Trick Question
Irradiated by LabRat
I didn’t watch as much of the Presidential debates last election as I perhaps should have if I’m going to comment on politics at all ever- though I did read a lot of breakdowns- so I’m unaware if I’m just talking out my ass here.
There are a lot of questions that seem to be standard for candidates for the Big Chair in the Big Cornerless Room, and most of them are basically bullshit in-group inclusion or exclusion questions that may have little real bearing on what a President can actually do. Nobody’s got a window into what kinds of things the President is actually going to be directly handling over the next four years, and questions like “If a big natural disaster strikes the US, are you going to frown thoughtfully at it from what distance, and why?” lack swaying power.
However, one of the things we can absolutely reliably predict about Presidents is that they’ll be Commander In Chief of the armed forces, and at some point during their term in office either they will succumb to the temptation to play with the world’s biggest, neatest set of army men, or the world in general will force or strongly compel their use.
For this reason, I think this question should be standard, both for debates and for media outlets: “What kind of military conflicts do you think can be resolved well with American air power primarily or exclusively?”
What’s happened pretty much every time we’ve either gotten involved in or continued a war or “kinetic military action” on this assumption is that we’ve either comprehensively wrecked a region that was already doing a good job wrecking on its own and left things worse for the innocents involved than it had been before (Somalia, former Yugoslavia), or we’ve gotten embarrassingly shellacked by forces willing to put in more serious commitment at throat-slitting distance (Vietnam). The only kinda-sorta exception I can really think of is the Berlin airlift, and we weren’t dropping bombs that time.
Commentary on current events can be left as an exercise for the reader.
March 29th, 2011 at 7:31 pm
Which “Berlin Crisis”, there were three? 1948, 1958/59 when Eisenhower threatened a nuclear response to any Soviet advance on the Western enclave of Berlin (because he had no alternative military option available in-theater due to budget cuts he encouraged during his years in office) and again in late summer of 1961 (see David Hackworth’s memoir ABOUT FACE for details on the 1961 event). I presume you mean the 1948 iteration as that was the occasion when air resupply doctrine was first tested on such a scale. The presence of so many WW II troops within the city (US, French, British/Commonwealth, etc), and in such numbers having prepared fighting positions routinely manned, made simply conquering the city and closing it’s airfields essentially impossible in a timeframe that would pre-empt a US atomic response (a technology the Sov’s hadn’t yet successfully stolen/reverse engineered). Given that now-altificial constraint, I’m not certain those lessons apply to the modern “battlespace” quite as directly as might be assumed. “We” physically occupied the delivery point in Berlin; I suspect Somalia is a better example of a logistic air lift being utilised in a Libyan or Iranian context for example.
A Presidential candidate ought to be casually conversant (able to discuss knowledgably with little-to-no prompting or topic coaching) on these and related C-in-C topics, but equally ought to be knowledgable of the command and communication structure s/he will have to utilise along with the particulars of US Law regarding C-in-C functions of the office. A thorough familiarity of how (and by what mechanisms) all that relates to US foreign affairs and treaty obligations ought to weigh more heavily than it does come election time too.
No, I won’t hold my breath on any of that actually occuring.
March 29th, 2011 at 8:26 pm
Okay, so I was being snarky and comparing a drop of supplies and food meant to counter a Soviet attempt to force control of Berlin without a hot war to the herpaderp “Maybe if we just bomb them enough they’ll give up and no American soldier has to get in grenade range and we win!” strategy that has been tried surprisingly often in our history.
But you are right, and any candidate proposing to become such needs to be able to discuss in that level of detail.
March 29th, 2011 at 9:19 pm
Osirik comes to mind, but that wasn’t us.
March 30th, 2011 at 5:36 am
Of course you can “win” a war with air power alone. As long as your definition of win is to kill your opponents leadership, destroy his military equipment and kill the vast majority of his fighting forces. All you have to do is to drop a moderate number of nuclear weapons.
Of course this also kills large number of “innocent” bystanders like a large percentage of the civilian population and contaminates the area as well with certain degree of fallout. The fallout also extends downwind with just about everywhere as being downwind eventually.
Many people like to think that with demise of the Soviet Union and the end of the “cold” war such as situation will never arise again. While it would be nice if they are right, I fear our current lack of credible opponents to USA military power to be temporary.
March 30th, 2011 at 6:10 am
we’ve gotten embarrassingly shellacked by forces willing to put in more serious commitment at throat-slitting distance (Vietnam).
I guess I missed the part where we got embarassingly shellacked. In fact, from Tet 1968 onward we won every major military confrontation with the NVA handily (there were very few VC left after Tet).
What happened was the American people lost the will to fight, and the Congress-spurred on by demonstrating hippies and the media-refused to support further war. So we quit.
