Preparing for the Next War

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James Joyner | Wednesday, May 9, 2007

My first article for The New Individualist, “Preparing for the Next War,” has finally gone online. It was written in February and published in the April issue, which hit the streets in late March.

Here’s the intro:

“Perhaps there is no great point in recalling all the tragic and idiotic blunders, all the false optimism, all the unrealism of the first phases of the war, but it is not possible to appreciate fully the heroism of the Security Forces unless the stupidities of some of those in command are remembered.”

The quotation above is from an April 1960 editorial in the Straight Times, reflecting back on a successful British-led campaign against the Malayan insurgency. Astute readers will see no small similarity with the yet-unfinished business in Iraq. It should be noted that winning in Malaya took twelve years. Our most recent adventure in Iraq will have barely passed the four-year mark by the time you read this.

As Genghis Khan observed some eight hundred-odd years ago, “Conquering a country while mounted is easy, dismounting and building a nation is difficult.” There have been amazing advances in the art of war since then, but that remains just as true today. Wondering why we fail to turn the world’s most disconnected and impoverished societies into “instant democracies” is, as the strategist Thomas Barnett puts it, “like wondering why the oncologist lets so many of his patients die.”