The Limits of U.S. Military Capability by James H. Lebovic

Author:James H. Lebovic [Lebovic, James H.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 0801894727
Published: 2010-01-14T16:00:00+00:00

Conclusions

That the United States persevered under duress, in its wars in Vietnam and Iraq, is perhaps more notable than that the United States lost steam over the course of these conflicts. But time worked decidedly against the United States—given the high and accumulating costs of US involvement relative to the foreseeable benefits that the United States was likely to obtain from staying the course.

In Vietnam, the United States relied on linkage and signaling strategies that could not compensate for adversary advantages in resolve. In Iraq, the United States was less attentive to “symbolic action” but was increasingly incapable of defeating insurgent and militia elements without the active or tacit support of those who had once fought US troops. In such conflicts, the US military and political disadvantage lies, ironically, in the immensity of US capability. This capability limits the US stake in any given conflict and requires that the United States marshal its resources to serve a global set of objectives and the military commitments that follow. As a major power, the United States is prone, then, to “accommodate” its adversaries by not engaging fully in a conflict.

True, the stakes for the United States will likely increase once it is engaged, to counter exhaustion. This can occur when policymakers quite rationally consider the “reputation” effects of failing to honor a military commitment or yield to an illogical tendency to retrieve sunk costs—“too many lives have been lost to quit”— and accept costs during an operation that would have been unacceptable at the start (Levy 1997). Few in 2003 would have regarded thousands of American lives and expenditures nearing a trillion dollars as an acceptable price for stabilizing or democratizing Iraq. A war that was hard to justify a priori, absent an Iraqi weapons of mass destruction threat, eventually became a “war we cannot afford to lose.” The commitment to existing policy is furthered by political considerations. Government officials reject options that amount, in their view, to “losing” (Gelb and Betts 1979)—an admission of failure that will not appease opponents and could alienate supporters. Neustadt (1981, 18) expresses doubt, for instance, that “the U.S. government ever seriously studied the option of getting out of Vietnam. Nobody insisted on having that option seriously explored. It was always taken to be unacceptable on the face of it.” 65 If anything, US policy makers choose to deepen US involvement when existing policies fail. Indeed, a politically unpopular leader might “go for broke” by incurring high risks to end a conflict on favorable terms or by escalating a conflict with the hope that a “rally-around-the-flag” effect (an outpouring of patriotic fervor and support in crisis) will strengthen the leader’s domestic backing (Oneal and Bryan 1995). If so, leverage is potentially derived from the precariousness of the leader’s position—that it has, in the adversary’s view, “nothing left to lose.”

Yet even these tendencies are insufficient to bulk up US resolve over the long term. For one thing, leaders almost always have something left to lose—honor, a tarnished

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