The sheer amount of ink and celluloid spent trying to come to terms with this is awesome, and a little depressing.
Korean war: half won, half lost.
Vietnam war: lost.
Grenada invasion: sort of won.
Gulf war 1991: I'd say won, despite Saddam staying in power.
Gulf war II: I'd say lost, despite Saddam deposition.
Afghanistan: lost, despite the killing of bin Laden.
Syria: can't tell yet.
It's a pretty depressing tally.
With that, I'd say that the US was on the winning side of a number of wars before that: WWII, WWI, Mexican war, Spanish war.
That said, many of the well-known, long haul conflicts that the US are involved in are the ones they are most likely to lose. The ones they win they usually win quickly and are less well known.
There are plenty of interventions post-WWII that have been quick successes for the US, esp. in Latin America.
The problem with all these conflicts is winning is so poorly defined or multi-goal.
What's winning in Syria? Getting rid of assad and then leaving? We could probably do that in a week or less and utterly demolish the country if we wanted. The consequences of 'winning' that war under that definition would probably be pretty horrible.
But that doesn't seem to be the goal right now?
There's the wider goal of not wanting to poke the Russia bear too much while simultaneously not letting Russia run too wild (arguably they are..).
Though Afghanistan is pretty simple imho. there aren't nearly as many global power stakes... The taliban explicitly does not want Democracy so if that is 'winning' it's doomed to a loss by default.
Eh - I'm not sure. Getting aircraft overhead would be difficult east of the euphrates when they have lots of anti-aircraft guns and they are also supported heavily by Russia.
The only Western power currently conducting airstrikes east of the euphrates is Israel and they have had planes shot down by Syria & Russia.
The US has a preponderance of military power, but I do think people are quick to assume that this means the US could easily topple lots of foreign nations. For some, that is definitely true, for others, like Iran, I think that is a misplaced confidence.
The whole collateral damage aspect is pretty high. But if we were willing to deal with the humanitarian and diplomatic fallout, we could do it pretty easily.
The anti-aircraft guns obstacle is, as you've said, more than surmountable. The likelihood of Russian reprisal, imo, is not.
Excuse me, but the goal should be that exactly. Not leaving an inch of flesh of the bear unpoked.
If you resign your emotions, and try to think about it seriously, it makes a lot of sense strategically to conduct a massive provocation.
Right now, it's completely the other way around: Putin delivers one grievous provocation after another to NATO. NATO grovels, shivers, but does nothing, for the whole world to laugh on.
It earns him client states, and satellites. You absolutely don't want your enemies flocking together.
If you turn that around, the world, and his wannabe clients that it's him now who can't do anything, but throw adorable tantrums, his construct will melt away withing years.
2 birds 1 stone.
It's also the types like Orbans, Sisis, and Assads who are only showing the voice now, because they can afford to look brave when the West is intimidated. That will pull the carpet from under them too.
I do think Trump was very dangerous and damaging in regards to NATO and pushing our allies away. By not understanding that 'america first' means so much more than simply scraping a few billion more from allies. That's playing checkers in terms of only being able to think in slogan-first 1st order logic. 2nd order or more is understanding why NATO was formed in the first place and the current role it has advancing our interests.
And I think it's critical to actively work against movements of authoritarian nationalism and hold Europe and our allies together.
I'm glad and think Biden is doing a better job in the Pacific in that regard.
Saddam bet that if no ones does anything concrete, he can get away with it, else, he can return back.
I would call than an "occupation" rather than a "war".
Edit : I retract my comment. I meant Gulf War I, the occupation of Kuwait.
I think it was a bad war and a mistake, but I don't think we "lost."
Depends upon whose interests are answering the question. These aren't so much "wars" as "resource shifting actions marketed as kayfabe [1] wars". This also isn't a new phenomenon. Such "wars" have existed throughout history, and is a side effect of a political sphere's emergent, loosely-defined requirements.
For common people in the path of destruction, a war has an unambiguous win/loss demarcation. For defense contractors if they are being honest with themselves, less so. For politicians with uncanny honesty, even more ambiguous.
