Farewell to Big Wars

The decade of 9/11 began with the most powerful army in history exhibiting an overwhelming strength. It ends with a country in which the distance between society and the military is deeper and the country itself isn’t up to more conflicts. The United States, under the Obama administration, is opting for a new kind of secret war as it is reluctant to send once again hundreds of troops to remote and incomprehensible places. This secret war would include bombardments with unmanned airplanes and operations with special forces unknown to the public.

After conversations with both historians and security experts in the United States, a diagnosis is emerging: For most Americans, that is to say, more than 90 percent of the population that is not military or do not have family links with the army, the wars during this decade have been invisible and far away. There is a disconnection. There was not a speech of blood, sweat and tears after the 9/11 terrorist attacks in 2001, whose 10th anniversary will be this very Sunday. On the contrary: President George W. Bush encouraged his compatriots to consume.

“Except for the heavy burden borne unequally by those in the military and their families, the conflict remains a distant reality show to the rest of society,” confirmed Brian Michael Jenkins, who has been studying terrorist threats at Rand Corporation for four decades. Rand Corporation, whose main client is the Pentagon, is the laboratory of ideas of reference concerning security. According to Jenkins, this absence of sacrifice was disguised with exaggerated displays of patriotism.

A reason for this distance is that, for the United States, both Afghanistan and Iraq have been less lethal than previous wars such as Vietnam. Some 60,000 Americans died in Vietnam, whereas some 1,600 have died in Afghanistan, which has been a longer war. More than 4,000 Americans have died in Iraq. Furthermore, in Vietnam, the conscription was compulsory, which made the pain social. Most families would know someone who was taking part in the war, or even who had died. Not now. The superpower has outsourced the war to the volunteers, who do not even reach 1 percent of the population, according to John McManus, military historian at S&T University in Missouri. The limited social involvement in wars reduces the political pressure to end them.

However, the absence of victories in Iraq and Afghanistan and its cost have affected the country. According to some recent estimates, both wars have cost $1.3 billion. During these 10 years, the military budget has almost doubled. There is war fatigue among citizens and leaders, said Richard Kohn, professor emeritus of military history at North Carolina University.

Robert Gates, then Secretary of Defense, said in February that “any future defense secretary who advises the president to again send a big American land army into Asia or into the Middle East or Africa should have his head examined.”

Some days ago, his successor, Leon Panetta, showed the intervention in Libya, in which the United States has been fundamental even in the background, as a model for future interventions. Both Gates and Panetta have summarized the period between 2001 and 2011: the interventions in Afghanistan and above all Iraq, Libya and Osama bin Laden’s death in May.

According to The Washington Post, the number of Special Forces has gone from 1,800 before 9/11 to 25,000 now. This newspaper defines these forces as “the United States’ secret army.” Under the management of the Joint Special Operations Command, this army that includes the Navy Seals, the elite group that killed bin Laden, acts not only in Iraq and Afghanistan but also in some countries the United States is not at war with, such as Yemen, Pakistan, Somalia, the Philippines, Nigeria and Syria. At the same time, the CIA has developed a military arm that, among other missions, controls the bombardments with unmanned aerial vehicles, or drones, which have already killed more than 2,000 alleged terrorists since 2001.

The secret war poses both legal and ethical problems. The deaths of civilians during night operations or bombardments are counterproductive to American interests. Some cast doubt on its effectiveness, said McManus, who has written a book about privates from World War II to Iraq.

Kohn foresees that war fatigue is favorable to some changes in the army, these changes being similar to those that took place after demobilization in past wars. He adds that both the ’20s and ’30s set a precedent. The size of the army was reduced but they adopted new technologies such as tanks, trucks, airplanes and submarines. Kohn also remembers that it was the time of minor wars in countries such as Nicaragua or Haiti. Archaic echoes resound in future wars.