11 ms·

Why Big Nations Lose Small Wars (Paper, 1975) [pdf]

60 points by hkc 5y ago

donpott 5y ago
Maybe a "[1975]" tag is in order, to better indicate that it doesn't refer to current events?
- hkc 5y ago
  My bad, I should've been more careful.
  - donpott 5y ago
    Not at all, thanks for considering it :)
- badRNG 5y ago
  Wow. This was written before Afghanistan and Ukraine? That is uncanny; this might as well could've been written in part about the Taliban insurgency.
  - bee_rider 5y ago
    I guess in 1975 it would be around the longest break Afghanistan had, from being invaded by superpowers (~100 years since the British, Soviets about to do their thing).
- nonrandomstring 5y ago
  Yeah, thanks for amending this 1975 date. It made it all the more interesting. Still only half way through but this is a great analysis by Andrew Mack. So, it leans heavily on Vietnam for its arguments as it was written before Afghanistan (a fail for the Russians and Allies). What I'm getting is a combination of two factors in conventional asymmetrical conflict; 1) For the superior force, not winning is basically losing 2) There's a sort of "Overton window" for winning, after which you lose at home, politically. Vietnam played out at home via television and newspapers. The US tried to avoid that mistake during Iraq-I by massively managing the news media and images. Iraq-I happened on CNN and was carefully scripted. Even now we're only just getting documentary accounts of how it really went over there, things that surprise even those who served. Putin is trying that. But in the internet age I think it's failing.
dimitar 5y ago
This is a paper on insurgency, not conventional wars between nations like the Russian invasion of Ukraine.
- dmix 5y ago
  Someone who read the PDF and didn't just use the headline as a jumping off point to talk about Russia! Agreed, it seems to be talking about terrorism-style wars like Algeria and guerilla wars like Vietnam. The Ukraine war is far more conventional and both parties are a strong existing nation state.
nimbius 5y ago
I managed to get through the PDF and it certainly dances around the vietnam war. Stanfords shouldering the bulk of the wound-licking here as vietnam ended in futility in 1975, which is a little early for a comprehensive academic assessment if you ask me. the article also flogs 'asymmetry' to the point of using it to scapegoat US culpability of leadership. Congress and Senate couldnt agree on a daily basis what to target or when to attack, and insisted on the micromanagement of the entire affair in some cases to a deleterious objective of just "fighting the communism" and "winning" without any meaningful performance indication. conscripting americans resulted in desertion and decline of morale to the point most soldiers didnt care, and lying to the public about casualty and progress made it equally untenable at home. im sure after defeat it was comforting to consider it a small war, but it wasnt. vitenam had the full backing (albeit proxy) might of the soviet union. it killed or wounded nearly 200,000 US troops and at a surge point of 3.5 million enlisted troops spelled the precipitous decline of enlistment to less than half that number over the next five decades.
- sudosysgen 5y ago
  Agreed on the last point - Vietnam was no small war, at all. For comparison, the Ukraine war is not small either, and has around 1/10th as many troops on the attacking side!
- Someone 5y ago
  I only see him calling this a small war compared to what the USA could have brought to the battle field. At the peak, there were about 550,000 US troops in Vietnam. In World War Two, they eventually fielded 10 million persons (https://warfarehistorynetwork.com/2017/06/26/us-involvement-in-wwii-how-the-military-grew/ https://warfarehistorynetwork.com/2017/06/26/us-involvement-...). So, if the political will had been there at home, they could have sent a lot more. I also think what you describe in “Congress and Senate couldnt… made it equally untenable at home.” is precisely the argument this paper made: that war was lost in the USA, not in Vietnam.
- gwbas1c 5y ago
  > spelled the precipitous decline of enlistment to less than half that number over the next five decades That was why, as a teenager, I refused to consider any kind of military involvement. The whole Vietnam war appeared an abuse of the draft and the goodwill of people who joined voluntarily. I still lean towards a belief that militaries should be all voluntary.
oneoff786 5y ago
The war in Ukraine is the strangest war history has ever seen. A much, much larger opponent with shockingly incompetent leadership and preparation invades a smaller country that has been aggressively preparing for exactly this outcome, armed with the support of many of the world’s strongest economic and military suppliers’ middle tier gear and top tier intelligence.
- dragontamer 5y ago
