Iraq as Spoiling Operation: When Losing is Winning
George Friedman at Stratfor on the strange paradox of what successful losers we, the Americans, are, and finds the silver lining in wars we seem to have lost, yet won:
The United States has now spent four years fighting in Iraq. Those who planned the conflict never expected this outcome. Indeed, it could be argued that this outcome represents not only miscalculation but also a strategic defeat for the United States …
… our attention is drawn to a strange paradox that has been manifest in American foreign policy since World War II. On the one hand, the United States has consistently encountered strategic stalemate or defeat in particular politico-military operations … Yet, over the same period of time, U.S. global power, on the whole, has surged.
… This general paradox must be explained. And in the course of explanation, some understandings of the Iraq campaign, seen in a broader context, might emerge.
There are three general explanations for this paradox:
1. U.S. power does not rest on these politico-military involvements but derives from other factors, such as economic power. Therefore, the fact that the United States has consistently failed in major conflicts is an argument that these conflicts should not have been fought — that they were not relevant to the emergence of American power.
2. The United States has been extraordinarily fortunate that, despite its inability to use politico-military power effectively … exogenous forces have saved the United States from its own weakness. In the long run, this good fortune should not be viewed as strategy, but as disaster waiting to happen.
3. The wars mentioned previously were never as significant as they appeared to be — public sentiment and government rhetoric notwithstanding.
… Put somewhat differently, there is the liberal view that the Soviet Union was not defeated by the United States in the Cold War, but that it collapsed itself, and the military conflicts of the Cold War were unnecessary. There is the conservative view that the United States won the Cold War in spite of a fundamental flaw in the American character — an unwillingness to bear the burden of war — and that this flaw ultimately will prove disastrous for the United States. Finally, there is the non-ideological, non-political view that the United States won the Cold War in spite of defeats and stalemates because these wars were never as important as either the liberals or conservatives made them out to be, however necessary they might have been seen to be at the time.If we apply these analyses to Iraq, three schools of thought emerge. The first says that the Iraq war is unnecessary and even harmful in the context of the U.S.-jihadist confrontation — and that, regardless of outcome, it should not be fought. The second says that the war is essential — and that, while defeat or stalemate in this conflict perhaps would not be catastrophic to the United States, there is a possibility that it would be catastrophic. And at any rate, this argument continues, the United States’ ongoing inability to impose its will in conflicts of this class ultimately will destroy it. Finally, there is the view that Iraq is simply a small piece of a bigger war and that the outcome of this particular conflict will not be decisive, although the war might be necessary. The heated rhetoric surrounding the Iraq conflict stems from the traditional American inability to hold things in perspective.
There is a reasonable case to be made for any of these three views. Any Stratfor reader knows that our sympathies gravitate toward the third view. However, that view makes no sense unless it is expanded. It must also take into consideration the view that the Soviet Union’s fall was hardwired into history regardless of U.S. politico-military action, along with the notion that a consistent willingness to accept stalemate and defeat represents a significant threat to the United States in the long term.
Friedman here goes into a lengthy discussion of the abovementioned wars, up to and including the surge, as “spoiling operations,” in which the United States did not engage its full military might and achieved what was viewed as stalemate or even defeat, to the end of disrupting and hamstringing the enemy.
… there is a deep structure in U.S. foreign policy that becomes visible. The incongruities of stalemate and defeat on the one side and growing U.S. power on the other must be reconciled. The liberal and conservative arguments explain things only partially. But the idea that the United States rarely fights to win can be explained. It is not because of a lack of moral fiber, as conservatives would argue; nor a random and needless belligerence, as liberals would argue. Rather, it is the application of the principle of spoiling operations — using limited resources not in order to defeat the enemy but to disrupt and confuse enemy operations.
As with the invisible hand in economics, businessmen pursue immediate ends without necessarily being aware of how they contribute to the wealth of nations. So too, politicians pursue immediate ends without necessarily being aware of how they contribute to national power. Some are clearer in their thinking than others, perhaps, or possibly all presidents are crystal-clear on what they are doing in these matters. We do not dine with the great.
But there is an underlying order to U.S. foreign policy that makes the apparent chaos of policymaking understandable and rational.
