Lessons Not Learned: Iraq, Ukraine, and US Strategy

Lessons Not Learned: Ukraine, Iraq, and US Military Strategy

The twentieth anniversary of the Iraq War arrived without fanfare in US political circles. It is not politically expedient to draw attention to the ambiguous-at-best results achieved there after the sacrifice of 4,500 US military personnel with many more wounded and suffering from psychological trauma, and perhaps hundreds of thousands of Iraqis killed during the invasion and subsequent occupation. The United States spent over a trillion dollars on the failed war, while simultaneously strengthening its adversaries. As Washington has never grappled with the magnitude of its failure in the Middle East, it is now hurtling full speed towards a similar strategic disaster in Ukraine.

Sound military strategy consists of balancing ends or strategic objectives, with the ways of “how” to attain these objectives, along with the means necessary to achieve the ways. Formulating a proper relationship between resources and risk is another useful way to consider strategic designs. The war in Iraq lacked the necessary ways and means to achieve the strategic objective of removing Saddam Hussein and establishing a democratic foothold in the Middle East. The risk of Iranian dominance in a post-Hussein Sunni regime run by the ethnically more populous and pro-Iranian Shi’a community was never balanced with the mitigation of commensurate military, diplomatic, or economic resources to prevent such influence. ISIS terrorism and Iranian hegemony now grip the region.

The same lack of sound military strategy emanating from DC is resulting in a blank check for Volodymyr Zelensky’s Ukrainian regime that may just bounce in a transaction of nuclear confrontation between the West and Vladimir Putin’s Russia. The Russian Army of around 900,000 active-duty forces, backed by 1 million reserves, has been seriously weakened from a year of intense combat with the less numerous but Western-trained Ukrainian forces. Of the 900,000 active Russian troops to begin the war, 250,000 were the operational core with the others in some state of training; those 250,000 front-line forces have been severely attrited and it will now take years for Russia to reconstitute. Russia’s equipment is in an even worse state, with the Ukrainian forces having destroyed most of its advanced tanks and personnel carriers. Russian troops have reportedly employed ancient T-54s.

The West has also succeeded in drawing NATO closer to the northern boundary of Russia with the certain induction of Finland into the alliance, and most likely accession of Sweden as well. One of Russia’s war aims was to prevent the Ukraine from joining NATO, and now Putin has made it worse by ensuring the alliance’s expansion.

A sound US strategy would recognize that Russia now lacks the ways and means to defeat the Ukrainian forces and achieve the “end” of occupying the entire country. As more American resources have poured into Ukraine the risk of nuclear escalation has continued to increase between Moscow and Washington. US strategy now should recognize that its end of weakening Putin’s regime has been achieved, and that shifting aims as Washington did between the achievable objectives of the first Gulf War and those unachievable objectives of the recent Iraq War ended in failure. Will Washington now learn the lesson of Iraq before it once again establishes unachievable ends that very may well end in a nuclear exchange

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