War doesn’t work anymore. The highest tech military in history spending trillions of dollars can’t defeat barefoot peasants armed with automatic rifles and IEDs. War for war’s sake, to display “toughness” or resolve, war without a political purpose, is pointless. What is the political purpose of America’s war in Afghanistan at this point, can anyone answer that? Our disastrous invasion of Iraq has only increased Iran’s power. Enough.
1
Nobody wins wars.
"In Iraq, the U.S. ended up in a forever war in part because the first Bush administration left Saddam Hussein in power after the Persian Gulf War in 1991."
George H.W. Bush did this precisely to avoid what happened after George W. Bush took out Hussein: A slow slide into anarchy and endless conflicts between Sunni and Shiite Arabs. By also banning any former members of Hussein's government and army from having a role in this "new" Iraq, W unintentionally created Al-Qaeda (and ultimately, ISIS).
Bush Senior recognized that Hussein in power, militarily restrained, was "the devil you know" and a better solution than a possible "devil you don't know." Plus, Hussein (who we did a lot of business with during the 1980s) was a useful idiot/bulwark against the influence of Iran and Hezbollah in the region.
You seem to be well-read, Brett. Hit the books again and you'll eventually realize that some wars are better off never fought. (Recall what Wallace Shawn aid in The Princess Bride: "Never start a land war in Asia!"
It's also useful to reflect on the futility of a foreign army trying to hold down a native insurrection, like we are with the Taliban. (It didn't work out so well in Vietnam, or the Phillipines after the Spanish-American War. Or for the British in the Thirteen Colonies back in the 1770s...)
5
"There is no substitute for victory," said Napoleon as he invaded Russia and couldn't remember why he had done it.
"There is no substitute for victory" said Hitler, as he let tens of thousands of his own soldiers freeze to death at Stalingrad rather than allow them to surrender.
"Removed from Jewish tradition" said Netanyahu about Rabin, Israel's military leader during the 7 Days War and later prime minister, one year after Rabin won the Nobel Peace Prize, one month before Rabin was assassinated by a pro-settlement fanatic who said he was following "God's orders," and eight months before Netanyahu himself became Israel's prime minister.
"Steer clear of permanent alliances with any portion of the foreign world," said George Washington in his Farewell Address.
2
I believe you have taken the wrong lesson from all of these. It is the peace following the war that has been time and again messed up.
I would call our victory of Imperial Germany pretty darn complete. We were able to totally dictate the terms of surrender. But the Versailles Treaty crippled Germany economically so that it fell into a deep depression which provided a fertile ground for the Nazis.
The first Iraq war ended in a Mideast that was relatively stable. The ability of a terrorist organization to launch 9/11 was not because of Saddam Hussein. It was the destruction of all government after the 2nd Iraq war, while leaving all the weapon caches, that gave rise to civil war and ISIS. Note, we were too busy trying to 'rebuild' Iraq in exchange for future oil, while denying others a share, to wage a proper peace.
You can also say the same thing of the Cold War and our abandonment of Russia to the oligarchs.
In fact just about every failure we have had is not because we failed to grind the enemy into the dust, but because we messed up the aftermath.
3
Is peace not en vogue anymore?
Once Elizabeth of Wied, Queen of Romania (1843 - 1916) wrote, that “The war between two educated peoples is a high treason on civilization.” We are educated - aren’t we?
Now some readers would possibly argue, that the opponent is not educated. Well, consider the next quote:
“No educated person would ever consider removing an ink stain with ink, an oil stain with oil, However, blood over and over again, should be washed away with blood.”
(Bertha von Suttner - Austrian writer 1843-1914)
Sorry, but I can not find even a remote understanding fo Mr. Stephens’ “final solution” like opinion, as it must never again be presented as a possible solution to solve problems between peoples.
1
Mr Stephens, you've made a number of wrong assumptions. To imply that some wars never end due to lack of resources (matériel, adequate numbers of human cannon fodder) or lack of will doesn't take into account that perhaps both sides are fairly evenly matched (e.g., the Allies and Germany during WWI) or that one or both sides are willing to fight until no one is left standing or they've exhausted their matériel. You also forgot that for much of history, the current war was fought using the methods of the last war. Sometimes new technology doesn't work (e.g., tanks during WWI were not useful given trench warfare and that those early tanks were not technologically advanced enough to make a difference. That changed for WWII).
Sometimes the reason is because one side thought war/invasion would be easy due to lack of research on their enemy, lack of knowledge of history, and sadly, too often hubris and stupidity. Napoléon's arrogance and lack of knowledge about Russia led him to think invading Russia while he was also fighting in the west was a good idea. It didn't work out well for him. Hitler did the same thing more than 100 years later, and had to learn the same lesson the hard way.
And sometimes it is the less advanced nation that wins, especially if they were invaded (defending homeland can be an incentive to fight, however long it takes to defeat a superior military power). I give you the examples of Vietnam and Afghanistan.
1
"War is not meant to be won. It is meant to be continuous"
George Orwell
2
Bret Stephens suffers from a typical conservative myopia. They think that “overwhelming defeat” will snuff out opposition and make populations of people amenable to subjugation. Here is the reality, Mr. Stephens: losers never forget. Why else are we still arguing about silly “monuments” to traitors and losers from the Civil War? Many in the south still nurse grievances from that conflict, even though all the participants are long dead. Why are Germany and Japan allies and trading partners with the US now? Not because of “overwhelming defeat”; but because of the generosity and far sightedness of the Marshall Plan. The use of the rule of law during the Nuremberg trials and the Tokyo War Crimes Tribunal also did a lot to establish the US as a fair, magnanimous arbiter. The conservative urge to “bomb them back to the Stone Age” or “see if sand can glow in the dark” is ultimately counter productive. It shows the seeds for future conflict and perpetuates the cycle of vengeance and retribution.
3
Please define a "win" in Afghanistan (or Iraq or Syria).
"The Taliban" are not foreign invaders. They are Afghans. We are the foreigners who invaded their country and they are fighting to drive us out of there. How do we "win" something like that?
3
"Why do they drag on interminably? Because one side lacks the means to win and the other lacks the will."
I will do my best to paraphrase a retired three-star Army general in the 1970s. He said that, with all other things being equal, the army with the best trained small units will win. Even when things are not equal, armies with the best trained small units will sometimes confound and outlast larger and better-equipped armies. When the general wrote this, an example of the former was the Israeli Army, while he cited the Viet Cong as an example of the latter. We have seen the same thing in Afghanistan, regardless of who has been there fighting the locals.
"Yet if the Allies had taken Pershing’s advice and pressed their offensive from the front until Berlin surrendered, it’s unlikely that the Germans who later embraced Adolf Hitler could have believed the myth that they lost the war only by being stabbed in the back."
It's also likely that had we never entered the war in the first place, England and Germany would have negotiated a peace settlement. By early 1918, both sides were out of almost everything, including men to fight.
2
Winning a guerilla war is not a matter of will, unless you mean the will to commit genocide. I think I'll pass on Stephens' military prescriptions; he is an irredeemable hawk.
3
Bret Stephens suffers from knowing only part of the history of World War I. Like almost everyone else, he believes that further aggression would have led to a more permanent peace. Incredibly, he now proposes that Israel and the United States only lack the will to truly win in the Middle East.
How would Mr. Stephens feel if he believed that the Great War was prolonged by the agreement made between Sir Mark Sykes and Chaim Weizmann in February 1917? That agreement, chronicled by Samuel Landman in 1936, traded British support for a homeland for Jewish people in Palestine for Zionist assistance in encouraging American entry into the war. If England hadn't entered into that agreement, Winston Churchill later argued, the war wouldn't have been prolonged, resulting in millions of additional deaths, and there would never have been the political chaos that resulted in the rise of the Nazis. Had England made peace in the spring of 1917, there would have never been a Jewish Holocaust.
Of course, the Palestinians had no idea that Sir Mark was trading away the land on which they had been living for more than 19 centuries. The Sykes-Weizmann Agreement led to the immeasurable pain and suffering for Jews and millions of others. But is the answer to continue to ignore that history? Is it anti-Semitic to even discuss the agreement that led to more anti-Semitism than any other single act in history?
If we only tell part of the history, can we hope to come to valid conclusions?
2
Perhaps by accident, Stephens name-checks Joe Haldeman's brilliant 1974 science fiction novel, The Forever War.
He would do well to read it.
What Bret does not mention is that war has few enemies.
Presidents, Generals, wives, mothers, boy scouts, jocks, would be heroes, big business right up to God Him/Herself I've been told all embrace and extol the multiple virtues of war. The motives are legion.
So Bret asks "Why do they drag on interminably?"
Because Americans love war and don't think they'll ever have to pay for it.
2
By your reasoning, the only way the Middle East will settle down is when one side "wins" decisively. I guess that means Israel pushes the Palestinians into the sea and takes the remaining land they live on now. Of coarse, the Palestinians could do the same to the Israelis, if they had the weapons, but either of these winner take all options seems pretty extreme. I get that at this date it is rediculous to talk about a solution to what's wrong with that part of the world, but a rejection of religion might not be a bad start.
The Palestinian Arabs are not going away and that makes Netanyahu's strategy of making them accept a peace where they are subservient to the Jewish state or to move into other Arab states, impossible. The other states cannot absorb the Palestinians, they cannot even live with them in refugee camps easily. The Palestinian Arabs are not going to accept being second class citizens in a Jewish state. In addition, conflicts which are passed on from generation to generation have often lasted for centuries. If Israel cannot make peace with the Palestinian Arabs, they will never find peace. That's just the way things are and will continue to be.
There is good money to be made. The military, political industrial complex is humming along.
As George Bush said after 9/11, go out and shop.. Leave the fighting of wars to the professionals, it is their industry.
We have little "skin" in the game, the troops and robots fight for us. The are jobs to supply the troops and build the bots. Life is good, as long as you are on the "right" side. Hey, black Friday is coming up, time to do our part to support the war effort.
You fight existential wars to the bitter end. WW1 and WW2 threatened the European and world political order.
.
You fight colonial police actions, like the various wars of the British Empire, the Vietnam war, Teddy Roosevelt's war in the Philippines, the Korean War, Iraq and Afghanistan, until you can find a stopping point. There is no end to these wars, because the natives will be forever restless. What would a final victory look like? Afghanistan will end when we strike a deal with the Taliban, which won't end conflict in Afghanistan, but will end it for the US. Our Iraq war will end when we stop fighting. THE Iraq war could go on for decades yet. We just have to decide if we want to support one side or the other, and how much support. Being the global policeman will always be messy. There are no final solutions.
1
There’s nothing new in this piece...just the same old nostalgia for the good old days when our adversaries presented themselves in uniformed masses and allowed us to kill them. Once all of the guys wearing the uniform of the other side were killed or captured, the war was over. We haven’t been presented with such a scenario since 1945. Our wars now are amongst the people, and unless we want to literally kill everyone in sight, with no concern for avoiding the slaughter of non-combatants, the ultimate effectiveness of modern technological warfare is limited. We’ll be forever pursuing little bands of armed peasants who are indistinguishable from everyone else.
We killed millions of Vietnamese with bombing and direct combat. Yet, they persisted. In Iraq we killed many hundreds of thousands. Maybe if we’d killed a couple of million more, the tide would have turned. Is that what you’re saying?
1
Unfortunately, it seems that there can't be an "us" without there being a "them".
1
And what about the Marshall Plan?
The Bible tells us that you end a war by killing all the males.
This is the soundest argument I have heard Stephens make. We live in a time where we mourn the end of species that never intersected with our lives.
I cannot deal with the insanity of war and I was lucky to be in Quebec where so many felt the same way as me. Today may be the beginning of the end of Netanyahu's political career because he did what I would have done. I don't believe in war. At what point can war be justified. I have Palestinian friends who have embraced me as much as any Israeli. I don't understand any of this, I am very lucky.
The wars in Afghanistan, Iraq and Syria have not been won because they are not real wars, and the enemies are not real nations.
1
I don’t agree with Bret Stephens. Many comments here contain far more insightful thinking than he is capable of. Another point that he doesn’t seem to understand is the one that explains that fighting for a cause is more compelling than fighting for a paycheck. Israel, Iraq, Afghanistan and Syria all have a side that is fighting for ideas, not unlike the the rebel side in the American Revolution. As to WWI, except for the US, the allies had lost a huge number of their young men, they were drained of life and sacrificial soldiers. You can run out of resources in war. The peace was almost as costly and draining for the allies as it was for Germany. The US was the only country that came out stronger than when they entered the war. War rarely has winners. The Marshall plan saved Europe. Creating it required creative thinking, which neither Brett, Netanyahu or American leadership appear to be capable of.
1
I think Mr. Stephens should have added the Korean War to this list of never ending conflicts, since it hasn't really ended after about 78 years.
The US probably has the raw firepower and manpower to win conventional wars, were we to choose to.
The USSR suffered the deaths of 11 million soldiers and as many as 20 million civilians in World War II. The Soviets had no choice because the Germans were intent on exterminating every Soviet citizen in the eastern third of the USSR and bringing in ethnic Germans to settle the land. The Soviets could not have safely surrendered had they wanted to. This led to the Soviets spending lives like so many pennies. It literally did not matter how many lives the Soviets lost.
With the Germans developing long-range missiles, an atomic bomb, and deploying jet powered aircraft, the British, Australians, Canadians and Americans also had no choice but to absolutely crush the Germans (and the Japanese, who had carried out the sneak attack on Pearl Harbor).
WWII was an existential war and those prosecuting it and fighting it knew that. Iraq and Afghanistan were not; rather, they were elective wars, and prosecuted as such. Remember too that to prevent future German aggression the Russians literally occupied East Germany for 45 years. The US, in its own less harsh way, militarily occupied West Germany and Japan.
Few countries can field the conventional forces to threaten the existence of the US, being China and Russia, and they also possess highly effective nuclear weapons. As such, any war with China and Russia could not be “won” in any reasonable sense of the word.
1
I have often thought of the two world wars as one, simply signally the end of monarchy as a viable system of government. It's notable, I think, that they ended only when peace was waged--i.e. the Marshall Plan pacified Germany and brought it into the community of nations.
We didn't win with guns and bombs and lives lost on the battlefield, although all of those things might have been necessary under the circumstances. We won with care for our fellow human beings.
The same way we won the Civil War, as was immortalized in Lincoln's second inaugural address--'with malice toward none, with charity to all...'
Maybe wars continue because one side or the other lacks the will or the capacity to lose, when they know, either ethically or pragmatically, losing is what they should be doing. When leaders allow hubris to overcome the duties they owe to their people (imagine that).
As Hendrix said, 'when the power of love overcomes the love of power, the world will know peace.'
1
It is a lot better for them to drag on than to try to win them. That is the lesson of Lyndon Johnson's attempt to win the Vietnam war. It was not realistic to win. It would have taken hundreds of thousands of additional lives on both sides. Actually, even then winning was impossible. It would have been a lot better to keep US involvement down to the level it was under Eisenhower. The approach take in Afghanistan, Iraq, and against ISIS is realistic. It acknowledges that these conflicts will be solved over decades--even centuries--and that winning in the short term is impossible even if you are willing to have hundreds of thousands die. It is called realism. And is inherently conservative. We human beings have pretty severe limitations on how much we can change the world. By the way, this is the approach that President Obama took.
World War I erased all the longstanding mythology about the heroic and noble resolution of conflicts between states on the battlefield. All the European Empires, including the Ottoman Empire, were destroyed by the war. The entire world order was undone in four short years. The world was horrified and most of the former imperial states wanted to limit war by reducing arms and the ability to fight big wars. Agreements were made to limit militaries and navies to just provide defense. It was all quite sincere but it actually made the few countries who thought war would allow them to prosper to become great military threats and to start wars which led to World War II. It took years and millions of lives to even begin to stop the Japanese, Germans, and Italians who started the fighting, and in the end the Western side of Eurasia was in ruins and the peoples in various stages of stark anarchy for a decade after the formal surrenders of 1945.
Only a well working peace prevents wars. Decisive battles like what Stephens discusses rarely happen.
1
If I understand Mr. Stephens correctly,
1) Wars that end in negotiated treaties are bad and never end
2) Wars that end in unconditional surrender or annihilation are good and create lasting peace.
Let us assume Mr Stephens hypothesis is true.
Therefore:
1) The US must still be at war with Britain since the war of 1812 ended in a negotiated peace.
2) Iraq must be a great wonderful peaceful land and strong US ally since May of 2003 when the 3rd Infantry march into Baghdad.
1
The Taliban in Afghanistan is not a group, it's a side and many groups join or switch sides in that country. As such, no matter how many fighters are killed the attrition has not and cannot end the fighting. At some point the war may end but the Taliban will be one of the parties agreeing to it's end, and it will be an Armistice not an unconditional surrender. Worse, Afghanistan is not a modern state, it's a state with thousands of independent communities who have no allegiance to any central government nor to any movement like the Taliban.
2
Germany ran out of material to continue fighting, the civilian population had begun to starve. It could not go on. Meanwhile, German forces had nearly won their offensive against Allies in the West. But the Americans arrived to save the day. Both the U.K. and French forces were spent by that time. The Americans were fighting bravely but they were not yet ready to match the Germans in a straight up fight. Pershing was not familiar with the new kind of war that he had to fight, and lost a lot of soldiers as a result. So the notion that there could be an unconditional surrender by Germany was just wrong. The Armistice was the only alternative for anyone. World War II was the continuation of World War I because all the countries in Europe had been broken and fragmented and the resulting disorderly arrangement coalesced with a lot of militaristic states that sought to conquer a lot of other countries.
Stephens is toying with the decisive battle scenario, the one where one side loses the ability to come back even after a period of recuperation. That rarely happens unless the loser is gone. Either they never had any hope of winning under any circumstances or they have been destroyed like Carthage was by Rome, everybody killed or made into slaves and carted away. The decisive battle is like winning the lottery, unlikely. There are battles which represent turning points but battles which effectively end wars are usually the last of a whole series of battles.
3
The notion of "Forever Wars" is an idea created by war profiteers to induce popular support for government funding of the military-industrial-political complex. If the citizenry can be convinced that it is fighting a "war," they can usually be cajoled or persuaded to give limited support.
But if we were told that the truth that these so-called "wars" are actually big-government sponsored economic welfare socialism for selected armaments industries, support would vanish overnight.
Think I'm exaggerating? Over the next 40 years, the total cost of war for the Iraq debacle is estimated at $6 trillion dollars. Iraq is a population of 30 million people. So, we are spending there $200,000 per Iraqi.
So, as a nation, we're willing to spend $200,000 per Iraqi to destroy their country. It's a mind bender. On average, the median tax cut profit per American was something like $250. That's right, we're spending 1000 times more money per person in Iraq than we are our own people.
The only people profiting here are the war corporations, those elite government-sponsored socialism industries, and the investment class of the population who own stocks in them.
Estimates are that total war industry business is 5% of the GDP. It's a truck load of money and the people whose jobs depend on it don't want to lose them any more than the rest of us want to lose our jobs.
11
@Kip Leitner
This is an excellent comment. Thank you!
Very true. However modern ‘mini-wars’ also last interminably due to (1) the vast amounts of entrenched money interests who profit greatly from continued conflict, and (2) the vast number of young people who glory in participating. The above applies to all sides in all violent conflicts.
4
It is now pretty much impossible for a democracy to fight a war to the finish with victory when that war will cause massive casualties. The United States military is always restrained by the fact that the homeland will only accept so many of its youth killed in war to achieve victory.
Israel is limited not just by its own democratic population but is restrained by world public opinion as well. If Israel waged all out war against Hamas, it would be denunciated by the UN and most of its member nations, few of whom care a whit about the Israelis.
The only exception to this rule seems to be when the national interest is so great that the very existence of the state is at risk. This occurred during WWII when most of the participating states believed that their vital, indeed existential, interests were at stake. Even then the United States lost 437,000 killed, almost the limit as to what the American population would sustain. The Russians may have lost as many as 20 million military & civilian casualties during that war. Only a totalitarian state with no regard for public opinion and fighting for its life would tolerate such losses.
War weariness comes quickly to a democracy when the reason for fighting is not clearly understood and the sacrifices of our military seem to be in vain. We have had too many wars where military objectives were obscure and subject to change, and our military's sacrifice was disproportionate to the objectives sought and the methods employed..
10
I guess that if the British had really wanted to beat George Washington in 1776, history would have been different.
Except that the Colonists were the real British, and George III was a German interloper from the House of Hanover, who had to hire German mercenaries from the Electorate of Hesse, because the British themselves did not want to fight their cousins.
Through a conservative lens, however, it all seems so clear and simple.
10
The moral imperative to establish Israel following the Holocaust is certainly understandable, and apparently as effective as the British Empire drawing the map of the entire Middle East without regard to the existing ethnicity in each local. Neither strategy has brought forth any lasting peace; only short violent bloody wars followed by interregnum followed short violent bloody wars followed by interregnum ad infinitum…
Following WWII, “responsibility” for maintaining the peace in the Middle East was assumed by the United States, giving birth to Pax Americana. We’ve been as successful there as the British were.
