‘All Wars Must End’—With Winners and Losers

“Every war must end” was the title of defense analyst Fred C. Ikle’s 1971 book. Ikle became undersecretary of Defense for policy in the Reagan administration and his observation passed from insight to conventional wisdom.

The Trump administration in its final weeks and the Biden government in its first months invoked the “all wars must end” axiom to justify withdrawing the last U.S. combat troops from Afghanistan. “We are not a people of perpetual war—it is the antithesis of everything for which we stand and for which our ancestors fought. All wars must end,” asserted Christopher Miller, acting secretary of defense, last November.

resident Barack Obama, in a 2013 speech at the National Defense University, was heckled repeatedly by Code Pink drama queen Medea Benjamin over the obscenity of America fighting its enemies in Afghanistan and Iraq. The commander in chief praised her passion and intoned that “this war, like all wars, must end. That's what history advises. That's what our democracy demands.”

This April, after 20 years, 2,400 GIs killed and $2 trillion in U.S. support, the Taliban continued to wrest territory from the government in Kabul. In addition to the resurgent movement that once imposed harsh Islamic law on Afghanistan and sheltered Osama bin-Laden, fragments of Islamic State, al-Qaeda and other Islamist terrorists also keep attacking civilian and military targets.

Meanwhile, Washington talked “peace” with Taliban representatives. Biden explained:

On Sept. 11, 2001, “we were attacked. We went to war with clear goals. We achieved those objectives … Bin Laden is dead and al-Qaeda is degraded in Afghanistan and it’s time to end the forever war.”

Certainly, wars must end. Even the 100-Years-War between England and France did.

The real question is how wars end. Formulations like Obama’s, Miller’s on behalf of President Donald Trump and Biden’s in April focus narrowly, on the near-future timing and tactics of withdrawal, not on the long run and strategies to achieve victory. The latter makes it necessary to put Ikle’s observation into context.

Ikle was a Cold War strategist. When he died in 2011, American Spectator editor Robert Tyrrell remembered Ikle as, among other things:

An opponent of 1970s’ arms control diplomacy who favored strengthening U.S. deterrence against the Soviet Union to ensure peace; advocate of Reagan’s Strategic Defense Initiative (derided by many Democrats as “Star Wars,” a supposedly unscientific belief we could hit a missile with a missile); proponent of deploying mid-range nuclear missiles in Europe over Kremlin (and some Allied) objections; and supporter of supplying Stinger ground-to-air rockets to anti-Soviet Afghan rebels, which cost Moscow troops and confidence.

Through such policies the Cold War did end. But not before lasting from the late 1940s to the collapse of the Soviet satellite regimes in East Germany, Poland, Hungary, Czechoslovakia, Romania and Bulgaria in 1989 and the U.S.S.R. itself two years later. For decades hundreds of thousands of GIs were stationed in Western Europe.

From diplomat George F. Kennan’s famous “long cable” advocating “containment” of the Soviet Union through U.S. leadership of the NATO countries of Western Europe and North America to Reagan’s defense build-up that helped bankrupt the Soviets, which Ikle supported, Washington had a successful strategy: First resist, then defeat Moscow. The Cold War ended in victory for the United States and its allies.

It’s been observed that Americans are formidable foes when aroused and fighting to win, like the Union during the Civil War and nearly the entire nation in World Wars I and II. They will tolerate national mobilization “for the duration,” provided victory’s on the horizon and the duration is no more than roughly four years.

But when a war's reasons and strategy are not clearly, convincingly stated, conflicts like Korea and Vietnam result. A front-page article in the April 27 Wall Street Journal ran under this headline: “Vets See Echoes of Vietnam in Afghanistan Withdrawal Plan; Troops who fought decades apart lament leaving wars unfinished.” A pull-quote referred to “allies abandoned.”

China has been at war with the United States since Korea and Vietnam. It's spent recent decades vacuuming American national security and commercial secrets, oppressing its own people, expanding its military, threatening its neighbors and seeking international trade, information and political hegemony. Bigger and wealthier than the Soviet Union ever was, it’s also more dangerous.

It is said most Americans today have no direct connection with the military that defends them and that many believe war is obsolete, rather than recurrent human behavior. China is watching. Kabul as Saigon will hardly deter Xi Jinping’s drive for global dominance.

This is absolutely spot on. Wars that drag on forever favor the weaker side as they can just grind down the resolve of the stronger side. However, winning a war almost certainly requires things like collateral damage to break the enemies will. Surgical, pinprick strikes will not do it. But the conflict will get ugly and no wants t tolerate that now-a-daze. They will cry genocide (without really know what that term means) and express “outrage” on various media. Can’t have that.

However, I suspect if the casualties are White or Judeo-Christian, the outrage will be very subdued (or non-existent).

All war must end?

This sounds like something a beauty contestant says when asked if she (or he/she/it nowadays) had just one wish.

World Peace, end hunger, find a cure for constipation.

As far as I can tell, the Peace Movement is designed to let the other side win. If you want peace with China, then you let China take over and learn to be a slave to the Chinese. How to resist China without having to go to actual war is the key. That resistance against China is difficult. Was there a resistance against the USSR? Seems like there was. It was called the Cold War. Eastern Europe is now free. A Cold War against China is needed. How such a Cold War is fought is crucial. Vote for Trump. Vote for Trump’s Plan.

With the U.S. in the post-WW2 era, wars only drag on forever because they’re not really wars. They are designed as limited engagements precisely because they are NOT intended to be waged against foreign nation-states. Instead, they are part of an empire-building campaign where warfare is counterproductive because it ultimately destroys a place or region that the U.S. sees as part of its own empire.

That’s why the U.S. hasn’t declared war against anyone in almost 80 years. For us, building an empire means taking sides in someone else’s civil wars, not conquering foreign countries through traditional military campaigns.

“....many believe war is obsolete,”

The last 50 years has displayed that gaining and holding land via war is not worth the blood and treasure, that was a main goal of war for 3,000 years.

However, that leaves: bio war, cyber war, trade war, maritime dominance, air dominance, space dominance, embargoes, tariffs, counterfeiting foreign currency, tech theft, subversion, demoralization, ...etc. (Add thirty more.)

As far as I can tell, the Peace Movement is designed to let the other side win.

Some of the most ignorant people I’ve ever spoken with have been part of “Peace Studies” programs. These fools imagine that wars never solve anything. The ironic thing is that they consider the military to be little more than Neanderthals with no real intelligence.

Note to president. Keep the diplomats out of peace talks until you have achieved your desired results in which the other side accepts, or you are defeated and need to be bailed out.

Allowing combatants to reside in third-party states unreachable by “law” ensures a conflict rather than a war. War can only result when all Laws are broken and places like Iran or Pakistan who harbor the enemy leadership and assets are not targeted.

Resurrecting Iran as a Nuclear Power means that America and the West would rather live with Islamic Terrorism and be overrun by Islam than install a friendly regime and not suffer the pain of a long period rooting out the Islamists.

“Those who turn their arms in for plowshares will be doing the plowing for those who didn’t.”

“Experience is something you don’t get until just after you need it.”

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