Stratfor on Iraq: spoiling attacks
Geopolitics and the U.S. Spoiling Attack By George Friedman [Stratfor]
The United States has now spent four years fighting in Iraq. Those
who planned the conflict never expected this outcome. Indeed, it
could be argued that this outcome represents not only miscalculation
but also a strategic defeat for the United States. The best that can
be said about the war at the moment is that it is a strategic
stalemate, which is an undesired outcome for the Americans. The worst
that can be said is that the United States has failed to meet its
strategic objectives and that failure represents defeat.
In considering the situation, our attention is drawn to a strange
paradox that has been manifest in American foreign policy since World
War II. On the one hand, the United States has consistently
encountered strategic stalemate or defeat in particular politico-
military operations. At those times, the outcomes have appeared to be
disappointing if not catastrophic. Yet, over the same period of time,
U.S. global power, on the whole, has surged. In spite of stalemate
and defeat during the Cold War, the United States was more in 2000
than it had been in 1950.
Consider these examples from history:
Korea: Having defeated the North Korean army, U.S. forces were
attacked by China. The result was a bloody stalemate, followed by a
partition that essentially restored the status quo ante — thus
imposing an extended stalemate.
Cuba: After a pro-Soviet government was created well within the
security cordon of the United States, Washington used overt and
covert means to destroy the Castro regime. All attempts failed, and
the Castro government remains in place nearly half a century later.
Vietnam: the United States fought an extended war in Vietnam,
designed to contain the expansion of Communism in Indochina. The
United States failed to achieve its objectives — despite massive
infusions of force — and North Vietnam established hegemony over the
region.
Iran: The U.S. containment policy required it to have a cordon of
allies around the Soviet Union. Iran was a key link, blocking Soviet
access to the Persian Gulf. The U.S. expulsion from Iran following
the Islamic Revolution represented a major strategic reversal.
Iraq: In this context, Iraq appears to represent another strategic
reversal — with U.S. ambitions at least blocked, and possibly
defeated, after a major investment of effort and prestige.
Look at it this way. On a pretty arbitrary scale — between Korea
(1950-53), Cuba (1960-63), Vietnam (1963-75), Iran (1979-1981) and
Iraq (2003-present) — the United States has spent about 27 of the
last 55 years engaged in politico-military maneuvers that, at the
very least, did not bring obvious success, and frequently brought
disaster. Yet, in spite of these disasters, the long-term tendency of
American power relative to the rest of the world has been favorable
to the United States. This general paradox must be explained. And in
the course of explanation, some understandings of the Iraq campaign,
seen in a broader context, might emerge.
Schools of Thought
There are three general explanations for this paradox:
U.S. power does not rest on these politico-military
involvements but derives from other factors, such as economic power.
Therefore, the fact that the United States has consistently failed in
major conflicts is an argument that these conflicts should not have
been fought — that they were not relevant to the emergence of
American power. The U.S. preoccupation with politico-military
conflict has been an exercise in the irrelevant that has slowed, but
has not derailed, expansion of American power. Applying this logic,
it would be argued that the Soviet Union would have collapsed anyway
under its own weight — as will the Islamic world — and that U.S.
interventions are pointless.The United States has been extraordinarily fortunate that,
despite its inability to use politico-military power effectively and
its being drawn consistently into stalemate or defeat, exogenous
forces have saved the United States from its own weakness. In the
long run, this good fortune should not be viewed as strategy, but as
disaster waiting to happen.The wars mentioned previously were never as significant as
they appeared to be — public sentiment and government rhetoric
notwithstanding. These conflicts drew on only a small fraction of
potential U.S. power, and they always were seen as peripheral to
fundamental national interests. The more important dimension of U.S.
foreign policy was statecraft that shifted the burden of potential
warfare from the United States to its allies. So, regardless of these
examples, the core strategic issue for the United States was its
alliances and ententes with states like Germany and China. Applying
this logic, it follows that the wars themselves were — practically
speaking — insignificant episodes, that stalemate and defeat were
trivial and that, except for the domestic political obsession, none
were of fundamental importance to the United States.
