
Why the world's biggest military keeps losing wars - Thevet
http://www.pieria.co.uk/articles/why_the_worlds_biggest_military_keeps_losing_wars
======
orbifold
Most of those conflicts are a pretense to funnel trillions of dollars into the
economy, but almost always also a fight to maintain spheres of influence. This
was certainly true for the Vietnam war, where above all a communist Indonesia
had to be avoided, but also obviously for any conflict in the Middle east.

What I find worrying is that the War on Terror is a poor substitute for the
Cold War. The enemy is technologically unsophisticated, so there is no chance
of a sputnik shock, no real competition to gain the upper hand technologically
and therefore potentially less incentive to use the vast resources of the
military to fund high technology research as it was the case during the Cold
War.

Moreover the technology developed to "hunt terrorists" can be turned against
the population much more easily than the rockets, nuclear weapons and computer
systems of the past.

~~~
wahsd
You aren't quite hitting the nail on the head. It's not about funneling money
into the economy, it's about manipulating the systems of governance to make
theft of public resources and money tenable. It's the same reason that we have
predictable "unpredictable" "bubbles" in the economy and it is why we start
wards who's sole purpose is justification to steal public money for private
gains. In many ways, there is even a disincentive to winning a war or military
conflict at all. Imagine if we had responded to the 9/11 attacks in a smart
manner; it would have cost maybe upper double digit millions of dollars to
apprehend or kill OBL, but going into Afghanistan like buffoon cost us no less
than $1,000,000,000,000.00 in direct expenditures and probably about another
trillion in opportunity cost and indirect costs.

THAT's the name of the game. Stealing public money to enrich private
individuals. As long as there is an incentive to manipulate America into
blowing our money and efforts on military boondoggles, we will do exactly
that.

~~~
bduerst
Could you elaborate on why it's theft? Your comment didn't really explain it
other than saying the Afghanistan war could have been cheaper.

~~~
noelwelsh
Were does the US military budget money get spent? A small portion goes on
wages, but every soldier needs equipment, food, and requires infrastructure.
This is mostly provided by private companies. "Defence" companies are in the
top lobbyists by expenditure, at about $200M each per year. They lobby hard to
get the lucrative contracts to provide all the above and more (e.g. the F-35
program).

Who pays for all this? The government of course. And where does the government
get its money? The tax payers. I.e. the public.

So the reasoning goes that the industrial military complex exists to transfer
money from the public, via the government, to private companies.

~~~
cgearhart
See the table on page one of chapter 5 (page 51 in the pdf) of
[http://comptroller.defense.gov/Portals/45/Documents/defbudge...](http://comptroller.defense.gov/Portals/45/Documents/defbudget/fy2015/fy2015_Budget_Request_Overview_Book.pdf)

Actual expenses in 2012 show that military pay and benefits accounts for 34.6%
of the DoD budget, with total pay and benefits (including civilian) accounting
for 47.8%. According to a CBO report I read in 2010, the growth in personnel
costs for the military was one of the biggest concerns for long term budget
planning. The _vast_ majority of the military servicemen costs are due to the
cost of providing healthcare, because the military isn't exempt or immune to
the cost growth experienced in that sector.

As an additional aside, expected outlays for the post-9/11 GI bill are much
higher than initial estimates because the cost of college has grown so much
and the benefits are transferrable.

~~~
noelwelsh
Thanks for linking to that. I tried searching for an exact figure and couldn't
find one.

------
dreamweapon
_One desert night on a Marine base outside Basra, I chatted with an Egyptian
interpreter hired by the US military. Knowing that Cairene Arabic is vastly
different from that of Southern Iraq, I asked him if he had any trouble
understanding the local dialect. He shook his head. “I have no idea what they
are saying. I have a much easier time understanding you.” His English was
excellent, which is presumably why he got the job, but his comprehension of
Basrawi Arabic was almost nonexistent. But Marine officers, who inevitably
spoke no Arabic, depended on him to explain what the locals were trying to
tell them. Since the interpreter just made up what he thought his bosses
wanted to hear, the Marines were operating with negative intelligence._

As good a synopsis of the last 60 years of this country's foreign policy, as
any.

~~~
stevenjohns
Both of them - the Egyptians and the Basrawis - are able to communicate
without issue using Modern Standard Arabic, and worse comes to worse, the
Basrawis wouldn't have much problem to emulate the Egyptian accent (almost all
of the TV dramas, films, actors and music is in a Lebanese and Egyptian
accent, so pretty much every Iraqi living in Iraq would have no issue with
it). It would never reach a point where they can't communicate with each
other.

The paragraph itself seems slightly misleading or enhanced for dramatic
effect. If this situation did actually take place as claimed, it's likely that
the locals were intentionally trying to confuse the interpreter.

~~~
nayefc
Also to add: any Arab will pick up any other local dialect/accent pretty
quickly as well. I highly, highly doubt any Egyptian living in Iraq for a
period of time would not be able to pick up the dialect rather quickly.

~~~
dreamweapon
_I highly, highly doubt any Egyptian living in Iraq for a period of time would
not be able to pick up the dialect rather quickly._

Except when you're working for an occupying military force, you're not really
"living" in the country you're occupying. Unless you're native, you're living
on a military base -- i.e. with the occupiers, and not with the locals.

Which is one of many, many reasons why these kinds of military operations tend
not to work so well.

------
smacktoward
The "don’t invade a country if you are too lazy to learn the language" point
is particularly telling. When the post-9/11 wars started, I thought one of the
highest priorities would be to get combat units to a point where they didn't
need external interpreters for the regions they were going to be operating in.
An interpreter is a massively dangerous potential point of failure -- he could
be incompetent, as the article suggests, or worse, he could be actively
conspiring with the enemy to tip them off about your movements, feed you
misleading info and make you look bad to the locals. If you can't speak at
least the rudiments of the language yourself, you have no way of knowing. But
after a decade of war in Iraq and Afghanistan, American combat units appear to
be just as dependent on external interpreters as they were going in.

I suspect part of the reason for this that the article doesn't touch on is the
idea of the rotation. Combat units don't see themselves as being stationed in
Iraq "for the duration," but as units that happen to be in Iraq today but
could be in Afghanistan tomorrow and Korea the day after that. What's the
benefit of learning Pashto today if you're leaving Afghanistan in three months
and may never rotate back there again?

~~~
Htsthbjig
It is not just the language. It is the culture.

Americans live in their own isolated world. If you understand the culture you
don't need to make the war or could reduce it to the minimum.

E.g. In the first Gulf war the Americans told the population to go against
Saddam because they were to enter Iraq. A significant part of the people did.

But Americans left betraying those who had supported them. Repression by Sadam
was terrible, over a million people died. Americans couldn't care less about
them.

This action alone meant USA was never going to be trusted again in Iraq
because families don't forget the betrayal, and never will until the widow of
the man who was tortured and killed for helping Americans is alive.

Another example is how the Americans burned poppy fields in Afghanistan while
not replacing it with anything that could make the families live.

Helping people growing food puts families on your side.

I had been in safe places of Afganistan and Iraq. The people there prefer non
Americans like British army because they have much more experience helping
native communities, and understand their culture much better.

