President-elect Donald Trump is said above numerous event After nearly 170 years, the U.S. military has largely forgotten how to win wars since 1945. This argument is part of the rationale for selecting Pete Hegseth, an Army veteran and Fox News host. claimed America's military was eviscerated and weakened by the Awakening, leaving him to lead the Pentagon.
Is President Trump right in believing that we as a nation, especially the military, no longer know how to win? There is some truth behind President Trump's claims. In major wars since 1945, the United States has essentially had a 1-2-2 record.
The U.S. military won a decisive victory in Operation Desert Storm with coalition partners in 1991, shortly after the Reagan administration's defense buildup. But that was an exception in the large-scale conflicts that followed World War II. We fought in Korea from 1950 to 1953, and more recently in Iraq from 2003 to a draw or something like a stalemate. And, of course, the United States suffered general military defeats in Vietnam and Afghanistan—although perhaps achieving some of its larger strategic goals, it did so in an otherwise ill-fated conflict in favor of communist expansionism. It's like fighting back against terrorism.
Moreover, it can be said that the US military played a major role in some of our greatest setbacks. General Douglas MacArthur foiled the invasion of North Korea in the fall of 1950 after turning the tide of the war with a spectacular landing at Inchon. In Vietnam, Generals William Westmoreland and LeMay, in particular, supported the large-scale and sometimes careless use of firepower, which proved counterproductive (these incidents probably led the military to suffer much more from the “woke”). seems to have happened before). Special forces performed poorly in the 1980 Iranian hostage rescue operation. Inappropriate rules of engagement and poor force protection led to the great tragedy of the Marine barracks bombing in Lebanon in 1983. Mission execution and sloppy tactical procedures led to the 1993 “Black Hawk Down” incident in Somalia.
But overall, Trump's claims are baseless. The US military has remained the best in the world since the 1980s during the Reagan National Defense and Goldwater-Nichols-Nunn reforms. Trump himself deserves some credit for the generally strong state of the U.S. military today and one of its most recent victories, namely the decisive defeat of ISIS in Iraq and Syria from 2014 to 2018. With or without Hegseth by his side, President Trump should consider the larger historical record before formulating his second-term agenda of modernizing and reforming the military.
First, the United States did win a decisive victory in Operation Desert Storm in 1991, quickly expelling Iraqi forces from Kuwait under the command of Generals Colin Powell and Norman Schwarzkopf. In a smaller but still significant event, the United States overthrew dictator Manuel Noriega in Panama in 1989. Together with its NATO allies, it won the 1999 war in Kosovo, driving out marauding militias led by Serbian strongman Slobodan Milosevic from its territory, with only two people killed.
Second, success continued into the 21st century, even considering the mediocre results in Iraq and eventual defeat to the Taliban in Afghanistan. Working with partners and allies as well as the CIA, the military defeated the Taliban in Afghanistan in 2001 and rapidly toppled Saddam in Iraq in 2003. The United States has destroyed al-Qaeda's leadership and much of its rank-and-file in much of the Middle East. South Asia and 2011 in the decade following the 9/11 attacks, culminating in the killing of Osama bin Laden in Pakistan on September 11th. President Trump himself authorized the surgical killing of Iranian terror mastermind Qassem Soleimani in Iraq in 2020.
Third, the Iraq surge of 2007 and 2008, planned and executed under General David Petraeus, was one of the largest resurgences in U.S. military history.
Fourth, as in Vietnam, the mistakes made in Iraq and Afghanistan were mostly the result of civilian decisions. President George W. Bush and Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld sent us into war in Iraq in 2003 with far too small a force and no serious plan for stabilization once Saddam was gone. Anbu. Paul Bremer was warned only a few weeks ago that he would take the job of running post-Saddam Iraq, with a counterproductive edict that would punish too many Sunni Baathists and fire Saddam's soldiers. and contributed to the rapid expansion of the rebellion.
Bush and Rumsfeld attempted a “light footprint” in Afghanistan from 2001 to 2008, giving the Taliban room to recover and rebuild. President Barack Obama then attempted a belated spike and crash in an attempt to achieve a miracle that would make up for lost time a decade ago. And Trump and Biden pulled us out of Afghanistan in 2020 and 2021, which was unnecessary and bad, in my opinion.
We should not criticize the military when we ask it to do nearly impossible things and then provide false or contradictory guidance on how to accomplish that mission.
President Trump's argument is not persuasive. We have a very good military and have been successful in deterring wars in Europe and East Asia for decades. There is always room for improvement, but there is no need for a major overhaul.
Michael O'Hanlon is the Phil Knight Professor of Defense and Strategy at the Brookings Institution. “Military History for Modern Strategists: America's Great Wars since 1861”
