Why the U.S. Still Doesn't Get the Message
35 Years Since the Fall of Saigon
The United States' wars have always been very expensive and capital-intensive, fought with the most modern weapons available and assuming a modern, concentrated enemy such as the Soviet Union. The ever-growing Pentagon budget is virtually the only issue both Republicans and Democrats agree upon. But there are major economic and social liabilities in increasingly expensive, protracted wars, and these-as in the case of Vietnam-eventually proved decisive.
The U.S. wars since 1950 have been against decentralized enemies in situations without clearly defined fronts, as exist in conventional wars. Faced with high firepower, in Korea, Vietnam, Afghanistan, even Iraq, America's adversaries disperse - they fight from caves, behind jungle foliage, etc.,-- using cheap, relatively primitive military technology against the most advanced U.S. artillery, tanks, helicopters, and air power. In the end, its adversaries' patience and ingenuity, and willingness to make sacrifices, succeed in winning wars, not battles. Its enemies never stand and fight on U.S. terms, offering targets. The war in Vietnam was very protracted and expensive, and the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan are also prolonged-and increasingly a political liability to the party in power in Washington. This has repeatedly illustrated the limits of American power, and the Korean war established the first precedent.
When the Korean war ended, the U.S. leaders swore they would never fight another land war in Asia. The Korean war was fought to a draw, basically a defeat for U.S. objectives to reunite the country. Vietnam proved yet again that the U.S. could not win a land war-and it failed entirely there, at least in the military sense. Their ultimate success was due to the confusion of the Vietnamese Communists themselves, not the success of the Saigon regime or American arms. The U.S. has always been vulnerable militarily precisely because its enemies have been primarily poor and compelled the adapt to the limits of their power.
After its defeat in Vietnam in 1975 the U.S. leaders once again resolved yet again never to fight a land war without massive military power from the inception of a conflict and the support of the American people - which gradually eroded during the Vietnam war. The Weinberger doctrine in 1984 enshrined this principle. The U.S. has won wars against small, relatively weak enemies, as in Nicaragua, but in both Iraq and Afghanistan it has made the mistakes of the Korea and Vietnam wars all over again. It still wishes to be the "indispensable power," to quote former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright, but it cannot win the victories it covets. Like a drunken person, it no longer controls itself, its environments, or makes its actions conform to its perceptions. It is therefore a danger both to itself and the world.
Gabriel Kolko is the leading historian of modern warfare. He is the author of the classic Century of War: Politics, Conflicts and Society Since 1914, Another Century of War? and The Age of War: the US Confronts the World and After Socialism. He has also written the best history of the Vietnam War, Anatomy of a War: Vietnam, the US and the Modern Historical Experience. His latest book is World in Crisis.
Source: CounterPunch
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US will never get the message
By Hussein, Ahmed at May 05, 2010 07:32 AM
The way I see it is that American wars, and consequently the ever increasing military budget, are nothing but a way to transfer tax payers money to the military industry. So it does not matter if America wins or loses all these wars. As long as it can be sold to the public as a victory. What really maters is that the war should go for as long as politically possible and it destroys as much arms as possible so the pentagon could order more.
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Re: US will never get the message
By O'neal, Steve at May 05, 2010 13:36 PM
Back around 1960, when I was about 15 years old and had just returned to the UK from the US, a right-wing friend of my mother's--the kind that accused then Prime Minister Harold McMillan of "creeping socialism"--declared something to this effect: It doesn't matter if the government manufactured weapons and then dumped them in the ocean. The point was/is to keep on manufacturing them.
At the time, the more I thought about it, the more confused I became. I had assumed that the world worked within a more or less rational framework. It wasn't until years later that I learned of Presedent Eisenhower's warning about the military-industrial complex.
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Re: Re: US will never get the message
By R., Andrius at May 05, 2010 18:52 PM
It's not just the U.S.; all the countries seem to be arming constantly. When the weaponry gets old, they justify new purchases so to be able to "defend against the enemy". It seems we should be progressing to a more peaceful age after the 20th Century's atrocities, but no, arms race never ends. I agree, the industrial complex is needed for the capitalist economy, even though most of the weapons never get used.
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Re: Re: Re: US will never get the message
By Smith, Christopher at May 06, 2010 03:43 AM
Steve, your right-wing friend was probably paraphrasing Orwell: “The war is not supposed to be winnable, it is supposed to be continuous… all for the hierarchy of society… The essential act of war is destruction, not necessarily of human lives, but of the products of human labor. War is a way of shattering to pieces, or pouring into the stratosphere, or sinking in the depths of the sea, materials which might otherwise be used to make the masses too comfortable, and hence, in the long run, too intelligent… it helps to preserve the special mental atmosphere that a hierarchical society needs. War… is now a purely internal affair.”
I almost always agree with Orwell. And I agree with everything said in this article and these comments, but I think it is pinch too short sighted. Its not all about internal affairs and profit right now, its about power and privilege. If it were only about internal affairs, then industry would continue producing weaponry for expenditure at home or in territory they already occupy. They would continue to do so until such a point when their short-sighted motives of profit were overcome by the longer-interest of a political agenda organized and enacted by a forgotten mass of people that they were not paying attention to (...not paying them attention because they have no affect on profit production). Therefore, it should be understood, in my opinion, that the US is the ultimate imperial region because it splendidly integrates the most sophisticated profit seeking corporations with a powerful state operating in the corporate interest, and the state has an aristocratic-like foresight beyond the short-term profit-power producing motives of the multi-national corporations.
My point being, while a continuous war anywhere in the world is profitable at face value to corporations, the fact that their interests--by law--must revolve around profits makes the corporation inherently self-destructive. You must have a state working above, but in coherence, with the corporate system in order to not only prevent the suicidal tendencies of corporations but also to ensure that the long-term interests of power and privilege are maintained. The state not only guarantees, through coercive force, the laws that allow a corporation to exist, but the state also guarantees broad strategic foresight. Until the US Gov't becomes incorporated, no private entity will have the strategic breadth and depth of which the US Gov't is capable.
The US political system fulfills this roll while also providing some benefits to the rest of us. The benefits provided to the rest of us were hard fought by labor and fellow travelers. The elite rationalize the benefits now through the belief that they are essential for the maintainance of our democratic facade and preventing the popular anger that could lead to a social revolution if these benefits were removed. It remains to be seen if the elite sectors of society will remove these institutional bastions between ourselves and the so-called Third World. To be sure, even if these laws are revoked, we will not immediately descend into peasantry status. But that is the sophistication of early 21st Century class war: its a sophisticated war of attrition. Just as the frog in a cool pot of water cannot detect a slow rise in temperature until it is too late, neither could our parents and grandparents detect a slow rise in the intensification of the class war. Can we detect the temperature change or will we continue to bask in warm comfort without a plan for survival?
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