It seems strange now, but once upon a time, long, long time ago, states went to war with the intention of winning. By winning it was generally understood that the purpose of the war was to impose one state's political will upon another. By so doing, it was assumed that the victorious state would create a better state of peace--from its perspective at least.
In some wars, World War II being the archetypal example, it was easy to formulate both the political goal and its necessary subordinate, a definition of victory. Of course, this was easy to accomplish in that for most of the combatants (the US was an exception here), the conflict was existential--a total war of national survival.
But, even lesser wars--the Falkland Islands War, for example--national survival was not at stake. Even so, the British formulated a clear, unitary political goal with a relevant definition of victory. The venue was small, the goal limited to the ejection of the invader, and victory was understood to mean the surrender or destruction of the occupying force along with a de facto pledge by the invader not to repeat the effort--at least in the near future.
In other wars--the several Arab-Israeli affrays come to mind--the political context precludes finally and completely bending the loser to the political will and goals of the "victor." Because the combination of size and international dynamics prevented the existentially threatened Israelis from carrying on the war until all its Arab adversaries admitted defeat and forswore future military attacks, the conflict between Arab and Israeli came quickly to resemble the indecisive, limited wars of Europe during the Eighteenth Century. No victories, only truces, no better state of peace, only timeouts between bouts.
When looking at the history of war since the end of "The Good War," the US stands out as a driver of the new trajectory--wars without clear political goals, lacking coherent definitions of victory. In part, this has been the necessary consequence of the American fixation upon collective security either actual, as in the cases of the Korean War and the Gulf War of 1990-91,or fabricated, as in the wars in Vietnam, Afghanistan, Iraq and, most recently, Libya. The requirements of collective approval automatically assured hazy goals and the lack of any clear cut understanding of the meaning of victory.
To a greater extent, the American failures to establish a unitary political goal, to define victory, or even to state realistically what might constitute a better state of peace arises organically from the nature and character of domestic politics in the US. The foundation truth here is simply that Americans are not really comfortable with the idea of interventionary warfare. We do not cotton up to the notion of getting into someone else's war.
During the long debacle of our intervention in the wars of the Vietnamese, the responsible administrations, the several Congresses, the media and public opinion molders, all were uncertain as to what we sought in the conflict. There was no agreement as to what our political goal might be beyond the boilerplate of "stopping Communist aggression. or "supporting democracy against armed force from without and subversion from within." The only idea of what might constitute a better state of peace was a South Vietnam in which the noise level of armed violence was reduced to a level such that the region might not be kept awake all night. Whether by force or negotiation, the US really did not have a clue as to what might be required of the North Vietnamese or the southern insurgents.
Without stating clearly and understandably what political dictate must be accepted by the other three combatants in the war, it was impossible for the US to establish either a goal or to define victory. As a result, it was impossible to continue American political will as the years went by and the blood flowed. It was also impossible to weaken the political will of the North or the southern insurgents. Finally, the lack made the possibility of bending the Southern government to our will a chimera at best.
The same lacks characterized our invasion of Afghanistan. Had the domestic political environment allowed it, the US could have mounted a punitive expedition aimed at killing or capturing as many Taliban and al-Qaeda figures as possible so as to destroy both entities. A simple punitive expedition would have been explicable to other states--including Pakistan--and would have allowed diplomatic arm twisting so as to have the freedom of operation necessary. In this approach, the challenges of (re)constructing Afghanistan post war would have been left to the Afghan people and whatever international bodies cared to assist. There would have been no long term "nation-building" commitment by the US.
Iraq was both identical and different. The difference resided in the inescapable fact that the US had no real reason to invade. Leaving that non-trivial consideration aside, had the US invaded with the simple, unitary political goal of removing the Baathist regime of Saddam Hussein, the definition of victory as well as the task itself would have been easy to state and accomplish. Again, the post regime removal process would have been assigned to the Iraqi people along with whosoever of the "international community" cared to assist, which might have included the US in a non-occupation role.
In Iraq and Afghanistan alike, the US had no clear, readily apprehended political goal. There was, as a result, no definition of victory after the capture of Saddam and his major associates. Other than in glittering generalities of no practical significance, the American administration could not state what our purpose in the country might be or how we might successfully do whatever it was we might think we should do. Nice sounding words about democracy or rule of law or economic development do not have any real world utility. In order to bend an adversary--whether Sunni or Shiite or secular--to our political will, to our understanding of what constitutes a better state of peace, it is essential to have a narrowly focused, realistically achievable goal which can be transmitted effectively to all involved parties including the American public.
Without the goal it is not possible to define victory. True, victory can be declared, but it cannot be achieved without the necessary predicate of a goal. The lack of a realistic, utilitarian goal, coupled with the total absence of any understanding of what might constitute a better state of peace assured not only an unnecessarily prolonged war but one which would end in a quite unsatisfying way.
