Back in last
year’s American Presidential Election, Donald Trump famously predicted that the
media would stop talking about “COVID-COVID” after the election. Unfortunately
for the world, he has finally been proven right. His successor somehow managed
to come up with a successful vaccination roll out program that seems to have tamed
Covid outbreaks in the USA (which still remains the world leader in Covid
infections).
While it was a
good move to rush out the vaccine, it was not a good move to rush the
withdrawal of American troops from Afghanistan, which America had entered back
in 2001 in an effort to catch Osama Bin Ladin and his Al Qaeda gang in revenge
for destroying the Twin Towers in New York. The only party which benefited from
the move was the Taliban, the religious fundamentalist who ran Afghanistan
prior to the American invasion in October 2001 and who had become a by word for
stone age treatment of people who didn’t agree with them (This being the group
that famously bombed ancient Buddhist statues, banned music and refused to let girls
go to school). It took a matter of weeks for the Taliban to recapture the
entire nation without much resistance. President Biden’s claim of “America is
back,” got a sharp kick in the nuts with pictures of American troops rushing
out in helicopters in the same way that American troops had to flee from the
top of their embassy in Saigon in 1975.
While Joe Biden
will get slapped for the decision to pull the troops out suddenly, the problem
was actually started back in 2001, when George W Bush made the decision to invade
in order to punish the perpetrators of the 11 September attacks. Back in 2001, the
Taliban had run the parts of the country they controlled in such a brutal
manner that when the Northern Alliance gained the military capability to drive
them from power thanks to support from American air power, the people were
happy to see the backs of the Taliban.
The Americans
and their allies in the Afghan government had twenty-years to create the
conditions in Afghanistan so that the Taliban would never have been able to
make a come-back. If you want to look at it from a brand perspective, the
American brand of “Life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness,” lost the war to
the Taliban brand of “death, ignorance, intolerance and destruction.” The American
presence in Afghanistan will probably go down as one of the biggest waste of
money and life in history – an audit of what the effort costs can be found in
the following report by Al-Jazeera:
https://www.aljazeera.com/economy/2021/8/16/the-us-spent-2-trillion-in-afghanistan-and-for-what
How did the
world’s biggest military and economic power end up being humiliated by a rag
tag group of religious zealots? Better informed people have given their opinions
on how the superpower failed to build a nation. The links can be found at:
https://www.aljazeera.com/opinions/2021/8/16/the-us-the-taliban-and-the-stunning-defeat-in;
https://www.aljazeera.com/opinions/2021/8/17/why-did-the-afghan-army-disintegrate-so-quickly
; and
https://www.aljazeera.com/opinions/2021/8/16/what-went-wrong-in-afghanistan
Perhaps the arguments
made by these writers can be summed up the military saying that the politicians
running the superpower forgot there’s a difference between a battle and a war.
One of my former army officers, who was a West Point Graduate made the point
that “Americans Always Win the Battle but Never the War.” What’s the difference?
In lay man
terms, the battle is a head-to-head confrontation between two opposing forces.
As mentioned, in a previous posting, this is usually the fight won by the
bigger and more powerful force.
I would sum up
a war as a case of ensuring that a given enemy is placed in a situation where
they will never entertain the idea of messing with you again.
A single war
can have many battles. Both sides will win a certain number of battles.
However, the war is only lost when one side capitulates. In World War II the
Germans and Japanese won many battles but lost the war. The allied powers rebuilt
both Germany and Japan to an extent where nobody considers either a force of
disruption. Winning wars is not just about military victories. One of the
reasons why Germany and Japan lost was due to an inability to control the
supply chain and both nations ran out of resources to wage war. As much as my British
friends will object, the war was pretty much won by American money and Russian
blood.
In the Korean
War, America and her allies won most of the battles. However, technically
speaking North Korea never surrendered and nobody gained any territory or advantage
other than to agreement that neither Korea should invade the other. In Vietnam,
superior American fire power saw US dominance on the battle field but the world
remembered American troops fleeing from the top of their embassy.
Wars are
inevitably psychological. In Vietnam the US won on the battle field but lost
the psychologically. The lessons from
Vietnam were not lost on insurgent groups. Nobody beats the giant elephant when
it charges. However, small insects can wear down an elephant on a daily basis
over several years. The invasion of Iraq was a classic example. It took a
matter of weeks for Saddam’s army to collapse. Years later, the Americans ran
away and we got ISIS.
Battles are
short and sweet. Wars are long and brutish. Take the Israeli-Palestinian
conflict as an example. One side wins all battles because it is the vastly superior
force. The other tries to bog them down in a psychological conflict and to
waste lives and money to achieve an objective.
If you watch
the Israeli series “Fauda,” you’ll notice that this is a long-drawn-out conflict.
It’s not about Israeli fire power alone but also about how it turns Palestinians
against each other with a combination of strategic brutality and kindness.
Israel has special agents who speak fluent Arabic and pass off as Palestinians
to the extent that they are perfectly at home praying in mosque and living as
Palestinians.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_vpZYPsfQ9A
This isn’t lost
on the Palestinians. In the second season of Fauda, you have an ISIS leader posing
as Israeli and telling his men “Speak Hebrew – we are now inside Israel.”
Big powers
inevitably get tripped up by the fact that they are big powers and unlikely to
be challenged on the battle field. Small powers have to fight very differently in
order to make it through the war. In military terms, nobody challenges the USA
on the battlefield (As stated in the Newsroom – we spend more on defense than
the next 26-nations combined, 25 of whom are allies). However, America has lost
wars because it got worn down by enemies who studied them. I think of the scene
in Fauda, where the Israelis compliment a Hamas collaborator on his fluent
Hebrew, to which the collaborator says, “Got to know your enemy.”
What is true in
the military context is also true in other areas. In Singapore politics, we
have our ruling People’s Action Party (PAP), which controls all the levers of
power. Singapore has never experienced rule by another political party and it’s
reached a stage where the political party has used a line from the national
anthem as a slogan (Majullah PAP as opposed to Majullah Singapura). This is an
unstoppable force on the proverbial battlefield. You have a few opposition
parties that rush into the fry and challenge the most powerful beast into
battles where they’ll do more than score a few popular points like the debate
on CECA (treaty with India).
There is,
however, a party that is playing to win a war. This is the Worker’s Party,
which remains quiet on many hot button issues. Why is that so? The answer is
simple, they understand that in the war, the only thing that matters is seats
in parliament. Hence, they focus resources on ensuring they win seats and get
the candidates that can win votes. Efforts are focused on showing voters than
they can be trusted to look after them rather than on scoring points in
cyberspace. The results have been telling. They took a single seat and held
onto it for two decades, quietly building up a team and waiting for the ruling
party to slip. They took a GRC and the scalp of a respected minister in 2011
and held onto it in 2015. In 2020, they saw to it that their candidates were
likeable enough to frustrate ministers (think of Dr. Vivian Balakrishnan’s
expression when he was debating Dr. Jamus Lim). They took their second GRC and
the scalp of another minister.
In a battle,
the bigger force always wins. In a war, it’s the side that has greater resilience
and more motivation that wins.
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