It is an interesting academic argument. As always, Friedman is unsentimental and discusses the issue in terms that would not make a successful argument on the floor of the House or televised from the Oval Office, as he suggests that in losing there can be victory. I would suggest that while he is right, in that we won the Cold War and our values of freedom and capitalism remain ascendant, that the hamstrung giant storyline has become increasingly costly to us over the past 35 years. The Vietnamese showed the way, and the Iranians and Jihadis have followed the path with considerable success. American has been big enough, strong enough, its ideals powerful enough to absorb blows. But would America even be able to engage in “spoiling operations” in the wake of another perceived defeat?
I see this ultimately as a kind of Gallic shrug of an argument that can be used to support the idea that withdrawal as harmless, when in fact the consequences to the region and our own long-term national security are too great.
Posted by Jules Crittenden at 11:01 am on Wednesday, March 21, 2007
11 Responses to “Iraq as Spoiling Operation: When Losing is Winning”
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March 21st, 2007 at 12:07 pm
The US has amassed so much power that we dominate the globe. This is not the first time such things have happened. The classic response has been balancing alliances, the dominant power against everybody else. These alliances are costly as they only come about as nations put aside their normal interests and give all to avoid the situation where the dominant power gains a durable majority of total power and can set itself up as a world government.
Balancing alliances over the past several centuries have always succeeded in bringing down the dominant power. A balancing alliance would be very bad for us, worse than a drawn out fight with less than clear victory at the end for Iraq. I believe that eventually we will win in Iraq but the length of time it takes will ruin our credibility for the time being as a world-wide boogeyman that must be opposed by everybody else. This is a good thing.
withdrawal is not harmless but easy victory is not without its costs. We must keep alive the idea that we intervene reluctantly and every time we do we must pay a stiff price. The formation of the balancing alliance must be avoided or, if it is inevitable, delayed as much as possible.
March 21st, 2007 at 12:43 pm
I think people forget too easily that the collapse of the Soviet Union was not predestined despite their economic failure; as the examples of Cuba and North Korea show, they could have simply continued to repress their people despite worsening privation. It was an internal decision by Soviet leadership allowing more freedom that precipitated the demise of the USSR, and that perspective probably would not have prevailed within their leadership if not for the successful US actions in Afghanistan and Central America, which made it clear the days of Communist expansion were over.
Wars end when one side gives up, usually because they no longer believe they can win. The problem with the current war is that jihadists are motivated by religious ideology and show every sign of being able to maintain indefinitely the fervent belief the Communists had lost by the 1980s. Fortunately, their appeal is relatively limited, and their philosophy tends to degrade the economic/military power of any region they gain influence over.
The great strength of American policy is that our politico-economic model works. Thus stalemate is sometimes all we need to win, because over time people gravitate toward freedom and prosperity. For instance, Korea was a stalemate in its time, but given the trajectories of the North and South since then, it’s pretty certain that can go in the “win” column now, not least as an object example of the contrast between the power and beauty of freedom and the brutal futility of totalitarianism. Similar logic applies in Germany… and might have in Vietnam as well, had we salvaged a stalemate there.
March 21st, 2007 at 12:52 pm
I don’t fully agree with the “spoiling operations” view. Oh, there are elements of spoiling operations in the current strategy, but I question that’s the primary doctrine (deliberately or through ignorance) that United States uses to conduct major military campaigns.
I recall an old saying, “The shortest distance to victory is the long way around.” Sometimes you can’t directly attack the enemy (e.g., Hitler in WWII). Sometimes, all you can do is strike at a weak spot and retreat, and then strike again another weak spot, attempting to wear your enemy down, while holding him at bay (e.g., the Cold War, MAD strategy combined with ).
I think that there may be little practical difference, though, if people don’t have the patience and steadiness necessary to wage a prolong campaign (e.g., the American Dhimmicrats). US mIlitary planners likely take this weakness of ours into account (Sun Tzu remains required reading to this day), even back in 2001.
Freidman has a point, but I don’t think it’s unsentimental. It looks more like a fatalisic view.
March 21st, 2007 at 12:54 pm
Sorry, I forgot to complete one sentence:
“…the Cold War, MAD strategy combined with our politico-economic model.“
March 21st, 2007 at 1:30 pm
[...] Don’t miss Jules Crittenden who explains how for some, losing is winning in the US of A [...]
March 21st, 2007 at 1:45 pm
IMHO -
Post WWII US Foreign Policy has been anchored in either containing or eliminating regimes that created or displayed Irrational Fear.
The cold war ended because the Soviet Union concluded there was little to fear from NATO, and even less to fear from a “Resurgent Unified Germany”.