~~~
smacktoward
I actually agree with this sentiment, but learning the local language is the
best first step to learning the local culture. It's much, much harder to
really understand how people live without first understanding how they talk to
each other.

~~~
bkmartin
And I think that people really underestimate how hard it is to learn these
languages well. It can take years of immersion to be fully fluent to where
communicating really really effective. I would think that we would have jobs
in our military that would be responsible for learning languages from all
kinds of places around the world, should we need to be there.

~~~
smacktoward
The Army, at least, appears to already have a MOS for
interpreters/translators: [http://www.goarmy.com/careers-and-jobs/browse-
career-and-job...](http://www.goarmy.com/careers-and-jobs/browse-career-and-
job-categories/intelligence-and-combat-support/interpreter-translator.html)

But they clearly either don't have enough people in that MOS or have enough
but specializing in the wrong languages, if frontline units still need to rely
on hired translators.

~~~
blister
The Defense Language Institute has massive failure rates for students in the
Cat 5 languages. Most of these courses are also at least a year long, if not
more. They would probably have to increase the overall size of that facility
20-fold to produce enough linguists annually to have qualified linguists
embedded in every unit.

The other big problem is that the people that (traditionally) do best in a
linguistics MOS are usually highly intelligent and work well in an
intelligence type of career field. Most of these would not do well in a
battle-hardened infantry unit.

~~~
bkmartin
There has to be enough people in our ranks with enough intelligence to learn
these languages. You don't have to be the best linguist, just a capable one
that is willing to work hard. Not to mention that every combat troop should
probably be getting at least cursory training in the local language as part of
their on going training when not out in the field engaged in combat.

Our soldiers are not stupid, and if we treat them like the intelligent and
invaluable human beings that they are then I think we might see far more
success that we can even imagine. Imagine if you could understand the locals
even 20% of the time vs our current nearly 0% for most units. How much more
effective would we be in not only our intelligence in the field, but being
able to convey our support for them and helping to relate to the local
population.

~~~
jwhitlark
It's not intelligence, but motivation that line units lack, in my experience.
People who volunteer for the front line are more interested in solving
problems with firepower than more peaceful interactions.

This sort of observation led to a suggestion that the American military should
be divided into a Leviathan part and a System Administrator part, an idea I
think is worth considering. See
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Pentagon's_New_Map](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Pentagon's_New_Map)
for more.

------
pluma
The problem is that most "wars" the US has been involved in across the recent
decades weren't conventional wars, even when the US was treating them as if
they were.

The ongoing "wars" in Iraq and Afghanistan (which miraculously have been
"ended" unilaterally by the US many times over) aren't wars. They're
garrisons.

Even ISIS (ISIL?) isn't a conventional enemy, despite having tanks. These
aren't nation states and those aren't, for the most part, soldiers.

The reason the "War on Terror" is still treated as a war is that there is no
reason not to. The article explains that quite nicely.

~~~
adam77
[The reason the "War on Terror" is still treated as a war...]

...is for its legal status (empowering the US executive to carry out certain
actions it otherwise couldn't).

A number of laws were changed/reinterpreted following 9/11 with respect to
what constitutes war and how it may be implemented.

~~~
LordKano
None of the legal mechanisms of war apply to what the US is doing in the
middle-east.

Congress has authorized certain actions but there has been no declaration of
war.

~~~
adam77
I think technically the US is 'at war' with certain terrorist groups, allowing
certain tools of war to be employed (esp. in the middle east).

Something along the lines of: "In times of war...

* the battlefield is wherever the enemy is (just about anywhere you can draw a link to terrorist activity);

* the battlefield may be 'prepared' (drone strikes, assassinations, covert ops, etc).

~~~
LordKano
We have allowed the word "War" to be bastardized in everyday usage with things
like "The War on Drugs" or "The War on Poverty" and now the "War on Terror"
but "War" is something very specific.

The United States of America is not at "War" unless there is a Declaration of
War from the Congress. The Congress of the United States of America has not
declared war in over 70 years.

It's not likely to happen unless this country is facing a very real,
existential threat. Declaring war is like flipping a switch on our
Constitutional and economic systems.

~~~
dragonwriter
> The United States of America is not at "War" unless there is a Declaration
> of War from the Congress.

The Constitution gives the Congress the power to declare war, but the
extension of that to "war doesn't exist unless Congress declares it" is
reading something into the Constitution which is not expressly there, and
which there is a fairly good historical argument (which every Supreme Court
case to take up the issue, starting fairly early on in the Republic, also
sided with) is not at all intended.

> The Congress of the United States of America has not declared war in over 70
> years.

This is not true; just as Congress doesn't have to use magic words when it
invokes, say, its interstate commerce power, or its taxation power, neither
does it when it choses to exercise its power to declare war; acts of Congress
like the 2001 "9/11 AUMF" and the 2003 "Iraq AUMF" are both examples of
exercises of the power to declare war (in both cases, declarations made
conditional on executive acts.)

> Declaring war is like flipping a switch on our Constitutional and economic
> systems.

Declaring war is _not_ like flipping a switch on the Constitution. Nor the
economic system, really, though _separate_ radical acts in the economic arena
may be _premised_ on the existence of a state of war.

------
voidlogic
I think many of the points raise are very valid areas of improvement, for
example: "Learn the Language"; Others are products of politician reality:
"Fear of Casualties".

But I think the premise: "the World’s Biggest Military Keeps Losing Wars", is
wrong.

1\. Conventional forces have trouble wining asymmetrical conflicts unless they
are allowed to wage total war (which is usually precluded by modern
political/moral concerns). Nothing new here- the Romans had experience with
this.

1.A Note the single "win" on the list of post-Korea conflicts was the first
Gulf War, a conventional conflict.

1.B It is arguable that the U.S. is actually better than most other
conventional militaries at asymmetrical warfare:
[http://www.warriorlodge.com/blogs/news/16298760-a-french-
sol...](http://www.warriorlodge.com/blogs/news/16298760-a-french-soldiers-
view-of-us-soldiers-in-afghanistan), however that may just be a product of
being better at conventional warfare improving overall fitness.

2\. "Winning" define this? Winning means very different things in total war
vs. occupation/garrison/nation building actions. While its fair to say the
U.S. lost Vietnam, I think its fair to say the U.S. won in Iraq and
Afghanistan as they are now governed by friendly democracies... Military
action is just a way of attempting to physically impose political will- If a
nation's military helps the leaders reach _their_ goals, it won.

~~~
quanticle
>I think its fair to say the U.S. won in Iraq and Afghanistan as they are now
governed by friendly democracies...

I dispute that Iraq is governed by a friendly democracy. Iraq, presently is
largely split between the Islamic State and the post-Saddam regime currently
headed by Haider El-Abadi. Neither is especially friendly towards the US at
this point. Islamic State is... well, Islamic State. The Abadi administration,
on the other hand, has largely fallen into the orbit of Iran, owing to their
shared Shia Islam heritage.

The outcome of the Iraq War reminds me of the old joke about the French and
Indian War. "Who won the French and Indian war? It was the British." Likewise,
"Who won the America/Iraq war? The Iranians."

