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Why Can’t America Win a War Anymore?
I recently read an interesting column by James Fallows in The Atlantic on “Why the Best Soldiers in the World Can’t Win.” (Yes, I know all the caveats that have to be attached to any members of the Carter Administration’s foreign policy team.) His thesis is that they can’t win because the US is a chickenhawk nation that supposedly supports its troops but can’t do the hard work of actually understanding what they do and how–“reverent but disengaged”– is how he terms it). His bases this thesis on three arguments:
1. The American public greatly admires the military, but very few serve in uniform anymore, causing complacency. This leads to underestimating the difficulty of foreign engagements. Likewise, this insulates the military leadership from public accountability.
2. Procurement is no longer about delivering a military capability most efficiently, but about consistently spending more on greater technology, regardless of battlefield need. The result is spending that is at once inflated and sacrosanct.
3. This creates politicians who view the Department of Defence as a source of pork for their congressional districts and a means of burnishing credibility on National Security for electoral purposes. There was a lot that I found provocative in Fallows’ piece.
Those are strong points, but he is still skirting the real problem. He never follows through from cause to effect, even as he provides ample evidence of the concerns that he highlights. He gets closest to the mark on #3, but can’t quite close the deal. To borrow a description of the British Army of the Great War, America isn’t winning its wars anymore because its soldier are “Lions led by Donkeys.”
The US hasn’t really suffered any tactical defeats since the start of the Korean War. At the same time, it is constantly being beaten by strategically by inferior rivals. This is why we must look to the deficiencies of the political classes. Their failure truly to understand the nature of our foreign conflicts and to make strategic decisions consistent with their nature undermines the ability of the armed forces to win.
In Iraq, the greatest problem was not that the Army had the wrong tactics, though there was undoubtedly a lot of learning that went on in the first few years. Instead, the greatest problem was to see the Iraqi security situation as an Iraqi problem, rather than as the focal point in a proxy war between Saudi Arabia and Iran. Just as the Viet Cong hid from a more capable foe by crossing into Cambodia, the antagonists in Iraq hid in a strategic depth where they were safe from American offensive action.
The loss of Iraq into Iran’s sphere of influence, while made complete by the withdrawal of forces on an artificial timetable, was well underway through the early problems during Sadr’s insurgency, and even through the successes of the Surge. Afghanistan was another of these regional conflicts in which the West decided to play in only one corner, though this time the conflict was between Iranian and Pakistani proxies.
When I was at staff college a couple of years ago, there were a number of new theories that we reviewed (Effects Based Operations, 4th Generational warfare, Systemic Operational Design … the list goes on and on). My impression across all of these is that these were thoughts generated by military leaders to mitigate the impacts of failures by the rest of government to approach military problems with any depth of understanding.
The problem with each is that they’re trying to solve the wrong problem. The political class should be shouldering this burden. Fallows cannot close the loop because it sits too close to home–the unimaginative and blinkered thinking of the political classes, of which he himself is a part.
Published in Military
Interesting post –
I work in the procurement process and what this paragraph describes is called “gold plating” requirements – and is death to any program. We spend the vast majority of our effort in procurement to demonstrate battlefield need first and foremost then look at doctrine, organization, training, leadership and education, personnel and facilities for solutions to the battlefield need – only when those choices are exhausted to we look at material – technology – even then we look at the spectrum of capabilities before recommending specific technologies for use.
Fallows premise is ludicrous.
I argue that the greatest mistake was the Coalition Provisional Authority and a too early transfer of sovereignty to Iraq.
American cannot win a war anymore because when it does win the victory is either forgotten or the goalposts moved to change victory to defeat. I can list two such examples:
1. The Cold War – 1946-1991. We won. They lost. The Soviet Union no longer exists. (Forgotten)
2. The Gulf War – 1990-1991. Kicked Saddam Hussein out of Kuwait. He never came back. Never could (Forgotten and redefined as a defeat.)
I have no doubt I will get a lot of explanations why those are not examples of victorious wars. That’s okay. We won, regardless.
Seawriter
Absolutely! I especially like the “lions led by donkeys,” formulation, though I might have worded it a bit more strongly. Retired NCO here, by the way, so I hope I’m not simplifying things to the point of crudity, but it seems to me that the political class (in uniform and out) lacks the spine needed to actually win. So uncivilized, you know, to defeat a mortal enemy.
The Ricochet Code of Conduct constrains my ability to adequately describe my frustration over the fact that it is perfectly acceptable to these empty suits that our troops fight with one or both hands tied behind their backs, and that they are required to train people who then kill them.
Our defense policy has been reduced to the proposition that if anyone provokes or attacks the US, or our interests, they will get new roads, schools, power grids, and a general infrastructure upgrade. The waste in American blood and treasure is inexcusable, while political leaders wonder aloud what difference it makes, and the people they ostensibly represent are so overwhelmed by the frontal assault on the Constitution at home, that they can barely focus on the outrageous treatment of their fighting forces. It is quite honestly infuriating, though not as infuriating as the fact that we seem powerless to do anything about it.