The US invaded Iraq not because it was an immenent threat to the United States, it was an imminent threat to its neighbors.
Whether GWB believed Saddam had WMD is fairly irrelavant…every other regime in the neighborhood believed he did…therefore every other regime in the neighborhood would have to acquire WMD as well.
A dozen nucleared armed unstable countries all afraid of each other , all with their fingers on the nuclear button,doesn’t present a pretty picture if one cares about “Peace”.
March 21st, 2007 at 4:24 pm
The US success in the cold war was a TKO rather than a win-by-knockout. We won by avoiding direct warfare (with the probable nuclear exchange) and by continuously hampering the USSR’s economic, military and political expansion-of-empire while economically and culturally manipulating their citizens.
When we win by knockout (Germany, Japan, Iraq) we take some/full responsibility for the post-war condition of our adversary. the US could not have afforded either the direct fight or the aftermath of warfare with the USSR (Iraq is a tiny fraction of the mess we would face if we had to directly manage reconstruction of post-war USSR terroritories).
Winning by TKO vs the USSR was our best-case scenario by far … and was achieved largely by inducing the USSR to overextend, overspend, and underdevelop with proportionately lower expenditures on our part (per our superior economic model). Everywhere they wanted to be, we made expensive for them. Every soviet “win” was a pyhrric victory. SEAsia tied up more of their attention, forces and production and by Afghanistan, we had perfected the art of the few CIA/SF people using force-multipliers to completely bog down a superpower.
Iraq war 1/GW1 was fought with the same thinking … minimally deal with the military problem then let economics and cultural internal pressure cause the regime to fail from within so we don’t end up owning the reconstruction problem. This failed because arab culture is different, tribalism and religion were involved, and Saddam was more evil, more practical, and less irrationally ideological than the USSR leadership.
The GW2/Taliban wars rationally acknowledged that imperialist tribal religious non-modern societies cannot be internally undermined by the same methods as imperialist educated modern atheist communist culture … so we went for the knockout win (having no other choice) and got stuck with the reconstruction.
I believe that we have at least 5.5 other conflicts brewing now …
* alQaeda … we are playing whack-a-mole
* Iran … we are using military provocation as both direct containment and to induce overspending (there is much internal unrest over military / nuclear spending while basic services go unfulfilled and there’s a looming gasoline shortage and infrastructure crisis) while using multiple parallel internal cultural destabilizations while top people go missing and planes/helicopters crash.
* China … they’re wasting lots of money trying to catch up to the 1990s US military (i.e. what we’ve chosen to make public) … so they can retake Taiwan (China’s Afghanistan … a money-drain almost-conflict with no direct gain (now) minus anybody actually dying in combat) … and meanwhile western media and internet culture is destroying communist culture, creating economic interdependance and making their people capitalist instead of militarist.
* China -> NKorea … the NK sock-puppet for China seems to have lost its value for China once NK tried to declare political/policy quasi-independance from China by having and detonating their own nukes. Dudding their nuke test is NK’s worst-case scenario … and China hates when rogue territories/puppets declare independance, however circumspectly.
* Venezuela … The socialist economic miracle is on its usual predictable path … nationalization, no infrastructure investment, inflation, paranoia, cronyism, corruption, central planning, etc leading to economic meltdown. Maybe China will leap to Venezuela’s assistance in return for oil and opportunities to send more construction workers/colonizers. Our best case is that Chavez gets to create the socialist paradise he desires as quickly as possible.
* Africa’s failed/corrupt/Islamizing states … insufficient international outrage to overcome oil-driven opposition by China/France/EU … so we’ve just barely started to pay attention and we’ve borrowed the Ethopian army as proxies. (Note that our restraint comes from “once we engage, how / where do we stop” … how do you intervene in A and not B … Sudan and not Zimbabwe? … and how do you do any of it while China is pseudo-colonizing africa with PLA construction and oil workers and blocking us at the UN? (special forces + the Ethopian army and the USNavy as air-cover))
So … WW2 and GW2 were fights-to-the-finish, NK, VN, GW1, Iran-Iraq@80s, Israel/Arabs, Nicaragua, misc-terrorism, CIA/KGB coups, etc were all spoiling actions … the US and USSR each interfering in the others back-yard while the US won the domestic-cultural+economic-confidence game the USSR did not know it was fighting. Had we _ever_ played to win any of those conflicts, they would have stopped bleeding the USSR and burdened the US/West instead … outright winning would have been directly counterproductive.