~~~
ta75757
The French and Indian War wasn't the French fighting against the Indians. It
was the Americans and British fighting against the French and the Indians.

------
leroy_masochist
Article is much better than I thought it would be. Money quote is last
sentence: "The most fundamental reason America’s huge military can’t win wars
is that it doesn’t need to." He's exactly right.

------
carsongross
This is a pretty shallow analysis.

Bill Lind has done some deep thinking on why the US military can't win modern
wars (tldr: the armed forces are a graft system, not a war system; no one has
figured out how to fight non-state and semi-state wars without going full
roman burn-and-crucify.)

I highly recommend his articles and books, particularly to people on the left
who might be initially put off by his social conservatism.

~~~
Kalium
> without going full roman burn-and-crucify

This is the key factor, right here. We do know how to win these wars. It just
requires things we are not willing to accept.

------
wahsd
The answer is that we have been goaded into seeing our military as a tool
rather than an necessary and reluctant engagement for self defense, by an
enemy more heinous, pernicious, and destructive than any enemy our country
will ever face. The enemy within and in our midst, the military services cabal
that does not care whether American wins or looses, as long as we are engaged
in or agitating and preparing for war and the money flows.

If anyone had any interest in preventing our warmongering, they would look at
changing the incentive structure that surges towards war and death and killing
and supporting despotic foreign dictators and shelters horrible people who do
horrible things in our own country. As long as we want to condemn foreigners
while giving immunity to degenerate f!@#-ups like Rumsfeld and the whole Bush
administration, there is nothing more that can be done. They should have all
been thrown alive in a grinder and turned into pig feed for the high treason
of deliberately and knowingly lying to America and the world and starting wars
that killed Americans for no reason. We are a hollow farce if we can't apply
the same Nuremberg Trial precedent to our own leaders.

~~~
maxxxxx
I think this is the problem with a professional army. I bet Vietnam would have
gone on for much longer if there had been only volunteers there. And the Iraq
invasion would not have happened of there had been a draft.

------
netcan
GWYNNE DYER: 1 April 2008

 _Suppose an Arab military force was currently bringing peace and freedom to
the oil-rich, violence-torn country of Texas. What would they be reading in
the Arab newspapers five years after the occupation of Texas?

They’d be learning about the minute doctrinal differences and the
irreconcilable rivalries between Catholic Hispanics and Protestant anglos, and
even between Southern Methodists and Southern Baptists. They’d all know about
Texas’s long love affair with guns, explaining why Texans were killing Arab
soldiers. They’d constantly be reminded that the dominant minority in east
Texas is African-American, while in west Texas it is Hispanic.

Everybody in the Arab world would know far more about Texas than any sane non-
Texan should ever want to know — without understanding anything at all._

If you don't understand, it's dangerous to convince yourself you do.

------
matthewowen
"Before Korea, America never lost a war."

Really? I feel like there's a decent case for the War of 1812 (the USA
attempted to seize Canada and failed).

~~~
AcerbicZero
Thats a bit pedantic, as well as inaccurate. I wouldn't call any party in the
War of 1812 a clear winner, as there were gains and losses of approximately
equal value in the end.

So depending on how you want to view the Civil War, the US was 6-0-1, or
5-0-2, until Vietnam.

~~~
matthewowen
I agree: I was being pedantic, but I don't think inaccurate: there is surely
some case: the USA declared war and didn't actually achieve their principal
objectives.

Does awarding "victory" depend upon who declares war? Surely there's some case
to be made that for Britain, maintaining the status quo was a victory: unlike
the USA they hadn't aimed for a change from the status quo.

------
johnnyfaehell
It won both Iraq and Afghanistan wars. Both governments were overthrown,
pretty quickly too which was their original goal. With Afghanistan they had a
secondary goal to find Bin Laden they achieved that goal too.

hat then happened was what is commonly known as peacekeeping. They then got
hammered by what is commonly known as terrorist using guerrilla warfare. Even
then, not like they lost.

I'm all up for bashing America, but let's not bash them for not carpet bombing
a bunch of civilians.

~~~
EliRivers
_they had a secondary goal to find Bin Laden they achieved that goal too._

In a different country, a decade later, by completely different means, after
he'd been allowed to escape Afghanistan. Hardly a rousing success. In fact, a
total failure, necessitating a number of different subsequent attempts. If you
fail repeatedly and then succeed once, you don't get to call the first failure
a success.

 _What then happened was what is commonly known as peacekeeping._

No. What then happened is commonly known as alienating the local population
repeatedly, losing all your popular support, becoming the laughable tool of
local animosities, and in so many ways just fucking everything right up in an
orgy of incompetence, aided so admirably by the British who shared many of the
incompetencies, but managed to demonstrate some of that at even greater levels
and still, to a large extent, refuse to accept how appallingly badly they did.
Face the facts; initial invasion a success, attempt to build a nation total
fucking cluster.

------
amyjess
There's a difference between winning the _war_ and winning the _peace_.

In Iraq, we won the war hands-down. We went in to effect regime change and
bring Saddam to justice. We did exactly that. We toppled Saddam's regime,
established a new one in its place, and then captured and executed the man
himself.

However, we lost the peace _badly_. We failed to anticipate the rebels, the
influx of al-Qaeda, the sectarian civil war, the rise of ISIS, etc.

~~~
refurb
Couldn't you say the same for the Vietnam War? After the Tet Offensive, North
Vietnam was reeling from it's failure to achieve its military objectives (it
was an absolute success politically).

The US got North Vietnam to agree to a peace treaty and then left South
Vietnam. Vietnamization failed and once the North Vietnamese realized the US
wasn't going to help the South anymore, they just took the whole country.

------
discardorama
The author makes some very good points.

The British were able to control vast swaths of the world with minimal
military power. They fought _smart_.

I remember watching Restrepo and other similar documentaries. I come from a
tribal culture too; and there were several instances where I could clearly see
how the Americans were making a mistake in their dealing with the locals.
Those people have been living and dying by their tribal codes for millennia,
and "democracy" and "freedom" means nothing to them.

Minor nitpick: it was GHW Bush who committed US troops to Somalia, just as he
was leaving office, in December 1992; a nice welcoming present for Clinton.

Edited: It was pappy Bush, not Dubya. Thanks @theorique :)

~~~
rhino369
>The British were able to control vast swaths of the world with minimal
military power. They fought smart.

The world changed. The British and French couldn't control those colonies
anymore. Guerrilla insurgencies are very hard to beat.

In order to win you either have to convince the people to support you, which
is almost impossible as an outsider. Or you make them fear you worse than the
insurgency. That is impossible under international law.

But if the US really wanted Afghanistan to bend to it's will and didn't care
about international law? Just carpet bomb villages that don't support you
against the Taliban. Relocate tribes to reservations and resettle your
supporters.

Why didn't Japan and Germany have insurgencies? They were afraid of what we'd
do.

~~~
rodgerd
> The world changed. The British and French couldn't control those colonies
> anymore. Guerrilla insurgencies are very hard to beat.

In the case of Britain, they spent so much on WW I and had barely recovered by
WW II. They were literally a fortnight away from having to surrender during WW
II. The US played a masterful hand in helping the UK out, and the one of the
post-war prices was US pressure to decolonize so the US could expand its
sphere of influence.

