Ross Douthat's latest column attempts to differentiate between Republican and Democratic politics via warfare. But does party matter, or is warfare politically neutral? DK's resident professional warfighter is here to give you the Marine Corps's perspective on warfare and whether or not Mr. Douthat's hypothesis holds.
Clausewitz is for losers!
First, some background on war. I sometimes grimly joke that I'm a human garbageman, usually in an attempt to deglamorize being a fighter pilot. I'm an F/A-18 pilot for the Marine Corps and our job is principally to bring death and destruction in handy 500lb increments. For the last 10 years I've been studying and applying courses on warfare at various levels including an introductory tactics course, The Basic School, and Expeditionary Warfare School (full disclosure, that was by correspondence due to me being in Afghanistan at the time). One of the driving forces behind warfare theory in the last few hundred years has been Carl von Clausewitz. Clausewitz's most famouse quote is "War is not merely a political act, but also a political instrument, a continuation of political relations, a carrying out of the same by other means."
"But wait", you say, "I thought warfare was just about killing the other side and being the last man standing." You're thinking about what to do when you're actually in war, not the steps that get you going to war in the first place. You go to war for political reasons: land, freedom, regime change, resources, stuff like that. Warfare is simply what happens when one side says "I'm going to kill your people and break their stuff until you give me what I want." This political goal is a key requirement of successful warfare; without it, there can be no clear victory. It's kinda like how you can play RISK in either the "take over everything" mode or the "accomplish these specific goals" mode.
Douthat kinda grasps this fundamental need.
It was blessed by the United Nations Security Council. It was endorsed by the Arab League. It was pushed by the diplomats at Hillary Clinton’s State Department, rather than the military men at Robert Gates’s Pentagon.
Notice the string of political agencies on his list? Yeah, there's a reason for that, chiefly that warfare is chiefly political in nature. A country does not press it's military advantage merely because it has one, it presses it because it is the most effective means of achieving political goals.
Eyes on the prize
Douthet continues listing the advantages and disadvantages to this collaborative, "liberal" way of war.
This way of war has obvious advantages. It spreads the burden of military action, sustains rather than weakens our alliances, and takes the edge off the world’s instinctive anti-Americanism. Best of all, it encourages the European powers to shoulder their share of responsibility for maintaining global order, instead of just carping at the United States from the sidelines.
But there are major problems with this approach to war as well. Because liberal wars depend on constant consensus-building within the (so-called) international community, they tend to be fought by committee, at a glacial pace, and with a caution that shades into tactical incompetence. And because their connection to the national interest is often tangential at best, they’re often fought with one hand behind our back and an eye on the exits, rather than with the full commitment that victory can require.
Aside from the "(so-called) international community" comment (which shows a fundamental lack of knowledge of what words mean), the advantages and disadvantages all share something in common: they deal with the fundamentally tactical side of combat instead of the political side of combat. Now those disadvantages can crop up, but only in the lack of clearly defined political goals or the intrusion of political leadership unnecessarily into the military sphere. These are valid concerns, but they do not rest solely with the "liberal" way of war. The "cowboyish" war that he compares things too can just as easily fall into the same traps, however they typically come from excessive intervention rather than lack of appropriate goals.
The only disadvantage he lists that doesn't easily apply both ways is the "eye on the exits" issue. Politically defined wars typically have an eye on the exits because the military action is designed to achieve political goals. Removing an eye from the exits often involves moving the eyes from the political goals, which prolongs wars and creates a "Red vs Blue" situation (slightly paraphrased):
Simmons: The only reason we have a red base over here is because they have a blue base over there. And the only reason they have a blue base over there is because we have a red base over here.
Griff: Yeah, that's because we're fighting each other
Such a war continues until someone finally figures out that no one can win.
Past and present
Douthat continues, raising examples of Somalia, Yugoslavia, and Kosovo as historical proof that "liberal" war doesn't work. Somalia is an example, but only in the cold calculus that a country must have something to gain from warfare. Kosovo is mentioned because it "probably inspired more bloodletting and ethnic cleansing in the short term", both unprovable and one of many examples about the danger of a cornered animal.
Getting around to the conflict in Libya, Douthat begins pointing out some of the restraints and conflicts in the political side. The exclusion of ground troops seems to be a particularly sore point, however I have to leave this to ya'll as having identified myself as a service member very bad things can happen to me if I attempt to speak for the Marine Corps on ongoing operations :)
The last paragraph has one of the more troubling bits.
The ultimate hope of liberal warfare is to fight as virtuously as possible, and with the minimum of risk. But war and moralism are uneasy bedfellows, and “low risk” conflicts often turn out to be anything but
The implication is that fighting virtuously with minimal risk is bad. That is the goal of all warfare. The problem with correlating these two aspects is that they chiefly involve different players in warfare. There's not much virtuous about "nuke 'em 'till they glow and shoot 'em in the dark" (especially if the other side doesn't have night vision devices), but it's decidedly low risk. Frequently it's the political side's job to make sure that the reason for going to war is virtuous and that the reward is worth the risk. It's the military side's job to minimize the risk to achieve those objectives while staying within the laws of armed conflict.
We try to take out all the risk we can, because we don't like dieing. However, there is always risk in warfare, generally mortal risk. It can never all go away, but we do our best to minimize it, generally by hitting the enemy where he's not expecting it and where it does the most damage. However we must wage war virtuously. Without that virtue any war that is not direct self defense loses all credibility and our side turns from virtuous hero to oppressive thug. If that happens, political goals short of conquest become difficult if not impossible, as does victory.