Why America Loses Wars: Limited War and U.S. Strategy from the Korean War to the Present. Donald Stoker. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2019.

The Political Limits of the Military Pivot

The national defense and foreign policy establishments in the United States are collectively looking away from Afghanistan and Iraq and towards China and Russia. As such, debates now center around how the military should be organized to deal with near-peer conventional conflict rather than the counterinsurgency conflicts it has been fighting for the better part of two decades. The debate is long overdue. Doctrinal documents and international developments are now beginning to refocus the military’s attention on high-intensity conventional conflict. However, reorganizing the military for new missions is far from sufficient. Reorganizing the military for great power competition and then selecting yet another conflict that requires counterinsurgency and stability operations will leave warfighters unprepared and dangerously exposed, as has happened repeatedly in the 70 years since World War II. Poor political decisions have the potential to undermine any advantageous reorganizing of the military, and a new book by Donald Stoker suggests this is likely to occur yet again.

In Why America Loses Wars: Limited War and U.S. Strategy from the Korean War to the Present, Stoker applies strategic theory to the modern American way of war and why it consistently fails to deliver on their political objectives.[1] To be fair, Stoker’s contributions are less a reworking of strategic theory, and more of a reminder of how existing strategic thought should be applied. Two of Stoker’s contributions are most important for the current debate on how to organize the military to compete with Russia and China. He argues for a restructuring of the limited war concept itself, and then provides a historical analysis of how U.S. leaders have misunderstood their role in forming strategy. Both contributions should be taken as warnings for current and future great power competition. The U.S. military can be given the necessary resources and take all prudent steps to compete with near-peer competitors, but if political leaders fail to wield military power in a way for which it is designed or fail to provide clear and attainable political objectives for the military, then all of this effort is for naught. Stoker’s book should be required reading for both military practitioners and those civilian leaders who are responsible for directing those practitioners.

What Are Limited Wars?

Stoker begins with a comprehensive dismantling and reconstruction of the concept of limited war itself. The term has come to be used for so many circumstances and under so many conditions that it now means little more than any war that isn’t branded a World War. Stoker says, “Simply put, we don’t know what we mean when we use the term ‘limited war.”[2] Many have attempted to define it in relation, and opposition, to total war. Limited war, therefore, is any war in which a state limits the resources dedicated to the war effort. This means-based definition is problematic, for many reasons that Stoker points out. The biggest problem in that no state has, or even can, divert the totality of their resources towards any war effort. Even in the example case of World War II, the United States held back enough resources to feed its own population, and not every citizen was involved in the war effort. Michael Beckley argued in Unrivaled: Why America Will Remain the World's Sole Superpower that the United States will continue to be a dominant power because, among other reasons, it is more difficult for China to divert resources away from a large and aging population to wage a long war of attrition. China, in other words, cannot divert the whole of its economic output to war—nor can any other country.

Stoker instead argues an ends-based definition focusing on the political objectives of the war has far more utility than a means-based definition. This is based on a reading of Clausewitz, who believed a war should be defined by the political objectives being sought and not the level of resources being used to achieve it. For Clausewitz, war was either an attempt at an unlimited political objective of overthrowing the opposing enemy’s regime, or something less than this—usually dealing with the capture of some piece of territory.

War can be of two kinds, in the sense that either the objective is to overthrow the enemy—to render him politically helpless or militarily impotent, thus forcing him to sign whatever peace we please; or merely to occupy some of his frontier-districts so that we can annex them or use them for bargaining at the peace negotiations.[3]

Therefore, a limited war is any war in which regime change is not being sought. This immediately draws into question the classification, and therefore the conduct, of many U.S. wars since World War II. Korea, at times, sought the overthrow of the North Korean regime, and both Afghanistan and Iraq post-2001 were unlimited wars seeking the overthrow of regimes. Furthermore, this classification should be evaluated for each dyad belligerent in the war. Take Vietnam for example. The U.S. sought a limited objective against the North in preserving the South Vietnamese regime. The North Vietnamese sought an unlimited political objective against the South in overthrowing the regime, but sought a limited objective against the U.S. in simply expelling them from South Vietnamese territory. Furthermore, these objectives can change over time.

While many outside the halls of academia see little value in such a comprehensive analysis of what a concept is and is not, these analyses are vital for practitioners and policy makers. The misconceptions surrounding the term limited war create conditions leading policy makers to believe complicated political objectives can be achieved on the cheap through military means insufficient to achieve the ends desired. Stoker says, “…bad limited war theory has helped rob the US and other Western nations of the awareness that wars should be waged decisively.”[4]

Take, as one example, the possibility of limited military strikes against Iran.[5] It is unclear what objective this kind of operation would achieve, although some hope it would deter Iran from future aggression. This strategy would be indecisive, would likely only escalate hostilities, and would not achieve the objective sought. If we think of limited war as anything not approaching the level of effort undertaken during World War II, then almost every plausible military engagement appears to be achievable for a relatively low cost. It takes little time to research the history of American wars defined in such a way to see that limited war is by no means small or cheap. The problem reveals itself as far more pernicious than it first appears after reading Stoker’s historical examples.

