Book Review: Why America Loses Wars

Adam Wunische, RCD/Strategy Bridge: Why America Loses Wars

The national defense and foreign policy establishments in the United States are collectively looking away from Afghanistan and Iraq and towards China and Russia. As such, debates now center around how the military should be organized to deal with near-peer conventional conflict rather than the counterinsurgency conflicts it has been fighting for the better part of two decades. The debate is long overdue. Doctrinal documents and international developments are now beginning to refocus the military’s attention on high-intensity conventional conflict. However, reorganizing the military for new missions is far from sufficient. Reorganizing the military for great power competition and then selecting yet another conflict that requires counterinsurgency and stability operations will leave warfighters unprepared and dangerously exposed, as has happened repeatedly in the 70 years since World War II. Poor political decisions have the potential to undermine any advantageous reorganizing of the military, and a new book by Donald Stoker suggests this is likely to occur yet again.

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WNU Editor: America badly needs a debate on what are its political/economic/military/and strategic priorities. In the current situation the U.S. is involved in almost every conflict and dispute, with many of them having no strategic value to U.S. interests. This has got to stop. I do not think Americans want to bleed blood and treasure running an empire.

The Case On Why U.S. Forces Must Stay In Syria And Afghanistan

Syrian Democratic Forces and U.S. troops are seen during a patrol near the Turkish border in Hasakah, Syria, November 4, 2018. (Rodi Said/REUTERS)

David French, NRO: The Frustrating Necessity of Staying in Syria and Afghanistan, Explained

We almost certainly know who will dominate in our absence, and we know their hostile intent.

One of the primary problems with our endless debates over (seemingly) endless American conflicts with jihadists overseas is that we rarely go back to first principles. We rarely take a step back and accurately define our strategic and tactical challenge. We don’t do this in debates between pundits, and we don’t do it in public arguments. Instead, all too often we resort to sloganeering and sniping, with serious pieces like those of my colleagues Andy McCarthy and Michael Brendan Dougherty (who disagree, by the way, with my counsel to stay in Syria) the welcome exceptions to the dreary rule.

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WNU editor: There is no overwhelmingly public will in the U.S. to keep U.S. military forces in Syria or Afghanistan, and there is certainly no strategy or plan on how to defeat the foes that the above author David French believes are a threat to he U.S.. But to me this discussion is all moot. In the end the people in these trouble spots are going to determine (for better or worse) what their future will be. And keeping a few thousand U.S. soldiers here or there is not going to make a difference.

The 'Adults In The Room' Want The U.S. To Continue Fighting Wars

U.S. President Donald Trump (C) talks to the media between Defense Secretary James Mattis (L) and White House Chief of Staff John Kelly during a briefing with senior military leaders at the White House in Washington, U.S., October 5, 2017. Reuters

Tom Dispatch: Danny Sjursen, Ringing in a New Year of War

On December 9th, the Washington Post covered Donald Trump's offhand, if long expected, announcement of the ousting of retired Marine General John Kelly from an embattled White House. Its report focused on the chief of staff’s “rocky tenure” there with a nod to his many merits, among them that he “often talked the president out of his worst impulses.” Buried deep in the piece, though, was a single line that caught my eye (and possibly that of no one else on this planet): “Kelly told others that among his biggest accomplishments was keeping the president from making rash military moves, such as removing troops from sensitive zones.”

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WNU Editor: My must read post for today. On a side note (and prediction). In 2020 President Trump will be running on three main issues, and these are the issues that will help re-elect him. They are .... the economy. Border security. And the withdrawal of U.S. forces from war-zones that show no signs of ever ending.

Can The U.S. Fight A War Against North Korea And Iran At The Same Time?

© AFP 2018 / YONHAP

Paul Sonne and Missy Ryan, Stars and Stripes/Washington Post: Could US fight dual wars in N. Korea, Iran? Strategists say military toll would be almost unfathomable

The seeming collapse of the North Korea summit and the U.S. withdrawal from the Iran nuclear deal have led top officials in the Trump administration to once again make veiled references to military action, with President Donald Trump most recently touting American might in a speech Friday at the U.S. Naval Academy.

But beyond the saber-rattling is a sobering reality well known by strategists and planners at the Pentagon: The unlikely, worst-case scenario of sliding into open armed conflict with both Iran and North Korea simultaneously would strain the U.S. military to a degree few Americans could fathom.

