Tactical Success

vs.

Strategic Victory

Hoover Institution Working Group on Military History

The White Houses

Seven Deadly Errors
MARK MOYAR

Strategic defeat often results from an accumulation of tactical failures. Repeated battlefield
setbacks can destroy an adversarys capabilities, as befell Napoleonic France, or its will, as
befell Britain in the American War of Independence. In such cases, military organizations
may deserve at least some of the blame for the strategic loss, because in most countries the
military leadership bears primary responsibility for training, equipping, and commanding
armed forces, functions that are fundamental to tactical effectiveness. Military strategy,
by contrast, is often set by civilian leaders, and in the case of the United States it is the
statutory prerogative of the civilian commander in chief.
When a country enjoys tactical military success as consistently as the United States,
responsibility for strategic success must rest primarily with those who make strategy.
The American military could be held culpable for recent strategic setbacks were it highly
influential in the crafting of strategy. But its influence under the Bush administration
wasmuch more limited, and under the Obama administration its strategic advice has
largelybeen ignored.
A review of Americas military interventions since 2001 reveals that seven broad errors
account for Americas inability to turn tactical successes into strategic victories. These
errors are described below. In every instance, the error was the direct result of presidential
decisions on policy or strategy. Some of those decisions ran in direct contradiction of the
militarys advice. The military can be faulted for some significant tactical errors, such as
ignorance of counterinsurgency in the early years of the Iraq war and excessive reliance on
population-centric counterinsurgency doctrine in the middle years of the Afghan war. But
the military eventually corrected its major tactical problems, and none of those problems
thwarted strategic success.
Incompetence, in the form of bad judgment and disorganization, contributed heavily to
the mistakes of both the Bush and Obama administrations. Reliance on flawed theories,
which could be attributed to ideological fervor as well as incompetence, also hurt both
administrations. Theories on democratization made Bush and Obama overly optimistic
about the prospects for intervention in certain countries. President Obamas adherence
toMcGovernite ideology fueled an undue aversion to the use of American military power.
In addition, preoccupation with domestic politics and personal popularity guided many
ofObamas ill-fated strategic decisions.

Military History

A HOOVER INSTITUTION ESSAY ON TACTICAL SUCCESS VS. STRATEGIC VICTORY

1. Excessive Confidence in Democratization

President George W. Bush and key advisers believed that the hostile governments of
Afghanistan and Iraq could be replaced with democratic regimes capable of maintaining
domestic order and suppressing extremists on their own. For this reason, they did not
assign American troops to the invasions in the numbers required for countering insurgents
after regime change and did not plan to keep American troops for more than a short
period beyond the formation of new governments. This thinking reflected both a lack of
understanding of the factions in those countries and an underestimation of the difficulties
of establishing liberal democracy in societies with authoritarian traditions. The shortterm strategic successes of regime change that Americas tactical successes made possible
in Afghanistan and Iraq evaporated as the new democratic governments failed to take
themilitary and political actions required for stabilization.
Obama engineered the overthrow of Libyas Moammar Gadhafi based on the same
misplaced confidence in democratization. Unlike Bush, he pursued regime change without
deploying US ground forces, arguing that American forces would be an impediment to
Libyas stability and political development. Libyas democratic experiment yielded even
poorer results, as anti-democratic forces dismembered the democratic government in
lessthan three years, ushering in chaos and violence.

2. Poor Selection of Local Allies

Bush and Obama erred repeatedly in their choices of allies within contested societies, to
include many of the people who led the newly installed democracies mentioned above.
Had the United States chosen different individuals in these cases, its experiments in
democratization might have fared better. As history has shown in such places as Botswana,
Chile, and Kosovo, leadership quality is often a critical factor in the viability of nascent
democracies.
In Iraq, the Bush administration excluded Baathists and military officers from the postwar
government, casting its lot instead with exiles, outcasts, and Shiite politicians, who turned
out to be less virtuous than anticipated. The new Iraqi government lacked the governors,
police chiefs, and military officers to cope with the insurgents, many of whom were former
Baathists or military officers. Because of their ineffectiveness, the US military had to step
into the breach.
Subsequent decisions to allow former Baathists and military officers back into the
government contributed to the stabilization of the country in 2007 and 2008. Prime
Minister Nouri al-Maliki, a highly sectarian Shiite whom Obama kept in power
following the disputed 2010 elections, undid the progress by removing many of those
same individuals when the US military withdrew from Iraq. He thereby weakened

