I took three main points away from this article:
--Enemies may play by different rules defining victory than we do.
--America keeps losing wars.
--And Russia has won their war against Ukraine although we don't recognize it.
I've read things by the author before. I've cited his stuff (we'll see if it gets published). But I don't know what he's talking about here.
The first point is simply restating the warning about mirror imaging an enemy. I've certainly gone on about not assuming our rational is an enemy's rational. So I'm all on board that point. 100%. Agreed.
But using that as a springboard to condemn American wars and extol Russia's is kind of mystifying to me.
It is a combination of people unwilling to admit we won a war; and people willing to see an enemy victory no matter what:
Over the years, I've periodically addressed the issue of victory and the idea of "just what on Earth do you people expect victory to look like?" as a counter to complaints that we are losing or have lost wars.
I recently addressed the Iraq War as well as our other post-World War II conflicts.
And I recently ran across a quote from Jean-Paul Sartre that pretty much sums up the problem:
A victory described in detail is indistinguishable from defeat.
There's a lot of truth in that. What other endeavor assumes death and destruction as the cost of doing business even if you win?
Would World War II have been considered a win if subjected to today's standards of mistakes and post-war problems?
Which addresses my points as well as including the strange ability to see our foes achieve victory no matter what. Because our critics see us in detail and hardly know the broad brush strokes of foes.
This is the corollary to the problem of assessing the progress of a war during the war when you see all your side's flaws but the enemy is concealed by the fog of war:
Man cannot tell but Allah knows
How much the other side is hurt.
That's from Rudyard Kipling.
People who expect perfection annoy me.
But if you consider those two observations it all makes sense. Combined, they paint a picture of too harsh an assessment of Western wars and too generous an assessment of enemy wars. Because we can closely examine our wars while our enemies' wars remain shrouded in secrecy.
Take Iraq, which the author says was a disaster as described by Fiasco and The Gamble by Tom Ricks. Remember that Fiasco said America could not win in Iraq. When we actually did win on the battlefield, the author needed a follow-up--The Gamble--to explain why the fiasco was not in fact a fiasco. To this day I am amazed that so many people fail to see we won the Iraq War. It was enough of a victory that President Obama--who opposed the war--saw fit to launch Iraq War 2.0 in 2014 to salvage our win after the rise of ISIL. Every day Iraqis kill jihadis. And Iraqis attempt to oppose Iranian ambitions.
I have similar feelings about Afghanistan.
And I'd be remiss if I didn't mention the effects of time. Look at Europe in November 1946 for why you need time to judge victory or defeat. Heck, in my adult lifetime I've gone from seeing the Korean War as a draw to seeing it as a victory because as time passed North Korea weakened while South Korea moved from an autocracy to a democratic and prosperous state. Even if you don't agree with me that Iraq right now is a win, perhaps you will change your mind over time, too.
Now let's look at Russia's invasion of Ukraine, which was a two-parter, and other wars for a bonus:
Crimea was a victory. Although Russia's credit is reduced by the recently revealed information that we told the new Ukraine government not to resist the Crimean takeover. I had no idea how accurate my description of Russian hybrid warfare as essentially Russia invading a country, Russia denying they are invading a country, and the West going along with the fiction was. [And let me add the unique factors that don't seem like things that can be applied to other targets.]
But how is the Donbas a victory? The very fact that Russia relied on irregulars rather than their own military reveals weaknesses. And the war drags on. A "quagmire" you might say, with Russia stalemated and paying a price under sanctions for holding the territory. And what is "insurgent" about a war that has "insurgents" using more tanks that Britain, France, and Germany deploy to their frontline units? These "insurgents" have formed units and hold territory along a frontline with the assistance of Russian battalion tactical groups that officially don't fight inside Ukraine! No American achievement on this scale would be counted a victory.
As for Syria, the multi-war rages with much of Syria out of Assad's control even after the defeat of the bulk of ISIL in Syria; and Russia, while a major factor, is in no way the most influential outside player involved there. Iran, Turkey, America, and even sub-state Hezbollah vie for that title. And if Assad goes down, Russia's investment is lost. At best it is an incomplete victory although Russian military performance has been adequate. But don't mention the smoking hulk of a crippled carrier that figuratively had to be put up on cement blocks for Russia to pretend to use if you don't want to tarnish the record.
We're not to speak of the clusterfucks of the Russo-Georgia War or the first Chechnya war, eh? Or even the incomplete nature of the brutal second one?
If Russia is actually happy with their Donbas expedition, why didn't Russia do the same in the Crimea rather than rapidly take it over? I mean, if Russia has so many advantages in that so-called "frozen" conflict, why not choose to enjoy that in the Crimea, too?
Face it, Crimea was a rapid and well run conventional--if subliminal, because Russia denied they invaded and the West went along with that fiction--conquest against a country in chaos from a revolution. This was no proxy invasion. Russian troops took it over with a thin covering of AstroTurf secessionists.
Russia got greedy and tried the same in the Donbas. But they faced Ukrainian resistance and could not complete the conquest. There has been stalemate and Western sanctions to punish Russia. The idea that the Russians intended this stalemate rather than hoping for another quick won is ludicrous, as I argued in this post:
This Russian approach is all based on Russian conventional weakness (compared to America-against their western neighbors Russia has the edge). Tell me that Russia wouldn't have preferred to hit the Donbas hard and win fast. The West got over the stripping of Georgian territories in 2008 because the war was over fast. The West seems to be ignoring the Russian conquest of Crimea and no doubt would have forgotten about it almost as quickly, given all the excuses still being deployed in the West to justify Russian aggression.
That's the way it works. The USSR subdued Hungary and Czechoslovakia quickly. We could do nothing. The USSR failed to subdue Afghanistan and eventually we made them pay a price for fighting there.
Russia should have invaded the Donbas while they took Crimea if they had the capability and gotten it done fast--or refrained from the attempt, being satisfied with the well-executed seizure of Crimea.
Russia is a threat because it can generate superior power in the short run against targets on their western borders. But given time, NATO can generate superior power to crush them in conventional battle. Don't give Russia and Putin more credit than they deserve.
Still, while the author's criticism goes too far, I'd rather have a tradition of examining our wars in order to do better than have a military culture that suppresses criticism.
