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Comment by jpm_sd | Hacker News Reader

"However, all wars must eventually be won with boots on the ground."

Can wars even be "won", in this sense, any more? Modern war is asymmetric. If the enemy is a radicalized percentage of the civilian population, hiding in plain sight, when do you "win"? Who surrenders? Who signs a treaty?

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It's a question of setting what the strategic objectives of the war are.

The first gulf war, Operation Desert Storm, was deliberately limited in scope -- liberate Kuwait from Iraqi control. Its predecessor, Desert Shield, as similarly scoped, to prevent an Iraqi invasion of Saudi Arabia. Both were successful by the metrics set out for it. Bush Sr. got a lot of flak from the burgeoning neocon movement for not driving through to Baghdad, a decision which in retrospect was incredibly correct.

Afghanistan and the second Iraq war, and the various "police actions" undertaken since then, have objectives that are unclear or are metric-based and do not easily translate to a simple objective that can be reasoned to be a stable endpoint. In this, it seems that the military is following suit with general industry trends towards vaguely defined metrics and objectives that allow for technical "success". This approach was pioneered, really, during the Kennedy administration with our approach to Vietnam and the "domino theory".

> liberate Kuwait from Iraqi control

Saddam was willing to leave.

> Both were successful by the metrics set out for it.

Because they were beat downs.

> Afghanistan and the second Iraq war, and the various "police actions" undertaken since then, have objectives that are unclear or are metric-based and do not easily translate to a simple objective that can be reasoned to be a stable endpoint.

i.e. not beat downs. America is good at beat downs, any idiot with a gun is good at a beat down because as the Beastie Boys said it takes a second to wreck. It takes time to build.

Remote wars then are bad because they facilitate beat downs. Because America has big guns, lots of money, and little actual intelligence of how to fix or change anything.

It's funny all these people saying oh well the CIA doesn't do anything it's those stupid people who are fighting with each other because of their ideology. And then look at how Russia with a bit of money screwed up American politics and how badly they reacted to this little bit of interference.

Did Russia screw up American politics or did American media unrelentingly obsessing over Russia screwing up American politics screw up American politics?

We screwed up politics ourselves. Russia is just piling on.

Desert Shield preceded Desert Storm, so whatever causal relationship you’re implying is wrong.

This isn't a modern problem. If you read Thucydides you'll find that cities were often betrayed by a small, radicalized percentage of the civilian population hiding in plain sight. Their solution was sometimes to kill all of the men and enslave the women and children. Obviously this wouldn't fly today, but I imagine that a nation like China might simply surveil everyone, sending anyone suspicious to concentration camps. That seems like effectively the same win condition; making it effectively impossible to resist.

Oh, yes the old method: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Measuring_against_the_linchpin

The history of warfare is littered with decision makers failing to accept how out of dating their thinking is in face of current technology. This why the US civil war and WW1 were so damn bloody.

In this current age of instant communications, global logistics, and rapid deployment people are again failing to accept how strategy must change in response to these technologies.

Ever since Vietnam the world has entered the age of long war. War can be won, but not when people lack the necessary patience, persistence, and drive to win. For the home team to win all they have to do is remain vigilant. They don't have to win a single battle. They just have to remain militant longer than the opposing force has patience. Game over.

For an invading force to win they must be able to have a quick and decisive invasion that results in a clear military victory and then must hold the ground, in cooperation with supporting elements, as long as it takes for the defending forces to cease military action. COIN (counter-insurgency) is rarely taken seriously, but is so incredibly essential. All of this could take decades.

That is a hard win since most people in a first-world country understand warfare about as well as they understand poverty or astrophysics. Everyone seems to think they are an expert in these matters despite all evidence to the contrary and their clearly never working with or in proximity to the field of study.

It doesn't help that the political leadership keeps telling the population that these wars will take a couple weeks and cost a pittance.

When George W. Bush did his infamous "Mission Accomplished" stunt,[1] he was sort of right. The "war" had been won. The trouble was that there was no plan for what to do next. The occupation was managed poorly and the insurgency had a chance to grow turning what really was a quick victory into a protracted "war."

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mission_Accomplished_speech

Of course, the real root cause of many subsequent troubles and years of war is that there was no reason to attack, even less invade, either Iraq or Afghanistan after 9/11. GWB just had to do something to show that he protects Americans and retaliates against enemies. So, he did that. And it was a big mistake on many levels.

Iraq? Perhaps not. But Afghanistan was sheltering Osama Bin Laden, and would not hand him over (or even expel him). Leaving him free to operate after 9/11 did not look like a good option.

You can argue the supposed need of invasion either way. That had no bearing on why it took long though.

America won the war, but lost the peace

They were telling people that at the beginning of the civil war. Houston and Sherman were laughed at for thinking otherwise. This was also the thinking before each of the world wars and Vietnam.

You would think people would be educated enough to see through that bullshit on its face regardless of what politicians say. I don’t have any sympathy for people lacking this ultra basic level of education.

To be fair, the people lying about how long war takes are the same people in control of the education.

I was watching a talk on YouTube last night about the end of WW2 with Japan. According to the speaker, one fear was that the emperor would surrender, but the military units individually would refuse to follow the order, meaning the army would have to pacify the country in pieces.

That sounds like modern warfare.

I was impressed but not too surprised to find that the phenomenon of 'Japanese holdout' has it's own Wikipedia page: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Japanese_holdout

The fanaticism of Japanese soldiers may have nuances when compared to the guerrilla and insurgent wars of today, but the potential for fighting to drag on for decades seems to have been demonstrated.

Hiroo Onoda has a biography about his time as a Japanese holdout in the Philippines. I just read it this summer and found it fascinating. I'd definitely recommend it!

https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/194440.No_Surrender

Which a hard line group of Japanese officers tried to do and stage a coup to stop the surrender.

The only vector I can think of would be improving society for the general public to the point where there's no reason to support the militants. i.e. so they end up being viewed the same as biker-gangs / outlaws rather than representing anyone. The boots being used to protect such work from interference.

It doesn't work that way. At that point, they cease being militants and become warlords.

That's not how it works. For example, fundamentalist extremism/terrorism has ramped up in Bangladesh in the last decade, even as the economy has been growing at 5-7% annually.

Isn't that sort of the way the remnants of the IRA have gone?

The US brought the Taliban to the negotiating table and have seen mixed success. The goal is not to kill the radicalized sect. It's to compromise with them and get them to assimilate back into the population.

I was under the impression that it was the Taliban who brought the US to the negotiating table.

and offering the same thing they did in 2001

And they're not going to do that. They know the lessons of Vietnam and the Soviet-AFG experience: chill out, wait for them to leave, then roll in and take over.

>Modern war is asymmetric

No, the recent wars we’ve fought have been asymmetric. There is no reason to think that won’t change.

Which is why I suspect all the talk about moral issues and bull, and they just want the tech just in case it comes to a "real" war.

You win when the other side thinks they lost.

in a lot of cases, the war causes the radicalization in the first place

I would say so, but it's more of a political than a kinetic displacement process. You win when the population would unilaterally have you in charge. I think the major challenge of 21st century warfare will be building better infrastructure in the middle of a war zone.

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