The American political elite, the American media, and the American public have lost the ability to see war with the same clear-sighted understanding that led us to victory in World War II. That is, to prevail in war often involves unpleasant and devastating choices.

As applied to the United States, small wars are operations undertaken under executive authority, wherein military force is combined with diplomatic pressure in the internal or external affairs of another state whose government is unstable, inadequate or unsatisfactory for the preservation of life and of such interests as are determined by the foreign policy of our Nation . . . small wars represent the normal and frequent operations of the Marine Corps.
– “Small Wars” definition in USMC Small Wars Manual, 1940

Now, we have been able to hold this line against this internal subversion by the Communists, as well as the external threat of military invasion, because for many years the United States has assisted these countries in meeting their own problems. We are assisting the people of Viet-Nam. We are assisting countries in Latin America which are faced with staggering problems. If we stop helping them, they will become ripe for internal subversion and a Communist takeover.
– President John F. Kennedy (regarding the importance of US Cold War counter-insurgency efforts in the Third World, Sept. 23, 1963) in “Idealism and pragmatism in American foreign policy rhetoric: The case of John F. Kennedy and Vietnam,” Presidential Studies Quarterly; (New York: Summer 1994)

The United States possesses overwhelming conventional military superiority. This capability has pushed its enemies to fight U.S. forces unconventionally, mixing modem technology with ancient techniques of insurgency and terrorism. Most enemies either do not try to defeat the United States with conventional operations or do not limit themselves to purely military means. They know that they cannot compete with U.S. forces on those terms. Instead, they try to exhaust U.S. national will, aiming to win by undermining and outlasting public support. Defeating such enemies presents a huge challenge to the Army and Marine Corps. Meeting it requires creative efforts by every Soldier and Marine.
– First paragraph of Introduction to US Army/Marine Corps Field Manual, FM 3-24/ MCWP 3-33.5, Counter-insurgency, December 2006

Can America defend itself and its national interests?

Is it possible for post-modern America to fight war when the public is bombarded by the media with politically correct judgments about the cruelty and brutality that is inherent in warfare?  In a world where just holding avowed enemies of the US in Guantanamo occasions shrieks of “torture!” from leftist politicians, we must ask ourselves as Americans how can we defend ourselves? Have we “progressed” so far that enemy combatants in a war zone are treated as criminal defendants and the war zone as a police action? Have we transcended national existence and its proper defense in war to a “universal human rights” as utterly transcendent of all else?

Are “small wars” still viable?

In his award winning book, The Savage Wars of Peace, Max Boot makes a case for what he terms “small wars” to maintain “Pax Americana.” Although The Savage Wars of Peace was published in 2002 after 9/11, it appeared before Operation Iraqi Freedom.  So that specific conflict is not addressed.  However, the insurgency we are currently fighting in Iraq, which would seemingly fall within Boot’s definition of “small wars,” calls into question if it is still feasible for America to fight in a conflict like the one we face in Iraq as we did in the past. Obviously the question is a political one as much as, or more than, a military one.

Boot details the little known history of America’s myriad undeclared wars beginning with our first clash against Islam when we responded in 1801 to attacks by Barbary Pirates who claimed the Koran as their authority for piracy. In the following ten chapters, Boot covers US military ventures throughout US history in such diverse places as China, the Philippines, Haiti, Russia, and Mexico to name but some. Boot’s point is that during our history America has been engaged in almost continual small wars that have served both US interests as well as those of native populations where we have often intervened to protect noncombatants, to put an end to such crimes as banditry and piracy, or to act as conflict peace makers.

It is not my purpose to revisit these small wars or their justifications; rather I make reference to them to illustrate how the perceptions of the American political elite, of the media, and of the public have changed radically regarding war. For example, the quelling of the Filipino insurgency over a four-year period (1898-1902) resulted in 4,234 killed in action, and while there were domestic protests against the war, the American public as a whole paid little attention to the conflict or the death toll.  Certainly such would not be the case today.

The small wars, as portrayed by Boot, were undeclared wars in remote locations fought by small numbers of professional soldiers for limited aims. The US Marine Corps was so heavily engaged in these operations that the Corps considered it necessary to publish a small wars manual in 1940 that clearly stated:

As applied to the United States, small wars are operations undertaken under executive authority, wherein military force is combined with diplomatic pressure in the internal or external affairs of another state whose government is unstable, inadequate or unsatisfactory for the preservation of life and of such interests as are determined by the foreign policy of our Nation . . . small wars represent the normal and frequent operations of the Marine Corps.

In the political atmosphere of today’s America, Democrat leftist critics and Republican rightist isolationists would declare that the Marines’ small wars intervention charter, as stated in their manual, is more appropriate for the Legions of Imperial Rome. Be that as it may, what American presidents from Thomas Jefferson to George W. Bush have learned is that the chief executive in charge of a commercial and political power with worldwide interests must be prepared to act as Commander-in-Chief of a military prepared to conduct time-sensitive, small-scale military operations which may in fact provoke armed hostilities without formal congressional approval. As world economic globalization and interdependence have grown, and most importantly as the threat from WMD from almost any country in the world with the will to develop it has become a technological reality, this requirement for such Commander-in-Chief authority has certainly not diminished, nor will it. Guarding our interest across the globe is a price the nation must pay for our commercial freedom and personal liberty in a dangerous world.