I would make them all read Clausewitz. In German.
Mr. Fallows manages to avoid mentioning that one of the reasons that the F-35 is expected to do so much is that some jug-earred numbskull cancelled the F-22, designed to fill the role of the F-15. He is right that the procurement process suffers from political engineering, among other things. That practice came into its own during the tenure of a certain buck-toothed numbskull, though no steps were taken subsequently to dial it back when the buildup to win the first of Seawriter’s forgotten wars was underway. Indeed, the buildup required broad bipartisan support and there were many lesser numbskulls that needed to be appeased to get it.
Is that how we got the F-35?
I am second to none in my disdain for the F-35 today – not to say that I don’t think it will be capable enough to do it’s job in the near future. The problem with the F-35 is that the required capabilities (the technology) isn’t required – it is. The problem is with the level of ‘Jointness’ or the degree of commonality it is required to achieve among different users. Carrier landings? Not required for USAF planes – yet contribute mightily to the weight and payload of the aircraft.
But the Joint requirements were levied by Congress, not sought after by the DoD, although the discussions often looked like this
Wash Rinse Repeat.
The F-35, what a concept. Guess no one at the DoD realized a less humiliating approach to sewing together a new Frankentein monster would be getting the F-111s out of the desert and re-branding them as F35s.
Does either Devereaux or Simon know whether the Harrier’s VTOL was ever critical to any marine activity or action? Is there any real operational necessity for Harriers and VTOL.
Devereaux, there were marine phantoms at Ubon and Udorn, maybe Takhi and Korat as well.
Yes, you are right about this. He is one of the college-deferred Vietnam War draftees. He was very involved in the antiwar movement. He’s a believer in John Kerry’s Vietnam War dogma. He writes from a position of guilt, and that guilt makes him chronically angry at the United States.
I have zero respect for his writing on foreign policy.
Our soldiers are handicapped with rules never dreamed of in wars of centuries past, such as “Don’t shoot unless you’re shot at.”
“Okay, first tie your shoelaces together. Don’t get too far ahead of the other guys. Good luck with the race!”
There is a moral dimension here also. Korea was a stalemate where neither side wanted to use nuclear weapons. We were not going to fight full strength for fear of retaliation. A similar approach was followed in Vietnam, but at the same time, there was an increase in interest in American casualties above any other aspect of the war, including our objectives. (One would imagine that if the Battle of Antietam, with 2,100 Northern soldiers killed in a single day, were fought in a Vietnam War era climate, the Confederacy would have won and Lincoln would have been impeached.) By the time we were fighting non-nuclear powers in the Persian Gulf, the deep aversion to casualties at any cost mentality seems to have taken hold pretty firmly.
If the aversion to casualties is greater than the need to do what it takes to win, we will not win and the lives that are lost are lost in vain.
What Quinn said.
We are no longer willing to do what it takes to win. Unfortunately, this is not true of the bad guys. You have to break the will of an army, and of the people who would send an army.
Our State-Department-centric strategy of bombing them back to the negotiating table and then giving them what they want is still working out about as well as it always did. We’ve just gotten better at proxying both the bombing and the negotiating. The results are the same.
One of Obama’s top goals was to convert our victories into losses, to discredit the use of American power both at home and abroad. Mission Accomplished!
I’ll just stop there.
Because the Democratic Party is full of traitors and the Republican Party is full of crooks.
Regarding the “lions led by donkeys” quote, it’s too kind to our political class. Lions led by feckless crapweasels would be more accurate.
No matter how it was spec’d, the current mission of the F-35 is to scoop up dollars from successful programs and plow them under. Same way the “Pacific pivot” is designed to make disestablishment acceptable — all that stuff will suddenly be de-scoped once its transition is too far along to stop. Just a matter of getting momentum, then gently nudging it over the cliff.
America is being destabilized from within.
But what do I know? Me, with my lack of university credentials in whatever boondoggle budget item this all gets rolled up in. Shut up and vote for Jeb — he’s only 98% big government.
The problem is not just our aversion to friendly casualties. It’s our aversion to enemy casualties, too. It shouldn’t take more than a brigade or two of armor/mechanized infantry with heavy air support to completely rout ISIS.
Let the ground troops roll up any small detatchments. Pulverize any strong positions (including ones in cities) with B-52s. Use tactical aircraft and ground troops to pursue when they run. As Nathan Bedford Forrest said, “Get’em skeered and keep the skeer on’em.”
The f35 was also used by leftists as a stalking horse to kill the f22 much the same as the b2 was used to kill the b1.
Once the earlier program is killed, the leftists are free to attack the stalking horse.
Zackly. They’re also doing this with whole pillars of strategy.
