Editor’s Note: As the United States steers its strategy around great power competition, the question arises of whether the US military is up to the task. In particular, as Raphael Cohen and Gian Gentile of the RAND Corporation point out, the Ukraine war has raised questions about how well the US military will fare in conventional warfare after 20 years of focusing on counterinsurgency. The answers, they believe, vary: The wars in Afghanistan and Iraq taught the United States many valuable lessons, but a Ukrainian-type war can still offer many unpleasant surprises.
There is little debate that the Russian military underperformed in the war in Ukraine. Many analysts thought the conflict would end in a matter of days, with minimal Russian military casualties, but five months later the conflict has continued and has destroyed most of Russia’s ground fighting force. There are many explanations for why the Russian army is performing so poorly—from the deliberate choice of Russian troop structure to underestimating Ukraine’s will to fight—but it’s clear that the Russian military has not lived up to expectations.
A controversial question revolves around a hypothetical: Would the US military do better? For some observers, the answer is no. For those in this camp, the argument is that the United States and other Western militaries suffer from some of the same ailments as Russia. These claims echo the broader narrative that the past 20 years have been a “period of strategic atrophy” and the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan have left the United States unprepared for most conventional battles such as the war in Ukraine.
Barring longstanding debates about which side was better equipped, a more agile power structure, or a stronger will to fight, what the “we couldn’t have done better” school missed is historical context. Although the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan may be different from the wars in Ukraine, they taught the United States some important lessons, often the hard way. As a result, the U.S. military may well avoid the problems that befell Russia in Ukraine—not despite the global war on terrorism, but because of it.
Despite all the differences between the Ukraine war and the Iraq and Afghanistan wars, there are striking similarities between Russia’s military failures in Ukraine and the US military struggles in the early days of the global war on terrorism.
One of the frequently cited causes of the Russian crash in Ukraine is that, during the early days of the war, the Russian military did not have a single unit of command. It is possible, because Russia thought the war would be a relatively brief conflict, it did not put a commander in charge of “special military operations” until April, when Vladimir Putin appointed General Aleksandr Dvornikov to the post. The end result was that the Russian operation, especially during those crucial early weeks, appeared confused and poorly coordinated.
The United States made a version of the same error before. While the early phases of the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq were led by one man, General Tommy Franks, he was also responsible for all of Central Command, which spanned most of the Middle East. After the “major combat operation” ended, Frank went home. As we now know, the early fighting phase of the Afghanistan and Iraq wars has just begun. Without strong centralized command and control to plan what would happen next, progress in both conflicts stalled. Arguably, the United States and its allies took months to build structures such as the Coalition Provisional Authority, the Multi-National-Iraqi Forces, and the International Security Assistance Force to provide such direction.
The second important shortcoming of Russian troops in Ukraine is in logistics. Russian tanks ran out of gas just a few dozen miles from the border, troops invaded Ukraine with expired food rations, and soldiers suffered from frostbite because they did not have adequate cold weather equipment. While some of these sustainability challenges can be attributed to the Ukrainian military successfully targeting Russian supply lines, they also reveal Russia’s more systemic weaknesses.
In contrast, the Iraq and Afghanistan wars highlighted and honed the logistical backbone of the US military. After some notable exceptions especially at the start of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars, such as the operational pause of the Third Infantry Division in its push to Baghdad, the US. logistics kept service members fed, refueled, and struggling for decades, even at remote bases in hostile terrain. For all the Starbucks teasing and surf-and-turf dinners at the superbase, the fact remains that the United States is not only capable of projecting hundreds of thousands of troops halfway across the globe but sustaining them.
Above all, Russian President Vladimir Putin also appears to have misjudged Ukraine in a very similar way to the Bush administration leading up to the Iraq War. The bright predictions of some pre-war Russian commentators about the expected outcome reflected the false boldness of the now-famous “cakewalk” predictions for the Iraq War. Russian intelligence services allegedly point to polls showing Ukraine, by and large, does not trust the government of President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, or most of their other government agencies. Perhaps Putin also truly believes that Ukraine and Russia are “one person” separated by a border. Either way, the Kremlin seems to think its forces can quickly overthrow the Ukrainian regime while being welcomed as liberators. In this regard, there are striking similarities to how the United States believed Iraqis would welcome US troops before the Iraq War. As we now know, in both cases this assumption was proven wrong.