The fact the Britain was also reduced, financially, for relying on ex-colonies
like New Zealand and Australia to send free food and pay down its war debts[1]
meant that they didn't have much choice. Less a straight military loss - the
British had plenty of experience putting down rebellions as brutally as
needed, after all - and more having dropped from a superpower to a US client
state.

France was different, since De Gaulle had preserved a great deal more autonomy
for France in the post-WW II era (hence a lot of US hostility). But France was
a lot weaker as well, even if it wasn't a US client state. They did, however,
hang on to more of their colonies, even in the face of persistent opposition
in places like New Caledonia.

[1] For sentimental reasons, not particularly well repaid with the manner of
the British entry to the EU.

~~~
rhino369
Part of it was that the US signaled after WWII that it would support Western
Europe, but it wouldn't help them colonize the world.

The British and French were shocked (and pissed) when the US sided with Egypt
and the Soviets against European colonialism.

The only reason the British didn't suffer a string of horribly embarrassing
loses to insurgencies is because the British just gave up after Suez. They
would have had their Indochina and Algeria had they tried to keep it all.

------
lordnacho
Of course the bigger your military, the more likely you are to think the next
engagement will be a walkover.

And because you think it will be easy, you are more likely to gamble on that
marginal gain.

And because the gain is only marginal, you don't want to lose any troops.

And since you don't want to really bet those lives, it's harder to win.

------
jdietrich
I believe it all boils down to the facts revealed by the Millennium Challenge
2002, a massive battle exercise conducted by the US military. The exercise
simulated a conflict between the US ('blue force') and a hypothetical middle-
eastern nation ('red force').

During the exercises, the red leader (Lt. Gen. Paul van Riper) used asymmetric
warfare strategies, designed to exploit weaknesses in US military doctrine.
Rather than using radio and risking eavesdropping, orders were sent via
motorcycle courier and signal lamps. Rather than squaring up along
battlelines, the red team used hit-and-run attacks, including suicide
bombings. After massive losses for the blue team, the exercise was reset and
the red leader was ordered to follow a preordained script to ensure a blue
victory. The exercise was deemed a complete success.

The US military learned absolutely nothing from this exercise, and continued
to make exactly the same mistakes in Iraq and Afghanistan. There is a
doctrinal belief in the 'correct' way to win a war, and the notion that
technological and logistical advantages can guarantee victory in any conflict.
US military strategy is designed to justify procurement decisions post-hoc,
rather than actually win wars. We invest heavily in eavesdropping
infrastructure, _therefore_ it is strategically invaluable. We have a fleet of
multirole fighters, _therefore_ air supremacy is a vital objective. There is
an ideological drive to transform all warfare into the bloodless technological
dispute of the cold war, regardless of reality.

To quote Lt. Gen. van Riper:

"My experience has been that those who focus on the technology, the science,
tend towards sloganeering. There's very little intellectual content to what
they say, and they use slogans in place of this intellectual content. It does
a great disservice to the American military, the American defense
establishment. 'Information dominance,' 'network-centric warfare,' 'focused
logistics'—you could fill a book with all of these slogans.

What I see are slogans masquerading as ideas. In a sense, they make war more
antiseptic. They make it more like a machine. They don't understand it's a
terrible, uncertain, chaotic, bloody business. So they can lead us the wrong
way. They can cause people not to understand this terrible, terrible
phenomenon."

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Millennium_Challenge_2002](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Millennium_Challenge_2002)
[http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/military/immutable-nature-
war.h...](http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/military/immutable-nature-war.html)

~~~
Agustus
To be fair, the pre-ordained script was put together to utilize the resources
that were brought in to run the challenge after General van Riper wiped the
floor with them. Yet, even with the victory accomplished by General van Riper,
the military had to suffer losses in Iraq before it changed the leadership to
handle the asymetric nature in 2005.

The issue with militaries is that unless they lose, there is no need for
improvements. The Romans troddled along until Hannibal wiped certainty off
their face, the Romans retooled, focused around a military society, and
learned sailing from captured triremes to beat the better adversary. Prussia
lost to France and the professional soldiering class was built up that is
still reflected in German society today in their cultural approaches with
bureaucracy.

Without the political will to go in a different direction, the entrenched
forces within a military will avoid the hard choices needed to changes its
system.

------
niels_olson
I remember eating lunch on February 5th, 2005. We were at the Officer's Club
at the Naval Academy. All the officers had assembled to hear a lecture by
Admiral Crowe, one of our political science professors, better known from his
time as the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. He forwent his prepared
remarks to discuss current events, opening with "Perhaps we would all be
better served watching CNN right now, to hear Colin Powell address the UN
General Assembly. Unfortunately, I am afraid the machinery of war is to far
gone for any of it to make a difference."

"I am afraid the machinery of war is to far gone for any of it to make a
difference."

That sentence will ring in my ears for the rest of my life.

~~~
hackuser
2003?

~~~
niels_olson
doh, yeah

------
jacques_foccart
What is conveniently avoided is that Japan, Germany and South Korea are at
(relative) peace and prosperous because of immense investment by the US. All
three are still, technically, militarily occupied territory.

The wars were total wars, won at the cost of millions of lives and financial
and industrial commitments that reshaped the culture of both nations, at
enormous civilian costs especially on the losing side (Dresden, Tokyo,
Hiroshima...) and the territory kept at peace via millions of boots on the
ground, enormous military effort (how much does Okinawa cost per annum?) and
enormous financial spending, justified by Pax Americana being presumably worth
more than its bill. In the case of WWI, not invading the losing power after
breaking its will to fight resulted in a worse war a couple decades later.

Another unpalatable and often glossed over fact is that in both Germany and
Japan, middle management was kept in power because the invading authority
(such as MacArthur) realised that chaos would follow otherwise, and that in a
statist, single-party state, all the talent would converge to the ruling party
anyway.

Today's taxpayer does not want to pay for another Japan or Germany, and some
people in Washington have sold him the unicorn of "instant happiness once the
bad guy is removed with a few skilled operators and cool tech" (aka COIN),
ignoring decades of history.

Either the American taxpayer needs to push for colonialism (call a spade a
spade), or it needs to accept that furthering US interests will create side
effects for locals. The latter is obviously a lot easier to stomach,
especially with free speech allowing comfortable, safe civilians to complain
loudly about how unfair it all is, so it has been the default position of
successive administrations since Johnson. Option 3 is to accept the occasional
bombing and attack on your civilians, in exchange for isolationism. The risk
of that option is well described by the example of Chamberlain in the 1930s.

------
DanielBMarkham
Here are a couple of clarifying notes to the essay:

1) the United States has not declared any wars. The last war we were in was in
the 1940s, over 70 years ago. Since then we've done "police actions" "limited
military engagements", and all sorts of other nonsense, but no wars.

2) Yes, there's too much emphasis on the wrong things. But there's a huge
problem here that the military is working through: what do you want your
military to do, anyway? The general consensus is that we want these highly-
sophisticated fighting units able to take a fight to other highly-
sophisticated militaries, like the Russians or the Chinese. But guess what?
That's not the fight we've had.

