Why Has the U.S. Lost Almost All Major Wars Since World War II?

But once war is forced upon us, there is no other alternative than to apply every available means to bring it to a swift end. War’s very object is victory, not prolonged indecision. In war, there is no substitute for victory.

General of the Army Douglas MacArthur’s farewell address to Congress

The debacle of Joe Biden’s bungled withdrawal from Afghanistan is only the latest example of major wars lost by the U.S. Moreover, if you examine the history of those lost wars, you will inevitably conclude they were all lost because they were limited wars, sometimes called “forever wars.” The reasons they were lost had nothing to do with defeat in battle. In all those lost wars, the U.S. armed forces were very rarely defeated in combat. The reasons also had nothing to do with the justness of our causes. Will an examination of why we actually lost so many wars show us how to avoid such humiliations in the future?

The Korean War: The Start of Limited Wars

The first example of a war not won after World War II was the Korean War (1950-1953). One might claim the war was not actually lost, but was instead inconclusive. After World War II, the states occupying the Korean peninsula, the United States in the south and the Soviet Union in the north, divided Korea into northern and southern zones divided by the 38th parallel. The Soviets established a socialist state, the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea, in the north; and the United States established the First Republic of Korea in the south. Both states claimed to be the sole legitimate government of all of Korea. On 25 June 1950, North Korean troops invaded the South to enforce their claims.

Initially, the U.S. and South Korea fought a purely defensive war that went badly. Pushed back to a small pocket at the port of Pusan, the U.S. and South Korean forces were on the verge of defeat. However, the U.S. troops within the Pusan perimeter were reinforced from Japan. At the same time, the U.S. Air Force and U.S. Navy aircraft interrupted North Korean logistical resupply.

At that point, the U.S. and South Korea changed their war aims. U.S. President Harry Truman and General Douglas MacArthur, commander in chief of U.S. Asian forces, decided the final goal would be to liberate the North from the communists. On 15 September 1950, the U.S. launched an amphibious assault on Inchon just south of the 38th parallel. Its purpose was to cut off all North Korean forces in South Korea from the north. Almost simultaneously on 16 September, troops within the Pusan perimeter broke out to drive North Korean forces back north.

The Chinese then began to worry about their own security. On 30 September, Chinese premier Zhou Enlai warned the U.S. that should the U.S. cross the 38th parallel, China was prepared to intervene militarily. Nevertheless, crossing the 38th parallel, U.S. troops moved rapidly toward the Yalu River, the border between China and Korea. General MacArthur believed that to end the war conclusively, his forces would have to cross the Yalu to destroy Chinese depots supplying the North Korean Army. The U.S. civilian leadership, starting with President Truman, wanted to avoid war with China at all costs.

The American civilian leadership was convinced war with China would cause the Soviets, China’s allies, to commit military aggression in Europe. The specter of nuclear weapon use in any Soviet attack on Europe effectively prohibited a large conflict with China. Should China cross the Yalu, any fighting would have to be limited as much as possible. Because of this irreconcilable disagreement with MacArthur, Truman finally fired MacArthur for insubordination.

On 19 October 1950, the Chinese People’s Volunteer Army (PVA) crossed the Yalu and entered the war. After that, because the U.S. refused to attack Chinese forces inside China itself, the war became an inconclusive back and forth struggle. The South Korean capital of Seoul changed hands four times. It was inconclusive because U.S. forces were unwilling to fight the Chinese within China. China itself was off-limits. The fighting finally ended out of exhaustion on 27 July 1953 when an armistice was signed.

The Vietnam War

The next major war, which was decisively lost, was the Vietnam War (1 November 1955 to 30 April 1975). Like the Korean War, it too was a limited war. Almost all of the time, U.S. forces were allowed to fight the enemy only within South Vietnam itself. Prior to 1968, the enemy were primarily indigenous South Vietnamese communists called the Viet Cong. However, during the Tet offensive of 1968, almost all the Viet Cong were killed. After that, most of our enemies were regular North Vietnamese Army (NVA) soldiers.

I have personal experience in the Vietnam War, and of the reasons why it was lost. As an ROTC cadet at the University of California Santa Barbara, I was commissioned on graduation in June 1968 as a second lieutenant of field artillery. By December, I was in South Vietnam.

