Are You Tired of Winning Yet?

Trump’s ill-considered war with Iran has gone predictably poorly. Nevertheless, this outcome raises the question: why exactly has the overwhelming might of the American armed forces proved incapable of producing anything that could be considered a victory? Despite this enormous difference in power, why has the US been unable to force Iran to give in? This is a question that cuts to the heart of the purpose of military power and reveals the mechanisms by which its use succeeds or fails.

The fear of utter helplessness

To answer our question we have to look at how war works as a tool. The classic account is given by German theorist of war Carl von Clausewitz (1780–1831), best known for his observation that war is “nothing but the continuation of politics with another means.” Plainly put: war should be thought of as a way of doing politics, not as something separate from politics. Clausewitz provides a simple framework for explaining how war works as a tool of coercion: “If we want our opponent to fulfill our will [i.e., do what we want], we must therefore put him in a position that is more harmful than the sacrifice which we demand from him; the harmfulness of this position must, of course, at least not appear to be temporary, otherwise our opponent would wait for a better time and not give in.” It follows, then, strategy is the art of (1) understanding what you want politically from your opponent and (2) figuring out how to put him in a position where he’s willing to give it to you.

Clausewitz also distinguished between two types of war: ones where the aim is to force the enemy to concede something (like territory) and ones where the aim is the destruction of the opposing state or government. In practice, wars often change from one type to another. If a war is going poorly for you, you might revise your objectives downwards; if you meet unexpected success, toppling their regime might suddenly seem feasible. If you’re the losing side, you know that unless you manage to turn the tables, refusing to negotiate means your government will be overthrown or your state destroyed entirely. Consequently, you always have to reckon with the danger of total defeat, even in a limited war. As your military situation worsens, this danger looms larger, and peace becomes ever more valuable, as all other hopes for escaping the impending destruction wither. This desperation means the victorious side can demand a higher price for peace, which in turn is grounds for the losing side to conclude peace before it progresses to this point. Thus, the way to get what you want is by increasing your enemy’s risk of utter helplessness.

From this, it becomes clear why Clausewitz insisted on the primacy of the political point of view: military success is only intelligible if we understand it as a tool of coercion. Military success means generating a risk of utter defeat that acts as sufficient leverage for the enemy to give in. With that established, we can begin to investigate why bombing alone fails, first by comparing it with the old-fashioned method of invasion and occupation.

While occupying territory is a drain on the attacker’s strength, the mechanism of victory is threatening the enemy with total helplessness, and so the costs have to be weighed against its contribution to this end. There are two ways it does this: (1) by denying means of resistance, and (2) by political effects.

For the first point, occupying territory prevents your opponent from benefiting from its population or industry, making it increasingly difficult for him to just sustain his forces let alone replenish his losses. In this way occupation can allow the attacker to make time—which is ordinarily the ally of the defender—turn its coat, and so make giving in seem more appealing than drawing things out. This reality was acknowledged directly in Joseph Stalin’s Order No. 227, “Not one step back!,” explaining the need to end the retreat:

“The territory of the Soviet state is not a desert, but people—workers, peasants, intelligentsia, our fathers, mothers, wives, brothers, children. The territory of the USSR which the enemy has captured and aims to capture is bread and other products for the army, metal and fuel for industry, factories, plants supplying the army with arms and ammunition, railroads.”

If you cannot prevent your territory from being occupied, you will soon lose access to all the things you need to carry on a war.

The weakness of airpower

An air campaign alone has two critical weaknesses: (1) it cannot deprive the enemy of territory, and (2) it cannot threaten the enemy with total helplessness.

In a ground campaign, peace means an end to occupation (aside from anything annexed); with airpower, the loser doesn’t become un-bombed if he gives in. Bombing can damage and it can hinder, but it cannot deprive a state of control of territory. A defender subject to a bombing campaign retains the means to wage war, as bombing can only diminish these means, not deny them entirely, and so applies little political pressure. Unlike occupation, airpower gives us nothing we can offer our enemy in return for giving in, providing instead every reason to wait us out. The threat of further bombing holds little terror for the defender, as the attacker increasingly finds it difficult to do more than “make the rubble bounce.” Consequently, even utter helplessness against airpower has only limited consequences for the defender if there is no prospect of an invasion. This means there is also little reason to make peace—further bombing rarely constitutes a more painful position than giving in.

This brings us to the second great weakness of bombing: it cannot so much as threaten to bring the enemy to the point of helplessness. The war with Iran shows this clearly: American airpower has done tremendous damage, but there is a great gulf between that and an open Strait. For all the advancements made in observation and detection from the air, for all the advancements in munitions and their delivery, there remain limits on what can be effectively struck. This is demonstrated by the failure to completely destroy Iran’s missile sites and its nuclear facilities (necessitating contemplation of a ground operation to ‘finish the job’).

While the costs of failing to defeat an invasion mount as the defender loses the means to continue the war, the costs of failing to defeat a bombing offensive taper off, as the defender adapts and the attacker runs low on munitions and suitable targets. This is to say: a country being bombed will suffer but endure; a country occupied is deprived of the means to resist (and eventually, persist). As it is the prospect of a still worse position that induces our enemy to fulfill our will, the weakness of airpower is that there are sharp limits on how bad of a position we can put our enemy in with bombing alone.

Seemingly the exception that proves the rule is the nuclear bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, which were a significant factor in compelling Japanese surrender. Yet it is impossible to isolate their effects from the overall course of the war and the imminent threat of total helplessness via Allied invasion. The nuclear attacks reinforced the immediacy of the threat of helplessness and demonstrated the futility of trying to gain a better peace through desperate resistance, but it is unlikely they would have produced Japanese surrender had Japan not already been on the cusp of defeat.

