FROM THE FIRST GULF WAR TO ISLAMIC STATE:
HOW AMERICA WAS SEDUCED BY THE “EASY WAR”
JANUARY 22, 2016
As the premier military power since the Cold War, the United States,
like hegemonic powers of the past, is held captive by the
dangerous myth of the “easy war.” While terms like
“network-centric warfare” wouldn’t formally enter the U.S.
defense establishment lexicon until later in the 1990s,
the central notion on which such concepts are based —
that precision technology could be leveraged to quickly
overpower an adversary — were validated by the stunning
U.S. success in the First Gulf War. In a matter of 100 hours,
with overwhelming and coordinated force and relying heavily
on airstrikes, the largely painless dispatching of Saddam Hussein’s
forces, the world’s fifth largest army, served as an affirmation to
many of the invincibility of American military might. Compared to
the bitter losses in Korea and Vietnam, the First Gulf War
established an unequivocal military victory, reaffirming the value
and dominance of the American methodology of warfare.
Or at least that’s how the story is told.
As a result, the First Gulf War entrenched the notion that
technology would provide near-omniscience on the battlefield,
paving the road to an uncomplicated victory. Almost overnight,
in the minds of strategists and policymakers, wars had become
brief, casual affairs.
Operation Allied Force, the NATO air war during the Kosovo
conflict, only furthered the easy war mythology, particularly
the concept of neat, effective victory through airpower
alone. The 78-day campaign, at the price tag of $3 billion,
expended over 28,000 high-explosive munitions in an
enormous display of airpower. Minus a few high-profile
cases of collateral damage, like the
(although the Chinese insisted the United States
deliberately targeted the embassy), less than
500 noncombatants died in the course of Operation Allied Force.
This marked “a new low in American wartime experience when
compared to both Vietnam and Desert Storm.” Following the
capitulation of Slobodan Milosevic to NATO demands,
Operation Allied Force was hailed as an unprecedented
success, elevating airpower to match its land and maritime
counterparts. Serge Schmemann of theNew York Times
claimed Kosovo provided “a refutation of the common
wisdom that airpower alone could never make a despot
back down.” Airpower had evolved the myth of the easy
war to a martial enterprise devoid of the risks and complications
of ground forces. Thus, the myth continued, brushing criticisms aside.
After 9/11, the mythology of the easy war unsurprisingly
carried over to the nascent months of the wars in Afghanistan
and Iraq. Donald Rumsfeld, then secretary of defense,
confidently declared in 2002 that the Iraq War would last
“five days or five weeks or five months, but it certainly
isn’t going to last any longer than that.” The legacy of the
First Gulf War and Kosovo produced rapid marches to
respective capitals, highlighting the spectacular use of
airpower. The Shock and Awe Doctrine was expected to
produce another bloodless victory. However, the wars in
Afghanistan and Iraq quickly devolved into a quagmire of
nation-building and counterinsurgency. Contrary to overly
optimistic expectations, a decade of occupation, and
of security or governance in either Afghanistan or Iraq.
The notion that toppling a regime and implementing
massive socio-political transformations would be a simple
endeavor seems whimsical at best, and delusional in hindsight.
Yet despite hard lessons learned in Iraq and Afghanistan,
the myth of the easy war stubbornly persists, permeating
American foreign policy toward challenges ranging from
Libya to the Islamic State. When the United States
intervened in Libya in 2011 with 19 allied states to enforce
Security Council Resolution 1973, the campaign was narrowly
restricted to aerial strikes and the establishment of
no-fly zones. NATO forces, trying to avoid a lengthy
engagement analogous to Iraq, actively avoided deploying
any ground troops to the frontlines. The intervention
aimed to do as little as possible, while retaining the illusion
of decisive action. Assuming a distant and hands-off strategy,
NATO focused on providing aerial support to advancing
local militias on the ground. Subsequently, the strategic
and operational distance of NATO forces from local
factions translated to an absence of control on the ground.
Although NATO support assisted in deposing
Muammar Qaddafi’s regime, the intervention unleashed instability.
Competing factions and militias vied for power and control
in the ensuing power vacuum, a pattern that continues
nearly five years later. In “Lessons from Libya: How Not to Intervene,”
Alan Kuperman argued, “NATO’s action magnified the
conflict’s duration about sixfold and its death toll at least
sevenfold, while also exacerbating human rights abuses,
humanitarian suffering, Islamic radicalism, and weapons
proliferation in Libya and its neighbors.”
