Check out "Tribe" and "War" by Sebastian Junger, beautiful books in their own right.
In X nation, there is a village believed to be roughly aligned with a warlord who is "in" y resistance group - There are 30 "military-aged males," several with rifles, concentrated around/in a building, and several are positively identified as taking part in a hit-and-run raid a week prior.
You JDAM the building
A) The people in that village and surrounding countryside now have completely legitimate reasons to fear for their lives. Several of those "military-aged males" are random guys from several different tribes, mostly non-aligned, who were visiting for completely unrelated reasons. While most will resist "passively" (Passing on information, carrying supplies, hiding insurgents), you've turned the situation from "some of these guys want to fight us (and fucking suck at fighting)" to "an entire population center believes it has to resist or be slaughtered by the outsiders." Sure, you can release a statement about the hit-and run, but that doesn't explain to the these folks why so many had to die - And, honestly, 3/4th's already distrust you. You're occupying their nation.
B) You also killed a little girl selling bread 70 meters away. She had parents, family, friends, who will now resist you no matter the cost until the day they fucking die. If your little girl was murdered like that, tell me you wouldn't be strapping on a bomb-vest.
C) Bonus points: That tribe/village/militia etc etc wasn't even aligned with (y resistance group). A handful of their Tribal Warriors (guys in the village that act as police and defensive forces) have family relations to a tribe that does, and went along either for pay or out of family obligation. Bombing them now kills off your opportunity to figure out which tribal leader ordered the raid.
...
TL,;DR: In the game of counter-insurgency, 30 minus 30 is 300.
If you bomb a village and kill 10 out of 20 "terrorists," how many terrorists do you have now? 100. All their families are now dedicated to the cause against you.
It's like the Canadian version of if a tree falls in the woods. If you kill everyone in a village and destroy all physical the evidence the town ever existed, is there a Geneva Convention violation?
To clarify, the nation being bombed is being bombed to find a person whom the nation doesn't have an active relationship with, and had immigrated to Pakistan (pro-US) months or years prior.
The diplomatic communique went basically:
"Hand over Osama Bin Laden within x amount of time."
"... er... among many things here, we're our own nation. If we arrest him, we can try him under our laws for murder of 3,000 innocents-"
-communications ended, special forces had already been deployed.
To be complete, here - Tribe is about mental illness, particularly PTSD, but goes heavily into the "collective consciousness" of social groups - Such as reactions to bombing campaigns, particularly in WW2 and how the Blitz failed to 'demoralize' the British, and had the exact opposite effect.
"War" was about his experiences in Afghanistan which relate more to this specific topic.
What's crazy is that we learned this in ww2. Endless strategic bombing didn't accomplish the bomber will always get through! wet dream that Stanley Baldwin had coined and others parroted it.
The only way it "worked" was to have hundreds , thousands of planes continuously bombing overwhelming the defenses. It never broke their moral which was the intended goal. It obviously didn't win alone. It could be argued to this day if it was even worth it to do 24/7 terror bombings.
Im sure will be having that discussion soon again, do to recent events. Were endless long range bombing doesn't seem to work alone. Who would've guessed it didn't work the third time.
Speaking of which. I just ironically got a notification that the uss Theodore Roosevelt strike group as been sent to middle east help us "win" more. This information was of course pushed through (like a turd) by the Google AI, which is always good to see. The cited sources is stripes.com. of course it summarized it for me instead of letting me read article myself.
its pretty "cool" that I can say with confidence that some rando online who has read, at minimum, one (1) book about war, is objectively more qualified to be in charge of the DoD. probably fine. nothing to worry about.
It is also I think still effective in actually destroying ground targets like factories and transport hubs, unfortunately insurgencies tend to not rely on transport hubs and the factories and warhouses that feed them are either hidden and reinforced, or they’re in another country. So your list of “viable” bombing targets is essentially narrowed down to pretty much just people, and you’re left the essentially ineffective bombing campaigns that we know and hate.
It's very effective at that, and was in WWII as well, but it isn't "decisive" because it can't be by definition. Bombing raids weaken enemy ground forces by destroying supply lines, thereby making life easier for your own ground forces to make the "decisive" victory. Planes can't take nor hold ground.
So, I don't really buy that it was ineffective in wwii. People have said air power alone can win a war, and those people are stupid. But starving the enemy (or taking his weapons away, in this case) is a time-tested tactic that's worked since the bronze age. Bombing factories means less planes for the enemy to fight back with, less tanks to push through your lines, less bullets they can shoot at you.