Mark Moyar The White Houses Seven Deadly Errors

the governments security forces and rekindled Sunni antagonism toward the central
government, leading to the rise of the Islamic State.
In Afghanistan, the Bush administration chose to empower Hamid Karzai, based upon
exaggerated estimates of his leadership skills. Bestowing key government posts on favored
tribes and persons, Karzai gave free rein to malign actors whose predatory behavior
drove Afghans into the arms of the insurgents. By the time he left office, he was almost
universally derided for incompetence and corruption.
In Libya, the Obama administration backed rebels about whom it knew very little,
and who were ultimately too weak to establish governmental control over the country.
Abed Rabbo Mansour Hadi, whom Obama pushed into power in Yemen, proved
incapable of holding off the Houthi insurgents. The Syrian rebels underwritten by
the Obama administration have been utterly ineffectual, and some have defected
toextremist groups.

3. Haste in Counterinsurgency
From late 2003 to late 2006, the Bush administration tried to hurry up the
counterinsurgency in Iraq, in the belief that prolonged American involvement would
alienate xenophobic Iraqis and dissipate American public support for the war. To
extricate the United States quickly, Bush ordered the rapid expansion and fielding
of Iraqi forces. But the Iraqi forces kept getting crushed by the insurgents, a problem
ultimately traced to poor leadership, which was itself the result of abbreviated training
and politicization of appointments. The US government ultimately rectified the
situation by allowing officers from the former regime into the Iraqi national security
forces and by compelling the Iraqi government to appoint leaders based on merit.
Afghanistan, by contrast, did not have a comparable body of experienced officers upon
whom the government could call when security deteriorated. Ravaged by decades of
civil war, Afghanistan had seen many of its talented and dedicated leaders perish, and
disintegration of central governance in the 1990s had left a generation of Afghans devoid
of professional soldiers and policemen. Creating a new, professional officer corps in
Afghanistan would take at least ten years of training and education. Early on, the Bush
administration undertook a serious effort to build an Afghan army officer corps, but it
entrusted the building of the Afghan police leadership to the German government, which
trained far too few police officers. Afghan police leadership development did not begin in
a serious fashion until the United States took on a large role, starting in 2008. Building
capable police forces, therefore, was likely to take until 2018 or later.
Obama decided early in his administration to intensify counterinsurgency in Afghanistan
in the hope that short-term gains would allow the United States to turn the war over to the

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Afghans in a few years, which was politically appealing to Obama because of the high costs
of American involvement and the unpopularity of the war among his political supporters.
To permit rapid enlargement of the Afghan forces, the United States boosted funding and
the number of American trainers. It also lowered recruiting standards for the Afghan army
and police and shortened training, with the result that the enlarged Afghan forces suffered
from the indiscipline and incompetence common to ill-led security units.
In 2011, Obama curtailed Americas counterinsurgency effort in Afghanistan by
cancelling large-scale clearing operations in eastern Afghanistan. The lack of a sustained
counterinsurgency campaign allowed the insurgents to recruit replacements across the
east. Those insurgents now provide safe haven for other terrorists and pose an existential
threat to the Afghan government.

4. Overreliance on Surgical Strikes

From 2002 to 2008, the small US military forces in Afghanistan relied primarily on
raids and ambushes to thwart Afghan insurgents and their al-Qaeda allies. Although
the Americans inflicted heavy losses, they could not keep the insurgents from gaining
in strength. The subsiding of violence in Iraq in 2008 permitted the shifting of US
military resources to Afghanistan, prompting recommendations from the military
leadershipincluding surgical-strike pioneer General Stanley McChrystalto shift from
surgical strikes to troop-intensive counterinsurgency. In late 2009, Obama consented to
counterinsurgency and the additional troops it required.
Obamas cancellation of counterinsurgency operations in eastern Afghanistan in 2011
necessitated a move back toward a strategy reliant on surgical strikes. Although drones and
raids inflicted heavy losses, they failed to hold the enemy at bay in eastern Afghanistan.
With the withdrawal of American troops, the security situation deteriorated to such a
degree that in early 2014 the CIA had to shut down its outlying Afghan bases and its secret
army of Afghan counterterroristsassets that were critical to surgical strikes.
In 2008, President Bush began precision drone strikes in Pakistan against al-Qaeda and
other extremists. The Obama administration increased the rate of strikes, but by then
al-Qaeda had taken effective countermeasures, to include the relocation of leaders into
urban areas where drone strikes were off-limits. Obamas drone effort killed mainly low-level
fighters from the Pakistani Taliban, an extremist organization of greater concern to Pakistan
than to the United States. The drone program depended heavily on cooperation from
Pakistans Inter-Services Intelligence agency, which often was unable or unwilling to provide
targeting information to the United States. Najibullah Zazi, the would-be subway bomber,
and Faisal Shahzad, who drove an SUV bomb into Times Square, received their terrorist
training in Pakistan at the peak of the drone strikes.