Two reasons. First, we never define Winning. Second, we do not WANT to win. If we did both, the “International Community” wouldn’t like us. We have totally lost the concept of destroying the enemy’s will to fight, and the concept of the winner dictating the terms (this also applies to domestic fights with the opposing party).
Coming in at post 20+ its hard to say anything fresh. I suspect Clausewitz’ formulation that “war is politics by another means” is a source of weakness. It is a politician’s formulation that sees blood and treasure as personal assets without regard to the cost to those whose blood and treasure is spent.
Americans are, at heart, non-interventionist. Leave the world alone and expect the world to leave us alone -you can see it as far back as the Monroe Doctrine. Americans consider war an on-off switch. If we are at peace, we leave each other alone. If we are at war, we try to slaughter each other utterly. Destroy everything, leaving no stone on top of another.
Today, we try to treat that switch as a dimmer. The result is that we don’t really fight wars, we fight authorized military actions against global extremism. Thus, if it isn’t important enough for us to flatten another country, a sizable chunk of Americans don’t want us to be there in the first place.
There are others, though, who believe we should be involved in these minor actions. On some days, I might even be one of them, too. The coalition for war consists of those who think we should flatten, and those who think we should engage in minor military operations. That coalition is inherently unstable. The first group won’t tolerate long wars that we don’t fight to the fullest, the second won’t tolerate total war beyond the first couple of weeks -months at most.
The amusing thing about this discussion is that it is based on a false premise: That America cannot win wars anymore. Except we can and we have — the Cold War and the Gulf War.
I pointed that out back in comment 2 or 3. No one has contradicted me.
However, the replies on this thread amount to a lot of chin-pulling about why America does not win wars any more. I’d say if we cannot win wars any more it is because we cannot recognize victory when we do win, and because too many people seem emotionally invested in the United States losing.
The United States wins wars. It has unequivocally won two wars since World War II. It won one of them (the Cold War) despite a general consensus in 1979 that the United States could not win the Cold War, and that we were only playing for time before the inevitable Soviet victory.
The United States wins wars when we have leaders committed to victory. When we do not have leaders committed to victory, we do not win wars. It is that simple.
Want to win wars? Find leaders committed to win. Don’t elect leaders who want to fundamentally transform the United States into a loser nation.
If that means you have to vote for someone who is committed to victory, even though that someone fails your political litmus test, then you have to set aside your political hobby horse to vote for that person.
It is just that simple. It may not be easy, but it really is just that simple.
Seawriter
This.
It’s not a question of being unwilling to take casualties. It’s our unwillingness to inflict them, and our fear of “collateral damage”. But you can’t win a war if you don’t break your enemy’s will to fight. And you do that by defeating not just the enemy military, but the enemy society. In WWII we were bombing enemy CIVILIANS round the clock.
We have to not just defeat the enemy, we have to make sure they know they’ve been defeated, and that the cost of not giving up is more than they’re willing to bear.
Strategic bombing may or may not win wars, but it sure seems to make sure they stay won.
We won vietnam militarily
We won the gulf war militarily
we won in the balkans militarily
we won in afganistan militarily
we won in iraq militarily
The reason we didn’t win the korean war is because these guys:
http://www.faqs.org/espionage/Bl-Ch/Cambridge-University-Spy-Ring.html
told the russians who told the chinese we couldnt actually carry through on a nuclear war even if we wanted too.
Lets be clear. The military wins wars, the rest of the screw ups can’t keep them won.
Glad to see that some of the discussion went toward the F35, which is emblematic of the procurement problems. Building to a common spec is one of the things that is really attractive on the surface, but results in over-engineered products as conflicting requirements demand design considerations well beyond the purpose built solution. The example of the STOL variant causing higher costs in the straight version should come as no surprise. It’s also the underlying reason why you can get a plane like the A-10, which is a terrible aircraft by any centralized design consideration, and just about the best ever created for fighter-ground interdiction.
For the RCAF, we are well down the path toward also buying the F35, and the cost over-runs are creating political problems. To my mind, this is again an issue of the uniformed politicians not looking at the nature of the problem that they are looking to solve. In our case, we are replacing the F18 in our inventory, and if you’re looking at a straight replacement, the F35 probably is the best answer. However, if you look at what our strategy supposedly is, a much better answer would have been for us to break the export restrictions on the F22 and getting a couple squadrons of those things, then buy some surplus A10’s for whatever FGI we need to do. Unfortunately, that option is no longer on the table.
This is exactly why I’m in the attritionist school of war. My country supposedly follows manoeuvre warfare, but my observation is that when put into practice it’s just too neat and results in enemies who don’t know they’ve been beaten.
Except we didn’t. You use the term “militarily”, where I would use the term “tactically”. Of those listed, only the Gulf War could be considered a victory, and even there, the job needed to be finished a dozen years later. My basic point is that it doesn’t matter what a military can do tactically if it cannot achieve strategic victory, and that the source of it’s problem is with “the rest of the screw ups”.