How Wars Are

Won and Lost

Vulnerability and Military Power

By

JOHN A. GENTRY

● Military power

– loose concept.– the United States repeatedly has done poorly

in its recent wars.

● Vulnerability theory– No materialist theory

– Military power is relational

– Asimmetry

● Components of militar power– national will

– resource mobilization

– resource conversion

– force generation

– Leadership

– operational execution.

● National Will– collective national will

– Will exists (or not) to conduct specific types of operations against specific opponents

– Importance of information

– Rules of Engagement (reglas de enfrentamento o compromiso)

● Resource Mobilization– acquisition of tangible resources for military

purposes.

– Attacks on transportation infrastructures, naval blockades, economic sanctions, and many others.

● Resource Conversion– Quantities of industrial output

● Force Generation– produce militarily relevant field forces.

– Material assets

– Intangible institutional factors (military training, doctrine, organizational cultures)

● Leadership– Effectiveness of leadership

– Ability and desire of subordinate organizations to implement policies.

● Operational Execution– conduct political/military operations

– Battlefield results

Philippines

● February 1899–July 1902– EEUU vs Spain/ Army of Liberation

● Two phases – conventional

– unconventional

Philippines

● May 23, 1898, Philippine independence ● McKinley ordered to occupy the Philippines

Philippines

● Initial military failures● Aguinaldo’s strategy guerrilla tactics.

– The guerrillas also exploited the U.S. policy of benevolence to find and maintain supporters and to extort funds and supplies from less sympathetic Filipinos.

● EEUU Force– Moderate-sized but fairly modern navy

– Small and poorly equipped army

– The U.S. Navy contributed blue-water warships and coastal gunboats for blockade purposesI

– Initial force ratio of about 1:2

– a considerable but not decisive advantage in the technological component of its military materiel

– The biggest American advantages involved skill

Philippines

● Effort to create a stable American colonial government. – The U.S. Army performed many of the civic action

tasks.

– Improving local water and sewer infrastructure;

– U.S. troops soon experienced higher casualties

● Increased aggressiveness against guerrillas – Small-unit, counterguerrilla field operations

Philippines

● The U.S. military and American civilian administrators found and exploited appreciable Army of Liberation and nationalist vulnerabilities in all six dimensions– national will

– resource mobilization,

– resource conversion

– force generation,

– leadership

– operational execution .

● Nationalists sought vulnerabilities – operational execution

– national will,

– leadership

Bombing of Germany

● Strategic aerial warfare– RAF: Morale Bombing

– American popular opposition to attacking civilians

– American air theorists argued strategic bombers would win wars by themselves

● RAF 1940/41– hitting the vicinity of the centers of German cities

– Bomber Command was only an “annoyance” to Germany

● February 12, 1942, – it focused on bombing civilians

● 1943 The Germans were winning their campaign against British and American bombers. – lack of long-range fighter protection

● January 1944– Major operational difference

● Dropping massive quantities of bombs on Germany did not damage German civilians’ morale– The Allies lost the morale war

– Damaging the skill of the organization

– Slowly and inefficiently degraded Germany’s military capabilities

● attacked perceived German vulnerabilities in four dimensions and achieved mixed levels of limited success– national will,

● morale bombing of cities

– resource mobilization● targeting critical general economic installations

– resource conversion● attacking key defense industries like aircraft factories

– operational execution● strikes by both air forces on military targets in conjunction

VIETNAM

● 1954 Dien Bien Phu● 1960 resumption of the armed struggle● EEUU ayudan el Vietnam del Sur

– Before 1961

– Kennedy expanded the role of U.S. military advisors

● Vietnamese “people's war”– conventional fights

– guerrilla engagements

– flexibility, good tactical intelligence, and mobility

● 1965 Johnson escalating– necessary to prevent collapse of the GVN

● Operation Rolling Thunder– Imposing physical damage

– Raise the morale of the South Vietnamese;

– interdiction of North Vietnamese infiltration

● 1968 Tet Offensive– cause a general uprising

– influence American public opinion

– Americans’ willingness to continue the war crumbled

● Fundamental failure of leadership– The military bureaucratically punished officers who

criticized conventional policy

● Politically helpful for the DRV to be perceived as a victim of enemy barbarism.