Mark Moyar The White Houses Seven Deadly Errors

Because of the Pakistani governments unwillingness to authorize US ground operations

inside Pakistan, the United States conducted only a handful of special operations raids in
Pakistan between 2005 and 2011. The last of those raids, which killed Osama bin Laden,
provoked such an outcry that the Pakistanis expelled American special operations forces
from the country, shut down the main US drone base, and obstructed CIA activities. The
United States has conducted no subsequent raids in Pakistan and its drone program has
been drastically curtailed. Al-Qaeda and other extremist organizations are now regenerating
in Lahore, Karachi, and other sprawling cities.
In Yemen, US military officers argued that the United States should help government
forces secure the countrys rural areas by supporting counterinsurgency operations, but the
Obama administration chose to rely exclusively on surgical strikes to counter al-Qaeda in
the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP). While drones killed a number of key AQAP figures, the lack
of counterinsurgency operations allowed AQAP and Houthi rebels to gain ground. Enemy
control of the population reduced American access to information, which in turn impeded
drone targeting and led to misdirected strikes that killed women and children. Exploiting
those mishaps to recruit new followers, AQAP increased in size from three hundred to more
than a thousand during the period of sustained US drone strikes. Obamas Yemen strategy
of counterterrorism without counterinsurgency collapsed entirely at the beginning of 2015,
when insurgents overran the capital, dismantled the Yemeni security services, and drove
outthe CIA.
According to US spokesmen, precision air strikes have killed thousands of Islamic State
fighters in Syria and Iraq. Yet the Islamic State appears no weaker now than when the air
campaign began more than one year ago. It has undertaken effective countermeasures to
protect key personnel and has recruited thousands of new followers in the areas it occupies,
in addition to attracting foreign radicals. The air strikes failed to prevent it from seizing
oneof its biggest prizes, the Iraqi city of Ramadi.

5. Refusal to Commit a Military Footprint

In 2011, the United States and its European allies used air power to help rebels destroy
the Gadhafi regime, then touted Gadhafis death as proof that they could achieve their
objectives without deploying their own ground forces. While the absence of US ground
forces from Libya kept the United States from sustaining casualties, it also prevented the
attainment of lasting strategic success. In the chaotic aftermath of Gadhafis overthrow,
no forces intervened to secure critical Libyan facilities, as US forces had done at Iraqi
facilities in 2003. The doors to Gadhafis prisons were flung open and untold numbers
of extremist leaders escaped. Miscreants looted the regimes armories of heavy weapons
and surface-to-air missiles. When insurgents flouted the new governments authority,
no foreign troops could beat them back, as American troops had done in Iraq and
Afghanistan.

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In the case of Syria, Obama refused to send American ground troops to assist rebel forces,
despite warnings from his military experts that American ground troops would be required
to give the rebels a chance of succeeding. Obama reportedly hoped that American-backed
rebels could assert enough strength on their own to force a negotiated solution of the
conflict. When inserted into Syria, however, the rebels have been kidnapped, killed, or
turned almost to a man.