With the scales involved today in not just people, speed, and destructive power, but also of information range and depth, I think it is time for a deep re-think of the "war is 'just' a political tool" paradigm.
This seems quite similar to Americans demanding their gun rights to protect themselves from the government. Well, I hate to inform you of this, but the government could out gun you since time immemorial. It’s a wild argument for gun rights.
Not really, because it changes the political calculus for exactly the reasons you mentioned. If the US government wants to forcefully take over, and they aren't aligned with gun owners, they have to go through them. In that scenario its more likely they are a shade of grey evil than "lets methodically exterminate all of our citizens". In the former, gun owners standing their ground would be a major political hurdle.
I'd actually argue pro gun rights are a bit silly because those same parties aren't pro encryption / privacy. So they give up the tools they'd need to defend themselves (encryption) from all but the most direct assault. And I'd consider a soft assault by violating their privacy much more plausible.
How is that usefull unless you are willing to commit genocide?
An observation not lost to the ground forces. I was in the US infantry 10+ years ago. We were well trained and lethal. We had an overwhelming technological targeting advantage. We had the support of a sizeable amount of the local population that we generally stayed a few steps ahead of the lower and mid tier rungs of whatever insurgency we were fighting (Al Qaeda in Iraq [ISIS predecessor], the Taliban, whatever-local-Afghan-village-thugs-in-later-deployments). We understood the war wasn't purely militaristic in "kill counts" or territory sieged, and the lessons of irregular warfare (hearts and minds) were beaten in to us.
The biggest issue, at least for us that actually had to kill and be shot at, was that the progressively restrictive rules of engagement (ROE) defanged us, both from lethal and willpower standpoints. There were so many nested bullet points and gotchas and just a wide breadth of rules that no person that wasn't a lawyer could keep up with it. Arbitrary things like "if you are in a gunfight with insurgents and they fall back into a cave, no matter who the insurgent is or how many casualties they were lucky to have inflicted on your forces, you absolutely cannot roll grenades into the cave." Very specific, very arbitrary, very confusing. Furthermore, it was beat into us that the full weight of the law was to fall on our heads if we screwed these things up. Which makes sense from a humanitarian point of view, but that lingering legal guillotine built in a sizeable amount of self-doubt and apprehension in us where we weren't ever sure when or if we were allowed to be lethal.
I imagine a set of ROE was drafted, and enough bureaucrats scribbled in "small edits" that the overarching sense of direction was lost in the sea of Great Ideas by Smart People and nobody with both the political clout and common sense was able to get to these revisions before they were inflicted on us on the ground. Not dissimilar to scope creep you see in software, except parties involved couldn't just vote with their feet and leave. That, and those functioning as the wars' PM's weren't as much concerned with delivering results as they perhaps were with empire building and political posturing. Just a god damn mess
Secondly, I think you definitely hit the nail on the head when it comes to the ROE being the main limiting factor in the "effectiveness" of the US military in being able to subdue its enemies, not just in Afghanistan/Iraq, but also in Vietnam and even to some extant in Korea. It seems to be one of the weird side-effects that nukes have on armed conflicts that when you have nukes, you really can never actually "fully commit" to a conflict. (Since going "all-in" could be apocalyptic.)
One thing I have always wondered, though, is the relationship between the ROE and irregular warfare. If the military personnel on the ground had broader discretion over their actions, would help or hinder the goal of "winning hearts and minds"?
At the end of 20 years, US indirectly had to negotiate with them.
So the other way of looking at it is, a bunch of un-educated, poorly trained, poorly equipped mountain people, who themselves are divided into many warring factions, stood their ground against the mightiest nation on earth, for 20 year, and in the end US negotiated with them for transfer of power.
Now, I see this as sheer political and administrative failure. Militarily, sure, the US has an upper hand and can pile up bodies like no other, But it failed to win the "war on terror" in Afghanistan. It could not change the govt., it could not bring stability and democracy to the region, it could not transform the society, and it could not even change the idea of itself in the minds of the Afghan people.