What Boot terms “small wars,” has been redesignated “counter-insurgency” (COIN) since the presidency of John F. Kennedy. COIN was incorporated into the concept of “limited war” which Kennedy and his civilian defense advisors developed as a way to avoid superpower confrontation. Kennedy justified the need for the US to undertake COIN in this way: “If we stop helping them [third world nations], they will become ripe for internal subversion and a Communist takeover.”

As I have written previously (here, here, here, and here), Kennedy and his civilian national security advisors codified the small wars concept into what became a limited war doctrine premised on the belief that the US need not destroy an enemy. Instead, these advocates of limited war doctrine envisioned the US adopting a non-threatening strategic defensive posture, which is what COIN is, while at the same time carrying out precise, pinpoint destruction of non-vital targets to “send a message” to the enemy regime that US attacks would get worse for the enemy unless they were to cease their aggression.

Inherent in this limited war doctrine is the idea that all the US needs to do is indefinitely escalate “message sending attacks” until the enemy is convinced it is in its best interest to desist from further belligerency. 

Such a concept of limited war is built upon three very obvious fallacies.  First, this kabuki dance of attacking non-vital targets conveys a message of indecision and weakness, and most certainly neither a message of strength nor that the situation will get worse if the war continues.  There is simply no incentive for the enemy to forego its efforts to obtain its strategic objective. 

Second, and related to this first fallacy, is the fact that “kabuki bombing” does nothing to diminish the enemy’s capability to carry on the war, so there is no material progress toward ending the conflict. In other words, the enemy grows suspicious that the implied threat of a ratcheting up of the destructive force of the war will never occur in fact.

Third, indefinite escalation implies open-ended war and an ability to sustain casualties over a long period of time, presumably on the side utilizing this doctrine. This third fallacy is transparent in its failure when viewed from the underlying assumptions of the doctrine itself. Thus, the Limited War Doctrine is based upon three fundamental assumptions. Assumption one is that there is some limit to the casualties and destruction the enemy is prepared to suffer. Assumption two is that the enemy has an implicit understanding that the adversary utilizing the Limited War Doctrine is fully prepared to continue ratcheting up the war while sustaining casualties until the enemy has had enough. And assumption three is that the side pursuing the doctrine does in fact have the stomach (i.e., motivation) for a prolonged war with mounting casualties.

Consequently, when any of these three assumptions are wrong, the Limited War Doctrine will actually become a doctrine the enemy uses to defeat the advocate of the doctrine. Specifically, we understand this quite intuitively: when the US engages in limited war against an enemy that does not value its soldiers’ lives with the same high regard as does the US, the outcome of the war suddenly becomes dependent on the American public’s will to sustain seemingly unending casualities. With this change in warfare focus, the battlefield shifts from enemy targets to the US homefront where the enemy’s principal weapon is the American news media.

In the last forty years it has unfortunately become all too evident that the enemies of America understand these fallacies better than our war planners and they most assuredly understand that the US media is only too willing to carry the enemy’s propaganda message to the American people. Naturally the day-in, day-out repetition of negative news, with the underlying message that the US forces are trapped in a futile war quagmire, strengthens the drum beat demands for immediate withdrawal of US forces by both the anti-war Left and Right, but even by the other more stalwart Americans who tire of bad war planning and strategy.

Once mainstream America jumps on the cut-and-run bandwagon, it is only a matter of time until the President must finally accede to the indigenous anti-American element of our political culture and surrender under a “fig leaf” typified by a political settlement, which eventually leads to the attainment of the strategic objective for the enemy.

Such was the story of the Vietnam War. What is difficult to fathom is that even after the catastrophe of Vietnam, the limited war doctrine still pervades US strategic thinking about warfare. The American political elite, the American media, and the American public have lost the ability to see war with the same clear-sighted understanding that led us to victory in World War II. That is, to prevail in war often involves unpleasant and devastating choices. This is the change in perception to which I made reference at the outset of this essay.

Limited war in Iraq?

The American political/military leadership’s continuing dedication to limited war through COIN is clearly enunciated in the introduction to the recently completed US Army/Marine Corps COIN manual. There it states:

The United States possesses overwhelming conventional military superiority. This capability has pushed its enemies to fight U.S. forces unconventionally, mixing modem technology with ancient techniques of insurgency and terrorism. Most enemies either do not try to defeat the United States with conventional operations or do not limit themselves to purely military means. They know that they cannot compete with U.S. forces on those terms. Instead, they try to exhaust U.S. national will, aiming to win by undermining and outlasting public support. Defeating such enemies presents a huge challenge to the Army and Marine Corps. Meeting it requires creative efforts by every Soldier and Marine.

