The Will to Win

Missing since 1945

We sit here in our continental fortress, protected by oceans and the most powerful military in history, and fantasize we can scare opponents into doing what we want; that they are as simple-minded as the formerly manly and now empathetic/effeminate America has become; that a show of force, the childish “shock and awe,” that may scare children but only proves a lack of willingness to lethality of the “adults,” can substitute for war.

Were we – a bunch of lightly-armed farmers – scared by the British when they were the most powerful empire on earth? Nope. So why would anyone else be scared of us, today?

In 1954, the foreign & defense policy of President Eisenhower, the penultimate (MacArthur) American General Officer to win his war, was articulated by Secretary of State John Foster Dulles at the Council on Foreign Relations. It became known as the “Massive Retaliation” speech:

Local defenses must be reinforced by the further deterrent of massive retaliatory power. A potential aggressor must know that he cannot always prescribe battle conditions that suit him.

Every political decision maker on the planet, friend and foe, understood this to mean a nuclear response.

One can also note the salience today of other, non-nuclear, parts of this speech and policy:

It is not sound military strategy permanently to commit U.S. land forces to Asia to a degree that leaves us no strategic reserves. It is not sound economics, or good foreign policy to support permanently other countries, for in the long run, that creates as much ill will as good will. Also, it is not sound to become permanently committed to military expenditures so vast that they lead to “practical bankruptcy.”

War is measured in the productivity of lives lost: if you lose more lives than your adversary... you lose; if you lose more men than you can absorb, even in winning, you have – at best – a Pyrrhic victory. So why not use one’s most productive weapons in mankind’s highest need for productivity? Why not ensure the death calculus for America, for our own men, is zero?

America is the first nation in history to sacrifice its own men rather than use our most productive weapons, and we have killed far more men of our adversary than was necessary to achieve our goals by doing so.

Had Trump used a subsurface-burst nuclear weapon on Fordo in 2025, he’d have destroyed their nuclear capability, shown absolute seriousness on the world stage, and this entire current ridiculousness in Hormuz, more than likely, would not be happening. Nor would the yak-yak-yak about their uranium. Perhaps, nor would the IRGC have massacred 40,000 of its own this past winter, as they may have been defanged, but you never know with zealots.

Had Truman nuked Pyongyang in July, 1950, we’d not have killed 2M Koreans and thousands of Americans, nor spent trillions of dollars as a “tripwire force” since; had we nuked Hanoi in 1964 instead of lying about the Tonkin Gulf, we’d not have killed 2M Vietnamese and thousands of Americans. (Of course, had LBJ(D) not lied about what happened at Tonkin Gulf, the entire war may have been avoided; we’ll never know…) Had we nuked Pyongyang, Vietnam may never have happened. Had we nuked Tora Bora, we’d likely not have killed 1M South Asians, and, again, thousands of Americans.

Known only to God: The cost in human capital of men and women - on both sides - never born as their never-to-be-parents perished in some jungle or sand dune?

Want to “shock and awe” someone? Scare them? Then demonstrate what you can do and make that threat credible. Pyongyang could have been that demonstrable and credible “shock and awe,” and today there might be lights on at night across all of Korea, all Koreans might be of similar height, and subsequent “small wars” may not even have occurred…

Korea at night from space

Seriousness of purpose counts in war above any other human endeavor: People are being killed… Why not minimize that? Not doing so … by choosing conventional warfare …is the most immoral choice we can make.

If we’re not going to go big, to be serious, not going at all is the better answer. Because not being serious costs more human lives.

Because slapping the hands of lethal adversaries never has, isn’t now, and never will work.