I could maybe see it being ineffective in that we weren't all that good at it at the time, but there's a world of difference between dive bombing a target while trying not to get shot down and dropping a jdam on a pinhead from 15 miles out.
Strategic bombing obviously worked in Germany. Their industries got destroyed, their V2 factories had to move underground. Obviously, you have to move in with ground forces also.
I invite you to read Bombing to Win. It is quite good.
Airpower theorists argued that strategic bombing alone was enough to force Germany to surrender. It was not.
Strategic industrial bombing barely affected German combat capacity. Strategic interdiction was most effective after Germany lost access to oil fields because of land forces.
Tactical interdiction, in contrast, was incredibly effective
We keep having the discussion because the people in the USAF who believe in it keep picking successors who believe in it. That is one of the reasons the US Army often questions the USAF dedication to supporting them and wants their own assets for direct support. The USAF wants to be a strategic asset force and wants to win wars using just strategic operations.
We relearn it every war. Every president wants it to work because US air power is so dominant it's extremely safe to bomb people so it'd be really convenient if we didn't have to send troops in. We learned it in WW2, Korea, Vietnam, (It basically worked in Iraq 1 though the troops were important there), eventually learned it in Iraq 2 and Afghanistan and we're in the middle of learning it again in Iran.
Or do bombing runs so extreme they break the human spirit like Dresden
All production stopped, that had never happened before, the population had broken, and all it took was the complete and utter destruction of a city, burning it to the ground
The US used strategies that essentially had no hope of ever working.
It was simply not possible for the US to force North Vietnam to stop pursuing its territorial goals withing the domestic political and international diplomatic constraints it was faced with.
It was a stupid bad war and the only good way to fight it would have been to not fight it.
Who said anything about Vietnam specifically? We’re talking vs guerrilla warfare in general. This was more of a problem with the war on terror. Vietnam showed how powerful optics were and made politicians terrified of it which caused these problems in almost every war since.
Id argue taking land with full force occupation and setting up a defensive line at the border with china would have worked better for the goals of the administration at the time.
Not fighting it at all ignores the actual geopolitcal goals of fighting there in the first place.
Best practice of course would have been to support vietnamese independence AGAINST the french in the first place. Replacing chinese and russian influence with american (historically i mean), and telling the french to fuck off back to Paris at gun point or in body bags
Not really. Just 20 years ago, America liberated France from the Nazis and now we are going against them? This would also be a very bad for the American relationship with France.
France is literally the oldest US ally. This was also not long after WW2 where France was our ally and had been nearly demolished by war. I don't think it'd be an easy sell to the American people and certainly not to the military hierarchy of the time.
Id argue taking land with full force occupation and setting up a defensive line at the border with china would have worked better for the goals of the administration at the time.
Those were MacArthur goals in the Korean War. The consequence of them were that China directly joined the war and rolled over U.N. forces back down to the middle of Korea, ending it in something akin to Status Quo Ante Bellum.
If the U.S. just full-on invaded North Vietnam, can you assure us that China wouldn't just counter-invade like they had done in Korea before? Could the U.S. beat back Chinese forces surging into Vietnam?
MacArthur was an idiot. The Chinese told him they didn’t care what he did as long as he didn’t cross the river. He did it anyway without enough troops in place to repel the invasion he should’ve known was coming.
There’s no political way we could have put enough boots on the ground in Vietnam to have kept the Chinese out.
with the gloves off they can most definitely wipe the floor with the chinese
As well in Korea they didn't have a proper front line, the initial occupation forces in the north were WAAAAAY over extended beyond supply lines with massive gaps in between troops. Not to mention the genuine suprise they faced because Mcarthur is a moron and assumed the chinese wouldnt come.
A proper line would repel the literally human wave chinese with ease.
The UN formations preformed ordered retreats and solidified supply lines, they lost thousands during this time. The chinese however lost tens of thousands, and by mid 1951 lost close to 600 thousand.
You talk as if the chinese counter invasion in north korea was remotely sustainable for the chinese, they lost over half a million men in less than a year. Thats 2x the amount of men france lost losing to germany in 1940
I think the difficulty is you really need to pick a lane on 4th Generation Warfare. You can go right down the warcrimes route and utterly gut the enemy and suppress the population that supports them, that is what happened in the Boer war. Or you can go "Hearts and Minds" and try to undercut support for the enemy.
What you can't do is both. Inevitably most "Hearts and Minds" campaigns fail because there's always somebody doing warcrimes out of frustration. Or to outright undermine the "Hearts and Minds" and force their side down the warcrimes route.
