NewYou can now listen to Fox News articles!
As a former DIA intelligence officer specializing in Russian war-fighting tactics The mindset of Russian President Vladimir PutinRecently I had the honor of briefing one of the U.S. combatant commands on the major security threats facing our country. This briefing and my conversations with high-ranking officials and their staff inspired me to write this article.
As the world becomes increasingly unstable under the Biden-Harris presidency, the risk of fighting a three-theater war has never been greater for the US military. The United States is already involved in two conflicts – Russia-Ukraine, with Europe as a proxy, and another in the Middle East, as Israel defends itself against the Iran-led axis of resistance. A war with China over Taiwan could also break out as early as next year, according to a high-ranking US military official who leads the US Air Mobility Command.
But how can the US win three wars in a row, when it has struggled to win even one in a quarter of a century? Think of Iraq, Afghanistan, Syria and Libya. No decisive meaningful military victories have been achieved by the US military in these conflicts, despite the fact that it has faced much smaller opponents who do not have advanced weapons and some do not even have regular armies. This is despite the fact that tactically, our military is the best war-fighting force in military history.
Why does Putin prefer Harris over Trump in the White House?
From left to right, Russian President Vladimir Putin, President Biden and Chinese President Xi Jinping. (Getty Images)
Here are the top three actions The Pentagon And the national security apparatus must take steps to prevent or win wars.
Understand your opponent
“If you know the enemy and know yourself, you need not fear the outcome of a hundred battles. If you know yourself but not the enemy, for every victory you win you will also suffer defeat. If you know neither the enemy nor yourself, you will lose every battle.” This guidance comes from the famous ancient Chinese strategist and general Sun Tzu. In his seminal work, “The Art of War,” the earliest known treatise on warfare and military science, which dates to the fifth century B.C., Sun Tzu emphasized the paramount importance of knowing your opponent when engaging in battle.
Even today, contemporary Chinese and Russian military planners follow Sun Tzu’s principles religiously. His entire war philosophy is centered on the elements of deception and surprise. Winning means outsmarting your enemy. But to outsmart your opponent, you must first understand how he thinks and fights.
View of the Pentagon from Air Force One flying over Washington on March 2, 2022. (AP Photo/Patrick Semansky)
I believe our military and intelligence agencies lack such understanding. Instead, the Pentagon relies on a one-size-fits-all approach, falsely believing that superior weapons, advanced technology, and efficient tactics will overwhelm any opposing force in any war. This misguided assumption has never been proven more clearly wrong than elsewhere. America’s Failure in Afghanistan,
Russia, China, Iran, North Korea are increasing threats against the US. What we need to know
In December 2019, the so-called Afghanistan Papers, a collection of confidential government documents containing two thousand pages of impressions from four hundred direct participants in the war, from generals to diplomats, revealed startling facts. The Pentagon did not know the slightest about Afghanistan before it invaded in 2001 – the culture, mindset and war style of its adversary. And that is the simple reason for Washington’s dismal performance in Afghanistan. “We were devoid of a basic understanding of Afghanistan – we had no idea what we were doing,” Douglas Lute, a three-star Army general who served as the White House’s Afghan war chief during the Bush and Obama administrations, told government interviewers in 2015. “What are we trying to do here? We had no idea what we were doing.”
A UH-60 Black Hawk helicopter takes off during a military parade marking the third anniversary of the withdrawal of US-led troops from Afghanistan, at Bagram Air Base in Parwan Province, Afghanistan, Wednesday, Aug. 14, 2024. (AP Photo/Siddiqullah Alizai)
20 years later, the result is more than $2 trillion in war money and the deaths of 7,000 American and allied troops. The Biden administration withdrew our troops and the same murderous government, the Taliban, is ruling the country. But now these barbarians have billions of dollars worth of our top secret military hardware.
Close gaps and minimize vulnerabilities
Since our military is the best in the world in conventional warfare, no foreign power would dare challenge it in a one-on-one kinetic battle. Instead, our adversaries have developed asymmetric strategies to win a war against our military. These strategies try to exploit weaknesses such as excessive reliance on technology. Indeed, we depend on satellites and access to the Internet for every aspect of war-fighting and our civilian lives. Satellites are used for global navigation, water management, power grid monitoring, weather forecasting, broadband access and telecommunications for applications ranging from banking to education and telemedicine.
