Small Wars Journal

America’s Unimportant, Unserious Wars

Wed, 02/07/2018 - 4:59am

America’s Unimportant, Unserious Wars
John Bolton

For America, brewing risk in its financial system, economy, and the wellsprings of national strength was far greater than anything that terrorists or other global rivals could muster.

-- David Rothkopf

American soldiers spent another holiday season fighting what Foreign Affairs recently called “America’s Forgotten Wars.” Having spent my career serving in an Army at war, I would add unimportant and unserious. Though their last real peacetime holiday was 17 years ago, most Americans regard their seemingly perennial wars as an abstraction at best. The nation has ignored these wars beyond the most superficial attention and supercilious “Support the Troops” platitudes. America lacks both serious consideration about the ends America seeks in deploying its sons and daughters across the globe and the way it is achieving our stated ends.

America must make a choice between pursuing interests full or redefining national priorities. Failing do so since 9/11 has created perpetual wars that are exhausting national will, money, and prestige while eroding freedoms and domestic consensus. If America does not quickly right the ship of state, putting away a dangerous inward-looking nationalism, we will wake to find that our heritage, solvency, and capacity to shape the world gone, leaving behind a nation of debtors beholden to powers we beyond our influence.

America’s endless wars in the greater Middle East are emblematic of a failure to link policy and national interests. In Afghanistan, the decisive year still looms. Though President Ghani is a capable partner, systemic problems plague the Afghan government and much of the population remains beyond government control, while anti-Afghan forces retain safe havens in Pakistan, which remains a fickle partner at best, despite decades of American protestations (and billions in aid). The larger problem is that our stated goals in the Middle East—preventing terrorist strikes on the homeland and fostering a stable Afghanistan—overstate the capabilities of both our enemies and ourselves.

Reflecting a preference for action over effect, America seeks easy wins (kills) against terrorists while ignoring growing threats in more important regions. No matter the threat, our solution is nearly always military firepower; changing presidents has only changed means, not our way of pursuing ends. The solution remains the same: perpetual war waged from South Asia to West Africa, based on a pernicious, can-do belief that what persistently failed in the past can succeed if given sufficient (more) money and firepower. This stubbornness illustrates the dissonance inherent in how America sees itself compared to the rest of the world.

While expecting to dictate our will, culture, and prerogatives around the globe, Americans largely do not understand the wider world. As a result, the public magnifies threats, playing into the hands of our adversaries. We focus less on defining our goals and values than defeating enemy tactics. The result is unbalanced military policy and national strategy. If our wars are just limited engagements seeking limited ends, then their costs are grossly disproportionate to their gains. If, in fact, we are in a long-term, generational struggle, then our means are likewise inadequate to our ends. Either way, the nation’s policies are discordant with its wars—the result of 20 years of strategic drift. The biggest danger to America’s military is not a foreign opponent, but a fractured domestic consensus consumed by culture wars while waging a war on credit.

Gentlemen, we have run out of money. It is time to start thinking.

-- Ernest Rutherford

Ignoring this choice—making our wars small and permanent rather than serious and short—has generated a stalemate machine. We fight not so much as to win, but to avoid losing. Our actions would make sense if the cost of inaction versus. action balanced out, but they are orders of magnitude apart. Sending $100,000 missiles against $2,500 pickup trucks is not a sustainable strategy, but we remain, somehow, afraid of what President Obama called “guys in pickup trucks.” After saying ISIS was “not an existential threat,” Obama received a media drubbing for his supposed dalliance, but events have shown him prescient. ISIS was not an existential threat; the group’s extremism was its undoing. The threat to the American homeland is best approached through policing, not military action. Meanwhile America’s debt grows unchecked, accrued in one-sided wars of attrition against an enemy that has more young men willing to die than we have dollars to spend.

Like an aging lion on the savannah—still powerful and deadly but outclassed by more nimble foes—America has thrown its might around the world haphazardly since the mid-1990s. Our national leadership, no matter the party, universally failed to adapt the nation to post-Cold War realities. The results are not pretty; even acknowledging post-Cold War disorder, American engagement has generally made situations worse. From Mogadishu and Kosovo to Iraq and Yemen, American bombs seldom reaped gains exceeding costs. Now-permanent crises overshadow our initial successes because of the humanitarian and political catastrophes left in our wake.