US is too powerful, militarily, to formulate effective strategies that further its goals. It is good in doing that economically, through sanctions, etc. But as a military force, it is too powerful for its own good.
Even Churchill said of them: "Every man is a warrior, a politician and a theologian."
The Afghans have no proper education system, no institutions other than local commanders directing their bunch of troops and have virtually no good infrastructure. They literally live among mountains and have no good networks for transportation.
I am giving the Afghans a lot of credit, because what I said about them is true. They won in spite of that.
I suppose one could say that the US hasn't lost yet, but it's pretty tough to say that the US has won.
Honestly, at this point it feels like any discussion of the US staying in Afghanistan seems like it should devolve into a discussion of the halting problem. (/s, but only slightly)
Al-Qeada and other groups just shifted to other unrested regions and even caused unrest. At a global scale the war only caused other countries harm.
The US just signed a peace deal with the Taliban agreeing to and withdraw all their troops and release aligned 5000 prisoners, the Taliban are also allowed back in government. Technically they could be in power at the next election.
What actual goal was fulfilled here after two decades of war?
Vietnam: countered Soviet expansionism and prevented Vietnam from becoming a communist regional superpower, Vietnam has not done much besides be a trading partner for the US since.
Grenada: won
Gulf wars: overwhelming victories. Destabilized the middle east, provided an opportunity for american megacorps to heavily profit and exert massive influence. Led to Arab spring which further destabilized the middle east. The middle east is essentially no longer in the picture in the game of global hegemony, and in large part has to rely on American refineries and american corporations to handle oil extraction.
Afghanistan: success, stimulated the American economy, very successful unemployment program (provided jobs for America's high school dropouts for 20 years), justified further weapons development plans, allowed america to build tons of bases to help counter China's Silk Road initiative by destabilizing the region.
Syria: mostly a failure at this point. The hope was to break Syria and build the Qatar gas pipeline to hurt Russia's hegemony on european energy supplies. Looks like that is a lost cause at this point, but of all the wars America has recently waged, this one is probably the most justifiable.
The world is no longer about winning wars and conquering territory. It's about destabilizing rising threats to your power. It's about toppling dictators and installing democracies, which are much easier to bribe. It's about countering your enemies/competitors (Russia, china, the middle east) initiatives and causing chaos in their neighborhood.
We now have strong evidence that both the Ghouta and Douma attacks were not chemical weapons attacks by the Syrian government. In the case of Douma, the OPCW leaks have very strongly shown (in my opinion, conclusively) that it was staged and put on by the White Helmets, a US/UK funded organization. Senior OPCW officials then reedited their official's report to make it seem like the Syrian government used chlorine gas. Don't believe me? Listen to Noam Chomsky explain it. [1]
Why does this matter? It was used as a pretense for the Trump administration to bomb Syria, which it did a few days later. [2]
[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w_KgRcw7mag [2] https://www.thenation.com/article/world/opcw-leaks-syria/
Please open a map, and take a look where Qatar is.
Similarly, Gulf War II is absolutely a loss, even though it "accomplished more" than 1991, because its strategic goals included dictating the post-war political arrangements in the country.
Victory and defeat are always relative to the parties' strategic goals.
It did not win it according to the objectives set by MacArthur (Drive the commies into the sea). He was, incidentally, relieved of command, thanks to his escalation of the conflict to include China.
An authorization for war means that war crimes can be committed and war criminals can get away with it, because there is no legal basis for defining that war, except for what Politician-de-jour says it is.
No, it doesn’t. A declaration of war has no effect at all on liability in international law. War criminals are responsible under international law whether or not war has been declared; the establishment of universal personal accountability of war criminals, including heads of state, for war crimes -- first unambiguously declared in the Nuremberg Principles -- declarations of war (which previously gave a veil of legitimacy to non-defensive war) have been pretty much irrelevant since non-defensive war was unambiguously itself declared to be a crime against peace.