As I have written previously (here):

. . . counter-insurgency is an essential form of warfare that needs to be an important part of our warfighting capability, and nothing I write is meant to detract from or depreciate the value of waging skillful counter-insurgency. However, .. . [c]ounter-insurgency is basically a defensive form of war. Defensive war is by definition only victorious when the enemy ceases making war. Thus, counter-insurgency concedes the initiative to the enemy.  While not totally impossible, war is most difficult to win while the enemy holds the initiative . . . In a war fought under realistic circumstances, the counter-insurgency defensive tactic would be teamed with an offensive strategy that exercises the initiative to destroy the enemy’s war-making capability and, consequently, end the war on dictated terms. A combination of effective defense and offense are the way wars are best fought and won.

It is now a demonstrable fact that the conflict in Iraq continues because the insurgents continue to be re-supplied from Iran and Syria. Unless and until this insurgency war-making capability is eliminated, control of the conflict will always remain in enemy hands. However, our political leadership is currently touting the new approach to COIN, coupled with a troop surge, as the solution to our seeming military stalemate in Iraq.  Additionally, the US Army general, David Petraeus, who was the guiding force behind the rewriting of a joint Army and Marine Corps manual on COIN, has been dispatched to Iraq to oversee the execution of his COIN creation. From initial indications, the situation is improving, but can the conflict be ultimately settled favorably from the US standpoint by employing a strategic defensive strategy?  In order to answer this question we need step back and assess the Iraqi situation.  

President Bush must look at the insurgency in Iraq from two perspectives – the short-term perspective driven by US domestic politics and the long-term future of Iraq and the larger war against the Islamic Jihadists to be determined by the final outcome of the insurgency.  The Bush administration is obviously operating on the dictum “shoot the bear closest to you,” so tamping down the domestic political opposition to US involvement in Iraq takes priority. As a consequence, General Petraeus’ implementation of effective COIN measures which decrease the violence in Iraq are likely to succeed in the short-term and will take immediate pressure off of President Bush to cave-in to his vociferous war critics on the Left and Right.

The picture, however, is not so rosy for the long-term future of Iraq and the larger war against the various enemy combatants. The suppression of insurgents in Baghdad and al-Anbar Province is a positive development, but it will not end the insurgency so long as insurgents can regroup and rearm in Iran and Syria. The key to successfully terminating the conflict in Iraq resides in effective offensive action destroying the insurgency-regenerating capability in Iran and Syria. Just as the key to ending the insurgency in South Vietnam was to destroy the insurgency generating capability of North Vietnam, so the situation is analogous in Iraq regarding resupply from Iran and Syria, and to a lesser extent the funds and personnel coming from Saudi Arabia to protect its Sunni interests.

The inescapable conclusion is that the combat in Iraq is not a “small war,” “limited war,” or “insurgency/COIN.” Just as the war in South Vietnam was international aggression by North Vietnam, the war in Iraq is international aggression by Iran and Syria (and, again, to a lesser extent the Wahhabis of the Gulf States). However, the difference is that the effects of the Vietnam War were more or less confined to Southeast Asia; the effects of the Iraq conflict will have worldwide reverberations in the larger war against the Shari’a faithful and their Jihad warriors.

What drives this Limited War Doctrine in Iraq?

The use of the Limited War Doctrine even today as a hang-over (or hold-over) from the Cold War era is a reality. Institutional inertia, especially in huge bureaucracies like the Pentagon and the State Department, is the norm not the exception. But, the Limited War Doctrine as counter-insurgency warfare has its own impetus in our war against Islam as it is fought in the theatres known as the War in Afghanistan and the War in Iraq.

One, like the fear of engaging China and the Soviet Union directly during the Cold War, and as exemplified in the Vietnam War, the US war planners are fearful of actually declaring war against the Shari’a-faithful Islamic world. To conduct an all-out war against our declared enemies is to them unfathomable and a war we cannot win.

Two, the Bush administration and its military leadership has fully embraced the notion that the way to fight the war against the Shari’a-faithful Islamic world is to convert them to adherents of liberal democracy. For this strategic mindset, the Limited War Doctrine is like a hand-in-glove fit. The doctrine so construed thus suggests that to build a civil representative government we must preserve and rebuild the infrastructure, both physical and social, and we must preserve the appearance of even-handedness as we promote a political process of reconciliation.

In other words, the “political process” tail must wag the military war-making dog. So it was that General Petraeus just recently reminded us that in Iraq victory is not possible militarily; it must come through the "political process of reconciliation."

But this Limited War Doctrine rationale is no less flawed than the one utilized in Vietnam. To build a civil representative government from scratch is hard enough; to do so among Arabs and Muslims is practically impossible. To attempt it in a country with a heterogeneous population, whose animus and ideological differences are soaked in blood, is insane.

There is but one reality in this war. We are in a world war, of which Iraq is just one theater of war. If we Americans and our political and military leadership will not adjust our thinking to acknowledge this reality and fight the conflict accordingly, we will face a defeat far more catastrophic than we have ever seen or experienced. Unlike the North Vietnamese, Jihad will come to America because many of their warriors are already here.

* * *

David Yerushalmi also contributed to this article.