When the facts change, I change my mind - what do you do, sir? — John Maynard Keynes

Keegan, Clausewitz, Rumsfeld, Iraq

smarties — Thursday, 19 April 2007

by Donald W. Taylor II

An e-mail from my brother that he is reading John Keegan's book, The Iraq War prompted the following:

I have considered Keegan's book on numerous occasions myself. The Iraq war was very unique and fought in a way unlike any previous war. My impression is that Keegan gets this and his book is an early attempt to flush out how. I would like to know much more about the war. It is too bad that the occupation has turned out so badly because it casts aspersion on the entire strategy now. Revolution in Military Affairs is now, like liberal internationalism, a theory in jeopardy.

Donald Rumsfeld was a genius — an evil genius — but a genius none the less. He pushed for a certain type of fight, but his war plan wasn't an occupation plan and he was done in by his own ambition. Again, this is a problem, because many of his ideas were, I think, correct.

The interesting thing about the Iraq war was the extent to which it was a model of Clausewitzian strategy. The paradigm moment of the Iraq war was when small arms fire brought down a few Apache helicopters. Commentators freaked out. How could we let this happen? Why haven't we been unleashing absolute destruction on these people? I recall at on point when U.S. advances had bogged down for a few days — a few days! — Bill O'Reiley calling for the U.S. to launch carpet bombing raids against Baghdad — as if U.S. piolots were still flying B-17s with Norden bombsights or something.

Most people think that war is just indiscriminate destruction. The point of Clausewitz is that war is destruction for a political end and that political end must determine precisely what sort of destruction a nation wrecks. In too many ways the Second World War has warped Americans' understanding of war. In many ways, though it was a war that the U.S. lost, the Vietnam War was more strategically doctrinaire or typical of war, and probably one more deserving of consideration. The U.S. sought unconditional surrender in the Second World War for a specific reason: because Roosevelt recognized that the world needed to break the back of German and Japanese militarism once and for all. But unconditional surrender is exceptional in the history of warfare and unnecessary for the attainment of most politico-military objectives.

This is where the Iraq war is so interesting, especially those helicopter shootdowns. The U.S recognized that it was not fighting a war against a nation, but against a regime, or even just one man; that after that regime had been toppled, the U.S. was going to be trying to remake Iraq into a model state in the Middle East. Therefore, as little and as finely targeted destruction as possible was what was required. The less we destroyed, the easier would be our task after the war, the more affordable would be the reconstruction. The ultimate objectives would determine all the lesser ones.

The amazing and entirely unprecedented thing about this was that the U.S. recognized that after the war Iraq would need security forces, both domestic as well as sufficient military so as to prevent a power vacuum in the region. It was not enough to try to avoid damage to Iraq's oil production capacity, critical infrastructure and other things that might have been targets in a more traditional war: the United States actually tried to conquer a nation without destroying its military! The aim of a light, fast moving force emphasizing maneuver was that the U.S. would simply drive around the Iraqi military, preserving most of its assets for the critical tasks that they would be expected to undertake after the war.

The U.S. Apache helicopters are interesting because the normal strategy for their employ would be to launch a major artillery barrage to clear a field of advance, then send in the Apache's to mop up. They were shot down in such news-worthy numbers because the Army avoided the sort of large-scale artillery employment that would have made a range safe for their operation. The U.S. was willing to accept higher levels of risk and loss in order to properly shape its operations to its strategic objectives. Classic Clausewitz.

Now I wrote in the previous paragraph that the U.S. recognized that after the war Iraq would need security forces. The problem is that there was never complete agreement within the administration as to the whole of the strategy — and there was insufficiently strong leadership to impose a single vision (an integrated grand strategy is the first job of the president). So some planned to build a democracy, while others schemed to topple the tyrant, destroy the weapons of mass destruction capacity (mission accomplished, circa 1998), turn the remnants over to some friends of the administration and split.

The U.S. military zoomed past huge swaths of territory without ever conclusively controlling them. In previous wars the Army would have ponderously rolled over a territory, fully controlling each new conquest before moving on to the next, guaranteeing that the frontier of advance wouldn't be attacked from behind, outflanked or cut off from its logistical tail, eventualities that all occurred in the Iraq war, much to the ephemeral dismay of the media. This strategy could have worked as phase I of a two part approach, with the reinforcements and the numbers coming in a second wave.

But with the Bush administration there never is a phase II until it is too late.

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Donald W. Taylor II Washington, D.C. United States of America taylordw@goodleaf.net