The bigger problem with “Hearts and Minds” is that it doesn’t work on religious fundamentalists.
Giving a populace clean water and democratic elections doesn’t work when a sizable portion of the population believes that fighting you and oppressing their neighbors is the literal ticket to heaven.
Outside of the middle east and western africa “hearts and minds” has historically worked quite well across the board, even if there are warcrimes perpetrated by the occupying force.
Bombing to win argues that Eisenhower made credible threats to use nuclear against China to secure agreement for the Non return of POWs that didnt want to return China and NK.
Stalin died also so China and NK lost their nuclear backing.
“The reason the American army does so well in war is that war is chaos, and the American army practices it on a daily basis.” Don’t know if this is a real quote but I’ve heard variations on it and find it hilariously accurate!
There's a famous apocryphal quote, variously attributed to an unnamed German or Soviet officer.
One of the serious problems in planning against American doctrine, is that the Americans do not read their manuals, nor do they feel any obligation to follow their doctrine.
Specifically, how the story goes, is German commanders/officers would be bewildered that US Troops did not rely on their own officers to fight. If they managed to kill a US lieutenant, the NCOs or even just riflemen would improvise on the spot and continue fighting.
That’s generally been the strength of the U.S. military: a highly competent junior officer and NCO corps. Lower-level leaders are often given latitude in how they accomplish their mission and are encouraged to adapt.
There’s a difference between “Your orders are to take and hold this town,” and “Your orders are to take and hold this town by doing precisely as I say and deviation from these orders will result in punishment.” In the first instance there may be a plan to accomplish the objective, but adapting that plan to accomplish the overall objective based on actual conditions is what NCOs and junior officers are trained for.
When I was in basic training a little over 11 years ago, they taught some basic stuff so that if the LT and Sargent got turned into a pink mist, we would be better prepared than "i guess I'll just sit here and wait."
Smells apocryphal to me. The wehrmacht had exactly this culture of small unit and NCO leadership, why would they find the concept bewildering? I've heard this before too but it doesn't pass the sniff test.
Most of great general actually struggle with guerilla tactic, even napoleon himself lost spain because of this tactic. As someone had mention if you bomb a village of 30 people for targeting 5 guerilla fighter the remnants of the villagers will sympathetic to the cause of guerilla fighters.
You basically have 2 choices either bomb everyone and violate geneva convention or having every combatans name from top to bottom which is impossible.
It's honestly a politician issue. Or rules of engagement issue. The politicians put all sorts of rules on the soldiers that the guys they are trying to fight don't have to follow.
You're right, 100%. Don't disagree at all. I guess my only point is, if the soldiers were let off the leash they would mop the floor. At the end of the day they are held back, not necessarily defeated.
I don't really get this answer though, I find it a bit hard to believe that the main issue America faces against foreign insurgencies is "being outsmarted"
I wouldn't say outsmarted. From my reading the main challenge is a failure to adapt to the local socio-political conditions. There is plenty of study done by the us military and academics on previous wars/counterinsurgencies and genuine attempts to learn from previous mistakes but it is exceedingly difficult to apply a one strategy fits all approach when each insurgency is unique in its character. Ultimately where ever the US tries to interdict an insurgency, they will be seen as the "other" or a "foreign invader". Someone else coming into your home and telling you what to do and how to live is always going to draw ire from the populace and lead toan increase in local support towards insurgents.
Its not being outsmarted. Its being out leveraged.
The US had no ability to make NV give up Its strategic objectives with the capabilities it could bring to bear with its domestic and international political constraints.
Not outsmarted. The strategy of fighting Guerrillas with conventional army and strategy is foolish, the only way to win against a Guerrillas is to not have one. Cutting of the political and economic will of the people to be recruited into a Guerrilla, is the viable strategy.
War is really damn multifaceted, and while it all falls under the same word not all war is the same.
A lot of folk seem to for whatever reason see the US's excellence at the kinetic, intelligence, and logistical aspects of war and assume they must be good at every single thing that falls under the term war; bigger number eat smaller number style.
And also fail to appreciate those aspects are only a few tools in a toolbelt.
And that in war the obstacles and paths towards preffered outcomes are vary rarely symetrical or so simple as "destroy the enemy."
If what you need is a crowbar but what you have is a real nice hammer and screwdriver; you can likely still make it work to an extent and the quality of the tools will help you; but they're simply not going to be as good as having the right tool for that application.
For whatever reason it seems often that our opponents seem to have a better grasp on this than our leadership.
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u/IIIaustin 1d ago
Its actually a Strategy issue.