America's 5 Worst Military Defeats

USS Arizona

James Jay Carafano, National Interest: America's 5 Worst Military Defeats

5 battles from U.S. history where losing wound up putting the nation on the path to victory.

Defeat can be an integral instrument of victory.

War is a competition between thinking, scheming, determined adversaries. Gaining a decisive advantage over the enemy is the ultimate high-ground. Sometimes this critical competitive edge comes from losing battles—when the loss sparks the actions that lead to winning.

For much of the 19th and 20th century, the Western way of war was battle-centric. Blame Waterloo (1815), the climatic one-shot campaign that ended Napoleon's run as the military master of Europe. Clausewitz and Jomini, the two-top commentators on Napoleonic warfare, went through a lot of ink describing the role of battle in diminishing the enemy's capacity to wage war. Meanwhile, Cressy's book on decisive battles of the Western World propelled combat into the center of Victorian pop culture.

WNU Editor: There were quite a few American civil war battles that ended badly .... but in today's conflict against radical Islam .... I see no pathway or strategy that will guarantee victory.