It seems humanity resists the concept of empire; even more so with ever improving means of waging war. Rome lasted 1000 years; the Holy Roman Empire ran for 600; The British Empire (by far the largest) lasted a little over 300. Pax Americana seems to be coming to an end now. Perhaps we should honestly try another path.
4
Never pass a chance to take a shot at President Obama, as if he had any better choices in Afghanistan, following the self-inflicted calamities of war criminals Bush, Cheney, and Rumsfeld. The right can't afford to give Mr. Obama any breathing room, lest they find themselves having to question the wisdom of carrying Saudi Arabia's water up to and including the current entertainments of the smooth and shiny prince with blood on the floor and plenty on his hands. Too bad our little president is too dumb and too scared of what to do next so our country can start acting like grown ups.
8
American policy because in part of unclear enemies at this time is very unclear. We need clear statements of why we are involved in a country, what outcomes we can live with, what we can accomplish. Also we need the same with allies. Our reasons for being in Afghanistan are unclear. Ditto for Syria.
Our emnity with Iran (anti-Israel b/c owed a billion dollars roughly from pre revolution Iran) would make anyone unhappy.
1
Mr Stephens: your column has many wrong assumptions.
1. You imply that the “never ending” wars in Afghanistan, Iraq and Syria are “never ending” for lacking of resolve or resources, including human sacrifice. You imply that if we were to fully commit to winning them, we could. I disagree. They are “never ending” because we don’t know how to stop an adversary to continue to recruit more young men to go die as “martyrs”. They are “never ending” because they are “un-winnable” under the current socio-political conditions of these regions.
2. In regard to a lack of making Germany surrender unconditionally on WWI as a precursor to WWII, you completely overlooked the fact that the Allies imposed heavy and humiliating penalties onto Germany at the end of WWI which caused huge economic chaos (example: hyperinflation, etc). This financial (and social) distress was widely used by the Nazis to blame their political enemies and the Jews as the cause of Germany defeat and as a justification for their methods. It was the Marshall Plan after the end of WWII that made Germany into our ally, not their complete defeat as you propose.
64
@LA. You make good points, but the reason Germany "accepted" the Marshall plan was they were crushed and had no choice in the matter and the u.s. was wise enough and rich enough to turn Germany and Japan into prosperous democracies. Think of the mess that is North Korea now. If we had defeated them in the same fashion (ignoring China for the sake of arguement) and we had done the same marshall style plan to the Koreans it would be a different situation on that peninsula than we face today.
Speaking of WWll, a study of how youth in three different European countries felt about WWll revealed some striking differences.
Danish youth tended to emphasize the role of their resistance movement & neglected collaboration with the Nazis in some quarters.
Finnish youth tended to view the Soviet Union as an adversary of primary importance, rather than the Nazis.
German youth recognized & took responsibility for the German people in the horrors of the war throughout Europe & of the impossibly grotesque holocaust. As one might imagine, grandparents were removed from active or passive participants in the atrocities to often heroic protectors of the targeted victims.
History, family & beyond, requires constant revision.
4
Mr Stevens neglects to take his thesis to the most logical historical site. Why, I wonder, does he shy away from the identical lessons of the Civil War?
7
What is the will to win in the author's opinion? A willing to pursue military objectives no matter the costs in collateral damage? Those ideas sound like the first steps on the road to war crimes and genocide.
7
Netanyahu's strategy is to maintain an occupation of the Palestinian people at minimal financial cost to Israel and minimal political costs to him and Likud. Leaving Palestinians on near starvation diets in Gaza and just enough economic activity in the west bank, he has quelled Palestinian capabilities for violence against Israelis to minimally acceptable levels. We help him do that.
8
So why was there ever a WWI? The Prussians decisively beat France in the Franco-Prussian war. Is it possible that even after a decisive victory the survivors will resent and fear you? Or are you saying that the victors should massacre all survivors?
10
The world's political leaders are powerless to achieve
world peace. That qualifies them for the 12-step program!
They should be required to attend 3-4 meetings per week,
to discuss the principles: Gratitude, Willingness, Honesty,
Unselfishness, Love, and Service, in a process of ego-deflation. Politicians Anonymous!
2
You can’t win if you are preoccupied with counting your enemies casualties. War can only achieve objectives that can be achieved by killing people and breaking things. If unwilling to kill and break to whatever degree is required, then on can be defeated by a stronger will even if otherwise inferior.
Israel could end the rocket fire from Gaza completely if they had the will. Open up with a massive artillery barrage when a rocket comes across. With each rocket, double the intensity and duration. Eventually the rockets will stop. That is only possible if Israel leaves it solely up the Gazans to decide how many of their lives those rockets are worth.
@KBronson
Or how many lives their dignity, humanity and independence are worth
Simply put, you can't win a war against combatants with dedicated ideologies fighting as guerrilla-style units in lands that are not your own. It didn't work in Vietnam (in my opinion the better comparison for our modern immortal conflicts, rather than the last true nationalist conflicts of WWI and WWII), it's not working for Israel, and its not working for the U.S. and our allies in our 17-long year War on Terror. The IRA/UK conflict and resolution shows the only way a strong entity can favorably resolve these ideological conflicts: compromise.
And if there can be no compromise, then the stronger side simply has to concede, or go on fighting forever. We had to do it in Vietnam. Russia had to do it in Afghanistan.
People fight for what they consider home, regardless of whatever transgressions caused their country or organization to lose control over it in the first place.
I know I would.
9
Maybe Trump's family and friends in the White House might want to rethink their shoot from the mouth first approach to diplomacy. Reports came out this week stating that the total cost on our 'war on terror' has been almost 6 trillion dollars since 9/11. This includes the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and smaller wars the general public is not aware of, Homeland Security, interest payments to finance the wars, VA costs to care for the vets, and other miscellaneous costs that get run up in the fog of war. And the Pentagon claimed if we went to war with either Russia or China we might not win, even though we outspend them 3 to 1 and 10 to 1, respectively. The Pentagon brass suggests we increase the defense budget 3 to 5 percent annually until we go broke. And the next war we fight we will be alone.
7
Would the learned Mr. Stephens please describe for us exactly what total victory would look like in a full-scale nuclear war?
8
'Then again, Israelis also pay a steep price for restraint. '
For once, I would like to see someone truly honest enough and with enough guts to say, 'creating Israel, a homeland for the endlessly-persecuted Jews of the world, right in the midst of, and taking land away from, the hostile Arabs who have been living there for centuries and then expecting that all will be hunky dory, was an immense mistake'.
Was it Ben Gurion who had said very candidly, in essence, 'of course they are angry, because we took their land'.
Of course the native Indians are unhappy that we took their land and how they wish they had sent their army to the borders when the long caravan of ships carrying Europeans, possibly including some middle-eastern terrorists and many rapists and many bad, bad people. Don't they wish they could have denied asylum to those fleeing persecution in Europe? You bet they do.
But they were powerless then and they are powerless now.
9
@Dreamer
A point that most Americans are unaware of. Palestine in 1945 had a population of 8 million Palestinians and merely about 100K Jews. Yet America facilitated the settlement of European Jewry and the displacement of the native population. A similar situation occurred in the settlement of America. The only difference is that in addition to taking the natives land they also engaged in genocide. The tragedy of America is that the settlers had firearms while the natives had arrows and tomahawk. If the natives had firearms and the settlers had bow and arrows we would be living in a different country.
1
WWII eventually led to a lasting peace in Europe because a majority of the population of the loosing side was horrified when they realized what they had done, it had less to do with the magnitude of the defeat. While similarly absolute and resulting in the destruction of empires, WWI did not lead to peace because the population of the loosing side viewed their case just and their treatment unjust. Further destruction could have delayed WWII but not prevented it. A more equitable peace and an attempt at European integration could have prevented it, perhaps....
What to learn from this: Ending wars is never simple and most likely going to succeed when all sides believe that peace and compromise are beneficial to all. Vietnam is a good example that getting out and not winning at all cost can actually lead to a fairly good long-term outcome, thanks to the Vietnamese people.
5
I just don't understand Mr. Stephens' attachment to the notion that a will to win can defeat any odds.
34
@Thomas Zaslavsky
It only works if you accept genocide as the ultimate solution.
6
Unfortunately, the basic premise is simply wrong. "Why do they drag on interminably? Because one side lacks the means to win and the other lacks the will" is baloney.
The wars last interminably because we no longer permit one side to kill all of the other. Since the survivors fight harder even as they lose, an unwinnable stalemate exists.
5
The answer to the premise question is simple:
We no longer declare wars. Odd that the last war won decisively was WWII, also the last declared war.
Declaring war results in such a disruption of civilian life that everyone pushes for it to be over quickly so we can get back to normal.
But if endless undeclared wars are the new normal, then they will never end.
5
'Alas, Babylon' was published 50 years ago. It's about a nuclear war that was triggered by an American missile that went astray and hit the wrong target--in Syria. All of the elements for that apocalyptic scenario are in place today--in Syria. And Iraq and Afghanistan Eastern Europe and the South China Sea and numerous other locales around this planet. All it takes is one little mistake. So, relax, all we have to do is never make a mistake! No problem, eh?
4
Is the situation in Palestine really "our war"?
3
@Steve B.
YES !!!!!!
@Steve B.
Unfortunately, some of it is our money, so I'm afraid the answer is yes.
The forever wars of today are very different than the wars of defined nation-states, which ended in 1945. What has succeeded those vast military conflicts that involved hundreds of thousands of soldiers in campaigns ranging across defined but disputed boundaries, are smaller, vicious conflicts between artificially-defined or murky groups, with names like Vietminh, Viet Cong, al-Kaida, al-Shabob or Hamas. Even Korea and Vietnam were wars between states that had been created by edict, so those violent and destructive wars were over something other than the conflicts between nation-states.
The notion that such wars can actually be won requires a definition of what victory looks like. If a the Taliban is actually induced to surrender, other groups with spring up like the Hydra, ready to continue the terrorist attacks and small-unit battles. Such opponents might quit for a while, but their cause of independence from what they consider to be the rule of an outside power, or oppressions of an infidel, or the unjust taking of homelands, don’t die. They smolder and brew until they reignite.
Lord Kitchener tried all-out military and social war against the Dutch settlers in South Africa in the Boer War. He broke the will of the Boer people with his own terror tactics, but the conflict continued, and defined their politics for decades.
Simple answers to complex problems are always wrong, said H. L. Mencken. Higher thinking by capable leaders is needed to solve these forever wars.
105
@Steve Feldmann
Mostly true, but don't forget: We kicked Grenada's butt, and Panama's, too. So, there's that.
8
@Steve Feldmann
We try to do to much with a specific narrow tool. What if we had confined ourselves from the outset to one narrow objective: to lay brutal disproportionate and castotrophic destruction on those who act to attack the United States, destroying the Al Queada camps and any Taliban factions that chose to fight, but otherwise leaving Afghans alone to live as they please, to bugger the boys and oppress the women, grow heroin and fight among themselves? Would the outcome have been better? I don’t know but it is worth considering.
2
@August West - A couple of National Guard units from most any state in the union could have defeated those two countries, hardly comparable to Iraq or Afghanistan wars.
Many bright people have already articulated here - better than I can - much of what needs to be said. Nonetheless, here are a few extra thoughts:
"Because one side lacks the means to win and the other lacks the will." Hogwash. Most said it already; why end something that creates so much profit? Human misery be damned.
But if you want a real answer to your piece, here it is:
United Nations Mandate 2019-A1:
Henceforth, when wars or conflicts are declared, the first soldiers to fire weapons will be the sons and daughters of the Kings, Presidents, Imams, Priests/Ministers and CEO's. Once all of their kids are dead or injured, then we'll send in the next wave of politician's sons and daughters. After all, historically we've sent the children of the poor and disenfranchised - but that's not slowed the dogs of war. Let's try it this way for a change.
Psst....Mr Stephens. We realize that your piece was not about trying to stop the horrors of war and more about cautioning Israeli leaders about even thinking of negotiating a peace with the Palestinians. We're just choosing to focus on the 'end all wars thingy'.
-- See you in a few weeks for your next pro-israeli piece.
7
The Earth is a very small stage in a vast cosmic arena. Think of the endless cruelties visited by the inhabitants of one corner of this pixel on the scarcely distinguishable inhabitants of some other corner, how frequent their misunderstandings, how eager they are to kill one another, how fervent their hatreds. Think of the rivers of blood spilled by all those generals and emperors so that, in glory and triumph, they could become the momentary masters of a fraction of a dot....Carl Sagan
31
The United States simply pursues its own course of action for its self interests around the world. Spending more on the military than the next eight countries combined is quite a feat. It clearly shows the power of the military industrial complex. Defense contractors need wars. Politicians need enemies. That is a match made in hell. Endless war is simply good for both concerns. America's great material wealth provides for this abundant military spending but beyond the costs what impact have the endless wars had on the American psyche? Gun culture, ultra violence, intolerance, hatred and a systemic devaluation of human life. All of these factors indicate a country in decay. Maybe it's time for Americans to reflect on the culture and the values that made it into a world power. It's easy to fight and not think. Thinking about what you are doing and how to achieve peaceful solutions requires patience, forethought, and a willingness to listen and negotiate with respect. It is way past time that the US put down the guns and came to the negotiating table to end the wars. I'm not holding my breath....
6
We should be talking about the Will to Profit, a hallmark of the human condition. Though Israel, using the same ingenuity with which they made the desert blossom, has developed its own indigenous arms industry, it is still a good customer for warplanes and heavy weaponry. As is Saudi Arabia. We fail to show much humanitarian concern for Yemen or Sudan (to name two), which countries have no oil or natural gas pipelines to "protect," unlike Afghanistan or Iraq.
What we lack, or discouraged from developing, is a Will to Peace. There are plenty of humanitarian and inter-religious groups laboring to build the kinds of bridges that are needed to develop this will, but they are denied news coverage, and in some cases actively suppressed.
The will to profit goes hand in hand with exploitation, tyranny, and keeping alive the flames of violence fed by the production of arms and the expropriation of natural resources. There is no will to win, only the will to keep the flames smoldering. The means to do that are seemingly insurmountable.
7
The one big reason not mentioned: profits. War may or may not be good for business. But war IS big business.
7
is there anybody out there who knows why we are still fighting in Afghanistan? or, who knows why we thought we had to go into that quagmire in the first place other than in our horror of being attacked by terrorists we had to retailiate against someplace with a physical location on a map?
the Afghans, for their part, appear to be playing us for suckers, ever since we flew over the first suitcases of cash.
aside from what could be a natural reluctance to admit a colossal mistake, there is money to be made by continuing a low level war for as long as possible. is that why we're still there?
so, if not for a bad reason, what is a good reason?
4
@[email protected]
We are there because any rational reconsideration of why we're still there, or what we can still accomplish by being there, is instantly derided by Republicans as "weakness" and "cutting and running" because it's good for the short term interests of the GOP.
Obama kept us there because he didn't have the political cover to do what he and all of us know is the right thing to do: pull the plug and live with the consequences. He would have been savaged as an "appeaser of terrorists" by the right, making his entire agenda stillborn.
One of the very few upsides to Trump is that he doesn't seem inclined to jump into any new wars, and has even begun talking about negotiating an exit with the Taliban.
In the same way it "took Nixon to go to China" in the '70s, after decades of Republicans tarring Democrats as "weak on communism," it may be that it takes a Republican (Trump) to get us out of Afghanistan. In fact, I predict he'll do that prior to his run in 2020.
"In Iraq, the U.S. ended up in a forever war in part because the first Bush administration left Saddam Hussein in power after the Persian Gulf War in 1991."
I posit that the removal of Saddam Hussein placed Iran as the supreme military and political power in the Near East (Israel excepted...) and that is what made The Forever Wars possible.
I do agree that the Treaty of Versailles was political, economic and military failure that led to a twenty year truce, not a decisive peace and, perhaps as tragically, the continuation of European colonialism which led directly to the US involvement in Viet Nam.
4
The only reason for W.W.1 was to make money.
"The large banking interests were deeply interested in the world war because of the wise opportunities for large profits."
...William Jennings Bryan
J.D.Rockefeller made $200,000 on W.W.1
It just gets worse from here on.
1
Re your Gulf War example - Then President Bush was able to put together a real multi-nation coalition by promising to evict Iraq from Kuwait but not keep going to Bagdad to remove Saddam Hussein. This was well done and perhaps, in fact, our only true military victory in many years. What you suggest would have been a betrayal of that agreement and a big mistake. When we did depose him in the bloody and costly Iraq War we set in motion a sequence of disastrous that will pay for into the untold future.
8
We are entering an era dominated by the politics of resentment and finding people to blame.
Hurting others has become more important than getting together to solve problems.
If you add the current violence and encouragement of hatred to climate change, what you have is a disaster, and possibly the end of civilization.
Call me an "alarmist" and I will tell you that I am right to be alarmed. There is never a time in history when it helps to hurt people and ruin the countryside rather than band together to help each other.
7
Wars happen because we refuse to believe in the dignity of mankind. The military industrial complex does not help either.
4
The problems for post-war Europe were not created by the Armistice, but by the details of the Versailles settlement. The peace treaty created the worst of all possible worlds: it humiliated Germany without depriving her of the means of gaining revenge.
9
“a single long war that ended only with Germany’s surrender in 1945”
Mr. Stephens conveniently forgets that Germany’s surrender did not create peace and prosperity in a united Europe, but instead was followed by Allied occupation, the division of the country and the continent, and a Cold War that lasted 45 years, until the Soviet bloc collapsed in exhaustion and the once-victorious Allies finally decided they could trust the Germans enough to let them reunify. And the first thing the unified German government did after that was to promote the breakup of Yugoslavia by funding their old Croatian allies from World War II, leading to a bloody civil war that featured “ethnic cleansing” and genocidal massacres, following the German model from the 1940s.
The “will” that is needed is not the will to force the other side to unconditional surrender at all costs, including genocide, but the will on both sides to achieve peace through mutual understanding. This is always in the best interests of the vast majority, but is always opposed by the narrow-minded religious fanatics, nationalist politicians, militarists, and arms dealers who prefer to profit by stirring up mutual hatred and fear. That is why the wars go on forever.
12
@J Johnson This is a gross simplification of what happened in the former Yugoslavia. I would suggest reading a detailed account: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Croatian_War_of_Independence
There were those in Yugoslavia who believed Germany wanted to extend its sphere of influence into the Balkans, but there is little evidence that that has actually happened.
Germany could not have funded those allies from WWII as Tito murdered almost 200,000 of them at the end of the war. There were no "Ustasha" or "Chetniks" in 1991 (except, perhaps, very old ones). There were only opportunists.
1
How do you fight and win a war against a hazily defined group that is not trying to defend territory, but to defend itself and its will? Imagine living in a village in Afghanistan. The US rolls in, gives away some stuff, says the Taliban is bad, builds a rudimentary school house, and leaves. The Taliban rolls in later, promises jobs in the poppy fields, threatens to kill collaborators, then melts back into the countryside. What is there to win and how? People want to survive. They don't see much different between US and Taliban rule. They just want both sides to stay away. There is nothing to win.
14
the Taliban are Muslim. the Americans are infidels with a very lose grip on a lot of money.
At the end of WW2 we embarked on a great experiment. The Marshall plan. From the ground up we committed to rebuilding and reestablishing democratic self rule in the countries we defeated and were occupied by our military.
We did the same in Japan. Israel squandered their great victory in 67 with a harsh occupation that has created a hated dependency.
15
In the days of early man, wars were probably brutal and short, with the winners taking the vanquished women as prizes and the men were often eaten! As more people populated the planet there were more and more conflicts over territory and resources. As long as our populations continue to grow the conflicts will exist, even within a given society as the inequality grows. So it won't be just between countries but within many of the countries as well.
To go back in history, when the tribes came out of Egypt and the Red Sea "parted," the land they came into already had people in it, but they fought battles and took the land and cities away from those who were already there. So easy to claim that "God" gave it to them!
6
Mr. Stephens, while you and I have many disagreements, I certainly will respect your opinion. However, what are you advocating here? Permanent reoccupation of Gaza? Permanent reoccupation of Iraq? Permanent occupation of Syria? As for Afghanistan, as long as the Taliban can run back into Pakistan, there can be no victory. So what’s your solution, a joint invasion of Pakistan with India? I get the status quo is untenable and agree with you that the current situation in all 4 places is untenable but the logical conclusion of what you propose is untenable for Isreal in Gaza in terms of population and is beyond the population capacity of what the United States could muster.
5
The idea that a 'more decisive' Allied win would have prevented the later conspiracy theories (by nationalist German agitators) is bloody minded and ludicrous. German militarists were no more inclined to admit fault in defeat than Donald Trump is capable of admitting a mistake. This piece is irresponsible. The front (where Bret says he would want the war to go) was far from German territory. The final Allied offensive cost the Allies over a million lives. German losses were even greater. Mutiny was widespread in the German Army. Revolution had removed Russia from the war, but it also broke out in Berlin.
