The current Ukrainian crisis has shown that calculating the costs and benefits for any particular side in a conflict cannot lead to absolute or definite outcomes, with one side being declared at some point the winner and the other the absolute loser. But for the U.S. it’s a no brainer.
20 November 2022 (Washington, DC) – Carl von Clausewitz tells us to measure society’s strength by whether we achieve victory on the battlefield. Victory entails not just destroying the enemy’s fighting capability or claiming his territory, but achieving certain political objectives.
NOTE: von Clausewitz was a Prussian general and military theorist who stressed the “moral”, in modern terms meaning psychological, and political aspects of waging war. His most notable work, “Vom Kriege” (“On War”), though unfinished at his death, is considered a seminal treatise on military strategy.
American politicians have shown a willingness to end wars without achieving their objectives. In other words, they have shown a willingness to lose. Precedent was set with the 1953 ceasefire in Korea and upheld when America withdrew from Afghanistan in 2021. It remains unclear whether politicians intended to lose those wars (and others) or merely accepted that the price of victory had become too high, that victory was no longer worth the time or effort required. In my treatise on Afghanistan I noted that my biggest military take-away was we should put an end to expeditionary counterinsurgency, which is different from colonial counterinsurgency. A foreign power cannot do coin like a host government can à la Sri Lanka or Colombia. Clearly America is no longer prepared to put its “boots on the ground” weight behind allies.
And it’s strange. As I have noted in my previous posts about the military, U.S. troops care about winning. That it is how it is “sold” to them at the military academies, and at the enlistment and training centers. Desire for victory is one reason young Americans leave their homes and families to enlist. They join to gain a mission, to make a difference, and to win on the battlefield. Desire for victory was part of the reason U.S. troops have performed (reasonably) well in the fight against terrorism. Ask anyone who served whether they believed their combat deployments were making a difference. Odds are they answer “yes”, but to-a-man will acknowledge the overarching military and political policy was misguided if not destined to fail.
Read just about any military history and no one blames the troops for U.S. failures in Korea, Vietnam, or Afghanistan. Rather, it is the political leaders who have forgotten that victory matters. And since the politicians do not believe that victory matters, U.S. troops have found themselves trapped in endless wars that lead to defeat or stalemate, a doom loop of poor-planning-leads-to-poor results, where the pursuit of war itself becomes more important than defeat or victory.
This weekend I finally finished Donald Stoker’s book Why America Loses Wars wherein he argues that flawed thinking about war, especially limited war, has led to flawed war policy and poor results. And Stoker anticipates more of the same unless U.S. political leaders clearly define their political objectives and apply the necessary military strategies and resources to achieve those objectives. In effect, he says, they need to apply a cost-benefit analysis.
And that is the very gist of the latest report/study from the Center for European Policy Analysis based here in Washington and discussed at a Rand Corporation briefing this past week. The cost-benefit analysis of U.S. support for Ukraine is incontrovertible. It’s producing wins at almost every level. As the report lays out, former President Trump, and others in the U.S. including some Democrats … as well as all those mad dog Republicans … have criticized continued U.S. support for Ukraine in its war with Russia. They have called for military and financial support to Ukraine to be cut, even ended. They downplay the risk from Russia and argue that the money should be spent at home.
Yet from numerous perspectives, when viewed from a bang-per-buck perspective, U.S. and Western support for Ukraine is an incredibly cost-effective investment. The link in the paragraph above will provide a nice summary with some excellent links but herein a few key points from the more detailed study:
– Spending 6% of U.S. military budget to destroy 50% of Russia’s military is a pretty sweet deal, indeed. When viewed from a bang-per-buck perspective, Western support for Ukraine is incredibly cost-effective.
– The U.S. alone will have spent roughly $40 billion on aid for Ukraine in 2022. More than half of it earmarked for defense.
– But the U.S. defense budget totals $715 billion for 2022. So the assistance represents 5.6% of total defense spending. That’s peanuts to take down a primary military adversary, and a top tier military rival (not too far behind China). Frankly, it’s a steal.
Right now, Ukraine is the best possible investment. And to be brutally blunt, we need to remember that it’s Ukrainian soldiers and civilians doing all of the dying. All we’re providing is equipment and training. Because in the last analysis, this war in Ukraine isn’t Ukraine’s war. It’s Russia’s war against the West that’s currently being fought in Ukraine. They didn’t ask to be the front line, but they are. If Putin is successful in Ukraine then all the former Soviet republics will, and by extension the rest of Europe, become vulnerable to attack. The choice for the U.S. is simple. Provide arms to support Ukraine today or deploy its own soldiers to fight Russia tomorrow. Armchair warriors will doubtless choose the latter. But I wonder if their attitude will change if it’s their son or daughter or nephew or niece walking up the ramp of the military transport plane.
And I am not making light of the complexity. War is the use of military force to achieve a political aim. The violence (force) element is pivotal. What you will see argued is that you can have war without violence. That’s wrong. You have rivalry and competition, but war must have politically directed violence, directed at an adversary for a political end.
Achieving your political aim. That’s the one thing that shines through.
And I do “get” the constant drumbeat that “we’re at war with Russia, we’re at war with China”. I think many terms we use confuse “subversion” and “crime” with actual war. Now, the “gray zone” is a big one used to denote actions occurring in this supposed realm between peace and war, but my point is that people are again misunderstanding “subversion” and elements of Great Power Competition. Fodder for another post, not this one.