This Week at War: The Long Shadow of Battles Past

What lessons can we learn from the way the U.S. ends its wars?

BY ROBERT HADDICK | JULY 22, 2011

After a long and risky advance far from their supply base, U.S. Army and Marine Corps units smash through the last enemy defenses and advance into the enemy's capital. The opposing president flees and his government collapses. The relatively small U.S. force now finds itself responsible for running the city, while an insurgency that threatens the army's supply line begins to boil. Meanwhile, as the U.S. president attempts to rein in an envoy who is disregarding his orders, he must also figure out how to convert an apparent battlefield triumph into the strategic goals he established at the beginning of the war.

Scenes from Baghdad in 2003? Perhaps, but these could be flashes of Mexico City in September 1847 where Gen. Winfield Scott's army had just arrived after a seven-month march from Veracruz. Like George W. Bush, President James K. Polk found himself in possession of the enemy's capital, but without a counterpart with whom to negotiate a final peace. The war had lasted longer and was more costly than Polk had anticipated. His army -- tiny and inexperienced before the war -- had pulled off daring feats spanning the continent. But now as a result of the unexpected collapse of the Mexican government, Polk risked getting bogged down with "nation-building" and battling insurgents determined to gain control of the road between Mexico City and his army's supplies in Veracruz. Polk kept his focus on his original war aims, the direct westward expansion of the United States to the Pacific Ocean. His envoy negotiated a peace treaty with one of Mexico's Supreme Court justices and Polk withdrew his army from Mexico a few months later.

Needless to say, very few of America's wars have ended so cleanly or delivered so completely on their prewar expectations. To help figure out why, Gen. Martin Dempsey, in 2009 the commander of the Army's Training and Doctrine Command and soon to be the next chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, commissioned some of the country's leading military historians to examine how the United States has concluded its wars. Col. Matthew Moten, head of West Point's history department, recruited 15 distinguished military historians to each write one chapter of Between War and Peace: How America Ends Its Wars. Beginning with Yorktown and the negotiations that ended the Revolutionary War to Operation Desert Storm in 1991, Between War and Peace brings many perspectives to the long-neglected subject of how America's generals and top policymakers have struggled with war's messy "endgame."

In Between War and Peace Moten and his historians explore how these American military engagements reached their culminating points, how each war's ending differed from the goals at the beginning of the conflict, and how the war's end would shape the future peace. Moten's aim, in the end, was no less than hoping, "that some future president, confronted with threats to American national interests and needing some time to think, will tuck this volume under his arm as he departs for a weekend of reading and reflection at Camp David."

AHMAD AL-RUBAYE/AFP/Getty Images

 

Robert Haddick is managing editor of Small Wars Journal.

MARTY MARTEL

4:58 AM ET

July 23, 2011

Election year politics decides when US ends its wars

It is NOT the national interest but the domestic election year politics that decides when US ends its wars.

Take the Afghan war.

After ten long years of this war, U. S. has come to realize that Taliban insurgency has been successful because it has Pakistani sanctuaries to go to, rest and refurbish and replenish and return safely to Afghanistan to continue the fight.

But after ten long years of war, people are tired and so US has no more desire left to go after Pakistan which is where the root cause has been all along.

So domestic election year politics is going to shut down the Afghan war.

A facade of Vietnam-style peace deal as dictated by Pakistan will be reached with the Afghan Taliban leaders chosen by Pakistan . US will begin its drawdown and finally exit the theater of a war it is desperate not to be seen as having lost, not so much to the Taliban and Al Qaeda as to the wily Generals of Rawalpindi who have proved to be smarter than the Americans.

That facade of peace will crumble within few years after the departure of US troops and Pakistan will bring Afghanistan under its suzerainty with reimposition of Taliban rule just as it did in 1996 while Uncle Sam will helplessly look the other way.

And the billons of dollars and countless deaths/injuries will all be for nothing because US did not have the stamina to take the fight to real enemy which had always been Pakistan.

 

NANCYS1

1:07 PM ET

August 20, 2011

i agree with marty

It makes sense to say that its the domestic election year politics that decides when to end the war. rocky mountain mortgage The Afghanistan war is a great example of his claim.

 

VR

1:33 PM ET

July 25, 2011

Isn't this already a book?

How Wars End by Gideon Rose

 

GIRIJI

2:52 AM ET

July 26, 2011

Yup I think there is an ebook

Yup I think there is an ebook related or we can say exactly like this article !!!!
but that ebook described it more , here its briefly !! :)

I think if US didnt stop then there are other countries like Russia who will go and starting war in near future and all will become like it used to in medieval period , like european countries . some country become slaves for more powerful country !!!
Olympiad Mathematics

 

AUKPERSPECTIVE

2:54 PM ET

August 7, 2011

Not sure I agree 100%

Not sure I 100% agree. The US has actually been very good at forward thinking battle strategies so to accuse the US of fighting the last war in a purely military sense is incorrect Also whilst it is the peace plans that appear to have been letting the US down more than anything else it is the changing nature of conflicts we are facing that is the real problem.