Defense Secretary Jim Mattis has repeatedly warned that an open conflict on the Korean Peninsula alone would be catastrophic, resulting in the sort of warfare the U.S. military hasn't seen in generations. The outside chance of a conflict with Iran at the same time would present Pentagon leaders with logistical, tactical and personnel challenges unenviable for any commander.

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WNU Editor: For as long as I can remember the U.S. military has always planned for the remote possibility of having to fight two full-scale regional wars at once .... a capability that I believe the U.S. still has. But the enormous cost to fight two major war .... and its aftermath .... I do not think the will-power exists in Washington to green-light two wars, and I doubt that the American public will support fighting these wars unless the case is effectively made by its leaders that they should.

Americ Must Rethink How It Fight Its Wars

Hamburger Hill in 1969. Photo via Flickr

Arnold Isaacs, War Is Boring: Why Can’t the World’s Best Military Win Its Wars?

Americans need to rethink armed conflict.

“This time, they think they have it right.”

So declared an Associated Press story reporting an upbeat assessment by this country’s top military officer at the end of a five-day visit to Afghanistan earlier this spring. Marine general Joseph Dunford Jr., chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, was heading home from the war zone, the A.P. reporter wrote, “with a palpable sense of optimism” about the U.S.-supported war against Taliban and Islamic State fighters there.

Light at the end of the tunnel, perhaps?

The story didn’t say whether any of the reporters listening to Dunford asked why it had taken more than 16 years for the world’s leading military power to come up with the “fundamentally different approach” that the general believes has put U.S. and Afghan forces on the path to success.

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WNU Editor: One of the best analysis that I have read in a long time on why America is not able to win the wars it is fighting. There are no surprises in the above commentary .... everyone does have a basic understanding on why U.S. war policy has failed. But this is a well written post, and it makes it a must read.

Military Escalation In Syria Is Not In The U.S. Interest

AFP

Frederick Kuo, Asia Times: Why military escalation in Syria is not in US interest

The images flooding US news sources are the stuff of nightmares. Children gasping for air, their chests heaving in pain, strange foam flooding from their mouths. This time, the images are coming out of Douma, one of the last strongholds of the opposition rebels resisting the Assad regime’s reconquest of Syrian territory.

Already, as if singing in chorus, shrill cries are flooding throughout all of the mainstream US news outlets and self-righteous rhetoric employed in lengthy articles, all calling in unison for a new war in Syria on the basis of moral outrage with the ultimate goal of regime change.

On Monday, a few days after announcing that the US would be pulling its troops out of the Syrian theater, President Donald Trump castigated the Syrian regime of Bashar al-Assad and its Russian and Iranian allies and promised a swift and powerful military response to this attack.

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WNU Editor: I agree with the above commentary. Syria in its current form is a failed state that will take generations to heal. The U.S. presence will only exacerbate a hopeless situation, while raising the possibility of widening the war that may cost the U.S. multi-billions and countless U.S. lives. And for what?

Time For The U.S. To Get Out Of Syria

Gordon Adams, Defense One: Time to Get Out of Syria

The national security 'blob' who warn departure would be a disaster are wrong.

President Donald Trump is right; it is time for the U.S. military to leave Syria.

Even though he appears to have no strategy for what comes next, his intention to put a limit on any long-term U.S. military commitment is the right way to go.

Trump’s off-the-cuff withdrawal statement from last week received the standard Washington push-back. Why did we go into Iraq if we don’t intend to see it through, some say? American lives will have been sacrificed for nothing, like in Iraq. We have to see it through and handle the next stage, as Gen. Joseph Votel of U.S. Central Command put it: “stabilizing these areas, consolidating our gains, getting people back into their homes, addressing the long-term issues of reconstruction and other things that have to be done.” Pulling troops from Syria, the critics say, unilaterally gives up leverage for a U.S. role in the next round of Syria diplomacy.

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WNU Editor: I have no doubts that the U.S. will be out of Syria one day .... I just do not know when, or what will be the cost.