> An authorization for war means that war crimes can be committed and war criminals can get away with it,
No, it doesn’t.
> because there is no legal basis for defining that war, except for what Politician-de-jour says it is.
Formal declarations of war and war authorizations have no difference in either international or, to the extent the latter is a recognized thing, most national laws in terms of what legal basis there is for defining the parameters of the war, and whatever difference in effect they might have under the terms of local law has no bearing on liability under international law.of those engaging in war crimes, crimes against peace, or crimes against humanity.
Regardless, even if you believe that authorization for use of force is unconstitutional, that does not make it secret. Only Bill Clinton's engagement in Bosnia/Kosovo could be considered a secret war... The others were done with full authorization of Congress.
Exactly the same way our close neighbours Pakistan keeps thinking they didn’t really lose any wars against us.
Even the people who were not even a foetus during those wars. Emotion trumps facts it seems.
Being in denial for so long.
Nehru was more interested in appeasement than long term strategic thinking, when it comes to international affairs. I think it stems from the deep seated inferiority complex that the British left in the elite and intellectuals of the country. Most of the leadership during the initial decade of Indian independence were heavily influenced by the British and looked up to them for guidance.
Nehru was quite a long-term thinker and a statesman. Hell it’s a miracle he navigated the country through the hell hole the cold war was.
Sad thing is he inherited a country and the people who just couldn’t rise above a certain level and that was where the Brits left us. On top of that the Brits ensured they left us broken and finished and deliberately at that I believe. I maybe wrong but I just can’t bring myself to look at the colonisers in any positive light. Trust me I’ve tried.
Again since you mentioned Nehru (while I’m not accusing you but it’s a pet “But Nehru” phrase used by the ultra nationalist right wing India of today[1]) and the past Govts, and yes they had their own follies and drawbacks, I just want to set the record straight that the current Govt has set India even further back by decades and I don’t see it recovering. Especially so as I majority will again elect current party for religious bigotry and things like temple.
While the past Govts could’ve done a lot lot better the current Govt has been successful in delivering the final blow.
[1] To others who aren’t familiar with the country and its pilots and scene today it’s actually funny. If something BJP the ruling ultra right wing party does and it fails and harms the public ;usually the case) the national chorus becomes “but what about Nehru”. Even if the intention was to fail or harm the public the chorus remains the same. Also Nehru died in 1964.
"That person may have done better, but what about the present person?"
The drive is politics, the lube is the media. The denial of reality and the rejection of truth is more prominent than ever and it is showing its face everywhere in US politics.
As on date, for the last decade, no politician has ever resigned for lying or cheating, personally or professionally. The character and integrity of those in power is off the table for discussion (what he/she does in personal life is not for discussion)
Here is the fact. Perhaps in other jobs, white or blue collared ones, personal life may not affect the job. But when it comes to jobs that move the nation, political positions, powerful bodies, and what not, the personal character and integrity of the person ought to be the scale of foremost importance.
Vietnam has a single party Communist Party that teaches Marxist ideals while having upgraded to state capital patches like every other marxist ideology worshipping party. They are geopolitically irrelevant enough for that never to bother anyone. The US was there to stop that specific thing from happening and didnt. US lost, Vietnam was unified and the control was consolidated under Vietnamese representatives of the communist party and for them they won. That’s the same standard we use for any conflict. Why single out that one to a higher standard where we point out the loss of life? Doesnt make sense. Vietnam won a unified country, and it is under communist rule. There once was a side that didnt want communism and they lost, too!
But if the objective of the USA was to prevent a domino of communism taking over all of South-East Asia, we can pretty clearly see where the advance of communism was stopped.
And if an American and a North Vietnamese communist from 1955 could see into the future 70 years, taking a tour around Hanoi or Saigon, I don't know if either would be so certain on their verdict of who 'won' or 'lost'. It might have been the North, but it certainly wasn't the communists.