By avoiding long-term risks and complications,
NATO forces, including the United States, forfeited
control in shaping the future of post-Qaddafi Libya.
The price of an “easy intervention” in Libya was
a failed state, characterized by instability and growing
violence.
If Libya was the pursuit of the easy war, then the current
strategy against the Islamic State spawned its ugly
sibling, the “half-baked war.” Reluctant for a sequel to
America’s adventurism in Iraq, the Obama administration
has relied on an aerial bombing campaign, hoping, as
administration officials are wont to say, to “degrade and
ultimately destroy” the Islamic State. The hope is that
American-led airstrikes, ironically called
Operation Inherent Resolve, would target key military
assets and logistical sites, enabling Iraqi ground forces
to dislodge the Islamic State from its centers of power
like Ramadi and Mosul. The strategic vision is frighteningly
similar to the one employed in Libya, which ended
disastrously. Admittedly, over time, the Obama administration
has deployed 3,500 troops to the region, largely limited to
training and advisory missions. Therefore, the aerial
campaign remains the crux of the American strategy in the
recurring and misguided belief airpower will critically weaken
the Islamic State. This noncommittal, distant application of
force retains the optimistic reliance on airpower and
techno-centric solutions of the easy war mythos.
Eliot Cohen, in “The Mystique of U.S. Air Power,” published
in Foreign Affairs in 1994, wrote, “Air power is an unusually
seductive form of military strength, in part because, like
modern courtship, it appears to offer gratification without
commitment.” Nearly two decades and multiple military i
nterventions later, the United States still desperately
clings to airpower as a panacea to armed conflict.
Ideally, the aerial bombing campaign of Operation Inherent
Resolve is eliminating key leadership and Islamic State
fighters in droves, significantly diminishing the group’s
capabilities. According to the Pentagon, the operation
has destroyed 16,705 targets, including 129 tanks and 4,942
fighting positions as of November 13, 2015. Yet, the aerial
campaign has failed to translate tactical successes into
strategic advances, while providing a powerful recruiting tool
to the Islamic State, seemingly validating its accusations
of American imperialism against the Muslim world.
Lt. Gen. Bob Otto, the U.S. Air Force’s deputy chief
of staff for intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance,
kill innocent men, women, and children, then there’s a
backlash from that. And so we might kill three and
create 10 terrorists.”
The political desire and expectation for bloodless,
risk-free (yet victorious) military operations has created
an impossible standard in the use of military force.
“Not another Iraq” has become a euphemism for the
myth of the easy war in Washington — the belief that
wars can be won without any costs and from an arm’s
distance. Speaking about the Islamic State, Donald Trump,
a Republican presidential candidate, said,
“I would just bomb those suckers. That’s right.
I’d blow up the pipes, I’d blow up the refineries,
every single inch, there would be nothing left.”
With a similar reliance on airpower, Hillary Clinton called
for a “more effective coalition air campaign, more allied planes,
more strikes, and a broader target set.”
Whether Republican or Democrat, the political
consensus insists on reproducing the “successful” exercise of
airpower in Kosovo, a neat little war.
So as if in a constant state of historical amnesia,
the United States continues to repeatedly pursue the
easy war mythos with reckless abandon.
Yet in light of repeated failures of U.S. strategy over the
past decade and a half, America’s victory culture
“starts to look like wishful thinking, unhealthy braggadocio,
and illusory triumphalism — good for the nation’s
self-esteem, perhaps, but not good for handling reality.”
The United States naively divorces military force from the
violent, complicated nature of conflict — effectively
sweeping away the human costs and fog of war. But
there is nothing easy or neat about wars.
This is a fact — indisputable, unchangeable, and wholly
unforgiving. Victory is a fickle mistress, here for moment
and gone the next. Thus, if the United States continues
to be enamored by the myth of the easy war, the country
will only fuel its cycle of feckless wars, devoid of any
connection to reality. The myth of the easy war only promises
more Iraqs, more Afghanistans, more Libyas, more Syrias.
Wars are messy, unpredictable, bloody affairs.
To forget this fundamental fact is to concede success
before the first shot.
Sebastian J. Bae, a major contributor to
Best Defense in Foreign Policy, served six years in the
Marine Corps infantry, leaving as a Sergeant.
He deployed to Iraq in 2009. He received his
Masters at Georgetown University’s Security
Studies Program, specializing in counterinsurgency and
humanitarian interventions. He is the Executive Editor at
Ramen IR. Twitter: @SebastianBae
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