TC
March 30th, 2011 at 8:25 am
True — even with the Easter Offensive (March - October 1972; the largest offensive in the world since China openly entered the Korean War — China alone donated 1000 T54 tanks to the NVA specifically for the invasion), it was ARVN troops, a handful of advisors (who were truly advising), and American airpower that stopped the NVA armored advance butt cold.
A ceasefire was signed in January 1973. North Vietnam calculated that by 1976 - 1977, South Vietnam would have built its military into a large, fully modern, and universally well trained and equipped force that would mean the RVN would be too strong to invade. The provisions of the ceasefire included resupply of South Vietnam by the US, as well as a US garantee of combat forces if the North violated the treaty. In other words, it was somewhat similar to the Korean ceasefire of 1953, except it also allowed the Communists to replace munitions and supplies consumed by forces already in the South on a 1:1 basis. (This was intended to be support for the Viet Cong, a putatively “popular insurgency” — but the Viet Cong as a military force, had ceased to exist in 1968, and had at ALL times been solely controlled from Hanoi and was in large part made up of North Vietnamese infiltrated into South Vietnam.)
Unfortunately, the Democratically controlled Congress prohibited the use of even American airpower after June 1973, and cut off resupply of South Vietnam. When the North broke the ceasefire in fall of 1973, Congress prevented the US from intervening — even though such intervention in case of the Communists reinitiating the conflict was the ONLY reason the South agreed to a ceasefire.
By January 1974, the Paris Peace Accords (the ceasefire) was no longer in effect due to the treachery of the North, but Congress continued to act as if it was. (South Vietnam lost another 25,000 casualties before declaring the “ceasefire” irreparably breached and void.)
By the time the 1975 invasion came in, the average MONTHLY issue for an ARVN rifleman was 30 rounds of ammunition, two hand grenades, and they were stripping field dressings off the dead , washing them, and reissuing them. South Vietnam didn’t even have the fuel or parts to operate the armor and aircraft they did have.
Meanwhile, the NVA had full up logistical support from abroad and an unhampered transportation network to receive it and send it south.
March 30th, 2011 at 8:45 am
The debate over the use of air-power has been going on since the interwar years (the period between WWI and WWII). Before the second great war there was a school of thought that held that all future wars could be won by bombing the enemies resources out of existence. The vast strategic bombing campaigns of WWII are a prime example of this concept in action. This failed to work in practice. Later as civilian targets were struck, the logic was that this would crush the populations will to resist. this also failed.
While throughout the war tactical bombing missions proved quite successful in support of ground troops, it seems that continued success in the field of precision bombing has convinced people to take up the old idea that air-power will win the war. the fact is that wars cannot be won in that fashion, boots have to be on the ground. Air-power isn’t some sword of Damocles that you can hang over a nations head to force everyone to do as you wish. War is an expression of political will by other means (to paraphrase Clausewitz) and to successfully express that will requires troops to directly impose it on the enemy, the will to follow through with whatever actions are necessary to accomplish the previous, and an actual idea of what you are trying to impose.
Sadly none of this is doable with aircraft alone, so the arguments that didn’t pan out in the 1930’s still don’t pan out today… but politicians still try.
I just cant wait until someone declares that “our boys will be home by Christmas”, because I am playing ‘History Rhymes and Fools Never Learn” Bingo and that’s one of the last ones I need!
As an aside leatherneck is correct, all evidence points to a very real U.S. victory in ‘Nam, but just as with the French in Angola a war that had turned and was finally being won was cut short, allowing the country to further slide into chaos, because it was no longer a popular cause with the public. Sadly people like quick decisive victories, and reality doesn’t provide them with any regularity.
March 30th, 2011 at 10:12 am
What happened was the American people lost the will to fight, and the Congress–spurred on by demonstrating hippies and the media–refused to support further war. So we quit.
A thing which I both agree with and count as an embarrassing shellacking. Wars are not won on technicalities, which includes “technically, we had the better military, and fought better”. The thing I am talking about in the first place is more a political than military problematic attitude.
March 30th, 2011 at 11:36 am
“the French in Angola”
You mean Algeria, right?
March 30th, 2011 at 11:46 am
Yes Terry I did, don’t know how I screwed that one up. I was *thinking* Algeria really hard though!
March 30th, 2011 at 2:10 pm
Whether you can win with air power is decided by what you drop. A few bombs here, and a few bombs there leaves a lot of usable real estate that can be used by the detractors from the daily ego boosting of a President. Instead of removing the will to fight, the result may be more resolve by those that resist changing their goals. In fact, you may be delivering free technology, and explosives, to be used at will.
Sooner, or later, to win, you have to remove the willingness of your opponent to continue fighting. This takes a lot of indiscriminate bombing, or ground troops.
March 30th, 2011 at 8:57 pm
“This takes a lot of indiscriminate bombing, or ground troops.”
Sorry Jess, have to disagree.
