Over the past 50 years, the United States has gotten good at losing wars.
We humiliatingly withdrew from Saigon in 1975, Beirut in 1984, Mogadishu in 1993, and Kabul in 2021. After a tenuous surge victory, we withdrew from Baghdad in 2011, only to withdraw again three years later when ISIS swept through northern Iraq and we had to stop it (with the help of Iraqis and Kurds, we did). We won limited victories against Saddam Hussein in 1991 and Muammar Gaddafi in 2011, but failed in the final stages.
What's left? Grenada, Panama, Kosovo. These are smaller wars in which American casualties were minimal and which are little remembered today.
The left would say that most, if not all, of these wars were unnecessary, unwinnable, and unworthy. The right would say that these wars were badly fought with insufficient force, too many restrictions on how to use force, and too much willingness to retreat before the mission was completed. In any case, none of these wars were about our very existence. Life in America, for example, would not have been substantially different if Kosovo had still been part of Serbia.
But what about existential warfare?
We know how America fought such wars: During the siege of Vicksburg in 1863, starvation caused “dogs, cats, and even rats to disappear from the city, succumbing to hunger,” writes Ron Charnow in his biography of Ulysses S. Grant, and the Union Army did not send food convoys to ease the suffering of innocent Southerners.
In World War II, Allied bombers killed an estimated 10,000 civilians in the Netherlands, 60,000 in France, 60,000 in Italy, and hundreds of thousands in Germany. All this was part of a declared Anglo-American policy to “demoralize the German people and fatally weaken their capacity for armed resistance.” We pursued exactly the same policy against Japan, where bombing killed an estimated nearly one million civilians.
Grant appears on the $50 bill. Franklin Roosevelt's portrait hangs in the Oval Office. The bravery of American bomber crews is celebrated in shows like Apple TV+'s “Masters of the Air.” Nations, especially democracies, often second-guess the means by which they win existential wars. But they also tend to saint leaders who, faced with the terrible choices of evil that come with every war, still choose morally compromised victory over morally pure defeat.
Currently, Israel and Ukraine are fighting a similar war. We know this not because they say so, but because their enemies say so. Vladimir Putin considers the Ukrainian state to be fictitious. Hamas, Hezbollah, and their backers in Iran openly call for wiping Israel off the map. In response, both countries are actively seeking to fight, operating from the view that they can only be secure by destroying their enemies' ability and will to wage war.
This often ends in tragedy, as was the case on Sunday when Israeli airstrikes targeting Hamas leaders reportedly killed at least 45 civilians in Rafah. This has always been a war story. Terms like “precision weapons” may encourage the idea that modern militaries can strike only their intended targets. But that is an illusion, especially against an enemy like Hamas. Hamas' strategy is to fight and hide among the innocent, to be saved from ruin by the world's concern for the innocent.
It is equally illusory to think that we can supply an ally like Ukraine with the right kind of weapons in just the right quantities to repel Russian aggression, but not so much that it escalates Russia. War is not porridge. There is almost no perfect approach to getting it just right. You are either headed for victory or headed for defeat.
Now, the Biden administration is trying to restrain Israel and support Ukraine under these two illusions. It is asking Israel to fight the war in much the same way that the United States has fought its own wars in recent decades: with limited means, limited resolve to win, and an eye on the possibility of a negotiated settlement. How is it possible, for example, that Ukraine still doesn't have F-16s to defend its skies?
In the short term, Biden's approach may help ease humanitarian suffering, quell voter anger or avoid a potential sharp escalation. In the long term, it will force an ally to lose.
The “peace deal” with Moscow gives Russia control over vast swathes of Ukrainian territory, which could invite a third invasion if Russia recapitalizes its military. The ceasefire with Hamas gives Hamas control over Gaza, meaning that Hamas will inevitably start a new war, as it has done five times before, and legitimizes the strategy of using civilians as human shields, which Hezbollah will surely emulate in the next all-out war with Israel.
President Biden delivered a moving Memorial Day speech at Arlington National Cemetery on Monday, honoring generations of soldiers who fought and died in a “battle against tyranny and democracy.” But the tragedy of America's recent wartime history is that thousands of our soldiers died in wars we lacked the will to win. They died in vain, because Biden and other presidents belatedly decided that we had higher priorities.
That's a luxury that a safe, powerful country like the United States can afford. The Ukrainians and Israelis cannot. The least they can do is understand that they have no choice but to fight as we did once before — when we knew what it took to win.