  I'm getting Russo-Japanese vibes from this war. Tsar Nicholas starts an imperial war of aggression with Japan to obtain a warm-water port, while the Japanese Navy (supplied with last-generation ships from the British Navy) surprises the world and proves to be able to fight the Russians on the world stage. Turns out that those old British ships were still pretty good, and the Japanese have learned how to use Western guns and tactics by the early 1900s (despite being a Samurai/Sword society just 40 years prior).
  - dnlbyl 5y ago
    Didn't Japan start that war?
    - dragontamer 5y ago
      Hmmm. Politics of the 1800s are weird. Both sides were imperialists, expanding their domains far beyond their historical norms. Russia expanded eastward. Japan expanded westward. You're right that Japan ultimately was the one who started the attack though. But I'm also looking at Russia's expansion to seek a warm-water port on the Pacific Ocean and connect it up with the Tran-Siberian railway. Russia definitely was encroaching upon the East. But Japan also was encroaching upon the West, with the 1890s Sino-Japanese War. Soooooo... both are kind of imperialistic assholes on this event, now that I think of it.
    - etrevino 5y ago
      Japan started the war with a surprise attack, but Russia intended to go to war with Japan and everyone knew it. Japan just figured that, as the smaller country, it ought to try to seize what advantages it could
thatguy0900 5y ago
I wonder if really winning a war and properly suppressing its people long term just requires a level of barbarism towards its populous that countries can no longer do? It certainly seems that the "winning hearts and minds" approach didn't really accomplish anything.
- sudosysgen 5y ago
  I don't think this is true. Wars have been successful at those goals without the hundreds of thousands or millions of souls lost to unsuccessful wars. There was no real hearts and minds in, say, Afghanistan. A real hearts and minds campaign would see at least as much on improving the quality of life as in destruction, yet in Afghanistan or Iraq, enough money was spent that the US could have provided every single family with a car, modern electronics, built a brand new house, and more - what was spent in Afghanistan was 350 000$ for each Afghan family! And yet the average Afghan saw war, devastation, death, and famine. The level of material investment is so bad that, adjusted for inflation, the average Afghan was significantly richer during the Soviet-Afghan war as during U.S. occupation. I can't see how you can come to the conclusion that real effort was spent on hearts and minds when so much money was spent on war when the living condition of the average Afghan only got worse. If you want hearts and minds, you need to materially and significantly improve the life of whoever you are occupying at the bare minimum. You can't impoverish a population that's already massively impoverished and claim that you're doing hearts and minds.
  - bjenkins358 5y ago
    2.3 trillion (US spending https://watson.brown.edu/costsofwar/figures/2021/human-and-budgetary-costs-date-us-war-afghanistan-2001-2022 https://watson.brown.edu/costsofwar/figures/2021/human-and-b... ) / 40 million (Afghan population https://worldpopulationreview.com/countries/afghanistan-population https://worldpopulationreview.com/countries/afghanistan-popu...) = $57,500. Which is still 8x the most typical salary of $7,000 USD a year ( https://www.averagesalarysurvey.com/afghanistan https://www.averagesalarysurvey.com/afghanistan ).
    - 5y ago
wins32767 5y ago
Bigger nations have (rightfully!!) stopped being willing to kill or enslave everyone if there is any form of uprising or resistance. It's not like the Gauls or the British or the Jews didn't try to rise up against the Romans, or Native American groups against the US, they were just incredibly brutally put down.
danamit 5y ago
Russia is only "losing" because they can't justify being barbaric to the world, US justified that with fighting terrorism, so "collateral damage" was allowed. I lived enough that I made it to 2021 to see that even Israel starting to care about that, when they let people know what buildings they are targeting before launching the attack.
- bigthymer 5y ago
  > when they let people know what buildings they are targeting before launching the attack This is not a new thing in 2021. They have been calling families to evacuate their homes before the home's scheduled bombing for a long time (I think more than a decade now).
ipaddr 5y ago
Today Russia is forcing oil payments in rubbles to unfriendly countries. This will shore up their currency and with the price increase in oil I'm not sure Russia is losing the economic war. Military wise they are afraid to go in and out right kill and level cities which is how they normally wage war. It makes sense because they share a genetic history where they had no issue leveling separatist southern provinces when needed.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- BipolarCapybara 5y ago
  They do are bombing and leveling cities already.