And like the Bush administration, the Kremlin appears to have no plans for what will happen next if Putin’s fantasies of a short, sharp war fail to materialize. Like US policymakers faced with a floundering conflict, Putin has chosen to double down—but his strategy seems, at this point, unclear.
And this is not an exhaustive list. There are other similarities between Russia’s misfortune in Ukraine and the United States’ misfortune in Iraq and Afghanistan. For example, like the United States during its troop surge in 2007, Russia is now learning that war requires a lot of manpower, especially those fought in urban areas. However, the broader point remains: History may not repeat itself in Ukraine, but it certainly does.
Mistakes don’t always translate directly into lessons. At least the popular narrative suggests that the US military chose to erase the Vietnam War from its collective memory rather than internalize the lessons of that defeat. As Russia in Ukraine knows, even if the military internalizes certain lessons, it is no guarantee that its political rulers will not sidestep them. So, the argument goes, US mistakes during the global war on terrorism do not necessarily guarantee that the United States will avoid repeating those mistakes in the future.
However, on closer inspection, no objections can be observed. We will not know how many combined forces have internalized the lessons of the past few decades until facing similar situations in the future. But we do know that joint forces have invested considerable time and effort in documenting and interpreting the lessons of the past two decades, as evidenced by the many official, semi-official, and Department of Defense-sponsored academic libraries and research.
Moreover, the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan are still a relatively new experience. With few exceptions, most of the current senior leaders in the US military have spent most of their careers operating in both conflicts. The same goes for the lower tiers for many junior ranks as well. For at least the next decade, joint forces will not have to learn as much from history as it does to recall personal experience.
Moreover, some lessons from US mistakes in the Iraq or Afghanistan wars, such as the importance of unity of command or logistics centrality, are not particularly controversial or politically sensitive. Indeed, the former is enshrined in doctrine and instilled into every member of the service from the very beginning. And the logistical backbone of the US military has long been one of its underappreciated strengths. While the United States may ignore this lesson in the future, the onus of proof should lie with the skeptics: Why is that?
As for the more politically-laden lessons—such as the wisdom of a regime change strategy, of course, a future American president could override any lessons the US military has drawn from Iraq and Afghanistan. But in contrast to Russia and other authoritarian regimes, democratic civil-military relations allow for a more honest, if not equal, dialogue between military and civilian counterparts. Future military leaders may not be able to talk to a future president about regime change, but they may at least be able to convince him that plans for rapid regime change often fail.
Finally, while the US military has learned from the past 20 years, so have the American political elite and public. The United States may not have lost its appetite for advocating regime change, but it has learned not to expect it to be a quick and easy affair. When President Biden said Putin “couldn’t stay in power,” his aides were quick to hit back at the comments, saying they were statements of “moral outrage” and not policy. After Iraq and Afghanistan, America has every right to be wary of regime change.
Will the US Military Do Better?
The short answer, if unsatisfactory, maybe. In any future operation, the US military will almost certainly make mistakes, but not as the Russians did in Ukraine—if only for the fact that they learned many of the same, often painfully, lessons over the past two decades of war.
The Iraq and Afghanistan wars did not prepare the US military for all aspects of future conflicts. They did not train soldiers how to advance under a relentless barrage of artillery, as we see in Ukraine today. They don’t teach sailors how to deal with anti-ship missiles, or pilots how to deal with advanced air defense threats. The Iraq and Afghanistan wars certainly did not teach the US military how to sustain the kind of casualties Russia continues to bear in Ukraine.
Similarly, the Iraq and Afghanistan wars, perhaps, also taught the United States a bad lesson. For example, US analysts’ estimates of Ukraine’s willingness to go to war may have been influenced by policymakers who overestimated the willingness of Iraqi and Afghan government forces to fight in 2014 and last year, when the more prepared and trained Afghan security forces in the US melted before them. . from weaker opponents.
However, Iraq and Afghanistan taught the US military several lessons relevant to the conflict in Ukraine; it is likely the US military would have avoided some of the accidents that befell Russia in Ukraine. The US military must accept this fact, if only to ensure it internalizes the “correct” lessons from the wars of the past two decades.
