¿ESTAMOS EN UNA GUERRA EN AFGANISTÁN?

Peter Leahy, ex Jefe de Estado Mayor de las Fuerzas de Defensa Australianas y Director del National Security Institute at the University of Canberra ha escrito un informe en el Lowy Institute titulado 'How do we know when we are at war?'

Aunque está centrado en el caso australiano, en él se pueden extraer algunas cuestiones interesantes para la situación española que han sido destacadas en el blog The Interpreter del mismo Instituto:

Nota: lamento no traducir el texto, pero siempre quedan los traductores de internet para facilitar la comprensión de este breve texto.

Today Australia (y en el mismo caso España) is at war. You wouldn’t know it if you used the old indicators of war such as a declaration of war, mobilisation or large scale conflict between states. But today our soldiers are being shot at, they see the suffering and the destruction of war, and they carry their dead and wounded comrades from the field of battle.

War has not gone away. It is now: intrastate and smaller; more frequent; of longer duration; being waged by non-state actors; and being conducted in cities and towns. In 2009 there were 17 major armed conflicts active in 16 locations around the world. Australia (España) is involved in or has been physically involved in five of these (España tiene militares desplegados en 8 misiones internacionales según el propio Ministerio de Defensa español) .

We are confused about war. The disciples of Clausewitz suggest that we are not involved in 'real' wars. Yet often what starts out as something other than a war can quickly escalate and end up looking a lot like one.

Witness Somalia, which began as a humanitarian mission. There may be a concept of low-intensity war but there is no such thing as a low-intensity bullet. Our politicians, who misuse the rhetoric of war to declare war on terror, drugs and banks, further confuse the issue of when we really are at war.

The reluctance to accept or even talk about war has a negative impact. How do we know we are preparing for future war in the most effective way? Should we reconsider the balance between existing defence, diplomatic and security resources and budgets?

With no public debate on national objectives, end states and potential deployment duration we can’t be sure that we are using the most appropriate strategy to pursue our national interests. Without a strong narrative from government justifying a deployment public support tends to diminish over time. This introduces the risk that the military will be caught between declining public opinion and government policy.

Today an effective war strategy requires a balanced whole-of-government approach rather than a solely or even primarily military response. In counterinsurgencies and stabilisation operations an over reliance on the military is bad strategy. It used to be said that war was too important to be left to the generals. It now must be said that war is too important not to involve the civilians.

El Gobierno español y la Ministra de Defensa seguirán negando que nos encontramos en una situación de guerra abierta y afirmando que las tropas españoles se encuentran desarrollando misiones humanitarias, lo que no deja de ser una mentira más de las que se repiten diariamente desde todos los medios de comunicación afines al Partido Socialista, para dar cobertura a la estrategia política del Gabinete de Zapatero.