newYou can listen to the Fox News article!
As a former DIA intelligence officer specializing in Russian warfare strategies and the thinking of Russian President Vladimir Putin, I recently had the opportunity to brief one of the U.S. combatant commands on major security threats to the U.S. homeland. This briefing, and my interactions with senior officials and their staffs, prompted me to write this article.
As the world becomes more unstable under the Biden-Harris administration, the risk that the U.S. military will have to fight in three theaters is higher than ever. The U.S. is already involved in two conflicts: a proxy war in Europe with Russia and Ukraine, and in the Middle East, where Israel is defending itself against an Iranian-led resistance axis. A war with China over Taiwan could also break out as soon as next year, according to a senior U.S. Air Force task force official.
But how can America win three wars at once when it has struggled to win just one in a quarter century? Consider Iraq, Afghanistan, Syria, and Libya. Despite facing much smaller foes without advanced weaponry, some of which did not even have regular armies, the U.S. military has yet to win a decisive, meaningful military victory in these conflicts. Tactically, our military is the best fighting force in military history.
Why Putin prefers Harris over Trump in the White House
From left: Russian President Putin, President Biden, and Chinese President Xi Jinping. (Getty Images)
There are three overriding actions that the Department of Defense and the national security community must take to deter or win war:
Understanding the enemy
“If you know yourself and know your enemy, you need not fear a hundred battles. If you know yourself but not your enemy, you will suffer defeat for every victory you gain; if your enemy does not know you, he will lose the battle.” These teachings are the words of Sun Tzu, the famous ancient Chinese strategist and general. In his masterpiece, The Art of War, the oldest treatise on war and military science dating back to the 5th century BC, Sun Tzu emphasized the importance of knowing your enemy above all else when going to war.
To this day, modern military planners in China and Russia adhere to the teachings of Sun Tzu. Their entire philosophy of warfare is centered around the elements of deception and surprise. To win is to fool your enemy. But to outwit him, you must first understand how he thinks and fights.
The Pentagon as seen from Air Force One flying over Washington on March 2, 2022. (AP Photo/Patrick Semansky)
In my view, our military and intelligence communities lack such understanding. Instead, the Department of Defense relies on a one-size-fits-all approach, mistakenly believing that superior weapons, advanced technology, and clever tactics will win any war against any enemy. This false belief has never been more clearly disproved than by America's failure in Afghanistan.
Russia, China, Iran and North Korea are increasing threats to the US. What you need to know
In December 2019, the so-called “Afghanistan Papers,” a 2,000-page trove of classified government documents containing impressions from 400 people directly involved in the war, from generals to diplomats, revealed a shocking truth: the Pentagon knew absolutely nothing about the enemy's culture, mindset, and fighting style before invading Afghanistan in 2001. And that's the simple reason for Washington's terrible performance in Afghanistan. “We lacked a basic understanding of Afghanistan. We didn't know what we were doing,” Douglas Root, a three-star Army general who served as the White House's Afghanistan war chief in the Bush and Obama administrations, told a government interviewer in 2015. “What are we trying to do here? We had no idea what we were getting ourselves into.”
A UH-60 Black Hawk helicopter flies during a military parade marking the third anniversary of the U.S.-led withdrawal of Afghan troops, Wednesday, Aug. 14, 2024, at Bagram Air Base, Parwan province, Afghanistan. (AP Photo/Sidiqullah Alizai)
Twenty years later, after more than $2 trillion has been spent on the resulting war and 7,000 American and allied soldiers have been killed, the Biden administration has withdrawn the troops and the same brutal regime, the Taliban, is in control of the country, except now these barbarians have billions of dollars worth of top-secret military equipment.
Close the gaps and minimize vulnerabilities
Our military is the best in the world in conventional warfare, so no foreign power can challenge us in a head-to-head battle. Instead, our enemies have devised asymmetric strategies to win wars against our military. These strategies seek to exploit our weaknesses, such as our over-reliance on technology. In fact, our nation relies on satellites and access to the Internet in every aspect of warfighting and in civilian life. Satellites are used for global navigation, water management, power grid monitoring, weather forecasting, broadband access, and communications for a variety of uses, from banking to education and telemedicine.
