‘While You're Busy Making Other Plans’ – The ‘Other RMA’

Abstract

This study argues that, in parallel to the developments in the West over the last three decades, several nations and organizations on ‘the other side of the hill’ have also undertaken a significant development in their military thought. This conceptual development is referred to in the study as the ‘Other RMA’ (‘O-RMA’). This study aims to identify and describe O-RMA, to analyze the learning process that led to it and to trace its intellectual origins. This ‘way of war’, whose roots lie in a series of dramatic and tumultuous events that took place in the Middle East between the years 1979 and 1982, is based on the following components: Improving absorption capability, in order to increase survivability and provide a breathing space for the ‘weaker side’, creating effective deterrence, in order to deter the ‘stronger side’ from attacking the ‘weaker side’ and shifting the war to more convenient areas in case this deterrent fails; and winning the war by not losing it, while creating an attrition effect. O-RMA is an exceptionally eclectic conception and its development was not intentional or systematic. This study claims that the main ideas that underlie this conceptual development evolved within the different elements, while maintaining a common image, concerning the military, technological, economic, social and political developments in the West during the 1990s.