Michael OHanlon - Military History for the Modern Strategist: Americas Major Wars Since 1861

MILITARY HISTORY FOR THE MODERN STRATEGIST

AMERICAS MAJOR WARS SINCE 1861

MICHAEL OHANLON

BROOKINGS INSTITUTION PRESS

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Copyright 2023 by Michael OHanlon

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This is a book about the big questions of modern American military history: why did wars happen, what were their main phases, how were they fought and won or lostand could their outcomes have plausibly been different? It also seeks lessons to inform anyone in the United States or elsewhere who is fascinated by questions of strategy, whether at grand levels of national purpose or at more specific military levels.

The wars considered here have generated huge literatures already. Throughout this project, and throughout my life, I have been an admirer and consumer of history. I would like to express my gratitude to those professionals who make it their lives workas well as my preemptive acknowledgment for undoubtedly missing important dimensions of some of the literature. Moreover, historians through their rigorous research and their analytical excellence continue to improve our understanding of past wars. To take just the example of World War II: in relatively recent years we have learned that blitzkrieg was less tank-centric than often previously understood, that strategic bombing was less effective than expected in weakening the industrial output of Americas adversaries, and that aircraft carriers were less dominant overall in the naval warfare of that era than often believed. In writing this book, I was the beneficiary of these and many other profound and important insights produced by the history discipline.

All that said, my goal here is specific and, I hope, complementary to most previous works: to explain the wars key causes, major campaigns, dynamics, and outcomes conceptually and succinctly. Military history is often extremely detailed. That makes sense. It is the courage, sacrifice, and drama of individuals and peoples trying to achieve victory and avoid defeat and death that inspires and fascinates us at the human level. But the general reader or busy policymaker may also want a more conceptual, and concise, treatment of modern U.S. historys major wars. This book attempts to provide that resource. It begins with the conflict that for the United States marked the beginning of industrialized and large-scale combat, the U.S. Civil War. It examines each world war, then Korea and Vietnam, and concludes with Iraq and Afghanistan.

The narrative here emphasizes what is often termed the operational or campaign level of war. It seeks to link military operations, wartime objectives, and grand strategy. I hope that approach makes it a useful contribution to the literature, together with the fact that it brings the reader into the year 2022, and thus is more contemporary than some earlier surveys of conflicts over the ages. In these ways, it indeed presents military history for the modern strategist.

Individual battles are certainly discussed, too. But the priority is to explain how they fit into a sequence of battles and other events typically lasting multiple months over a given geographic region. Think, for example, of General George McClellans peninsula campaign that began with a major troop movement by boat down the Chesapeake Bay, designed to seize Richmond during the spring and early summer of 1862 in the U.S. Civil War. Or consider General Robert E. Lees efforts from late summer 1862 through mid-1863 to take the fight to the North at Antietam and Gettysburg, or General Ulysses S. Grants laborious but ultimately successful year-long effort to mount a campaign against Lees armies in Virginia starting in the spring of 1864. Germanys attacks on northern France in the world wars are other salient examples, as are the American island-hopping campaigns during the approaches to Japan in World War II, or General Douglas MacArthurs Inchon landings followed by his fraught decision to move northward toward the Yalu River in the Korean War.

The main purpose of this book is to chronicle, analyze, and reflect upon modern American military history. In that sense, it is a primer. But it is also a primer with a purpose. The central lessons of the book center on the persistent and dangerous proclivity of decisionmakers to display naivete, as well as overconfidence, about the likely courses, costs, and outcomes of war. Vladimir Putin has delivered the world a signature example of this flawed human tendency with his ill-fated aggression against Ukraine. That war began on February 24, 2022; Putin probably expected it would end within days, and certainly by V-E Day in Russia on May 9. As of this writing in the summer of 2022, sadly, the conflict continues. Russias early hopes for a knockout blow against the government, and perhaps even an annexation of much or most of the country, have joined the litany of countless other cases in history in which aggressors began wars with breathless enthusiasm and unwarranted optimism for quick, easy wins.

The danger of overconfidence may increase when policymakers have not recently experienced a cataclysmic event in their own lifetimes or careers. It also grows when the advent of new technologies creates exciting new possibilities for military plannersyet often with accompanying downsides or vulnerabilities that are underappreciated at the time decisionmakers choose to go to war. It also seems most likely when decisionmakers misunderstand or underestimate their potential adversariesand the human tendency to become more committed to a war, rather than less, once family and friends begin to die at the hands of an enemy. Indeed, to continue with the contemporary Russian example, prior to launching his brazen invasion of Ukraine, Putin had become accustomed to relatively easy wins in places such as Crimea and Syria in recent years, had taken great pride in his military modernization effort of the previous decade that had produced highly-touted new missiles among other weaponry, and had developed a contempt for President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraineas well as the very concept of Ukraine as a truly independent and sovereign nation.