The United States Win Wars, but Can They Win Peace?

Strengthened by the force of its arms, the supremacy of its technology, and the richness of its strategic and doctrinal thinking, the American army occupies a predominant place among Western forces. It would, therefore, be fair to suppose that the combination of these three factors; giving the United States an incontestable supremacy through their total control of tactical, operational and strategic environments would also allow them to easily win hearts.

And yet, despite General Petraeus’ undeniable successes in Iraq, the experience drawn from the recent conflicts tends to show that the ability to win wars and conquer territories doesn’t necessarily result in winning peace. Among all the possible reasons likely to be put forward to explain the U.S.’ difficulty to rally the affected peoples of Iraq and Afghanistan to their cause, at least two are worthy of mention as they seem so relevant, even unavoidable — because American efforts are rooted in American culture and history.

The first is historical and would appear to relate to the manner in which the New World was conquered. A young country in the eyes of European nations, the United States was shaped around the structured theme of “new frontiers” and of the conquest of Indian territories, which were considered to be uncharted lands and, therefore, naturally hostile and dangerous.

Besides an instinctive attitude of defiance, this manifested itself through columns of wagons, which at the first sign of trouble closed in on themselves in a self-protective circle — thus delineating the known and civilized world from the inevitably hostile and savage one, which was beyond the protective ring.

Henceforth, this pattern of thought seems immutable in the American collective subconscious. Consequently, in Kosovo at the time of Operation Trident in 1999, while the French and British units split up at the divisional level to better fit into their operational surroundings and moreover, to integrate into the population of whose extremely basic living conditions they were sharing, the American forces shut themselves away by “bunkering” in camps, symbolic examples of the Old West wagon circle.

One may wonder if this kind of “Fort Alamo” syndrome doesn’t reflect in reality an inability to adapt and open up to others, if not to understand them then at least to respect them by getting past their natural mistrust, which everything that outside of the “known” sphere evokes.

The second reason that would explain this distancing with regard to indigenous populations is juridical-cultural in nature. Indeed, to integrate into a foreign population and open up to it in order to be accepted also requires, beyond all the operational training the deployed troops may be subjected to in the theater of operations, that this open approach to others be natural, spontaneous and conforms to the cultural norms of its own national environment.

Now, the extremely liberal legislation concerning the possession of firearms in the United States — roughly 200 million firearms for 300 million inhabitants — undoubtedly results in the adverse consequence that each individual is perceived as a potential threat, since he or she may be a gun carrier. This being so, its control is dependent on the yardstick of potential risk that it reflects and takes place according to extremely strict, restrictive and sometimes aggressive procedures.

This model, accepted and in a certain sociological way, legitimized, has been established as a cultural and policing standard, whereas it would be totally unacceptable in most European democracies. By a kind of unconscious slide, it naturally follows that what is considered as a perfectly acceptable security norm in American territory, applies all the more so in a theater of operations where the natives are considered as a potential enemy, who and from whom one must, a priori, mistrust, and protect oneself.

Two consequences result from this. Firstly, for the American forces: indeed, obsessed by the “dogma of zero casualties,” “set” by their own cultural standards, and prisoners of their siege mentality — which could only have led them to follies such as those of Abu Ghraib — they run the risk of becoming withdrawn to the point of cutting themselves off from precisely those they came to help, appearing distant to them and sometimes disdainful.

Secondly, for the native populations: subjugated on their own soil by rules of engagement which are difficult to accept because they alienate them, and are at times the cause of collateral damage, they are all the more likely to consider the stranger who has come to defend them as an invader. Thus, the combination of these two factors, historical and cultural, constitutes a potent obstacle to the capability of the American army to “win hearts and minds.”

Hereafter, a risk to our own forces could ensue from this. Engaged alongside their powerful ally they could, in fact, be inclined to neglect their traditions and decorum inherited from General Lyautey and forget that “every battle won without regard for dignity is, sooner or later, a battle lost.”