However, amid these challenges (and failures) America cannot afford to turn inward. Revisionist powers like Russia and China seek to counter American influence, specifically limiting our trade partnerships and power projection. Now we are turning against free trade, a self-inflicted wound that will limit our economic power and global reach.

The emerging global paradigm is less Cold War great power standoff than it is 19th Century Rush for Africa. As new markets open thanks to Globalization, we must take advantage. China’s One Belt/One Road initiative exemplifies this new paradigm. Likewise, while China embraces technology and rapid development, particularly mass transit, we look backward. Rather than grasping the future however, many Americans yearn for the past, espousing a specious nationalism which, ironically, serves our adversaries’ narratives. China and Russia utilize and encourage nationalism to justify violations of international law abroad. Domestically, they use nationalism to support a spurious deal to their people, forcing them to trade human rights for economic progress. America embracing outsider roles only helps this agenda. American ethno-nationalism is facile, ignoring American history and demographics. It inhibits our strongest virtues abroad and it underwrites poor choices at home.

Now lacking any enemy to frame ourselves against we are seeing the harsh edges of a morbid civil culture that has lost faith in mainstream institutions (except the military), norms, and practices. Older, multi-cultural, unifying American norms lie trampled under the feet of a fractured individualism that serves small, selfish needs and breeds distrust. Ironically, our adversaries trust their own despotic regimes more than we trust our own. As trust collapses at home, our strength abroad flounders.

Russian interference is the 2016 election is not surprising; what is shocking however is that a foreign power could have had such impact with such a shoddy, haphazard influence campaign. The Russian success shows the underlying mistrust and cracks in the previously strong American electorate.

In many cases men have been able to see the dangers ahead. But they have surrendered to an idea that seduced them into an irrevocable disaster…by their own folly rather than misfortune.

-- Thucydides

Concurrent with a failure to develop sound policy is a Civil-Military chasm between the nation and the instruments of its militarized foreign policy. A nation that fails to take its military seriously cannot hope to take seriously the hard business of national security. An undeniable result of our Chicken Hawk military policies—whereby the public supports the military but lacks a connection to it—is the substitution of talking points and slogans for realistic policy. Americans love their military, but the public is AWOL on many critical issues. This partly reflects an increasingly political military that is, likewise, increasingly a family affair. A political and parochial military increases the likelihood of it becoming a political football.

Just two generations ago, Americans understood their military, beyond the platitudes and stereotypes seen today. In an earlier time, military service was something closer, tangible—respected surely, but not beyond a sly barb or joke. In other words, it was familiar. A familiar military is gone; most Americans today will spend their lives never knowing a service member, let alone have one in the family. Due to a combination of military parochialism, declining civic virtue, and the All-Volunteer Force, the American Military is more abstraction than reality.

Failing to address this situation generated a perpetual war with the attendant costs of a war state. Our budget exploded, our domestic strife increased, our military civil-divide is larger than ever, and we willing curtain civil rights in service of security. Wars so long should be intolerable to the national psyche, especially ones so detached from real threats.

So what should we do to alleviate this national malaise? According to National Security Advisor H.R. McMaster, winning “requires a rational determination to achieve sustainable outcomes…consistent with vital interests.” American can achieve its ends through domestic tranquility, financial solvency, and increasing economic power. That Americans are turning their back on free trade and the internal institutions that secured and sustained the peace for three generations—NATO, the UN, and the World Bank —should give us pause.

Consumed with internal faction and fighting culture wars, America needs to get serious—and quickly. Difficult choices lie ahead. We cannot continue doing what we have, excusing failure because we did not drop enough bombs or spend enough money. After a pause for reflection, we must strike a balance between the poles of isolating nationalism and neo-liberal nation building. We must disabuse ourselves of a nationalism that serves our adversaries’ agenda at the expense of our own. Americans have hyperbolic expectations of permanent primacy and world leadership as their birthright. Nothing is guaranteed, particularly world power. Our founders were wiser, reminding us “the price of freedom is eternal vigilance.”

Categories: Russia - China - Afghanistan

About the Author(s)

John Bolton is the Deputy G3 for Train Advise Assist Command-East (4/25 IBCT (A)). He is a graduate of the Command and General Staff College’s Art of War Scholars Program and holds degrees from West Point and American Military University. His assignments include 1st Engineer Battalion and 1-1 Attack Reconnaissance Battalion with deployments to Iraq and Afghanistan. The views presented here are his alone and not representative of the U.S. Army, the Defense Department, or the U.S. government.

Comments

Bill C.