60 points by hkc 5y ago

donpott 5y ago

Maybe a "[1975]" tag is in order, to better indicate that it doesn't refer to current events?

hkc 5y ago
My bad, I should've been more careful.
- donpott 5y ago
  Not at all, thanks for considering it :)
badRNG 5y ago
Wow. This was written before Afghanistan and Ukraine? That is uncanny; this might as well could've been written in part about the Taliban insurgency.
- bee_rider 5y ago
  I guess in 1975 it would be around the longest break Afghanistan had, from being invaded by superpowers (~100 years since the British, Soviets about to do their thing).
nonrandomstring 5y ago
Yeah, thanks for amending this 1975 date. It made it all the more interesting. Still only half way through but this is a great analysis by Andrew Mack. So, it leans heavily on Vietnam for its arguments as it was written before Afghanistan (a fail for the Russians and Allies). What I'm getting is a combination of two factors in conventional asymmetrical conflict; 1) For the superior force, not winning is basically losing 2) There's a sort of "Overton window" for winning, after which you lose at home, politically. Vietnam played out at home via television and newspapers. The US tried to avoid that mistake during Iraq-I by massively managing the news media and images. Iraq-I happened on CNN and was carefully scripted. Even now we're only just getting documentary accounts of how it really went over there, things that surprise even those who served. Putin is trying that. But in the internet age I think it's failing.

dimitar 5y ago

This is a paper on insurgency, not conventional wars between nations like the Russian invasion of Ukraine.

dmix 5y ago
Someone who read the PDF and didn't just use the headline as a jumping off point to talk about Russia! Agreed, it seems to be talking about terrorism-style wars like Algeria and guerilla wars like Vietnam. The Ukraine war is far more conventional and both parties are a strong existing nation state.

nimbius 5y ago

I managed to get through the PDF and it certainly dances around the vietnam war. Stanfords shouldering the bulk of the wound-licking here as vietnam ended in futility in 1975, which is a little early for a comprehensive academic assessment if you ask me. the article also flogs 'asymmetry' to the point of using it to scapegoat US culpability of leadership. Congress and Senate couldnt agree on a daily basis what to target or when to attack, and insisted on the micromanagement of the entire affair in some cases to a deleterious objective of just "fighting the communism" and "winning" without any meaningful performance indication. conscripting americans resulted in desertion and decline of morale to the point most soldiers didnt care, and lying to the public about casualty and progress made it equally untenable at home. im sure after defeat it was comforting to consider it a small war, but it wasnt. vitenam had the full backing (albeit proxy) might of the soviet union. it killed or wounded nearly 200,000 US troops and at a surge point of 3.5 million enlisted troops spelled the precipitous decline of enlistment to less than half that number over the next five decades.

sudosysgen 5y ago
Agreed on the last point - Vietnam was no small war, at all. For comparison, the Ukraine war is not small either, and has around 1/10th as many troops on the attacking side!
Someone 5y ago
I only see him calling this a small war compared to what the USA could have brought to the battle field. At the peak, there were about 550,000 US troops in Vietnam. In World War Two, they eventually fielded 10 million persons (https://warfarehistorynetwork.com/2017/06/26/us-involvement-in-wwii-how-the-military-grew/ https://warfarehistorynetwork.com/2017/06/26/us-involvement-...). So, if the political will had been there at home, they could have sent a lot more. I also think what you describe in “Congress and Senate couldnt… made it equally untenable at home.” is precisely the argument this paper made: that war was lost in the USA, not in Vietnam.
gwbas1c 5y ago
> spelled the precipitous decline of enlistment to less than half that number over the next five decades That was why, as a teenager, I refused to consider any kind of military involvement. The whole Vietnam war appeared an abuse of the draft and the goodwill of people who joined voluntarily. I still lean towards a belief that militaries should be all voluntary.

oneoff786 5y ago

The war in Ukraine is the strangest war history has ever seen. A much, much larger opponent with shockingly incompetent leadership and preparation invades a smaller country that has been aggressively preparing for exactly this outcome, armed with the support of many of the world’s strongest economic and military suppliers’ middle tier gear and top tier intelligence.