So we keep spending trillions of dollars for a military built to do one thing,
and then we keep asking it to do something else. You might think the answer
would be "Just re-factor!", but it's not. As it turns out, if you want B2
stealth bombers, you gotta have this huge industrial complex churning away for
decades to get them. You can't just turn it off and on. If there's ever a
fight requiring high-tech military versus high-tech military, all of that prep
will pay off. If there isn't? It still might have been worth it -- having it
in place could have prevented the fight. You don't know.

The real problem is that the Pentagon and various administrations are unable
to have an honest discussion about the issues. There are too many lucrative
contracts and jobs on the table. The risks are too great to boil down into
slogans.

For now, my recommendation is to form a new branch of service dedicate solely
to large numbers of low-tech groud-pounders who specialize in nation-building
and international rescue/response. Whether we like it or not, that's what we
keep ending up doing, and the existing services do not seem to be able to
mentally make the trade between one bomber and, say, 100K peacekeepers. Plus
the missions are vastly different.

------
dominotw
I saw a frontline documentary on iraq called : losing iraq.

[http://www.netflix.com/WiPlayer?movieid=80017023&trkid=13752...](http://www.netflix.com/WiPlayer?movieid=80017023&trkid=13752289&tctx=0,0,iraq:e30d03a0-dfdc-479d-bf0b-8bd9c3fec7ca)

I gained a whole new prespective on the war

~~~
dennisgorelik
That's a great documentary/post-mortem.

------
germinalphrase
The military strategist Thomas Barnett has an interesting (and entertaining)
TED talk where he described two different functions the US military needs to
fulfill. It responds well to the criticisms presented in this article.

The first: the Leviathan force. This is the military as we know it. Go in an
break stuff quickly and thoroughly. Staffed by slightly pissed off, gung-ho
young Americans. We're already pretty good at this.

The second: the Systems Administrator. Go into a broken country (by us or
otherwise) and 'wage peace'. Help build governments, keep peace, develop
social services, etc. Staffed by older, more experienced individuals from a
variety of fields who are not (primarily) front-line soldiers. We don't know
how to do this.

Link:www.ted.com/talks/thomas_barnett_draws_a_new_map_for_peace

~~~
refurb
_We don 't know how to do this._

We did a pretty good job in Japan and Germany after WW2, no? And South Korea?

~~~
wtbob
Yeah, I think the issue is that we're not _willing_ to do this. Japan and
Germany remained peaceful for a number of reasons. First of all, they _knew_
that they had lost, and lost hard: their cities were in ruins; many of their
leaders were dead; a large portion of their populations were dead; and huge
numbers of foreigners were occupying their nations, making decisions on their
behalf with little consultation. Psychologically, they were cowed.

Secondly, there was still an external existential threat: the Soviet Union
(or, for the East Germans, the West). We were considered the lesser of evils,
so they were more willing to do our bidding.

We won't reproduce these conditions: we're not going to shatter cities and
decimate populations (there's also generally no other existential threat).
That's morally good, but it makes successful nation-building much more
difficult, or impossible.

We should carefully consider if, given that we won't do what it takes to
succeed at a task, it makes sense to attempt it anyway.

------
joshontheweb
I wonder if the surge in military suicides has anything to do with their
perception of the 'righteousness' of our warfare. It seems like it would be
much harder for a soldier to feel good about what they were doing now as
opposed to WWII for instance.

------
tomohawk
"War traditionally was mostly an excuse for plunder. In the modern world,
Angell argued, armies slaughtered not prospective slaves but potential
customers."

It would appear that many are joining ISIS precisely because they do like
obtaining plunder and (sex) slaves.

~~~
kbart
It's one of the false westerners' believes that keep from fighting ISIS
effectively. Just yesterday here was a good article on this topic:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9061725](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9061725)

------
markbnj
The answer is at least partly related to the question he asks in the second
paragraph: "how can America spend more on its military than all the other
great powers combined and still be unable to impose its will on even
moderately sized enemies?" What is "will" in a representative democracy? Even
when the country is united with a strong plurality for action against some
state, it doesn't extend to tolerating much bloodshed or internal discomfort.
We may be the first post-modern nation that has simply become unwilling to
project its power with the blood of its own citizens. I wonder what that might
mean when the drone revolution really arrives?

------
aluhut
That brings us to Ukraine, and Russia vs. US (again).

What is the global context to that? Where is the point there?

I know it started with the Eurasian Economic Union vs. the Ukraine–European
Union Association Agreement but from what I've heard the EEU is not really
worth it and Belarus is not very sure about it anymore. Was that really enough
to start the whole show? I mean, Putin can't get out of it now. He's too deep
in his own propaganda. While the EU seems to want to get back to calmer times,
Obama waits with the fuel tank around the corner reminding the EU and Putin of
the fact from time to time. But...what is this supposed to be? A new Cold War
show? Really...??

~~~
olegious
Ukraine is caught in the middle of the competition between Russia and the USA.
For the US, it isn't about democracy, it is about bringing NATO to Russia's
borders. Russia is terrified of NATO (the 2008 war in Georgia was basically
the preview of Ukraine).

~~~
adventured
More than being terrified of NATO (it's not), Russia wants to retain a very
high degree of control over its former satellites if it can. Including
specifically Belarus, Kazakhstan, Moldova, Georgia, and Ukraine. Russia
influences those countries practically as proxies as though they still belong
to the old empire. Russia fears losing that control, it doesn't fear the NATO
military alliance. I think it's a lot more afraid of trade ties with Western
Europe and culturally changes that drive political changes.

~~~
aluhut
Yes, I guess this is it and we probably crossed the line now. I'm curious how
this will end if everybody wants to save their faces.

------
leroy_masochist
The problem with many of the conspiracy theories presented by other commenters
on this thread is that they assume that the government (and by extension the
overall military-industrial complex) is much, much more competent than it
actually is.

~~~
nraynaud
Ahah, I had the same remark recently. I think it's the contrary, they are
putting rules, and they no real control over the complex effects.

------
coffeemug
We're not losing wars. We're winning them very quickly.

We're losing the aftermath -- policing and rebuilding foreign countries
_after_ we win the wars. That's a much more challenging problem, and we aren't
good at that at all.

------
hotgoldminer
The will to win isn't politically viable. War is heavily scrutinized and
almost entirely unpalatable (to say the least). Sure America may have the
might, technology, and numbers, but their enemy lacks political constraint.
Now they're faced with ISIL. Their decision makers obviously strive to make
visible the least palatable aspects of war in the belief it will expand their
sphere of influence.

America should re-think military strategy. Do they wish to 'win' wars with
violence? Can they? Or perhaps cyber war, surveillance, and infrastructure--
all soft forms of control--are the strategies of the future.

------
lazyant
From my European perspective this article is almost stating the obvious,
nothing controversial here. The only point is that conditions for victory
("winning the war") need to be clearly defined and they haven't.

------
adwf
I would say he missed the biggest reason: Because we've changed the definition
of "winning". It used to be that you just trounced the enemy army and didn't
give a damn about what the country looked like afterwards. Go in, kill them
till they surrender. This is true of pretty much every war before 1950.

