How warfare has evolved

November 01, 2024 4 Reactions

Conflict: The Evolution of Warfare from 1945 to Gaza
by David Petraeus and Andrew Roberts | Harper, 2023, 544 pages

Conflict is the updated version of a book that was originally published just days after the October 7th attacks.

It is written by the retired US Army General David Petraeus and the leading historian Andrew Roberts.

An authorial combination like that makes any reader sit up and take notice. Here, they look at those wars which have contributed to the evolution of conflict, while explaining how humans acquire lessons from war, or fail to do so.

Strategic leadership is a major focus also. Petraeus and Roberts maintain that a military leader must be able to accomplish four key tasks: grasping the overall strategic situation and crafting the appropriate response; communicating those big ideas through their entire structure; implementing the ideas; and lastly, continuously adapting their approach by performing the first three tasks again and again.

Without letting the book become an example of “Great Man Theory,” the authors provide numerous examples of military leaders who succeeded or failed.

The Communist revolutionary Mao Zedong’s unlikely victory over Chiang Kai-shek in the Chinese Civil War is one. When the Japanese invaders were defeated in 1945, Chiang’s Guomindang army had more than five times as many soldiers as Mao did, and Chiang controlled most of the country’s key cities.

Chiang should have been able to mobilise the forces needed to achieve a monopoly on the use of force within China’s borders, but he alienated both internal and external allies and scattered his troops needlessly throughout the country.

Mao was more flexible in how he deployed his forces and dealt with other factions in China. He was also frighteningly brutal when it came to consolidating control over that part of the country under Communist occupation.

In Mao’s case, the big idea was that his insurgency would occur in three phases: first as low-level guerrilla warfare, then escalating to include larger-scale attacks from insurgent bases, before a large conventional war could be waged to topple the government.

Douglas MacArthur’s record in the Korean War comes in for withering criticism. His major strategic ideas were wrong, particularly his belief that continuing the advance into North Korea would not lead to a Chinese intervention.

Join Mercator today for free and get our latest news and analysis

Buck internet censorship and get the news you may not get anywhere else, delivered right to your inbox. It's free and your info is safe with us, we will never share or sell your personal data.

Know your enemy

It is to the benefit of the reader that Petraeus is willing to be critical of a legendary American warrior, and he does not shy away from denouncing the top brass in his examination of America’s failure in Vietnam.

A conventional explanation for this defeat, favoured by many American conservatives and put into words by Sylvester Stallone’s Rambo (“Somebody wouldn’t let us win!”), is that the American military was forced to fight the war with one hand tied behind their backs.

This is too simplistic. As Conflict makes clear, General William Westmoreland failed the most basic test of leadership by not recognising the war for what it was.

Clausewitz advised commanders to first establish “the kind of war on which they are embarking; neither mistaking it for, nor trying to make it into, something that is alien to its nature.”

American leaders first helped their South Vietnamese allies to build large army divisions on the American model, rather than focusing on small units which were nimble enough to secure the population centres and locate the Vietcong.

When this did not work and the US military entered the ground war themselves, Westmoreland focused on large conventional operations. “Search and destroy” became the watchwords, instead of “clear, hold and build”, and the US judged the success of its operations by body counts.

Westmoreland could have prioritised operations by smaller units and the US Marine Corps had much success in doing this in some areas, but he was too wedded to the desire to fight the war he wanted, not the one in front of him.

Guerrilla warriors are neither new nor indestructible. Insurgent campaigns are often defeated – the authors give examples of this such as Britain’s victory in the war in Malaya between 1948-1960.

Here, the British success came after they had made political concessions to the rebellious ethnic Chinese minority and after they had moved large numbers of people into secure “New Villages” in order to distance them from rebels.

American military leaders failed to learn lessons from this or build upon their learnings from Vietnam.

This created an inevitable problem when the country’s military was tasked with occupying and securing Afghanistan and Iraq.

Petraeus and ‘The Surge’

General Petraeus is primarily known for his role in helping to develop a new counter-insurgency strategy before implementing it in the “Surge” in Iraq in 2007.

