Victor Davis Hanson: U.S. Is Winning War on Terror
[Victor Davis Hanson is a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution, the editor of Makers of Ancient Strategy: From the Persian Wars to the Fall of Rome, and the author of The Father of Us All: War and History, Ancient and Modern.]
There is a common — and understandable — perception in the postmodern age of nuclear proliferation that victory is an obsolete concept.
Is it that too many nuclear players have provided too many eleventh-hour reprieves to the losing sides in conventional wars?
Or is it the non-uniformed status of our increasingly common terrorist enemies?
Or perhaps the “ends” of wars seem inconsequential because of the ubiquity of terrorism and unconventional tactics, the mess of post-battle reconstruction and nation-building, and the power of instant global communications that bring us unedited and unrepresentative soundbites from the front.
In reality, such pessimism discourages Western military action, and cynical postmodern societies seem to be stymied by their zealous premodern opponents.
“I’m always worried about using the word ‘victory,’ because, you know, it invokes this notion of Emperor Hirohito coming down and signing a surrender to MacArthur.”
So asserted our president in a July 2009 interview with ABC News. Aside from the fact that Emperor Hirohito never himself went “down” anywhere to surrender to General MacArthur, the president reflected the prevailing sense that wars are now amorphous, never-ending, and without clear benchmarks of success or failure.
But is all this quite accurate?
If it is true that human nature is unchanging, then the very human enterprise of war — with understandable allowances for changing technologies and ideologies — should itself, at least in its essence, have remained unchanged since antiquity.
In other words, while particular wars in any age may not end in victory or defeat for either side, the concept of such finality is very much possible for either, given their shared human nature. In short, if a war is stalemated, it is usually because both sides, wisely or stupidly, come to believe victory is not worth the commensurate costs in blood and treasure — not because victory itself is an anachronism.
In fact, for all the laments about American impotence in a nuclear age, we have won most of our wars since World War II. Despite the stalemate at the 38th parallel in Korea, the U.S. military achieved the stated goal of the Truman administration: keeping North Korea from destroying the South, and ensuring a viable autonomous state there. That was victory as defined before the war broke out.
The first Vietnam War ended in an American victory: the 1973 Paris Peace Accords that accepted an independent South — the original reason to intervene. We most certainly lost the second Vietnam War when our congressional leaders deemed that the postbellum vigilance of keeping the North from overwhelming the South was not worth the additional costs. A Watergate-damaged Nixon administration was unable to honor its commitment to use U.S. airpower to stop renewed Communist aggression.
The British clearly won the Falklands War. The United States won the small wars in the Balkans, Grenada, and Panama. It was victorious in both Afghanistan and Iraq, having removed the Taliban and Saddam Hussein. In the latter two instances, we are fighting second wars in which victory is defined as ensuring the survival of successive consensual systems under the countries’ elected governments.
So far, we are winning both. Victory is definable: when these states are able to stay autonomous largely through their own efforts — with the understanding that Europe, for 65 years, and South Korea, for 60, have both required American military support to ensure their independence.
Iran could not possibly resist the economic and military power of Europe and the United States, should we decide that the mullahs will not have the Bomb. If they get the Bomb anyway, it will not be because stopping the theocracy is impossible, or because such a victory is too abstract a notion. It will be the result of American and European political leaders concluding that the costs would not be worth the benefits.
But what would victory in the now-derided War on Terror look like?
It would require three conditions, all of them closer to fruition than we think...
Read entire article at National Review
There is a common — and understandable — perception in the postmodern age of nuclear proliferation that victory is an obsolete concept.
Is it that too many nuclear players have provided too many eleventh-hour reprieves to the losing sides in conventional wars?
Or is it the non-uniformed status of our increasingly common terrorist enemies?
Or perhaps the “ends” of wars seem inconsequential because of the ubiquity of terrorism and unconventional tactics, the mess of post-battle reconstruction and nation-building, and the power of instant global communications that bring us unedited and unrepresentative soundbites from the front.
In reality, such pessimism discourages Western military action, and cynical postmodern societies seem to be stymied by their zealous premodern opponents.
“I’m always worried about using the word ‘victory,’ because, you know, it invokes this notion of Emperor Hirohito coming down and signing a surrender to MacArthur.”
So asserted our president in a July 2009 interview with ABC News. Aside from the fact that Emperor Hirohito never himself went “down” anywhere to surrender to General MacArthur, the president reflected the prevailing sense that wars are now amorphous, never-ending, and without clear benchmarks of success or failure.
But is all this quite accurate?
If it is true that human nature is unchanging, then the very human enterprise of war — with understandable allowances for changing technologies and ideologies — should itself, at least in its essence, have remained unchanged since antiquity.
In other words, while particular wars in any age may not end in victory or defeat for either side, the concept of such finality is very much possible for either, given their shared human nature. In short, if a war is stalemated, it is usually because both sides, wisely or stupidly, come to believe victory is not worth the commensurate costs in blood and treasure — not because victory itself is an anachronism.
In fact, for all the laments about American impotence in a nuclear age, we have won most of our wars since World War II. Despite the stalemate at the 38th parallel in Korea, the U.S. military achieved the stated goal of the Truman administration: keeping North Korea from destroying the South, and ensuring a viable autonomous state there. That was victory as defined before the war broke out.
The first Vietnam War ended in an American victory: the 1973 Paris Peace Accords that accepted an independent South — the original reason to intervene. We most certainly lost the second Vietnam War when our congressional leaders deemed that the postbellum vigilance of keeping the North from overwhelming the South was not worth the additional costs. A Watergate-damaged Nixon administration was unable to honor its commitment to use U.S. airpower to stop renewed Communist aggression.
The British clearly won the Falklands War. The United States won the small wars in the Balkans, Grenada, and Panama. It was victorious in both Afghanistan and Iraq, having removed the Taliban and Saddam Hussein. In the latter two instances, we are fighting second wars in which victory is defined as ensuring the survival of successive consensual systems under the countries’ elected governments.
So far, we are winning both. Victory is definable: when these states are able to stay autonomous largely through their own efforts — with the understanding that Europe, for 65 years, and South Korea, for 60, have both required American military support to ensure their independence.
Iran could not possibly resist the economic and military power of Europe and the United States, should we decide that the mullahs will not have the Bomb. If they get the Bomb anyway, it will not be because stopping the theocracy is impossible, or because such a victory is too abstract a notion. It will be the result of American and European political leaders concluding that the costs would not be worth the benefits.
But what would victory in the now-derided War on Terror look like?
It would require three conditions, all of them closer to fruition than we think...