These Are The Wars That President Trump Should End Right Now

Daniel R. DePetris, National Interest: 3 Wars Trump Should End Right Now

When President Donald Trump signed the massive omnibus spending bill last month, he did so fleetingly and reluctantly. He called it a “ridiculous” piece of legislation that made a mockery of Congress as an institution, and he sternly made a promise: "I will never sign another bill like this again.”

The only reason Trump swallowed his disgust for the bill was because the U.S. military received a substantial windfall of cash courtesy of the American taxpayer. The 2018 omnibus threw $700 billion into the military’s coffers, a mountain of a figure that the bureaucrats and pencil pushers in the Pentagon never had to work with before.

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WNU Editor: These are wars that the U.S. should walk away from this year .... but my prediction is that the U.S. will not.

Was It Premature To Declare Victory Over ISIS In Syria?

Thomas Joscelyn, Long War Journal: Analysis: A premature declaration of victory in Syria?

The White House declared on Apr. 4 that the “military mission to eradicate ISIS in Syria is coming to a rapid end, with ISIS being almost completely destroyed.” While the United States is “committed to eliminating the small ISIS presence in Syria that our forces have not already eradicated,” the Trump administration already has an eye on “future plans,” which will rely heavily on other countries “to work toward peace and ensure that ISIS never reemerges.” Indeed, President Trump has vowed to withdraw the 2,000 or so American troops in Syria “very soon.”

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WNU Editor: The U.S. has been down this road before .... declaring victory over radical Islamists, but then finding them coming back a few years later. The sad fact is that a good part of the Sunni population supports ISIS, and see them as the only real alternative to defend them from Iranian supported supported militias and the Syrian Army. Throughout its history the Middle East has always been deeply divided along sectarian/tribal/and religious lines, and Syria is not an exception to the rule.

Should The Pentagon Inform The Public About Its Wars?

This video screengrab apparently shows the October 4, 2017 ambush of American and Nigerien soldiers in Tongo Tongo, Niger [Via AFP]

Bonnie Kristian, RCD: The Pentagon’s Secret, Permanent Wars

Two months after the lethal ambush in Niger that killed four American troops in October, U.S. forces were involved in another skirmish in the central African nation with militants linked to the Islamic State. If this story sounds unfamiliar, that’s because it was first reported last week, fully three months after the battle.

Pressed for an explanation of the delay at a Defense Department briefing Thursday, chief Pentagon spokesperson Dana White offered a stunning justification: U.S. “troops are often in harm’s way, and there are tactical things that happen that we don’t put out a press release about,” she said. “We also don’t want to give a report card to our adversaries. They learn a great deal from information that we put out.”

In other words: The military will decide whether Americans find out what the military is doing in their name.

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WNU Editor: I am sure that the oversight committees are kept in the loop on what is happening in these overseas conflicts .... even though they feign ignorance when things go wrong. And as for the conflicts themselves and the right of the public to know what is happening .... this blog and other websites do cover all of them, and what happened in Niger was not a surprise to me. After-all .... there is an active insurgency in the region, U.S. forces are deployed there (including a drone base), and they are involved in training and assisting these governments. As for the missions themselves .... they are kept secret for a reason .... but it should surprise no one that they do go out with the forces that they are mentoring/training .... and sometimes they will encounter the enemy. The only surprise that I have is that it took a long time before U.S. casualties occurred in a place like Niger. As for the need to have a public debate on why is the U.S. involved in these conflicts .... this blog has long been an advocate of that. Unfortunately .... the Congress, the media, and the public have shown very little if any interest to have such a debate.

Is The American Way Of War Coming To An End?

U.S. Military Academy Graduation. YouTube

Paul McLeary, Breaking Defense: The End Of The American Way of War; The Cold War Really Is Over

The American way of war — using overpowering industrial might, crushing firepower, and owning the sea and skies — may have come to an end, a top Pentagon official says.

For the past two decades, “the Chinese and the Russians have been working to undermine that model,” said Elbridge Colby, deputy assistant secretary of defense for strategy and force development. By spending billions on modernizing their militaries and fielding new technologies like artificial intelligence and hypersonic missiles at a faster clip than the Americans, the two countries have changed the way the United States must approach future conflict.

