What do the wars in Ukraine and Iran have in common and what lessons must America learn from them?
As Trump goes to China this week, he is embarrassed by his inability to force Iran into submission. As Putin watched the annual parade passing the Kremlin last week, he too was embarrassed, in the Russian’s case by his failing struggle to overcome Ukraine. There are many other similarities between the situations the two men find themselves in beyond their embarrassment, but among them are the reasons for their military failures. Understanding and acting on those reasons can have great value in the public debate we need about how America does national security.
The current scenes of America being thwarted by Iran and Russia by Ukraine are not the only examples that come to mind when thinking of large militaries unable to defeat what at first appeared to be much less capable foes. As we celebrate the 250th Anniversary of our own war of national liberation, we reflect on how disparate militias in the American colonies drained and ultimately defeated what arguably was then the world’s most capable military. Our own experience in Indo-China in the 1960s and early 70s, demonstrated again how the world’s most mighty military could be humbled by what seemed to be a modest force.
Although the larger military has usually prevailed in history, there are many other examples of Lilliputian success. Focusing, however, on Russia in the Ukraine War and America in the Third Gulf War, two reoccurring factors are salient. The first factor involves the mistakes of the attacker and the second stems from the response of the defender.
First, the attackers: Put simply, the attackers’ failure was one of anticipation. The attackers, Russia invading Ukraine and the US (and Israel) launching an air war on Iran, seem in retrospect to have 1) not accurately anticipated their opponent’s responses or 2) not modified their own plans in ways that took the most problematic responses into account.
For all the billions of dollars spent on weapon systems used in the war, the Pentagon and National Security Council in the US appear not to have spent the few thousand dollars it would have cost to run a series of war games, simulations often called table top exercises, before the war. If this turns out to be the case, it is remarkable, given the sophisticated ability to conduct such activities at the Defense Department’s several War Colleges and federally funded research centers.
At places like the Naval War College in Newport or the RAND Corporation in Santa Monica (yes, both beautiful beachside settings far away from the hubbub of the Pentagon), for decades civilian and military experts and practitioners have conducted war games in which the team playing the US opponent is encouraged to be innovative and to try to win. That encouragement of the team playing the opponent is key because experts’ concerns about what the “enemy” can do are more easily surfaced in the guise of a war game than they can be as a formal intelligence product in the highly structured and layered bureaucratic process of Threat Assessment.
As far back as 1933, the Naval War College showed how an enemy (Japan) could use submarines and aircraft to defeat the battleship heavy US Pacific Fleet. At the beginning of World War II that is exactly what happened. More recently, RAND war games have reportedly shown how China could prevail in a Taiwan focused conflict. Indeed, RAND’s highly respected analyst, David Ochmanek, has been publicly quoted as saying that in repeated simulations Team Blue (the US) “routinely got its ass handed to it.” Lessons from those games have reportedly caused adjustments in Pacific Command’s war plan.
An unscripted simulation of the air war against Iran would have shown Tehran moving to shut the Straits of Hormuz even after having been stripped of conventional Navy and Air Force assets. It would similarly have revealed how Iran could use its massive missile and drone arsenal to overwhelm and penetrate Gulf Arab air defenses to destroy US assets and allied critical infrastructure. The opposing team in such a simulation would not need to be especially perspicacious to come up with those responses; they had been widely anticipated by analysts.
A war game of the Russian invasion of Ukraine might have included an excursion in which Ukraine was warned by the US of the rather obvious impending attack, causing the Russian Army to lose the advantage of a surprise attack. It might also have shown that without a quick, surprise attack victory, the fighting would devolve into something resembling the trench combat and slow movement of World War I where the defender has a traditional advantage.
In both the Washington and Moscow contexts, it is highly likely that the institutional bureaucracies included analysts who knew the lessons of war games, but that the clarity that they could impart never made it to the ultimate decision makers. The advisors near the two nations’ presidents probably thought that their leaders were intent on going to war soon and were not likely to respond well to the bearer of bad news, of caution, of warning. Such was also the case in Gulf War II, when an extensive State Department led analysis showed that decapitating the Saddam Hussein regime would lead to civil war as well as an insurgency aimed at US forces. The war happened anyway.
