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

https://web.stanford.edu/class/polisci211z/2.2/Mack%20WP%201975%20Asymm%20Conf.pdf

by hkc • 4 years ago

60 64 4 years ago

web.stanford.edu

donpott2• 4 years ago

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

hkc• 4 years ago

My bad, I should've been more careful.

donpott2• 4 years ago

Not at all, thanks for considering it :)

badRNG• 4 years 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• 4 years 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• 4 years 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• 4 years ago

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

dmix2• 4 years 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• 4 years 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.

sudosysgen3• 4 years 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• 4 years 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-...).

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.

gwbas1c2• 4 years 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.

spaetzleesser• 4 years ago

I think during wartimes political leaders and business leaders (especially defense company leaders) should be required to either go themselves to the front themselves or have their children fight in the war. It’s good for them to have “skin in the game” in wartime so they understand their decisions better. There are way too many examples of leaders and their families who live the good life during war while the military and civilian population are suffering.

cafard• 4 years ago

> 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.

Ultimately the administration needed Congressional backing, but the Pentagon reports directly to the president.

oneoff7864• 4 years 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.

dragontamer5• 4 years 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• 4 years ago

Didn't Japan start that war?

throwaway0a5e• 4 years ago

Even on paper the match between Japan and Russia was much more evenly matched. Japan was balls deep in their whole "speed run European history" phase at that time. Russia didn't care about the territory in question nearly as much and it was more of a "fisticuffs between two people who already are predisposed to fight each other" war.

Ukraine isn't that big and isn't developing like that right now and the Russian motivation is very different.

ProjectArcturis• 4 years ago

Indeed. And Ukraine doing absolutely amazing propaganda work to pull the entire developed world firmly onto its side. I don't mean to take anything away from the suffering Ukraine is experiencing, or the justness of its cause. I mean, they're presenting all that in an incredibly persuasive way, across essentially all media.

For example, early on in the invasion, we saw pictures of new highway signs, where the directions to different cities had been replaced with (in Russian), "Fuck Off", "Also Fuck Off", and "Fuck Off Back to Russia." Or, when a brewery switched to creating Molotov cocktails, they had already printed labels, with fun graphic design, an the title "Putin is a dickhead." That wasn't spontaneous. They had an entire portfolio of stuff like that, which they'd been planning for years.

Absolutely genius preparation by Ukraine.

WJW• 4 years ago

What is so weird about that? Proxy wars have been a thing since the Roman empire. It's just that Russia forgot to do it by proxy this time, but NATO certainly seems to be regarding it as such.

mhh__• 4 years ago

Most proxy wars aren't fought with really up to date technology wielded by professional soldiers. Weirdest? Don't know, but it certainly is remarkable.

topspin4• 4 years ago

"It's just that Russia forgot to do it by proxy this time"

Russia has been conducting a proxy war in Ukraine for years, trying to inspire ethnic Russians to revolt against their supposed Ukrainian oppressors. That ploy turned into a quagmire because even ethic Russians in Ukraine don't want to live under Russian control.

Russia is doomed in this fight. They've only secured about 20% of Eastern Ukraine, exposing the rot in the heart of the Russian military in the process. If they ever get as far as Western Ukraine, where they will face desperate ethnic Ukrainians armed to the teeth with advanced weapons, supported by supply lines to the Western world and informed by real time surveillance the Russians can only dream of, the Russian body count will be staggering; far beyond any level Putin can conceal or survive politically.

The awful truth is that this ends only after enough Russian men have been fed into the meat grinder and Putin is deposed. For Putin it's win or fall, and winning clearly isn't feasible.

oneoff7864• 4 years ago

I can think of no proxy war that has played out like this. The scale of Russian incompetence is difficult to understand.

dragonwriter2• 4 years ago

Proxy wars have been a thing since the Roman empire. It's just that Russia forgot to do it by proxy this time, but NATO certainly seems to be regarding it as such.

