Case in point is Yemen:
Since mid-2019 the balance of combat power has shifted as the government coalition lost a lot of their ground troops. This was because the UAE (United Arab Emirates) withdrew most of its forces in late 2019 because of disagreements with Saudi Arabia over strategy ... The Saudis also lost troops contributions from other Moslem states and has not been able to replace them. This stalled the long, slow, methodical and successful government offensive which had pushed the rebels back. The rebels, encouraged by the steadfast and effective support from Iran, held on.
And as I've reported lately, the rebels made some gains on the ground as the slow offensive ground to a halt short of victory.
And who knows what unexpected bonus time can provide you. Lord knows what the Wuhan Flu will do to the Saudi war effort. So now, as Strategypage writes, the best hope for the Saudi war effort is if the mullah regime in Iran falls and their aid to the Shia Houthi rebels collapses in its wake.
And then there is Libya, where Haftar's Libyan National Army (LNA) has been involved in a long and slow effort since March 2019 to take Tripoli from the officially recognized Libyan government (Government of National Accord , or GNA). Victory there would pretty much knock out the government which controls little else. Haftar went slow to minimize casualties.
But the slow pace also granted his enemies time. Who used it as Turkey intervened on the side of the government:
In March 2019, Khalifa Haftar telegraphed his long-anticipated assault on Tripoli when cargo planes began flying in ammunition and weapons to Al-Watiya from his eastern stronghold. Battered Soviet-era fighter aircraft were soon taking off from the base to bomb the capital, home to the United Nations-backed government.
More than a year on, Al-Watiya has become the besieged refuge for Haftar’s fleeing loyalists after government forces backed by Turkish weaponry struck back, capturing a string of western towns last week. ...
On Saturday, a day after the Turkish airforce and navy carried out a drill off Libya’s coast, government forces launched an offensive on Tarhouna, closing in on Haftar’s last remaining bastion near the capital. ...
Turkey is “actively backing” the counter-offensive by Sarraj’s forces to defeat Haftar, said a senior Turkish official who’s familiar with the country’s Libya policy, asking not to be named discussing sensitive information. ...
“The balance of power has changed in the past two months due to Turkish support and what Turkey has brought in, in terms of material and fighters,” said Wolfram Lacher, a Libya expert with the German SWP research center.
I've mentioned that Turkey has sent weapons, Turkish troops, and many more Syrian mercenaries to back the GNA.
Efforts to reduce casualties by slowing down the intensity of offensive operations only reduce the rate of casualties. If reducing the rate of casualties extends the time you endure that "lower" rate of casualties, your total casualties could end up being much higher than if you had endured a higher rate to win in a shorter period of time.
I called this kind of effort to reduce the rate of casualties "false compassion:"
It is false compassion to say that very tight rules of engagement and very tight application of those rules that reduce casualties from our firing to a 2 or 3 per day is better than rules that result in 100 per day if the looser rules end the war much faster.
If we wage a two-day battle that defeats the enemy and ends the battle but kills 200 civilians, is that really worse than a 100-day battle--longer because the enemy isn't being hit as hard as it could be--that kills 2.5 civilians per day (so 250 total dead)?
And how many more civilians die from other causes in that extra 98 days of fighting from enemy executions, accidents, disease, lack of medicine for treatable conditions, hunger, thirst, suicide, or the perils of becoming a refugee (like dying in a sinking boat trying to reach Europe)?
The point applies to civilian casualties caught in the middle, your own troops, and potentially even enemy troops.
And so the civil wars in Yemen and Libya drag on. Sure, Iranian help to the Houthis helped. And Turkish help to the GNA helped. But the real reason the tides could change (even if temporarily) is because losing enemies were granted that most precious commodity of all in war: time.