6. Refusal to Maintain a Military Footprint

In Iraq, the tactical military successes of 2007 and 2008 led to several years of strategic
success, during which Iraqis stopped fighting the government and participated increasingly
in the democratic process. Vice President Joe Biden declared in 2010, Youre going to see
a stable government in Iraq that is actually moving toward a representative government.
According to Biden, the political advancement of Iraq could be one of the great
achievements of this administration.
At the end of 2011, President Obama withdrew all US forces from Iraq while asserting
that a large American civilian presence would suffice to preserve stability. The American
civilian presence, however, failed to contain Iraqs sectarian impulses as US military
forces had. As soon as the last US troops left the country, al-Maliki rounded up Sunni
politicians en masse and purged Sunni officers from the security forces. He also curtailed
US intelligence activities, leading to a sharp degradation of counterterrorism operations.
These developments paved the way for the rise of the Islamic State in 2014.
When Obama sent American forces back to Iraq in 2014, he constrained their effectiveness
by keeping them few in number and confining them to bases. American troops could not
exert nearly as much political and military influence as the Iranian personnel in Iraq and
the 100,000 Iraqi Shiite militiamen whom the Iranians had trained. As a consequence, the
United States has been unable to rehabilitate the Iraqi national security forces or regain
Sunni confidence.

7. Signaling of Retrenchment
Another reason behind the Obama administrations inability to turn tactical successes
in Afghanistan into strategic gain has been the Afghan perception that Obama planned
to abandon the country. This perception arose from Obamas frequent statements about
removing American forces from Afghanistan, beginning with his West Point speech in
December 2009. It received reinforcement from the successive withdrawals of American
troops from 2011 onward. Opportunistic Afghans supported the insurgents in the belief
that the Americans would depart before the Afghan government was strong enough to
fend off the insurgents on its lonesome. Pakistan, interpreting Americas departure from
Afghanistan as the segue to Indian domination of the country, stepped up support for
theTaliban and Haqqani network.

Mark Moyar The White Houses Seven Deadly Errors

Voluminous foreign complaints about American intervention in Afghanistan and Iraq

have obscured the fact that those interventions instilled respect and fear of the United
States in much of the world. By overthrowing hostile regimes and maintaining a US
presence in the face of vicious insurgencies, the United States dispelled the notion
encouraged by the abandonment of South Vietnam in 1975 and the Black Hawk Down
episode of 1993that it was unwilling to stomach prolonged and costly military
expeditions. Americas adversaries, in such places as Damascus, Tehran, Moscow, Beijing,
and Pyongyang, took note. For a time, therefore, Americas military accomplishments
inAfghanistan and Iraq worked to its strategic advantage elsewhere.
The respect and fear began to subside in December 2009 with Obamas announcement of
his Afghanistan withdrawal timeline and tumbled sharply in late 2011 with the evacuation
of American forces from Iraq. American prestige fell still further with the Syrian red line
debacle, Russias unchecked aggression against Ukraine, and the rise of the Islamic State.
The United States thereby suffered a decline in its strategic position on issues such as Irans
nuclear program, the China Development Bank, and the Syrian civil war.

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Working Group on the Role of Military History

inContemporary Conflict

About the Author

MARK MOYAR
Mark Moyar is a senior fellow
at the Joint Special Operations
University. He is the author of
numerous books and articles,
including Triumph Forsaken:
The Vietnam War, 19541965
and A Question of Command:
Counterinsurgency from the Civil
War to Iraq. He holds a BA summa
cum laude from Harvard and a
PhD from Cambridge.

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The Working Group on the Role of Military History in

Contemporary Conflict examines how knowledge of past
military operations can influence contemporary public
policy decisions concerning current conflicts. The careful
study of military history offers a way of analyzing modern
war and peace that is often underappreciated in this age of
technological determinism. Yet the result leads to a more
in-depth and dispassionate understanding of contemporary
wars, one that explains how particular military successes
and failures of the past can be often germane, sometimes
misunderstood, or occasionally irrelevant in the context
ofthe present.
The core membership of this working group includes David
Berkey, Peter Berkowitz, Max Boot,Josiah Bunting III, Angelo
M.Codevilla, Thomas Donnelly, Admiral James O. Ellis Jr.,
ColonelJoseph Felter, Victor Davis Hanson (chair), Josef Joffe,
Frederick W. Kagan, Kimberly Kagan, Edward N. Luttwak,
Peter Mansoor, General Jim Mattis, Walter Russell Mead, Mark
Moyar, Williamson Murray, Ralph Peters, Andrew Roberts,
Admiral Gary Roughead, Kori Schake, Kiron K. Skinner, Barry
Strauss, Bruce Thornton, Bing West, Miles Maochun Yu, and
Amy Zegart.
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