Iran and NK nuke programs have been Russian and Chinese sock puppets to manipulate and distract the US military and diplomacy that got out of hand. China pulled the plug on NK (food, fuel and diplomatic support) and Russia just pulled the plug on Iran (nuclear fuel rods … after getting every dollar they could from the Iranians).
March 21st, 2007 at 6:27 pm
TALIBAN VS. AL QAEDA? That’s a “cycle of violence” I could live with.
http://www.instapundit.com/
Links to Austin Bay.
Well Glenn, it would tickle the hell out of a lot of people. Let’s help foment…hmmm, maybe we are.
March 22nd, 2007 at 12:10 am
I do not think we have lost this war or even come close to losing it.
Look at our losses:
Wars___U.S.Population___U.S. Dead____Percent
Vietnam_200,000,000____57,690_______0.0288%
Iraq/Afg_300,000,000____@3,100_______0.0010%
We captured the enemy capitals and allowed the formation of a new governments in both Afghanistan and Iraq. In Iraq we captured the enemy leader.
How are Iraq and Afghanistan considered a loss?
Only by the constant, repetitive statements that it is a loss in the media and by the Democrats.
March 22nd, 2007 at 1:19 am
I tend to agree with much of what sarnac has to say.
The only parts I’d add or change are:
1. The cold war just about undid us here in the US. The propaganda campaign that stalinist adherents have waged in the US and abroad has done us much damage and greatly undermined our ability to defend ourselves. The most aggressive and comprehensive part of that campaign domestically, was the redefinition of the 1st Amendment to include protection for enemy sympathizers, enemy propagandists and overtly enemy loyal citizens in this country. Treason has become so trendy that calling someone on it, no matter how obvious the offense, is now viewed as an offense. We may well not survive that, long term.
2. NK is often associated with PDR China most likely because both are asian and neighbors, but NK was always a Soviet sock puppet. The old Soviet may have collapsed as an organization but it is well on its way to a rebirth as an idea and a problem. Most of what we’ve been fighting since the collapse of the USSR are remainders of the filth and fungus that was allowed, by necessity, to grow in the gaps between us and the USSR.
Example: The USSR made it official policy in its “confront the west at all opportunity” strategy to formally adopt any and all “anti-western” terrorist organizations. After the arse whooping the Soviet allies in the mid east got in ‘67, the USSR made common cause with any and all arab/muslim terror organizations that wanted help. The Russian will become a predominant problem again and soon.
3. Vietnam was a loss. No question, no excuse. That loss had long term and devastating repercussions. That loss not only lead directly to the near total destruction of much of south east asia and the loss of millions of lives, it also is cited as the primary reason that the hawks in the USSR finally got the go ahead for plans to expand into central asia (Afghanistan).
There is much to be said about our military command and federal politicos screwing the pooch in RVN but the war was on the way to being won, even with those problems. What caused us that loss was a victory by enemy propagandists, their useful idiots and cowards on our domestic front.
March 22nd, 2007 at 8:00 pm
The Cold War can also be seen as a period of unprecedented Great Power weakness. The two superpowers could not attack each other directly for fear of a nuclear armageddon. They could only fight proxy wars, and even then they had to be very careful to avoid any escalation that could draw them into direct confrontation. They also had to avoid committing all their forces to one front, as this would simply give the other side free reign elsewhere.
But using proxies meant that the USA and USSR had to compete for the favour of every two-bit bandit who controlled a scrap of territory, for fear that he would side with the enemy. Brutal Third World dictators, and the equally brutal rebels who opposed them, were able to play the two sides against each other for decades.
So the Cold War was a situation in which the world’s dominant powers faced exceptionally tight constraints on how they could use military power. That was particularly true for the United States, as the development of the modern news media put the government under constant and often hostile scrutiny. The use of “spoiling operations” as America’s preferred way of fighting was therefore a product of those specific historical circumstances.
The collapse of the Soviet Union has removed many of those restrictions, but it inevitably takes time for politicians, diplomats and the public to adapt to the new circumstances. People like James Baker, for example, spent their whole careers in a world in which a misjudged act of aggression could lead to the total extinction of the human race. One false move and the man in the hat visits every major city like the ultimate Bad Santa. It would be no surprise then if the legacy of the Cold War was a culture among career diplomats and strategists that sees instability as something to be avoided at all costs, and war as something to be fought in the most cautious way possible.