Anatomy of Failure – Historian Explains Why America Loses Every War It Starts

[OJsDad]

http://militaryhistorynow.com/2018/03/25/anatomy-of-failure-historian-explains-why-america-loses-every-war-it-starts/

[JasonPratt]

I do want to read that, but there are exceptions to that statement. (Although in some cases perhaps those count as "operations" more than "wars", Grenada for example.)

Edited to add: the author thinks Grenada was a "fiasco". What the whatting wha?! You couldn't even argue we won the war but lost the peace there! -- which could be easily said about other wars he regards as disasters. We definitely did not lose Gulf War 2. Our politicians lost the peace afterward. That's an important distinction, one which bears comparison with Vietnam which was not the "unmitigated disaster" he somehow thinks it was: we accomplished our military goal, albeit taking much longer than we expected at more loss of life, and went home. The unmitigated disaster was a political refusal to intervene in the next war 2 years later when the NVA steamrolled ARVN and we broke our promise.

Granted, one might save the data there by arguing that we didn't start either of those wars: the VW was already ongoing by the time we intervened, and GW2 was a recommencement of the GW1 started by Hussein which the coalition graciously didn't finish prosecuting and whose United Nations resolutions he continued to flout. But goodness. The American Revolution? We started that and dang well finished it. Grenada (which he counts as a war), we started and we finished it, with flying colors (although with interservice adjustments). Afghanistan? We started the war against the Taliban government (unless one wishes to argue they started it against us with 9/11) and we finished it, ongoing pacification operations notwithstanding (which are more of a political aftereffect problem). Arguably the US started the civil war with the seceding states before shots were fired at Sumter; no sane person would argue the US lost that war, much less that it was minor and of no consequence. (Worth noting: the author implies the United States lost the American Civil War, in order to keep his thesis going.  #:-)) The United States doesn't usually start wars, and we don't always accomplish our military goals -- we don't always win wars started by others, either. (The war of 1812; Korean War.) But this guy seems like he has some other axe to grind. So we took 78 days to stop Milosevic -- but we did stop him, more or less on the terms Clinton wanted to be restricted to. In Lybia we quickly won the war (supporting the deposition of Qaddafi), even if the aftereffect was botched through a lack of consistent follow-through. (One might argue that the aftereffects have been politically botched precisely because the United States is not in fact an Empire, expanding by conquering enemy states.)

[bayonetbrant]

Grenada wasn't the smooth execution everyone assumes it was supposed to be, and sheer weight of numbers indicated that the US was going to overwhelm the natives, and the Cuban 'reinforcements'.  But it wasn't the wild success everyone claimed it was in the immediate aftermath given that everyone knew there was going to be an American flag planted on that rock afterwards.

One could argue that we didn't really "start" the AWI - the British did at Lexington/Concord (but he doesn't seem to go back before WWII, in essence setting the "start line" as the establishment of the DoD)

Kosovo/Serbia?  We spent the better part of 2 months bombing tractors and hay bales and when we were done we stillhad to put 10,000 troops on the ground, and then we still had to spend (hmm.. lessee... Oh! we're still there?!?) over a decade trying to oust the last of the Serbians, for a mission that we never should've gone into in the first place  (see below)


We keep starting wars with ill-defined or unachievable end-states (what was the defined end-state of Vietnam?) and then wondering why we don't win.

"Let's play football!"
"OK, for how long?"
"Eh, just start playing, we'll let you know.  Oh, and we're going to change the other team, and their scoring, on a regular basis."














+++++
Kosovo - note the dateline

The New York Times
November 1, 1987,

Sunday, Late City Final Edition
Section 1; Part 1, Page 14, Column 1;

"In Yugoslavia, Rising Ethnic Strife Brings Fears of Worse Civil
Conflict"

By DAVID BINDER, Special to the New York Times

BELGRADE, Yugoslavia

Portions of southern Yugoslavia have reached such a state of ethnic
friction that Yugoslavs have begun to talk of the horrifying
possibility of ``civil war`` in a land that lost one-tenth of its
population, or 1.7 million people, in World War II.

The current hostilities pit separatist-minded ethnic Albanians against
the various Slavic populations of Yugoslavia and occur at all levels of
society, from the highest officials to the humblest peasants.

A young Army conscript of ethnic Albanian origin shot up his barracks,
killing four sleeping Slavic bunkmates and wounding six others.

The army says it has uncovered hundreds of subversive ethnic Albanian
cells in its ranks. Some arsenals have been raided.

Vicious Insults

Ethnic Albanians in the Government have manipulated public funds and
regulations to take over land belonging to Serbs. And politicians have
exchanged vicious insults.