2
After victory, there has to be occupation. Could the victorious allies in 1918 occupy central Europe in such a way that they could ultimately withdraw and leave a peaceful and stable situation behind? Or would they punish central Europe, appropriating its resources to rebuild their own damaged economies, and leave it longing for revenge?
The necessity for occupation after victory makes the enemy into a tar baby. Only a fool thinks that once punched, a tar baby is easily or quickly disengaged from. After World War II, we were magnanimous towards the defeated Axis powers because we needed them as allies against Uncle Joe and Chairman Mao; we were lucky that they were around, because they saved us from making Tar Babies.
Our wars are forever because we insist on fighting Tar Babies rather than finding other ways to deal with them. Perhaps it is sometimes necessary to punch a tar baby, but the dangers of doing this must be recognized and anticipated. And they usually arent.
1
One medium sized quibble: You can't say Arabs are anti Semitic. They too are Semites.
We have unending wars because we have a military industrial complex that, like a shark in the ocean, must keep moving and devouring or it will die.
How can they possibly make more money on bullets if they don't use the last batch they made?
We have unending wars because the gas and oil business wants the oil. Profits, you know. If we added the costs to our Nation of using our Navy to patrol and keep the oil lanes open for business gasoline would cost $20.00 a gallon.
The U.S. spends more on defense than the rest of the world combined (or nearly) so what are we worried about.
The latest worry was ISIS. A cult of fundamentalist religionists who don't have jobs and futures.
The Allies soundly defeated the Axis in 1945 then went to work to rebuild the Countries that were destroyed in the process. That fact helps explain the relative peace that followed, at least in Europe. Maybe we should have gone into Afghanistan with bulldozers and cement trucks after the first invasion and put those guys to work.
It would be better if the U.S. and Israel picked their fights a little better. We learned, or should have learned, in Vietnam that you cannot defeat a guerrilla army that has the support of the people.
Israel should learn that helping build a Palestinian nation will in the end be cheaper and cleaner (less death) than constantly reacting to Hamas' daily threats.
3
Mr. Stephens: Regarding this statement in your essay, "If anything, Gaza serves him (Netanyahu) as a political billboard of sorts - a warning to the Israeli public of what it can expect of a Palestinian state should one ever come into being." This fearful and pessimistic view only serves to further dim the hopes of a future peace between the Israelis and Palestinians. If Lord Balfour (1917); or Anwar Sadat/ Menachem Begin, (1978), allowed their heroic efforts to be clouded by the lens of this cynical "billboard" you cite, perhaps there would be no State of Israel today. Let the peacemakers view the possibilities for future peace through a more hopeful and positive lens. Encourage them to "give peace a chance."
tj
2
The Armistice was main the cause of the Nazi's rise? I think you've been watching "Wonder Woman" too many times. The rise of the Nazis and their "stabbed in the back" narrative would have been much less likely if the victors in WWI had not imposed a punitive peace treaty at Versailles in 1919. The crippling reparations Germany had to pay led directly to its hyperinflation in the 1920s; that wiped out middle class savings and living standards, leading to a much mre fertile climate for extremism. (The global depression of the 1930s also played a role---but, as we've seen in the present day, populist extremists can rise even in countries where a recent defeat in war hasn't occurred.)
11
What would you suggest? As I see there are two viable options.
The first. Kill as much of the enemy as possible will accepting that civilians will also die and then subjugate the country until they decide they can stand on their own. I must point out we never left Japan, S.Korea, or Germany.
The other option is just to leave. And do our best to keep them from ever coming here.
The third option of indefinite outpost holding in hostile territory while propping a local leadership that doesn't really want us there but relies on us to stay in power basically just feeds our national treasure to the military industrial complex in a never ending river. This must end.
5
All of the wars across the globe could end in an instant. (take that in for a moment) It is only a matter of political will and money.
If the ''superpowers'' (America, Russia and now China) decided that there were going to be ''set'' borders for all countries, and decided they were going to work together, then that would be that. All three could send troops, build walls, and fight whatever resistance there were. It would all be over in the blip of an eye.
However, the powers that be allow the fighting to go on (generally through proxies) , as all three (and more) jockey for political position, in the pursuit of dominating power structures and the natural resources of whatever country. (mainly oil)
This is the way since WWI/WWII
2
Nuclear weapons changed the equation.
No country with Nuc's will go down, surrender unconditionally, without using them. And in doing so Everyone loses.
3
All of the wars across the globe could end in an instant. (take that in for a moment) It is only a matter of political will and money.
If the ''superpowers'' (America, Russia and now China) decided that there were going to be ''set'' borders for all countries, and decided they were going to work together, then that would be that. All three could send troops, build walls, and fight whatever resistance there were. It would all be over in the blip of an eye.
However, the powers that be allow the fighting to go on (generally through proxies) , as all three (and more) jockey for political position, in the pursuit of dominating power structures and the natural resources of whatever country. (mainly oil)
This is the way since WWI/WWII .
1
It’s disgusting how easy it is for media outlets to dictate the manner by which large swaths of people will actually come to believe the things that they do. To Mr. Stephens, I would offer a quote from Walter Scott:
“Oh, what a tangled web we weave
When first we practise to deceive!”
Omission is one powerfully deceptive tool, and the geopolitical omissions surrounding much of the West’s understanding of the State of Israel is appalling. The etymology of the word ‘philistine’ does not paint a flattering portrait of those that conquered the land.
“Hamas hit Israel with some 460 rockets and mortars and Israel responded with airstrikes of more than 100 targets in Gaza.”
The State of Israel has an active-denial missile shield. “The Iron Dome” is incredibly effective, it’s just too costly to destroy each projectile. That said, there has been one Israeli killed.
Gaza is a strip of land that’s about twenty-five miles long, containing about 1,750,000 residents. There is no way to escape aerial bombardment. Human life either has value, or it doesn’t.
2
I rarely agree with Bret on anything, but I find this piece truly appalling even by that standard. This is exactly the type of neo-con argument I'd expect from a Paul Wolfowitz. How ironic that this is published so soon after remembrance day (veterans day?).
Bret, do yourself a favor and read 'Why we don't learn from history' by Liddell Hart before opining on the topic of winning wars again.
3
I found the premise of of Mr. Stephens column to be
sad...sad that war never ceases to end...sad that
money and politics continue to drive us to war...sad that people are maimed and killed each day ...When
will we ever learn to accept peace and embrace
forgiveness...
4
Reasonable debate about how to define the terms "war" and "winning" helps show how elusive are nice, happy conclusions to conflict. Is war only destructive activities, therefore when those activities end (the "cessation of hostilities") will the war end? Maybe decisive and overwhelming force won against the Nazis and the Empire of Japan, but those seemingly clear-cut wins, are exceptions in the history of war.
World War II also involved pre-existing conflict with the Soviet Union, and that War really became the Cold War. WWII war was "won" against some dictators and fascists, but not all of them, because the Stalinist Soviet Union, though severely crippled, finally by the 1990's, really hasn't been eliminated, thanks to Putin. (Korea and Vietnam have not kept the PRC from becoming another potential war threat.)
The "war" to free the slaves has not really concluded in the U.S. (The "war against drugs"; the "war on poverty . . . "?)
Forever wars in the Middle East, at least ours in Iraq and Afghanistan, and our "war on terror" seem to be very good for the United States economy. We seem not to have killed enough people to end those by "win", "lose", or "draw."
Finally, Stephens overly simplifies what Hitler and the Nazis were all about and puts too much emphasis on Pershing's rather naïve view. Some more reading about WWI would tell him that much than then how WWI concluded contributed to WWII.
1
Insofar as the US is concerned, I noticed there was not one mention of the word "draft".
Yes, it would be expensive and in a purely military sense unnecessary but it would put an end to our (the US) endless "war or whatever".
One could have fun thinking about the new types of deferments involved with a resurrected draft. Someone might be too important to draft because they excel in developing algorithms to determine the fast food buying habits of folks.
1
It seems most wars, regardless of the underlying cause(s), would never become more than regional skirmishes if industrialized nations simply wouldn't feed them with money and sophisticated weaponry. Most kids don't have RPGs lying around....
5
In its most primitive form, war resembles a multi-generational vendetta: there may be lulls in violence but never peace or a resolution. The routine of declaring wars - and with it, the end of peace - got started when centralized states with organized military forces needed to put their citizens, allies and adversaries about their changed circumstances. When the adversary is not a state or a uniform-wearing military, the conduct of war regresses to a more primitive state.
2
So, too, with our Civil War.
1
I'm puzzling over the distinction between the privations imposed on Germany after WWI (now seen as bad, a source of WWII), and our present strategy of imposing sanctions and tariffs with the goal of impoverishing our enemy, whether in Russia, Iran, China,etc. (now seen as good, a way to make our enemies capitulate.) Was there anything similar to Marshall Plan toward Russia when Soviet Union collapsed, or did we just beat our chests, crow about being the last super power, and smirk at their suffering?
6
@DMATH
I wholeheartedly concur. The lingering dissatisfaction in Germany over reparations in the 1920s was a huge talking point for the Nazis. After WW II Japan and Germany, though totally defeated, became our closest allies through our investment in their rebuilding.
2
Interesting comments. To humiliate, usually unnecessarily, the losing party in a war, may not necessarily guarantee permanent peace. We humans seem born warmongers when we plunder for the spoils, especially when listening to Eisenhower's warning of the avarice of a military-industrial complex, enriching itself at the huge cost of lives and treasure. If I could put aside 'W's' invasion of Irak under false pretenses, and focus instead on the 'permanent' war of Israel against a radicalized fraction of Palestinians (Hamas, shooting it's own foot to stay 'relevant' {in power}), it is a sly enterprise for Netanyahu to stay in power, asserting that, by not being involved in subduing Palestinians, more violence might ensue...when the opposite might be true. I believe that, if Israel returns, or swaps Palestinian land, stops the current 'Apartheid' policy, and helps them gain independence, that Hamas would disarm itself for lack of motive to send a few little missiles into Israel for dignity sake. Insofar complete surrender and the human carnage as a result, a compromise armistice via diplomacy seems better and more humane. Life is just too short to make each other's life miserable. And for what, exactly? Arrogance would do well in ceding it's predominance to Humility; and then, Solidarity and Justice; without it, no peace can be envisioned.
4
@manfred marcus Humiliation is the easiest way to guarantee there will NEVER be peace. This is not just for humans, it's for all animals. A humiliated dog or horse will kill you at their first chance. Hatred does not breed respect or love. Unfortunately, even though we have (not now, but before) a president who was dedicated to forming trusting relationships with all 'enemies', the shrill sounds from our 'Madding Crowd' declares otherwise.
2
What does "one side lacks the will" to win these wars mean?
Remember, this lacking the will to win is supposedly why the U.S. got bogged down in the Vietnam War.
If President George H. W. Bush had done what his Oedipally driven son, President George W. Bush, did, and taken Gulf War 1 into the streets of Baghdad in order to remove Saddam Hussein from power, the likelihood is that we would have reached the present state of chaos even sooner, not that we would have secured a lasting peace.
For "the will to win the war" to be effective in the Middle East, it would require exterminating every man, woman, and child on the other side. Alexander the Great is said to have committed genocide against every tribal group that opposed his forces in what is now Afghanistan, but he still couldn't hold the territory. He marched his army back out, killing all the way. No lack of will to win, and no peaceful rule over the region.
The implication is clear: to be effective, genocide must leave not a single survivor. If this is what Mr. Stephens has in mind, he should say so plainly.
13
I see no hope for peace when even the Democrats are mostly war mongers--consider who was all for the Iraq war; consider who was all for the Afghanistan war. Consider Hillary's crowing about killing Kadafi. America is the most warlike country on earth--it's what we do.
4
@Hector In the big picture, this country is still a teenager - and we know how they are . . .
2
@barbara jackson, You mean teenagers like the ones in "A Clockwork Orange"?
1
in response to JoWilliams, ref 100,000 women troops. you are on to something. how many women leaders throughout history have started wars? I believe the answer is none - other than, perhaps, the 1152 War of the Whiskers between France and England.
@Sparky
Margaret Thatcher; Golda Meir, Indira Ghandi?
2
The only part of that Opinion piece that had any validity was the statement, "historical counterfactuals can never be proved."
2
Random thought - Could we acknowledge Joe Haldeman for the origin of the term "Forever War" in his 1974 novel of the same name? He's a fine award-winning author and should get some dystopian credit.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Forever_War
5
Has the pencil-pushing ideologue Stephens ever had some “skin in the game “, literally, or have his children, siblings, relatives, close friends, etc.? Has he ever witnessed up close the catastrophic consequences of unleashed modern day warfare? Maybe so, but most likely not. What we categorically do not need are these present day John Bolton wannabe, trigger happy, “tough guys”.
11
Exactly right.
P.S.: The Palestinians actually have two states, one on the West Bank and one in Gaza. At least one of these is internationally recognized, the same as any other state: it has embassies (not quite called embassies, but just as much embassies as the U. S. "interest sections" in several countries) around the world, controls its territory, and its travel documents (not quite called "passports", but equivalent) are accepted around the world.
1
The conflict between Israel and the Palestinians continues because the underlying cause remains unaddressed; modern Israel was established on land where other people were living. Until both peoples have secure nation states to call their own, there is no solution, military or otherwise.
Likewise, the war in Afghanistan continues because it is essentially a Pashtun rebellion against a rival tribal coalition in Kabul, backed by the United States.
Until the local participants believe they have more to gain from peace than war, both conflicts will not only drag on interminably, they will continue indefinitely.
6
Mr. Stephens,
You don't see the forest for the trees.
There hasn't been a real war since WW2.
Since then, our "wars" have all been what Eisenhower warned us against 58 years ago, undue influence by the Military Industrial Complex.
"Wars", in this new definition, are profitable.
The end.
12
The question is: could these "forever" wars be won? What would be needed to win them? Assuming that question actually has an answer, do we have the resources to win them? What we've done since Vietnam is to fight wars against adversaries that have had no voters to answer to when they've failed to defeat us.
In Vietnam an authoritarian power, having fought the French, the Japanese, the French again then us, did not have to account to its public for the massive casualties and privations war imposed. Their is no Taliban government in Afghanistan that has to account to its citizens for a war its been fighting since 1979.
Do we want to invade and conquer Syria? Why? Is our national survival at stake? Our vital interests? Are we willing to raise taxes in order to fight a war on that scale? We didn't want to do that in Iraq. Two months after invading Iraq Congress passed a large tax cut.
The most basic question we face in our wars is: why do we fight them? What is at stake? That wasn't at all clear in WWI, a war I don't think we should have fought. WWII was necessary but have we actually fought a war since where the stakes were as clear?
8
I disagree with Bret Stephens's premise here, which is a result of "survivor bias." He looks at wars that drag on, and of course those are wars that weren't won decisively. But wars that do end decisively may still spawn sequels (e.g. the Franco-Prussian War, Israel's Six-Day War, America's invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan), and wars that end indecisively might not flare up again (e.g. the War of 1812 or our other border conflicts with Canada).
If the Entente powers had pushed on into Germany, would that have decreased Germans' desire for redemption and revenge? Would it have decreased the war-weariness that led Britain and France to allow the re-militarization of Germany? Or would some writer from this alternate future note that the Entente turned down a resolution that was nearly complete victory, and suggest that a more lenient outcome would have prevented the rise of Nazism?
@Robert Stadler
Quite right. WW1 was won and settled on the battlefield. There was no need or call to despoil a starving Germany as well - even if there had been any willingness (beyond Pershing) to suffer such pointless casualties. (Mutiny would have been more likely.) And whatever is said about reparations and resentment, it has to be noted that the Nazis were nothing and made no headway before the Great Depression when US credit was stopped and mass unemployment and scapegoat seeking followed. Absent that disaster, the Nazis would probably have remained just a political footnote.
1
No, no, no. This is at best a convenient and selective re-interpretation of history. Hitler and everything else that went wrong in Germany can be traced to a very bad armistice and repayments program that John Maynard Keynes wrote a whole book about, “The Economic Consequences of the Peace”. The seeds of the next war were economic and man made. Much the same can be said of almost every lingering war you can name. How about the American Civil War? Terrible reconstruction led to Jim Crow and a century long Cold War. Vietnam was at war in various forms for centuries before we got there. The Middle East is a quagmire populated by winners and losers of a long economic conflict. By mid-century we’ll have lots more of this as climate refugees swarm the earth seeking the essentials of life. We need to figure this out and the solution is not in this article.
5
Defeating the Taliban is a pipe dream. They are a tribe which has been in Pakistan and Afghanistan forever and will be there long after we are gone, if we are ever gone.
1
@Richard Bircher
Unless we nuke every square mile of that country you are probably right. Just in case it wasn't obvious, we should not nuke Afghanistan.
1
War in Libya ended with the complete surrender of the Qaddafi regime, the death of its leader, and a complete withdrawal of allied forces, but there is no Libyan peace.
2
Are we pretending we don't promote the biggest military and weapons sales on the planet?
Doesn't Congress give great deference to corporations, especially military contractors? Even after they defraud us, we give them another contract.
Has our government lost perspective so that endless war seems to be the primary reason we exist?
Americans own half the guns on the planet. We are a militaristic nation.
Only we can change direction, but it will be over the objections of corporations that profit from guns and war.
2
It's probably best to remember there are NO victories in war. That way ruminating on the thought that "maybe" if we had done X, the outcome would have been different.
The case can be made closer to home, that our own Civil War is still not over. We have a racist president who belittles minorities to the glee of a really small idiot minority and to the hushed acceptance of a larger majority, now exposed as Republicans. We have weird statues to the "great" men of the Confederacy....the opposition in the war in which a number of Americans died so that, we guess, their enemies could have statues erected? Totally weird.
We should probably finish up here at home on our own war before we ruminate on the failures of other countries and their own wars.
Tear all the statues of the confederacy down. Thaat's a good first step.
3
"Wars that don’t end decisively — in absolute victory for one side and unequivocal defeat for the other — tend not to end at all"
Unequivocal defeat for the defeated is only the first half of the equation. The second half is how the post-war administration convinces the defeated that they will be better off not fighting in the future and that any subsequent attempt to fight will end even worse for them.
Some people are easier to convince of this than others. And some cannot be convinced at all.
2
It is far from clear that a dictated peace with Germany after World War I would have made much difference, but the extended war would certainly have cost many more lives on both sides in the short term. It is likely that the victorious allies would still have imposed the ruinous reparations that later crippled the Weimar economy. Moreover, we are all painfully aware these days that conspiracy theories like "the stab in the back" have little relationship to the truth to begin with. There is no reason some variant of it could not easily have arisen under these imagined circumstances as well.
An equivalent of the Marshall plan for Germany after WWI, rather than reparations, would have gone a long way toward reducing the circumstances that led to WWII. Whether any of the victorious governments at the time had either the will or the means for this is another question entirely.
6
Trying to draw comparisons between WWI and Israel's military occupations is a major stretch. Perhaps Israel could militarily 'win' in Gaza if it simply had the will, through a path of domination and genocide. These aren't the 20th century wars of nation states, and there will always be another insurgent otherwise; unjust situations are inherently unstable. Easier and cheaper political solutions toward peace and justice are available, but do not serve the needs of an elite who rules through fear and benefits from the industry of war.
3
@Travis The current situation in Gaza can be traced -- with about as much confidence as one should ever have in these matters -- to one of those "easier and cheaper" solutions. You're also rather dismissive of the Israeli electorate, the vast majority of which has come to its own, unaided conclusion that ceding anything more to the Palestinians at this point would not be worth the risk.
So, do we need a war methodology that engages in war with no deaths on our side? Or maybe just that credible threat? Don't we also need an aftermath strategy? Really, who really wants to clean up such a mess. There has to be the will to do the "clean up". What is the goal of total surrender? Peaceful co-existence? Is this the "two state solution" discussion that has been endless? Could we see this simply as a crucible? Or the insanity in Yemen that we are a part of? Do we have anything that looks like a global end game? Or how about an end-point that looks just two or three generations ahead? The lull between WWI and WWII now almost seems to be a luxury. Resources and will. Resources to do what? Will to do what? To enable co-existence? To crush the "other"? As the planet gets more crowded, and the seas continue to rise, where are we going? What are we to do? What are our practical choices?
Desires to fight on to total victory are usually expressed by the sorts of people who never serve in wars.
10
Thanks for your thought provoking article in the best tradition of the times. Historical what ifs only make sense if we really understood all the factors involved which we very rarely do. Decisions made by real people in real time are dissected with caution by those ensconced in armchairs years later. We should be humble and realize that the pressure to end suffering and bloodshed now with an imperfect result may always be judged preferable to some hypothetical better result achieved at far higher and more uncertain cost latter. The humanity of our leaders often come into play.
2
You don't mention geography, arrogance or stupidity when you mention the endless wars America finds itself in. We don't belong over there and those that live there understand that. If a foreign power took over the Bronx you would expect Americans to participate, endlessly, in their attempt to rid their turf of these evil invaders and you would be cheering on these patriots. I also note that you mention the legal and righteous first gulf war but leave out the second, illegal invasion of Iraq that pretty much assured that we would be in endless conflict in the Middle East. On top of all that, we now take a war-like posture on our own southern border to protect America from impoverished, frightened, women and children in Trump's neverending war on sanity.