Even the last massacre in China was because the protestors wanted to democratically have more communism instead of the liberalization of the markets and private ownership. That gets reduced to “students wanted democracy”, geopolitically it would have even been worse. (It is sad they were killed and that unity in that country relies on never mentioning it or any other strife)
But Communism flourished in Vietnam. So if you want to argue domino theory (which was wrong anyways), they certainly didn't stop the Vietnamese domino. So they didn't win in Vietnam.
Leninism and all its descendants, including Maoism, are, ab initio, state capitalism. What the CCP moved toward is more of xenophobic totalitarian corporatism than state capitalism; essentially fascism without, or at least with less, overt expansionism.
The US escalated it's involvement until the early 1970's when via strategic bombing of the North (which the US was unwilling to do previously), decisively destroyed the North Vietnamese ability to fight.
Then, the Americans left.
A couple of years later, the North Vietnamese rehabilitated their forces, and invaded the South.
The reality is such different perspective than 'North Vietnam Won' to the point wherein it's basically almost misinformation to just state it like that.
Finally, the tactical and strategic advantage of the US bombing with Nixon was enormous. The US could have feasibly stayed for a long time - after shedding their fears of 'Bombing the North' and just 'doing it', they finally gained the 'obvious advantage' that a major power should have had.
But Nixon ran on a platform of 'Getting out of Vietnam', and the folks back home lost interest in a miasma of populism.
I think those nuances are important, because I think it demonstrates how tactics, politics and populism fuelled the outcome.
The lessons of 'Fight to Win Only' and 'A long grinding war will turn your population against you' are straight out of the Art of War.
Those lessons informed the 1st US invasion of Iraq (and 2cnd), which was led by Vietnam vets. 'Overwhelming Force and Boots on the Ground to Unambiguously Overwhelm Enemy Forces', though the 2cnd occupation didn't go quite as well.
Finally, literally one day after Barack Obama ordered the last US units out of Baghdad, then Iraqi PM Malaki ordered a purge of Sunnis from his party and government. The Sunni Tribes, in fear of their lives from the then-emboldened Shia dominated Iraqi Army ... invited ISIS in. This very well could have been avoided by keeping a few units, neatly tucked away 'behind the wire' in Baghdad - just enough ongoing oversight and leverage to keep people like Malaki from self-destructing. It would have been better in hindsight to take a longer view of that situation as well.
It's hard to say if there is a direct parallel with Vietnam but it kind of looks like that.
So they were never even "winning" in the sense that the US leadership thought they were winning.
Which elements of 'top leadership' believed this?
For whom would that 'show' be for?
You'll have to state which individuals took that position.
"never even "winning" in the sense that the US leadership thought they were winning. "
This directly contradicts your first statement. Did US leadership think they were winning or not?
The data (i.e. 'body count') was initially misleading, but that lesson was learned quickly enough.
By 1965 , at the start major escalation, The Pentagon wanted to do strategic bombing of the entirety of North Vietnam. US political leadership wanted to avoid Hanoi and other targets for political reasons i.e. 'Rolling Thunder'.
Rolling Thunder failed.
Later, with political limitations removed, Op. Linebacker I and II (in 1970's) successfully dismantled N. Vietnam's ability to fight.
Imagine how history would have changed were, in 1965, the Pentagon were able to fight on it's own terms? The big rise in casualties to 1969 probably never would have happened, and the political repercussions would have been at least somewhat less.
Even the populist miasma is affected: when people are dying, it's one thing if 'major progress' is being made (think sicily and european campaigns against Hitler, once they started and were winning, it'd be impossible to bring them back until it was over), but altogether another if there's a stalemate or there isn't evidence of material progress.
But history is 20/20 and that's the whole point.
In 2021 we're still not done politicizing this war, the PBS documentary had some very good elements, but was still only one lens and entirely ignored the geopolitical aspects.
Macnamara v. Pentagon was realized 'All Over Again' with Maj. General Tommy Franks vs. Donald Rumsfeld. This time, the Army mostly go their 'Boots on the Ground and Overwhelming Power' to guarantee a fairly immediate collapse of the enemy. Too bad there was no plan for the occupation.