Many things described as modern “proxy wars” between major powers have been direct wars between a major power and an ally of an opposed major power (and many have involved direct conflict between major powers, though usually with at least one major power having deniability.) This was true of several of the major USA/USSR “proxy” conflicts (Korea, Vietnam, Afghanistan).

dmix2• 4 years ago

I'm really curious if Ukraines years of preparation was a big factor in Russia's hesitation to use the airforce (besides helicopters) in the initial days of the war.

That plus not getting strong air supremacy.

motoboi• 4 years ago

Anti air batteries. Ukraine has several.

You can avoid them flying low, but then you fall into the killing envelope of shoulder mounted anti-air weapons, which Ukraine also happens to have many.

andrewmd5• 4 years ago

Afghanistan?

nigerian1981• 4 years ago

We’ve been here before with the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan. That didn’t work out too well for them either

dylan604• 4 years ago

Nor for the US

oneoff7864• 4 years ago

The Soviet invasion of Afghanistan was a slow guerilla war against an insurgency. Russia has lost more troops in Ukraine in a few weeks than in 9 years of Afghanistan. It’s not an insurgency either. Ukraine is outright fielding a proper army with armor and air support and what not.

Hell they’ve got a sizeable amount of the western front of Russia’s army surrounded and set for a strategic rout.

dirtyid2• 4 years ago

Seems like a gross exaggeration. Larger RU experiencing some difficulties annexing one her smaller neighbours with foreign support is history rhyming, down to both sides thoroughly entrenched in their own propaganda. This is regression towards mean in terms of typicalness of peer war. Note scale, paper deals with insurgencies.

thatguy0900• 4 years 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.

sudosysgen3• 4 years 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• 4 years ago

2.3 trillion (US spending https://watson.brown.edu/costsofwar/figures/2021/human-and-b... ) / 40 million (Afghan 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 ).

lordnacho• 4 years ago

You really do have to ask what might have happened if the US had just said "give us Bin Laden, we'll buy everyone a house and a car".

It's staggering how much the war ended up costing in money, time, and lives.

Animats2• 4 years ago

We are now finding that out.

Ukraine with most of the people dead may be an acceptable outcome to Putin. Mariupol with most of the people dead is happening right now.

FpUser3• 4 years ago

"Mariupol with most of the people dead is happening right now"

I have zero sympathy to that rabid dog Putin. However your "most of the people dead" is total BS. Check the numbers on Wikipedia - casualties vs population [0].

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Siege_of_Mariupol

excitom• 4 years ago

I think the example of the Mongol conquests supports your point about the success of barbarism. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Destruction_under_the_Mongol_E...

FpUser3• 4 years ago

"winning hearts and minds" approach didn't really accomplish anything.

Agent orange, Mỹ Lai massacre, Abu Ghraib, hundreds of thousands of dead, millions of maimed, displaced, financially ruined, starved (check heartwarming reply of Madeleine Albright in regards to 500,000 kids dead by starvation and desease). Well the list can go on and on.

I fail to see even a trace of "winning hearts and minds" approach here.

Swizec• 4 years ago

On the contrary, Rome was able to conquer most of Europe thanks to its hearts and minds approach. You can rule yourself, keep doing your thing, get some nice roads and towns, move on with life. All you have to do is swear allegiance to Rome and pay some taxes. No more than that. You didn't even have to change your religion if you didn't want to.

If you said no, that's when the pain started of course.

You can conquer people by force, but you can't occupy by force. Occupation only works with hearts and minds.

fivefifty• 4 years ago

That's really not how it worked, the conquered people mostly obeyed the Roman rule not because they were won over with hearts and minds but because otherwise the Romans were absolutely brutal and cruel in their punishment against any kind of uprising or disobedience. Rebellions and insurgencies broke out all over the place and were usually brutally crushed typically with great bloodshed on both sides and any survivors and their families typically suffering one of the many cruel and unusual punishments the Romans favoured.

wins32767• 4 years 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• 4 years 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• 4 years 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• 4 years 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.

BipolarCapybara• 4 years ago

They do are bombing and leveling cities already.

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

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