The book, on several occasions, recounts interactions between civilian leaders and military officers in which civilians ask for military options against a country, military officers ask for the political objective to be achieved, and the civilians refuse to provide them. Stoker places the majority of the blame at the feet of political leaders who do not understand that wars should be defined by the political objectives sought, and how it is their responsibility to clearly communicate those objectives to the military. However, the problem goes beyond an initial understanding of what the political objective should be, to a situation where leaders allow political objectives to be expanded into nebulous, far-flung ambitions long after the initial objectives have been achieved. For example, after 2003, Iraq morphed from an unlimited political objective of regime change to an unclearly defined limited objective of preserving the western-backed regime. Proper strategy, as argued for in Stoker’s book, would have the end state of an Iraq invasion in mind before it began, and civilian and military leaders would have planned for that outcome before the first tanks rolled across the border.

Rhythmic History?

My own research looks into the military’s effectiveness in armed state-building operations, what many call nation-building. Much of my focus revolves around a painfully predictable cycle of the military finding itself unprepared in a state-building operation, diverting resources and effort to getting better at state-building and counterinsurgency, then dismantling those capabilities to refocus on great-power competition, just to find itself once again sent unprepared into another state-building operation.

Unclear political objectives contribute to this cycle. The initial stages of recent conflicts saw clear objectives early on—the removal of a regime. These then morphed into operations with unclear objectives requiring tasks the military was not designed for, like statebuilding and counterinsurgency. Restructuring the military is of little value if it is designed for one type of conflict and sent by political leaders into wars with unclear political objectives. For those who think the United States couldn’t possibly repeat the mistakes of Afghanistan and Iraq, Trump administration officials have pushed for military interventions in both Venezuela and Iran. Both would likely require a substantial commitment of ground forces dedicated to counterinsurgency operations if the United States sought to take and hold territory.

Breaking this cycle requires an awareness among both civilian and military leaders that political objectives must come first, that war must then be waged decisively to achieve those objectives, and finally that these wars must not be allowed to morph into indecisive forever wars. The United States cannot  allow interactions like the one below with the then Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, General Colin Powell, to occur at the highest levels of government.

Powell, fearing the U.S. public would not support it, was reluctant to use military force over the fate of Kuwait. As the conversation extended, Cheney pressed Powell for options regarding how the US could use its military power against Iraq. Powell, for his part, insisted that his civilian leaders first provide the political objectives they wanted to achieve. Growing irritated, Cheney exploded at Powell, growling ‘I want some options, General.’ ‘Yes, Mr. Secretary,’ Powell replied, and the meeting ended.[6]

Donald Stoker’s book challenges how we categorize war and argues convincingly that misunderstanding these categories comes with substantial consequences. There are interesting civil-military relations dynamics at play in his arguments. Stoker does not place more blame on either civilians or military leaders for America's poor formulation of strategy over the past 70 years. Military officials can pressure civilians for political objectives, like in the quoted interaction above, and civilians can provide none. Civilians can make their political objectives clear and military officials can ignore them or be resistant. The formulation and execution of good strategy requires that both civilians and military leaders understand and recognize the importance of both military and political dynamics.

 Students of strategic theory will not be wholly unfamiliar with his framing, although some may find it unique and useful for engaging a lay audience. Stoker seems to be pushing readers to better understand and appreciate the “ends” side of the ends, ways, means formulation. Essentially, Stoker is arguing that a better understanding of the political objectives of a war will result in a better American way of war than has been occurring for the past 70 years. Events in Syria, and ongoing U.S. military engagements throughout the world, demand that we at least hear what he has to say.

Adam Wunische is a researcher with the Quincy Institute, an instructor at the George Washington University, and a PhD candidate at Boston College. He served in the U.S. Army and completed two deployments to Afghanistan.

Have a response or an idea for your own article? Follow the logo below, and you too can contribute to The Bridge:

Enjoy what you just read? Please help spread the word to new readers by sharing it on social media.

Header Image: U.S. Air Force pararescueman participates in a training exercise in the Grand Bara Desert, Djibouti. (A1C Nicholas Byers/USAF Photo)

Notes:

[1] Stoker, Donald. Why America Loses Wars: Limited War and US Strategy from the Korean War to the Present. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2019.

[2] Ibid.: 4.

[3] Howard, Michael, and Peter Paret. On war. Vol. 117. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1976: 69.

[4] Stoker, Donald. Why America Loses Wars: Limited War and US Strategy from the Korean War to the Present. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2019: 7.

[5] Christian Whiton. “To Deter Iran, Give War a Chance.” The National Interest. June 19, 2019. https://nationalinterest.org/feature/deter-iran-give-war-chance-63322.

[6] Stoker, Donald. Why America Loses Wars: Limited War and US Strategy from the Korean War to the Present. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2019: 44.