After six years of the mightiest military power on the planet bashing and thrashing about to no good end, people are beginning to wonder why.
Better late than never.
There are reasons, a number of them, that we've just ignored and we (meaning all the good folks backing the inane "war on terror") are paying the price for that.
Today's Toronto Star discusses a report by a professor of international affairs at the University of George examining why, since WWII, the world's most powerful nations' military adventures have failed 39% of the time.
In short, the answer is because Western militaries do some things exceptionally well and some things astonishingly poorly. We're very good at striking fast with overwhelming power. Get in, get the job done and leave. In the long haul, not so good. Actually that's where we fall on our faces. Think Vietnam. Think Iraq. Think Afghanistan. Think.
"Since Vietnam, researchers in the complex field of conflict studies have focused on the outcome of wars, and have looked at how even low-budget insurgents can defeat the world's greatest powers by taxing their political will to fight.
"Now, Sullivan's research, which appeared in the June issue of The Journal of Conflict Resolution, tells us why this happens in the first place, and appears to give policymakers a gauge for how well a military intervention will fare. It could have important implications for Canada's foray into Afghanistan.
"It turns out that a major power is much more likely to fail when its war aim requires some sort of co-operation on the part of the adversary or the citizens on the ground, in order to change a despised foreign or domestic policy, for example, or quell sectarian violence, or prop up a regime that's on shaky ground.
"Objectives that simply require sheer physical force – the purging of former Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein's army from Kuwait in 1991, or the toppling of the Taliban in Afghanistan in 2001 – have a high probability of success because no co-operation is necessary.
"'The key factor,' says Sullivan, 'is the nature of the objective that the state is trying to achieve.'
"One Canadian expert in conflict studies, Patrick James, says Afghanistan is a good example of Sullivan's analysis in that regime change, including the success of a replacement government, is 'very likely to fail.'
3 comments:
I didn't realise you had written on the same thing.
Do you think any of the strategists will take an honest look at this?
Hi KNB. Will they take an honest look at this? I doubt it. Too many reputations and careers have been wedded to the existing state of affairs. We're in a "treading water" situation, especially with our meagre numbers. That makes it tough to imagine what options remain, short of leaving. What happens to the mission won't be decided by events in Afghanistan or the welfare of our troops but how it all plays out on the floor of the House. That's a damned shame but don't expect anything more courageous out of Harpo.
That's a damned shame but don't expect anything more courageous out of Harpo.
I never expect anything courageous from him. He's the ultimate bully and they don't possess that trait.
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