-Caveat Lector-
>From Intellectual Capital . CoM
>>>Begin article <<<
How Not to Fight a War
by William R. Hawkins
Thursday, September 30, 1999
Comments: 15 posts
The National Security Council (NSC) has drafted a new strategy that sees a
continued high rate of U.S. military operations in various hot spots, from
humanitarian aid to peacekeeping to regional wars. "We must be prepared and
willing to use all appropriate instruments of national power to influence the
actions of other states and non-state actors," the NSC says.
In many ways, this echoes past statements, like those in the annual reports of
the secretary of defense. But the tone of the NSC paper reflects the giddy
confidence of the Clinton administration, which thinks its use of force in
Haiti, Iraq, Bosnia and Kosovo has been successful.
The hubris of modern warfare
First reactions to the NSC report have focused on the imbalance between ends
and means. Since the Gulf War, the Army has gone from 18 divisions to 10, the
Air Force from 24 fighter wings to 12. Even these reduced force levels are low
on personnel, spare parts and ammunition. Recent operations have stretched
deployments and used stocks of scarce weapons, such as cruise missiles.
The NSC conceded that the capability to fight "two major regional wars," a goal
set by the 1996 Quadrennial Defense Review, cannot be met with current forces.
Instead, it resurrected the "win, hold, win" strategy initially proposed and
then abandoned by the Clinton administration in 1993.
According to the NSC: "Our strategy is to seek to halt the second aggressor's
advance while concluding operations in the first theater. Our focus would then
shift to the second theater." This assumes that the first war would be won
quickly with a minimum of American losses so units can "swing" from the first
war directly into the second, without needing rest or replenishment.
This is dangerous hubris born of the "100 hour" ground war that liberated
Kuwait from Iraq in 1991, or the even more grandiose Kosovo notion that wars
can be won from "over the horizon" with missiles.
US military capabilities haven't
always produced easy victories
The United States does have some unparalleled military capabilities. It is the
only nation in the world able to conduct large-scale military operations far
beyond its borders. But this has not always produced cheap and easy victories.
Saddam Hussein is still in power in Iraq. Having run the U.N. weapons
inspectors out of the country, Iraq again is working on biological and chemical
weapons and the missiles to launch them. U.S. warplanes continue to bomb Iraqi
sites several times a week.
Slobodan Milosevic is still in power in Serbia, though because that country has
a less oppressive system of government than Iraq, he may be forced out of
office. Yet, his successor may be another nationalist hostile to the West.
Because of this continued Serbian militancy, the United States is keeping an
Army division in the Balkans for an indefinite period, divided between Bosnia
and Kosovo.
The transformation in U.S. military thinking
Iraq and Kosovo showcased American military superiority but revealed a lack of
strategy as postulated by Karl von Clausewitz. For the great German thinker,
the end of strategy is not just military victory; it is peace.
This requires political change to be stable. Peacekeeping is not peace; rather,
it is proof that the war is not really over. This is because the enemy remains
in power to fight another day. Clausewitz fought in the Napoleonic Wars. This
two-decade struggle produced great victories on all sides, but peace came only
after Napoleon was deposed.
The United States seemed to understand the Clausewitz philosophy of war in
World War II, when President Franklin D. Roosevelt declared a strategy of
"unconditional surrender" and "the destruction of the philosophies in those
countries which are based on conquest and the subjugation of other people."
This meant the removal of the Axis regimes and their replacement with
democratic governments. It would have been unthinkable to stop at the German
border after the liberation of France, leaving Adolf Hitler in Berlin.
Italian dictator Benito Mussolini was executed by Italian partisans; Hitler
committed suicide in his bunker. Japanese Emperor Hirohito was spared, but
General Tojo was hanged. De-Nazification programs, war-crimes trials, purges of
collaborators and the writing of new constitutions cemented liberal governments
in office.
These new democracies soon joined the United States as allies. Western Europe
settled into the longest period of peace in its history.
When the United States tried this same strategy in Korea, the Chinese drove the
allied army out of North Korea. President Harry S. Truman was not willing to
escalate. Thus was borne the strategy of "limited war" based on stalemate.
Which is why another of the Army's handful of divisions is still tied down in
South Korea half a century later. The militancy of the North Korean regime
remains undiminished as it tests missiles that could reach America.
Limited-war theory peaked in Vietnam, where 500,000 American troops were
confined to a strategically defensive stance in South Vietnam with no thought
of marching on Hanoi. Instead, a futile air campaign attempted to coerce a
regime whose survival was never in jeopardy. Despite "military inferiority,"
North Vietnam concentrated on the basics, sending an army to destroy the Saigon
regime and end the war.
Unworthy of being called strategy
The strategy in Kosovo looked like that of Vietnam but with one difference: The
Serbs always thought NATO would invade, despite Washington's assurances it
would not. When Milosevic was indicted as a war criminal, he could not risk a
march on Belgrade. He made a deal to stay out of prison.
There is no appreciation of this in the NSC strategy. Its endorsement of
reduced-force levels confirms a commitment to indecisive limited wars that bog
down into endless peacekeeping operations. This is particularly evident in the
shrinking Army, as ground troops are essential to the overthrow of hostile
regimes and their replacement with friendly, democratic governments.