Faced with continuing a losing war against Islamist insurgents, American forces were shifted from their large bases and sent in small detachments into urban neighbourhoods to work alongside their Iraqi security force counterparts.

Areas with a strong insurgent presence were physically cordoned off and biometric identity devices were used to screen those coming in and going out. Meanwhile, America’s intelligence and special forces elite waged a high-intensity and surgical war against leading terrorist targets.

A key part of this strategy involved convincing aggrieved Iraqi Muslims to join local militia groups like the “Sons of Iraq” in order to protect their communities.

Violence fell sharply and Petraeus became the face of this new approach.

There were limits to this success though, and the narrative which the retired leader provides in this book does not make this clear enough.

The Afghan military’s collapse shortly after the US pullout in 2021 demonstrates that no military campaign can establish a viable country where none exists.

Petraeus touches upon the hubris of American decision-makers – as when he writes that promises of delivering a “government in a box” on a local level were “regrettable” – without ever properly reflecting on this.

He contrasts the courage of President Zelensky in Ukraine in 2022 with the cowardice of the fleeing Afghan president a year earlier, but personality is not what is important here.

The nation is a delicate social organism. It cannot be built by foreigners, even with the best weapons in the world. People either share common affections and loyalties or they do not, and if they do not, they will never be able to prevail against a determined enemy.

At one point, Petraeus expresses regret about the decision by American politicians to require that the Afghan military use American military equipment, on the grounds that it was so sophisticated that it made it impossible for the Afghans to operate without foreign contractors.

This would be more persuasive had the Afghan military not also struggled with organising the acquisition and use of donkeys, due to the constant theft of funds which would have gone to paying for them.

The failure to acknowledge the deeper political or sociological reasons behind the failure of interventionism in the Muslim world is a significant weakness in this book.

There are many other useful lessons here.

War is a numbers game: to pacify an area, the recommended ratio of security personnel to the overall population is 1:50. To achieve success in an offensive, an attacking force is recommended to have a 3:1 numerical advantage.

War evolves but it can also regress. The Iran-Iraq War of 1980-1988 quickly degenerated into something akin to World War I, involving massive frontal assaults, trench warfare and poison gas.

Wars in the Middle East play a major role in this study and again there are striking parallels with contemporary struggles.

Israel in its War of Independence in 1948 was in a somewhat similar position to Ukraine in 2022. Not only was it vastly outnumbered and outgunned, it also had to defend itself on multiple fronts.

But Israel and Ukraine enjoyed two key advantages. The knowledge that defeat meant national destruction inspired a fierce determination. Also, the defenders were “fighting with organised interior lines of communication, supply and reinforcement, as well as having a central command.”

Modern warfare is a complex business. Even the US military has taken a long time to learn how to combine all aspects of a military campaign successfully. A conscript army like Russia’s, filled with unwilling and poorly trained soldiers and plagued by corruption from the top down, cannot achieve the same feats.

Russian commanders have the advantage that Mao and other tyrants have had in the past, in that they do not need to care about casualty rates among their forces.

The same can be said of Hamas in Gaza, who also have a vested interest in getting as many of their own civilian population killed as possible in order to increase international sympathy.

AI warfare

One of the most consequential developments in warfare’s evolution is only really coming into focus now, and that is the use of Artificial Intelligence (AI).

The scale of the shift can be exaggerated – the authors note that “unmanned” drones actually require large numbers of personnel in bases elsewhere – but something significant is changing.

A startling example of this occurred on a remote Iranian road in November 2020. Mohsen Fakhrizadeh, Iran’s top nuclear scientist, was travelling in a vehicle convoy when a stationary pickup truck in the distance came into view.

Inside this truck was a robotic machine gun and a camera equipped with facial recognition technology. Within seconds, a positive visual on Fakhrizadeh was made, and a fusillade of bullets ripped through the body of Iran’s most valuable human asset before the pickup truck detonated.

Remote controlled machine guns have been an effective component in Ukraine’s battle to overcome its numerical inferiority against Russia, and this process of technological innovation will continue along with the evolution of hybrid warfare and the greater use of open source intelligence.

