Given its position as the world’s greatest superpower since World War II, it is an enigma that the U.S. lost wars against decidedly inferior enemies in Vietnam and Afghanistan and struggled mightily to achieve very little in Iraq despite massive investments (blood and treasure) for nearly a decade. Certainly, there were a number of factors that contributed to these unexpected failures. Among these are restraints on national decisionmakers regarding requisite levels of military force arising from concerns over nuclear escalation, the exorbitant costs and negative media coverage associated with long wars, and perhaps, evolving morality among the American people.
While I believe all these possible factors played some role, the primary reason we lost those wars was poor strategy and ineffective communication, which in turn led to poor military campaign planning, resourcing, and execution. Thus, as it turned out, Clausewitz’s insights from the early 19th century were (and are) still relevant today regarding how nations formulate grand strategy. Specifically, Clausewitz declared that before a nation goes to war it must first know its political goals and ensure that they are realistic and achievable. Subsequent to that, nations must harmonize those goals (or ends) with the ways (methods) and means (resources) for winning that campaign. He further cautioned, once committed to a military campaign, the people, the government, and the armed forces all must unify behind it or risk increasing “friction,” and possibly, failure.
Regarding Vietnam, Afghanistan, and Iraq, the United States ignored all these points and ultimately paid dearly. In each case, we failed to achieve our stated political goals. In this essay I will compare and contrast our experiences with these aforementioned failures with the overwhelming success achieved during the Persian Gulf War to illustrate the criticality of coherent grand strategy formulation.
At first blush my point here may appear trivial or pedantic, but it is highly consequential. If global superpowers are still capable of winning modern wars decisively despite legitimate concerns over nuclear escalation and daunting costs, then a well-conceived and resourced “Peace Through Strength” grand strategy approach, grounded in deterrence, can still succeed. If, however, superpowers are incapable of winning modern wars for the reasons suggested above (and possibly others), then it’s not likely that credible deterrence can be achieved; in which case the U.S. will have to develop alternative approaches to security. I believe that modern wars are winnable and grand strategies to secure peace and prosperity based on deterrence are still possible. I explain why and how below.
Vietnam
As H.R. McMaster documents in Dereliction of Duty, in Vietnam our national leaders clearly were very concerned about triggering a Chinese response similar to one we had experienced in Korea only a decade earlier. Any expansion of the war could also bring into the conflict the global communist leader, the Soviet Union, which carried with it the specter of potential nuclear escalation. These concerns weighed heavily on the minds of American national leaders and played a role in their decision to limit the amount of force employed during the Vietnam War. For these reasons, and others I’ll mention below, President Johnson settled for “graduated pressure” as the campaign’s grand design.
Given that this war was really the first one shown daily on American television, the brutal images constantly displayed reinforced the decision to limit the amount of force to help sustain popular support for the war. Moreover, mounting costs, too, played a role in the strategic decision to go with “graduated pressure” as the Johnson administration wanted to fight the Vietnam War as they invested heavily in its signal domestic priority—the “War on Poverty.”
Throughout the mid-1960s, all these factors contributed to the decision to stick with “graduated pressure,” despite obvious signs that this strategy was not working. When he first deployed ground troops to Vietnam in March 1965, President Johnson publicly insisted that we needed to defeat the communists in Vietnam to stop the spread of this insidious philosophy before it reached our shores. The appeasement approach Chamberlain embraced at Munich with Hitler failed and he had no intentions of repeating that mistake. Yet, despite these public utterances as McMaster uncovered, behind the scenes American decision makers were more preoccupied with not losing than winning, because a loss in Vietnam in 1965 would jeopardize the Great Society legislation which was before Congress.
So, was our central political goal to not lose in 1965 or to defeat the communist threat in South Vietnam? In relation to those goals, what were our political goals regarding North Vietnam? The confusion over political aims of the war had cascading negative effects because winning a war requires more resources than merely avoiding a loss. This confusion adversely affected military campaign planning, resourcing, and execution and disaster soon followed. The reality is we never really got around to making the necessary investments to win that war. As McMaster pointed out, the Joint Chiefs were fully aware of that flaw but pursued the strategy nonetheless. In Vietnam our ends, ways, and means were never harmonized and the U.S. war effort struggled mightily. The American people eventually soured on the costly stalemate. In the end, we settled for making the pain go away by shifting security responsibilities to the South Vietnamese during the Nixon administration and then withdrawing our forces. In 1975, South Vietnam fell to the communists, and we lost.
Our strategy was flawed from the start. President Johnson miscalculated when he escalated with ground troops. A decade earlier, as President Eisenhower was confronted with French requests to intervene as the Vietnamese ground forces surrounded their forces at Dien Bien Phu, the former general saw no real path forward that harmonized vital U.S. national interests (ends) with acceptable and viable ways and means. For that reason, he rejected the French request and kept America out of the war in Vietnam. Although very little (if anything) had changed a decade later, in 1965 President Johnson ordered U.S. ground troops into Vietnam to fight an unpopular and unnecessary war we were never committed to win. Eisenhower read and understood Clausewitz. Johnson did not.
