no winners
11/22/06 13:51
Surfing the web is like panning for gold, a lot of
time and effort with very little payoff. I stay with
it mostly for the pleasure of the work itself, just
collecting those shiny little flakes of knowledge and
squirreling them away. Occasionally I stumble upon a
nugget of genuine wisdom. I mined this one from the
comments section over at Sadly, No.
If you look at history with a view unfogged by nationalistic just-so stories, you make an amazing discovery. Modern wars have no winners. In fact, modern wars are all, and will all be unwinnable. This became obvious in 1953, but no one seems to be willing to acknowledge it even 53 years later. Name one war that has had a clear winner since the “truce” on the Korean peninsula shouted out to the world “wars may end, but there is no winner”! Wars used to be declared, fought between fairly equally constituted armies until one was conquered and/or surrendered. Then came Korea, with the global geopolitical considerations, and there simply was no way to win. Followed by Algeria, Suez, Dien Bien Phu, The Six Day war, Vietnam, Afghanistan I, Sri Lanka, Chechnya, The Balkans, Rwanda, GW I, etc. The interesting thing is the asymmetrical nature of these conflicts. Invariably, one side is a powerful traditional military and the other side is a more populist guerrilla force, typically supported by another powerful nation. There are no big decisive battles, no truly occupied territory (in vietnam we frequently said we only owned the ground we were standing on). Given a supply of money and weapons, the guerrillas can just keep bleeding the traditional military until the homefront support collapses and the fighting slows, then stops. At least for a while.
We will not see an old-fashion war ever again. There’s just no way two powerful nations will slug it out. Oh, if America doesn’t learn her lesson, there may come a war with China at some point, but it will be brief, because very quickly escalation will threaten the world’s survival. So it would be important for Pentagon officials to begin to understand that while it’s easy to start a war, it’s almost impossible to end one. And it’s certainly impossible to win one. The world has changed - why haven’t they noticed?
mikey
Mikey, who has his own blog, but doesn't post much lately, really nailed something for me there. Reading through this list reminded me of how the administration and it's supporters have used comparisons to WW II in selling the War on Terra. Things like Usama bin Laden, then Saddam Hussein, being portrayed as the next Hitler and our enemies labeled as Fascist even though the term doesn't remotely apply. I realized that they have to go back that far to get the happy ending they are selling. The one where the US emerges as the benevolent superpower beacon of democracy on the hill. It was the last time the US faced a genuine existential threat, our last truly necessary war. But as mikey says, the world has changed. That happy ending is a fiction now. Modern war is not fought to save a country or to gain one. It's always about one (larger/stronger) country trying to force it's will on the populace of another (smaller/weaker) one. And since guerilla tactics are indefensible short of genocide, it just doesn't work. We, as the largest/strongest country need to learn this lesson in the worst way before we end up like Israel writ large, spending decades flailing about in the desert. Terrorism should be treated as crime. Declaring it a war gives the perpetrators more credence than they deserve. We empower them merely by getting in the ring with them.
If you look at history with a view unfogged by nationalistic just-so stories, you make an amazing discovery. Modern wars have no winners. In fact, modern wars are all, and will all be unwinnable. This became obvious in 1953, but no one seems to be willing to acknowledge it even 53 years later. Name one war that has had a clear winner since the “truce” on the Korean peninsula shouted out to the world “wars may end, but there is no winner”! Wars used to be declared, fought between fairly equally constituted armies until one was conquered and/or surrendered. Then came Korea, with the global geopolitical considerations, and there simply was no way to win. Followed by Algeria, Suez, Dien Bien Phu, The Six Day war, Vietnam, Afghanistan I, Sri Lanka, Chechnya, The Balkans, Rwanda, GW I, etc. The interesting thing is the asymmetrical nature of these conflicts. Invariably, one side is a powerful traditional military and the other side is a more populist guerrilla force, typically supported by another powerful nation. There are no big decisive battles, no truly occupied territory (in vietnam we frequently said we only owned the ground we were standing on). Given a supply of money and weapons, the guerrillas can just keep bleeding the traditional military until the homefront support collapses and the fighting slows, then stops. At least for a while.
We will not see an old-fashion war ever again. There’s just no way two powerful nations will slug it out. Oh, if America doesn’t learn her lesson, there may come a war with China at some point, but it will be brief, because very quickly escalation will threaten the world’s survival. So it would be important for Pentagon officials to begin to understand that while it’s easy to start a war, it’s almost impossible to end one. And it’s certainly impossible to win one. The world has changed - why haven’t they noticed?
mikey
Mikey, who has his own blog, but doesn't post much lately, really nailed something for me there. Reading through this list reminded me of how the administration and it's supporters have used comparisons to WW II in selling the War on Terra. Things like Usama bin Laden, then Saddam Hussein, being portrayed as the next Hitler and our enemies labeled as Fascist even though the term doesn't remotely apply. I realized that they have to go back that far to get the happy ending they are selling. The one where the US emerges as the benevolent superpower beacon of democracy on the hill. It was the last time the US faced a genuine existential threat, our last truly necessary war. But as mikey says, the world has changed. That happy ending is a fiction now. Modern war is not fought to save a country or to gain one. It's always about one (larger/stronger) country trying to force it's will on the populace of another (smaller/weaker) one. And since guerilla tactics are indefensible short of genocide, it just doesn't work. We, as the largest/strongest country need to learn this lesson in the worst way before we end up like Israel writ large, spending decades flailing about in the desert. Terrorism should be treated as crime. Declaring it a war gives the perpetrators more credence than they deserve. We empower them merely by getting in the ring with them.
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