Infinite War: The Gravy
Train Rolls On
In truth, infinite war is a
strategic abomination -- an admission of professional military bankruptcy.STAFF SGT. DENGRIER M. BAEZ / US MARINE CORPS.
June 7, 2018
“The
United States of Amnesia.” That’s what Gore Vidal once called
us. We remember what we find it convenient to remember and forget everything
else. That forgetfulness especially applies to the history of others. How
could their past, way back when, have any meaning for us today?
Well, it just might. Take the European conflagration of 1914-1918, for example.
You may not have noticed.
There’s no reason why you should have, fixated as we all are on the daily
torrent of presidential tweets and the flood of mindless rejoinders they
elicit. But let me note for the record that the centenary of the conflict once
known as The Great War is well underway and before the present year ends will
have concluded.
Indeed, a hundred years ago
this month, the 1918 German Spring Offensive — codenamed Operation Michael — was sputtering to an
unsuccessful conclusion. A last desperate German gamble, aimed at shattering
Allied defenses and gaining a decisive victory, had fallen short. In early
August of that year, with large numbers of our own doughboys now on the front
lines, a massive Allied counteroffensive was to commence, continuing until
the eleventh hour of the eleventh day of the
eleventh month, when an armistice finally took effect and the guns fell silent.
In the years that followed,
Americans demoted The Great War. It became World War I, vaguely related to but
overshadowed by the debacle next in line, known as World War II. Today, the
average citizen knows little about that earlier conflict other than that it
preceded and somehow paved the way for an even more brutal bloodletting. Also,
on both occasions, the bad guys spoke German.
So, among Americans, the war of
1914-1918 became a neglected stepsister of sorts, perhaps in part because the
United States only got around to suiting up for that conflict about halfway
through the fourth quarter. With the war of 1939-1945 having been sacralized as
the moment when the Greatest Generation saved humankind, the
war-formerly-known-as-The-Great-War collects dust in the bottom drawer of
American collective consciousness.
From time to time, some
politician or newspaper columnist will resurrect the file labeled “August 1914,” the grim opening
weeks of that war, and sound off about the dangers of sleepwalking into a
devastating conflict that nobody wants or understands. Indeed, with Washington
today having become a carnival of buncombe so sublimely
preposterous that even that great journalistic iconoclast H.L. Mencken might
have been struck dumb, ours is perhaps an apt moment for just such a reminder.
Yet a different aspect of World
War I may possess even greater relevance to the American present. I’m thinking
of its duration: the longer it lasted, the less sense it made. But on it went,
impervious to human control like the sequence of Biblical
plagues that God had inflicted on the ancient Egyptians.
So the relevant question for
our present American moment is this: once it becomes apparent that a war is a
mistake, why would those in power insist on its perpetuation, regardless of
costs and consequences? In short, when getting in turns out to
have been a bad idea, why is getting out so difficult, even
(or especially) for powerful nations that presumably should be capable of
exercising choice on such matters? Or more bluntly, how did the people in
charge during The Great War get away with inflicting such extraordinary damage
on the nations and peoples for which they were responsible?
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For those countries that
endured World War I from start to finish — especially Great Britain, France,
and Germany — specific circumstances provided their leaders with an excuse for
suppressing second thoughts about the cataclysm they had touched off.
Among them were:
- mostly
compliant civilian populations deeply loyal to some version of King and
Country, further kept in line by unremitting propaganda that minimized dissent;
- draconian
discipline — deserters and malingerers faced firing
squads— that maintained order in the ranks (most of the time)
despite the unprecedented scope of the slaughter;
- the
comprehensive industrialization of war, which ensured a seemingly endless
supply of the weaponry, munitions, and other equipment necessary for
outfitting mass conscript armies and replenishing losses as they occurred.
Economists would no doubt add
sunk costs to the mix. With so much treasure already squandered and so many
lives already lost, the urge to press on a bit longer in hopes of salvaging at
least some meager benefit in return for what (and who) had been done in was
difficult to resist.
Even so, none of these, nor any
combination of them, can adequately explain why, in the midst of an unspeakable
orgy of self-destruction, with staggering losses and nations in ruin, not one
monarch or president or premier had the wit or gumption to declare:
Enough!
