What’s Wrong Today:
Yesterday’s column asked about our goals in Iraq, and our willingness to default to military action whenever a crisis emerges. Since that is our reflexive reaction, let’s take a quick look at how effective our military operations in the Middle East have been. Ian Welsh wrote: (brackets and emphasis by the Wrongologist)
The military as a tool of national strategy is designed to use its resources to inflict costs (loss of territory, weapons and fighters) on the enemy, which the enemy cannot easily replace. Or, that the financial costs of replacement are beyond the ability of the enemy to pay.
In a sense, war fighting is often a battle of attrition of resources, and generally, one side prevails. That was the history of warfare in the 20th century.
Our 21st century experience with fighting Islamist militias is instructive. Our military is brutally expensive. Islamist militias are cheap. The Taliban funds itself with blackmail and drugs. Until they broke the bank in Mosul for $425 million, ISIS ran on donations from rich Muslims along with some state support. Now they are self-funding.
These Islamic armies cost peanuts compared to the US, British or Israeli military. And they are capable of tying down Western militaries for years, using up huge financial resources, and even winning. Hezbollah defeated Israel, which was (before Hezbollah proved otherwise) widely considered one of the most effective militaries in the world. We were held to a tie in both Afghanistan and Iraq.
A military that is hundreds of times more expensive than its main competitor has problems, particularly in a long war. In military operations, effectiveness is most important. But if your effectiveness doesn’t actually deliver a win, in the sense of making your enemies stop fighting, then a hugely expensive military will indeed bleed us white in a prolonged state of warfare.
Our military is aware of these facts: We use drones because they are cheaper than planes. Ground combat robots, which the US army is working to perfect, may ultimately be cheaper than human soldiers, as well as offering the advantage of requiring fewer troops, meaning fewer combat casualties.
In Iraq and Afghanistan, our military leaders completely underestimated the strategic importance of the IED. When the insurgents deployed IEDs, the costs of American occupation soared, and our maneuverability, a perceived strength, slowed to a crawl. Now, IEDs are simply the 21st century version of land mines. It was understandable that our generals thought that we knew how to detect and beat the mine, but with the IED, a cheap and primitive weapon, entire areas of Afghanistan became “no-go” zones, where our troops could only move in convoys of exceptionally large armored vehicles. Traumatic Brain Injury (TBI) caused by IEDs has become a major cause of US casualties in both Iraq and Afghanistan, with soaring costs for extended rehabilitation when the injured soldier returns to the US.
Our generals have not been able to blunt the effectiveness of IEDs, even though we own the most advanced military technologies since the dawn of human society.
We also have a political problem. America is no longer willing to accept high levels of casualties. We, our politicians, and therefore our generals, try exceedingly hard to avoid large numbers of dead and wounded in our “wars”. This has made successfully occupying space in a foreign country impossible. If we are occupying a province or a city in a foreign country, and the lives of our troops come first, we will shoot first and ask questions later. It is better strategically if we accept higher losses than it is to kill innocents in tribal societies, even though that is a very difficult ask of our military. When we kill an innocent, an extended family then hates America. Even if they don’t take up arms, they will then provide support to the insurgents.
Our soldiers stand out in a Middle Eastern culture. US soldiers did not speak Arabic, did not dress like Iraqis or Afghanis, did not practice the predominant religion or understand its culture. To our troops, all locals became the enemy, and to the locals, the occupying forces come to be seen as the enemy. This is true despite efforts to train our troops to work with locals.
The most amazing fact is that all of this is known/taught/accepted by US military leaders, but they seem to be incapable of behaving differently, or to change the tactics on the ground sufficiently to enable a “win”.
So the West uses highly expensive troops whom we don’t want to die, along with drones, close air support and extensive surveillance. And the Islamic militias, on budgets that aren’t even shoestring by US standards, survive and grow stronger. They are evolving: They communicate via Twitter, we use UHF radios with big, heavy batteries. They get smarter all the time. They are Darwinian organizations: screw up, and you die.
But, in his book, The Generals, Thomas Ricks d
emonstrates that a culture of mediocrity has taken hold within the Army’s top leadership rank, and if it continues, the country’s next war is unlikely to produce better results than the last two. Nor is there much of a relationship between an officer’s battlefield performance and subsequent promotions. He quotes an American civilian official based in Afghanistan in 2007:
Ricks wrote in the Atlantic that the tactical excellence of enlisted soldiers in Iraq and Afghanistan may have enabled and amplified the strategic incompetence of the generals in those wars. The Army’s combat effectiveness lets its generals dither for much longer than they could have if the Army had been suffering clear tactical setbacks. He quotes Sean McFarland, brigade commander in Ramadi in 2006: (emphasis by the Wrongologist)
Despite our 13 years of military experience on the ground in the Middle East, our strategies, tactics and weapons remain essentially the same, and they haven’t worked well enough to deliver the strategic objectives we hoped they would.
So, which are the effective methods of stopping or defeating an insurgent or terrorist force in Tribalstan™?
- Kill and/or expel the insurgent militias
- Play ethnic groups against each other
- Colonize the provinces with jobs, infrastructure, schools, and a new legal regime
- Some combination of the above?
- Something completely different?
As a thought experiment, how exactly could the US “win” on the ground in the Middle East, given our current military?
If we cannot “win” on the ground in the Middle East, where does the use of military force fit in our Middle East Strategy?
The answer to your question is simple. The terrorists have already figured it out. Make the price of victory too high.
As a nation we are not willing to pay the physical, monetary or moral price to beat the terrorists. The ultimate solution is to kill a disproportionate number of their people when one of ours is killed. We can’t discriminate between combatants and civilians to achieve this goal.
I don’t agree with that course of action but it is the only way to turn the tide.
In sales we talk about making finding a potential customer’s pain point. We have not found that yet with the Islamic radicals. The real question should be, are we willing to pay the price for victory?
Good comment, Jim. We are in agreement that the price for “victory” in the Middle East would be stunningly high. On the other hand, even if we tried to kill ’em all, there are 1.1 billion Muslims in the world, and there will be more than 2 billion by 2030. They could probably outlast us if it turned into a blood feud.
You are correct that jihadis in the ME may have found our point of pain, at least for the moment, and the majority of Americans don’t see a reason to take up this particular battle. Things have a way of reaching an equilibrium, and the ME may get to a place where people just live their lives every day mostly at peace, whether we do anything to make that happen or not.