I was assigned to Alpha Battery, 2d Battalion, 32d Artillery. Alpha Battery was a heavy battery with two 8-inch howitzers and two 175 mm guns. The standard 8-inch projectile was 200 lbs of TNT and steel; the standard 175 projectile was 145 pounds of an explosive called composition B and steel. We were corps artillery under 2d Field Force Vietnam. We fired in support of any U.S. or South Vietnamese unit in serious trouble.

For the entire year that I was in Vietnam, Alpha Battery never moved. It was probably the only heavy battery in Vietnam located at a fire support base, rather than a base camp. A fire support base is typically a small installation with only a single battery occupying it. Officially, our fire support base was named Camp St. Barbara, but we called it the Old French Fort.

The Old French Fort was approximately in the middle of Tay Ninh Province, which is right on the border with Cambodia. Our howitzers and guns could reach virtually anywhere within the province. That is why we never moved.

The northeast border of Cambodia with Tay Ninh had somewhat the shape of a fish hook, so naturally we called it “the Fishhook.” The southwest border looked something like a parrot’s beak, so we called it “the Parrot’s Beak.” The NVA had large base camp areas in both border areas. I once heard an intelligence officer claim that usually about 80% of the NVA were in the two base camp areas.

Unfortunately, the rules of engagement said that as long as an enemy force was across the border in Cambodia, we were not allowed to shoot at it. Therefore, the Vietnam War was a limited war in the same way that the Korean War was. An enemy force could survive as long as it limited its exposure to our fire. If fighting us hurt them too much, they merely had to scurry across the border to escape our fire.

Most of the time I served as the fire direction officer (FDO) of my battery. I was in charge of a section that took in calls for fire from forward observers, solved the gunnery problem, and sent commands to the guns.

Every now and then, however, I was detached from the battery and attached to a South Vietnamese Airborne battalion to serve as a forward observer for heavy artillery. One such attachment illustrated the problem with limited wars particularly well.

During that detached duty, I was sent to walk with the 3d Battalion Army of Vietnam (ARVN) Airborne. Unlike the airborne in World War II, today’s airborne goes into combat, not by a parachute jump from an airplane, but delivered by helicopters. During this particular assignment, the battalion was tasked with patrolling up and down the parrot’s beak border with Cambodia. The idea was to engage any NVA unit that crossed the border into Tay Ninh.

In practice, that meant trying to entice the enemy to cross the border to attack us. The battalion commander tried to make his battalion an irresistible target. We would march parallel to the border, showing the enemy our flank. We would march away from the border showing our rear. We would night camp at the same place, night after night. Then, just to make sure the enemy knew where our night camp was, we would shoot flares into the air.

Occasionally, we became too great a temptation. One night a regiment hit us about three o’clock in the morning. We learned later it was the 271st VC/NVA regiment. It was styled a VC/NVA regiment because it was originally organized as a Viet Cong unit. However, after Tet of 1968, very few VC were left alive. Therefore, when the regiment was reorganized, it was remanned with NVA soldiers.

Being a regiment that was roughly three times the size of a battalion, the 271st had the requisite numerical superiority to overrun us. However, they did not have the firepower we possessed. At the command of the battalion commander, I called in a fire mission to a heavy battery — Bravo Battery, 2d Battalion, 32 Artillery — in Tay Ninh city base camp. The enemy had formed a firing line at the edge of a tree line. I gave the firing battery two coordinates that formed a line covering that tree line. Then, I told the FDO of the firing battery that I wanted a round at one end of the line, and then to place additional rounds every one hundred meters down the line until the other end of the line was reached. Then, the firing battery was to repeat gun data going down the line again.

To understand what followed, you must know that the 8-inch howitzer was (at least at the time) the most accurate artillery weapon in the world. If one repeated gun data (deflection, quadrant elevation and charge) at medium range, the 8-inch howitzer would place a round in the same hole, time after time. Apparently, after a round landed, NVA officers and non-coms saw a ready-made fox hole dug for them. They then ordered troops to take cover in those newly dug fox holes. As the firing battery repeated gun data for a second pass down the line, the NVA soldiers occupying those holes had no chance for survival.

