This one is a personal bug-bear of mine.\u00a0 It has been common in the post-World War II world for Western nations in particular to set nebulous and generally unattainable war goals. \u00a0The submission of an enemy state is often not an objective and when it is even when achieved international pressure limits making a total victory truly stick.\u00a0 This is not helped by unrealistic expectations on the part of the public that military victory can be achieved quickly and with little sacrifice of blood and treasure.<\/p>\n
Nebulous goals have been such lofty sounding things as \u201cmake the world safe for democracy\u201d (Cold War, Vietnam), \u201chumanitarian assistance\u201d (Bosnia, Kosovo, Somalia), the \u201cwar on drugs\u201d (Afghanistan, Latin America), and my personal favorite \u201cfighting terror\u201d (Iraq, Afghanistan, Horn of Africa, Philippines).\u00a0 In actuality none of the above reasons ever admit of an announcement of success.\u00a0 To be sure the US and other nations engaged in these kind of operations prior to World War II, I am thinking in particular here of the wars against the Barbary Coast, Britain stopping the Slave Trade in the mid-19th<\/sup> Century, The Dominican intervention of the 1920\u2019s and similar operations.\u00a0 However, even these operations had a concrete end-state in mind, were not considered endless tasks, and were prosecuted with a singleness of purpose that allowed for victory to be achieved and\/or the mission to be accomplished.<\/p>\n Whether wars and conflicts are related to national strategic interests is perhaps another subject altogether.\u00a0 The main reasons this is so is because the definition of strategic interests, like beauty, is in the eye of the beholder.\u00a0 Before this debate or discussion can even begin what we mean by strategic interests must be defined and that definition agreed on.\u00a0 I favor a narrow definition of strategic interests because I believe that too broad a definition fosters strategic overreach and dissipation of force.\u00a0 Since I am the one writing this my definition of strategic interests is what counts for me and I hope that it makes sense to those of your reading this.\u00a0 I define national strategic interests as: events or trends in the geostrategic sphere in which a resolution unfavorable to the nation directly impacts the survival prospects of that nation or its citizens<\/em>.\u00a0 That being said I will use some events from the past several decades to illustrate events that I think were and were not strategic interests of the United States.<\/p>\n Iran Hostage Crisis \u2013 yes \u2013 American Citizens were at risk<\/p>\n Invasion of Grenada \u2013 yes \u2013 American Citizens were at risk<\/p>\n Honduran Intervention \u2013 Maybe \u2013 Perhaps American strategic interests were at stake because of The Contras but like Panama I view this as a pure demonstration of American power<\/p>\n Invasion of Panama \u2013 No \u2013 It was an assertion of American prerogative but no strategic interests were at stake except perhaps control of the Panama Canal<\/p>\n Central American Narcowars \u2013 No \u2013 although the argument could be made that stopping the illegal trade is a vital interest of the US<\/p>\n Gulf War I \u2013 Yes \u2013 Ensuring the free trade in oil is a strategic interest of the US regardless of what the Left has to say<\/p>\n Somali Intervention \u2013 No, this was purely humanitarian intervention and its success or failure affected the security of the USA only peripherally at best<\/p>\n Bosnia\/IFOR \u2013 No, this was a more purely European issue but one that the US stepped into in the face of European failure to effectively address the crisis.<\/p>\n Kosovo\/KFOR \u2013 No, for the same reason as the IFOR mission<\/p>\n Afghanistan\/OEF \u2013 This one I am on the fence on.\u00a0 I th8ink the initial mission to destroy and\/or drive Al Qaeda and the Taliban from power was but the subsequent nation building was\/is not.<\/p>\n Iraq II\/OIF \u2013 No, the invasion of Iraq and subsequent occupation is the clearest example of strategic distraction I can think of since attempted invasion of Turkey by the Allies in 1915.<\/p>\n Somali Littoral War\/Anti-piracy \u2013 Yes, ensuring Free trade is eminently a strategic interest of a maritime nation like the US<\/p>\n Libyan Intervention \u2013 No, it is arguable if this was even a European interest.<\/p>\n ISIS Intervention \u2013 Not sure but my tendency is to say no.\u00a0 Based on results America\u2019s involvement is more to be able to say we did something than to actually achieve lasting results.<\/p>\n What is clear is that calculations of political necessity play a larger role in the use of force by America than do rational calculations of strategic interests.\u00a0 Based on history I would even argue that 19th<\/sup> century politicians had a more pragmatic grasp of the utility of force and what it could and could not achieve than do the world leaders of today who have allowed national interests to become subservient to supposed international norms of behavior that are often inimical to national interest and at best neutral to achieving national goals.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Wars are no longer fought to achieve victory but to achieve often nebulous goals short of the actual defeat of the enemy and often were unrelated or even contrary to national strategic interests. This one is a personal bug-bear of… Continue Reading →<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[88,125,341,482,24,60,81,460,1083,631,995],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5751","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-campaigns-operations","category-current-events","category-general-history","category-geopolitics-statecraft","category-military-technology","category-contemporary-wars","category-political-history","category-military-strategy","category-terrorism","category-war-theory","category-western-civilization"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.military-history.us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5751","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.military-history.us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.military-history.us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.military-history.us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.military-history.us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5751"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.military-history.us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5751\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5752,"href":"https:\/\/www.military-history.us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5751\/revisions\/5752"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.military-history.us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5751"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.military-history.us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5751"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.military-history.us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5751"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}<\/h2>\n