Compelling an opponent to stop actively resisting is always a political action, regardless of tactical considerations. See the discussion up-thread regarding Vietnam between Geodkyt, Leatherneck and Labrat as illustration of that contention (Jpo’s contribution is informative too). While the sufficiently long-term presence of occupation troops can create that result (see post-WW II Germany and, still in contention, Iraq), Vietnam and Algeria both are examples of defeating an enemy strategically despite overwhelming tactical disadvantages.
Stipulating the necessity for “boots on the ground” requires the exclusion of alternative strategic considerations that don’t conform to the economic infrastructure all societies invest in war fighting technology and/or political structural organisation.
March 30th, 2011 at 10:57 pm
Will, could you unpack that last sentence, please?
I read Jess as saying that “if you want to make a very determined enemy give up, you have to either break all their shit or bring the war to as many of their doorsteps — in personal fashion, with the bayonet — as it takes”. The former rings of WWII Japan; the latter, of WWII Germany (and done as much by the Soviets as anyone else). As you say, those are largely political decisions, not operational ones.
Even “breaking all their shit” doesn’t seem to matter as much as “breaking some of their shit in spectacular fashion” — witness the success of nuking Japan over the failure of bombing Saigon (or Tokyo, or Dresden). More germane to LabRat’s point: I doubt we could get Ghadaffi to leave without a credible revolutionary threat short of nuking Tripoli. (And if I may try to unify Leatherneck’s and LabRat’s points about Vietnam: it wasn’t soldiers and Marines who got “embarrassingly shellacked”, it was voters and Congressshitbags.)
My point seems to be that winning a war inevitably hurts, even if you think you ought to be able to do it with loud expensive flying things. (Which are still totally awesome, despite their inability to win wars by sheer technological chutzpah.)
March 31st, 2011 at 7:36 am
I have a friend that spent a tour with the Cavalry in Vietnam. He has some spectacular photos of what initially appears as a stand of large trees at the edge of the jungle. A little closer inspection reveals what is actually the immediate aftermath of a B-52 raid. Otherwise, a 1/4 mile by 1 mile swath of jungle, 12 miles away, was turned into a lunar landscape. The result was probably a few dead NVA, but there were more to be found for replacement. No real estate was acquired. In fact, there was now a clear area for the enemy to transport troops and supplies. Same shit; new flies. Back to humping.
If the same bombs, and more, had been dropped on Hanoi, the war would have ended shortly, although there would have been a few complaints, I’m sure. Call it cutting off the head of the snake, for lack of a better term.
Air superiority has a nice ring to it, but it’s not a war winner if surgically applied. If you want to surgically remove the heads of nations, you have to have covert assassination in your arsenal. Dropping bombs, with the same intent, usually kills the nice lady that comes in once a week to make the fantastic bread. Bad guy dictator has a crummy meal for a few days and shows his displeasure by throwing a few unlucky citizens into a wood chipper.
March 31st, 2011 at 9:56 am
LINEBACKER raids forced the North to sign the Paris Peace Accords. Forced the replacement (and importation) of a lot of infrastructure, which used up transport capacity that would otherwise have moved munitions.
The mining of Haiphong harbor significantly affected the North’s ability to bring in large amounts of material.
Stopping the strategic air campaign and demining Haiphong allowed the North to rebound in 1973, to the tune of “George Patton would have appreciated this level of support”.
Meanwhile, the South had their resupply cut by the US Congress even worse than the air campaign at its height had affected the North.
Using Vietnam to establish that air power doesn’t work doesn’t cut it. The air power worked — the reason for the loss in Vietnam had no more to do with the failure of air power than the failure of Nazi Germany had to do with the awesomeness of the American two-buckle boot compared to German jackboots.
March 31st, 2011 at 10:07 am
The point of the original post was not “air power doesn’t work”. The point was “you can’t win a war quickly with minimal cost to yourself without substantially upsetting anyone with air power alone, but the belief that you can is oddly recurrent across more than one generation of politician, and it is a dangerous one for us”.
Which is why it’s a question that should be put to the politician whose control over the military is largely governed by political decisions and has the power to send us to war and decide how we’re allowed to fight it.
Sending us to Vietnam/Somalia/Kosovo/Libya and going “okay, you can shoot stuff from above, but you’re only allowed to do it in these specific locations and they’re gonna give up” still counts as war, and it still counts as a loss when and if they don’t.
April 3rd, 2011 at 1:50 pm
I’d make a more general case. To any politician, the message they need to get is “you can start the war yourself, but the only way you can finish it yourself is to surrender”.
Assuming that you can win an arbitrary future conflict by air power alone is simply one example (of many) of assuming that the enemy will cooperate with your plans.
There are probably situations that can be solved with air power alone. Osirak does come to mind, there. But one has to manage expectations carefully. And that’s something politicians as a class are notoriously bad at.