Nowadays we're generally not fighting an established government but instead
some form of guerrila force. There is no-one to declare a surrender, therefore
the war will never really end.

~~~
discardorama
> It used to be that you just trounced the enemy army and didn't give a damn
> about what the country looked like afterwards.

You're forgetting the Marshall Plan.

~~~
adwf
That was a consideration after the war, not during. Nowadays we hold back from
razing entire cities like we did with Dresden/Nagasaki/Hiroshima.

~~~
laurencerowe
Fallujah was razed. Phosphorous incendiaries were used as in Dresden.
Casualties were much lower though as most of the population had fled by that
point.

~~~
rodgerd
And razed to support mercenaries, as well! Not a good look hearts-and-minds
wise.

------
lexcorvus
The answer can be summarized in two words: _asymmetric warfare_. More
accurately called _symmetrized warfare_ , USG's policy of binding itself to
different rules of engagement than its enemies, in such a way as to ensure
that the two sides are closely matched, is a recipe for unending conflict. The
_political_ reasons for this policy are complicated, but the _military_
reasons for the effects of the policy are straightforward.

------
StudyAnimal
I wonder what sort of correlation there really is between learning the enemies
language and winning a war against them. This big army doesn't win wars
because it holds itself back for political reasons. It is not that hard. You
have to be 100% focused on total destruction. That is what created the modern
Germany and Japan. This half-assed modern style of warfare is good for the
arms industry I guess. For them a long war is better than a won war.

------
SocksCanClose
Very interesting article...a second corollary might be that we have become
encumbered to the point where our enemies are running circles around us:
[http://www.projectwhitehorse.com/pdfs/boyd/patterns%20of%20c...](http://www.projectwhitehorse.com/pdfs/boyd/patterns%20of%20conflict.pdf)

------
yellowapple
I wouldn't really say that the second Iraq War was "lost", per se; it _did_
meet its objective of eliminating the regime of a dictator, after all. It's
the swarm of smaller-scale conflicts following it that the United States
struggled with.

I agree with all the points presented, though. Very well put.

------
anovikov
I completely disagree that any of these conflicts other than Vietnam, were
lost. They were just inappropriate use of the military power, akin to the
Soviet invasion to Afghanistan. Americans never had a big problem of defeating
any enemy, problem was what to do next (and Iraq-91 was a victory for exactly
that reason: they quickly withdrew and left defeated Saddam to deal with the
mess, with Schwartskopf correctly stating that there is no interest for U.S.
to 'run the country'). If you see 'victory' as 'Iraq (or Afghanistan) adopting
a stable US-style democracy', which apparently was an intent, than this 'war'
is not winnable, and there is nothing to blame military for in this fact.

~~~
adventured
The Vietnam War being lost is similar to proclaiming that Iraq was lost after
the invasion (the occupation time frame). There was no victory basis in either
case. Vietnam was a holding pattern, as the US chose not to march north with
its full might.

Not to mention, the Vietnam War was a civil war. Would we declare that France
lost the Revolutionary War, had the colonies been defeated by Britain? I'm
skeptical.

Had the US abandoned South Korea like it did South Vietnam, people would
proclaim the Korean War a failure as well. The primary difference between the
two, is the US chose to protect South Korea perpetually. Had the US stayed and
protected South Vietnam, I think it's very unlikely that war would be regarded
as essentially a total failure. It's not very complicated, the US chose to
leave because it was exhausted culturally, not because it was defeated
militarily.

~~~
rodgerd
Ah, the old stab in the back; a favourite myth throughout the ages.

------
known
Any type of hegemony will have awkward repercussions and collateral damage.

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joseph_Nye](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joseph_Nye)

------
jgreen10
They overthrew Milosevic, Taliban, Hussein, Austin, Noriega, Bosch, Gaddafi,
... Fighting guerrilla wars is the problem. Firepower obviously doesn't help
in guerrilla wars.

------
offshoreguy41
Maybe the goal is not to win. Maybe the goal is perpetual war.

------
danielmiessler
We're losing wars because we're not fighting them.

------
bane
In individual battles, the U.S. almost never loses. The raw military
capability the U.S. possesses is _staggering_. It's so vast that in actual
wars, the Army doesn't even do the bulk of actual fighting anymore, and
massive garrison forces in Europe and Asia barely see a dip in total manpower.
Special Forces and Marines go in to clear the way for big Army to come in and
sit and patrol like an overamped police force.

The opening invasion of the first Gulf War was over in what, 5 weeks? This was
a military power that Iran fought to a virtual standstill for almost a decade.
People forget about this part, because the rest of the occupation was such a
debacle. But when the U.S. military gets pointed at an objective, it will
generally get the job done. The military on military loss exchange ratios are
_astonishing_ , like 150:1. In most of history, 4:1 or 5:1 is considered
overwhelming. In the Korean war, it was about 4:1 for example. Vietnam was
about 1:1

The problem is that the world has changed _and_ the U.S. has changed.
Achieving occupation no longer counts as "winning" and the U.S. no longer has
the will to simply carpet bomb and shell an enemy to the point of complete
annihilation.

The U.S. fights wars for precision and to minimize non-combat casualties.

Genghis Khan would simply raze a city to the ground and murder every man woman
and child if he faced resistance. The U.S. orders Marines to go in for a door-
to-door clearing operation and try real hard not to shoot too many innocents.
And if that didn't work they'd just go and do it again.[1][2]

War is supposed to be terrible, and there are no "winners". Victory has always
been the last to give up or run out of people to throw at the enemy's swords.
By sanitizing the terribleness out of war, the U.S. has managed to ensure that
it never "wins" anything in particular. It's turned war into large-scale
police actions, which means it's regularized it. The U.S. hasn't fought a real
war in ages. Everything else has been policing.

The U.S. doesn't really have many big enemies, it has rabble rousers and riff-
raff on the edge of it's sphere of influence it needs to deal with -- rogue
and failed states, non-state actors, whatever. Most of the world is America's
town and it sends in police/soldiers to deal with the bad parts of town and
"keep the peace"

In a normal town, nobody cares if the police "win", just so long as things are
relatively safe for the good parts of town. Police are part of the
infrastructure of successful nations. The U.S. military strives to be the
global police infrastructure of a successful world.

The commander-in-chief has just been turned into chief-of-police of the
biggest baddest police force in the world.

1 -
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First_Battle_of_Fallujah](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First_Battle_of_Fallujah)

2 -
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Second_Battle_of_Fallujah](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Second_Battle_of_Fallujah)

------
fierycatnet
I can recommend "The Utility of Force" book for further understanding of
modern warfare and it's evolution.

------
diydsp
> implying the goal of fighting the war is to "win" it.

The purpose of fighting the war is to motivate the mining and weapons
development industries. If a constituency receives $50 million dollars to
produce a type of ammunition or equipment and research the next generation,
its large business owners, skilled workers and labor have "won," at least in
the short term.

~~~
Amorymeltzer
>The primary aim of modern warfare is to use up the products of the machine
without raising the general standard of living...

>The problem was how to keep the wheels of industry turning without increasing
the real wealth of the world. Goods must be produced, but they must not be
distributed. And in practice the only way of achieving this was by continuous
warfare. The essential act of war is destruction, not necessarily of human
lives, but of the products of human labour. War is a way of shattering to
pieces, or pouring into the stratosphere, or sinking in the depths of the sea,
materials which might otherwise be used to make the masses too comfortable,
and hence, in the long run, too intelligent.