Put somewhat differently, there is the liberal view that the Soviet
Union was not defeated by the United States in the Cold War, but that
it collapsed itself, and the military conflicts of the Cold War were
unnecessary. There is the conservative view that the United States
won the Cold War in spite of a fundamental flaw in the American
character — an unwillingness to bear the burden of war — and that
this flaw ultimately will prove disastrous for the United States.
Finally, there is the non-ideological, non-political view that the
United States won the Cold War in spite of defeats and stalemates
because these wars were never as important as either the liberals or
conservatives made them out to be, however necessary they might have
been seen to be at the time.
If we apply these analyses to Iraq, three schools of thought emerge.
The first says that the Iraq war is unnecessary and even harmful in
the context of the U.S.-jihadist confrontation — and that,
regardless of outcome, it should not be fought. The second says that
the war is essential — and that, while defeat or stalemate in this
conflict perhaps would not be catastrophic to the United States,
there is a possibility that it would be catastrophic. And at any
rate, this argument continues, the United States’ ongoing inability
to impose its will in conflicts of this class ultimately will destroy
it. Finally, there is the view that Iraq is simply a small piece of a
bigger war and that the outcome of this particular conflict will not
be decisive, although the war might be necessary. The heated rhetoric
surrounding the Iraq conflict stems from the traditional American
inability to hold things in perspective.
There is a reasonable case to be made for any of these three views.
Any Stratfor reader knows that our sympathies gravitate toward the
third view. However, that view makes no sense unless it is expanded.
It must also take into consideration the view that the Soviet Union’s
fall was hardwired into history regardless of U.S. politico-military
action, along with the notion that a consistent willingness to accept
stalemate and defeat represents a significant threat to the United
States in the long term.
Resource Commitments and Implications
Let’s begin with something that is obviously true. When we consider
Korea, Cuba, Vietnam, Iran and even Iraq, it is clear that the United
States devoted only a tiny fraction of the military power it could
have brought to bear if it wished. By this, we mean that in none of
these cases was there a general American mobilization, at no point
was U.S. industry converted to a wartime footing, at no point were
nuclear weapons used to force enemy defeat. The proportion of force
brought to bear, relative to capabilities demonstrated in conflicts
such as World War II, was minimal.
If there were fundamental issues at stake involving national
security, the United States did not act as though that was the case.
What is most remarkable about these conflicts was the extreme
restraint shown — both in committing forces and in employing
available forces. The conservative critique of U.S. foreign policy
revolves around the tendency of the American leadership and public to
recoil at the idea of extended conflict. But this recoil is not a
response to extended war. Rather, by severely limiting the force
available from the outset, the United States has, unintentionally,
designed its wars to be extended. From this derives the conservative
view that the United States engages in warfare without intending
victory.
In each of these cases, the behavior of the United States implied
that there were important national security issues at stake, but
measured in terms of the resources provided, these national security
issues were not of the first order. The United States certainly has
shown an ability to mount full-bore politico-military operations in
the past: In World War II, it provided sufficient resources to invade
Europe and the Japanese empire simultaneously. But in all of the
cases we have cited, the United States provided limited resources –
and in some cases, only covert or political resources. Clearly, it
was prepared on some level to accept stalemate and defeat.
Even in cases where the enemy was engaged fully, the United States
limited its commitment of resources. In Vietnam, for example, the
defeat of North Vietnam and regime change were explicitly ruled out.
The United States had as its explicit goal a stalemate, in which both
South and North Vietnam survived as independent states. In Korea, the
United States shifted to a stalemate strategy after the Chinese
intervention. So too in Cuba after the Cuban missile crisis; and in
Iran, the United States accepted defeat in an apparently critical
arena without attempting a major intervention. In each instance, the
mark of U.S. intervention was limited exposure — even at the cost of
stalemate or defeat.
In other words, the United States consistently has entered into
conflicts in which its level of commitment was extremely limited, in
which either victory was not the strategic goal or the mission
eventually was redefined to accept stalemate, and in which even
defeat was deemed preferable to a level of effort that might avert
it. Public discussion on all sides was apoplectic both during these
conflicts and afterward, yet American global power was not materially
affected in the long run.
