The U.S. Fails to Deter its Enemies

In my last post, Growing Foreign Threats to the U.S., I wrote about how the continued existence of the U.S. as an independent country is in danger. To a very large extent, this dangerous state of affairs has risen because of Democrats’ opinions and wishful thinking. These prevent the Biden Administration from deterring our enemies’ attacks on us and our allies. What has changed in this country that we cannot deter our enemies?

The Evidence of Current Events

Can anyone doubt we no longer deter our foreign adversaries from acting against us or our allies? Iran, motivated to attack Israel by Donald Trump’s promotion of the Abraham Accords, sends its Hamas proxies to kill Israelis after Trump has left office. Iran also sends the Houthi rebels of Yemen to attack U.S., Israeli, and other allied ships in the Red Sea.

Then, on the night of April 13, 2024, Iran attacked Israel with over 300 drones and missiles. Prior to that night, President Biden was asked what he would say to an Iran considering such an attack. To this query, Biden whispered just one word: “Don’t.” Apparently, Iran was not deterred. While Biden allowed U.S. forces to intercept some of the incoming missiles, he tried to threaten Israel into abstaining from a counterattack. He openly told the Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu that the U.S. would not support any Israeli counterattack. Israel launched a minor attack anyway. Apparently, Biden not only cannot deter the actions of adversaries, but those of allies as well.

Going further back in time, the Taliban ignored Biden’s warnings against attacking U.S. personnel during their campaign to retake Afghanistan. Later, Vladimir Putin ignored Mr. Biden’s demand that Russia should not invade Ukraine. Every time President Biden has issued a demand or a warning, his foreign adversary has ignored it. And no wonder. Every time anyone is admonished not to do something —by a parent to a child, or the law to a criminal, or one country to another — warnings are heeded only if punishment follows if they are ignored. Mr. Biden does not seem to understand this.

The Effects of “Forever Wars”

The waning American will to oppose our enemies overseas is another factor encouraging them to actively attack us. This diminishing willpower is the product of a long series of U.S. “forever wars.” Indeed, the U.S. has lost almost every one of its wars since the end of World War II. This is because they promised to last forever and therefore lost political support from the American public.

Yet, those wars continued interminably not because of a weakness of U.S. arms, nor because of the strength of our enemies. For example, the U.S. won virtually every battle during the Vietnam War. Nevertheless, we still lost. How could this be?

The answer to this conundrum is that a synonym for “forever war” is “limited war.” A limited war is one fought purely within the confines of a single country. American forces are not allowed to follow an enemy that retreats across an international border into another country. I have personal experience on how this dooms our efforts.

In 1968 and 1969, I fought in Vietnam as a very junior field artillery officer. Most of the time, I was the fire direction officer of a heavy battery with two eight-inch howitzers and two 175-mm guns. Occasionally, however, I was detached to serve as a heavy battery forward observer with a South Vietnamese airborne battalion. 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 Province.

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 the Tet offensive 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, 32d 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 Fire Direction Officer 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? And why they must necessarily become forever wars? We should take seriously the words of one-time General of the Army Douglas MacArthur.

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

If, once we go to war, we ourselves will not do what is necessary to win, why should our adversaries be deterred by our warnings.

The War Against the West, Wishful Thinking, and Appeasement

It seems that all the world is at war with the West, i.e. at war with the ideals of the Age of Enlightenment. (See also here and here.) The enemies of the Age of Enlightenment most especially include the academic elites of the West, particularly in the United States. Instead of using reason to determine what is real and what is not, wishful thinking directs society’s elites to work for what they most desire. As noted by a great many, the elites’ belief they can achieve their desires by secular means, i.e. their faith, amounts to a new secular religion. Empirical evidence takes a back seat, if it has any role at all. The ideals of the enlightenment are an impediment to the achievement of their desires.

If even Western elites are at war with the West, why should not other nations oppose the West as well.

Of course, many non-Western nations are also at war with the West. This is the epitome of Samuel Huntington’s clash of civilizations. Here the cultural and religious differences between the West and the non-West give non-Western nations the motive to oppose us. It does little to discourage them from harming us when many among the Western elites agree that Western civilization is at fault for most of the world’s ills..

To the extent that Western elites have become hostile to Western Civilization itself, and have been seduced by the fraud of multiculturalism, they have lost interest in defending our traditions, institutions, and way of life. Instead, they would try appeasing our enemies. If we will not defend ourselves, who will? How can we deter our autocratic, empire-building enemies?

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