● Attacking North Vietnam in the leadership, resource, and operational execution dimensions– destroying or threatening its military, economic, and

logistical capabilities

● Johnson never made a persuasive case for the war

● DRV was not vulnerable EEUU attacks.

● Failed to understand the strength of North Vietnam’s commitment to national unification

● DRV resources: people and food.

● The DRV’s primary target was national will and leadership

● Hanoi actively managed strategically important

information.

● North Vietnam’s ability to identify and exploit

U.S. vulnerabilities

YUGOSLAVIA

● Yugoslav military and Serbian internal security forces’ killings of ethnic Albanian civilians in the Serbian territory of Kosovo

● Clinton launched the war for ethical reasons ● Yugoslavia recognized U.S. reluctance to use

ground troops in the Balkans● Yugoslav military and Serbian security forces

remained coherent organizations throughout the war

● Five goals, – minimizing loss of friendly aircraft

– impacting” Yugoslav military and Serbian security forces in Kosovo

– minimizing collateral damage;

– achieving the first three in order to hold NATO together

– protecting allied ground forces in neighboring Bosnia

● The numbers– Human Rights Watch counted 90 NATO attacks on

civilians and confirmed

– 488 civilian deaths,

– estimate that Serbs killed about 10,000 Kosovar Albanian civilians during Operation Allied

– ethnic Albanians murdered Serbs chronically After 1999.

– NATO lost two aircraft but suffered no combat fatalities

● NATO attacked Yugoslavia in the leadership dimension. – The initial, modest attacks on facilities were ineffectual.

● NATO attacked national will– NATO expanded its target list

● No major efforts to attack Yugoslavia in the resource mobilization, resource conversion, or force generation dimensions

US-IRAQ (2003-2011)

● Deposing President Saddam Hussein

● a conventional phase (March–April 2003) – Defeated the conventional Iraqi military, deposed

Saddam Hussein, and occupied Iraq;

● an unconventional phase thereafter – The insurgents conducted unconventional warfare

● American military planners had assumed that their military victory would be complete – they ignored thousands of weapons depots

– Cultural insensitivity

● Many of the failures reflected the U.S. military’s denigration of “nation building” operations

● Large parts of the U.S. force structure were irrelevant to counterinsurgency warfare

● excessive and inappropriate use of airpower

● The conventional war against Saddam’s regime was fought and decided almost entirely in Iraq’s leadership and operational execution dimensions

● The coalition did not attack Iraqi national will ● The coalition did not attack Iraq’s resource

mobilization ● The coalition did not attack in the force

generation dimension.

● The Americans at first denied they faced an insurgency. – Major failures in the resource mobilization

dimension

– resource conversion

– fostering insurgent force generation .

● Insurgency goals– Attacks in the national will

– Resource mobilization dimensions

AFGHANISTAN

● September 11, 2001● NATO on September 12, 2001, Article 5 of its

founding treaty● Afghanistan: an “economy of force” operation

● war can be divided into two phases– a conventional phase between October and

December 2001

– Thereafter

● the Taliban and al-Qaeda regrouped and launched by 2003 an insurgency.

● The U.S. effort in the conventional war was focused in two dimensions – leadership

– operational execution

● the mistaken judgment that conventional military force could end the war

● In the unconventional phase, the United States and its coalition partners generally failed to do well in any of the six dimensions,– national will dimension

– resource mobilization

– force conversion and force generation

– operational execution dimension thereby were only partly successful.

● Taliban performed well– resource mobilization,

– force generation dimensions

● Externally– attacked the coalition’s national will

– leadership

– hurting Afghan government resource mobilization