~~~
ctdonath
For some reason China's "ghost cities" come to mind: enormous efforts
expending tremendous resources, only to leave entire urban regions to decay
unused.

~~~
jafaku
That happens everywhere to some degree. In corrupt countries it's very common
that politicians announce the building of big schools and hospitals, but the
projects are never finished. The construction companies bribe the politicians
to get the contracts, and then it doesn't even matter whether they ever
complete the job, no one will control that.

------
uptownhr
We're playing the wrong game with the wrong rules and using wrong tools for
the job.

------
offshoreguy41
Maybe the goal is not to win. Maybe the goal is simply perpetual war.

------
jkot
I often criticize US army, but this article is just b * t. And not single word
about what is actually wrong with US army (F35 and similar projects)

> _More than three-quarters of Americans in Iraq didn’t fight. A ridiculously
> large number_

75% of servants in army (support roles) is pretty stable number since Roman
Legions times.

> _the American military is too big and bulky. Special Forces are lean and
> mean and_

Fighting street by street, block by block takes large number of men.

> _Egyptian interpreter hired by the US military. Knowing that Cairene Arabic
> is vastly different from that of Southern Iraq, I asked him if he had any
> trouble understanding the local dialect. He shook his head. “I have no idea
> what they are saying._

> _If more American soldiers understood Arabic, their insight and awareness of
> Iraqi culture could have made a huge difference._

Army should not do police work. There should be para-military units (gendarme)
composed from locals, but from different regions. US did great job at
Philippines with this strategy.

> _Fear of Casualties_

> _It is impossible to imagine William the Conqueror, Genghis Khan, Napoleon,
> or Patton focusing above all else on not losing soldiers.... . Historically,
> officers are happy to use their men as cannon fodder if it will help them
> achieve their objectives._

I will take any US 'war hawk' over this guy anytime. BTW Russians captured
Crimea with 2 casualties, so much about 'not enough deaths'.

> Only go to war if it is worth sacrificing your children. When Hitler invaded
> Russia, Stalin’s son went to the front, was captured and eventually died in
> a POW camp

Paragraph about Yakov Dzhugashvili is nice, perhaps just add what happened to
his family after he was captured. Also UK prince served in Iraq as far as I
know

> _Fifty thousand Americans died in Vietnam. So did more than 2 million
> Vietnamese. If war were a numbers game, America would have been victorious.
> But war is ultimately a matter of will. The North Vietnamese were willing to
> suffer more than the Americans were, because victory was more important to
> them._

And how many of those Vietnamese were killed by other Vietnamese, French,
Koreans...? Americans lost because they could not go near Chinese border.
Please read some facts about that conflicts.

> _War, What is it good For? Absolutely Nothing. ... When William conquered
> Britain, when Cortez conquered Mexico, their soldiers made fortunes. War
> traditionally was mostly an excuse for plunder._

So nobody, not a single person, made any sort of profit on any war in last two
decades?

~~~
Guvante
> And not single word about what is actually wrong with US army (F35 and
> similar projects)

This is a silly mindset. Your preconceived notion about the worst problem
shouldn't stop someone else from talking about a different one. If you looked
you will notice that other than quoting complaints at the beginning, the vast
majority of the article ignores costs. They speak only of effects.

It is easier to question military spending by first pointing out why throwing
money at problems isn't working, since you can't easily quantify the benefit
of the military you can't just apply cost benefit analysis and have a
convincing argument.

> 75% of servants in army (support roles) is pretty stable number since Roman
> Legions times.

And that number works great in Roman style conflicts. When you have a force
power huge logistic lines make a great target, refocusing your logistics is a
way to minimize that weakness.

> Fighting street by street, block by block takes large number of men.

You assume that is the ideal method of fighting the conflict.

> Army should not do police work. There should be para-military units
> (gendarme) composed from locals, but from different regions. US did great
> job at Philippines with this strategy.

You didn't actually disagree with him here but frame it as if you did. He said
they sucked at understanding local needs but acted on what information they
had. You said that they shouldn't act on local things.

> I will take any US 'war hawk' over this guy anytime. BTW Russians captured
> Crimea with 2 casualties, so much about 'not enough deaths'.

Was the goal of Crimea to minimize casualties? Because it isn't the results he
is criticizing but the mind set. "#1 don't let anyone die. #2 win" isn't the
best strategy if you want to win.

> Americans lost because they could not go near Chinese border. Please read
> some facts about that conflicts.

You aren't actually disputing his point, but simply pointing to a different
one. There are lots of things that cause Vietnam to go bad, their ability to
sustain casualties certainly helped.

------
classicsnoot
Largest military by nation list on wikipedia is interesting. (
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_number_of_...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_number_of_military_and_paramilitary_personnel)
)

Vietnam is at the top. Lel.

I appreciate that the author was in the Theater of Operations. I respect that
he has an enormous amount of anecdotal data about military personnel and
conflict. That being said, this person appears to have a rather shallow
understanding of the nature of conflicts as it pertains to Geo-politics.

To say the US has not won a war since Korea is idiotic, as the US did NOT win;
there is a de facto state of war between the Koreas and the US is bound to the
South by alliance. I get the feeling that the author is European (just a
guess). I wonder what the answers would be if you asked a large range of
people (age and nation of association) who won WWII. Asking an American who
won the Cold War will probably yield a more homogeneous pool of responses. Ask
a N.Korean who won the Korean Conflict and the diversity of answers would drop
even further. The point is that anyone can say anything that they want; the
winners are decided over and over again culturally as well as historically.
There has not been a 'real' war since the Second Global Conflict in terms of
losses in material and personnel. If the Ukraine Conflict becomes a shooting
war between Russia and Ukraine, the losses in one week could total the entire
losses of the US in the ten years of brush beating. 5K soldiers is a paltry
sum:
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_wars_by_death_toll](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_wars_by_death_toll)
.

The world has not known war in many years, and it is precisely because of the
political efforts of the US, Russia, England & Friends, and more recently
China. They do this not out of compassion for their citizens, but out of
necessity for their profits.

In forums like these, people love to belabor the trope that war brings
technological advances and benefits the D-Con companies solely. They use this
as some sort of reasoning behind why the US invades the countries it does.
This is silly. War turns an economy to shit. It does this to both sides,
though obviously it takes longer for the 'victor' to feel it. Peace ==
Prosperity. Regardless of the 'billions' that are said to be invested in
America's wars, they are trickles compared to the naked power of a well cared
for middle class. There is so much more money to be made when people are free
to save it and spend it. this is the fundamental principle behind US
Capitalism: 1)make peace through force 2)inundate with currency 3)?????? 4)
Middle class appears.

Instead of large wars heralding dramatic shifts in power and means, a
background of smaller conflicts in emerging raw material provider countries
keeps the weapons sales up and makes the way for more ethnically homogeneous
locals when the drilling crews show up.