“I want to really stress that everything should be circled back to what the problem statement is, what the problem definition is, which is defeating the Chinese or Russian potential theories of victory,” Colby told an audience at the annual directed Energy Summit, co-sponsored by Booz Allen Hamilton and the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments. The answer, as much as there is one, will be found in a combination of technology, training, and doctrine, “but we should be taking initiative. They’ve gone after our theory of victory? We should go after their theory of victory so we have a better deterrent.”

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WNU Editor: We are definitely living in a  different world today. The U.S. may still have the world's most formidable military, but developments in more lethal technologies is forcing a leveling of the battlefield there by balancing out U.S. firepower. The world's industrial base is also now more diversified ... and forget about owning the sea and skies.

The U.S. Is At War In At Least Seven Countries

Slate: Fifteen Years After the Start of the Iraq War, the U.S. Is at War in at Least Seven Countries

Fifteen years ago today, George W. Bush announced the beginning of the Iraq war. Two U.S. presidents, thousands of lives lost, a withdrawal and a reengagement later, American troops are still on the ground—and dying—in Iraq. There are no plans for withdrawal, even though the most recent foe there—ISIS—has been almost entirely defeated.

The conflict in Iraq is just one facet of an ever-expanding and seemingly endless U.S. military campaign across the Middle East, Central Asia, and Africa. Last week, the White House, as required by a new provision in last year’s National Defense Authorization Act, issued a report to Congress on all the countries where ongoing U.S. military operations are taking place. According to the unclassified portion of the report, America is currently at war in seven countries:

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WNU Editor: The seven countries are Iraq, Syria, Afghanistan. Yemen, Somalia, Niger, and Libya. In smaller conflicts .... like the Philippines and drone strikes against targets in Pakistan .... the U.S. is there but their impact is minimal.

Previews Of America’s Next War

Stefano Reliando / Reuters

Micah Zenko, Foreign Policy: 12 Depressing Previews of America’s Next War

Here’s hoping past performance isn’t an indicator of future success.

The excellent new book by Lawrence Freedman, The Future of War: A History, demonstrates that military futurists, like political pundits, have a terrible track record of predicting the future in their field of expertise. Freedman notably warns to avoid those who proclaim, “the ease and speed with which victory can be achieved while underestimating the resourcefulness of adversaries.”

Despite futurists’ long, poor track record, writing about the future of war is a well-resourced industry, within the military, in academia, and at think tanks. Because futurists are not evaluating or making judgments about contemporary events, they avoid critiquing those who hold power today, which prevents them from losing access to officials, being retaliated against, and generally harming their career advancement. Moreover, the penalties for making unsound or incorrect predictions are rarely incurred, and if they are at all, it is only in the distant future.

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WNU Editor: People are creatures of habit. These 12 previews of America's next war are probably spot on.

Why Does America Lose The Wars That It Starts?

President John F. Kennedy meets with the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Maxwell D. Taylor and Defense Secretary Robert S. McNamara at the White House on Oct. 2, 1963. Abbie Rowe, National Park Service, in the John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum.

Harlan Ullman, Defense One: Why America Loses Every War It Starts

There’s no school for presidents, JFK said — but there needs to be a way to bring knowledge and understanding to bear on presidents’ decisions.

Most Americans believe that their military is the finest in the world, a belief well-founded by several measures. Yet if the U.S. military were a sports team, based on its record in war and when called upon to defend the nation since World War II, it would be ranked in the lowest divisions.

Consider history. The United States won the “big one”: the Cold War. But every time Americans were sent to wars that it started or into combat for reasons that lacked just cause, we lost or failed. Korea was at best a draw, ended not by a peace treaty but a “temporary” truce. Our record in subsequent conflicts was too often no better, and too often worse. Vietnam was an outright and ignominious defeat in which over 58,000 Americans died. George H.W. Bush’s administration deserves great credit in the first Iraq War and in handling the collapse of the Soviet Union. But the Afghanistan intervention begun in 2001 is still going with no end in sight. The Second Iraq War, launched in 2003, was rightly termed a fiasco. Even far smaller interventions — Beirut and Grenada in 1983, Libya in 2011 — failed.

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WNU Editor: The U.S. has won the wars that count.

If The U.S. Succeeds In Regime Change In North Korea And Iran, What Would Happen Next?

A view of a parade celebrating the 105th birth anniversary of founder Kim Il Sung in Pyongyang, North Korea April 15, 2017 in this photo released by North Korea's Korean Central News Agency (KCNA) on April 16, 2017. (Reuters)

George Perkovich, National Interest: If America Topples North Korea and Iran, What Happens Next?