Instead, the politicians sat on
their hands while actual authority devolved onto the likes of British Field
Marshal Sir Douglas Haig, French Marshals Ferdinand Foch and Philippe Petain,
and German commanders Paul von Hindenburg and Erich Ludendorff. In other words,
to solve a conundrum they themselves had created, the politicians of the
warring states all deferred to their warrior chieftains. For their part, the
opposing warriors jointly subscribed to a perverted inversion of strategy best summarized by Ludendorff as “punch a hole
[in the front] and let the rest follow.” And so the conflict dragged on and on.
The Forfeiture of Policy
Put simply, in Europe, a
hundred years ago, war had become politically purposeless. Yet the leaders of
the world’s principal powers — including, by 1917, U.S. President Woodrow
Wilson — could conceive of no alternative but to try harder, even as the seat
of Western civilization became a charnel house.
Only one leader bucked the
trend: Vladimir Lenin. In March 1918, soon after seizing power in Russia,
Lenin took that country out of the war. In
doing so, he reasserted the primacy of politics and restored the possibility of
strategy. Lenin had his priorities straight. Nothing in his estimation took
precedence over ensuring the survival of the Bolshevik Revolution. Liquidating
the war against Germany therefore became an imperative.
Allow me to suggest that the
United States should consider taking a page out of Lenin’s playbook. Granted,
prior to the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, such a suggestion might have
smacked of treason. Today, however, in the midst of our never-ending efforts to expunge
terrorism, we might look to Lenin for guidance on how to get our priorities straight.
As was the case with Great
Britain, France, and Germany a century ago, the United States now finds itself
mired in a senseless war. Back then, political leaders in London, Paris, and
Berlin had abrogated control of basic policy to warrior chieftains. Today,
ostensibly responsible political leaders in Washington have done likewise. Some
of those latter-day American warrior chieftains who gather in the White House
or testify on Capitol Hill may wear suits rather than uniforms, but all remain
enamored with the twenty-first-century equivalent of Ludendorff’s notorious
dictum.
Of course, our post-9/11
military enterprise — the undertaking once known as the Global War on Terrorism
— differs from The Great War in myriad ways. The ongoing hostilities in which
U.S. forces are involved in various parts of the Islamic world do not qualify,
even metaphorically, as “great.” Nor will there be anything great about
an armed conflict with Iran, should members of
the current administration get their apparent wish to provoke one.
Today, Washington need not even
bother to propagandize the public into supporting its war. By and large,
members of the public are indifferent to its very existence. And given our
reliance on a professional military, shooting citizen-soldiers who want to opt
out of the fight is no longer required.
There are also obvious
differences in scale, particularly when it comes to the total number of
casualties involved. Cumulative deaths from the various U.S. interventions,
large and small, undertaken since 9/11, number in the hundreds
of thousands. The precise tally of those lost during the European
debacle of 1914-1918 will never be known, but the total probably
surpassed 13 million.
Even so, similarities between
the Great War as it unspooled and our own not-in-the-least-great war(s) deserve
consideration. Today, as then, strategy — that is, the principled use of power
to achieve the larger interests of the state — has ceased to exist. Indeed, war
has become an excuse for ignoring the absence of strategy.
For years now, U.S. military
officers and at least some national security aficionados have referred to
ongoing military hostilities as “the Long War.” To describe our conglomeration
of spreading conflicts as “long” obviates any need to suggest when or under
what circumstances (if any) they might actually end. It’s like the
meteorologist forecasting a “long winter” or the betrothed telling his or her
beloved that theirs will be a “long engagement.” The implicit vagueness is not
especially encouraging.
Some high-ranking officers of
late have offered a more forthright explanation of what “long” may really mean.
In the Washington Post, the journalist Greg Jaffe recently reported that “winning for much
of the US military’s top brass has come to be synonymous with staying put.”
Winning, according to Air Force General Mike Holmes, is simply “not losing.
It’s staying in the game.”