3
Simplistic argument. Wars are not limited to military competition; they are multi-dimensional. You're not just dealing with bombs and bullets, but with public support, political trends, international perceptions, alliances, economics and a host of other factors. Stephens invokes "the will to win" as if victory is just a matter of resources and desire, and the context within which the struggle takes place is irrelevant. I have a one-word answer for that proposition: Vietnam.
4
If Pershing’s advice was followed WW2 might have been averted is an utterly futile day dreaming.
William James in The Moral Equivalent of War feels military feelings are too deeply grounded. Says that there is something highly paradoxical in the modern man's relation to war. Ask all citizens whether they would vote “to have our war for the Union expunged from history, and the record of a peaceful transition to the present time substituted for that of its marches and battles, and probably hardly a handful of eccentrics would say yes. Those ancestors, those efforts, those memories and legends, are the most ideal part of what we now own together, a sacred spiritual possession worth more than all the blood poured out. Yet ask those same people whether they would be willing, in cold blood, to start another civil war now to gain another similar possession, and not one man or woman would vote for the proposition. In modern eyes, precious though wars may be they must not be waged solely for the sake of the ideal harvest. Only when forced upon one, is a war now thought permissible”.
Argues that modern war is so expensive that we feel trade to be a better avenue to plunder; but modern man inherits all the love of glory of his ancestors. Showing war's irrationality and horror is of no effect on him. The horrors make the fascination. War is the strong life war taxes are the only ones men never hesitate to pay, as the budgets of all nations show us.
History is a bath of blood.
Really, the US should have taken over Iraq in 1991? Do you really think the results would have been any different than the horrible aftermath of the 2003 invasion? That's your takeaway from what is probably the most foolish military endeavor in the country's history? That it should have happened sooner? That's the craziest thing I've read all day, and I subscriber to @therealdonaldtrump!
7
Wars end only by bringing a lasting peace, which only comes about in two ways: crushing your adversary, or negotiating a solution that is actually produces a "fair" outcome for both sides. But there's a third element as well--World War II did not give way to World War III, perhaps because the Axis powers were truly defeated by the Americans and the Soviets, but also because the Marshall Plan made sure that the aftermath of WWI would not repeat itself.
2
It's not that the U.S. and Israel lack the will to win; it's that the cost of winning is too high.
In WW II, the press and opposition political parties did not see Adolph Hitler as a misunderstood, mistreated adversary; they saw him as the same murderous dictator and enemy that Roosevelt and Churchill saw, and the attitude of the public, the current administration, and opposition was the same: win at all costs.
But in 2018, the liberal press, some opposition parties and many parts of the public see the Taliban and Hamas as just additional legitimate political powers on the world stage, so that if we could all just sit down and talk nicely with them, piece would break out.
If the Israelis were willing to accept the public relations disaster that "winning" entailed, they would shut off all water and electricity to Gaza, in the same way that the Allied air forces attempted to bomb German cities during WWII with little regard for civilian casualties.
But Israeli politicians have clearly decided that the public relations cost is too high a price to pay.
So all they can do is "mow the grass", reducing terrorism to a "manageable" level, and hoping that the surrounding Sunni Muslim countries can force and guarantee a political solution eventually.
3
I beleive that Bret is totally wrong. First, on the morning that the Armistice was to go into effect (at Noon) the American Army launched an offensive that killed about 8000 soldiers on both sides. That was one of the most brutal betrayals of all time. Then, Germany, in economic and physical ruin was saddled with paying the Allies for the cost of the war. German factories were disassembled and move to Allied lands, Inflation destroyed the lives of the common German. Horrible injustice led the the rise of Fascism and the Second World War. The Hitler myth of Germany being stabbed in the back would not have had any traction if the victors had not made every effort to economically destroy Germany after the war.
Luckily for the whole world, we, the victors in WWII learned from out mistakes and spent billions of dollars helping Germany to recover from the devastation of WWI.
Obviously, Brett Stephens, a Republican Conservatives, is spouting the Republican lies about what caused WWII.
5
The best way to avoid "forever wars" is not to start them in the first place. There was never any need to invade either Afghanistan or Iraq. We could have accomplished the capture or death of Osama bin Laden pretty much the way we eventually did it, without seizing the whole country and therefore becoming responsible for it from then on.
The invasion of Iraq was based on completely bogus claims of WMD. It was really about hubris: the idea that we could create our own "reality" in the Middle East. What we eventually accomplished was chaos, instability, huge bloodshed and immense financial costs.
As to the author's comments about WWI and going for complete German surrender rather than an Armistice, this was not the cause of the rise of Hitler.
The drastic terms imposed on Germany by the Versailles Treaty and the Great Depression were the sparks that led to National Socialism. The Allies were almost as exhausted at the end of the war as the Germans. There was no thirst for further bloodshed and destruction on anyone's part, other than Gen. Pershing.
Had the Allies treated Germany with the sort of humane approach that they used after WWII, the result would no doubt have been very different.
10
Is Lawrence of Arabia’s existence a historical counterfactual? How about Henry Balfour? The violent extremism pursued by The Irgun, perhaps?
Seems pretty factual to me, and that’s without mentioning anything that would get this comment censored.
1
I think Germans would have believed Hitlers’ myth even if there had been a definite conclusion. Good grief, we’re still debating whether the South seceded for economic slavery or idealistic states rights.
But I do agree that our weariness of war, and probably Israel’s, causes acceptance of any relief, and the rationalizations that follow. I think we will be back someday, and so will Israel. And sooner or later War will have an end.
I had to laugh at one comment, saying critics of conciliation should join the military. Give me 100,000 women troops, and we’ll take Afghanistan. And keep it, open it to settlement, administer it. Bring peace. And maybe Russia, China can come along with us and actually do something helpful in the world.
Bret is quite gung-ho with the blood of others, as he sits in the safety of his den producing his gems of wisdom. Is a war ever won? Do Southern Confederates think so? Do German Nazis think so? Do Japanese nationalists think so? I am sure this list of questions is near endless throughout history. Conservatives delude themselves daily with their fantasy life, while the real world continues. Conservatives promote competition, when the answer to coexistence is cooperation.
4
Stephens seems to regret that the Israelis haven't done to the Palestinians in Gaza what they did to the Philistines.
3
Treaty of Versailles, which imposed harsh
terms on Germany, created miserable conditions
in Germany which gave rise to Hitler
and his right wing supporters. John Maynard
Keynes, British economist, wrote"economic
consequences of Peace" visualizing the
hardships in Germany. Wise men like Clemenceau of France Lloyd George of Britain and Wilson of USA didn't understand and made WW2 possible.Germany surrendered in 1945
but no harsh terms were imposed as demanded
by American Treasury secretary Henry Morganthau and Stalin. With economic help
under Marshall plan, Germany rose peacefully.
De Gaul of France and Adenauer of Germany forged co-operation realizing the futility of war. USA and Israel should also understand the
futility of war. It is not that USA and Israel
lack the will to win, as alleged in this column,
but the will to resist by Vietnamese, Iraqis
and Afghans as well as palestinians made
the victory impossible. If there is no
surrender there is no victory.
2
WWI would have ended in an exhausted stalemate had the egomaniacal Woodrow Wilson not betrayed his re-election slogan ("He kept us out of war") so that he could impose his globalist vision on the post-war world. In fact, Allied and German soldiers on the frontlines embraced when word of the armistice reached them.
It was the humiliating and untenable conditions of the Versailles treaty that fed German nationalism and enabled Hitler to blame "others" for Germany's woes, just as it was the Sykes-Picot betrayal of Arabs and the arbitrary carving up of the former Ottoman Empire that birthed a century of political unease in the Middle East.
Of course Stephens channels his bellicose blundering into a full-throated call-to-arms for his One True Love, Israel, and its immoral and near-genocidal occupation of Palestinian lands. The title of this article is misleading; I thought Mr. Stephens had had a change of heart and was coming around to an embrace of enlightened non-interventionism. No such luck.
4
Well, there's always genocide.
That's the authoritarian's solution. Make your opponent "other" and you can deny their personhood. Empathy disappears. Children are taken from their parents without regret. People are killed and "there's good on both sides." Mass casualties become "collateral damage" justifiable by achievement of one's own goals.
The saying that "we have found the enemy and he is us" is relevant here. War and conflict will not end until we recognize the need to heal ourselves of hatred. Seeing others as part of one humanity, with legitimate needs and goals, is fundamental to resolving conflicts.
It's easy to be invincible - have no enemies.
1
Warfare is endless, not from the lack of will, but from laziness. It is far more difficult to emphasize and negotiate than to brutishly annihlate. Wars are always begun with the promise of a quick solution to complex problems. We prefer “shock and awe” over the tedious work of acceptance and change.
War is a narcotic designed to dull the pain of grieving and change. As Abraham Lincoln said, “It is good that war is so horrible or we would grow to love it.” Wars are always fought to avoid change and to protect one’s outmoded “way of life”. Violence is an easy high, peace requires effort, time, and patience. Wars are forever because humans are infinitely lazy.
1
If I were in charge, many history professors would be instantly fired because they are utterly useless.
The history books as written are the crime against humanity.
Allegedly, one side in the conflict is good and the other is bad. Well, that didn’t happen since the Mongol invasion of Europe and the massive carnage they created.
All the other human wars have been waged against our first neighbors, meaning our loved ones.
That makes all of us directly responsible and guilty of the crimes against humanity.
Let’s really analyze the Great War or the WWI.
It was waged between the colonial powers on both sides that deprived the hundreds million people of their basic human rights by oppressing and colonizing them.
It started after one state organized the terrorist assassination of the heir prince of other country (let’s ignore for the moment that the monarchies, kingdoms and empires deprived their own citizens of the basic democratic rights).
A half of Europe defended this gruesome terrorism and threatened all-out war if the crime was investigated and the culprits brought the justice.
The other half of the Old Continent was willing to launch a bloody war over a single victim.
The dozens millions people were killed, the dozens million other humans were wounded and maimed, the enormous wealth and energy were destroyed and wasted, but our historians still claim there were the victors in that conflict.
That’s why I would fire at least the deans of history departments.
Wars signal either that: 1) belligerent nations never had any diplomatic means as an alternative to armed conflict, or 2) the diplomatic means that were in place place failed. Once armed conflict ensues, the notion that there is any "best way" to use them to settle accounts to ensure a stable, lasting peace is simply specious without strong diplomatic systems also being established to manage that peace.
The best way to have avoided decades of wars in the Middle East might have been to have had more effective diplomacy and political settlements for the region after WWII to begin with.
Mortimer Adler once noted that all countries are existentially at a state of war inasmuch as armed conflict is always an available option to settle international disputes. He posited that until there is a "global police force" to restrain nations from that option, the prospect of war is always with us.
Perhaps more fundamental is the recognition that as a species dependent on tribal identity--be it family, village, region or nation--armed conflicts are inevitable. The only hope is that we use diplomatic measures more effectively and justly.
Or if we must fight, then we should use less extreme military action whenever it can avert greater conflagration. France could have pushed Germany out of the Rheinland when it violated the Treaty of Versailles in 1936. Not only might WWII have been totally averted; Hitler's regime would have probably been turned out of Berlin as well.
I would say the moral of the story is "don't start what you can't finish". Vietnam and Iraq-Afghanistan Wars are prime examples of invasions poorly planned and with little thought of the strength of the opposition or what the aftermath might be.
Our war monies could be better spent helping other countries rise from poverty and disease and rule by despots.
2
If we teach the next generations that the unnecessary bloody conflicts transform the politicians into the great historic figures, that all their other incompetence and failures are instantly forgotten and forgiven, and that no criticism is acceptable during the time of conflict, why should the humanity be surprised that we cannot eradicate the gruesome wars from our lives?
2
Bret Stephens obviously is a student of Carl von Clausewitz. War is an extension of politics by other means. Any world leader who neglects to follow Clausewitz's dictum is unfit for office.
We have heard nothing from the Democrats about withholding funds from our forever wars, and we should. It's as if both sides see these wars as a necessary evil and ignore them as much as possible. If the Democrats plan to stand up to Republicans on domestic issues, they should do so on foreign wars as well.
3
Bret -- would you please describe what a "won" war in Afghanistan would look like? I have trouble visualizing it. Would a permanent occupying force of 100,000 soldiers do it? That would cost 500-1000 lives/yr, 5,000 brain injuries per year, plus $100B/yr, but worth it, you say?
1
I won't presume to advise Israel on how to deal with Hamas; I think Stephens is out of his depth to try. But as for the US 'winning' wars in Iraq or Afghanistan, I will weigh in.
'Winning' such a war involves not only a brief military victory, obtained under logistic conditions of extreme difficulty, but also a long occupation of a country with a large hostile population. This translates into a guerilla war between the occupiers and the occupied. Such wars are inherently extremely nasty, and Geneva Convention rules hinder them.
So Stephens is really calling for a repeat of the Vietnam fiasco. The worst case is Afghanistan, which is a logistic nightmare and not known for friendly reception of occupying powers.
The American people have no stomach for such adventures. They reject yearly casualty rates that are less than the cost of the battle for one small island in WWII. They do not like the idea of colonial occupations, which is what would be required to produce change in Iraq or Afghanistan -- assuming that such a foolish venture could work.
European (world?) wars were about power relationships between nation states, not about cultural differences. Everybody involved was in theory a good Christian, recognized the Geneva Conventions as normative and didn't want to alter cultural institutions. So the comparison to wars in Afghanistan, Iraq or elsewhere in the Middle East is idiotic.
1
BRET'S thoughtful essay should mention this issue too.
1- Regardless of the belligerent side, war must be thought extreme detail, 2003 Iraq war wasn't qualify any benchmark approval, what ever people claim 1991 gulf war is a stellar example of war, G.H Bush were never credited in the eye of American people executing a surgical precision war with simply achieving the true goal. All Republican and some Democrats drag the 1991 Gulf war in to the swamp of middle east politics and drown it till perishes its glory. then try to give credit to G.W Bush as if he tried to finish the job. No you are misrepresenting the facts, adultering what happened in the history.
2- 1st option is the only thing about the war, If you do not have exit or finalizing strategy , any war is only sending young's to meat grinder. True wars end with Glory/surrender or absolute peace treaty.
Israel-Palestine war was not a war even in the beginning, it was proxy war of insulted and humiliated dominant Arab nations which they used, abused and neglected the Palestinians more than a half century. Israel is becoming increasingly, particularly after Netanyahu playing war game until money dries up but now Israel can easily afford this fights and entire policy based on abusing this conflict for internal political blood sport.
I am a no fan of Hamas but didn’t Israel make an armed incursion into Gaza first? I find this certainly caused the newest armed outbreak but no mention from you. A desperate people do desperate things. And Gaza is desperate place.
Obama’s war Afghanistan? George Bush started this and then detoured to Iraq! Didn’t Trump have a secret plan to win in Afghanistan within weeks of becoming president? You are suffering from republican amnesia. Now the number of US troops is a secret. Who knows what really is going on there.... but I’m sure the commander in chief has it under control.
1918 - more autonomy for ethnic groups in Europe’s new borders via promised plebiscites did not occur helping cause extreme nationalism that ignited into WW2. German reparations brought their economy to its knees. The USA was partly to blame as they drifted into isolationism in the 1920s. Remember the League of Nations? It would have helped if the US hadn’t left it. But republicans would prefer to leave the UN. Obviously no lessons learned from history.
2
The history of wars is always the same for all the countries across the globe.
First you win a small conflict that makes you feel macho, strong, powerful and important.
That messes up our system of values so the countries start believing they could solve their problems by waging the bloody conflicts.
That’s how the humanity ended up in the endless cycles of the repetitive bloodsheds.
We don’t even know when those started, what started them or why we are doing it anyway.
We just keep fighting each other and teaching the young generations that the leaders jumping headfirst into the destructive conflicts are the historic figures and the national father-figures...
Just pay attention to the Sunni-Shiite conflict. It has started 14 centuries ago and still going strong.
What about the conflict for the control of Holy Land?
We wage the wars to defend the faith?!
I thought the faith bans the killings and demands that we love our neighbors...
Silly me...
2
You seem to have forgotten the Iraq war of 2003, which we decisively "won". Don't you remember "Mission Accomplished"?
Our decisive victory turned out to be a total disaster. This is the clearest example of what would likely happen in Gaza or Afghanistan if we or the Israelis had the "will to win".
I'm surprised that such an apparently intelligent observer could possibly write such a juvenile column. There used to be wars between the military forces of rival nation states, resulting in defeat for one side and victory for the other. That ended with WWII. The Korean War ended in a draw. The Vietnam War (which was only arguably similar) ended in a loss. Since then the term has been completely degraded e.g. the "war on terror". War buffs like you are going to have to face the facts: if there ever is another classical war like WWII, it will almost certainly involve nuclear weapons and may well result in the destruction of the planet.
4
Mr. Stephens apparently knows far more about wars involving Israel than myself, but, it seems to me, drawing parallels between World War I and conflicts involving combatants who are groups, as opposed to nations, is at best problematic. Near as I can figure, the situation in the Middle East is more akin to whack-a-mole than World War I. If it were not, then our invasion of Iraq, when we took over the whole dang country and Saddam ended up dead, should have accomplished something. It did not. And what of Afghanistan? Ask the Soviets (I mean, Russians) what happens when you have the will and means to win, and yet, you still don't win.
33
Whack-a-mole is a description of an endless war. The Western power isn't willing or able to do what it takes for victory, but is unwilling to accept the consequences of defeat. The world would be a better place if we stopped whacking moles.
2
Mr. Stephens cites wars in Syria, Afghanistan, and Iraq and doesn't mention, say Niger, where uninvestigated by Trey Goudy, four US soldiers died for what?
https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2018/02/17/world/africa/niger-ambush-american-soldiers.html
The US will continue to fight these wars for at least two reasons:
1) War is good business and the US war industry is the world's largest by far.
2) Neither major political party in the US can try to ratchet down the spending on war without being accused as being soft on "security" or not "supporting" our troops.
For me, though, the overwhelming message of the Vietnam War -- the war in which people of my generation died, and after which the suicide total of returned veterans pushes at four times the number that died in the fighting -- is that our government, politicians, military leaders, cabinet secretaries, and hundreds of other high-level officials can lie to the American people without accountability. Kissinger is still seen as an elder statesman but he lied on national TV about US negotiations with North Vietnam and US incursions into Cambodia.
Lies are always concocted to hide a greater harm.
And now we have the Liar-in-Chief and people are scratching their heads as to why. This guy has told over 5,000 falsehoods -- documented -- in 16 months in office with no slowdown on the horizon.
42
Thank you, Bret Stephens. Wars end by making them end. How would Iraq have turned out if we pursued to a formal surrender from the Iraqi military? What would have happened if we had insisted on a surrender from the Taliban? The Taliban may lack a formal structure, but if we pressed hard enough they would find the internal mechanism to sign agreements to end the struggle. ISIS is truly stateless; we've sort-of defeated them, but who can promise that they won't return?
I'm dismayed. This is simply poor history. Think of the wars so long we name them by their duration: e.g Thirty Years War or Hundred Years War. Stephen's dictum, "Wars that don’t end decisively — in absolute victory for one side and unequivocal defeat for the other — tend not to end at all," is irrelevant. War is far more complicated than he allows and simplistic calls for the will to victory are counter-productive.
4
Mr. Stephens writes: “Why do [forever wars] drag on interminably? Because one side lacks the means to win and the other lacks the will.”
I find it remarkable that such a thesis could be advanced, and such a column could be written, without the word “Vietnam” being mentioned. The U.S. should have drawn many lessons from the Vietnam conflict, among which is that certain conflicts cannot be won or solved by the U.S. with military means and will power. Indeed, certain conflicts are only intensified and prolonged by the application of more military power.
7
@Dylan: Or multi-sided, asymmetrical warfare (think Syria).
To paraphrase Dhamma 28: Winning creates enmity, for the losers lie down in pain. The enlighted lie down with ease, having set winning and losing aside.
2
We have been perpetually at war since 1941. Either fighting official wars, unofficial wars, preparing for war, or now...fighting in endless conflicts. The military (and I'm knocking the troops at all) is the biggest government jobs program we have. There are thousands and thousands of people whose livelihoods are dependent on the military. Imagine the strain on the private sector and the economy if all of these people were suddenly unemployed. We have backed ourselves into this and I don't see a way out.
4
@JAA You are certainly right about this. I grew up in a military family and my father worked in the Navy Department in the Inspector General's Office after he left active duty. I served as an Air Force officer and saw incredible waste throughout my term of service.
I remember my Dad telling me how incredibly difficult it was to close even the most useless bases because of the impacts feared by the local communities which had grown so dependent upon military largess. Congress finally had to start putting all closures in one bill with an up or down vote.
Weapons programs on which my father worked were almost impossible to kill, even when a military service branch didn't want the weapon in question. Defense corporations strategically placed their factories in key congressional districts in order to be able to pressure politicians to lobby for their continuation.
We could cut huge portions of our Defense budget with no negative impact on military readiness, but we won't because of pressure from corporate and local interests.