Afghanistan
After al-Qaeda attacked our country on September 11, 2001, the United States had to respond. Our swift and decisive military campaign to destroy their forces was justified and necessary. The decision to occupy Afghanistan and commit to rebuilding it as a thriving Jeffersonian democracy, however, was fanciful, unnecessary for vital national security interests, and ignorant of history. Stunningly, it only had been a dozen years since the Soviet Union withdrew their military forces after trying hard and failing to politically remake Afghanistan. The Soviets did not learn from the earlier failures of the British empire, which had similar aspirations for Afghanistan in the 19th century and lost. Yet somehow it was going to be different with America in Afghanistan? No, we learned the hard way that the laws of “strategic physics” are not suspended for anyone, including “exceptional” America. Ends, ways, and means still must be harmonized and rationalized.
To be clear, while especially difficult and costly, nation-building after a war is possible. We did just that after World War II. The Allied powers rebuilt Germany and Japan and remade them into peaceful nations. But there was a big difference between Germany and Japan after World War II and Afghanistan in 2001. After our traumatic experiences with fascism before and during World War II, most Americans believed it was in our vital national security interests to fundamentally change the political arc of those countries. Given that, we committed to positioning over a half million men and women in Europe alone (many others in Japan) for several decades and spent a sizable portion of our GDP to rebuild the infrastructure of those war-torn nations. As such, our ends, ways, and means were harmonized, and we achieved those difficult and costly political goals. With Afghanistan (as with Vietnam), U.S. national leaders were never able to make a compelling argument to the American people why rebuilding and remaking that country was a vital national security interest. Consequently, our level of resource commitment was insufficient to achieve those lofty (and unnecessary) goals. With Afghanistan’s lack of history with democracy and its entrenched culture, it’s not clear any level of resources would have sufficed.
Once again, the absence of realistic political goals and overall strategic clarity led to poor military campaign planning, coordination, and execution. Curiously, somewhat similar to our experiences in Vietnam, we ended up resourcing Afghanistan not to lose, rather than to win, and after 20 years of stalemate, many Americans from across the ideological spectrum questioned the value of continuing this “endless” war. It did not seem worth it to continue to expend more blood and treasure for an unlimited period to achieve what was perceived as very little strategically. Thus, both the Trump and Biden administrations searched for exit ramps. Not all “exit ramps” are created equal, however, and the U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan in 2021 was especially inept. That entire brutal experience shall live in infamy as a testament to what can happen to any country, even global superpowers, who don’t learn from Clausewitz.
Iraq
After the 9/11 attacks, neo-conservative strategists within the George W. Bush administration (including the Vice President Dick Cheney) who had long argued that the aims of the Persian Gulf War were too limited, convinced the President that the United States should pursue regime change in Iraq. The rationale was that Iraq was associated with the 9/11 attackers and possessed weapons of mass destruction, and thus was an existential threat to the U.S. We were told we could not wait for a “mushroom cloud” before taking action to protect ourselves. So, in March 2003, exactly 20 years after President Reagan insisted to the world that America does not start wars, we did just that, attacking Iraq to depose Saddam Hussein.
The initial phase of the invasion went very well. Iraq’s military was routed, and Hussein’s regime was toppled in just a few weeks. American casualties were, thankfully, very low. Hussein was on the run, hiding in places throughout Sunni-held areas in Iraq. Before long, however, trouble developed as we embarked on an ambitious plan to remake Iraq into a multi-ethnic, religiously-tolerant republic based on democratic principles. This proved unpopular and a full-blown insurgency against our occupation ensued, eventually expanding into a bloody civil war between Sunni and Shia factions throughout the country. The U.S. led coalition simply did not have the force structure and resources in place to defeat the insurgency and to broker peace between the warring factions. We spent nearly a decade, including a major surge of troops and resources in 2007, before we were able to gain enough stability to eventually transfer authority for security to Iraqi forces and withdraw back to the U.S. Today, while the Iraqi government remains intact and largely in control of the country; and while it is true that Iraq is less of a haven for terrorists than Afghanistan, the reality is that we never achieved our initial strategic aims for that war of choice. While Iraq is not controlled by a government sympathetic to al-Qaeda, it is not a thriving multi-ethnic, religiously-tolerant republic. Nor is it a close ally of the U.S. It is instead a Shia-led majority and more of an ally to our arch nemesis, Iran.
The costs for our very marginal gains have been staggering. We lost thousands of servicemembers killed in action and have a generation of wounded who will need care for decades. Meanwhile, our domestic politics have been transformed for the worse. Now years later, deep political and ideological divisions remain, and we have a mountain of debt that threatens our future. All these factors have contributed to the widespread cynicism of the American people who increasingly distrust their leaders and institutions.
