Posted on May 3, 2018
Why Can't The World's Best Military Win Its Wars?
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“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.
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.
Why Can't The World's Best Military Win Its Wars?
Posted from huffingtonpost.com
Afghanistan
Vietnam War
Military History
Posted >1 y ago
Responses: 9
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From the article: "A strong case can be made that the American-allied Saigon regime’s single most toxic weakness was pervasive corruption... ...convinced that corruption was the single biggest reason the Saigon government had lost the war."
And __that__ is beyond the control of the US military.
Also, seems like the US should have taken the fight to the north and destroyed the regime there. That's what militaries do - they destroy things. Sorting out corruption and convincing an entire society to make up their minds a certain way - when/if those things are even achievable, I don't think it should be as much a military role as one for another agency, maybe the State Dept, maybe something new. (Again __IF__ rooting out corruption and/or producing societal changes are even acheivable, if, if, if....)
And __that__ is beyond the control of the US military.
Also, seems like the US should have taken the fight to the north and destroyed the regime there. That's what militaries do - they destroy things. Sorting out corruption and convincing an entire society to make up their minds a certain way - when/if those things are even achievable, I don't think it should be as much a military role as one for another agency, maybe the State Dept, maybe something new. (Again __IF__ rooting out corruption and/or producing societal changes are even acheivable, if, if, if....)
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SFC David Xanten
We never had the political will to win. The Military could have done so whenever it was allowed too.
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SGT (Join to see)
SFC David Xanten - The military could have won engagements forever, but without attacking the North directly for the purpose of destroying the communist government there, the fighting would have continued for decades because the North would have simply continued to drive the conflict. But even then, if the government in the north had been destroyed and nominal political control consolidated in one government, but that government had systemic problems with corruption, the Chinese or the Soviet governments (either one; understanding that they weren't getting along all that well), could have easily reignited internal conflict by leveraging public dissatisfaction with a corrupt government easily portrayed as a puppet of a new form of colonialism.
So, my point is that when it comes to fixing a corrupt foreign government, I don't think that's something the US military is going to be able to do. That's a question of running a country - not winning engagments, battles, and wars. Since the mid-90s, there has been a resurgent interest in the military in various aspects of "it's not nation-building" but when we look at the governments in places where the US has tried "it's not nation-building" the governments there look more corrupt than the state of Illinois - not because the US made them that way, but the US wasn't able to prevent it or fix it. That doesn't surprise me because, again, it's not a core military domain - and it shouldn't be. Winning wars is hard enough. Fixing corruption seems like a job for another agency, at least to me.
So, my point is that when it comes to fixing a corrupt foreign government, I don't think that's something the US military is going to be able to do. That's a question of running a country - not winning engagments, battles, and wars. Since the mid-90s, there has been a resurgent interest in the military in various aspects of "it's not nation-building" but when we look at the governments in places where the US has tried "it's not nation-building" the governments there look more corrupt than the state of Illinois - not because the US made them that way, but the US wasn't able to prevent it or fix it. That doesn't surprise me because, again, it's not a core military domain - and it shouldn't be. Winning wars is hard enough. Fixing corruption seems like a job for another agency, at least to me.
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SFC David Xanten
I guess I am old school. When we decide to go to War, we should by definition try to win the War by destroying the other Country's ability to fight. We didn't do that in Korea or Viet Nam. We didn't have to do anything more then destroy the North Korean's Government the ability to fight. But because President Truman didn't think we, as a Country had the will, we settled for a ceasefire. We did pretty much the same in Viet Nam, but instead of sticking around to enforce it, like in Korea, we left the Country to fend for itself. It the first example we were fighting as part of the UN, not so much in VN. All wars are political and they wouldn't happen if the politicians had to fight them, but they don't and maybe that is the reason we have them.
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SGT (Join to see)
I'm not so neutral about it. Communism was, and might again become, a threat to freedom and Western civilization. I was born during winding down of Vietnam, but I think the US was absolutely correct to fight back against it, just could have made better decisions about how at various junctures. Also, just to give credit where it's due, JFK was President during the initial involvement of the United States in Vietnam and he certainly demonstrated his willingness in WW2 to go to war.
