The American military is exceptionally competent at learning tactical lessons, developing new ways to fight on the ground while producing better equipment. However, the American military consistently fails to maintain lessons learned past the tactical level of command. The current rush of the military to move past its failures of the last 20 years is reminiscent of the rush to do so post-Vietnam. American military strategic culture has consistently lacked the connection with the formulation of policy. This culture, discussed in depth in works such as Russell Weigley’s The American Way of War and Donald Stoker’s Why America Loses Wars, maintains its stranglehold on American strategists today.[1]
To understand this strategic amnesia and rushing to the next war, this paper will briefly examine the war with the largest impression on the military, World War II. It will continue from there to the Afghanistan withdrawal. This article suggests a continuity in how quickly the Army moves towards the next fight. This paper then explores the reasons behind the loss of institutional knowledge, building off the historical analysis to show how the Army fails to adapt and reassess.
Historical Background
World War II
World War II began when the imperial Japanese Army invaded Manchuria in 1931, and Nazi Germany invaded Poland in 1939.[2] America remained a non-combatant until the 7 Dec 1941 Japanese surprise attack on Pearl Harbor. The American military mobilized more force than ever before, fighting from the deserts of North Africa to the island of Okinawa. The trials and tribulations of World War II are remembered fondly; every Army cadet reads Band of Brothers at least once before commissioning. However, the victory disease from the war continues to infect today.[3]
The history of World War II continues to dominate the learning institutions of the Army because it was so clearly won, in myth.[4] Large tank battles, control of the air, domination of the sea, movie-worthy airborne drops, and daring amphibious assaults are the highlighted stories of the war. While the war does deserve a place in the U.S. Army’s institutional memory, it is also important to remember what has changed. What followed the victories of WWII should have diminished the impact it had on the U.S. Army, yet it has remained on a pedestal. The stalemate and failure of the next two major wars are direct consequences of the victory disease brought on by WWII.
The Korean War
As World War II ended and relations between the communist Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR) and the United States soured, the Cold War began. Soon China fell into the grip of communism. As the world spiraled closer to the possibility of all-out nuclear war, North Korea crossed the 38th parallel into South Korea, setting off the Korean War.[5] North Korea’s initial push was explosive and might have culminated in the desired quick decisive victory if not for the quick deployment of U.S. and United Nations troops. In the seesaw events of the Korean War, the U.S. and North Korean/Chinese troops launched massive offensives. These culminated when U.S. troops regrouped and methodically pushed back the combined Chinese/North Korean forces and halted at the 38th parallel.
This was America’s first true lesson on limited war in the post-war period. American forces had to deal with hostile locals as they moved past the 38th parallel. The U.S. oversimplified the Chinese attack as hordes of Chinese soldiers, yet the attacks against U.S. lines were organized and pointed at breaking the defense at multiple spots. The U.S. also failed to understand how important cultural understanding was, it did not know that the occupation of U.S. troops had a negative impact on the newly formed South Korean government.[6] In continuing to rush to the next war, the Army never institutionalized the lessons learned.
The American War in Vietnam
The decolonization struggle between the Vietnamese and the French colonial government took on a Cold War framing. Once the French failed in Vietnam, the U.S. supported South Vietnam. The U.S. slowly escalated involvement until the Gulf of Tonkin incident in 1964, which led to the United States committing full combat troops to South Vietnam. The U.S. military failed to ever realize its nation building and counterinsurgent mission in South Vietnam. The military overused its firepower, failed to pacify the countryside, and failed to understand the culture. Under General William Westmoreland and General Creighton Abrams, the military emphasized the statistical measurement of body counts and other arbitrary statistics.[7] It was a war that held an elusive enemy that fought in unconventional ways, sometimes as conventional units from the North and sometimes as communist insurgents from the South. After many years of failing to pacify South Vietnam, the U.S. pulled out its combat forces in 1973, and in 1975 the Saigon Government fell.
The American war in Vietnam has had resounding implications on the wars that followed; however, the U.S. Army failed to learn lessons from Vietnam. As seen above, the U.S. Army failed to fully institutionalize lessons learned because it is always in a rush to move on. The Army did not believe it could learn much from a war it lost and predicted that it still needed to only face the Russian Army in large-scale combat. The Army failed to come to terms with its shortcomings, instead pretending that Vietnam was a one-off. The idea of the Vietnam Syndrome shows that the Army thought of the war only as its loss and not as a way to develop better counterinsurgency doctrine.
The End of the Cold War, Desert Storm, and GWOT
In the aftermath of Vietnam, the Army was disgraced by its loss in Vietnam, failed further during the botched Desert One rescue attempt, and fell into a malaise. However, under President Ronald Reagan, the military worked towards ending the malaise of failure. As it participated in small operations, such as Operation Just Cause, it began to feel its might again. Two major events occurred that imparted the Army with victory disease so rancid that it contributed to the failure of the occupations of Iraq and Afghanistan.
The first major event was the success of the U.S. mission during Operation Desert Storm from August 1990 to February 1991. In repelling, routing, and utterly demoralizing the Iraqi Army, the U.S. Army felt it had finally kicked the Vietnam War syndrome. Unfortunately, America was drunk on its military victory and forgot the loss of Vietnam. The second event was the dissolution of the USSR and the end of the Cold War in 1991. America, so it seemed, was now the invincible superpower. Intoxicated by these two victories, the 21st century crashed into America.
This jubilation did not last long; on 11 Sept 2001, terrorists attacked the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. Beginning in October of 2001, the Global War on Terror commenced with the invasion of Afghanistan.[8] The war in Afghanistan was eerily similar to that of Vietnam. Yet, the U.S. had not learned its lessons fully and was unprepared for the pacifying mission in Afghanistan following the fall of the Taliban. The United States also failed to follow the warning of Clausewitz against opening a second front, and started a second war in Iraq in 2003. The ensuing occupation of Iraq led to the creation of ISIS and other terrorist organizations, and in Afghanistan, the government made no headway into the rural areas. In the fallout of the disastrous withdrawal from Afghanistan, it looks like the Army is preparing to continue the mistake of failing to learn.