Because of our superior firepower and superior communications, the enemy regiment began to fall apart. Around 6 o’clock in the morning, the 271st began to break up into small units and to run for the border. I, along with my radio telephone operator, was loaded onto a Huey helicopter along with a squad of a Vietnamese company. Three other Hueys were also loaded with squads from the same company. The idea was we would try to leapfrog the enemy and try to destroy him before he could cross back into Cambodia. Unfortunately, fear lent wings to the flying enemy and they crossed back into Cambodia before we could catch them. The damned rules of engagement then protected the enemy from our superior firepower. Once they were across the border, we were not allowed to touch them.

Are you beginning to see the impossible problems posed by limited wars?

The War in Afghanistan

Now, we come to the war in Afghanistan, which we have just lost. Just like the Korean War and the Vietnam war, U.S. armed forces and our allies were only allowed to strike the enemy so long as that enemy was in Afghanistan. After the U.S. was attacked by Al Qaeda in 2001, the U.S. invoked Article 5 of the NATO treaty to bolster our attack against Al Qaeda and its Taliban supporters in Afghanistan. Soon afterwards, the Taliban fled the country for sanctuaries in the neighboring countries of Pakistan and Iran.

Afghanistan and Pakistan share a very long border, as shown in the map below. This long border made it easy for the Taliban to sneak across the border without detection for guerrilla operations.

As you can see from the map, the Islamic Republic of Iran also shares a long border with Afghanistan. Iran also allowed Taliban refuge within Iran. However, both Pakistan and Iran have provided the Taliban with much more than just shelter from allied NATO attacks.

In fact, the Pakistani Army’s Inter-Services Intelligence Directorate (ISI) helped to create the Taliban in the mid-1990s. When the Soviets were trying to conquer Afghanistan in the 1980s, the ISI trained Mullah Omar, the future founder of the Taliban. After the Soviets retreated from Afghanistan, the country fell into a multi-sided civil war between warlords. Mullah Omar was one of them. The Pakistani Army provided military and logistical support for his 1996 drive on Kabul that gave the Taliban control of most of the country. The Pakistanis finally provided military and economic aid that cemented Taliban control of Afghanistan.

Then came the Taliban hosting and training of Al Qaeda. This led to Al Qaeda’s many terrorist attacks, including those on the U.S. on September 11, 2001. What followed was the Afghanistan War, which chased the Taliban out of Afghanistan.

Both Iran and Pakistan have provided sanctuaries, weapons, and financial and logistical support to the Taliban in their exile from Afghanistan. Yet, the U.S. and its NATO allies have never allowed themselves to cross the borders into Pakistan and Iran to finally destroy the Taliban enemy. This was the cause of Afghanistan’s “endless war.” The Biden administration is touting their unilateral withdrawal from Afghanistan as ending that endless war. However, that is a delusion. There has been no change that would keep the jiihadis from using Afghanistan as a base camp from which to launch attacks on the West, particularly on the American homeland.

How to Stop Endless Wars

The problem with the “forever wars” is not that we choose to fight them. The problem is not that we attempt “nation building.” The real problem is a “forever war” is synonymous with “limited war.” In a “limited war,” the rules of engagement we impose on ourselves limit where U.S. forces can strike the enemy. The enemy is allowed sanctuaries to which he can retreat to escape the danger of annihilation. Then, so long as the enemy does not overexpose himself outside his sanctuary, he can extend the war for as long as he wants.

The solution to not getting bogged down in “forever wars” should now be glaringly obvious. If eliminating a threat to the U.S. is important enough to go to war, then we cannot grant our foes any sanctuary whatsoever. If we engage an enemy force and it retreats across a national border, then we must follow and fight it until our enemies are eiither dead or captured.

Consider the case of an alternative Afghan war in which we granted no santuary to the Taliban. Suppose we are fighting a Taliban force and it crosses the border into Pakistan. In this alternative reality, U.S. forces would cross the border hot on the heels of the Taliban. The Pakistani government might warn us that unless we withdraw back into Afghanistan, they will go to war with us. Since they are supporting the Taliban, they are just as great a threat to us as the Taliban. Our reply should be that unless they stop protecting and sustaining the Taliban, we will destroy their capability to wage war. The alternative would be to withdraw and endure years and years of unending war.

In all of the “forever wars” in which we have engaged, the U.S. armed forces won almost every battle. Yet we still lost because of the decisions of politicians. In this one matter of granting enemy forces sanctuaries, the politicians should be removed from the question as a matter of policy, and the generals put in charge. Should this not be acceptable, then do not go to war in the first place. Accept all the deaths of our fellow citizens from attacks on our homeland by jihadis.

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