“Every war the United States has started, and every time it employed military force without just cause, it has lost or failed.”

By Dr. Harlan Ullman

DOES HISTORY MATTER? If it does, why is it that more Americans have not expressed concern or even outrage when reviewing the record of the nation’s use of its military since World War Two? The reality is that every war the United States has started, and every time it employed military force without just cause, it has lost or failed.

Yet, this stunning truth goes virtually ignored. Indeed, it is matched with another fact: Since Sept. 11, 2001, the United States has been at war or has had forces deployed to fight for about 70 per cent of the time. Put another way, America’s military has been engaged in combat missions or war five days out of every seven over the past 17 years.

Virtually all Americans believe that its military is the finest in the world manned by dedicated professionals. In that regard, this belief is well-founded. But, if the U.S. military were a sports team, based on its record in war and when called on to defend the nation since World War Two, it would be ranked in the lowest divisions.

The United States of course triumphed over the Axis and also prevailed in the Cold War. The Korean War was at best a draw concluded by a truce, not a peace treaty. And had General Douglas MacArthur’s reckless advance to the Yalu River been checked, as the Joint Chiefs hoped to, how different the world might have been. Ultimately, they were unable to corral the hero of Corregidor; their successors did little better wielding military force in the years to come.

Some would argue that the Cuban Missile Crisis of 1962 was a victory for the United States. Unfortunately, the Kennedy Administration inadvertently precipitated the near-disastrous standoff with Moscow by way of a massive rearmament program that began in 1961. Washington’s disastrous Bay of Pigs invasion was also a factor. Both developments would force Soviet premiere Nikita Khrushchev to forego plans to reduce defense spending and instead try to meet America’s growing nuclear superiority by placing short-range nuclear weapons in Cuba.

Vietnam was an unmitigated disaster for the United States, one that claimed the lives of more than 58,000 Americans and as many as one million Vietnamese. George H.W. Bush’s Administration deserves great credit for the coalition victory in 1991 Persian Gulf War, as well as its handling the collapse of the Soviet Union. But the second Iraq War of 2003 is rightly seen a blunder, as is the 2001 U.S. intervention in Afghanistan, a campaign that is still is ongoing with no end in sight. Similarly, American adventures in Beirut, Grenada and Libya were all fiascos.

Americans need to know why. Notably, failure has not always been the exclusive fault of the Pentagon. My latest book Anatomy of Failure—Why America Loses Every War It Starts analyzes and explains why America has failed more often that it has succeeded militarily since 1945, and how, if uncorrected, the defeats and humiliations will continue. Interestingly, the errors leading to defeat span generations and have been committed by both Republican and Democrat commanders-in-chief. Indeed, what caused John F. Kennedy and Lyndon Johnson to fail in Vietnam were similar to the reasons why George W. Bush also came to grief in Iraq.

Failure in both cases begins in the Oval Office. Americans elect presidents who are largely unprepared for the responsibilities of the most difficult office in the world. President Kennedy tartly observed that there is no school for presidents. Yet both he and his successor Lyndon Johnson became trapped in the Vietnamese quagmire because of poor strategic judgment and a near total lack of knowledge and understanding of that conflict. This failure of knowledge and understanding persisted.

Ronald Reagan believed that he could bankrupt the Soviet Union by engaging in an arms race. He was wrong; Moscow imploded because after seven decades the communist system had stagnated. Along the way, Reagan blundered into two military misadventures in his first term. The Lebanon deployment ended when suicide bombers detonated a pair of truck bombs inside a U.S. military barracks in Beirut, killing 241 Marines. Days later, an amphibious taskforce seized the Caribbean island of Grenada, which was in the midst of political upheaval. Operation Urgent Fury, as it was called, was mounted ostensibly to protect American students at St. George’s Medical School (none of whom were in any danger) and to prevent the completion of an alleged Soviet air base, that was in fact was being constructed by a British firm as part of a U.K. effort to increase tourism in the region. Later, the Iran-Contra scandal nearly cost Reagan his presidency.

It took Bill Clinton 78 days to force Serbian president Slobodan Milosevic to stop the killing of Kosovars through a bombing campaign that should have lasted a matter of hours or a few days had ground forces been threatened.

George W. Bush invaded Iraq to change the “geostrategic landscape of the greater Middle East” by democratizing the region — arguably the greatest American military catastrophe since the U.S. Civil War. Barrack Obama produced a civil war in Libya through an air campaign that brought down the regime of Muammar Qaddafi.

Tragically, it was the U.S. who started these wars for reasons that proved wildly wrong or intervened based on no real cause and lack of knowledge and understanding. While President Donald Trump has yet to suffer a crisis as severe as 9/11, his strategic judgment and understanding are clearly as poor and likely worse than his predecessors’.

To prevent or mitigate future failures, among many recommendations in the book, foremost is a ‘brains-based’ approach for making strategic judgments. Simply put, a 21^st century understanding is needed to deal with current and future crises. We rely too heavily on 20^th century thinking that is outdated and no longer fits with the world. Deterring the Soviet Union was far different from deterring a modern Russia that has no intent of attacking NATO. Many of our current enemies, like Al Qaeda, the Islamic State or Boko Haram, lack armies, navies or air forces. Yet the basis for providing for the common defense still rests on the 1947 National Security Act as amended, a policy framework predicated on a single massive ideological and military threat in the form of the Soviet Union. Communism is long gone, yet strategic thinking from the Cold War still has an iron grip on how, why and when we use military force.

Finally, the focus of policy and strategy must be affecting, influencing and even controlling the will and perception of friends, foes and enemies. In such a world, conventional military force may or may not be relevant. And because the Pentagon has such huge capabilities, it is destructive to plan on the basis that the military can substitute for other tools of government when it cannot.

Unless and until Americans recognize why we often fail in using force and correct these flaws, the chances of future reverses may not be inevitable. But failure is highly likely.

Dr. Harlan Ullman is currently a Distinguished Senior Fellow and Visiting Professor at the U.S. Naval War College in Newport, R.I.; Senior Advisor at Washington D.C.’s Atlantic Council and Business Executives for National Security; chairman of two private companies; and principal author of the doctrine of shock and awe. A former naval officer, he commanded a destroyer in the Persian Gulf and led over 150 missions and operations in Vietnam as a Swift Boat skipper. His weekly columns appear as far away as the Pakistan Daily Times. He can be reached on Twitter @harlankullman. Anatomy of Failure — Why America Loses Every War It Starts has just been published and is available at the Naval Institute Press and Amazon.