War Is Boring

It was an ignominious start for a potentially profound technological revolution. On June 21, 2011, a U.S. Navy MQ-8 Fire Scout robotic reconnaissance helicopter was shot down near Tripoli by forces loyal to then-Libyan dictator Moammar Gadhafi. The 24-foot-long, gray-painted drone was one of two launched from the frigate USS Halyburton and remotely controlled by operators aboard the vessel. Carrying classified sensors, the Fire Scouts likely helped detect targets for NATO forces flying top cover for Libyan rebels.

There is perhaps no better measure of the failure of American strategy over the past decade than the fact that in both Iraq and Afghanistan, tactical objectives have been used to define victory. In particular, both wars have been characterized by an all-encompassing obsession with the methods and tactics of counterinsurgency. To be sure, the tactics of counterinsurgency require political and cultural acumen to build host-nation governments and economies. But understanding the political aspects of counterinsurgency tactics is fundamentally different from understanding core American political objectives and then defining a cost-effective strategy to achieve them. If it is to avoid repeating the mistakes of the past decade, American strategic thinking must regain the ability to link cost-effective operational campaigns to core policy objectives, while taking into consideration American political and popular will.

Guy Taylor from World Politics Review interviews me for his Trend Lines column on the escalating conflict in Somalia.

Editor’s note: This article is the second in a two-part series. Part one focused on assistance to rape victims and educational efforts for everyday Congolese. Part two looks at efforts to reform the groups responsible for rape in Congo.

DUNGU, Democratic Republic of Congo — When the Ugandan rebel group, the Lord’s Resistance Army, attacked the town of Duru in eastern Congo two years ago, it took a convoy of U.N. peacekeepers and humanitarian workers 10 days by road to reach the devastated town. Representatives of the U.N. high commissioner for refugees found Duru residents in “urgent need of assistance.”

In this four-part video opinion series on Afghanistan, I examine obstacles to NATO and U.S. victory in Afghanistan. These include terrain, a culture of corruption, the agrarian nature of the economy, and the technology employed by U.S. and NATO forces.

In this four-part video opinion series on Afghanistan, I examine obstacles to NATO and U.S. victory in Afghanistan. These include terrain, a culture of corruption, the agrarian nature of the economy, and the technology employed by U.S. and NATO forces.

In this four-part video opinion series on Afghanistan, I examine obstacles to NATO and U.S. victory in Afghanistan. These include terrain, a culture of corruption, the agrarian nature of the economy, and the technology employed by U.S. and NATO forces.

In this four-part video opinion series on Afghanistan, I examine obstacles to NATO and U.S. victory in Afghanistan. These include terrain, a culture of corruption, the agrarian nature of the economy, and the technology employed by U.S. and NATO forces.

The Iraqi insurgents moved fast. Piling into the back of a civilian pick-up truck, they weaved through the western Iraqi city of Ramadi until they were within a few miles of the local American base. The truck halted, and the insurgents spilled out. In just seconds, they set up a mortar and fired at least one shell toward the base. Seconds later they were speeding to safety, their vehicle hidden in the city’s traffic.

In the 1980s, NATO ground troops in Europe faced a Warsaw Pact force of overwhelming size. To prepare to blunt a Soviet-led attack and overcome the Warsaw Pact’s numerical superiority, NATO adopted a revolutionary new idea. The so-called “AirLand Battle” concept, which originated in the U.S. Army’s training command, posited that forward-deployed NATO tanks and missile-armed infantry, supported by jet fighters carrying smart munitions, could beat a larger Warsaw Pact army.

It was a shocking discovery. On July 2, agents from the Ecuadorian military and police, acting on a tip from the U.S. Drug Enforcement Agency, raided a smugglers’ camp deep in Ecuador’s jungle. Among rickety buildings and some scattered equipment lay a 100-foot-long submarine, half-submerged in a muddy channel.