The Spoiling Attack
This appears to make no sense until we introduce a military concept
into the analysis: the spoiling attack. The spoiling attack is an
offensive operation; however, its goal is not to defeat the enemy but
to disrupt enemy offensives — to, in effect, prevent a defeat by the
enemy. The success of the spoiling attack is not measured in term of
enemy capitulation, but the degree to which it has forestalled
successful enemy operations.
The concept of a spoiling attack is intimately bound up with the
principle of economy of force. Military power, like all power, is
finite. It must be husbanded. Even in a war in which no resources are
spared, some operations do not justify a significant expenditure.
Some attacks are always designed to succeed by failing. More
precisely, the resources devoted to those operations are sufficient
to disrupt enemy plans, to delay an enemy offensive, or to create an
opportunity for political disruption of the enemy, rather than to
defeat the enemy. For those tasked with carrying out the spoiling
attack, it appears that they are being wasted in a hopeless effort.
For those with a broader strategic or geopolitical perspective, it
appears to be the proper application of the “economy of force”
principle.
If we consider the examples cited above and apply the twin concepts
of the spoiling attack and economy of force, then the conversion of
American defeats into increased U.S. global power no longer appears
quite as paradoxical. In Korea, spoiling Communist goals created
breathing space elsewhere for the United States, and increased
tension levels between China and Russia. A stalemate achieved
outcomes as satisfactory to Washington as taking North Korea would
have been. In Cuba, containing Fidel Castro was, relative to cost, as
useful as destroying him. What he did in Cuba itself was less
important to Washington than that he should not be an effective
player in Latin America. In Vietnam, frustrating the North’s
strategic goals for a decade allowed the Sino-Soviet dispute to
ripen, thus opening the door for Sino-U.S. entente even before the
war ended. The U.S. interest in Iran, of course, rested with its
utility as a buffer to the Soviets. Being ousted from Iran mattered
only if the Iranians capitulated to the Soviets. Absent that, Iran’s
internal politics were of little interest to the
United States.
If we apply the twin concepts to Iraq, it is possible to understand
the reasons behind the size of the force deployed (which, while
significant, still is limited relative to the full range of options
brought to bear in World War II) and the obvious willingness of the
Bush administration to court military disaster. The invasion four
years ago has led to the Sunnis and Shia turning against each other
in direct conflict. Therefore, it could be argued that just as the
United States won the Cold War by exploiting the Sino-Soviet split
and allying with Mao Zedong, so too the path to defeating the
jihadists is not a main attack, but a spoiling attack that turns
Sunnis and Shia against each other. This was certainly not the intent
of the Bush administration in planning the 2003 invasion; it has
become, nevertheless, an unintended and significant outcome.
Moreover, it is far from clear whether U.S. policymakers through
history have been aware of this dimension in their operations. In
considering Korea, Cuba, Vietnam and Iran, it is never clear that the
Truman, Kennedy, Johnson/Nixon or Carter/Reagan administrations
purposely set out to implement a spoiling attack. The fog of
political rhetoric and the bureaucratized nature of the U.S. foreign
policy apparatus make it difficult to speak of U.S. “strategy” as
such. Every deputy assistant secretary of something-or-other confuses
his little piece of things with the whole, and the American culture
demonizes and deifies without clarifying.
However, there is a deep structure in U.S. foreign policy that
becomes visible. The incongruities of stalemate and defeat on the one
side and growing U.S. power on the other must be reconciled. The
liberal and conservative arguments explain things only partially. But
the idea that the United States rarely fights to win can be
explained. It is not because of a lack of moral fiber, as
conservatives would argue; nor a random and needless belligerence, as
liberals would argue. Rather, it is the application of the principle
of spoiling operations — using limited resources not in order to
defeat the enemy but to disrupt and confuse enemy operations.
As with the invisible hand in economics, businessmen pursue immediate
ends without necessarily being aware of how they contribute to the
wealth of nations. So too, politicians pursue immediate ends without
necessarily being aware of how they contribute to national power.
Some are clearer in their thinking than others, perhaps, or possibly
all presidents are crystal-clear on what they are doing in these
matters. We do not dine with the great.
But there is an underlying order to U.S. foreign policy that makes
the apparent chaos of policymaking understandable and rational.