I still remember the Vietnam War days, after all I was one year from going. Day after day we saw heard the battle statistics like they were college football scores. According to those scores, we were winning by so much that we chalked up the war as a victory well before it finished. And so we were shocked when the nationˋs most trusted news broadcaster, Walter Cronkite, said otherwise. His announcement came, if memory serves, after the Tet Offensive.
Why did we lose that war? It was because our nationˋs leaders failed to understand why the enemy was fighting, the different strengths of the enemy, and the resolve of the enemy. Over 2 million Vietnamese and 58+ thousand American service people died for that lack of understanding.
We failed to understand the enemy because our leaders failed to understand a people and culture that was not their own. They projected their own personalities, values, and culture on the enemy and thus lost the war because they didn't realize how difficult winning would be.
Fast forward to 2001 and 2003 and our wars against Afghanistan and Iraq. We told ourselves that Iraqis would greet us as liberators and though some did, but not enough celebrated our invasion. And our efforts to invade and then rebuild their respective nations and the lies we told ourselves caused us to lose those wars.
We should note that we lost the war in Iraq after President Bush announced ˋMission Accomplished.ˋ And we lost the war in Afghanistan after we not only established an elected government, we kept troops there to protect that government.
And so Trump claims that we will achieve a lasting victory if, after winning all of the battles, we avoid rebuilding the nation ourselves. Instead, we can let the Iranian protesters overthrow the theocracy and establish their own government on their own.
And so if we will not try to rebuild Iran after destroying it, what is it that we donˋt understand about Iran that can cause us to lose this war? We know that Iran is run by a theocratic government in which the most popular religion is one that is held by its leaders. Yes, the opposition has many supporters, but so does Iranˋs theocracy. But do we understand the degree of commitment that the government and many of its people have in persevering when attacked by their arch enemies? After all, such an understanding could tell us how much the government and people will endure vs how much our nation can endure in fighting the war.
With the Vietnam War, not understanding the desire for reunification that many Vietnamese had outweighed their commitment to the U.S. installed governments caused us to naively escalate our involvement in Vietnam. Our nationˋs leaders believed that that war was about the spread of Communism back then and could be won by our military. And so North Vietnam and the VC were willing to endure more suffering than our nation was willing to in fighting the war.
Another nation that is fighting a war for reunification is Russia. Russia illegally and immorally invaded Ukraine in order return Ukraine back to itself And this explains how much suffering Russia is willing to endure. What Putin didnˋt anticipate how much Ukrainians did not want to be part of Russia again.
A nation can also fail to anticipate how an opponent can fight back. In Vietnam, because of the disparity between conventional military strength between the two sides, both the NVA and the VC often fought using gorilla tactics. The result is that the NVA and the VC were able to prolong the war past our own nationˋs endurance. And one of their strengths was the number of combatants they had to draw from.
In Iraq, both our own blunders and an insurgency was used to offset the disparity in military strengths.
In our attacks on Iran, Iran is addressing the disparity in our respective military strengths by using its weapons to fight an economic war rather than engage in a head to head military confrontation. And so when our Secretary of Defense reports on the progress of the war, which he does like a teenage boy would report on playing a video game, he fails to address both a key vulnerability of ours and Iranˋs progress.
Another issue is the respective costs of the war. Though the militaries of Israel and the U.S. are much more powerful than Iranˋs, the cost of our weapons far exceed the costs of Iranˋs weapons. This can make it easier for Iran to win of attrition caused by financial concerns. Cheaper weapons can make it more feasible for a nation to persevere in fighting than more expensive weapons can. And thus there comes a point when continuing to fight can begin to cost too much and factor in to how long both sides are willing to fight.
Because of the Cold War, we sometimes believe that the only wars that we canˋt afford to fight are mutually destructive wars where nuclear weapons are involved. But in the current war with Irans, we could face a total breakdown of the global economic system which would be very destructivee. And so despite our military accomplishments, we will not know who will win this current war until some time after Trump and Netanyahu announce ˋMission Accomplished.ˋ
But there is another factor that determines whether we should fight in a given war. That is the moral factor. With each war, the participants risk experiencing military defeat and/or moral suicide. We are currently witnessing this in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. It is apparent by their actions that both Israel and groups like Hamas have not only experienced, but have embraced, moral suicide. It appears, with the victims of the current war, that the U.S. and Israel, along with Iran, are at least flirting with moral suicide. This moral factor would better influence the decision to enter a war if values influenced the participantsˋ decisions more than their respective interests did.
Another factor that should come into play in determining whether to go to war or not is the precedent that such an action sets. The powerful nations believe in privilege based on power. Thus, when they are going to war, they don't think of themselves as setting a precedent or an example for other nations to follow. That stands in contrast to International Law that presumes the equality of all nations. And so when Russia invades Ukraine or the U.S. and Israel team up to attack Iran, they are not aware that they are setting an example for the nations wishing to become part of the powerful elite to follow. Nor do they consider how other nations, wishing to go to war with another nation, can rationalize their actions by pointing to the unjust wars prosecuted by the powerful elite.
A nation's military may win all of the battles, but it is the leader of a given nation that determines the success of prosecuting a war. And when one considers the above, most wars are lost when a President decides to start a war. And that happens when opportunism is at least partially fueled by ignorance.. But there is something else that we need to consider, if we follow the Russell-Einstein Manifesto, leaders would conclude that almost every war is not worth starting because the accumulation of wars leads to the eventual use use of WMDs. And here we should note that today, WMD is equated with nuclear weapons. But who knows what else could become a WMD in the future.