dragontamer 5y ago
I'm getting Russo-Japanese vibes from this war. Tsar Nicholas starts an imperial war of aggression with Japan to obtain a warm-water port, while the Japanese Navy (supplied with last-generation ships from the British Navy) surprises the world and proves to be able to fight the Russians on the world stage. Turns out that those old British ships were still pretty good, and the Japanese have learned how to use Western guns and tactics by the early 1900s (despite being a Samurai/Sword society just 40 years prior).
- dnlbyl 5y ago
  Didn't Japan start that war?
  - dragontamer 5y ago
    Hmmm. Politics of the 1800s are weird. Both sides were imperialists, expanding their domains far beyond their historical norms. Russia expanded eastward. Japan expanded westward. You're right that Japan ultimately was the one who started the attack though. But I'm also looking at Russia's expansion to seek a warm-water port on the Pacific Ocean and connect it up with the Tran-Siberian railway. Russia definitely was encroaching upon the East. But Japan also was encroaching upon the West, with the 1890s Sino-Japanese War. Soooooo... both are kind of imperialistic assholes on this event, now that I think of it.
  - etrevino 5y ago
    Japan started the war with a surprise attack, but Russia intended to go to war with Japan and everyone knew it. Japan just figured that, as the smaller country, it ought to try to seize what advantages it could

thatguy0900 5y ago

I wonder if really winning a war and properly suppressing its people long term just requires a level of barbarism towards its populous that countries can no longer do? It certainly seems that the "winning hearts and minds" approach didn't really accomplish anything.

sudosysgen 5y ago
I don't think this is true. Wars have been successful at those goals without the hundreds of thousands or millions of souls lost to unsuccessful wars. There was no real hearts and minds in, say, Afghanistan. A real hearts and minds campaign would see at least as much on improving the quality of life as in destruction, yet in Afghanistan or Iraq, enough money was spent that the US could have provided every single family with a car, modern electronics, built a brand new house, and more - what was spent in Afghanistan was 350 000$ for each Afghan family! And yet the average Afghan saw war, devastation, death, and famine. The level of material investment is so bad that, adjusted for inflation, the average Afghan was significantly richer during the Soviet-Afghan war as during U.S. occupation. I can't see how you can come to the conclusion that real effort was spent on hearts and minds when so much money was spent on war when the living condition of the average Afghan only got worse. If you want hearts and minds, you need to materially and significantly improve the life of whoever you are occupying at the bare minimum. You can't impoverish a population that's already massively impoverished and claim that you're doing hearts and minds.
- bjenkins358 5y ago
  2.3 trillion (US spending https://watson.brown.edu/costsofwar/figures/2021/human-and-budgetary-costs-date-us-war-afghanistan-2001-2022 https://watson.brown.edu/costsofwar/figures/2021/human-and-b... ) / 40 million (Afghan population https://worldpopulationreview.com/countries/afghanistan-population https://worldpopulationreview.com/countries/afghanistan-popu...) = $57,500. Which is still 8x the most typical salary of $7,000 USD a year ( https://www.averagesalarysurvey.com/afghanistan https://www.averagesalarysurvey.com/afghanistan ).
  - 5y ago

wins32767 5y ago

Bigger nations have (rightfully!!) stopped being willing to kill or enslave everyone if there is any form of uprising or resistance. It's not like the Gauls or the British or the Jews didn't try to rise up against the Romans, or Native American groups against the US, they were just incredibly brutally put down.

danamit 5y ago

Russia is only "losing" because they can't justify being barbaric to the world, US justified that with fighting terrorism, so "collateral damage" was allowed. I lived enough that I made it to 2021 to see that even Israel starting to care about that, when they let people know what buildings they are targeting before launching the attack.

bigthymer 5y ago
> when they let people know what buildings they are targeting before launching the attack This is not a new thing in 2021. They have been calling families to evacuate their homes before the home's scheduled bombing for a long time (I think more than a decade now).

ipaddr 5y ago

Today Russia is forcing oil payments in rubbles to unfriendly countries. This will shore up their currency and with the price increase in oil I'm not sure Russia is losing the economic war. Military wise they are afraid to go in and out right kill and level cities which is how they normally wage war. It makes sense because they share a genetic history where they had no issue leveling separatist southern provinces when needed.

deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
BipolarCapybara 5y ago
They do are bombing and leveling cities already.