After such a philippic against airpower, it is necessary to explain why bombing remains attractive as a strategy. First, there are numerous cases in which airpower seemingly alone has been effective, particularly in the US’s involvement in the Middle East. These successes are in reality using airpower to harm—not coerce—an adversary, allowing partner forces to defeat them on the ground. The US campaign against Iran has gestured towards this in trying to get the Iranian people to fulfill this on-the-ground function, as well as in attempts to get Kurdish forces involved, but has primarily relied on the bombing itself as a tool of coercion, since the Iranian regime shows no signs of collapsing.

The temptations of airpower

For the most part, however, the appeal of bombing rests primarily in its relatively low political risks. Not only does it mean far fewer casualties for the attacker, but the very transience that makes it ineffective as a tool of coercion furthers its appeal: the attacker can, or at least appears to be able to, start or stop it whenever he desires. Meanwhile an occupation has to be sustained until you win or you lose; the end of a bombing campaign (or indeed what its objectives are) is far less clearly observed.

Occupation is also intrinsically costly to the attacker; it increases the length of his supply lines, the number of troops he must devote to securing them, to pacifying the population, etc. In short, occupation requires the attacker to spread his forces across a wider space, which effectively gives the whole apparatus a much greater surface area, magnifying the effects of friction. Guerillas or partisans, for instance, might not have the ability to defeat the occupation, but they force the attacker to commit forces to address them while leaving the regular forces of the defender undiminished. Occupation should therefore be understood as a necessary evil for the attacker, a cost to be borne in exchange for the costs it imposes on the defender, which the attacker must raise until they appear higher to the defender than the costs of giving in.

Thus, the attacker’s success hinges on correctly judging the defender’s will to resist. If the attacker misjudges, he may find his own will exhausted before the defender is willing to concede anything at all. “Will” is a somewhat nebulous term, but we mean it here in the sense of the willingness of political leadership to bear costs and risks. “Popular will” in the sense of public opinion is a factor, but not in itself decisive; wars can and are often carried on contrary to popular opinion. If we don’t intend to destroy our enemy utterly, our aim is therefore to convince the enemy’s political leadership that the cost and risk of giving us what we want is less than that of continuing the war. The defender therefore wants to convince the attacker that attaining the attacker's objective entails more costs and risks than the attacker is willing to bear—even if the attacker has the necessary strength.

The United States suffered defeats in Vietnam and Afghanistan because it simply was not willing to endure the costs involved in continuing the fight as the magnitude of its misjudgment of the enemy’s will became apparent. This should not be attributed to American faint-heartedness, but rather to the fact that the Taliban and North Vietnamese were in positions where they possessed the means and will to both bear extreme costs and impose sufficient ones on the United States to dissuade it from continuing the struggle. Thus the intrinsic costs of occupation mean it can fail without the attacker being defeated on the battlefield, if the defender has the combination of means and will to demonstrate to the attacker that the price of victory (if it is possible at all) is higher than the attacker is willing to pay.

The ability to sustain an insurgency is not universal or unlimited. Occupation is particularly potent as a means of coercion, since it threatens to entirely destroy a state by annexation or the installation of a more cooperative regime, intrinsically threatening the absolute worst outcome. As the attacker occupies more of the defender’s country—and as the defender demonstrates his inability to retake the ground—acquiescing to the attacker’s demands therefore becomes more appealing. Giving in means the defeated state regains control of its remaining territories and escapes the mounting odds of destruction. It’s this leverage that makes the costs of occupation worthwhile as a tool of coercion, despite its costs and risks for the attacker.

The matter of will

In Clausewitz’s analysis of the Swedish intervention in the Thirty Years’ War, he inveighed against the kind of ‘scientific’ analysis that claimed that the emperor could have met the Swedes at the Battle of Breitensfeld with 60,000 men instead of 32,000 because he would subsequently go on to raise so many. The better question, Clausewitz argues, is “Had conditions already driven [the emperor] to that degree of energy and will that was required to produce such an effect? Is it not wiser to pay less attention to what the enemy can do, and pay more attention to what he will do?” (Clausewitz, quoted in Paret 1985, 85–86). What he’s getting at is that you can’t try to just look at the strengths of states ‘objectively,’ but you must look at what political costs come with using that strength. These costs are not linear—broadening conscription, for example, might not affect one’s political position at all, or it might be the last straw that causes one’s political downfall, or anywhere between. It is the particular political circumstances that dictate the political costs entailed in using one’s military strength, and likewise what costs your enemy is willing to bear.

The Trump administration justifiably balked at the costs of invading and occupying Iran. Trump himself calls Iraq a “quagmire” and recognizes how costly the program of occupation was. But this did not cause the administration to renounce the aim of regime change. Instead, it tried to achieve regime change through the clearly insufficient means of bombing. It can be strategically justifiable to bet on a long shot—from lack of alternatives, or because it’s a cheap gamble—but such justifications do not apply to the Iran war. Iran’s ability to close the Strait of Hormuz was well-understood, and so was its willingness to do so, and therefore it was clear from the outset this would not be a cheap endeavor. The Trump administration deluded itself that the ‘objective’ measure of strength alone meant victory was assured.

Bombing can be a powerful tool for harming other states, and it is an integral part of combined-arms warfare, but it is only possible to believe that bombing alone has substantial coercive power if you ignore the mechanisms by which military success has historically induced the enemy to give in. Bombing’s low intrinsic costs have led the administration to choose to forget that airpower provides no way to force a favorable peace—the only meaningful metric of victory. Strikes may continue until we’re all tired of winning, but they will not reopen the Strait of Hormuz.