The American military has gotten into a terrible, extremely dangerous habit of confusing war fighting with war winning.
To be sure, our focus on war fighting has enabled us to produce an instrument of combat power that can project worldwide with a competency that no other nation in history could match.
Whether it is seizing control of the air, delivering munitions with precision accuracy, winning ground battles against other armies, or implementing extraordinarily complex raids with amazing speed and skill, the United States has developed a war fighting system that should make every American proud.
Unfortunately, war fighting is not the goal of combat power. It’s war winning.
Around 500 BC, Sun Tzu wrote about nature of warfare in his classic book on strategy, “The Art of War.”
He wrote:
“The art of war is of vital importance to the State. It is a matter of life and death, a road either to safety or to ruin. Hence it is a subject of inquiry which can on no account be neglected.”
Sun Tzu was not writing a manual for generals and admirals. He was writing a book to educate the political leadership on what they should expect from their military.
He was interested in victory – not military victory, but simple victory. He wrote, “that to fight and conquer in all your battles is not supreme excellence; supreme excellence consists in breaking the enemy’s resistance without fighting…
“Thus the highest form of generalship is to balk the enemy’s plans; the next best is to prevent the junction of the enemy’s forces; the next in order is to attack the enemy’s army in the field; and the worst policy of all is to besiege walled cities.”
Sun Tzu drove this point of using cleverness and strategy rather than violence to achieve victory:
“Therefore the skillful leader subdues the enemy’s troops without any fighting; he captures their cities without laying siege to them; he overthrows their kingdom without lengthy operations in the field.”
As part of his commitment to strategy rather than unending violence Sun Tzu strongly favored short wars and opposed long wars. He wrote: “There is no instance of a country having benefited from prolonged warfare… When you engage in actual fighting, if victory is long in coming, then men’s weapons will grow dull and their ardor will be damped… When your weapons are dulled, your ardor damped, your strength exhausted and your treasure spent, other chieftains will spring up to take advantage of your extremity.”
Consider the 10 years of American military involvement in Vietnam and the 19 years, 10 months, and 23 days in Afghanistan (the longest war in American history). These were the opposite of Sun Tzu’s model. They were long wars with massive amounts of violence and ultimately defeat.
Now, Russia’s war on Ukraine is the longest European War in modern times. America is currently embroiled in a continuous, grinding fight with Iran – an enemy that shows no sign of changing its policies and values. Also, there is an unending fight with the Houthis, who the Saudis have been unable to defeat in a 17-year campaign.
There are no signs of any serious efforts to think through what victory would require in any of the three fights.
Beyond the obvious state versus state conflicts, there is also a seemingly unending war with the radical Islamist movement, which gains reach and strength with each passing year.
One of the greatest challenges for the Department of War, the Department of State, the intelligence community, and the National Security Council is to shift decisively from a focus on combat power and war fighting to war winning. We must work backward from victory to a clear process of focusing all the elements of national power to achieve victory – with minimum violence and casualties – as quickly as possible.
A war-winning culture will require fundamental and profound changes in all the military schools and our entire national security planning process.
Focusing on war winning also requires a lot more clarity with political leaders – and much greater willingness to frustrate people who want easy solutions which turn out to be bloody dead ends, hopeless projects of failure, and meaningless press releases which disguise rather than admit how hard winning is.
The shift from war fighting to war winning may be the greatest challenge facing the national security system, the White House, Congress, and the news media.
If we can’t refocus on war winning, we will be doomed to continued failure, attrition of our assets, and decline of our relative power.
This is the historic crossroad at which we find ourselves.
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Good perspective, Newt. You say, “ Focusing on war winning also requires a lot more clarity with political leaders…” Is it not instead, “First, political leaders must be a lot more clear…”? For all the criticism of Bush the Elder’s decision to leave Saddam in power at the end of the Gulf War, that’s the last time we had such clarity from an Administration.
as for Afghanistan...
Trump should have kept 5k combat troops in Afghanistan at Bagram as "cheap insurance" against the Taliban resurgence and to continue to bolster the Afghan government... his asinine agreement with the jihadists Taliban to fully withdraw all US forces was reckless 😳... Xi Biden then retreated from Afghanistan and surrendered to the jihadists Taliban and left behind $80 BILLION of weapons and equipment... 20 yrs wasted $3 TRILLION and US military lives and blood...