One can say the US loses, and on many counts we do. But the world* wins. We
invaded Iraq to stabilize oil supplies, guarantee supremacy, and foment regime
change: the European and Chinese oil supply, the supremacy of Saudi Arabia
over Iran, and regime change in the Middle Eastern monarchies.

Somewhat non sequitur, but if you want to learn about an amazing american geo-
political victory that used some of that 'excessive' spending, try to find
info about the shadow campaign waged across the -stans to secure power and
water as a preemptive strike against nascent extremist populations. Good luck;
there is not much documentation ou there.

Having a clear definition of terms is important, both in conflict as well as
in blogposts.

*Europe

------
gnrlbzik
in love with warfare

~~~
gnrlbzik
why down vote? US is in love with warfare, for past many decades, people make
money off these events and as such make a lot of money. It sucks that this is
so, but it is so...

------
foobarqux
"I don't think that Vietnam was a mistake; I think it was a success. [...]

To determine whether it was a failure you have to first look at what the goals
were. In the case of Indo-china, the US is a very free country; we have an
incomparably rich documentary record of internal planning, much richer than
any other country that I know of. So we can discover what the goals were. In
fact it is clear by around 1970, certainly by the time the Pentagon Papers
came out, the primary concern was the one that shows up in virtually all
intervention: Guatemala, Indonesia, Nicaragua, Cuba, Chile, just about
everywhere you look at. The concern is independent nationalism which is
unacceptable in itself because it extricates some part of the world that the
US wants to dominate. And it has an extra danger if it is likely to be
successful in terms that are likely to be meaningful to others who are
suffering from the same conditions. " \-- Noam Chomsky

------
Htsthbjig
_" Genghis Khan, Napoleon, or Patton focusing above all else on not losing
soldiers. Historically, officers are happy to use their men as cannon fodder
if it will help them achieve their objectives"_

It is interesting that those three people were famous for being the first one
in the battle fighting and risking their lives. I bet it will be different
with generals today.

 _" If their primary interest was oil, American diplomats would have told
Saddam to grant exclusive contracts to select oil companies and he would have
gladly complied in order to avoid invasion."_

Not really. American diplomats told Saddam to grant exclusive contract to US
companies. What happened is that Saddam refused, he even started selling the
oil in Euros in order to get European support, but did not.

When USA invades a country and spends a trillion dollars on it, it is not
Americans the ones who have to pay for it, thanks to the magic of the
petrodollar, but the rest of the world.

But Americans companies are those that benefit from the reconstruction effort.
American oil companies are the ones who extract the oil. And the petrodollar
system remains one year more, because if someone dares to go against the
petrodollar(like Iran) sanctions are raised or their country is invaded.

~~~
Amezarak
> American oil companies are the ones who extract the oil.

No, they aren't. US companies comprise a fraction of the oil companies
extracting oil in Iraq.[1] Moreover, for the American companies operating in
Iraq, Iraqi oil supplies < 2% of their worldwide production.

[1]
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Petroleum_industry_in_Iraq#Serv...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Petroleum_industry_in_Iraq#Service_Contracts_Licensing_Results)
[2] [http://www.fool.com/investing/general/2014/06/25/are-
these-w...](http://www.fool.com/investing/general/2014/06/25/are-these-
western-oil-majors-operating-in-iraq-at.aspx)

------
at-fates-hands
_" how can America spend more on its military than all the other great powers
combined and still be unable to impose its will on even moderately sized
enemies?"_

Aside from the the reasons he cited, you can put up there fighting with both
hands ties behind our backs.

The politicians want the military to win the hearts and minds, have surgical
strikes to reduce civilian casualties, and spend more time keeping up
diplomatic relations then killing our adversaries. The media have never been
pro-war, never been able to stomach seeing and reporting the brutality of what
war really entails.

Patton once said, "Attack rapidly, ruthlessly, viciously, without rest,
however tired and hungry you may be, the enemy will be more tired, more
hungry. Keep punching."

We haven't done this since Vietnam. You want to win the wars in the middle
east? You throw away the Geneva Conventions, you take off the handcuffs and
employ the full force of the military. Like Patton said, you attack rapidly,
ruthlessly and viciously. If the US even used a fraction of its full
firepower, and instead hunted down and killed the terrorists and then made
examples of them, their enemies would shrivel up and put down their weapons.

You wanna know why the Mexican drug cartels are feared? You wanna know why
people are scared of ISIS and terrorism here in the states and what they've
done in Europe already? Because they don't have rules, they instill fear with
violence, something the US Military has been unable to do - because of
politicians and the media.

Take off the handcuffs and let the full force of the military come down on
these people and you'll see them broken, tired and without refuge.

~~~
pluma
For the record, the US didn't win in Vietnam either. Despite not pulling any
punches.

But yes, if the US gave a 100%, it may have a chance of actually winning those
wars. Considering the collateral damage from decades of "surgical" strikes and
drone attacks, I'm not even sure an all-out war would be any worse for the
civilians on the receiving end.

It would absolutely ruin any pretence of moral superiority and "clean"
warfare, however. And that would make it even more difficult to explain to
allies why the US is better than Russia, China or Saudi Arabia.

~~~
rstupek
I'm not sure you can classify Vietnam as a place where the military didn't
pull its punches. We didn't invade North Korea, for example.

~~~
BerislavLopac
You did, in fact:
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Korean_War#UN_forces_cross_part...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Korean_War#UN_forces_cross_partition_line_.28September_.E2.80.93_October_1950.29)

~~~
dba7dba
Answer is less clear. US was hesitant to go above the 38th parallel line once
N Korean army was routed. They were happy to stop there and go back to having
38th parallel line before the Korean War started. However the S Korean troops
just marched across 38th parallel in order to reunite the peninsula under 1
government. And the US troops in away just kept going with them. Because the
Korean war was so unexpected, no thoughts had been given on what to do.

The Korean peninsula had been 1 kingdom for over 500 years, far longer than
Germany as a nation.

Both N Korea and S Korean leaders had been calling for a united Korea, even
with force, even before the Korean War. For this reason, US govt hesitated
giving heavy weapons to S Korea before the start of the Korean War.

So no, US didn't exactly invade N Korea. N Korea invaded S Korea first.

~~~
BerislavLopac
This is not what the Wikipedia article describes.

------
karmacondon
My problem with this article is that the author doesn't define the criteria
for "winning". What does winning look like in Iraq or Afghanistan?

I generally don't understand what the point of this article is. The US should
learn the language of the countries where its soldiers are operating? I can't
think of very many armies that have ever done that. Historically it would be
the very rare case. And we should we willing to tolerate more bloodshed? The
argument seems to be that if we aren't willing to needlessly sacrifice the
lives of our soldiers as cannon fodder, then the conflict isn't worth being
involved in. I don't think that makes a lot of sense, either.

There are some very flawed premises here. I think the bottom line is that the
US military is still the envy of the world. Recent conflicts have been poorly
planned in terms of goals and exit strategies, but it's a bit disingenuous to
imply that the armed services aren't able to meet military objectives or face
threats of all kinds at any point on the globe. There have to be better ways
for the author to say "I don't like recent US military actions".

