Page 186 - Le Operazioni Interforze e Multinazionali nella Storia Militare - ACTA Tomo II

826 XXXIX Congresso della CommIssIone InternazIonale dI storIa mIlItare • CIHm

strike and Paralysis of the „enemy“ in the scope of the Effects-based Operations. Hereby
a language was discernible which used words such as brain, heart, backbone or nervous
system. Despite the „enemy“ being dehumanized alone through the propagated distance
from within it was fought and downgraded to a defenseless entity being treated with the
scalpel on the dissecting table.
Since the Gulf War in 1991 the United States Air Force points out increasingly how
airstrikes are more „efficient“ compared to the deployment of ground forces. But at the
same time the idea of killing by itself seemed only to have been made more agreeable
by the concept of the „effect“ instead of „destruction“ or „annihilation“. Tuck, lecturer at
the King’s college, sees the tendency towards a post-heroic American culture of „strat-
10
egy“ which imagines a „war“ fought through wide distances with minimal casualties.
Yet, the „wars“ in the Balkans and the intervention in Somalia in 1993 were harbingers
of a war reality which did not fit as well to ideas such as Dominant Maneuver or Effects-
Based Operations.

10 Tuck, Christopher: Land Warfare, in: Jordan, David; Kiras, James D. et al.: Understanding Modern Warfare,
Cambridge, 2008, p. 66-121, p. 114f.