How Wars Are

Won and Lost

Vulnerability and Military Power

By
JOHN A. GENTRY

Military power

loose concept.
the United States repeatedly has done poorly
in its recent wars.

Vulnerability theory

No materialist theory

Military power is relational

Asimmetry

Components of militar power

national will

resource mobilization

resource conversion

force generation

Leadership

operational execution.

National Will

collective national will

Will exists (or not) to conduct specific types of

operations against specific opponents

Importance of information

Rules of Engagement (reglas de enfrentamento o

compromiso)

Resource Mobilization

acquisition of tangible resources for military

purposes.

Attacks on transportation infrastructures, naval

blockades, economic sanctions, and many others.

Resource Conversion

Quantities of industrial output

Force Generation

produce militarily relevant field forces.

Material assets

Intangible institutional factors (military training,

doctrine, organizational cultures)

Leadership

Effectiveness of leadership

Ability and desire of subordinate organizations to

implement policies.

Operational Execution

conduct political/military operations

Battlefield results

Philippines

February 1899July 1902

EEUU vs Spain/ Army of Liberation

Two phases

conventional

unconventional

Philippines

May 23, 1898, Philippine independence

McKinley ordered to occupy the Philippines

Philippines

Initial military failures

Aguinaldos strategy guerrilla tactics.

The guerrillas also exploited the U.S. policy of

benevolence to find and maintain supporters and to
extort funds and supplies from less sympathetic
Filipinos.

EEUU Force

Moderate-sized but fairly modern navy

Small and poorly equipped army

The U.S. Navy contributed blue-water warships and

coastal gunboats for blockade purposesI

Initial force ratio of about 1:2

a considerable but not decisive advantage in the

technological component of its military materiel

The biggest American advantages involved skill

Philippines

Effort to create a stable American colonial

government.

The U.S. Army performed many of the civic action

tasks.

Improving local water and sewer infrastructure;

U.S. troops soon experienced higher casualties

Increased aggressiveness against guerrillas

Small-unit, counterguerrilla field operations

Philippines

The U.S. military and American civilian administrators

found and exploited appreciable Army of Liberation
and nationalist vulnerabilities in all six dimensions

national will

resource mobilization,

resource conversion

force generation,

leadership

operational execution .

Nationalists sought vulnerabilities

operational execution

national will,

leadership

Bombing of Germany

Strategic aerial warfare

RAF: Morale Bombing

American popular opposition to attacking civilians

American air theorists argued strategic bombers

would win wars by themselves

RAF 1940/41

hitting the vicinity of the centers of German cities

Bomber Command was only an annoyance to

Germany

February 12, 1942,

it focused on bombing civilians

1943 The Germans were winning their

campaign against British and American
bombers.

lack of long-range fighter protection

January 1944

Major operational difference

Dropping massive quantities of bombs on

Germany did not damage German civilians
morale

The Allies lost the morale war

Damaging the skill of the organization

Slowly and inefficiently degraded Germanys

military capabilities

attacked perceived German vulnerabilities in four

dimensions and achieved mixed levels of limited success

national will,

resource mobilization

targeting critical general economic installations

resource conversion

morale bombing of cities

attacking key defense industries like aircraft factories

operational execution

strikes by both air forces on military targets in conjunction

VIETNAM

1954 Dien Bien Phu

1960 resumption of the armed struggle

EEUU ayudan el Vietnam del Sur

Before 1961

Kennedy expanded the role of U.S. military advisors

Vietnamese people's war

conventional fights

guerrilla engagements

flexibility, good tactical intelligence, and mobility

1965 Johnson escalating

necessary to prevent collapse of the GVN

Operation Rolling Thunder

Imposing physical damage

Raise the morale of the South Vietnamese;

interdiction of North Vietnamese infiltration

1968 Tet Offensive

cause a general uprising

influence American public opinion

Americans willingness to continue the war

crumbled

Fundamental failure of leadership

The military bureaucratically punished officers who

criticized conventional policy

Politically helpful for the DRV to be perceived

as a victim of enemy barbarism.

Attacking North Vietnam in the leadership,

resource, and operational execution
dimensions

destroying or threatening its military, economic, and

logistical capabilities

Johnson never made a persuasive case for the

war

DRV was not vulnerable EEUU attacks.

Failed to understand the strength of North
Vietnams commitment to national unification
DRV resources: people and food.

The DRVs primary target was national will and

leadership
Hanoi actively managed strategically important
information.
North Vietnams ability to identify and exploit
U.S. vulnerabilities

YUGOSLAVIA

Yugoslav military and Serbian internal security

forces killings of ethnic Albanian civilians in the
Serbian territory of Kosovo
Clinton launched the war for ethical reasons
Yugoslavia recognized U.S. reluctance to use
ground troops in the Balkans
Yugoslav military and Serbian security forces
remained coherent organizations throughout the
war

Five goals,

minimizing loss of friendly aircraft

impacting Yugoslav military and Serbian security

forces in Kosovo

minimizing collateral damage;

achieving the first three in order to hold NATO

together

protecting allied ground forces in neighboring Bosnia

The numbers

Human Rights Watch counted 90 NATO attacks on

civilians and confirmed

488 civilian deaths,

estimate that Serbs killed about 10,000 Kosovar

Albanian civilians during Operation Allied

ethnic Albanians murdered Serbs chronically After

1999.

NATO lost two aircraft but suffered no combat fatalities

NATO attacked Yugoslavia in the leadership

dimension.

NATO attacked national will

The initial, modest attacks on facilities were ineffectual.

NATO expanded its target list

No major efforts to attack Yugoslavia in the

resource mobilization, resource conversion, or
force generation dimensions

US-IRAQ (2003-2011)

Deposing President Saddam Hussein

a conventional phase (MarchApril 2003)

Defeated the conventional Iraqi military, deposed

Saddam Hussein, and occupied Iraq;

an unconventional phase thereafter

The insurgents conducted unconventional warfare

American military planners had assumed that their

military victory would be complete

they ignored thousands of weapons depots

Cultural insensitivity

Many of the failures reflected the U.S. militarys

denigration of nation building operations
Large parts of the U.S. force structure were irrelevant
to counterinsurgency warfare
excessive and inappropriate use of airpower

The conventional war against Saddams regime

was fought and decided almost entirely in Iraqs
leadership and operational execution dimensions
The coalition did not attack Iraqi national will
The coalition did not attack Iraqs resource
mobilization
The coalition did not attack
generation dimension.

in the force

The Americans at first denied they faced an

insurgency.

Major failures in the resource mobilization

dimension

resource conversion

fostering insurgent force generation .

Insurgency goals

Attacks in the national will

Resource mobilization dimensions

AFGHANISTAN

September 11, 2001

NATO on September 12, 2001, Article 5 of its
founding treaty
Afghanistan: an economy of force operation

war can be divided into two phases

a conventional phase between October and

December 2001

Thereafter

the Taliban and al-Qaeda regrouped and

launched by 2003 an insurgency.

The U.S. effort in the conventional war was

focused in two dimensions

leadership

operational execution

the mistaken judgment that

military force could end the war

conventional

In the unconventional phase, the United States

and its coalition partners generally failed to do
well in any of the six dimensions,

national will dimension

resource mobilization

force conversion and force generation

operational execution dimension thereby were only

partly successful.

Taliban performed well

resource mobilization,

force generation dimensions

Externally

attacked the coalitions national will

leadership

hurting Afghan government resource mobilization