By Peter Huessy, Warrior Nuclear Weapons Analyst
Numerous critics of United States security policy have asked why the country engages in what have become known as endless wars, and that end in what can only be described as defeat for the United States. To many Americans, this is incongruous. Having been repeatedly reminded the US was supposedly the world’s sole superpower, it is bewildering that over two decades the United States could not over the long term defeat the Afghan Taliban even having with great skill and speed, initially eliminated the Taliban from power in Afghanistan in 2001.
Victor Davis Hanson has one explanation. The United States in Korea and in Vietnam assumed that such conventional conflicts could easily become nuclear if pursued too vigorously by the United States. So, the United States repeatedly pulled its punches and settled for less than victory. This resulted in the case of Vietnam and Afghanistan victory for our enemies and the status quo ante in Korea.
A retired senior US military officer writes that he thinks there is strong historical support for Hanson’s analysis. He writes however about a companion concern: “We could at least try to think through how to end a crisis or conflict leaving US security better off than when the conflict started.” He explains further: “Even when the US actually seem to settle for the status quo ante, we often never actually achieve such an objective, as we seem to always end up leaving the security of the United States a little worse off as opposed to ending up better than when such a conflict started.”
The American people assume that no American leader would do this on purpose so the reason for such outcomes must be found in some other explanation. The default often assumed is the military industrial complex or profit making defense contractors. Actually, the defense industry never asked for nor campaigned for such conflicts. Wars actually often harm readiness and other military requirements especially modernization of the force that takes a back seat to supporting, for example, the costly force sustainment accounting literally for the expenditure of trillions of dollars taking on counter insurgency in Afghanistan, ISIS in Iraq and Syria, and the Houthis in Yemen.
My senior retired military officer friend further explains “This problem is even worse or more challenging for strategic and nuclear deterrence evidence of our practice of confusing the avoidance of confrontation as an undermining deterrence as we appear unwilling to use our deterrent force.” He warns: “We are not recognizing that deterrence will fail if we’re unwilling to make such threats simply because they’re considered escalatory. What is not recognized is that very few in the US security establishment understand how deterrence works, particularly in the nuclear business, which is now limited to a very small circle of military and civilian professionals.”
Taking “escalation off the table” takes deterrence off the table, and cedes the initiative to our adversary, Putin, especially in the case of Ukraine. And thus, after three years of war and nearly one million casualties, there is no prospect for victory for Ukraine and its NATO allies. Deterrence after all is the threat to escalate to a higher and more effective use of military force, as well as companion economic, political and diplomatic measures. That is what the Chinese communists called “unrestricted warfare.”
If economic sanctions don’t really cut off Russian gas sales, for example, but do so only in part, and actually overall develop into high revenue for Moscow for oil and gas sales, the United States has ended up filling up Moscow’s exchequer with much needed cash as opposed to the opposite. Taking military option off the table and leaving most of Russia in a sanctuary from harm, tells Moscow the US is less than serious about war. When the first option chosen by the United States is restraint, the first option for our enemies will be the opposite—to further pursue military force.
On the positive side, the US did largely defeat ISIS and did so with the cooperative effort of Iraq and Syria where US forces remain. And Iraq is allied with the US in such efforts although heavily infiltrated by Iranian agents and forces.
