Does the West Remember How to Win a War?
Does the West Remember How to Win a War?
The United States and the West have gotten good at losing wars over the past 50 years. Give me liberty or give me death is the celebrated phrase. It's a black and white choice.
The West withdrew in humiliation from Saigon in 1975, Beirut in 1984, Mogadishu in 1993 and Kabul in 2021. We withdrew from Baghdad in 2011, only to return three years later after ISIS swept through northern Iraq and we had to stop it (which, with the help of Iraqis and Kurds, we did). We had small wins against Saddam Hussein in 1991 and Muammar el-Qaddafi in 2011 but we made a mess of the endgames in both those places. All that money. All that technology. All that ingenuity. Not much to show for it. But man those industrial weapons fairs - they ruled!
What’s left? Grenada, Panama, Kosovo: those were US mini wars. And we had easy wins in all those places. But then again Grenada? It's basically a pretty rock in the Caribbean with a couple of large dinghies for a navy. The others in that list are pretty similar. It would be pathetic if we didn't win those wars easily.
If you’re on the left, you’d probably say that most of these wars were unnecessary, unwinnable or unworthy. If you’re on the right, you might say they were badly fought - with inadequate force, too many restrictions on the way force could be used or an over-eagerness to withdraw before we had finished the job. Or if you’re on the MAGA right you might say what the hell were we doing in any of them in the first place. We should stay out of it!
Either way, none of these wars were about our very existence. Life in America would not have changed much if Kosovo were still part of Serbia.
But what about wars that are existential?
We know how America fought such wars. During the siege of Vicksburg in 1863, hunger “yielded to starvation as dogs, cats, and even rats vanished from the city,” Ron Chernow noted in his biography of Ulysses Grant. The Union did not send food convoys to relieve the suffering of innocent Southerners.
In World War II, Allied bombers killed an estimated 10,000 civilians in the Netherlands, 60,000 in France, 60,000 in Italy and hundreds of thousands of Germans. All this was part of an English and American strategy to undermine “the morale of the German people to the point where their capacity for armed resistance is fatally weakened.” In England it was the undeclared payback for German bombing at home.
We pursued an identical policy against Japan, where bombardment killed, according to some estimates, nearly one million civilians and gave birth to the Godzilla film industry.
And we celebrated the leaders who gave us those victories. Grant is on the $50 bill. Franklin Roosevelt’s portrait hangs in the Oval Office. Churchill's bust had pride of place at the White House for years. His cigar and whiskey glass are preserved in Downing Street. Or they were until BoJo seemingly took them with him to the Cotswolds when no one was looking.
Nations, might have second thoughts about how they win existential wars. But they also tend to canonise leaders who, faced with the awful choice of evils that every war presents, still chose morally compromised victories over morally pure defeats. Actually I don't think nations have second thoughts about those victories. Victors control the narrative.
Today, Israel and Ukraine are engaged in the same kind of war. Vladimir Putin believes the Ukrainian state isn't real. Hamas, Hezbollah and their patrons in Iran openly call for Israel to be wiped off the map. In response, both countries fight aggressively for their survival. They believe they can only be safe by destroying their enemies. They know that's the way to control the narrative in the end.
This often ends in tragedy, as it did on Sunday when an Israeli airstrike targeting Hamas leaders led to the deaths of at least 45 civilians in Rafah. This has always been the story of warfare. Terms like “precision weapons” make believe that it’s possible for modern militaries to hit only intended targets. But that’s a fantasy, especially against enemies like Hamas. Hamas fights and hides among the innocent civilians like ISIS did in Syria.
They use their people as a kind of insurance policy. Their narrative is to show how evil Israel is and so they push an existential fight. For Hamas every day is existential.
It’s equally a fantasy to imagine that you can supply an ally like Ukraine with just enough weaponry of just the right kind to repel Russia’s attack but not so much as to provoke Russia into escalation. Wars are not porridge. A Goldilocks approach to getting it just right doesn't exist. Either you’re on the way to victory or on the way to defeat.
Right now, the West is trying to restrain Israel and aid Ukraine while operating under both illusions. It is asking them to fight their wars in roughly the same way that the United States has fought its own wars in recent decades — with a limited stomach for what it takes to win and a negotiated settlement.
I mean Ukraine still doesn't have F-16s to defend its own skies. Why?
This approach may help relieve humanitarian distress, assuage angry protesters or eliminate the possibility of big escalations in casualties. But in the long run, it’s a recipe for losing.
Many are sure that a “peace deal” with Moscow that leaves it with the vast areas of Ukrainian territory it's conquered is an invitation for Putin’s third invasion once Russia rebuilds it's army. What is it about short men… Wasn't Napoleon enough of a cautionary tale?
Others are sure a ceasefire with Hamas that leaves them in control of Gaza means it will inevitably start another war, just as it has five times before. They think that would reward their strategy of using civilian populations as human shields - something Hezbollah would copy in its next full-scale war with Israel. That would be a nightmare for both Palestinians and Israelis.
President Biden gave a moving Memorial Day speech at Arlington National Cemetery this week, honouring generations of soldiers who fought and fell “in battle between autocracy and democracy.” But the tragedy of America’s recent battle history is that thousands of those soldiers died in wars we didn't win. They died for a lot about nothing in the end.
That’s an evil luxury. Safe and powerful countries like the United States have the luxury of losing without real consequences to the country. (Although MAGA might be calling the establishment out on that one). Ukrainians, Israelis and Palestinians don't have any room for a luxury like that. The least we can do for them is understand that they have no choice but to fight. Liberty or Death.
It's existential for them.
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