2
Look no further than the words of outgoing President Eisenhower on January 17, 1961: "In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist." Our failing to put an end to America's disastrous wars since then has proven only that money talks louder ~ especially in the halls and private offices of our Congress.
9
@Edgar Numrich
That was 57 years ago, Edgar.
Since the early 70's it has all been a slow creep downhill.
It has sped up considerably in the last 24 months, and, I suspect, it will will go even faster now that the Supreme Court has been kidnapped by the Dark Side.
How to pay for all of this?
Eisenhower slapped a tax rate of over 90% on the wealthiest -....
Gosh, I'm still laughing that any Republican was ever so smart!
Well, THOSE days are long gone, aren't they...?
3
@rosa Thank you, Rosa. Indeed, tallied the years at 57 before entering my comment. That so many years and conflicts ("Good Morning, Vietnam!!") ~ as well as inferring from your reply with all the "wars" and "engagements" subsequent that "resolved" little ~ is further testament that our "system as is" portends a disastrous future for a "United" States-that-are-not.
1
Mr. Stephens you ask, "Why do they (wars) drag on interminably?"
Because the International Mafia 0.01% Robber Baron/radical religion Good Old Boys cabal wants them to - they make money and think they gain "power".
WE THE PEOPLE - average people around the world - have had enough of their constant destruction of OUR lives. WE want relative peace and WE will stop them before they can start WW3.
4
Napoleons generals knew how to motivate their army’s to fight endless wars by simply hiring more ribbon makers! Notice the huge number of ribbons hanging on our military today by chance? Even private’s are decorated with pretty ribbons for just completing basic training as the incentive to strive for ever more! The opposite was true between 1954 and 1964 when hardnosed WWII/Korean war veterans did not allow a single medal to be issued to new recruits. Vietnam changed that and the ribbon makers have been doing a lucrative business ever since..
4
@Moe Def If you think we fought for ribbons you misunderstand veterans entirely. I suggest you find one at the local VFW and ask in person what motivated them.
1
All of my life I have read historians argue that the seeds for WWII were planted in the humiliating terms dictated by the allies to Germany following WWI. What would have been different in those terms had the allies forced a German surrender?
7
@Angelo Sgro
Excellent comment.
The terms weren't actually so bad.
The problem was the hypocrisy. In WWI the US war aim was to create a new world order, where there would be no more wars to conquer your neighbors land. All people would have the right to self-determination. And then Germany's neighbors got to help themselves to parts of Germany. Now these were only small areas - much less than they had wanted to conquer before WWI (the terms were not that bad). But how was the new Pax Americana any different from the old world order?
2
Mr. Stephens provides a simplistic answer to his question. Assume the US was suddenly infused with a strong desire to win in Afghanistan. What would that mean? More American casualties, but certainly accelerating the killing of Afghans. Letting the war drag on or managing it may be a better moral choice.
And what if Israel were to crush Hamas? It would then have custody of almost two million people that it doesn't want to care for. It might have to treat them like citizens instead of inmates. We don't lack the will to win wars. We've just implicitly decided that managing wars as we have been is the less costly option.
8
@TT - And "win" what? There was never any strategy behind Chickenhawk George's invasion of Afghanistan and/or Iraq in the first place. No goal thus no way to measure "success". Same with Nam, in which "winning" ended up being measured in body counts.
These are politician's wars of profit, intended to feed the endless appetite of the MIC. Winning doesn't matter as long as the (R)ich are getting (R)icher.
3
Mr. Stephens brings a quaint, manly approach to the idea of war as “winnable.” He claims all you need is resolve to win a war, and of course, the resources. He cherry-picks a few historical snapshots to bolster his story. But what history, especially recent history, shows is how the notion that one can “win” a war is simply false. Victory and loss in wars are mere punctuation points in the long arc of history and no matter who claims victory, everybody loses in the prosecution of war (except the war machine).
Rather than legitimize the false narratives of nationalistic one-upmanship, which is the main prize derived from claiming victory, we must recognize there is only one outcome in choosing to go to war and that is loss and destruction.
War is what happens when mankind loses his grip on his values, his reason and his decency. War is mankind at his lowest and worst. We have to find a better way to coexist on this planet.
36
@T Bucklin
Bravo.
2
Inasmuch as we have little idea of what Gen. Pershing imagined an "unconditional surrender" would entail, we should not overinterpret his note. It seems unlikely that he expected it would entail the German army stacking its rifles and going into captivity or even, straggling back into Germany. There is no reason to think Pershing anticipated an Allied occupation of Germany.
Ludendorf, whose overly ambitious and disastrous 1918 campaigns not to mention his late September panic resulted in the request for an armistice, would -- no matter how defeat was labled -- never accept his and his caste's blame for Germany's loss.
The German General Staff is always stabbed in the back -- if not by Erzberger, then, by Hitler. It's never their fault.
5
This feels like a misinterpretation of history. For one thing, as much as the myth of being stabbed in the back was a convenient rallying cry for the Nazis, it is extremely questionable to argue that a so-called negotiated peace (neither the Armistice OR Versailles truly involved negotiation by anyone other than the winning powers) would have prevented WW2. You might argue that different impositions from Versailles could have prevented the war, but the very FACT of Versailles? That doesn't make sense.
More importantly, WWI Germany was a fundamentally different kind of enemy than Hamas or the Taliban. The German Empire was very much a nation-state with an institutional apparatus that could be dismantled. Hamas and the Taliban are more like movements, guerrilla insurgents that, when a power occupies a territory, they melt into the population, only to return when the occupiers leave. What kind of scenario are you imagining where the winning power eliminates Hamas, Mr. Stephens?
This is important, because the myth of the winnable-if-you're-brutal-enough war leads to atrocities on a scale that is truly horrific. It is true that if Israel massacred all the Palestinians, there would be peace of a sort. That is not preferable to the current awfulness.
13
@Kevin S. Ah, but the Allies did stab Germany in the back. On the day that Armistice was to begin as noon, The Allies attacked the German positions early in the morning in a battle that killed about 4000 combatants on each side. It that is not a stab in the back, nothing is.
1
"Wars that don’t end decisively — in absolute victory for one side and unequivocal defeat for the other — tend not to end at all."
Well, no. The English certainly conquered Ireland in the 17th century. The Irish were still fighting in the 20th century.
12
There is a third option for the reason, Bret.
It is that someone is making money.
Lots of money.
For instance: Afghanistan.
Afghanistan used to be a total mystery. What were we doing there? Why? Bin Laden? Heck, we waved bye-bye to him before we even started carpet bombing. Besides, it was Saudis who done it. And, neither of those countries ever passed a law that helped a female (our other dodge on why we were there), so what was the reason...?
And then (drum roll here) out came that famous geological report that within the bombed out mountains of that blighted country were THREE TRILLION DOLLARS WORTH OF MINERALS!!!!
Wow.
And then it all became perfectly clear.
"Forever Wars"?
I have copies of all of Joe Haldeman's sci-fi trilogy that coined that phrase.
He's pretty clear on exactly who was making money off that war (that really did go on forever).
We try to not be so open.
We would rather that the tax-payer (those poor folk who are now the only ones still paying taxes) than let them know that our military budget is now up to 63% of the budget, and that Israel now receives FOUR BILLION DOLLARS and not the 3 billion that it is now passe to chant.
When it comes to money, Bret, no victory is ever gained.
That's in the rule-book.
I'm sure I read that somewhere.....
10
It's a conundrum in Jerusalem. Because of how Hamas conducts itself -- holing up in schools, hospitals and mosques and using children as shields -- any robust attempt by Netanyahu to fully root them out of Gaza would be a horror show (see, e.g., Yemen, Aleppo), and would strip the Israelis of support around the world, and in the U.S.
3
And what a huge embarrassment to send the draft-dodger Trump to that solemn affair. As usual, he behaved like a petulant 4 year-old - more than likely because he wasn't the center of attention.
However, he remedied that with his little Twitter outburst against France and Macron. Just a ghastly human being.
9
Accurately stating Trump to be "just a ghastly human being" fails to hold accountable those who voted for, support, and cheer him on.
3
@Plennie Wingo, Wherever Trump goes he
ends up belittling, insulting the host. He
insulted Justin Trudeau after G7 meeting
calling him "dishonest", "weak",etc.Now
it was turn of Macron and France to be
insulted. Argentina, watch out he is
coming in couple of weeks. Talk to
him in Spanish so he doesn't understand
and hopefully eschews his scorn.
4
My impression was that the negotiated peace after the First World War was already quite harsh on the Germans. It fueled a lot of the economic woes and resentment that led to the nazis gaining power a couple decades later.
There is no easy answer to this, but continuing wars when treaties are possible that can save thousands of lives seems like a poor and unnecessarily belligerent tactic.
How would the already beleaguered allies have justified the needless casualties that would have resulted? Easy to make decisions with other people’s kids.
6
@Andy
Excellent points, I think. At Versailles, it seems, the Allies dictated every condition, from reparations to limits on the German war machine to territory divided. Does Stephens, or anyone, seriously think that the Germans would, or could, have said "You know what? We don't like these terms, we're going back to the trenches. See ya."
You say tomato, I say tomahto. One person's armistice is another person's unconditional surrender. Let's also remember, though, that both the allies and the Germans didn't want to see what happened in Russia happen in their countries, and so ending the war was, it could be argued, a matter of self-interest on the part of rulers who made astoundingly stupid decisions about going to war in the first place and did not want to face revolutions on the home front. And it is hard to imagine Wilson being able to explain to folks at home a whole lot of U.S. troops dying on a march to Berlin to solve, as LBJ would say many years later, what folks there should be figuring out for themselves.
1
I suppose after the brutal slaughter in Gaza that Stephens wishes were politically possible, the surviving Palestinians would be given Israeli citizenship the way the Palestinians on the West Bank have — oh, wait.
Every piece written by Stephens on the subject of Israel and Palestine shows his utter indifference to Palestinian human rights. He doesn’t come right out and say they have none, because that would be too blunt. He simply talks about them as murderous problems that Israel has to deal with.
11
Wars are a choice. They will stop dragging on when American politicians decide to value human life above profits. Wars will also stop dragging on when religious zealots decide to let people lead their lives as they wish and to actually love their fellow humans.
6
Mr. Stephens is wrong on so many things it's hard to know where to start... It's even harder to understand what point is he trying to make. Does he really believe that the Germans would not have supported and followed Hitler in their despair and humiliation just because of how, technically, WWI ended?? And did the peace after WWII endure because of the way we defeated our enemies or maybe because we colonized them and remained there for a while, with a huge investment, to see through a real change? But wait, if that's a recipe for success - why didn't it work for us in the 2nd Iraq war (when we did what exactly Mr. Stephens seems to preach for)?
In Israel, it seems that Mr. Stephens explains all the reasons why there isn't any "easy" or really any clear path for a solution for Gaza - so what exactly was his point? What does HE offer Israel does there?
The 6 day war in 1967 ended in a decisive victory for Israel. Its Arab enemies suffered a crushing defeat and were utterly humiliated. None more than Egypt. And yet, only 6 years after, the Egyptians went to war with Israel again.
History is filled with examples that can point to exact opposites in terms of "what works best". We know that what may have worked in one place, may not work in another. And what may have worked at one time/era, may not be duplicated in another.
The truth is there aren't any "easy" or "clear cut" solutions to conflicts in Syria, Iraq, Afghanistan, or Gaza - but who wants to read THAT?
7
@GN,
Totally agree. I usually like Stephens' stuff, but this column is a disaster.
Ah Bret. Today we have your version of preferred final solutions. As to be expected from you, they are uniformly violent. They are also rather ahistorical. You say the French should have fought on in WWI, despite the widespread risk of mutiny in the French army. You say the Germans weren't really licked-- which would be news to the Kaiser who was deposed and fled to Holland. It would also be news to the allies in the Paris peace conference who dictated crushing terms to the Germans and Austrians. And btw I missed the reports you must be implying exist-- you know the ones showing victory celebrations in Berlin in 1918. Your shaky grasp of real events again unfits you from accurately assessing the future in the middle east or elsewhere. I'd rather trust captain Renault from Casablanca: I was with the Americans when they blundered into Berlin in 1918.
11
What kind of inhuman neocon does it take to write a column like this? Whether it's written in the interests of Israel or the U.S. it's pure poison.
It was the destabilizing of Germany after WW1 that led to WW11, rather than build on a period of peace that could have perhaps made it "the war to end all wars."
Today it's the abasing of the Palestine people and the attempt by Israel, the Saudis et al, and our present administration to destabilize Iran that is leading us down the path of the Iraq war all over again.
It's that temptation to overstep the bounds of human dignity in order win an ever-receding victory that causes nothing but suffering and refugees from suffering seeking revenge; never the hoped for gain.
10
I'm struck that you stated Hamas hit Israel and Israel retaliated. But you didn't mention the Israeli undercover strike that "went south" and ended in bloodshed. There was a cease fire, but Israel went in there and killed people.
Believe me, I'm not a fan of Hamas tactics. However, Israel is no angel. Failing to mention their actions diminishes your argument, I think.
11
@Jenna
You raise an interesting example. The way people perceive a war such as the Israeli-Palestinian struggle is in temporal segments, and depending on which side you favor, the segment that supports your side begins with the atrocity by the other side that could not be ignored, followed by a just and heroic response by your side. On and on and on.
In the grand river of time however, over the more than 2000 years these particular enmities have persisted, it is impossible to tease out who is the aggressor and who is the victim, who is the victor, what specific accommodations would satisfy the aggrieved parties and end the conflict. With the perspective of time it just looks like a vicious, childish perpetuation of humanity’s ugliest tendencies toward violence and oppression. Precisely the scheme our own dear leader celebrates and promotes daily here at home.
There is only one way to end such a cycle and that is for all parties to obliterate, forgive, dismiss forever their grievances and their historical prejudices and commit to working together toward the success of all people.
13
We can only speculate as to what would have happened if Pershing’s recommendation was accepted. Another speculative idea at the time but dismissed outright by the Allies and in Germany was to have allowed the German monarchy to have survived as a constitutional monarchy using a grandchild. A constitutional monarch might have prevented Hitler from gaining complete power over the military. Anyway my thought is that sometimes an unpalatable idea may be a solution to a forever war.
I don't know. I would say that, even if the allies had pressed the war until Germany surrendered, they still would have imposed overly punitive conditions on Germany. And it is those punitive war reparation that paved the way for Hitler as much as anything else. They bankrupted Germany, caused hyperinflation, and led to a German hyper-virulent version of Trumpism.
3
I appreciate the parallels you're trying to draw, Bret, but I think they're a bit too tenuous. Of course WW2 was the second act of WW1, but the petri dish of resentment that let Hitler rise had less to do with Pershing not pushing on toward Berlin (which would have been a long and hideously bloody affair), than it did with France and England's determination to punish the Germans in Versailles. The treaty's onerous terms, in conjunction with the awe-inspiring incompetence of the Weimar leadership (though it could be argued they didn't have a chance), turned Germany in just a few years from a proud and prosperous nation into one of the worst places on the planet. Enter the accepted necessity, 27 years later, of the Marshall Plan.
Drawing correlations between those awful wars and our current simmering embroilments is likewise tricky. Germany was an advanced nation, sharing many similarities (historical, cultural, religious) with the victors, and was accustomed to fighting its wars through a formal military. Formal militaries are not our problem today. You're correct that one side (be it Hamas or the Taliban) can't win and the other (Israel or the U.S.) lacks the will. However, when you're fighting a citizenry instead of a military, the only way to win, to be absolutely sure, is extermination. I'm rather glad we don't have the belly for that.
10
Even an outright military victory may not be enough. Remember that in 1865 the South was totally defeated and occupied until 1876. That did not stop the rise of Jim Crow, and one can argue that in some ways the present administration is a successor not of Abraham Lincoln but of Jefferson Davis.
On the other hand, the Soviet soldiers raising the Hammer and Sickle over the ruins of the Reichstag convinced most Germans that the Third Reich was over, and two mushroom clouds over Japan convinced the Japanese that the Greater East Asian Prosperity Sphere was finished.
@John Graubard We just thought the Union won the American Civil War. Heck, I thought it myself, until about 2016. Your point is excellent.
Using WWI and WWII as one war is a bit simplistic in analyzing the situation in Israel. Not clear on the point the author is attempting to make.
3
@Gary Cohen
you are absolutely right, there can be no comparison made between two world wars and the Gaza war. Israel does not want to inflict deaths on civilian population. No restraints on losses of human lives were generally applied then. Gaza is under the control of Hamas terrorist leaders who do not tolerate opposition, and immediately execute any who would consider an alternative idea other than compete annihilation of Israel and exterminate all Israeli jews. Hamas sets no value on human life: Documented proof shows Hamas systematically use as shelters the bodies of their own civilians during attacks on the Israeli population, in addition send women, and youngsters of all ages to storm the Israeli border defences. These are horrific war crimes which the IDF have to contend with. Hamas terrorists store piles of thousands of rockets in homes, mosques, hospitals, schools, knowing that Israel refrains from attacking these storages. Recently, 500 rockets rained on civlian Israeli cities in a few days. The only solution would be to take out the Hamas leadership of Gaza. Israelis in the southrn cities demand that the government provide a solution immediately! Civilians cannot continue to live in bunkers, in the vicinity of bomb shelters day and night and flee there when warning sirens sound. Life is hell in the South of Israel. Bibi had to explain this to President Macron of France who demanded Israeli restraint: No country in the world would accept this situation, he said.
Bret, I'll do you one better, we are still at war with North Korea and have 28,000 troops stationed along the DMZ there to prove it. 70 years and counting with no armistice agreement, just a cease fire, and now a heavily nuked up isolated adversary.
On the plus side we got our butts kick in and then out of Vietnam, and we are not only at peace with Vietnam, but have normal international relations, and are looking at increasing our ties to her.
Funny how we often win a war or heavily prevail anyway, and the path forward with those once enemies (i.e., Iraq, Afghanistan) now our allies or un-enemies is a never ending morass, and conversely we lose a war (i.e., Vietnam (and badly)), and it turns out pretty good. We have no troops in Vietnam, we openly visit and trade with Vietnam, heck, there are even Americans who have retired to Vietnam. Also, for all intents Vietnam is a free market, peace loving country with no aggression in their region towards their neighbors.
5
@shend, correct. Incidentally, Ho Chi Minh
was working in Paris in a restaurant when
Versailles treaty was being negotiated.He
went there to plead case for self determination. He was rebuffed
contemptuously though Mr. Wilson
propagated the idea of self determination.
The colonial issue of Vietnam could
have been resolved peacefully but
in their arrogance western powers
dismissed the opportunity and created
misery for Vietnamese, 3 millions dead,
and humiliation for France and USA.
1
Those folks at Halliburton and companies of that type do just fine
2
The Paris treaty did stab the Germans in the back. It wasn't the "myth" that led to Hitler it was the crushing treaty imposed on Germany.
Also, will you NOW admit it was a blue wave?
4
Why can't we learn to deal with things as they are rather than the woulda-shoulda-couldas?
2
What an odd statement. "...it’s unlikely that the Germans who later embraced Adolf Hitler could have believed the myth that they lost the war only by being stabbed in the back."
The myth that wars are lost only by being stabbed in the back is alive and well in the United States. We lost in Vietnam not because it was a dumb war, but because we were stabbed in the back by students and hippies who demonstrated in the streets and sapped our will to win. When a country wins a war, its people believe that their sacrifice and determination produced victory. When a country loses a war, its people are not willing to believe that sacrifice and determination are not enough to produce victory and they look for scapegoats.
3
@OldBoatMan
And that loss was one of the best things that ever happened to us as well as to Viet Nam.
2
"Wars that don’t end decisively — in absolute victory for one side and unequivocal defeat for the other — tend not to end at all." - That was especially true for The Civil War.
Lincoln just said, "Hey all you confederates we'll just pretend this whole thing never happened" and 150 years later we are still fighting it.
If Lincoln would have locked up or had killed (for treason) every last confederate. Their offspring would not still be flying the flag a century and a half later. And oh yeah Trump would not be President.
1
If the Treaty of Versailles had actually followed Wilson's 14 points that were offered by the strongest nation in the world as the basis for an armistice leading to a just peace, there would have been no audience for Hitler's tirades. I recognize that history is not simple to interpret, but consider that Jus Post Bellum is perhaps the crucial element in generating a lasting peace.
4
Mr. Stephens ignores the fact that when the great majority of people in a region share a goal and fight for that goal through some type of "guerrilla" warfare, "defeating" them by occupying their territory may only cause former fighters to fade into the larger population. Unless the occupation is permanent or the victors resort to large-scale slaughter of people who appear to be civilians, fighting in pursuit of the goal is likely to resume after the victors leave.
4
There is no sight like hindsight.
Historians and in this case an op-ed columnist have the privilege of hindsight.
"What if" depends on prophecy and luck.
As there are no longer any prophets, and as no analysis is foolproof, a true leader does the best he or she can.
Sometimes that includes calling a halt to the attack, even when you are capable of possibly totally defeating the enemy and refrain from doing so.