Human beings are exceptionally good at killing. War has always been inhumane, and now it will be inhuman too.

Was Rambo right? Did US troops fight with one hand tied behind their backs?

James Bradshaw writes from Ireland on topics including politics, history, culture, film and literature.

Image credit: UH-1D helicopters airlift members of a US infantry regiment, 1966 / Wikimedia

Showing 4 reactions

Sign in with

Steven Meyer commented 2024-11-04 15:02:24 +1100

Yes the United States won the battle of the Tet offensive. In fact the United States won every encounter with the Viet Cong.

But that means just what it says. US forces won another battle, not the war.

Was the war “winnable”? I doubt it; but we’ll never know. By the time of the Tet offensive the US military had lost all credibility with the American public. Westmoreland was asking for another 200,000 troops in addition to the 500,000 he had said would be adequate before Tet. Over 50,000 Americans had already died and many times that number suffered life-altering injuries.

In the end I think the refusal of America’s ruling class to let their children become involved in the war said it all. This was in marked contrast to World War 2 where, for example, George Bush 1 was a naval aviator.

The manpower shortage had become so acute that McNamara was sending literal idiots, people whose IQ said they were unfit to join the army, to die in Vietnam. The idiots – this is a description not a denigration – were a danger to themselves and their comrades.

But the bigger question is, “what were you fighting for?”

The idea that the Vietnamese and the Chinese were “comrades” in arms was preposterous. Shortly after the end of the war, Vietnam and China fight a war. Then Vietnam did the world a favour and overthrew the regime of Mao’s puppet, Pol Pot, in Cambodia.

In South Africa military strategists studied the battle of Dien Bien Phu and the tactics employed by Vo Nguyen Giap. I think if Americans had understood that battle, the brilliance of Vo, and the resourcefulness and sheer, almost maniacal, bravery of the Viet Minh soldiers, you would never have entertained the thought of winning the war.

Yes, the French were incompetent. But that does not detract from the strategic and tactical brilliance of Vo or the fighting spirit of the Vietnamese.

As for Petraeus, he went on to become head of the CIA. He was deservedly fired. If the head of the CIA does not understand that email is not a secure communications channel he is unfit for the job.
David Page commented 2024-11-03 10:41:21 +1100

The quote is from the movie, “First Blood”. It doesn’t exist in the book. The book, also called “First Blood”, was a rolling tragedy. A condemnation of war. In the book everyone dies, including Rambo and the sherif, in the final chapter. The movie was structured to allow for sequels. In the military a common phrase is “Who drew first blood?”. In fact it was the war itself that drew first blood, and set the scene for the tragedy that followed. I have a lot of experience with the veterans of that war. My best friend in Germany went on to become a ‘dust off’ pilot in Vietnam. He killed himself. A good friend, who died just two weeks ago, lost a life long struggle with the effects of Agent Orange. I drove him to the veteran’s reunion in Kokomo when he was still able to travel. I never met a veteran there who thought Vietnam was a particularly good idea.

The idea, proposed by Marty Hayden, that Walter Cronkite somehow lost the war, is an absurdity. The war was lost when we decided, at the end of WWII, to support colonialism in the far east. The French defeat at Dien Bien Phu should have been the end of that madness (Who, in their right mind, defends a valley against surrounding mountains).
Marty Hayden commented 2024-11-01 22:05:58 +1100

Many Americans, and even many Vietnam vets, think we should not have even been in Vietnam. I would defer to the millions who suffered under communist rule for that answer. But as for the war itself, the United States certainly won militarily, particularly after Tet. The Viet Cong were essentially wiped out, and the North Vietnamese army was crippled. But it wasn’t until ‘uncle’ Walter Cronkite declared the war ‘unwinable’ that the United States lost all will to fight. Ho Chi Min was smart, and knew it was only time before the US pulled out.
James Bradshaw published this page in The Latest 2024-11-01 17:37:52 +1100

Like what you are reading?

Here are some more articles you may enjoy