How Wars Are
Won and Lost
Vulnerability and Military Power
By
JOHN A. GENTRY
● Military power
– loose concept.– the United States repeatedly has done poorly
in its recent wars.
● Vulnerability theory– No materialist theory
– Military power is relational
– Asimmetry
● Components of militar power– national will
– resource mobilization
– resource conversion
– force generation
– Leadership
– operational execution.
● National Will– collective national will
– Will exists (or not) to conduct specific types of operations against specific opponents
– Importance of information
– Rules of Engagement (reglas de enfrentamento o compromiso)
● Resource Mobilization– acquisition of tangible resources for military
purposes.
– Attacks on transportation infrastructures, naval blockades, economic sanctions, and many others.
● Resource Conversion– Quantities of industrial output
● Force Generation– produce militarily relevant field forces.
– Material assets
– Intangible institutional factors (military training, doctrine, organizational cultures)
● Leadership– Effectiveness of leadership
– Ability and desire of subordinate organizations to implement policies.
● Operational Execution– conduct political/military operations
– Battlefield results
Philippines
● February 1899–July 1902– EEUU vs Spain/ Army of Liberation
● Two phases – conventional
– unconventional
Philippines
● May 23, 1898, Philippine independence ● McKinley ordered to occupy the Philippines
Philippines
● Initial military failures● Aguinaldo’s strategy guerrilla tactics.
– The guerrillas also exploited the U.S. policy of benevolence to find and maintain supporters and to extort funds and supplies from less sympathetic Filipinos.
● EEUU Force– Moderate-sized but fairly modern navy
– Small and poorly equipped army
– The U.S. Navy contributed blue-water warships and coastal gunboats for blockade purposesI
– Initial force ratio of about 1:2
– a considerable but not decisive advantage in the technological component of its military materiel
– The biggest American advantages involved skill
Philippines
● Effort to create a stable American colonial government. – The U.S. Army performed many of the civic action
tasks.
– Improving local water and sewer infrastructure;
– U.S. troops soon experienced higher casualties
● Increased aggressiveness against guerrillas – Small-unit, counterguerrilla field operations
Philippines
● The U.S. military and American civilian administrators found and exploited appreciable Army of Liberation and nationalist vulnerabilities in all six dimensions– national will
– resource mobilization,
– resource conversion
– force generation,
– leadership
– operational execution .
● Nationalists sought vulnerabilities – operational execution
– national will,
– leadership
Bombing of Germany
● Strategic aerial warfare– RAF: Morale Bombing
– American popular opposition to attacking civilians
– American air theorists argued strategic bombers would win wars by themselves
● RAF 1940/41– hitting the vicinity of the centers of German cities
– Bomber Command was only an “annoyance” to Germany
● February 12, 1942, – it focused on bombing civilians
● 1943 The Germans were winning their campaign against British and American bombers. – lack of long-range fighter protection
● January 1944– Major operational difference
● Dropping massive quantities of bombs on Germany did not damage German civilians’ morale– The Allies lost the morale war
– Damaging the skill of the organization
– Slowly and inefficiently degraded Germany’s military capabilities
● attacked perceived German vulnerabilities in four dimensions and achieved mixed levels of limited success– national will,
● morale bombing of cities
– resource mobilization● targeting critical general economic installations
– resource conversion● attacking key defense industries like aircraft factories
– operational execution● strikes by both air forces on military targets in conjunction
VIETNAM
● 1954 Dien Bien Phu● 1960 resumption of the armed struggle● EEUU ayudan el Vietnam del Sur
– Before 1961
– Kennedy expanded the role of U.S. military advisors
● Vietnamese “people's war”– conventional fights
– guerrilla engagements
– flexibility, good tactical intelligence, and mobility
● 1965 Johnson escalating– necessary to prevent collapse of the GVN
● Operation Rolling Thunder– Imposing physical damage
– Raise the morale of the South Vietnamese;
– interdiction of North Vietnamese infiltration
● 1968 Tet Offensive– cause a general uprising
– influence American public opinion
– Americans’ willingness to continue the war crumbled
● Fundamental failure of leadership– The military bureaucratically punished officers who
criticized conventional policy
● Politically helpful for the DRV to be perceived as a victim of enemy barbarism.
