I'm beginning to think wars are unwinnable

[Dis]

The U.S. cannot win in Iraq. Have we come to a point where no other nation can conquer another? Or perhaps they can only if they use brutal military force to subjugate the population. Something we are not capable of in the U.S.

So the larger question, is the U.S. capable of winning a war? I'm beginning to think we cannot. Or perhaps it depends on what the objectives of the war. A war such as gulf war 1 we can win, since there was never an issue of toppling a goverment and trying to keep order in the land for rebuilding. All we did was liberate a country that wanted to be liberated and was ready to re establish their goverment. So I'll rephrase my statement into saying the U.S. cannot win a war that involves toppling a goverment and occupying their land.

But what of other nations? Can other nations conquer a country and take for their own? I don't think it was that long ago China took Tibet. I think they are capable of doing it again. Which brings me back to massive military use to curb uprisings. The only way perhaps, is to violently curb uprisings.

[Heraclitus]

Originally posted by Dis
The U.S. cannot win in Iraq. Have we come to a point where no other nation can conquer another?

[Heraclitus]

Re: I'm beginning to think wars are unwinnable

Originally posted by Dis

So the larger question, is the U.S. capable of winning a war? I'm beginning to think we cannot. Or perhaps it depends on what the objectives of the war. A war such as gulf war 1 we can win, since there was never an issue of toppling a goverment and trying to keep order in the land for rebuilding. All we did was liberate a country that wanted to be liberated and was ready to re establish their goverment. So I'll rephrase my statement into saying the U.S. cannot win a war that involves toppling a goverment and occupying their land.

I couldn't stop my-self sorry about that.

But seriously, America's problem are:
1. The inability to station large amount of troops and to sustain casualties. I mean twenty,fifty or even a hundred thousand are historicaly very low causality rates for a nation of 300 million but are inconceivable to the American public.
2. Lack of pragmatism.

Now to answer your question, I think America IS capable of doing that since it was in WW2, where they occupied Japan and Germany. But the public would have to perceive it as a war of self-defense.

[Wernazuma III]

Re: Re: I'm beginning to think wars are unwinnable

Originally posted by Heraclitus


I couldn't stop my-self sorry about that.

But seriously, America's problem are:
1. The inability to station large amount of troops and to sustain casualties. I mean twenty,fifty or even a hundred thousand are historicaly very low causality rates for a nation of 300 million but are inconceivable to the American public.
2. Lack of pragmatism.

Now to answer your question, I think America IS capable of doing that since it was in WW2, where they occupied Japan and Germany. But the public would have to perceive it as a war of self-defense.

But WWII was different in so many ways. The cost of lives during occupation wasn't important since post-war German Nazi resistance wasn't that big and ended soon, and because so many had died DURING the war the few casualities afterwards didn't matter in public opinion. Also, no partisan civil war broke out in Germany, and even if they wanted, they had no financial input from outside to organize properly and buy weapons, etc., etc.

In one word: you can't generalize, but surely, nowadays I don't know what would have to happen so that the public would support large casuality numbers - which in turn is a big incentive for any resistance to increase American casualities.

[Eli]

How much is it now? Three or four thousand dead? That's just what medium sized armies suffered through attrition, even before the actual battles. And that's for nations that had populations roughly 20 times smaller than modern US. Spain was fighting all over Europe, and the Americas, taking much larger casualties, with a population of 6-8 million.

Don't get into a mess if you're not willing to pay the price for it.

[Patroklos]

Or perhaps they can only if they use brutal military force to subjugate the population.

Has this ever not been the case?

[Saras]

http://www.exile.ru/articles/detail.php?ARTICLE_ID=7015&IBLOCK_ID=35

[Blake]

Re: Re: I'm beginning to think wars are unwinnable

Originally posted by Heraclitus
Now to answer your question, I think America IS capable of doing that since it was in WW2, where they occupied Japan and Germany. But the public would have to perceive it as a war of self-defense.

In WW2 they had the unconditional support of many other nations, and they were fighting against genuine aggressors.

I'm sure that if a nation - other than America, were to act as aggressively and boldly as Japan/Germany in WWII, then the world would rally against them sufficiently that they'd get a righteous ass-kicking.

The thing is, no nation would be stupid enough to do that now.

One possible conquest style in the future could probably go like this:

Quickly invade and take some land, taking land until it's clear that other nations will be compelled to intervene (basically, they figure out what's going on and prepare to mobilize!). Then stop taking land.
Flood the land with people and settle them in as quickly as possible.
Use brinkmanship diplomacy to prevent others interfering (taking it back).