Second, the defenders: their relative successes are owed to creativity and invention driven by necessity and literally existential crises. When it invaded Ukraine, Russia’s army vastly outgunned Ukraine’s in main battle tanks, about 3.6 to 1. Ukraine could not respond successfully to the Russian armored divisions in a similarly structured force-on-force exchange. The two nations’ air forces balance was similar in theater, 3 to 1, but was 10 to 1 if the Russian air power spread across Eur-Asia was counted. Those numbers could have convinced Putin that the war would be no contest, and it would have been if Ukrainian leaders tried to fight it in a traditional manner. Ukraine knew that and decided to change the rules of the game.
Kyiv responded not by tank-on-tank battles or aerial dog fights, but by mobilizing the entire nation to create hundreds of drone factories, simple drones that killed tanks, cheap drones that attacked aircraft on the ground parked at air bases. When Russia would defeat a Ukrainian weapon or tactic, Kyiv would reply within a few weeks with a counter capability or maneuver. Ukraine devolved decision making to small unit commanders and Do it Yourself makers in small workshops. Ukraine’s decision and response execution time got shorter and shorter. It included resorting to unconventional warfare measures, such as assassination of Russia generals, even in Moscow.
The Iranians also avoided aerial dogfights and declined to engage in ship-on-ship naval battles. Taking a page from the Ukrainian war, they manufactured tens of thousands of inexpensive drones. As they had done in the so-called Tanker War of the 1980s, they employed speed boats, not battleships. They hid ballistic missile launchers in a vast network of camouflaged sites, tunnels, and caves. Like the Ukrainians, they devolved decision making to local commanders because they believed the US would attack leadership and communications targets.
The governments in Kyiv and Tehran both knew that losing their wars meant losing their lives. Their governmental structures would be replaced as well. Faced with that stark reality their decision makers did not engage in “check the box” or “phone it in” rote responses. They seem to have done second order, third order thinking, questioning assumptions, encouraging creativity, devolving some authorities. Planners for super-powers sometimes do not go that extra mile, thinking about what could go wrong, or asking how we might do things differently. Confident in their numerical superiority and conventional wisdom, super-power civilian and military leaders are not often scared into paradigm breakage. If they try, they are too often punished in some way, rather than empowered.
The lessons for the US are numerous, and many are obvious. Our Navy is still built around vulnerable aircraft carriers, just as it was built on battleships in the 1930s. Our Army has entire divisions of Armored (tank) units, most of which would not be able to get out of Texas by the time a modern war was over. The Air Force is still tied to the concept of piloted aircraft and large, fragile airbases. As Gulf War III drove home, we have small inventories of highly expensive weapons and little industrial base for surging supply. Things take too long to get done, operating on annual planning and budget cycles. By the time a new weapon system is deployed, the military leaders who came up with the requirement for it are usually retired.
Despite Pete Hegseth’s obvious shortcomings, the Pentagon is now addressing some of these problems and trying to be innovative and agile. Unfortunately, that shift came too late for Gulf War III, but before the Congress writes the $1.5 trillion check Hegseth has requested for next year’s budget, it needs to set aside more of the appropriation for agile solutions and less for costly weapon systems designed to fight the last war. Congress needs to create new oversight mechanisms and decision cycles that operate on less than an annual basis. It needs to authorize new command structures, like a new service, Cyber Force, and ease personnel screening requirements to staff it.
In the wake of the Ukraine War, Germany’s leadership called for a defense Zeitenwende, or “turning point.” The Bundestag significantly increased defense spending, over sixty percent in three years. Then the German army ordered more tanks. Whatever the ultimate increase in the US defense budget that the Congress agrees to (probably well short of $1.5 trillion), we need to ensure that the Pentagon does not just go out and spend it on more of the same. We need to think creatively about how an imaginative, innovative, and creative foe would defeat the US military, not on the traditional battlefields but in space, in cyberspace, in the homeland. And then we need to figure out how to defend America from those new 21st Century style attacks and counter them, quickly.
Richard Clarke served for thirty years in national security roles in the US government, including ten years in the White House under three presidents. He is the CEO of Good Harbor Security Risk Management. (richardaclarke.net)