● Attacking North Vietnam in the leadership, resource, and operational execution dimensions– destroying or threatening its military, economic, and
logistical capabilities
● Johnson never made a persuasive case for the war
● DRV was not vulnerable EEUU attacks.
● Failed to understand the strength of North Vietnam’s commitment to national unification
● DRV resources: people and food.
● The DRV’s primary target was national will and leadership
● Hanoi actively managed strategically important
information.
● North Vietnam’s ability to identify and exploit
U.S. vulnerabilities
YUGOSLAVIA
● Yugoslav military and Serbian internal security forces’ killings of ethnic Albanian civilians in the Serbian territory of Kosovo
● Clinton launched the war for ethical reasons ● Yugoslavia recognized U.S. reluctance to use
ground troops in the Balkans● Yugoslav military and Serbian security forces
remained coherent organizations throughout the war
● Five goals, – minimizing loss of friendly aircraft
– impacting” Yugoslav military and Serbian security forces in Kosovo
– minimizing collateral damage;
– achieving the first three in order to hold NATO together
– protecting allied ground forces in neighboring Bosnia
● The numbers– Human Rights Watch counted 90 NATO attacks on
civilians and confirmed
– 488 civilian deaths,
– estimate that Serbs killed about 10,000 Kosovar Albanian civilians during Operation Allied
– ethnic Albanians murdered Serbs chronically After 1999.
– NATO lost two aircraft but suffered no combat fatalities
● NATO attacked Yugoslavia in the leadership dimension. – The initial, modest attacks on facilities were ineffectual.
● NATO attacked national will– NATO expanded its target list
● No major efforts to attack Yugoslavia in the resource mobilization, resource conversion, or force generation dimensions
US-IRAQ (2003-2011)
● Deposing President Saddam Hussein
● a conventional phase (March–April 2003) – Defeated the conventional Iraqi military, deposed
Saddam Hussein, and occupied Iraq;
● an unconventional phase thereafter – The insurgents conducted unconventional warfare
● American military planners had assumed that their military victory would be complete – they ignored thousands of weapons depots
– Cultural insensitivity
● Many of the failures reflected the U.S. military’s denigration of “nation building” operations
● Large parts of the U.S. force structure were irrelevant to counterinsurgency warfare
● excessive and inappropriate use of airpower
● The conventional war against Saddam’s regime was fought and decided almost entirely in Iraq’s leadership and operational execution dimensions
● The coalition did not attack Iraqi national will ● The coalition did not attack Iraq’s resource
mobilization ● The coalition did not attack in the force
generation dimension.
● The Americans at first denied they faced an insurgency. – Major failures in the resource mobilization
dimension
– resource conversion
– fostering insurgent force generation .
● Insurgency goals– Attacks in the national will
– Resource mobilization dimensions
AFGHANISTAN
● September 11, 2001● NATO on September 12, 2001, Article 5 of its
founding treaty● Afghanistan: an “economy of force” operation
● war can be divided into two phases– a conventional phase between October and
December 2001
– Thereafter
● the Taliban and al-Qaeda regrouped and launched by 2003 an insurgency.
● The U.S. effort in the conventional war was focused in two dimensions – leadership
– operational execution
● the mistaken judgment that conventional military force could end the war
● In the unconventional phase, the United States and its coalition partners generally failed to do well in any of the six dimensions,– national will dimension
– resource mobilization
– force conversion and force generation
– operational execution dimension thereby were only partly successful.
● Taliban performed well– resource mobilization,
– force generation dimensions
● Externally– attacked the coalition’s national will
– leadership
– hurting Afghan government resource mobilization