Had we right-sized the invasion force from the start to ensure we could stabilize the country after regime change, we may have saved a decade’s worth of heartache and the blood and treasure we lost, but the end result likely would have still been the same: a Shia-led Iraq, friendly towards Iran. From the start, our strategic aims were not realistic given that country’s previous history and culture. Like Vietnam and Afghanistan, faulty strategic thinking and poor campaign planning and execution led to suboptimal outcomes in Iraq.
The Persian Gulf War
In contrast to these failures, the United States achieved overwhelming strategic success in the Persian Gulf War of 1991. The major difference between these wars was how we approached strategy, starting with the political aims for the conflict. The goal identified for the Persian Gulf War was clear, limited, and achievable—to expel Saddam Hussein’s Iraqi military from Kuwait. This goal was effectively communicated to both domestic and foreign audiences allowing for broad and overwhelming support among constituencies throughout the U.S.-led coalition. The political leadership of the coalition thereafter properly resourced and supported the commanders and troops in the field. The political and strategic processes set the conditions for effective military campaign planning, coordination, and execution. The results speak for themselves. Within 100 hours the coalition’s ground campaign achieved the stated aim of the war. The Iraqi military was thoroughly defeated and humiliated and expelled from Kuwait. The war ended. The resounding political victory was matched by the lopsided combat results. While any soldier killed in combat is mourned sacrifice, compared to the Iraqi forces and other campaigns throughout history, the 392 combat deaths suffered by coalition forces during the Persian Gulf War were, thankfully, very light.
The decisive military victory had extraordinary strategic effects. Not only did it resolve the crisis by liberating Kuwait, it also effectively ended Hussein’s ability to threaten his neighbors. Further, the U.S. military renaissance, which had been underway for nearly two decades following the devastating loss in Vietnam, was now affirmed and on display for everyone in the world (friend and foe alike) to see. This significantly enhanced deterrence and strengthened the hand of American diplomats and elected leadership for a generation. In the end, that military campaign stands as an example of how to effectively execute grand strategy.
Going Forward
Significantly then, the abject failures in Vietnam and Afghanistan (and to a marked degree in Iraq) does not mean that the U.S. is incapable of winning a modern war because of legitimate concerns over potential nuclear escalation, high costs, and public aversion to long wars. The results of the Persian Gulf War prove that if we must wage war, we can still do so successfully. That fact renders viable the “Peace through Strength” grand strategy based on the concept of deterrence. This approach can be used to keep the peace and to secure American vital interests.
Thus, the lessons we should take from the entire post-World War II era is that we must develop future senior leaders capable of effective strategic thinking, communication, and decision-making. Those strategic skills of senior leaders when coupled with properly manned, trained, and equipped armed forces will deter potential adversaries, and should deterrence fail for whatever reason, fight and win our country’s wars decisively.
The key to American Grand Strategy then is to develop a clear vision that is achievable and popular among the people. This strategy should incorporate all elements and dimensions of national power. Such an approach will persuasively convey to potential adversaries that if they attack the U.S. they will lose and end up worse off than they started. All of this affirms that while much has changed since Clausewitz first published On Strategy in the 19th century, his central arguments regarding national security and foreign policy remain valid and we ignore them at our peril.
Accordingly, as this new administration gains its footing, it should work on rallying the American people behind our “Peace through Strength” grand strategy approach. In parallel we should pursue other national priorities such as restoring fiscal sustainability, revitalizing our industrial base (we should not be reliant on any other nation for our critical minerals and materials, energy, and food), and above all else, significantly improving the readiness of our armed forces. This approach will also require smart trade policies and vibrant alliances, but all the aforementioned points are achievable and have worked for America in the past.
In the 1980s, the Reagan administration deployed a similar strategy, which enabled the U.S. and the West to win the Cold War. Reagan made good choices, set realistic strategic goals, dramatically improved the readiness of the U.S. military, and never got us bogged down in hubristic nation-building efforts that weren’t necessary—a lesson we forgot in Afghanistan and Iraq.
Although the Trump administration’s grand strategy during the first term was in many ways as effective as Reagan’s (if not more so), that doesn’t guarantee similar outcomes this time around. Success must be earned this time by once again practicing smart grand strategy and making wise decisions. History is replete with examples of hubris where once effective leaders thereafter over-reached and made foolish choices, for which their nation paid dearly. Let that not be our fate now. We face significant challenges checking and shaping a rising China including deterring an invasion of Taiwan, securing wise and just peace agreements that last in Ukraine and Gaza, rectifying unfair trade practices, and ensuring we can continue to compete and flourish in an age of dizzying technological change.
Yet, in the face of these daunting strategic problem sets, we have the potential to restore American power and stature and enjoy our best years of peace and prosperity. That should be our priority and focus going forward. Re-reading Clausewitz will help.