Click here to receive our Opinion Newsletter
U.S. Marines with 2nd Battalion, 8th Marine Regiment, 2nd Marine Expeditionary Brigade walk toward a helicopter transport as part of Operation Khanjar, Camp Dwyer, Helmand Province, Afghanistan, July 2, 2009. (Manpreet Romana/AFP via Getty Images)
Russian and Chinese military strategies include cyberattacks and anti-satellite attacks targeting our critical infrastructure, government networks, and military systems. The Department of Defense has been aware of the possibility of attacks on U.S. space systems since January 2001, when a committee led by then-Secretary of Defense nominee Donald Rumsfeld issued a report warning of a space Pearl Harbor attack.
Similarly, the Pentagon has been aware of America's cybersecurity shortcomings since 1999, when Russia infiltrated several U.S. government and military agencies, including weapons labs, and stole huge amounts of sensitive data.
But our satellites remain unprotected, and even our arsenal, including key advanced systems such as the Patriot missile system, is vulnerable to cyberattack, according to a recent audit by the U.S. Government Accountability Office.
So if we were to send troops into theater to defend former Soviet nations like Taiwan or Ukraine, we would have a very hard time defeating a China or Russia that has plans to bring Armageddon to our country in cyberspace or a Pearl Harbor in space.
Have a written war plan and a clear definition of victory
Taiwanese soldiers are deployed for war and disaster training as part of the annual Wan'an Air Raid Exercise in New Beigang, Taiwan, on July 23, 2024. The drill, held at the same time as the annual Han Kuang exercise, involved about 2,000 participants from government agencies, including the military, firefighting and rescue teams. With China increasing its military presence in the Taiwan Strait, the drill is being conducted to simulate emergency response to a large-scale disaster or attack by China. (Photo by Daniel Chen/Anadolu via Getty Images)
“No plan can survive contact with the enemy” is one of the most misquoted lines of military wisdom, attributed to Prussian Chief of Staff Helmuth von Moltke, who is credited with being the driving force behind Prussia's military dominance in Europe in the mid-19th century.
What Moltke actually said was much more nuanced: “No operational plan can be reliably extended beyond the initial encounter with the enemy's main force.” A diligent and skilled planner, he emphasized the importance of adaptable plans that could be modified to suit rapidly changing circumstances. In his view, a good plan must contain multiple options that take into account the possibility of various outcomes. And that can only be achieved through thorough preparation.
Unfortunately, I don't believe the Pentagon is prepared to do so. Prior to the 2001 invasion of Afghanistan, the Pentagon had no advance plan. Operation Enduring Freedom, which aimed to destroy al-Qaeda and oust the Taliban from power, was based on recycled elements of an earlier CIA contingency plan to work with the Northern Alliance against the Taliban, along with several options hastily prepared by U.S. military forces, including the Joint Special Operations Command.
Click here to get the FOX News app
A People's Liberation Army J-16 fighter jet flies over an undisclosed location. Taiwan's Ministry of National Defense announced Monday, December 26, 2022, that “the Chinese military dispatched 71 aircraft, including J-16 fighter jets, and seven ships to Taiwan in a 24-hour show of force against Taiwan.” (Taiwan's Ministry of National Defense via The Associated Press)
The Pentagon's lack of preparation and culturally ignorant approach to the war led to a failure to predict how insurgents in Afghanistan (and later Iraq) would adapt to, fight, and thwart the most sophisticated and technologically advanced military forces in the world. Insurgents used improvised explosive devices (IEDs), allowing them, the weaker side, to gain an advantage over U.S. forces. IEDs were responsible for 60 percent of American deaths and half of American casualties in Afghanistan, but they also weakened American advantages in resources, technology, and ground warfare. These homemade devices ruined our military equipment and injured our soldiers.
To defeat even a less-skilled foe, U.S. planners must learn to improvise and outwit, rather than relying on the technological backbone of advanced weaponry. And to outwit, they must study their enemies well before deploying them to the battlefield.
Defining what victory looks like up front would help us avoid a descent into nation-building, pointless fighting, and two decades of loss of American lives in a country like Afghanistan. There's a reason it's called the “Graveyard of Empires.”
To read more articles by Rebecca Kofler click here