Sat, 02/10/2018 - 11:55am

If the goal of the United States, since at least World War II, has been to transform the outlying states and societies of the world more along modern western political, economic, social and value lines and to, thereby, adequately provide for the material, etc., wants needs and desires of U.S. populations.

(In this manner, the government of the U.S. fulfilling its sacred duty, as described in the Preamble to our Constitution. From NSC-68:

BEGIN QUOTE

II. Fundamental Purpose of the United States

The fundamental purpose of the United States is laid down in the Preamble to the Constitution: ". . . to form a more perfect Union, establish justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity." In essence, the fundamental purpose is to assure the integrity and vitality of our free society, which is founded upon the dignity and worth of the individual.

END QUOTE

https://fas.org/irp/offdocs/nsc-hst/nsc-68-2.htm

If this indeed is our goal, then is it in this exact such light (we must cause the Rest of the World to become organized, ordered and oriented more along modern western political, economic, social and value lines; this, so as to adequately provide for the material, etc., wants, needs and desires of our population) that we might best determine whether "America's Forgotten Wars" are unimportant and/or unserious? From former National Security Advisor Stephen Hadley:

BEGIN QUOTE

... America has always been about its principles. Its history has been the record of its struggle to realize these principles at home and to advance them abroad. ...

Political democracy and free markets were at the core of the rules-based international order that America and Europe created in the aftermath of World War II. And every war that America has fought since that time has been fought in the name of advancing the cause of freedom, democracy, human rights, and the rule of law.

America has never accepted the idea that it had to choose between its democratic principles and its interests. This is a false choice. Advancing freedom and democracy in the world also advances American interests. For a world that reflects these principles, is more likely to be a world in which America -- and Americans -- can thrive and prosper.

END QUOTE

https://www.usip.org/publications/2017/05/us-democracy-assistance

Note: With regard to the requirement outlined above (to transform the outlying states and societies of the world more along modern western lines and to, thereby, adequately provide for the material, etc., wants, needs and desires of of the American people):

a. During the Old Cold War, a major effort was made to "contain communism." (Thus, our "wars" undertaken during the Old Cold War; these may best be understood in terms of "containing communism?") While:

b. During the post-Cold War era, a significant effort has been made to "advance market-democracy." (Thus, our "wars" undertaken in the current era; these are best understood in terms of "advancing market-democracy?")

If the above analysis/description is correct, then the relevant question seems to become:

Are "America's Forgotten Wars" in the current era (undertaken so as to "advance market-democracy" and to, thereby, adequately provide for the material, etc., wants, needs and desires of the American people) -- are these such wars unimportant and/or unserious?

cammo99

Tue, 02/13/2018 - 10:25am

In reply to by dfil

General Petreaus and the Bush administration did not exclude the State Department or deny it a critical role in fact it raised the military to playing a role that was more a partnership. I don't see how you have arrived at such a critical view of the Military's working with Department of State. If anything the Clinton Obama Kerry over dependence on Department of State being able to effectively defend interests abroad while pursuing unilateral disarmament failed horribly. In fact so badly was Obama's moves and their impact on Iraq which he abandoned there is a possibility that Department of State has lost traction as a valid means to address conflicts because too much was expected of diplomacy and played a role in promising too much. I can agree with you that we need to go back to some of the principles advocated by General Petreaus inclusive and putting import on diplomacy but we don't need a repeat of the last administrations road to Benghazi.

"No matter the threat, our solution is nearly always military firepower"

The role of the State Department and USAID is almost totally neglected in regard to preventing threats (at least by numerous commentators). The statement quoted is purely a product of perceptions, there are virtually no mainstream news reports about development programs, security cooperation, or diplomatic mediation efforts that stifled problems before they got worse.

"The solution remains the same: perpetual war waged from South Asia to West Africa, based on a pernicious, can-do belief that what persistently failed in the past can succeed if given sufficient (more) money and firepower."

Both surges in Iraq and Afghanistan were accompanied by wholesale shifts in strategy (and often tighter rules of engagement). It is completely false to say that the wars were the same in strategy and execution throughout their entirety, or to boil adaptations down to simply wanting to spend more money and drop more bombs. Saying the solution is "always military firepower" also neglects the dozens of interagency, international, and NGO partners that partook in these efforts. Please visit the USAID Afghanistan page, and read about the "civilian surge."

Too many of the author's points are cynical oversimplifications or outright falsehoods.