Insurgency and ideological based conflicts are so much harder to win than traditional state on state warfare. We been holding our victory parties far too early. You have not won your war till you have won over the hearts and minds of the population too. That is a lot harder than just knocking out all their tanks alas

 

ALIZA123

12:35 AM ET

August 8, 2011

He says the centermost of the

He says the centermost of the war is there. I agree, but not because Pakistan desires it so, but because they are bent in dynamics of battle of which they are the arch victim. The war in Afghanistan has steadily and more destabilized a country which was absolutely ambiguous abundant afore the accountable battle began on 9/11. Pakistan will abet with us alone to the amount they have to for these reasons. ISI of advance plays a adroit and bifold game, because they must. The Pashtun abide 40% in Afghanistan and 60% in Pakistan. They anatomy the amount of the nationalist defection adjoin adopted armies, are burst by thirty years of killing and chaos, and do not and never will admit the affected Durand Line, the poisonous bequest of centuries and backroom past and people use to talk about break up quotes but overall its not good.

Thanks

 

ALANCOSO

4:36 PM ET

August 19, 2011

Pakistan and Afghanistan has

Pakistan and Afghanistan has entirely different situations. First one suffered a lot from the war against terrorism. After Afghan, many people found a great safe place in Pakistan and that's where the country had to pay a big cost. Free Car Valuation Thanks

 

DAYSI LOTH

4:18 AM ET

August 11, 2011

This Week at War: The Long Shadow of Battles Past

In my opinion

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PETERSMITHSON

1:53 PM ET

August 11, 2011

The elephants in the room

I feel there are some rather large elephants in the room here. What we really want to know is what went wrong in Iraq and Afghanistan So lets look closely at events in Afghanistan and Iraq and our failures there. Elephant one -- a complete disregard for the welfare of Afghan and Iraqi people in the immediate aftermath of the war. They should have been singing our praises for being freed but not suprisingly got dillushioned very quickly thereafter when law & order disintegrated. Elephant two - we allowed Pakistan and Iran to provide aid and bases for insurgents. I suspect this was not preventable but it made and continues to make a big difference on the ground. We should have tried harder. If external assistance was eradicated it would be all over by Xmas for the insurgents I suspect. Elephant three - we are geared up to fight governments not idealogies. This is where we really went wrong. We thought the war was at an end once we had destroyed all their regiments (or whatever) when it fact it had barely started. We needed to change what people think too and you cannot do that just with drones.

 

MICEONLY

12:10 AM ET

August 14, 2011

I agree with you that we need

I agree with you that we need to talk more on these issues, there is a need of table talk and not the weapons. We have to bring out some new ideas for this purpose. Oklahoma Criminal Defense
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AXELBROOK

1:14 PM ET

August 18, 2011

Because like it or not the

Because like it or not the USA has political and economic ties with the rest of the world.rio orange The global economy is a reality, and isolationism is wishful thinking..

 

LORRINE156

6:08 AM ET

August 20, 2011

This Week at War: The Long Shadow of Battles Past

What lessons can we learn from the way the U.S. ends its wars? I feel there are some rather large elephants in the room here. What we really want to know is what went wrong in Iraq and Afghanistan So lets look closely at events in Afghanistan and Iraq and our failures there. Elephant one -- a complete disregard for the welfare of Afghan and Iraqi people in the immediate aftermath of the war. They should have been singing our praises for being freed but not su automotive Pakistan and Afghanistan has entirely different situations. First one suffered a lot from the war against terrorism. After Afghan, many people found a great safe place in Pakistan and that's where the country had to pay a big cost. Free Car Valuation Thanks.

 

LIAMREGLER

3:41 PM ET

August 20, 2011

Seminole and Filipino insurgents

Although Moten aspired to produce a guide that would inform policymakers as well as strategists, some of the historians could have supplied a deeper research into the alternatives available to policymakers from critical points along with a discussion of the dangers and consequences of these options. Particularly discouraging were the sections on the World Conflicts, which repeated well-worn fight narratives while mostly neglecting bodybuilding discussions from the strategic choices as well as consequences faced through the combatants. Showing the variance that comes with an anthology, Conrad Crane's outstanding chapter on the Japanese War focuses on the actual United Nation command's tries to compel an end towards the fighting through alterations in its aerial bombardment techniques.

 

PATRICIAMOORE

11:57 PM ET

August 20, 2011

The View From Abroad

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Anyone who is an adherent of a libertarian philosophy finds racism to be totally abhorrent. Such people will only judge people as individuals and do so only on the basis of their solar without any consideration to their race, religion, ethnicity, etc. They believe every individual should be permitted to live their life as they see fit and to keep the fruits of their labor, and to do so without interference from their neighbors or the state. If Congressman Paul says he was unaware of what was being written under his name, I believe him. You are free to believe otherwise. However, I believe the life he has lived along with his actions and words should earn him the benefit of the doubt.

 

INDIANMUNZZANI

10:36 AM ET

August 22, 2011

Allow other countries to help

The USA need to learn to take aid and not be so proud, if they recruited the likes if India and Pakistan it would end the war before ti started and would also improve relations with the countries. You wouldnt have social media seo going nuts everywhere.