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We don't 'win' wars because we don't fight wars. We fight and win 'battles'. You win wars by destroying your enemy's ability to fight and sustain combat operations against you. You kill his troops, destroy his equipment, interdict his supply lines, and eliminate his industrial bases that provide his means of making war. War is an ugly business. People, and not all combatants, die. No matter how hard we try, war cannot be made into something less horrendous. Attempting to do so will inevitably result in the failure of operations, and casualties to your troops. This, however, is probably a philosophy now set in stone. Military operations on the scale of WWII battles with commensurate casualty rates would result in public outcry and denunciations of commanders leading troops into bloodbaths.
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U.S. involvement in Afghanistan since the ouster of the capital-T Taliban government doesn't seem to me like a war so much as a nation-building activity accompanied by armed conflict. So, saying that the United States cannot "defeat" Afghanistan is not a serious statement. On a broad, overarching level, I don't think you can issue people the ideas you want them to hold and value. You can try to convince them, and they can either accept it or not. We have a military for the purpose of defending the country on the battlefield and while some aspects of that will require things like counterinsurgency and certainly counterterrorism, the main focus will be on winning _wars_ (an activity I categorize here as mostly distinct from counterinsurgency and counterterrorism when those activities take place separate from a conventional military conflict). If the enemy is unable to openly confront our military, then I don't think the nature of such a conflict constitutes a war.
Then he goes into the Vietnam War. If the United States wanted to keep Vietnam out of the communist sphere, the US should have attacked the North. Either that or reduced the scale of involvement dramatically. My favorite response to this suggestion is when someone quotes the movie The Princess Bride: "Never get involved in a land war in Asia." But if you are involved, and the US already was, then either do it like you mean it or go home. Don't just bleed. It's irresponsible.
But his point about corruption - that's a good point. If the enemy is making use of legitimate gripes among the population and you can't really address those gripes due to an unalterable political situation in that country, then the prognosis is not good. As a voter, I'd appreciate a more sober, pragmatic evaluation of US involvement in armed conflicts (particularly Afghanistan) that:
- sets up objectively measurable criteria that define success and don't require the application of opinion in order to assess whether or not they've been satisfied. (No, not body-counts. Maybe evidence of destruction of specific enemy capabilities. Maybe evidence of the establishment and effectiveness of new host nation capabilities. But metrics that are verifiable. No open-ended, nebulous, essay-question type never-ending stories. You'll be there forever.)
- honest, pragmatic evaluation of the probability of achieving the aforementioned criteria and over long a time and with how much resources
The fact that a society may be hellbent on a self-destructive path is not evidence of US military failure. It is evidence of aggregate human behavior - and that's all.
Then he goes into the Vietnam War. If the United States wanted to keep Vietnam out of the communist sphere, the US should have attacked the North. Either that or reduced the scale of involvement dramatically. My favorite response to this suggestion is when someone quotes the movie The Princess Bride: "Never get involved in a land war in Asia." But if you are involved, and the US already was, then either do it like you mean it or go home. Don't just bleed. It's irresponsible.
But his point about corruption - that's a good point. If the enemy is making use of legitimate gripes among the population and you can't really address those gripes due to an unalterable political situation in that country, then the prognosis is not good. As a voter, I'd appreciate a more sober, pragmatic evaluation of US involvement in armed conflicts (particularly Afghanistan) that:
- sets up objectively measurable criteria that define success and don't require the application of opinion in order to assess whether or not they've been satisfied. (No, not body-counts. Maybe evidence of destruction of specific enemy capabilities. Maybe evidence of the establishment and effectiveness of new host nation capabilities. But metrics that are verifiable. No open-ended, nebulous, essay-question type never-ending stories. You'll be there forever.)
- honest, pragmatic evaluation of the probability of achieving the aforementioned criteria and over long a time and with how much resources
The fact that a society may be hellbent on a self-destructive path is not evidence of US military failure. It is evidence of aggregate human behavior - and that's all.
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