Just say no to regime change. It hasn't worked in the past and it won't now.

On October 19, National Security Advisor H. R. McMaster declared that President Donald Trump was not going to accept the North Korean regime threatening the United States with a nuclear weapon. “He just won’t accept it,” McMaster reported. “There are those who have said, ‘What about accept and deter?’ Well, accept and deter is unacceptable.” McMaster was speaking at a conference organized by the Foundation for the Defense for Democracies—a small but influential Washington think tank. Its leaders advocated the invasion of Iraq in 2003 and now provide intellectual fuel for McMaster, CIA Director Mike Pompeo, and others, such as the Wall Street Journal editorial board, which called for “The Regime Change Solution in Korea.”

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WNU Editor: If you break it ... you own it. And at this moment in time there is fortunately no appetite in the U.S. public to wage war against North Korea and Iran with the goal of regime change .... and there is certainly no desire to be responsible for cleaning it all up when the bombs have stopped dropping. But in the event that regime change is pursued .... and it is successful .... unless the U.S. is willing to commit hundreds of thousands of soldiers and trillions of dollars for a long term occupation .... nothing is good is going to come out of this.

A U.S. Military Budget But No Plan Or Strategy To Back It

President Donald Trump delivers remarks aboard the USS Gerald R. Ford. REUTERS/Jonathan Ernst

Caitlin Talmadge, NYT: Trump’s Military Budget Minus a Plan

Last week President Trump again called to revitalize the United States military, most notably with a 10 percent increase in the defense budget. Such proposals make for a snappy sound bite and enable the president to bask in the reflected glow of the armed forces, which happen to be more popular than he is. Yet in the absence of a coherent national strategy, arbitrary increases in the defense budget will do little to make America safer, and could make the world more dangerous.

There is no doubt that the United States faces serious security threats. The Defense Department is dealing with genuine readiness and modernization challenges, and reasonable people can disagree about whether targeted budget increases are a necessary remedy. Some experts see rising threats from North Korea and Russia and have called for augmenting the United States’ ground warfare capabilities after long campaigns in Afghanistan and Iraq. Others call for increasing funding for the Navy, which is slated to shoulder the cost of a new ballistic missile submarine — the backbone of the nation’s future nuclear force — even though this effort may squeeze out the service’s traditional shipbuilding.

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WNU Editor: For the past 20 years there has been no debate/discussion on what should be America's national security priorities .... and the military/intelligence budget that is needed to accommodate these strategic priorities. President Trump is continuing this tradition .... throwing a defence budget number out there but not explaining why we should be spending this money.

Has The U.S. Lost The War In The Middle East?

U.S. soldiers gather in the town of Gwer, northern Iraq August 31, 2016. REUTERS/Azad Lashkari /File Photo

Danny Sjursen, Huntington Post: The Misuse Of American Military Power In The Middle East

Fifteen-plus years after 9/11, engaged militarily in half a dozen countries across the Greater Middle East, with no end in sight.

The United States has already lost ― its war for the Middle East, that is. Having taken my own crack at combat soldiering in both Iraq and Afghanistan, that couldn’t be clearer to me. Unfortunately, it’s evidently still not clear in Washington. Bush’s neo-imperial triumphalism failed. Obama’s quiet shift to drones, Special Forces, and clandestine executive actions didn’t turn the tide either. For all President Trump’s bluster, boasting, and threats, rest assured that, at best, he’ll barely move the needle and, at worst… but why even go there?

At this point, it’s at least reasonable to look back and ask yet again: Why the failure? Explanations abound, of course. Perhaps Americans were simply never tough enough and still need to take off the kid gloves. Maybe there just weren’t ever enough troops. (Bring back the draft!) Maybe all those hundreds of thousands of bombs and missiles just came up short. (So how about lots more of them, maybe even a nuke?)

Lead from the front. Lead from behind. Surge yet again… The list goes on ― and on and on.

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WNU Editor: The Pentagon will be presenting their options to President Trump on Monday on what needs to be done to defeat the Islamic State. We will know then if it will be business as usual .... or a new strategy and approach on using U.S. military power in these conflicts.