The inability to articulate a convincing explanation of what might be a better state of peace also complicated the diplomacy of constructing and keeping an alliance, including the very necessary alliance between the indigenous people, their government, and the US. The inability to share a vision of a better state of peace, to put forth a clear political goal, to know when meaningful victory might be achieved served to worsen the frictions inherent to any alliance as well as to erode the political will of the civilian populations of the interventionary forces. The longer the lack of a consensually understood goal exists, the more the frictions will grow while domestic opinion turns increasingly against the war.
Now there is Libya. At the outset, a single US Marine Expeditionary Unit could have removed Gaddafi in a matter of days. Or, as a senior British officer told Con Coughlin of the Telegraph, a single tank battalion could have done the job in twenty four hours. Militarily, either proposition is substantially accurate.
The lack of a political goal which was agreeable to the several Western powers favoring the quick removal of the Gaddafi nuisance as well as the existence of only the most vague notions of what might be a better state of peace prevented the focused use of diplomacy and military power to the goal of abating the Gaddafi menace. While excuses might be offered regarding the need for "international community" legitimization of any use of force against the Gaddafi regime, these remain mere excuses.
The difficulties resided not with opposition from Russia or China; nor did they come from the Arab states. Nor, realistically, was there a basis for the lack of vision in fear of outraging Muslim opinion. The failure of the several prime Western movers to define a better state of peace or enunciate a political goal emerged from a visceral feeling of oh-no-here-we-go-again!
The bad examples of Iraq and Afghanistan--which we must remember were American adventures in very bad thinking--caused fulminating paralysis of political will in the chanceries of Paris, London, and Washington. Fear of a rapidly blooming Gaddafi success and all that implied fought with fear of being bogged down in one more Arab/Muslim morass. The result was worse than doing nothing.
The result was embarking on an intentionally emasculated program of half-measures. No--make that one-eighth measures. No objective observer reasonably well grounded in the history and culture of Libya as well as the nature and character of Brother Leader and his coterie could have concluded that the combination of a no-fly zone and civilian protection air strikes would bring favorable or rapid results. Nor could this observer have concluded that the results would be other than prolonged and bloody stalemate.
Had the Big Three of the West--France, the UK, and the US--mutually determined that the quest for a better state of peace would result only with the removal of the Gaddafi regime, their instruments of diplomacy could have been put to work to assure the tacit acceptance of this decision by other parties both great and small. With this necessary preliminary being accomplished in private, a joint announcement of goal--the removal of the Gaddfi regime--and definition of victory--the capture or death of the chief members of the regime--could have been made.
The mechanism of accomplishment would have been a short duration ground and air campaign. The short term nature of the military operation could have been made clear as the first air defense suppression ordinance hit the targets. The task of the foreign troops would have been restricted to the removal of the obnoxious regime. The post-removal effort would have been left up to the Libyans and those of the "international community" of a mind (or national interest need) to assist.
In this scenario, the definition of a better state of peace, the political goal, and the metric of victory would have been simple, straightforward, easy to comprehend, unitary--and susceptible to accomplishment in a politically acceptable time frame and at a cost in lives which would be low--certainly for the Libyans far lower than the ongoing agony of internal war.
The public carping by the usual suspects would have taken place. There would have been the inevitable violent demonstrations by Muslims, or at least those looking for a reason to be outraged. Nothing new here.
Most importantly, the use of this alternative would have cleansed the West of the ongoing fear of inconclusive war. Wars are inconclusive only when there is no real and generally acceptable goal for which the war is being fought. Without an understandable vision of the better state of peace toward which the war is aimed, without a political goal, without a definition of victory, without the use of sufficient and situationally appropriate force, the war must be unnecessarily prolonged or inconclusive.
The hypothetical alternative outlined for Libya would not have made the conflict "a splendid little war," for no war is splendid, but it would have assured the war would have been both little and conclusive. Even now it not too late to change war horses in mid-stream as a senior British commander has suggested. It will take ground forces; it will now take more time and lives; it will present a messy problem for diplomats, but failure can still be redeemed.
Far more importantly, given both the situation in Libya and the rush to the exit in Afghanistan, it is now time for decision makers and military planners alike to take a very hard look at the ground truths regarding the conduct of the operations in Iraq and Afghanistan. It is long past time to reacquaint ourselves with the powerful reality of war, that it is an instrument of policy. And, a war without a realistic, utilitarian policy behind it is simply a costly exercise in futility.
Our record in costly futility disguised as war is lengthy--Vietnam, Afghanistan, Iraq, (perhaps) Libya. Isn't it time to break the string?
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