How to Win Wars

October 25, 1976. This morning, we boarded a chartered bus to take us to the airport in Addis Ababa and thence to home. Along the way, we picked up a police escort. That seemed odd until we reached the gate of the airport. Awaiting us was a vast sea of refugees extending to the horizon left and right. This ocean of humanity was desperate to find a way out of the newly communist Ethiopia and the bloodbath that had already started a couple of days before. The police motorcycles pushed slowly through the crowd like the prow of a ramshackle ship, our bus following behind. Bow waves of reaction propagated away as people backed off from our vehicles, the waves flowing across the human sea until they were lost over the distant horizon. This must have been the scene in far Saigon the year before, when we left South Vietnam to the mercies of the North. I'm glad to have left this behind.

Viet Nam: a war won on the battlefield but lost in Congress. Viet Nam is a melancholy episode in a long string of modern strategic failures that continue to plague us. Something is wrong with our current thinking about war.

It has become fashionable in academic circles to talk about "counterfactual history." This is just a fancy way of formalizing the alternate history theme of a great many science fiction stories. It is basically a what-if speculation on what the world would be like if a particular historical event had turned out differently. For example, what if Stonewall Jackson had not been killed, with Lee therefore winning at Gettysburg?

Of course, history is as it is. One cannot know what an alternate history really might have been like.

Second, win decisively and as quickly as possible. Victory means the enemy no longer exists.

Here's the money quote. Victory means the enemy no longer exists.

American liberals have lost the will to do what is needed to win. As long as we leave the enemy alive, they will eventually regroup and attack us again. We have to either destroy their lives, or their belief system. So far we've been able to destroy the belief systems of the countries we have defeated (Germany and Japan etc). If the people will not change their belief system, then they must be eradicated like so many vermin. We cannot afford to be merciful with enemies.

Wars became unwinnable when civilians were no longer considered military targets.

I do consider them to be legitimate targets. They are the next generation of fighters. The source of materiel and support for the troops already fielded.

The fire bombing to Tokyo and Dresden served a valuable function. it was a demonstration to the fronline soldier that the cost of the war would be born not only by himself, but would extend to his family.

Today, the use of “human shields” is a shining example of why the Geneva Conventions are a recipe for failure in any military endeavor.

War must be total and complete. With no targets off the table.

Wanna win a war? Stick the RoEs and the Geneva Conventions in the garbage can and get down to work.

Killing enemy soldiers is mostly a waste of time. There is always going to be more of them. Killing them is mostly a matter of force preservation.

STARVE the enemy. Kill his logistics. Cut him off from food, medicine, fuel, ammo, money, etc. Kill anyone supplying him. Kill anyone doing business within him. Kill anyone handling his money. No arrests. No trials. Just corpses and wreckage. Use covert action if you have to act against ‘neutral’ or ‘allied’ countries.

Yes, that includes starving the civilians. Wipe out any NGOs that try to provide these things to the enemy. Any aid provided to civilians will, inevitably, make its way to the military. Don’t let anyone provide them aid.

ALWAY remember the lives of your soldiers and those of your allies are worth INFINITELY more than the lives of the locals - civilian or military.

While this seems cruel, the extended wars caused by stupid ideas like limited RoEs are far crueler, both to the locals and to our troops.

Smash the enemy mercilessly. Get the job done. Go home.

Or, if you can’t do this, stay home.

We won the Korean War because, over time, we fashioned a victory out of an acceptable stalemate. The victory consists of fostering under our protection a free and prosperous South Korea that is an ally and is governed along Western democratic lines.

More important, by keeping South Korea out of communist hands during the Cold War, we averted a major threat to Japan's security. Japan's role today as a reliable national security partner in the Pacific would be much less likely if she were menaced by a hostile unified Korea only 120 miles away and allied with communist China.

In addition, MacArthur was not just disobedient and failing as a general in Korea when he was removed, but he was dangerously wrong about what our objectives and strategy should be in Korea. Because of China's immense size and manpower, a conventional war with China was beyond US capabilities.

Large scale US nuclear strikes on China would have devastated the country, but could not have achieved a military victory because of China's massive population and large size. Notably, US studies in that era concluded that the US nuclear weapon stockpile was far too small to defeat even the Soviet Union. That would be even more true of China.

Most likely, a US nuclear strike on China to "win" the Korean War would have triggered a Soviet attack on Western Europe because a critical portion of the US nuclear stockpile would have been expended. Still recovering from WW II, Western Europe and the unprepared US troops there would have been overwhelmed.

That is why the US Chiefs of Staff backed backed the removal of MacArthur. They did not want a wider war with China that would have caused a loss of Europe to the Soviet Union and likely led to the US falling to communism.

Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.