Click here to receive the Opinion newsletter
U.S. Marines of the 2nd Battalion, 8th Marine Regiment, 2nd Marine Expeditionary Brigade move toward a helicopter transport as part of Operation Khanjar at Camp Dwyer in Helmand Province, Afghanistan, July 2, 2009. (Manpreet Romana/AFP via Getty Images)
Russia and China’s military strategies include cyberattacks and anti-satellite attacks targeting our critical infrastructure, government networks, and military systems. The Pentagon has been aware of the potential for attacks on U.S. space systems since January 2001, when a commission led by then-Defense Secretary-designate Donald Rumsfeld issued a report warning about a space Pearl Harbor.
Similarly, the Pentagon has known about weaknesses in our cybersecurity since 1999, when the Russians breached numerous U.S. government and military agencies, including weapons labs, and stole massive amounts of sensitive data.
Still, our satellites remain vulnerable. According to a recent US Government Accountability Office audit, our weapons arsenal, including key advanced systems like the Patriot missile system, is vulnerable to cyber attacks.
As a result, winning against China or Russia, both of which have plans to wreak a cyber Armageddon or space Pearl Harbor on our homeland, is not something we will be able to do as easily if we deploy troops to the theater to defend Taiwan or any other country. Former Soviet nations such as Ukrainewould be very problematic.
Create a battle plan and a clear definition of victory
Taiwanese soldiers deploy during combat and disaster exercises as part of the annual Wan-An Air Raid Drill at a port in New Taipei, Taiwan, July 23, 2024. The exercise, which coincides with the annual Han Kuang exercise, involves about 2,000 individuals from government agencies, including the military, fire and rescue services. It is held by China to simulate emergency responses to major disasters and attacks, as Beijing has increased its military presence across the Taiwan Strait. (Photo: Daniel Seng/Anadolu via Getty Images)
“No plan stands the test of contact with the enemy” is one of the most misquoted military wisdoms, coming from Prussian Chief of the General Staff Helmut von Moltke the Elder. He is best known for serving as the architect of Prussia’s military supremacy in Europe in the mid-19th century.
What von Moltke actually said was far more subtle. “No operation plan ever proceeds with certainty beyond the first encounter with the enemy’s main strength.” As a diligent and efficient planner, he emphasized the importance of an adaptable plan that could be modified in the face of rapidly changing circumstances. In his view, proper planning should involve multiple options, taking into account a variety of possible outcomes. And this can only be achieved through thorough preparation.
Sadly, I don’t think there is any such preparation in the Department of Defense. In 2001, before the invasion of Afghanistan, the Pentagon had no pre-existing plan. Operation Enduring Freedom was trying to destroy al Qaeda Therefore, the plan developed to remove the Taliban from power was based on reusing elements of the CIA’s previous contingency plans for cooperation with the Northern Alliance against the Taliban, and some options hastily devised by US forces, including the Joint Special Operations Command.
Click here to get the Fox News app
A Chinese PLA J-16 fighter jet flies over an undisclosed location. Taiwan’s Defense Ministry said on Monday, Dec. 26, 2022 that China’s military sent 71 aircraft, including J16 fighter jets, and seven ships toward Taiwan in a 24-hour show of force. (Taiwan Ministry of Defense, AP)
The Pentagon’s lack of preparation and culturally ignorant approach to war led to a failure to anticipate how insurgents in Afghanistan (and later Iraq) would adapt, fight, and deter the world’s most sophisticated and technologically advanced military. The insurgents’ use of improvised explosive devices (IEDs) enabled them, the underdog, to gain an edge over U.S. forces. IEDs – which accounted for 60% of all U.S. deaths in Afghanistan and half of U.S. casualties – nullified the U.S. advantage in resources, technology, and ground combat. These homemade devices destroyed our military hardware and crippled our service members.
To defeat low-tech enemies, American planners must learn to outperform them, rather than relying on the technological crutches of advanced weapons. Outsmarting your opponent requires knowing everything before you enter the battlefield.
Defining ahead of time what victory looks like will help avoid twenty years of nation-building, futile fighting, and American lives lost in a country like Afghanistan. It’s called the “Graveyard of Empires” for a reason.