Bottom line, learn from mistakes, and try to avoid repeating them, but when is said and done, it is all a toss of the dice.
Luck. You win some and lose some.
2
What would peace in Afghanistan look like? Do the majority of people in Afghanistan want what we want? It sure doesn't look that way. It looks every bit like Vietnam.
2
One could argue we are still fighting World War I. The loss of the Otterman empire still resonated with bin Laden. We are still trying to westernise Afghanistan. The mess call the Middle East was the West’s creation. The only thing we’re missing is the Doughboy helmets.
1
Another thoughtful piece. But situations differ. The Allies could have imposed a different peace in 1918. Can Israel do the same thing in Gaza? I'm less sure.
1
Men is exceedingly tribal, this dooms us to the lifelong, carefully taught, hatred of the other, this leads to endless wars.
As an aside, our current society is encouraging Republicans to truly HATE the Democrats. Currently, Republicans believe that Democrats voted over and over again on election day because that is the only way they could win. These are intelligent, educated individuals not country bumpkins. Why has this happened and what could the end game be?
Avoidance of wars takes much more, intelligence, diplomacy, the willingness to really listen and most importantly compromise (win some lose some). This takes time but probably much less time, much less revenue, including human blood and lives than war. Maybe we should have women leaders far more thoughtful about life.
War is a fool's game led by posturing men with the truly young men as pawns in the game. It is unknown, if mankind will ever be able to rise above this. It is more than likely we will destroy the world before that happens.
2
This piece is painfully simplistic. It supposes all problems can be solved with unrestrained violence and that our only limitation is a lack of "will." We used an exceptional amount of force in Vietnam, and we lost. Not every problem can be solved with force. And not all use of restraint results from a lack of will. Very often, restraint results from the presence of judgment.
With regard to ISIS, Al Qaeda, and the the like, we are fighting an idea. Those are hard to blow up with a bomb.
3
You can defeat an enemy by doing one of several things; kill them, remove their ability to use weapons and starve them. Actually, none of these actually work and never since the beginning of time, have they.
War usually happens as the Chinese say when the talking stops. Try to think of war as a labor strike. Think of Unions. Why were unions so popular in the past? Simple. It was collective bargaining. You paid dues to have someone or some organization present your grievances as a body to your boss. The boss (organization) had two choices, either attempt to settle the dispute to the members, or the members went on strike. Guess what happens during a strike? Both sides lose unless all the fair demands are met. War is the same mentality. One side, or the other, or both, never reach a true agreement on what their goal was in the first place.
Wars in the past were usually fought over Territory, whether that Territory was land (Land Man Ratio) or ideology. Israel is a perfect example of both of these. Their method of protection? Advanced weapons. Is that kind of peace sustainable? Of course not. It’s temporary.
As long as nations preach Nationalism, there are going to be wars. The reason the United States has been so successful in the past is because we think of the parts (states) as individual, but also as part of the whole. We’re a unit! Our mistake is when we try to dictate that ideology onto people still living in the Stone Age.
1
The reasons for Hitler’s rise to power and subsequent agression were far more complex than the writer suggests. Yes, there was a serious loss of morale among the German population - because they lost. The peace may have been negotiated but there was no doubt who the victors were, and they exacted heavy war reparations that added to Germany’s economic woes. Add to that the Great Depression, soaring inflation and high unemployment and the stage was set for an autocrat to seize power.
After World War II, the victors behaved very differently. The Marshall Plan is a template for what can be achieved with enlightened leadership.
For the record, Pershing sent soldiers into battle after the Armistice was signed, and as a result around 3,000 soldiers lost their lives unnecessarily.
3
Ok Mr. Stephens. I hope you feel better now that you have aired out your escalatory id. Unless you have a real and doable plan to bring about your triumph of the will, can we now get back to the real work of managing the problems of the day? Otherwise, you will have to move to Hollywood or Marvel Comics, where your visions may find at least some use.
2
If before the UN Partition Palestinians held title to almost 92% of the land and right after only 42% of the land (now 22% if that), then perhaps they had good reason to be unhappy with the UN Partition. But now after everything that has happened, why not give each side at least 45% of the land, each side's land mass contiguous with a border on the Mediterranean Sea respectively, and then make Jerusalem an international city with the possibility of each respective capital in the suburbs outside. Allow no right of return. Palestinians would have enough land to accommodate their refugees. It would look like two "L's, hugging each other. Palestinians living in Israel would have the choice of selling their property at market value PLUS A PREMIUM and moving to Palestine, and Israelis living in the new Palestine would have the same option. Let Israel have the only weapons for say 50 years and make Palestine a UN protectorate for 50 years with an internal police force. The United Nations would pay for it. But then, it would be a steal, given the price the world is NOW paying for the conflict. The Palestinians would accept such an agreement in a heartbeat, and Palestinian radicals would slowly wither on the vine. Then the Palestinian grandfathers, uncles, and fathers would tell their Young Turks, their warriors, their teenage sons: “Finally, after 70 years we have a fair settlement, it is time to make peace and start to build a new Palestine.” Now that's a solution.
1
The claimed "stab in the back" was the German uprising/mutiny of early November 1918. Largely spontaneous, it was blamed on the Socialists, which for the Right meant "the Jews".
The uprising preceded any possible campaign into Germany, so that the "stab in the back" would still have been a slogan. Indeed, it would have been pressed with even greater ferocity, for causing the occupation of the capital.
A much better case can be made that it was the predatory victor's peace of Versailles that was the prime cause of WWII.
Another, paradoxical, suggestion, is that a German victory might well have been the best outcome. This possibility is raised by Martin Malia in his 1994 work, "The Soviet Tragedy". Malia was among the handful of preeminent American historians of Russia, a very careful man, and not at all given to extreme arguments.
His musing is that: (a) a victorious Germany would have occupied Russia and put down the Revolution in 1918 or 1919. (b) The factor of Communism, in Russia, and in east Europe would have been wiped out. (c) the German paranoia about the mortal threat of Communism, identified with Jews [Judeobolshevism], would never have arisen. (d) nor Fascism. (e) A fortiori, the Nazis would never have been a factor.
He proposes this idea as a Westerner. That is, that even from the outlook of the Allies, bewilderingly, this would have been the best outcome.
He didn't assert it as necessarily true. He did muse about it.
As should we.
If you are going to undertake murder on a grand scale, it should only be if the cause is something so important you are personally prepared to die for it, or to send your own children to. And only if you have the ability to clearly define victory's terms, before you start. Hint...most of the US won't commit to personally shed their lives for Exxon Mobil or BP.
2
People in Gaza are not waging a war. They are staging periodic uprisings against being held in a concentration camp indefinitely. The question there is not how to win a "war" but how to squash the uprisings of a colonized people. Where in history can we find good examples of that?
As for America's overseas adventures: how do we "win"? How about Americans stop the never-ending war machine that makes billions for defense contractors and impoverishes the rest of us?
2
One of the most ironic “jokes” about society is that prostitution is “the oldest profession”. Actually, WAR is the oldest profession. It’s been going on for millions of years - sometimes on a vast scale, sometimes on a low level. Before modern humans arose, groups of early humanoids fought. Before early humanoids arrived, groups of social primates fought. We’re biologically wired for it. John Lennon was wrong - simply wishing will not “give peace a chance” for very long.
1
This argument is uninformed; it is meant to inflame. The unwillingness of modern states to annihilate adversaries is evidence of human progress. In true reactionary form, the author lusts after simple, black and white resolution without addressing what that means.
There are types or categories of war -- war between state actors, asymmetrical war between a state and a non-state actor that may or may not involve outside parties.
It can be relatively cheap for a non-state actor to maintain a guerilla conflict, especially with support from some of the people of a region. Slaughter of combatants and supporters can end this type of "low grade fever," but most modern states are not that bloodthirsty.
The concept of "solving" a conflict through economic and political modernization hasn't worked where a determined and well-financed actor (e.g., Taliban) has other goals.
The terms of the peace following WWI had an effect on the decisions that led to war twenty years later. Pauperizing and further humiliating Germany would not have made them less interested in re-arming.
Distortions like this article are the stock in trade of propagandists. Simple-minded "solutions" are populist lollipops for the unthinking. Mr. Stephens must have another war he wants to sell us.
1
I understand that we do not have the means to win a war win a religion. Why do you suppose they lack the will to defeat us? And what can we do to continue sapping that will? It is clear that fighting on might do the trick.
The problem with the argument that taking out the narrative of Germany being defeated by a "stab in the back " could have prevented the rise to power of Hitler and WW2 is that there is every reason to suppose the peace which followed unconditional surrender would have been even more punitive. The additional death and sacrifice required to take Berlin certainly would not have modified the desire for retribution from the French and British leaders or population. Surely a Germany in even more dire straits come the depression would have been just as ripe for the rise of a nationalist demagogue.
3
"In Iraq, the U.S. ended up in a forever war in part because the first Bush administration left Saddam Hussein in power after the Persian Gulf War in 1991."
Yeah, and the other "part" was the disastrous 2003 invasion under Bush the Younger. But why bother with that lil detail?
4
Factual correction. Hamas did fire rockets into Israel. But that occurred after an Israeli military raid into Gaza during a cease fire that killed a dozen Palestinians.
But this raises the larger question. What is Gaza? It's certainly not a country. But neither is it an Israeli territory.
It operates more like an open air prison compound where the inmates have some control over day to day affairs, but not much.
Israel controls the borders, the air space, the coastal waters and "allows" shipments of food and other goods in on a tightly controlled basis.
Like any other prison compound the inmates of Gaza periodically revolt against their incarceration and those results are dangerous and violent.
But the scenes of this play keep replaying over and over. Much has been written about the effect of 50 years of the occupation of the West Bank and the blockade of Gaza and needn't be repeated here.
But while this status quo is a vehicle for more Israeli land annexation, it has also become the slow destruction of its democratic character and its political and religious diversity.
So regardless of what one thinks about the Palestinians it is emphatically in Israels interest to end the occupation and allow a Palestinian state to emerge.
The US would send a peace keeping force into the Palestinians state in a heartbeat, and the Palestinians have accepted this idea. If that doesn't guarantee Israeli security then nothing will.
52
@drspock
You should consult the Hamas charter (or its "moderated" "document") to understand why Israel can't yet allow a Palestinian state to emerge. For example, "Hamas rejects any alternative to the full and complete liberation of Palestine, from the river to the sea."
Until the Palestinians - which includes Hamas - indicate clearly that they are willing to make a permanent peace with the state of Israel that terminates all belligerent claims, there is no possibility of a permanent peace. Hamas has explicitly ruled it out.
Please point me to any source that supports the claim that the US would be willing to send a peace keeping force, or that the Palestinians would accept that, as part of a two state solution that leaves Israel intact.
1
"Wars that don’t end decisively — in absolute victory for one side and unequivocal defeat for the other — tend not to end at all."
The harsh victor's peace imposed at Versailles could hardly have been more decisive or more motivated by the will to crush the opponent. That is what caused it to unravel.
"Why do [wars] drag on interminably? Because one side lacks the means to win and the other lacks the will."
Wars don't go on because a party does not want to win. They go on because they can't. Those demanding more "will" are usually bloodthirsty maniacs. Stephens seems motivated by Lieberman here.
In the Korean War, why did the US not end it with large scale use of nuclear weapons, as urged by the commanding general there, five-star general and national hero Douglas MacArthur? The US could not. Sure we had the weapons. We could not use them, for real reasons.
Continuing, why did we not nuke North Vietnam? Why today do we not nuke North Korea or Iran? We can't. It isn't lack of will. The blowback and other consequences would be too much.
So why does Israel not just finally destroy the Palestinians of Gaza, and run them out of the West Bank too? There are certainly some who want to do so.
Do they "lack the will?" No. They can't. They wouldn't get away with it. Doing such gigantic war crimes would be the end of Israel. It is the same reason the US can't use nuclear weapons to solve all its problems, and Israel can't use them on Iran either.
6
Since the development of the atomic bomb, every war is a limited war and many of those are the kind that never end. Total war is so terrifying that humans have rightly avoided it by conducting limited wars of attrition that guarantee the winner is simply the side that refuses to quit. The US forces did not lose on the battlefield in Vietnam. The government quit. The critical issue today is to stay out of war because they never end. What have we achieved in Afghanistan in 17 years? It's a lose/lose war like Vietnam. Stay or leave, we lose.
6
@dudley thompson -- So why don't we just win them as conventional wars? Because we can't. We started something out of hubris that we can't win, without a realist's caution for means and ends.
The Iraq War was not a continuation of the Gulf War. George H.W. Bush weighed the costs of removing Hussein in 1991 and determined the war wasn't worth the cost to win. There was no exit strategy. The war was therefore unwinnable.
George W. Bush disregarded his father's conclusion. Saddam Hussein was not a threat to US security. He was not a threat to regional stability. He was a man Bush 43 and his advisers were out to get. They wanted a war. They decided Iraq was a war they could win.
Unfortunately, no one in the Bush administration had ever bothered studying ethnic relations in the modern Levant. Much to everyone's regret, the continuing violence in the region is a direct result of their willful ignorance.
From there, things get more complicated. We never intended to overthrow the Taliban in Afghanistan. The US was after Bin Laden. Bush let him escape Tora Bora. What should have been a raid turned into a quagmire. We lost the initiative.
Obama was of course trying to exit both wars. If you'll recall, Iraq was practically kicking us out at the time. Unfortunately, the Iraqi government is still incapable of their own security and the Taliban are just waiting for us to leave. That doesn't leave a lot of room for withdrawal.
Then the Arab Spring happened...
Armchair war hawks like Bret Stephens love to pontificate on how the US should win wars. If Stephens knows so much, he should join the military. Everyone else knows winning wars requires necessary wars.
10
WWI was a war which ended with the absolute victory of one side and the imposition of a dictated peace on the losers. The peace in Europe of the last seven decades is a result of a balanced peace settlement after WWII and the development of an international system that consciously eschewed the idea of conflicts which would be pursued to total victory. Stephens fails to see that the Second world war was a.consequence of attempting to achieve a total victory at Versailles.
4
The comments here seem unusually well-informed, and suggest how much Stephens is winging it. I'd only add that the terms imposed on Germany at the end of WW I were pretty close to those unconditional victory would have demanded, and that those terms impoverished Germany (especially when the Depression came) and exacerbated German resentment of the Allies. I can't think that anyone thought at the time -- not even Pershing -- that Germany could be under a decades long occupation and administration by the Allies, which is essentially what happened after World War II -- thanks to the lessons of World War I. And the aftermath of WW II did also include the Marshall Plan, which was not in the offing three decades earlier -- quite the reverse. Allied demands for reparations eventually led to the rise of violent nationalism and Hitler.
5
@Jeoffrey
Though I am ambivalent about Stephens's point, I don't think that he's saying the terms ending WWI would have been significantly different (the Pershing quote focused on that) but that the psychology of Germany would have been different. Instead of feeling as though European politics and shifting allegiances left the otherwise capable German military from winning, Germans would have seen that their military was not equipped to win against all comers and that any resentments about the terms of peace would not have motivated future aggression since such would have been seen as futile.
Again, not sure I agree with that assertion but wanted to assert a different reading of his emphasis on unequivocal victory.
The war to end all wars will not be fought with bombs or guns, but will be a quiet, rather peaceful revolution of the human mind. The final war will come when we program the human mind in a computer and learn what we're doing to ourselves from this model.
In the near future, we will program the mind in the computer based on a "survival" algorithm, which will provide irrefutable proof as to how we trick the mind with our ridiculous beliefs about what is supposed to survive - producing minds programmed de facto for destruction. These minds now see the survival of a particular group of people or a belief as more important than the survival of all. This is the geneses of our endless wars.
When we understand all this, we will begin the long trek back to reason and sanity. It won't be quick or easy, but eventually we will accept the harm of beliefs much as we now acknowledge a round world or the earth revolving around the sun.
See RevolutionOfReason.com
3
Stephens essentially Orwellian construct: if only warring parties would commit to total annihilation of their enemies there would be world peace.
The weapons-makers and weapons-merchants applaud so rational a position.
4
It was not possible for the allies to fight on until the Germans surrendered unconditionally. The fighting ability of Britain and France had been exhausted. The US was not prepared to make the additional commitment that would have been necessary. Remember also(we seem to forget) that in WW II the Soviets we’re attacking from the East. Russia was already out of the war in WW I. As always with the neocon crowd the cure for war is more war
1
@sr -- What might have been done to Germany with an unconditional surrender that was not done to them at Versailles?
They were occupied by the Armistice Commission, which roamed everywhere, imposed laws, and inspected and disarmed them. The Rhineland was entirely removed (temporarily they said) and of course Alsace and Lorraine permanently, and Poland created out of Eastern Germany too.
What else might have been done to them, and for how long?
Wars drag on interminably because their endless nature enriches defence contractors far more than a brief conflict with clear goals. There's real money in waging war: our Civil War was the nucleus of innumerable new fortunes and gave rise to the Robber Barons of the late 19th century who replaced the wannabe aristocrats of cotton by that time. Human life is worthless to military planners, mere bodies to sacrifice to attrition, losers who would have had no success in any case. Erik Prince, sibling of our enlightened Secretary of Education Elizabeth De Vos, presides over the world's largest purveyor of mercenaries, Xe Corporation. I suggest that someone from this paper attempt to interview him on the subject of four more wars...
2
People need to realize the world is shrinking faster than some minds are changing and the alternative to continual suffering, death and destruction, is humane solutions to man-made problems.
Greed, pride, lust for power are choices and the causes of human problems since the beginning of history. There is a reason these are part of the “seven deadly sins”. For non-religious people like me, these faults are humanly immoral due to the needless suffering, death and destruction, they have caused. Elevation of these faults politically lead to lack of empathy excused by redefining right and wrong to justify wrong.
As a young teenager, I did not perceive the United States as a democracy. The words were there in the Constitution, but many citizens were not treated equally both politically and in the public square. Political will and insistence to right wrongs demonstrated faith and trust in democratic and human values over human faults, misconceptions of the power of wealth, status, and racial privilege.
I have had a similar perception of Israel - a democracy on paper and little will to be one. I understand the adversarial role ancient religions play, as well as continually increasing mistrust due to injustices heaped on injustices. Perhaps a solution is elevating humanity over both.
21
General Pershing's analysis failed to take into account knock-on consequences of pursuing such a strategy. Germany, gripped in starvation on the one hand, and military disaster on the other, was already beginning to fall into civil war. Continuing to prosecute the war would effectively support the Bolsheviks in establishing their international order. As it was, years of ugly fighting remained before Central and Eastern Europe settled into a sort of exhausted calm.
Also, following years of propaganda claiming that the Allies were fighting to protect themselves and the world from militarism and uphold the rule of law, continuing the war in the by then obvious face of German collapse would show the Allies to be bloodthirsty barbarians, no "better" than those they fought.
5
Mr. Stephens must be a smart guy, and his essay on "winning the peace" is very coherent.
The problem is, military victory is rarely a basis for lasting peace.
The death and destruction such victory requires, may bring about an end to overt hostilities, but it only enlarges suffering and impoverishment.
Israel, to use Mr. Stephens's example, has had numerous "total victories" over its "adversaries" -- who also just happen to be inhabitants of the same land.
The only victory is to vanquish fear and hatred, and to replace them with love and respect.
The wars we fight, victorious or not, are really just expressions of internal struggles in which we all fail to become human and love our neighbor as ourself.
5
Indications are that the American public is tired of the endless wars and bloated military spending.
https://www.thenation.com/article/new-poll-shows-public-overwhelmingly-opposed-to-endless-us-military-interventions/
This is something the Democrats should jump all over. But unfortunately, except for a few party progressives, the party seems oblivious to this huge opportunity. Trump asked for a staggering 11% increase in the military budget over the next two years and Democratic leaders Nancy Pelosi and Chuck Schumer have enthusiastically supported it.
For 2020 the Democrats are looking for an effective message to excite the voters with. This seems like a no-brainer. It is a tremendous policy and election campaign opportunity for Democrats - an opportunity to reduce a bloated military budget and redirect the funds to a domestic agenda that would resonate with voters.
It’s likely that Democrats are taking money from the very corporations that are profiting from war and the military machine. If true, it is morally reprehensible. And a failure of Democrats to seize this opportunity would be another indication of the party’s fecklessness.
One can only hope that the new blood in the party and Congress will make war an issue.
3
The author is wrong, the motor of wars is a wish of one side to better themselves on the expenses of the other side. That brings the sense of injustice that fuels the war for centuries. Remember, Spain was under Arabs for 500 years before it became Spanish again. Balkans were under Turkey for centuries but its people never lost the hope to free their land. Unless you are willing to slaughter the native population of the conquered countries as the USA did with native Americans (but even that took quite some time), you will not able to have a peace. Israel was forced on. Palestinians. They thought it was unjust then, they think it is unjust now, American invasion was unfair In the eyes of the locals. The America broke the law and attacked the countries trying to create better situation for themselves, but totally disregarded traditions, lives and wishes of locals. And no matter how long the Americans occupied the country, the resentment would be always there, and fuel aggression. Ask Great Britain or other European country that had colonies for many many years and yet we're not convinced native of The benefits of colonial system. Germans felt that the peace treaty 1918 was unjust to them. It fed the resentment that led to the war. In the last war, the Allies made sure that Germany is treated fairly and that benefited to everybody.
