Off the top of my, yes I would accept that. How often though were those wars: “limited” wars, “peace keeping” wars, trying to set up a puppet regime quickly, expecting a short “battle driven” war, not popular with the citizens of the aggressing nation, fought for “ideological” type reasons, etc.
How many of the losing nations were “progressive” mass governments? I think it may be the nature of the goals of war that have changed and maybe the “acceptable” duration at which a war can be waged by a “western” type govt
This is a common self-congratulatory misconception. “Western” type governments have been as brutal and as sickeningly criminal as any in history of unconventional warfare. When faced with resistance as willing to commit atrocities on a large scale as any other types of governments. There have been few wars as brutal and as criminal as the one in Vietnam. Without much success for the aggressor.
This type of conflict is ideological in nature. The aggressor isn’t seeking the absolute destruction of the enemy, it merely wants to hurt them enough to disarm them and “change their minds”. Naturally, then, it’s a hopeless objective.
States within the last half-century haven’t stooped to the level of barbarism needed to win a war against an insurgency. My former example of the Anglo-Boer War is a case in point.
That is not true. US was far more barbarous than lord Kitchener. The relocation camps which “won” the war in SA were only one of many inhumane strategies tried in Vietnam. But there were simply too many Vietnamese to pack off to concentration camps.
In any case your point is superfluous. If you “win” a war against guerillas it is not called a war anymore. It is a genocide, or at least a threatened genocide.
I hold it is better to lose a war than to win a genocide.
What is war, but a concerted action of genocide supposedly ham-stringed by arbitrary regulations? It’s not like you have willing men meeting to fight in an empty field anymore…
Just look at Darfur in the Sudan, or the Biafra in Nigera, or very recently, the Tamil Tigers in Sri Lanka. There are dozens of examples of states winning these types of conflicts in recent history.
Interesting. You mention van Creveld (which is really good stuff btw), but iirc he claims that the 2006 Lebanon War was a strategic success for Israel…
I do think van Creveld correctly points out that von Clauswitz’s trinitarian model of war is inadequate in describing most modern LICs/asymetric warfare/unconventional warfare. And this is the opinion of someone who is a big fan of Clauswitz’s On War.
Also:
is incorrect. The Mau Mau uprising, the Hungarian Revolution, the Taureg Rebellion, conflicts in Peru, various insurgencies in Africa, etc are just a few of several examples of a state defeating non-state actors.
For it to be worthwhile, the tyrant would have to be able to “live off the fat of the land,” so to speak. This is limited by the fact that you can’t generate excess wealth at gunpoint. If he’s a benevolent tyrant, nobody will care and over time the invaders will just get assimilated (i.e., out-marry).
Re: Afghanistan and Iraq, both were examples of a State deposing a competing State. As for the non-State elements, why shouldn’t they sit back and lap up US foreign aid? The US will eventually spend itself into defeat in both places.
Speaking of out-marriage, it’s too bad there aren’t more attractive women in Afghanistan and Iraq. If there were, the US military wouldn’t be able to replace the number of US soldiers going native.