed the prospect of fighting in cities and have sought to avoid it," write David Betz of King's College London and Lieutenant-Colonel Hugo Stanford-Tuck, a British officer, in the Texas National Security Review, a military and security journal. But whether they like it or not, modern armies are increasingly forced to do so. They are looking to the past for guidance, and pondering how urban battles might best be fought with modern weapons.

In July Britain's chief of general staff announced that the British army, which has spent the past two decades mostly fighting low-tech insurgents, would, in future, "major on urban combat". In a speech to the United States Military Academy in May, General Mark Milley, America's most senior soldier, told graduating cadets that they would have to retool for cities. That would transform armies, he warned, with "huge implications" for everything from camouflage patterns and weapons to vehicle design and logistics.

This growing interest has several causes. In one sense, armies are simply responding to recent history. Battles over cities have been central to many modern wars. The fight for Shusha, a town in the disputed territory of Nagorno-Karabakh, was the decisive engagement of the war between Armenia and Azerbaijan in 2020. The conquests of Mosul in Iraq and Raqqa in Syria marked the triumph of Islamic State (IS) in 2014; its expulsion from those cities by an American-led coalition two years later signalled the jihadists' fall.

Deeper trends contribute, too. Until the start of the 21st century more people lived in rural areas than urban ones. Now over half the world's inhabitants live in towns and cities, a figure that is expected to rise to two-thirds by 2050. In some places the figure is higher still. A Chinese invasion of Taiwan, should it occur, would require the People's Liberation Army to slog through the island's towns and cities, where 80% of its population live.

That same historical trend means cities are becoming bigger. In 1950 only New York and Tokyo qualified as "megacities"--those with over 10m inhabitants. Today, the United Nations reckons 33 do. Though wars have been fought in and around cities since antiquity, few have been waged inside ones so big and complex.

And even as cities have swollen, armies have shrunk. In the past "mass armies swamped cities, forming large fronts around and through them", notes Anthony King of Warwick University, the author of "Urban Warfare in the Twenty-First Century".

Eighty years ago almost half a million men fought over Stalingrad, which had a pre-war population of around 400,000.

Today "cities envelop the armed forces."

Barely 100,000 troops assaulted Mosul, a city of 1.7m, to rid it of IS in 2016.

Urban warfare has a reputation for destructiveness and brutality. Built-up areas offer plenty of places to hide, so firefights occur suddenly and at close range. Buildings can be laced with mines and booby-traps. The need to be constantly alert frays soldiers' nerves. Fighting in jungles or woodland presents similar difficulties, but in cities the presence of civilians makes everything harder. "I can destroy a forest," says one European army officer, asked where he would prefer to fight. "I will not have permission to destroy a city."

The concrete jungle

One consequence of shrunken armies fighting in bigger cities is that urban warfare often ends up as a series of "localised micro-sieges", says Mr King, sometimes over individual structures. "A single building can consume an entire battalion [up to 1,000 troops] in a day's fighting," says Peter Mansoor, a retired colonel who commanded the 1st Brigade of America's 1st Armoured Division in Baghdad in 2003.

Modern explosive weapons were largely designed for cold-war battles on the plains of Europe. When they are used in populated areas, at least nine in every ten casualties are likely to be civilians, notes a report by Action on Armed Violence, an NGO which tracks such things.

Even smart bombs can level a city. In Mosul, American air strikes hit buildings with extraordinary precision, but insurgents simply fled to others--which would be hit in turn. The result, notes Amos Fox, a major in the American army, was that bombs simply followed the enemy from house to house.

Over 10,000 civilians were killed in Mosul, about a third of them by the American-led coalition.

And a city's inhabitants are not always passive bystanders.

Another feature of cities is that they tend to extend underground. Marko Bulmer, a scientist and reservist in Britain's army, describes how IS exploited sinkholes and caves around Mosul, and built new tunnels, some large enough for vehicles, using everything from hand tools to improvised boring machines. The most sophisticated were equipped with dormitories, hospitals and ventilation systems. Israel's armed forces claim to have destroyed 100km of tunnels under Gaza during a war with Hamas last year.

Many of the newer technologies on which Western forces have come to depend simply do not function below the surface, including satellite navigation and surveillance with drones. They can be iffy on the surface, too. "Urban canyons" between tall buildings can interfere with radio signals. Civilian television and radio crowd the airwaves. "The main problem is that in such a crowded, populated and intricate area, we only see what we can see," says Gal Hirsch, a retired Israeli brigadier-general who commanded units in the West Bank and Lebanon. "We simply cannot see most of the threats, as large segments of the enemy are concealed from us."

Such difficulties partly explain why America's army has, until recently, shied away from thinking too much about city fighting, argues Liam Collins, a retired colonel and co-author, with Major Spencer, of "Understanding Urban Warfare", a forthcoming book. "It doesn't fit the model of war that we want to fight. We want to fight the Gulf war [much of which took place in open desert] again." Now that armed forces have concluded that urban combat is likely to become more common, they are wondering how some of its features might be turned to their advantage.

The British army has been analysing what the opening battles of a European war would look like and how they might be won. Major-General James Bowder, in charge of that effort, described the army's working hypotheses at a conference at the Royal United Services Institute, a think-tank in London, in June.

Armies will struggle to manoeuvre over open ground, he warned, as "multispectral" sensors--satellites that can see through clouds, or drones that see in infrared--become more common, and the firepower they direct becomes more lethal.

Moving between towns and cities would therefore entail "unprecedented jeopardy", said General Bowder. The flipside was that urban areas would become the "principal prize", not only for their political and economic value but, no less important, as sanctuaries from the enemy's ability to find units and strike at them. The implication is that places like Tallinn, Riga and Vilnius, though relatively small cities, would become citadels, offering shelter to armies as they raided enemy’s supply lines and prepared counter-attacks.

