The Real Lessons of Mosul (and Sixteen Years of War in Afghanistan, Iraq, and Syria) by Anthony Cordesman - Center for Strategic & International Studies

Driving most ISIS forces out of Mosul is an important victory at the tactical level. The fight in Mosul is still a work in progress, but Iraq is close enough to driving ISIS fully out of the city to show Iraqi forces have steadily improved over time, and the combination of Iraqi forces, U.S. airpower, and a carefully tailored U.S. train and assist mission has had important successes.

It is scarcely surprising, therefore, that there is a rush to declare the "lessons" the U.S. should learn from the initial phases of this Iraqi victory in Mosul, and to treat that battle as the culmination of a new and more successful approach to fighting extremism and asymmetric wars. If there is any lesson of war that the United States should learn from the more than a decade and a half of previous fighting, however, it is not to declare "mission accomplished" on the basis of even the greatest tactical victory.

The United States has fought a long and frustrating series of wars and battles since U.S. Special Forces first entered Afghanistan in October 2001. Again and again, seemingly lasting victories have not turned into strategic successes, and have been followed by new rounds of fighting and strategic frustration. And, only lasting strategic results really count.

We must not let the success of the moment blind us to the fact that this is still a limited tactical success that only came as the result of overcoming a long series of unnecessary mistakes. When Mosul is judged by the fact it is not even a complete tactical success—and may not be fully secured for weeks or months—and from the perspective of a decade and a half of previous mistakes, the lessons to date are very different from those that come from only looking at the recent course of a single battle:

The Failure to Set Strategic and Grand Strategic Objectives…

Civil-Military Action in Failed States: The "Hole in Government" Approach…

Creeping Incrementalism vs. Decisive Force…

Real World Time and Resource Needs in Creating and Supporting Partner Forces…

Read on.

America Literally Can't Afford More Military Adventurism by Doug Bandow - The National Interest

Republican presidents and Congresses claim to support fiscal responsibility and balanced budgets. Yet the previous GOP president, George W. Bush, was a wild spender. The Republican-controlled Congress that served alongside him was no better.

So too it looks to be the case with President Donald Trump and the current GOP-dominated legislative branch. The former doesn’t want to touch entitlements. The latter doesn’t like the big cuts President Trump proposed in discretionary outlays in areas such as the State Department. And most of the Republicans are clamoring to fill the Pentagon’s coffers: the only question is how much, how quickly.

These nominally “conservative” spendthrifts act like they have no choice but to foist money onto the military. They rightly worry about a mismatch between foreign policy and force structure. But America’s expansive international intervention is discretionary, not mandatory. No security imperative requires defending prosperous and populous allies in Asia, Europe and the Middle East, fighting other nations’ battles in Africa and the Middle East, engaging in seemingly endless nation building in Central Asia and the Middle East, and treating the slightest instability anywhere as a summons to act.

Congress and the president must begin to rethink priorities as America’s fiscal situation becomes more precarious. As usual, the Congressional Budget Office produces the grimmest reading in Washington…

Read on.