Slavic Orthodox churches have been attacked, and flags have been torn
down. Wells have been poisoned and crops burned. Slavic boys have been
knifed, and some young ethnic Albanians have been told by their elders
to rape Serbian girls.

Ethnic Albanians comprise the fastest growing nationality in Yugoslavia
and are expected soon to become its third largest, after the Serbs and
Croats.

--  Radicals` Goals

The goal of the radical nationalists among them, one said in an
interview, is an ``ethnic Albania that includes western Macedonia,
southern Montenegro, part of southern Serbia, Kosovo and Albania
itself.`` That includes large chunks of the republics that make up the
southern half of Yugoslavia.

Other ethnic Albanian separatists admit to a vision of a greater
Albania governed from Pristina in southern Yugoslavia rather than
Tirana, the capital of neighboring Albania.

There is no evidence that the hard-line Communist Government in Tirana
is giving them material assistance.

The principal battleground is the region called Kosovo, a high plateau
ringed by mountains that is somewhat smaller than New Jersey. Ethnic
Albanians there make up 85 percent of the population of 1.7 million.
The rest are Serbians and Montenegrins.

--  Worst Strife in Years

As Slavs flee the protracted violence, Kosovo is becoming what ethnic
Albanian nationalists have been demanding for years, and especially
strongly since the bloody rioting by ethnic Albanians in Pristina in
1981 - an ``ethnically pure`` Albanian region, a ``Republic of Kosovo``
in all but name.

The violence, a journalist in Kosovo said, is escalating to ``the worst
in the last seven years.`` ...

Were the ethnic tensions restricted to Kosovo, Yugoslavia`s problems
with its Albanian nationals might be more manageable. But some
Yugoslavs and some ethnic Albanians believe the struggle has spread far
beyond Kosovo. Macedonia, a republic to the south with a population of
1.8 million, has a restive ethnic Albanian minority of 350,000.

``We`ve already lost western Macedonia to the Albanians,`` said a
member of the Yugoslav party presidium, explaining that the ethnic
minority had driven the Slavic Macedonians out of the region.

--  Attacks on Slavs

Last summer, the authorities in Kosovo said they documented 40 ethnic
Albanian attacks on Slavs in two months. In the last two years, 320
ethnic Albanians have been sentenced for political crimes, nearly half
of them characterized as severe.

In one incident, Fadil Hoxha, once the leading politician of ethnic
Albanian origin in Yugoslavia, joked at an official dinner in Prizren
last year that Serbian women should be used to satisfy potential ethnic
Albanian rapists. After his quip was reported this October, Serbian
women in Kosovo protested, and Mr. Hoxha was dismissed from the
Communist Party.

As a precaution, the central authorities dispatched 380 riot police
officers to the Kosovo region for the first time in four years.

Officials in Belgrade view the ethnic Albanian challenge as imperiling
the foundations of the multinational experiment called federal
Yugoslavia, which consists of six republics and two provinces.

--  `Lebanonizing` of Yugoslavia

High-ranking officials have spoken of the ``Lebanonizing`` of their
country and have compared its troubles to the strife in Northern
Ireland.

Borislav Jovic, a member of the Serbian party`s presidency, spoke in an
interview of the prospect of ``two Albanias, one north and one south,
like divided Germany or Korea,`` and of ``practically the breakup of
Yugoslavia.`` He added: ``Time is working against us.``

The federal Secretary for National Defense, Fleet Adm. Branko Mamula,
told the army`s party organization in September of efforts by ethnic
Albanians to subvert the armed forces. ``Between 1981 and 1987 a total
of 216 illegal organizations with 1,435 members of Albanian nationality
were discovered in the Yugoslav People`s Army,`` he said. Admiral
Mamula said ethnic Albanian subversives had been preparing for
``killing officers and soldiers, poisoning food and water, sabotage,
breaking into weapons arsenals and stealing arms and ammunition,
desertion and causing flagrant nationalist incidents in army units.``

--  Concerns Over Military

Coming three weeks after the ethnic Albanian draftee, Aziz Kelmendi,
had slaughtered his Slavic comrades in the barracks at Paracin, the
speech struck fear in thousands of families whose sons were about to
start their mandatory year of military service.

Because the Albanians have had a relatively high birth rate,
one-quarter of the army`s 200,000 conscripts this year are ethnic
Albanians. Admiral Mamula suggested that 3,792 were potential human
timebombs.

He said the army had ``not been provided with details relevant for
assessing their behavior.`` But a number of Belgrade politicians said
they doubted the Yugoslav armed forces would be used to intervene in
Kosovo as they were to quell violent rioting in 1981 in Pristina. They
reason that the army leadership is extremely reluctant to become
involved in what is, in the first place, a political issue.

