Granite TAHG Summer 2013, Unit 4

1. Granite TAHG Summer 2013, Unit 4 Post-Vietnam U.S. Military Conflicts

2. Day 1: Ideas Different Ways of Thinking About War and Going to War

3. The Four Big “Question Clusters” to Bring to the Study of Any War • CAUSES • Why did it occur? • CONDUCT • How intense / destructive / prolonged was it? • How effective were the combatants’ militaries? • OUTCOME • How and why did it end the way it did when it did? • CONSEQUENCES • How did the war’s outcome subsequently effect the combatant nations and the world at large?

4. Examining the Conduct of a Specific War • The War Aim • The political “end state” each nations seeks to create • The Strategic Level of War • The sequence of campaigns that terminate in the end state • The Operational Level of War • Campaigns conducted to attain strategic enabling goals • The Tactical Level of War • Missions executed to achieve decisive operational results • Mobilization: the total national effort to achieve the aim

5. Topics • Exceptionalist Idealism vs. Cold War Realism • Reinhold Niebuhr’s “Christian Realism” • The “Seven Tests” of the Latin Christian Just War Tradition (the origins of modern international law) • Conventional War vs. Counterinsurgency

6. Two Competing Visions of U.S. Foreign Policy and the Resort to War • ExceptionalistIdealism • Bottom Line: America may use force to defend and export its political and economic values • A uniquely American concept • Cold War Realism • Bottom Line: America may only use force to defend its tangible national interests • An American development of an older European tradition

7. Exceptionalist Idealism • The U.S. is not merely one sovereign state among many, but a nation with a special mission to • Export liberal democracy and market capitalism • “Hard wired” into all “patriotic Americans” • Seminal figure: Woodrow Wilson • Today embraced on both the Right and the Left: • Clinton Era “Democratic Peace” proponents • Bush Era Neoconservatives • Obama Era Human Rights / Geoncide / Civil War Interventionists

8. Cold War Realism • Dominates U.S. foreign relations 1942-1989 • Essential to U.S. success during the Cold War • A “loyal opposition” after the end of the Cold War • The U.S. is formally coequal with all other sovereign nations, and has no higher global mission • A with all nations, the U.S. must safeguard its critical tangible national interests, its • Survival, sovereignty, security, and economy • “Values” are not a tangible national interest

9. The Basic Premises of Realism • Human nature is not perfectible, and states act as individuals writ large • The sovereign state is the basis for all international relations, not ideology, ethnicity, religion, etc. • Absolute security for one state creates absolute insecurity for all other states • The “national interest” is the survival, sovereignty security, and economic growth of the nation • Since each state pursues its own security, the motives of all nations are relatively transparent

10. Question • How would a Realist and an Idealist view • Supporting China against Japanese Aggression before Pearl Harbor? • Fighting Nazi Germany? • Occupying a nation to prevent ethnic cleansing? • “Going to war for oil?”

11. Reinhold Niebuhr’s “Christian Realism” • A “middle way” between Exceptionalist Idealism and Cold War Realism • “The pretentions of virtue are as offensive to God as the pretentions of power” (160) • “No society...is...good enough to make itself the final end of human existence (xii) • “The course of history cannot be coerced from a particular point in history and in accordance with a particular conception of its end.” (79)

12. Neibuhr’s Critiques of Idealism and Realism(We’ll return to Niebuhr on Friday) • “all of the arguments of the idealists finally rest on a logic which derives the possibility of an achievement from its necessity” (40) • “realists, on the other hand... Argue that a good cause will hallow any weapon. ...they closely approach the Communist ruthlessness.

13. The “Seven Tests” of the Latin Christian Just War Tradition • Jus ad bellum: Five Tests that apply to a nation’s resort to war • Jus in bello: Two tests that apply to a nation’s conduct of war

14. Jus Ad Bellum: War Must Only be Resorted to... • By sovereign authority i.e. a sitting head of state • In a just cause: to overturn or prevent an actual or imminent wrong • With right intention: to restore peace and the earlier status quo • As a last resort: all political means to remove the cause of the war • With a reasonable hope of success (this applies to both strong and weak nations)

15. Jus In Bello: War Must Only be Waged... • With Proportionality • The good must outweigh the bad; unregulated violence must not subvert just ends • With Discrimination • There must be no avoidable killing of civilians, who are morally immune from attack • The “structures of civil society” are not legitimate military targets

16. Preemptive vs. Preventative War Within Just War Thinking • Preemption: If a nation is facing an imminent attack from a hostile power it may strike first • However, the “evidentiary bar” is high; imminence cannot simply be asserted • Classic example: the 1967 Arab-Israeli War • Prevention: A nation may not attack another sovereign state to neutralize a future “threat” however grave it may appear

17. Questions • Which of the following U.S. wars pass the five tests of Jus Ad Bellum, and why? • The Korean War of 1950-1953 • The First Gulf War of 1990-1991 • The Iraq War of 2003-2011

18. Two Distinct Forms of Warfare • Maneuver Warfare • Main effort against the opposing nations armed forces • Requires synchronization of weapons and “multipliers” • Technology and logistics are always critical to success • Counterinsurgency • Main effort against the insurgency’s political legitimacy • Requires synchronization of military and political efforts • Technology and logistics can become part of the problem

19. What is an “Insurgency?” • An organized movement mounting a protracted effort to overthrow a constituted government or secede from a sovereign nation, that • Employs an interlocking set of coercive political, economic, and psychological actions reinforced by violence (selective or/and indiscriminate) • Note: “constituted” doesn’t equal “legitimate;” most insurgencies historically exploit a loss of legitimacy

20. What is “Counterinsurgency?” • The sum total of all actions: military, political, economic, psychological, and civic, taken by a government to defeat an insurgency (with or without outside assistance) • The civilian population is the “center of gravity” - central to a successful counterinsurgency strategy • Non-military efforts are central to successful COIN operations; the counterinsurgent must have a robust “soft power” civil structures development capability • In nations damaged by warfare or sanctions, soft power agencies must reconstruct basic civil infrastructure • Many occupations become counterinsurgencies, which are then very difficult to defeat