Macnamara. LBJ. Kennedy.
> For whom would that 'show' be for?
For the American people, for Congress, for the world. To prove that the US stands by its allies and can still win wars. To prevent accusations of being losers by domestic political opponents, both in the same and different parties. Pretty basic stuff, these political dynamics are in play in nearly every war.
> This directly contradicts your first statement. Did US leadership think they were winning or not?
You are misreading the line. I am saying there were not winning either in reality nor in the leaderships minds. The US leadership did NOT think they were winning.
> Imagine how history would have changed were, in 1965, the Pentagon were able to fight on it's own terms?
How do you propose to fix the problem of Chinese troops overwhelming any serious success like they did in Korea? That's nearly the entire reason the US couldn't fully commit to destroying North Vietnam.
How do you even fix the problem of having unreliable and problematic allies in Southern Vietnam that could never really rally the country properly?
You have learned no lessons.
Or, maybe they didn't like their children being draft into the army and coming back crippled?
N. Vietnam won, but that doesn't make war a success.
> N. Vietnam won, but that doesn't make war a success
Wars are disasters. 500,000 - 1 million (?) people died, the country was physically destroyed. That's not a good outcome.
Did the Vietnamese people win the war? No. They've been living in poverty for 50 years and most of them still are in 2021, 50 years later.
If left to develop its communist government by itself, it could be like China today - a superpower that's going to overtake the USA by important measures.
Lets stop pretending that years of war against a superpower didn't come at a cost for them and the US should have left them alone.
Would they have been better off if france agreed to decolonize instead of trying to hold on to their failing colonial empire with force (leading to everything that came to follow)? Maybe we'll never know.
But i don't think there's any particular reason to assume that if the south won they would be any better off. South Vietnam hardly seems like it was the most stable/well run of governments - they were into fixing elections and persacuting buddhists, etc. Hardly what i would call an ideal state.
Ho Chi Mihm was a puppet of china. There was no 'developing on their own'.
> Lets stop pretending that years of war against a superpower didn't come at a cost for them and the US should have left them alone.
Yeah, letting Russia and China subjugate the world would have gone SO MUCH better. What good has it done for nicaragua, cuba, north korea, afghanistan or the many noname countries in Africa? The USSR left only poverty and death whereever they went.
And once USA took control of Afganistan, how has the situation improved?
Vietnam is communist but they're not very friendly with China, nor have they been since about 1975; vietnam is certainly not a satellite of China. Starting in 1979 they fought a low-intensity border war with China that went on for over a decade, a fact you seem to be unaware of.
Oh and if you do some digging you will know that HCM sent a few letters to Trumman asking for US's aid, we could have been ally 70 years earlier, but no, the US branded him as a commie and the rest is history. Btw, the first line of our Proclamation of Independence is pretty much a paraphrase of the US's Declaration of Independence, that's to show how much we wanted the US to be ally.
Do "the people" ever win a war? Something like 600,000 - 2 million civilians died in that war. If you're implying that people would be better off ecconomically if the other side won, that seems highly speculative with no evidence to back it up.
Would you rather live in North Korea or South Korea right now?
That's the closest comparable we have.
If the US were to have 'stayed' in S. Vietnamese, much like they did in S. Korea, that S. Vietnam would look 'somewhat' like S. Korea, but not nearly as prosperous given their agrarian history etc..
But definitely better off.
50 years on, still in poverty.
Win or loose, live in poverty.
But you're right, it's poverty nontheless.
Such regressive thinking, that too about whole societies and nations. As if they are not human.
From https://www.worldbank.org/en/country/vietnam/overview:
"Vietnam’s development over the past 30 years has been remarkable. Economic and political reforms under Đổi Mới, launched in 1986, have spurred rapid economic growth, transforming what was then one of the world’s poorest nations into a lower middle-income country. Between 2002 and 2018, GDP per capita increased by 2.7 times, reaching over US$2,700 in 2019, and more than 45 million people were lifted out of poverty"