Why Is The U.S. Military Losing Wars

Visitors are reflected in the Vietnam Veterans Memorial wall, etched with the names of more than 58,000 U.S. servicemen and women who died in the war, in Washington May 23, 2013. REUTERS/Yuri Gripas

Harlan Ullman, UPI: Why does the U.S. military have such a staggering record of failure?

The official end of the Cold War came in 1991 with the dissolution of the Soviet Union and the creation of the Russian Federation. Since then, remarkably, the United States has been at war or engaged in significant conflicts and military interventions in which tens of thousands of its soldiers, marines, sailors and airmen have been killed or wounded for over two-thirds of the intervening years. Iraq in 1991; Somalia in 1992-93; the global war on terror and Afghanistan 2001-present; Iraq 2003-present; and Syria and Yemen since 2016 represent a total of 19 of the past 26 years.

Using the end of World War II in 1945 at a starting point and including the Korean War (1950-53) and Vietnam Wars (from 1959 when the first Americans were killed to withdrawal in 1974), Americans have been in battle for 37 of the past 72 years or well over 50 percent. And the record has not been impressive. Korea was a draw. Vietnam was an ignominious defeat vividly portrayed by the poignant image of the last Huey helicopter lifting off the roof of an apartment building in Saigon.

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WNU Editor: Some wins. Some loses. Overall .... nothing to brag or be proud about.

US Marine Captain: 'We Lost The Wars In Iraq And Afghanistan'

Sgt. Mark Fayloga/U.S. Marine Corps Photo

Capt Joshua Waddell, Marine Corps: Innovation; And other things that brief well

I am now thoroughly convinced there is something deeply wrong with the part of the Marine Corps occupying the I-95 corridor leading to the Pentagon. What has become painfully apparent to me is the drastic difference between the mindset of the Operating Forces and the Supporting Establishment. While I grant that, in the case of the former, the prospects of being shot, blown up, or otherwise extinguished tend to be wonderful motivators to constantly improve and perform, the Marine Corps Supporting Establishment is filled with senior officers whose backgrounds include extensive experience in combat within the Operating Forces. Why then is there such a divide between the organizational energy and innovative agility of our Marines and the depressive stagnation found within the Supporting Establishment?

I believe I know a big part of the answer: self-delusion.

Let us first begin with the fundamental underpinnings of this delusion: our measures of performance and effectiveness in recent wars. It is time that we, as professional military officers, accept the fact that we lost the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

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Update: US Marine captain writes stinging op-ed: 'We lost the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan' (Paul Szoldra, Business Insider)

WNU Editor: His analysis is .... true.

An Analysis On The Rise And Possible Future Of U.S. Special Forces And Operations

America’s most elite troops deployed to 138 nations in 2016, according to U.S. Special Operations Command. The map above displays the locations of 132 of those countries; 129 locations (blue) were supplied by U.S. Special Operations Command; 3 locations (red) -- Syria, Yemen and Somalia -- were derived from open-source information. (Nick Turse)

Nick Turse, Tom Dispatch: The Year of the Commando

U.S. Special Operations Forces Deploy to 138 Nations, 70% of the World’s Countries

Don’t think the fad for “draining the swamp” began on the campaign trail with Donald Trump. It didn’t, although the “swamp” to be drained in the days after the 9/11 attacks wasn’t in Washington; it was a global one. Of course, that’s ancient history, more than 15 years old. Who even remembers that moment, though we still live with its fallout -- with the hundreds of thousands dead and the millions of refugees, with Islamophobia and ISIS, with President-elect Trump, retired Lieutenant General Michael Flynn, and so much more?

In the never-ending wake of one of the most disastrous wars in American history, the 2003 invasion and occupation of Iraq, it’s hard to imagine any world but the one we have, which makes it easy to forget what the top officials of the Bush administration thought they would accomplish with their “Global War on Terror.” Who remembers now just how quickly and enthusiastically they leapt into the project of draining that global swamp of terror groups (while taking out the Taliban and then “decapitating” the Iraqi regime of Saddam Hussein)? Their grandiose goal: an American imperium in the Greater Middle East (and later assumedly a global Pax Americana). They were, in other words, geopolitical dreamers of the first order.

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WNU Editor: Will this change under a Trump administration .... I can only hope and pray.