15 years or so ago Robert Redford made a movie – Lions for Lambs – which attempted to ask some hard questions about the War onTerror. It received mixed reviews, wasn’t seen by a lot of folks, and arguably missed the mark – the difficult mark – of entertaining while getting people to think about the war on terror before it became a quagmire.

The problem with the movie came to mind the other day when I remembered the line the investigative reporter – played by Meryl Streep – writes in her notebook, a line from the young Senator played by Tom Cruise. The Senator has a new “strategy” with which we’ll “win the war” in Afghanistan; the reporter thinks it sounds like Vietnam.

But before we pull that apart, look at where we are in fact: Afghanistan is a mess as they seemingly descend back into the dark ages (by the way, this past week they closed the final women’s salons), US reputation abroad is shall we say, not so good, we’re involved in low-scale wars in Syria and Somalia, we’re supporting an ally’s war in Yemen, we’re trying to deter an approaching war with China over Taiwan, Iran is recalcitrant as ever and probably about to become nuclear power, North Korea is firing more missiles, we’re waging a proxy war against Russia and arguably destroying Ukraine as we do so – and also eating up our conventional weapons stockpiles, and for the first time in more than 4 decades there are no nuclear weapons limiting treaties in force.

As we stare at the mess that is Ukraine, it’s regularly and frequently noted how awful the Russians have performed. Setting aside the reality that as many Ukrainians have been killed as Russians and that the Russians are fighting a much different fight in the last 12 or 13 months than they did in the first two, the fact is the great Russian mistake was in their net assessment of Ukraine, and the strategy they executed based on that net assessment. That mistake is the root cause of everything that has followed.

But haven’t we suffered from the same problem? The US, as in Vietnam, fights tactically brilliant battles, with state-of-the-art weapons, in the hands of fantastically well trained personnel who have been formed into units capable of eye-watering combat feats, all pulled together into well-planned operations. But, so what?

Consider this line from the movie (written in 2006): We walk, and Afghanistan reverts back to the Taliban. Only now the Taliban has metastasized into something infinitely more vicious and potent because they’re now 2-0 versus superpowers. They butcher the people who helped us, who voted and were stupid enough to put their faith in our word. So call it not only the end of hope for 10s of millions of Afghans, but the end of American credibility, the end of America as a force for righteousness in the world. And when we’re forced to go back in a couple years, and please quote me on this, we’ll be squared off against a shattered Iraq, a hopeless Afghanistan, and a nuclear Iran. How many troops are we going to need then? I guarantee you’ll be adding some zeros.

A tad dramatic, but pretty close to the mark. But what is the real issue? The real issue was we started on the wrong foot, and we executed the wrong strategy. As with Vietnam – as Col Harry Summers liked to point out: tactical brilliance, the fact that we never lost an engagement larger than a platoon was irrelevant; we lost the war. And to those who would say that if we had stayed in Afghanistan the Taliban would still be a fringe force hiding in the mountains of Pakistan, the answer is: “we didn’t.” And our strategy failed to account for what would happen if “the next administration” pulled us out. Back again to: the strategy failed.

Which gets to the next point: what was it that the reporter (Meryl Streep) wrote in her notebook? The words from the Senator were: “As long as it takes.”

These are the same words that the Biden administration, and key figures in NATO and the EU, are using now when they talk about Ukraine: “As long as it takes.”

The problem is that what has happened is that that tough sounding phrase is acting as a substitute for clear strategic thinking.

And again, it’s the leadership in the Pentagon – the uniformed leadership, which has all received real, graduate level education in strategic thought – that is responsible for strategy formulation. And they have utterly failed. One might even argue that they have utterly failed in nearly every case presented to them since World War II.

We are at another bend in the road; the war in Ukraine threatens to slide in the fall, and then the winter and then we’ll see the start of the start of third year of war. That may show determination but it doesn’t show strategic acumen. The new Chairman will be in place soon, assuming Senator Tuberville relents. Even if he doesn’t, the Chairman, whoever that is, should lead a new strategy session: clear goals in Ukraine, in the Mid East, and in East Asia. Clear statements of accepted costs, then hard planning, game it out. Discuss it with Congress – make a real strategy. We’ve done this successfully in the past (before World War II). We know how to do this. It will require real leadership from the Pentagon, but we need a new strategy.

“As long as it takes” is not a strategy.

Copyright 2023 Arrias
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