Lawrence Freedman
In Operation Desert Storm, the 1991 campaign to liberate Kuwait from Iraqi occupation, the United States and its coalition allies unleashed massive land, air, and sea power. It was over in a matter of weeks. The contrast between the United States’ grueling and unsuccessful war in Vietnam and the Soviet Union’s in Afghanistan could not have been more stark, and the speedy victory even led to talk of a new era of warfare—a so-called revolution in military affairs. From now on, the theory went, enemies would be defeated through speed and maneuver, with real-time intelligence provided by smart sensors guiding immediate attacks using smart weapons.
Those hopes proved short-lived. The West’s counterinsurgency campaigns of the early decades of this century, which came to be labeled “forever wars,” were not notable for their rapidity. Washington’s military campaign in Afghanistan was the longest in U.S. history, and in the end it was unsuccessful: despite being pushed out at the start of the U.S. invasion, the Taliban eventually came back.
Nor is this problem limited to the United States and its allies. In February 2022, Russia launched a full-scale invasion of Ukraine that was supposed to overrun the country in a matter of days. Now, even if a cease-fire can be reached, the war will have lasted for more than three years, during which it was dominated by grinding, attritional fighting rather than bold and audacious actions. Similarly, when Israel launched its invasion of Gaza in retaliation for Hamas’s October 7, 2023, assault and hostage taking, U.S. President Joe Biden urged that the Israeli operation should be “swift, decisive, and overwhelming.” Instead, it continued for 15 months, in the process expanding to other fronts in Lebanon, Syria, and Yemen, before a fragile cease-fire was reached in January 2025. By mid-March, the war had reignited. And this leaves out numerous conflicts in Africa, including in Sudan and the Sahel, that have no end in sight.
No comments:
Post a Comment