Not so long ago, America’s
armed forces adhered to a concept called victory, which implied
conclusive, expeditious, and economical mission accomplished. No more. Victory, it
turns out, is too tough to achieve, too restrictive, or, in the words of Army
Lieutenant General Michael Lundy, “too absolute.” The United States military
now grades itself instead on a curve. As Lundy puts it, “winning is more of a
continuum,” an approach that allows you to claim mission accomplishment
without, you know, actually accomplishing anything.
It’s like soccer for
six-year-olds. Everyone tries hard so everyone gets a trophy. Regardless of
outcomes, no one goes home feeling bad. In the U.S. military’s case, every
general gets a medal (or, more likely, a chest full of them).
“These days,” in the Pentagon,
Jaffe writes, “senior officers talk about ‘infinite war.’”
I would like to believe that
Jaffe is pulling our leg. But given that he’s a conscientious reporter with
excellent sources, I fear he knows what he’s talking about. If he’s right, as
far as the top brass are concerned, the Long War has now officially gone beyond
long. It has been deemed endless and is accepted as such by those who preside
over its conduct.
Strategic Abomination
In truth, infinite war is a
strategic abomination, an admission of professional military bankruptcy. Erster
General-QuartiermeisterLudendorff might have endorsed the term, but
Ludendorff was a military fanatic.
Check that. Infinite war is a
strategic abomination except for arms merchants, so-called defense contractors,
and the “emergency men” (and women) devoted to climbing
the greasy pole of what we choose to call the national security establishment.
In other words, candor obliges us to acknowledge that, in some quarters,
infinite war is a pure positive, carrying with it a promise of yet more
profits, promotions, and opportunities to come. War keeps the gravy train
rolling. And, of course, that’s part of the problem.
Who should we hold accountable
for this abomination? Not the generals, in my view. If they come across as a
dutiful yet unimaginative lot, remember that a lifetime of military service
rarely nurtures imagination or creativity. So they come and go at regular
intervals, each new commander promising success and departing after a couple
years to make way for someone else to give it a
try.
It tells us something about our
prevailing standards of generalship that, by resurrecting an old idea —
counterinsurgency — and applying it with temporary success to one particular
theater of war, General David Petraeus acquired a reputation as a military genius.
If Petraeus is a military genius, so, too, is General George McClellan. After
winning the Battle of Rich Mountain in 1861, newspapers dubbed McClellan “the Napoleon of the
Present War.” But the action at Rich Mountain decided nothing and McClellan
didn’t win the Civil War any more than Petraeus won the Iraq War.
No, it’s not the generals who
have let us down, but the politicians to whom they supposedly report and from
whom they nominally take their orders. Of course, under the heading of
politician, we quickly come to our current commander-in-chief. Yet it would be
manifestly unfair to blame President Trump for the mess he inherited, even if
he is presently engaged in making matters worse.
The failure is a collective
one, to which several presidents and both political parties have contributed
over the years. Although the carnage may not be as horrific today as it was on
the European battlefields on the Western and Eastern Fronts, members of our
political class are failing us as strikingly and repeatedly as the political
leaders of Great Britain, France, and Germany failed their peoples back then.
They have abdicated responsibility for policy to our own homegrown equivalents
of Haig, Foch, Petain, Hindenburg, and Ludendorff. Their failure is
unforgivable.
Congressional midterm elections
are just months away and another presidential election already looms. Who will
be the political leader with the courage and presence of mind to declare:
“Enough!” Man or woman, straight or gay, black, brown, or white, that person
will deserve the nation’s gratitude and the support of the electorate.
Until that occurs, however, the
American penchant for war will stretch on toward infinity. No doubt Saudi and
Israeli leaders will cheer, Europeans who remember their Great War will scratch
their heads in wonder, and the Chinese will laugh themselves silly. Meanwhile,
issues of genuinely strategic importance — climate change offers one obvious
example — will continue to be treated like an afterthought. As for the gravy
train, it will roll on.
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Andrew Bacevich, a TomDispatch regular, is
the author of America's War for the Greater
Middle East: A Military History, published by Random House.
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"The master class
has always declared the wars; the subject class has always fought the battles.
The master class has had all to gain and nothing to lose, while the subject
class has had nothing to gain and everything to lose--especially their lives."
Eugene Victor Debs
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