6
The civil war comes to mind.
2
Thanks Bret. Sadly, 'the War to End All Wars' has not ended. My father always referred to 'the great war' in those terms, with derision, after all, he and my uncles spent 3 plus years chasing the Nazis back to Hell. When Victoria's grand-children decided to break the world into pieces because they just didn't have enough, there was no way to know what the consequences would be -- for example, Hitler, the atomic bomb, an Imperial America. (And unlike the Brits, we aren't any good at it.)
WW2 on top of WW1 will someday probably properly be considered the second half of the second European Thirty Years' War. Indeed, the Brits went broke fighting their German cousins for a generation. How do you think America got to claim the world's reserve currency status? Shakespeare was right: "The signs of war advance. No King of England, if not King of France." And then of course, this: "France being ours, we'll bend it to our awe. Or break it all to pieces." (Substitute 'Europe' for France, and throw in India and Africa and you get the gist.)
Maybe calling it the Second Thirty Year's War is bidding too low. Perhaps the Second Hundred Years' War would be better. As Charlie Wilson said after we failed to protect Afghanistan from becoming what it has become: "but the ball will keep on bouncing." Caesar himself, no doubt, would be pleased, as his spirit told Mark Anthony: "Cry Havoc; let slip the dogs of war." These things are a bit harder to stop than start, it seems.
2
Mr Stephens writes: "but hundreds of thousands of Israelis were forced into safe rooms during the fighting; Israel spends vast sums trying to defend itself militarily against Palestinian rockets, tunnels and crowds".
My, my--poor Israelis-- suffering such hardships, while those pampered Palestinians simply get incinerated by Israeli air power and artillery.
BTW, a correction: Israelis spends vast sum of American tax payers' money to defend themselves.
Concerning Israel-- try getting it right, once and awhile, Mr Stephens.
4
"the U.S. ended up in a forever war in part because the first Bush administration left Saddam Hussein in power after the Persian Gulf War in 1991"
Oh revisionist history is amazing isn't it. It's kinda like Saddam was responsible for 9/11 or something. I'd like to think the NY Times is better than this but Thomas Friedman is still writing for them so I guess not.
4
Tell us about your Military Service, Bret. Go ahead, don’t be shy.
6
Besides Syria, Afghanistan, etc. in the Mid East, add two more wars in Asia that drag on interminably; the Korean war and the Chinese civil war after WWII with US (still) defending the Nationalist.
The means of war are nukes and rockets that Korea and China can now deploy, not an issue. Neither war will be easily winnable, by us or them, without the "will" of one side to sacrifice millions of enemy soldiers and civilians on both sides. Its a good thing!
Hitler rose to power because a' Victors' peace drove Germany to Bankruptcy, not because they felt cheated by the outcome. Regardless of the "DISGRACE OF VERSAILLES" as Adolf put it, invading Poland had nothing to do with WWI. Dictators will always find someone to scapegoat. Look at the mealy mouthed menace we have in office now.
One reason forever wars can go on, seemingly forever, is that it does not take that many combatants to keep them going. As long as there is enough funding and they are tacitly supported by a strong minority of the population, it is almost impossible to put an end to a conflict.
Isis took over a large part of Iraq with a force of a few tens of thousand fighters. The population of the area they commanded was over a million. They were driven out of Iraq, but they are not gone. The Taliban were driven into the hills, but they are back.
If even a few percent of a population is willing to go on fighting, and perhaps less than a quarter of the population sympathizes with them, no amount of military might can end a forever war.
This is why what happened in Northern Ireland, that their forever war stopped, so important to try to learn from.
1
The distortion introduced into Mr. Stephens' argument stems from his narrow perspective. He consistently examines the issue of war and peace from the point of view of only one side in the conflict. Thus the Israelis, the US and the Allies failed to win decisive victories because they judged the cost to exceed the benefits.
This approach implies that the enemy lacked the capacity to affect the outcome or, at least in the latter two cases, would have responded to defeat in a predictable way. Stephens claims the failure to achieve a meaningful victory in Iraq after 2002 resulted from Bush's father's decision not to remove Saddam Hussein from power following the earlier war. But Bush II did remove the dictator and chaos resulted. Why would the Iraqis have responded differently if Bush I had overthrown Saddam? It was the second, pointless war, not the first one, that sucked the US into the quicksand of an endless conflict.
In WWI, would total defeat have convinced the Germans that a rematch could not have had a different outcome? Who knows, but history does teach that, in highly volatile situations such as those involving the decision to declare war or remain at peace, emotion often overrides reason. After WWII, the presence of American and Soviet troops in central Europe deprived Germany of the option to try its hand at conquest a third time.
This is a fine article, save for the idea that any nation can control what occurs in a war to achieve a fast victory. The only certainty about war we all agree on is what will happen if one goes nuclear/thermonuclear, so the importance becomes avoidance. This is why fission/fusion weapons, as old as they are becoming, are guarded today by the grandchildren of their original custodians with deadly force.
As a continuation of politics by other means wars are the most costly of negotiations and are won by logisitics combined with sustained professional vision. Today you simply outlast your opponent over decades and enter into a negotiated settled peace decades down the road. The sooner we all come to that realization and operate out of it the better. There are no more quick wars, they're all expensive as hell, never occur according to what we plan for, and they're all going to end up in negotiations. No one is going to see an unconditional surrender ever again, and Bahgdad was an aberration, the worlds wealthiest and strongest superpower beating up on a third world tin pot terrifying dictator. Anyone who counsels war, a quick war, in the future needs to be laughed out of the room, off the airwaves, and into obscurity, it's a false vision. Our opponents, many of them highly worthy ones, are in thier conflicts for the long haul. We need to think likewise, and permanently rid ourselves of the false notion of a quick war. Think in decades.
1
@da veteran -- A short victorious war is the dream and promise, often of both sides.
Modern day "forever wars", wars in which one side lacks the means to win and the other side lacks the will?
Asking the question itself gives the answer: The modern age since at least WW1 has chosen the "good" course, the course of declaring war evil, that conquering is always bad, which automatically robs almost all sides of the will to wage war to the end, leaving everybody ironically without the means to win war whether with actual armament and manpower or not, which results in not overcoming of national, cultural, racial, religious, ethnic differences but rather a process of mutual growth economically which is never really non-zero sum, but battle after battle and stalemate after stalemate, and a multipolar, increasingly frustrated, and overpopulated world.
The human race is quite a piece of work. It declares officially to have chosen the good, to stand for morality, to be against evil, war etc. but this good is actually all sides growing in parallel in a process of not really being good but of tense low level one-upmanship which is gradual mutual containment, loss of freedom on all sides, economic intertwining which is actually bureaucratic network and snare and control of always increasing population, and of course it's entirely laughable that any side, any political leaning, would have any actual positive effect on say climate change or the natural environment. The fact is even if humans declare themselves to be against evil they are good in incompetent manner.
You left out a significant event that happened after WWI and before WWII, the Great Depression. Germans were certainly miserable during the war but then it was compounded by the depression. Desperate people look for solutions and scapegoats. Without the depression, who knows what may have happened in Germany after WWI? I just read that during WWII, on average, about twenty-five thousand people died every day, (for five years!) That’s a big price to pay for total surrender. Clearly, had things worked out economically things might have been different and it was certainly, at the time, a risk worth taking .
As far as Afghanistan goes I assume the statement "Because one side lacks the means to win and the other lacks the will" is referring to the lack of will for the US. Which would mean we have the means?
Exactly wrong. I have heard of no viable military plan which would give us a decisive victory against the Taliban. They can wait us out for 20 or 30 years. They have sanctuary in Pakistan.
They melt into the general population when faced with a superior military force. Please tell me what the means would entail to ensure a victory in Afghanistan.
5
The problem Mr. Stephens fails to address is the cost of "total victory." The countries that pay the price for total victory often find themselves swept out of power in the international world order at the end of the conflict, with rising powers taking control. See, e.g., Britain and France after WWII and the rise of the US. We all know what rising power is waiting for the US to exhaust its resources on another so-called "total victory."
2
This is Mr. Stephens' most muddled column. The claim is that some wars are not won because of a lack of "will." But some wars cannot be won, period. There is a difference between military victory and vanquishing your enemy. Bush 43 saw this when he "won" his Iraq war. There is also the problem of defining what it means to win. The "War on Terror" can never be fully won. And Israel will always have enemies out to destroy it, even if they either reoccupy the Gaza or by some miracle there is a 2-state "solution."
7
Today's wars in the Middle East and Central Asia are different than WWI or WWII. They are, as the military likes to call them, asymmetric wars. One side has overwhelming military power but is constrained by morality and international law from using it effectively. The other side is militarily weak but unconstrained. They can - and do - use terrorism and assassinations and then blend in with the local population when attacked. The Taliban would collapse in a heartbeat without the terror tactics they use to control the population in areas they occupy.
We also have to remember that concern for collateral damage is fairly recent. Lots of British, French, German, Japanese, and Russian civilians died during WWII. It's not well known that 10,000 French civilians died during the Normandy invasion. We're not going back to that time, which is why wars are forever. Total victory is not possible without total violence.
3
@J. Waddell
Unfortunately, the Taliban have real support among the people. Terrorism isn't their only asset.
You can extend your premise much further than you do. Much of the conflict that leads to our current wars is the direct result of how national boundaries between countries like Iraq and turkey were arbitrarily drawn by European powers at the end of WWI. Likewise, Our wars in Korea and Vietnam, both had their roots in the loose ends left after WWW2. The American War in Vietnam, the war in which I had to fight, was the direct result of our efforts to maintain a pre world war colonial partition imposed first by the French and then by us. For public consumption we always described it as a civil war but it was not. Though our presidents at the time all claimed to be avowedly anti-colonialists, in many ways their hubris in executing that war was no better then that of the French Colons at the height of their control. My theory is that there is really only one war for humankind, built in and always smoldering just under the guise of its own ashes, waiting for the next inevitable opportunity to burst into flame again, to spring back to life, to set the world on fire, always waiting.
3
Mr. Stephens misses the elephant in the room - 'Why is the U.S. militarily involved in so many areas/issues around the world?' China, Russia, Iran, Iraq, Afghanistan, and Yemen, while also bad-mouthing France, Britain, the EU, Cuba, Venezuela.
2
Stephens’ story was mostly consumed by events in the Mideast, whereas his title would indicate a look at what has happened to US foreign policy.
The transformation to war all the time preceded 9/11. In one of the best columns to address this topic appeared in the Times, May 26, 2013, by Eikenberry and Kennedy. Their analysis listed the reasons why we are in perpetual war. One of the most telling is:
“The Congressional Research Service has documented 144 military deployments in the 40 years since adoption of the all-voluntary force in 1973, compared with 19 in the 27-year period of the Selective Service draft following World War II — an increase in reliance on military force traceable in no small part to the distance that has come to separate the civil and military sectors. The modern force presents presidents with a moral hazard, making it easier for them to resort to arms with little concern for the economic consequences or political accountability.”
From Rome to Napoleonic France to Imperialist Europe, each power rationalized their behavior—Pax Roma, Liberty, Equality, Fraternity, or White Man’s Burden. Those powers that believe in their Right to make the world into their own image have met with failure.
It is time to reevaluate our foreign affairs, and make readjustments. More selectivity is needed before a resort to war.
13
Professor,
The analogy is weak at best. Europeans have been fighting among themselves for centuries for regional dominance and the two world wars were a part of that trend. If anything good came out of them, it was the realization that they have to get along with one another, however imperfectly, or face endless wars with cycles of destruction and rebuilding. The result was the European Union.
In our case, the wars in the Middle east are wars of choice and not wars of need (except 9/11, although that resulted indirectly because of our bases in Saudi Arabia during the First Gulf war). We have no business there, toppling regimes and weakening countries, all for a slice of the oil pie and in unconditional support of Israel. We have outsourced our Middle East foreign policy to a foreign country with a very powerful lobby.
Think of it. With fracking, we are now self-sufficient in oil and gas for the foreseeable future. Why then do we still meddle in the Middle east, wasting trillions of dollars of taxpayer money? For what? Middle East was quite peaceful prior to 1950's. It was the discovery of oil and unthinking endorsement of israel's policies that have made the Middle East our "enemies". It is not the lack of our will to win. Question is at what cost? The result is endless wars that drain our treasury!
I believe the greatest lesson one can learn from those two destructive wars with needless slaughter is that we should forget about global dominance and learn to get along!
6
It is,as you say, the lack of will that prevents our winning in Iraq and Afghanistan. But I would say you need look no further than the war industry for the reason our will is lacking. It doesn't want peace. It abhors peace. War is what it does, the source of its profits. Better to keep a war simmering and the dollars flowing than to win and declare peace and see their markets evaporate.
Governments similarly abhor peace, as you allude to regarding Israel. The primary purpose of government is keeping its people safe. Without some identifiable and immediate danger they can show they are protecting the people from, they would suffer a loss of relevance in their people's eyes, and that simply can't be countenanced.
9
A bipartisan commission on national defense strategy has just released a report to Congress that concludes the United States has lost its military edge to a dangerous degree and could potentially lose a war against China or Russia. This despite our massive defense spending (especially taking into account all agencies not just the DoD) and the recent increases. I think we know where this ends.
There is no end, Bret.
4
The first thing you have to understand is that Stephens was an enthusiastic proponent of both the Iraq and Afghanistan wars and a long time propagandist for the state of Israel which no doubt accounted for his promoting of certainly the Iraq conflict of which the Israeli government was an active supporter. So he has personally contributed to the
totally needless deaths of thousands of Americans not to
mention the unfortunate Iraqis and Afghans.
Wars once started are notoriously difficult to end. Germany had effectively lost WW 2 by December 1941, having failed to knock out Russia and with the advent of the US into the war. Likewise Japan had lost the war by the late summer of 1942 and yet these conflicts rolled on for another three and a half years basically because the military castes in these countries refused to recognize reality. Similarly it's obvious the US and its proxies have lost the war in Afghanistan as it was obvious they had lost the war in Iraq.
Some wars are simply unwinnable given the constraints under which modern democratic states operate because the draconian options available to for example the Nazi or Soviet states are not available to them. This is why Israel is never going crush the Palestinians even though it has millions of them confined in a huge ghetto and the US is not going win in the political, social and geographic landscape of Afghanistan. Thus a political solution has to be found.
16
@John
Good comment until the last sentence which is a concise repetition of the tale of the mice that decided to bell the cat but couldn't figure out how to do it.
As long as the "good guys" operate under such self-imposed restraints, they can't win a war against barbarians who have no regard for human lives, including the lives of their own people. That was true of WW II, as John correctly notes, and it is true today. In the end, MacArthur said it all in one sentence: there is no substitute for victory.
1
@Maven3
So what do suggest? Hostage taking on the basis of 100 hostages for every US or Israeli death. Some Ardeatine cave massacres to show the Palestinians or Afghans who is boss?
MacArthur btw was a windbag. Nimitz won the Pacific war. By end of 1943 MacArthur's campaign was marginal to the defeat of Japan; and the invasion of the Philippines which caused immense death and destruction was essentially unnecessary. It was a MacArthur ego trip.
5
@Maven3 -- "As long as the "good guys" operate under such self-imposed restraints, they can't win a war against barbarians who have no regard for human lives, including the lives of their own people."
So who thinks like the barbarian in this?
8
George Orwell explained the need for forever wars quite clearly. They are meant to keep domestic political elites in power at low cost and are never ending because they have nothing to do with winning because winning would end their usefullness. In Orwell's novel, the wars are fictions which the government media portrays as existential.The Iraq and Afganistan wars were begun because Bush2 needed it to change the topic from the 911 intelligence failures to the comic book Axis of Evil. We continue them because domestic political rivalries will not permit us to stop. No need for a government media, as the NY Times made clear during the run up to the Iraq invasion, our "independent" media will play the role at no cost to the taxpayer, and as Mr. Stephen's now demonstrates in his paen to Total Victory. We should be grateful for Mr. Trump's caravan war. It is all theater. Those 5,000 troops have to be somewhere after all, the border is better than the usual. God bless America.
8
@Dan
Ending wars means killing the goose that lays the golden eggs (of profiteering). In the same vein, why would big Pharma want to cure any disease or chronic illness that would stop the flow of big profits from all those permanent, lifelong drug prescriptions---aka, their golden goose? We live in a world of oppressive industrial complexes that treat humans as commodities.
The premise of this article, that the Armistice in WW1 was not an 'absolute victory for one side and unequivocal defeat for the other', and thus should be seen as no end at all is overly simplistic. The British blockade of Germany by 1918 had effectively reduced the entire population to near-starvation, whereas the attrition on two fronts and the addition of American soldiers to the already superior Anglo-French forces meant that Germany stood to lose the entirety of a generation of fighting aged males. Their surrender was an abject defeat and the terms of the Treaty of Versailles could not have been more absolute unless they salted the earth.
The author's conclusions are also dodgy at best. Anti-semitic scapegoating was a response to the national humiliation of total defeat, and it does not follow that had the defeat been even more humiliating and devastating than what occurred, the German people might have rejected fascists' reasoning.
Regardless, total industrial war is an inappropriate comparison to Afghan, Iraq, and Palestine. All more closely resemble colonial policing actions (particularly in Palestine) of the 19th and 20th centuries characterised by controlling occupied civilian populations and sporadic, regionalised violence against perceived-as-illegitimate foreign powers.
A 'total victory' in WW1 terms in any of those three countries would look like the atrocities committed by Italy in Ethiopia in the 1930s: criminal, colonialist, and counter-productive.
25
The dilemma in the Middle East, is the military tools you use to defeat an army do not work on defeating deep cultural beliefs and practices. And when these beliefs involve religion---military might only in flames the situation. I have no easy answer for this quandary--except, to say, that the soft power of diplomacy---which takes time, money, skill, and patience---is really our only tool for addressing these cultural dilemmas. After a decade of failed hard power strategies, you would think our world leadership had learned a lesson.
6
Any examples of the success of this method?
The seeds of war are planted in the remote past but germinate and grow decades later. The Sykes-Picot agreement carved up the former Ottoman Empire regions after WWI and set the boundaries which set the stage for the modern conflicts in the Middle East. Kurds ended up scattered between Syria, Turkey, Iran and Iraq, effectively ending the ability to have their own intact country.
National boundaries established by conquerors inevitably lead to further conflict as they disregard ethnographic factors. The divisions in Eastern Europe and the Caucasus are truly (and literally) byzantine. The Korean peninsula and the Taiwan strait will continue to be flash points until and unless common peoples work out their differences.
Perhaps it is just the human condition to wage war, but I have grown tired of paying a tithe of human life to the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse. It's time to put a stop to the madness.
23
@Douglas McNeill Beat me to it. The way the great powers carved up the ottoman empire without regard or any knowledge of the area are the continuing source of trouble ever since. I recommend reading Tribes with Flags as just a start as well as T.E Lawrence's book Seven Pillars of Wisdom.
3
One reason for 'forever war' is the weak end game. For example, we are fighting the Civil War again because we compromised at the finish (1877). We must have the political will to finish violent conflict unless we value the economics of war more than the sustainability of peace.
11
The economic consequences of theTreaty of Versailles, which later worsened the Depression in Germany, probably caused WWII more than anything else. However, I think Pershing was right about demanding unconditional surrender.
1
Our issues in the middle east endure not because we lack and have lacked the will to win. Our issues are unending due to the fact that those places are not ours and we refuse to occupy or colonize them.
In fact, the notion that one party needs the will to win and must drive the others to capitulation is actually the force that drives the forever wars. The parties in the middle east live by the credo espoused in this essay as the means of resolution, and yet that credo is reason their issues never get resolved. Why negotiate or compromise when what you really need is capitulation from the other.
Mr. Stephens has it exactly wrong. Absolutely wrong.
28
@WJL
Mr. Stephens opinion that WWII might have been avoided had the Allies (who had lost millions - in the words of Wilfred Owen and quoted wonderfully by Benjamin Britten, "half the seed of Europe, one by one") leads me to remember the words of a colleague on Sept 11, 2001. He said that we should turn the countries (sic) responsible "into glass" with what he and his colleagues made in the DOE weapons facilities.
Yup, that would "end those wars" - or would it just start more wars? Setting aside the morality of that path, I suspect that starting many more wars is the most likely result.
I should also go back and read what Mr. Stephens said last year about the 100th anniversary of the October Revolution. I somehow doubt he said that the Soviets had it right by going for total victory over those who opposed the revolution.
One must remember that the Palestinians were finally given a chance at open elections. Those in Gaza voted in Hamas. The fact that the rest of the world didn't like their bona fide choice only serves to show that the commitment to "democracy" is sometimes more dependent on the results, rather than the principle. No easy solutions, admittedly, but one has to begin any relationship by accepting the legitimacy of the other would-be partner.