Besides high-level discussions of strategy, armies are also thinking about tactics. One option is to learn from those with more experience of fighting in urban areas. Eyal Weizman, a British-Israeli architect, has described how Israeli soldiers fighting in the Palestinian town of Nablus in 2002 employed a strategy of "walking through walls". That involves blasting a route through buildings rather than using doors and roads, a technique first noted by French military theorists writing about 19th-century battles over Paris.

"Do you interpret the alley as a place, like every architect and every town planner does, to walk through, or do you interpret the alley as a place forbidden to walk through?" asks Aviv Koshavi, an Israeli general. "The enemy interprets space in a traditional, classical manner, and I do not want to obey this interpretation and fall into his traps." The result, says Mr Weizman, is almost a post-modern form of warfare: "a conception of the city as not just the site, but the very medium of warfare--a flexible, almost liquid medium."

The lessons of the past

Western armies are ramping up training, too. A recent exercise in Leeds, in northern England, saw troops from Britain's 21 Engineer Regiment navigating urban tunnels in sweltering conditions, low light and knee-deep water. The last time British military engineers conducted this sort of underground movement at scale was in the Korean war, says Sergeant Dale Mottley, who took part in the exercise.

The drill furnished a series of lessons. The total darkness made night-vision goggles all but useless, since they rely on amplifying the faint ambient light that is present above ground even at night. Disturbing stagnant water can release toxic gases into the air, and soldiers can quickly use up all the available oxygen. It is also colder, by as much as ten degrees Celsius. "You realise that unless you are properly drilled, and have spent a long time down there, you're not moving fast," says Sergeant Mottley.

The old ways are often best. Sergeant Mottley says that mining equipment in service since the 1960s, passed on to the army from the fire brigade, was more useful than some newer, fancier kit. But some of the old ways are now off-limits. The techniques once used to clear tunnels--America used tear gas in Vietnam; the Soviets a variety of chemical agents in Afghanistan--"would likely be regarded as unlawful today", says Daphné Richemond-Barak, the author of "Underground Warfare". (Despite its frequent use against domestic protesters, tear gas is largely illegal in war.)

The biggest question is whether a lack of familiarity with city fighting has over-amplified its grim reputation. A study by Christopher Lawrence of the Dupuy Institute, which collects historical data on warfare, analysed urban operations towards the end of the second world war. It found, perhaps unsurprisingly, that cities slowed down armies: rates of advance were one-third to one-half what they were in non-urban combat.

But cities were not necessarily deadlier than other battlefields. The attacker's casualties were no higher in urban operations than non-urban ones, and losses of vehicles were the same or lower. In more recent urban battles--those for Fallujah in Iraq in 2004 or Marawi in the Philippines in 2017--the attackers' casualties were low, just over one death a day, and far lower than those of defenders.

 

Nor does this sort of fighting seem to be uniquely traumatic (at least for those carrying guns). A report by the RAND Corporation, an American think-tank, concludes that rates of combat stress--what was once called shell shock--were no higher than usual in the battles for Brest in Brittany in 1944, Manila in the Philippines in 1945 or Hue in Vietnam in 1968 (though most civilians had, wisely, left before the fighting started). The report suggests that the intensity of urban combat paradoxically gave soldiers a greater sense of initiative, control and purpose than those fighting in open terrain.

If urban war is not necessarily bloodier, then it is at least more onerous? The conventional military wisdom is that armies on the offensive must outnumber their opponents three to one to overrun a defended position. A manual published by America's army and marines in July notes that in urban areas, this can rise as high as 15:1.

In theory, these ratios should mean that smaller forces have a better chance of holding off numerous attackers. But it does not always work that way. After all, urban defenders face dilemmas of their own. A single battalion might defend a handful of buildings, but each unit will struggle to see beyond its surroundings, offer support to the others or replenish supplies and evacuate casualties. Large numbers of defenders can thus be pinned down in a small number of places--"fixed", in military parlance--and either picked off or bypassed.

"In the majority of urban battles that we examined," says Stuart Lyle, an urban expert at Britain's Defence Science and Technology Laboratory, "the attacker wins." Mr Betz and Colonel Stanford-Tuck point to battles for Aachen, Groningen and Medicina in 1944-45, where smaller attacking forces defeated larger defenders, often with very low casualties and, in the latter case, in a few hours.

In all these cases, things turned less on the urban terrain than on sound tactics that apply as much outside cities as in them. Fast, powerful and multi-pronged advances can paralyse the enemy's decision-making. Combined-arms warfare, with infantry, armour, artillery and aircraft working closely together, is vital.

Tanks, frequently thought to be ill-suited for narrow, debris-choked city streets, are often essential. Colonel Mansoor recalls that in the fight for Sadr City in Baghdad, Shia militants destroyed six lightweight Stryker armoured vehicles with rocket-propelled grenades within a week. American commanders were forced to send in much bigger Abrams tanks "which provided the overmatch that US troops needed to remain in the area". And surprise is as important as ever: American doctrine points, with grudging respect, to the Viet Cong's infiltration of Hue in 1968 ahead of the Tet Offensive.

In the end, those who see cities as the decisive battlegrounds of the next big war and those who view them as ruinous sideshows to be avoided at all costs tend to agree on one thing: that although much has been forgotten in the past two decades, the basics of urban warfare are not new. Cities have been razed, tunnelled and contested since antiquity. Soviet and Western armies alike thought deeply about a potential battle over Berlin, in case the cold war turned hot. "It's all been learned before," says Colonel Collins. "But we just don't teach it and study it, and that's probably the biggest disappointment."" [1]


1. "Mean streets; Urban warfare." The Economist, 20 Aug. 2022, p. 53(US).