The surest way to win limited wars is to win them quickly:
Time is our greatest enemy and our enemy’s greatest friend. Yet as our experience in Kosovo has shown, we still lack the means to transport decisive landpower to even a local theater of war in time to preempt or preclude the offensive actions of a minor tyrant.
We seek to win at minimum cost. During wars in this century the overwhelming majority of battlefield deaths have been suffered by infantrymen in close combat. The greatest killer of American infantry has been the homely and unglamorous mortar, followed closely by the rifle and machine gun. Yet while today we possess the technology to remotely locate strategic targets in Belgrade or Baghdad, a platoon leader must still rely on DePuy’s tactic of direct observation and contact in order to locate a machine gun position. We can strike strategic targets with precision from thousands of miles distance but our platoon leader has no way to destroy a mortar over the next hill with any degree of precision.
Recent post-Cold War experience in Kosovo and Iraq have shown that even an army of inept petty tyrants can, if given time, adapt and learn to counter our unique method of fighting limited wars. Add to this uncomfortable truth the realization that the American people will continue to demand cheap victories and it seems absolutely apparent to those who have studied recent history that the United States will no longer have the luxury to improvise on the battlefield.
That was was written after a visit to Albania in May 1999.
The best strategy is to not go to war. We did not have to involve ourselves in Kosovo, or Iraq either time.
“the American people will continue to demand cheap victories”
The American people should demand cheap victories in conflicts of little or no interest to them.