Thus the NSC planning document does not deserve the title "strategy." It does
not have the proper ultimate objective in view -- and provides no way to reach
it, even if it did.
William R. Hawkins is a visiting fellow at the U.S. Business and Industry
Council.
>>>End article <<<
>>>Begin article <<<
Pro & Con: Send in the Troops � But Don't Keep them There
by Pat Choate
Thursday, April 15, 1999
Comments: 197 posts
The United States entered the 1990s as the world's remaining superpower,
simultaneously able to fight two wars in different parts of the world and
prevail. Then, our president could tell the world that the Iraqi invasion of
Kuwait "will not stand," and the world understood it would not.
We end the decade with the United States still a powerful military force with
more than two million people under arms. Nevertheless, as events in Kosovo have
revealed, we are no longer a superpower. A Democratic president and Republican
Congress have so cut the resources to the U.S. military, and the military has
so misdirected those resources, that a Balkan madman in a country of less than
12 million people dares challenge us.
What superpower?
Were it not tragic, the past four weeks of the Balkan campaign would be
laughable. Despite hundreds of billions of dollars invested in NATO and high-
tech weaponry, for instance, our military cannot get 24 attack helicopters into
Kosovo in less than a month's time.
NATO requires another two months to move 70,000 to 100,000 combat troops into
battle position -- that is, should it ever decide to put ground troops into the
fight. Even our bombing is timid. NATO is using fewer than half as many planes
against the Serbs as the forces used against Iraq, largely because we lack the
pilots and backup staff.
Consequently, we helplessly stand aside as 500,000 refugees cross the Kosovo
border and as another 750,000 refugees inside Kosovo starve. We respond by
dropping bombs on empty buildings in Belgrade, destroying Yugoslavia's civil
works and taking down refugees' tales of terror and mass murder by Serb forces.
So far, nothing we have done seems to have induced even the most remote signs
of desperation by Serb leader Slobodan Milosevic and his followers. Why should
they be concerned? Our president and the leaders of NATO show daily that they
lack the will to confront the Serbian thugs in the only way such criminals
understand -- lethal force that threatens them.
Other madmen, of course, are watching this unending demonstration of U.S.
military and political impotence. Will the Iraqis conclude, for instance, that
we are no longer able or willing to contain them? Will the North Koreans think
we are too weak to defend South Korea? Will the Chinese decide the moment has
come to invade Taiwan?
Finish what you started
Fortunately, the current Balkan mess provides one clear benefit. It focuses
national attention on the future U.S. role in NATO.
While the emergence of China as a world military power and our dependence on
Middle East oil may require a U.S. military presence in those two areas, no
such demand exists in Europe. Communism has lost its attractiveness, and while
Russia may possess thousands of nuclear warheads, it lacks the economy to
create the threat once posed by the Soviet Union.
Indeed, the U.S. presence in Europe and our dominance of NATO seems to retard
European governments from acting on their own. The time has come to bring home
the troops and leave European problems such as the Balkans to the Europeans.
Kosovo today makes clear the danger of having a national presence where no
vital U.S. interests are at stake. It draws us into conflicts that expend
American lives and treasure but do little or nothing to advance our own
national well-being. The obvious remedy is not to be there in the first place,
which we should not have been.
Simultaneously, the Balkan mess also illustrates the dangers of partial or
irresolute action. Since the early 1990s, Milosevic and his thugs have launched
four separate wars, each of which involved massive war crimes. In each case,
negotiations with the Serbs were as productive as the pre-World War II
negotiations with Hitler, and now as then led to more war crimes.
In The Prince, Machiavelli provides advice for such a circumstance. He said it
is safer and better to kill an offending sovereign than insult or offend them.
Send in the troops � but not forever
The point is that once the United States chose to involve itself in Kosovo,
whether such involvement was in our national well-being or simply humanitarian,
our interests required that we achieve our goals. Others must understand that
once committed, we are resolute -- and that opposition can be costly, even
deadly. In short, do not mess with America.
Now, removing Milosevic and restoring the Kosovars to Kosovo serves both to
achieve our humanitarian objectives in the Balkans and illustrate the larger
point about American resolve.
Eliminating Milosevic from office and his thugs from Kosovo is a matter best
turned over to the military, along with the directive to do it as quickly and
with as little loss of U.S. lives as possible. If that mission requires troops,
they must be massed. If the troops must destroy much of Yugoslavia, so be it.
If there are heavy civilian losses in Yugoslavia, we must accept them as
necessary.
>From this point forward, we must be under no illusion. The Serbs have blood on
their hands. They know what Milosevic has been doing. They have kept him in
power and therefore must accept the consequences.
Yet even as we help Europe rid itself of this nest of Balkan war criminals, we
must make known to all that the United States sees our half-century mission
there as both successful and over. We will bring our troops home. The task of
policing the aftermath of Kosovo, or not, must be left to a rich, free Europe
Pat Choate is a Washington-based economist, author and talk-show host, and a
contributing editor to IntellectualCapital.com. In 1996 he was the Reform
Party's vice-presidential candidate. His e-mail address is
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
>>>End article <<<
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