US Army Poorly Prepared for Arctic: Finnish Forced Surrender During Exercise

militarnyi.com

31 points·saubeidl··6 comments

‘The organizers of the exercises were forced to ask Finnish reservists, who were playing the role of the enemy, to go easier on the Americans.’

Since World War II, the U.S. has fought five major foreign wars (Korea, Vietnam, Gulf War I, Iraq, Afghanistan), with a poor win rate of about 1 win (1991 Gulf War) and 4 non-wins (draws or losses). In smaller interventions or “gray zone” conflicts, the pattern worsens: 9 wins, 8 losses, and 42 draws out of 59 cases. This creates a perception of frequent losses.

That's not really very fair. Besides the "draw" in Korea all the other defeats were political rather than military. Second Iraq war is more of a pyrrhic victory as well.

Is it a victory at all if it’s not political? Then what are you trying to accomplish? These are rhetorical questions. The problem is that leaders or frameworks have not been able to adapt as fast as technological progress.

This seems like an entirely different and hardly relevant argument when discussing the capabilities of the US military.

The U.S. military exists to perpetuate and enforce U.S. policies, and not just for its own sake. You can’t rule over ashes and bones, you can’t rule if you’re ashes and bones. Politics are the point.

Since World War II, the U.S. has mostly been fighting asymmetric warfare against insurgents and guerillas. This has caused a paradigm shift in our armed forces, to be more prepared for these types of conflicts, for street-to-street fighting as in Fallujah, and wary of threats like IEDs and suicide bombers.

Perhaps our pivoting has left them less prepared to fight conventional warfare on open battlefields against symmetric adversaries? I don't know.

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