There's a book series, um... "Tomorrow, When the War Began" by John Marsden. Storyline, is that Northern Australia gets invaded from the north, the plot is deliberately ambiguous on who is doing the invading (quite cleverly done, overall).
The reason for invasion: Land, to help relieve overpopulation (the aggressors having like 15x the population density of Australia). The invasion was done relatively bloodlessly and in a first-strike blitz style attack, with the goal of taking a lot of land, but not necessarily continuing after that. Just "Take X land" and claim "That's ours now!". Quickly shuffle in as many people as possible.
The brinkmanship, is in that reversing the invasion would be bloody and take a larger toll on human life than the invasion itself. Presumably there could also be the threat of nuclear weapon use (like "Interfere and it's MAD time!").

Spoiler:

A few countries did interfere, of course. In the story, New Zealand, backed covertly and even overtly by other powers such as USA (of course) made every effort to help the Australian resistance effort (basically, border struggle, I guess, since it became clear the aggressors would be keeping at least some land). Again there's brinkmanship diplomacy - the aggressors aren't really going to threaten to nuke New Zealand, it's raising the stakes too high when the stakes are low.

The agressors know they're going to get a lot of grief regardless so they can only afford to use the big threats sparingly. Threaten the nuclear powers with nukes, and fight the non-nuclear powers who get involved the old fashioned way.

Spoiler:

One of the interesting things about that storyline is the teenage protagonists become bona-fide terrorists and one even blows herself up (she was a Christian, no less). It was written before 9/11 but was an interesting reflection anyway. Invade a country, and the locals are going to hate you, regardless of how it's justified.

Anyway I think such a conventional invasion, using Brinkmanship diplomacy, probably would be somewhat possible. Doesn't mean it would happen though, the way global communications are these days, the aggressors would become extremely unpopular extreme quickly.

[OzzyKP]

Sounds like the story is intended to be an analogy of the Israel-Palestine situation.

[GePap]

Of course the US can win wars. The simple question is what it the aim of the war.

if our invasion of Iraq had been purely to remove Saddam Hussin, with no interest in the aftermath, then we would have been able to claim complete victory in 6 weeks.


The problems with Iraq were legion, but the most basic ones were that the amdinistration was not truthful with the people about our long term aims, meaning they did not build sufficient political support for the actual costs, and they also greatly underestimated the cost. basically a total ****up.

Don't confuse Bush admin. incompetence for the ability of the US to achieve goals.

[Aeson]

We need to aim lower next time to build up confidence. Something nice and easy... like have the CIA incite a secession attempt of one of the Aleutian islands and it's 50 Bear residents?

I don't think wars are "winnable" on general principles. But you can certainly lose less than your opponent does.

[Wycoff]

I think you've missed the lesson, Dis.

Wars are still quite winnable. The U.S. military utterly demolished the Iraqi military forces.

Longterm colonial occupations by democratic western nations over peoples who don't want them there are, on the other hand, unwinnable in the modern era. Look at the past 60 years. The only way to keep control over a large group of people who don't want you there is to act truculently, and western societies don't want to do that. That's a big reason why the colonial empires fell apart.

We could pacify Iraq if we truly wanted to. All it would take is for us to act like Nazis. We could annex Iraq and massacre millions upon millions of Iraqis, stopping only when the remaining population is too terrified and small to retaliate. That approach, though, would go against everything that we stand for, and is a completely unacceptable option.

Gepap's right. The administration sold the Iraq project on this idealized fantasy that the people of the world loved us and wanted us to save them from themselves. If Bush & co. would have told the people what things would really be like-that conquering Iraq would leave us with a defacto colony and result in a long and probably futile occupation, then people wouldn't have supported it. (Furthermore some of these leaders (of the Wolfowitz variety) seem to be blind ideologues who actually believe the crap that they shoveled, which IMO is even worse than merely being a lying crook (of the Cheney variety))

Instead of presenting the American people with a realistic cost-benefit analysis of the situation, the leaders pulled on the American public's Wilsonian heartstrings, added in a strong dose of scare tactics and innuendo, and sold the vast majority of the population a utopian fairytale.

[Heraclitus]

Re: Re: Re: I'm beginning to think wars are unwinnable

Originally posted by Blake

Anyway I think such a conventional invasion, using Brinkmanship diplomacy, probably would be somewhat possible. Doesn't mean it would happen though, the way global communications are these days, the aggressors would become extremely unpopular extreme quickly.

With power comes the luxury of not caring whether you are liked... You are assuming that the country involved would not be a hegemonic superpower, there is no guarantee of western power 50+ years from now. If third world countries wouldn't develop they would be very passive concerning the whole situation, and if the aggressor was so wise to take as to take advantage of existing distrust among the parties involved... You're analysis however valid is missing another more imporatnt consideration, an appeasement scenario.

[Tattila the Hun]

How does one annex a nation, actually? In HOI, I just push the "Annex" button, and I'm done... Are there forms to fill?

[Shrapnel12]

Originally posted by OzzyKP
Sounds like the story is intended to be an analogy of the Israel-Palestine situation.

The only problem is, the Arabs are the ones who invaded first. The Jews just beat them back and then took the land.