Ethnic Albanians already control almost every phase of life in the
autonomous province of Kosovo, including the police, judiciary, civil
service, schools and factories.

Non-Albanian visitors almost immediately feel the independence - and
suspicion - of the ethnic Albanian authorities.

--  Region`s Slavs Lack Strength

While 200,000 Serbs and Montenegrins still live in the province, they
are scattered and lack cohesion. In the last seven years, 20,000 of
them have fled the province, often leaving behind farmsteads and
houses, for the safety of the Slavic north.

Until September, the majority of the Serbian Communist Party leadership
pursued a policy of seeking compromise with the Kosovo party hierarchy
under its ethnic Albanian leader, Azem Vlasi.

But during a 30-hour session of the Serbian central committee in late
September, the Serbian party secretary, Slobodan Milosevic, deposed
Dragisa Pavlovic, as head of Belgrade`s party organization, the
country`s largest. Mr. Milosevic accused Mr. Pavlovic of being an
appeaser who was soft on Albanian radicals. Mr. Milosevic had courted
the Serbian backlash vote with speeches in Kosovo itself calling for
``the policy of the hard hand.``...

Remzi Koljgeci, of the Kosovo party leadership, said in an interview in
Pristina that ``relations are cold`` between the ethnic Albanians and
Serbs of the province, that there were too many ``people without
hope.``...

Efforts are under way to strengthen central authority through
amendments to the constitution. ...The hope is that something will be
done then to exert the rule of law in Kosovo while drawing ethnic
Albanians back into Yugoslavia`s mainstream.

[OJsDad]

Grenada wasn't smooth on all parts, but were there lesson the military learned and used to make improvements through the rest of the military or were they ignored.

Interesting, Panama wasn't mentioned.  Military mistakes were made, but it was an overwhelming success. 

Were there any lessons learned that helped with the success of GW1?

I'm not sure that either GW2/Iraqi and Afghanistan can be considered failures.  Outstanding successes, no, but not complete failures either.  Of the 2, Afghanistan can be considered the closer of the two to be failed. 

[bayonetbrant]

Were there any lessons learned that helped with the success of GW1?

Per the author's thesis, we didn't start Gulf 1

But Panama has very little to do with the success of Gulf 1. That was much more attributable to NTC and a perfect storm of tactical/operational situation.

(Some other thoughts on this one were discussed here 2 years ago
http://grogheads.com/forums/index.php?topic=15042.0 )

[JasonPratt]

I would argue that, despite vaugeries in other regards, the defined end state of the Vietnam War was to stop the north from sending official and unofficial military power into the south, and to effectively remove any such military power that did get in (making allowances for scattered crumbs of VC military action which might remain).

This was the military version of the political goal of supporting an anti-communist regime under attack in the area: stop this particular domino from falling. From every history of the war that I've read and watched, regardless of how critical the authors might be about the process and the end result, that concept can be seen clearly enough from the moment we got involved in military support until the Paris peace treaty and our military withdrawal.

It took a long time, but we did accomplish that. The Pentagon argued all along the way that we could have accomplished it sooner by boiling the water faster than the frog was prepared to sit in it (so to speak), but it did get accomplished.

...for two years, and then the NVA came back, rested, restocked, and leveled up, and we decided nope not going to risk getting dragged back into that again despite our promise to restore lost ARVN equipment at least.

But that wasn't a military loss. That was a political decision, if perhaps one made to avoid risking an actual military loss after the dirty cost of the military win.

[bayonetbrant]

I would argue that, despite vaugeries in other regards, the defined end state of the Vietnam War was to stop the north from sending official and unofficial military power into the south, and to effectively remove any such military power that did get in (making allowances for scattered crumbs of VC military action which might remain).

This was the military version of the political goal of supporting an anti-communist regime under attack in the area: stop this particular domino from falling. From every history of the war that I've read and watched, regardless of how critical the authors might be about the process and the end result, that concept can be seen clearly enough from the moment we got involved in military support until the Paris peace treaty and our military withdrawal.

It took a long time, but we did accomplish that. The Pentagon argued all along the way that we could have accomplished it sooner by boiling the water faster than the frog was prepared to sit in it (so to speak), but it did get accomplished.

...for two years, and then the NVA came back, rested, restocked, and leveled up, and we decided nope not going to risk getting dragged back into that again despite our promise to restore lost ARVN equipment at least.

But that wasn't a military loss. That was a political decision, if perhaps one made to avoid risking an actual military loss after the dirty cost of the military win.

nh;dr

[Barthheart]

...
nh;dr

[JasonPratt]

Stop NVA and
VC using force down south.
Eventually, we did.