9
Rather than conclude that total victory is the only way to win a war I would conclude that diplomacy where all parties feel that they achieve something leads to stability whereas war or any aggression leads to resentment and instability sowing seeds for a future conflict.
11
All wars that drag on are not the same. It's simply not true that one side doesn't have the means to win and the other the will.
In the case of Israel, Israel knows that its cause is wrong - immoral and illegal - and allowing it to drag on is infinitely more effective to its actual goals than "winning" the war against the Palestinians.
Israel wants it all - but taking it all by killing off the Palestinian people while smashing Hamas would lead to world wide condemnation as well as a war with Iran and Russia. So Israel instead provides housing for illegal settlements and cuts off access to life services and products from Palestinians.
This IS how they have chosen to wage a "Forever War."
As for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, America cannot end them because they are not our wars to fight. As with Korea and Vietnam, these are civil wars and we have no business there.
The war that's coming is the anti-Iran coalition of Saudi Arabia, other Sunni arab nations, Israel and America. This is nothing more than Israel using America in its forever goal of bombing Iran to smithereens. And Sunni nations using America to put an end to Shiite's claim to Islam.
I just hope Trump is out of the Oval Office before this cold war becomes hot.
41
@Mimi
Ah yes. According to Mimi, all evil caused by wars -- particularly wars waged ineffectively -- is the fault of those wicked, wicked Israelis. And never mind the historical fact -- and it is a fact -- that in the 1940s a half-dozen Arab nations (including the British-led, British-financed, and British armed Trans-Jordanian Arab Legion) attacked Israel, vowing to "drive the Jews into the sea" -- remember? They were quite open and explicit about that objective, and they still are, even if they ceased using that terminology in their propaganda, embracing instead the role of victimhood, even as they continue to set off bombs aimed at civilians. So far this strategy has worked for them politically, so why stop?
But that absurd theory doesn't come close to explaining the post-WW I mess in Europe, nor the causes of WW II which broke out before Israel was even in existence. Nor Vietnam.
3
@Mimi
Are you aware that in 2000, and 2008, Israel offered to return Gaza and 97% of the West Bank to the Palestinians, and the Palestinian leadership turned them down?
3
@Maven3
The problem that Israelis and pro-Israelis have is that they live in the past.
I'm talking about the present and the reality of the current Israeli-Gaza war.
I'm surprised you didn't quote the Old Testament.
4
There's an obvious counter example to this argument. That would be Vietnam, which was probably the mother of all indecisive wars. Yet 45 years later, aside from some Rambo diehards, who cares about the outcome? We're not at war with the Vietnamese nor are we likely to be. I've heard it's a nice place to visit.
11
@JaneDoe
Didn't we decisively lose? America never admits defeat, but that doesn't mean it didn't happen.
Now wars will be fought perpetually because war is a growth industry, an essential feature in the economies of the largest nations on earth and the stateless fighters who fight them. Trillions of dollars are made across glass economies that provide constantly renewable wealth. Wars that we must win are in fact wars that we must never end. The Taliban are indigenous to the failed false state called Afghanistan and will surely triumph over a western invading power just as it will over Isis or al Qaeda, a reality that took years of handwringing to glean from our war in Vietnam. W Bush didn’t invade Iraq because Tony Blair said Saddam could obliterate London in fifteen minutes but because of naive Jeffersonians and cynical hegemonists like Dick Cheney and the corporations he made wealthy and bled for his personal gain. The will to which Stephens refers is that of plutocrats and their politicians to kill their young in remote unwinnable meaningless wars. The Iliad should be required reading in high school as it was daily for President Lincoln during the Civil War, as was the book of Psalms he carried with him at all times, works that reminded him that war was futile and horrific even if it was inescapable. We learned from the Civil War since every war since we fought in foreign countries, though I am sure ten million native Americans might not agree. We need the will not to war unless it is against climate change which left to spread its terror will be the war to end all wars.
54
There can be no resolution to the Israel Palestine conflict as long as the US give unconditional support to Israel. It has all the power. Stephens doesn't even mention the continued building of settlements on Palestinian land. That must stop and be reversed.
17
Stephens compares apples to oranges when he tries to equivocate the situation concerning a war in Europe 100 years ago vs. the current situation in the middle east. Conceptually, his argument makes sense, though winning a war with a fellow European power, Germany, is a very different animal from winning one against the deeply entrenched anger of Afghans and Gazans, whose animosity toward Europeans goes back centuries. Different strategies are needed to put an end to the violence in the Middle East. Unfortunately, whatever those strategies are seem to be anybody's guess.
1
My take is, the biggest influence post the WW 1 lull was, the French and the Brits cooking up the treaty of Versailles . Our post WW 2 policemen role is worn out, and ineffective. We have always been sold the term, as we start wars, "we are protecting our interest". Last point is, we could win the wars we walked from, but the devastation will not be tolerated by the rest of the world. As for Israel, they too could destroy Gaza in a heartbeat. Again not palatable. Read a bit of history how we closed the book on WW 2. Germany was reduced to rubble and we dropped an atomic Bomb, because the Japanese refused to surrender. Afghanistan is a proven Empires graveyard, as was Vietnam. Invaders of Afghanistan all packed up and leave , The French warned us to stay out of what they called indo China . Reality is the middle east has no exterior powers solution, they will always be killing one another. Reality is not our best suit.
8
I suppose the first thing we have to ask is "What is winning?"
For Afghanistan, what is a win? How do you defeat a force that is largely an idea or an ideal, that continues to recruit amorphously even as you cut off its head? The war is not a war for territory, but for an idea. There is the Taliban, and a vacuum. How long do you occupy hoping that the vacuum gets filled with something that will work?
For Israel, what is winning - accepting Palestinian Israelis, or accepting a Palestinian nation? The Palestinians themselves are not going to disappear.
Wars are intractable because we don't have a real way of losing the unstable ideal and replacing it with something stable without incredible carnage.
Bombs, troops, weapons cannot substitute order instead of chaos, for self-government, for the development of civic institutions that bring general welfare and peace.
So what is winning?
11
@Cathy
For Israel, both sides would have won if the Palestinian leadership had accepted the offer that Israel made to them in 2000 to give back Gaza and 97% of the West Bank. A similar offer was made in 2008 and again rejected by the Palestinians. What is Israel to do?
@Cathy so what I should winning? In the case of Israel, I can see only one way of winning. Since Israel’s settlement policies have eliminated any realistic chance of a viable a Palestinian state, the only winning solution is extending all rights to Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank, creating one state and rejecting apartheid . Israelis would win by reclaiming their connection to real Jewish morality.
"Serious" thinkers love to offer the choice between ineffective compassion and morally unpalatable efficiency. They love to tell us that if we really want to end our troubles once and for all, we must eventually see the wisdom of a Final Solution.
But in reality, it's not just pearl-clutching that causes us to seek other options beyond "total victory" or whatever other euphemism Stephens wants to use for millions more dead. It's the recognition that "total victory" didn't stop wars either. God save us from the serious thinkers like Mr. Stephens who, against the evidence of thousands of years of recorded human history, still think it can.
37
The unending conflict between Hamas in Gaza and Israel has no solution.
But there are some falsehoods on Stephen's essay that should not go uncorrected.
Israel stopped its assault on Hezbollah because the cost to Israel in dead and wounded was becoming too high. Hezbollah was more skilled and better entrenched then Israel had imagined. Hezbollah indeed is stronger today for many reasons and one of them was they showed the Arab world they could fight the invincible Israeli army to a stand still.
Stating one reason the war in Iraq is a forever war, and the only reason Stephen uses, is HW Bush's fault for leaving Saddam Hussein in power is only partly true. The real reason is the neocons in the second Bush's presidency pushed for a war that was based on lies and was not needed for our national security and was not able to be "won" unless the US had a permanent occupying force of hundreds of thousands troops there. Bush2 signed an agreement with the Iraqi government to prevent that from happening. It was the only smart thing he did in Iraq.
The war in Afghanistan was "won" until Bush pulled all of our resources out of the country to fight the ill fated war in Iraq. Obama recognized at long last the the US could not do what foreign invaders from Alexander the Great, Great Britain and Russia could not do in Afghanistan do we could not do either.
19
Most of the Central Powers were totally defeated in World War I. The Ottoman Empire and Austria-Hungary both lost most of their territory and ceased to exist. Russia’s surrender to Germany was also more or less a total capitulation. Yet all of those areas became less stable after capitulation, with the problems resulting from the fall of the Ottoman Empire continuing to this day. On the other hand, we withdrew from Vietnam without total victory and today we have good relations with them and they are stable and growing economically.
40
@G.K The US withdrew from Vietnam with no victory whatsoever, and today (or yesterday) the biggest US-Vietnam dispute was over labeling of catfish. The US lost the war, but both it and Vietnam won a reasonable peace.
1
@G.K
"Yet all of those areas became less stable after capitulation, with the problems resulting from the fall of the Ottoman Empire continuing to this day."
But is this really the case? The Austro-Hungarian Empire was not so stable as the people in its European "colonies" were not so pleased to be second class citizens of that Empire. Those advocating the breakup of that empire, whether peacefully or violently, were growing in power and visibility (the assassination of the Arch-Duke and his wife was just one sign of that) as was the rapid growth of of the Eastern European communist, socialist, and left-peasant parties.
The resulting countries did become unstable, partially as a result of what could be called the growing pains of a new democracy in the case of Czechoslovakia, the tensions of a monarchy for those opposed to monarchies in the then Yugoslavia (plus the resentment of losing its major ports which were given to Italy). Poland was relatively stable until WWII and the Hitler-Stalin pact (even though it had to share Gdansk with Germany).
Russia was hardly stable before WWI, except by repression. Kerensky and the constituent assembly might have survived had they not continued to fight to the finish and final victory over the Axis powers.
Being stable at the point of a bayonet is more likely was what kept those areas "stable" before the war.
It can be argued that WWII ended and led to a prosperous Europe not so much because of a total military victory but rather the Marshall Plan and the threat posed by the USSR. Nobody was proposing generosity after WWI.
America’s forever wars in the Middle East seem inevitable to me. We are in their countries, after all, and it seems unlikely that they will all decide to go somewhere else to live. And if having the will to win means that we will kill all of them, well no, I don’t think we have that, thank God. But since we aren’t willing to accept the idea that ungoverned people in ungovernable regions can be allowed to attack us here, I guess we will attack them there, forever. And for Israel and the Palestinians, the stakes are higher and attack them there isn’t very far away. Nor is Iran (very far away). And while it seems reasonable to me that an Iran without nuclear weapons might someday become a tolerable neighbor if allowed to become prosperous and invested in stability, Israel and Saudi Arabia seem unlikely to ever agree. So that means we will never agree. And never sounds like forever, at least as measured on the scale of human lifetimes.
15
@Mike Iker
Not sure I understand your point about Israel and Saudi Arabia not agreeing to a non-nuclear Iran. Weren't they objecting only to a nuclear Iran?
I disagree regarding WWI: Germany had made peace with Russia, and had plenty of men and equipment to throw into a defense of their homeland. Note that the final push into Germany in WWII, 1.2 million Germans died—hardly proof of a defeated people.
British, and French forces, already decimated by 4 years of unprecedented losses would have to continue losing another million men, along with, probably an additional loss of another
100,000 Americans. How would that be even possible for their war-weary populations to support?
How would a conquered Germany, living under an unsustainable force of occupying armies be less revanchist?
The allies in WWI chose not to have a “Forever War” of occupation because it would have been politicallly, economically, and militarily impossible. They were wise to reject Pershing’s desire for “total victory”.
That happens to be true of Gulf War I, Gulf War II, and Afghanistan. The price for “total victory” is eventual defeat and self-degradation for the “victors”.
7
World War I was about more than just Germany. It brought an end to the Ottomans in the Middle East, the Hapsburg and German empires in Central Europe and Czarist Russia. China lost Manchuria to an expansionist Japan. Colonies of imperial powers around the world were destabilizing by the 1930s, just as the Great Depression was devastating many industrialized economies.
Crushing Germany would not have solved all of the problems leading to WWII. The world was too fractured by a collapsing imperial system that had imposed conditions of bondage on much of the world's population. Hitler admired Great Britain for what he saw as the slave empire it had created.
The conditions which led to the Marshall Plan after WWII simply did not exist after WWI, when the Great Powers were more interested in making the world safe for petroleum than people.
It is worth remembering that only international cooperation has ever been relatively successful in navigating massive disruptions and economic transformations, as were experienced in the 20th century, with its two world wars and Cold War.
Trump's bully ideology, on the other hand, has a terrible history.
38
Would fewer conflicts occur if female politicians headed governments around the world? My guess is YES. I think male leaders may have genetic tendencies dating way back that cause them to be more inclined to go to war. Throughout human history the role of males was to defend his family and his tribe against hostile males. For many reasons, the odds of women taking over are low--but I can hope can't I?
15
@Dave Then please explain Catherine the Great, Elizabeth the First, Victoria, or Golda Meir. Female rulers, yes? Peaceful reigns, not so much.
1
@mikecody
How about love-those-wars Maggie Thatcher, Hillary Clinton...? It's not about gender, it's about ruling class.
2
Realistically, how do you defeat a stateless enemy, and do it in a way that is so decisive that you've cut away root and branch so that it can never grow back? You really can't, unless you embark on and win a war of such total destruction that it shocks your moral conscience. Pershing was probably right in 1918--many Germans believed that their side was winning the war. Russia had made major concessions in 1917's Treaty of Brest-Litovsk, and the 1918 German Western offensive was initially effective. The military was deft enough to make the civilian government sign and shoulder the blame for what was an excessively punitive peace.
What I have yet to see, from Mr. Stephens, or anyone else, is any reliable formula for determining how much war is enough. Since we cannot determine that, maybe we need to focus on choosing more wisely where we decide to express military power.
93
As a historian, a human being, and someone who experienced the "fun" of Hamas bombardment in 2014, my own response to this essay is: So what?
Maybe it takes a historian to be impatient enough with past history to know -- know -- that people focusing too much on history is too often a trap, that leads to the very wars talked about here. Obsessing about a loss in World War One ... who might that be?
Forget the history for a minute. We're in the position we're in, now.
And there, nobody has a magic plan. All that experience -- let alone history -- tells us is that this situation is not, not, a story of means or the will to win.
It's a story of lack of wisdom, and of a will to peace.
88
@Phillip Wynn Wonderful comment. As humans, we need to remind ourselves of the dangers and limitations of thinking by analogy, as we seem genetically predisposed to do.
Insurgency is much easier to sustain if one has a large part of the population on its side. Combined with the cost of being an occupying power you have the ingredients for what we see in the middle east.
5
Total surrender is not enough. You have to kill every single person to achieve lasting peace. However, a dead person cannot be employed, exploited, made to go shopping. buy soybeans or an F16. Therefore a total victory is not desirable and stalemates based on immediate or long term repulsion of aggressors are acceptable by all sides.
@Pressburger Does anybody seriously believe that Israel keeps Palestinians alive so they can buy Israeli products, or work for Israeli employers? They do it
because of concern about international condemnation, and maybe their own conscience. Ironically: A) the world will condemn Israel anyway, regardless what they do or not B) were Hamas in position to exterminate every Israeli, they would do so (with the world's approval).
Mr. Stephens embraces a philosophy that misses the point. Wars involving multiple nations occur when one country invades another brings downfall to all involved. Using this columnists example, WWI, 37 million died including military and civilian casualties. It is peace and tolerance that brings harmony and prosperity, not armies. If one thinks about nations that invaded another, the eventual outcome favors neither. This fight to the death construct by Mr. Stephens is a recipe for disaster.
53
@Donald Green
Case in point: Ethiopia and Eritrea.
2
Let the following serve as an answer to what strikes me to be Mr. Stephens' naive at best, disingenuous at worst question of "Why do [wars] drag on interminably?"
War may not be good business, but it is certainly big business. And in contrast to Russia and China, the war industry in the US is heavily privatized, including the use of mercenaries.
First, some statistical context. America's military spending, which will rise to US$716 billion in 2019, is almost half the total of the world's military spending.
It is bigger than the next 15 biggest countries' combined outlays, four times China's level and ten times Russia's. And that is just military spending.
In short, war for American defense contractors is immensely profitable and this being America nothing and no one is ever going to be allowed to get in between a US company and its right to make a buck. That there are "externalities" to this business model--you know, the deaths of American citizens needed to fight the wars, the death and chaos delivered upon the people of foreign sovereign states, the wrecking of the US budget--will not show up on the corporate balance sheet. War and capitalism, two cancers joined at the hip. Perhaps President Eisenhower knew what he was talking about?
278
@Greg Gerner
Spot on!
12
@Greg Gerner Eisenhower’s original speech called it the “Military-Industrial-Congressional Complex”. Still is.
17
@Greg Gerner Nothing new under the sun:
“I spent 33 years and four months in active military service and during that period I spent most of my time as a high class muscle man for Big Business, for Wall Street and the bankers. In short, I was a racketeer, a gangster for capitalism. ... Looking back on it, I might have given Al Capone a few hints. The best he could do was to operate his racket in three districts. I operated on three continents.”
Smedley D. Butler, War is a Racket: The Antiwar Classic by America's Most Decorated Soldier
41
Bret looks, I think, at VE and VJ days as examples of the kinds of war victories he considers complete enough to bring peace. Except they didn’t. The US emerged victorious and didn’t have to worry about Germany, but still worried about Russia, lost men and treasure in places like Korea and Vietnam, and set the stage for a perpetual struggle between Israel and the rest of the Middle East. It is not difficult to trace a line between the victory in WWII and the World Trade Center attack.
But I think it’s worth looking at the decisions that Germany and Japan made at the end of WWII. They chose to rejoin the Allies rather than fight them, and they were rewarded by the US with money to rebuild. (They also had government structures that didn’t simply siphon off the money into the elites’ pockets.) I think they saw a world under US hegemony as preferable to world under Russian hegemony, and made a strategic choice. Elsewhere, the greed, spite, and violence of humans spins on and on.
20
@M - Indeed, as the war in Europe wound on to its eventual climax, General Eisenhower was offered advanced Luftwaffe aircraft like the Messerschmidt ME-262 jet fighter by high-level German officers (through intermediaries), so long as he used them against the Russian army.
German officers realized they were going to lose and lose big, but feared Russian occupation far more than they did American, British, and French occupation. We were considered to be civilized; the Russians were little more than barbarians thirsting for revenge.
It's a good argument, perhaps, for Germany . But, I don't see how in many parts of the world - today - an unequivocal victory could be attained.
Ideas don't die - good or bad; we do not seek and kill every opponent; and in many parts of the world - especially the Middle east - the "tribal" affiliations do not align with national borders, but with identities based on centuries of history.
The kind of unequivocal victory you imagine would essentially require the imposition of a government by the "victor" with military or police forces to enforce it's rule. Modern colonialism, with a reversal: the maintenance of order will eventually bleed the "victor" of resources , and anger it's own people.
10
The Versailles treaty at the end of WWI, which we habitually disdain has having made WWII inevitable by humiliating and impoverishing Germany, was actually too lenient. It allowed Germany just enough room to rearm for WWII.
Germany's full surrender at the end of WWII, after which it was fully occupied, split in two, and had new governments put in place by foreign powers, was a much greater humiliation than Versailles. But the results seem to have been more positive, for longer.
Or so one (currently unpopular) school of thought goes. As Bret points out, counter factual arguments can't be proven. But nevertheless, it's an interesting point of view to consider.
5
@Alex Grove Both wars were fought to preserve the British Empire and to stop the rise of Germany on the continent. This was an extension of British foreign policy going all the way back to Napoleon. But one has to ask how that worked out when we look at the relative positions of Britain and Germany today. Britain’s entry into WWI might have been the biggest strategic blunder of all time.
4
Wars drag on forever due to money. Money appropriated by legislators flows to the military-industrial complex and back to the campaign funds of the legislators. Until the citizens vote against the monied warmongers, wars will continue to drag on forever. It's always about the money.
171
Contra Mr. Stephens it is not a lack of will power but the fantastic profits made by corporate suppliers of weapons to the Pentagon that keeps these wars going. The US economy is presently based on war and preparing for war.
155
@Red Allover Don't forget the privatized prison and mass incarceration industry! An ever more important part of the economy and symbiotic with the MIC.
9
Good, honest piece. With today's sensibilities, can any country in the West be brutal enough to win a war to the point that they can dictate peace? Even though this might ensure a lasting peace, the price in international condemnation and internal protest makes it almost impossible for countries like Israel and the U.S. The only contemporary examples of total war to the end that I can think of are Syria and Russia in Chechnya.
8
@Naysayer: Brett talks about winning but at what price, needless deaths, etc., but here's the thing: You must pay full price for full victory, and thus be able to dictate terms. In the horrible calculus of all this those extra deaths are necessary. Yes then you own the whole kit and kaboodle, and are responsible for it, largely why Bush the elder didn't go for Saddam's jugular. Another mitigating factor looms extremely large, ongoing war means ongoing business for the MIC, profits in war are like war itself, obscene. There's much more at work here than merely the moral and existential questions of philosophers and columnists.