Victory Misunderstood: What the Gulf War Tells Us about the Future of Conflict

Victory Misunderstood What the Gulf War Tells Us about the Future of Conflict Stephen Biddle tions of the Gulf War‘s outcome are wrong. The orthodox view explains the war’s one-sidedness in terms of the Coalition’s strengths, especially its advanced technology, which is often held to have destroyed the Iraqis’ equipment or broken their will without exposing Coalition forces to extensiveclose combat on the ground.’ The main rival explanation emphasizes Iraqi shortcomings, such as their weak morale, poor training and leadership, or numerical inferiority in the theater of war.2Both schools appeared within a few months of the cease-fire, and have changed surprisingly little since then.3 The information Stephen Biddle is a member of the research staff at the Institute for Defense Analyses (IDA),Alexandria, Virginia. This analysis was supported by the IDA Central Research Program. The views expressed are those of the author, however, and do not necessarily represent positions of IDA, its management, or sponsors. The author would like to thank Richard Betts, Tami Davis Biddle, Eliot Cohen, Steven David, Peter Feaver, Wade Hinkle, Marshall Hoyler, Christopher Jehn, Chaim Kaufmann, Michael Leonard, H.R. McMaster,JesseOrlansky Brad Roberts,Richard Swain,John Tillson,Robert Turrell, Victor Utgoff, Larry Welch, Caroline Ziemke, Robert Zirkle, and the members of the MIT DACS Program, the UNC Carolina Seminar, and the Triangle Universities Security Seminar for helpful comments on earlier drafts. Responsibility for any errors, however, remains the author’s alone. 1. See, eg., William J. Perry, “Desert Storm and Deterrence,” Foreign Affairs, Vol. 70, No. 4 (Fall 1991),pp. 66-82; Bobby R. Inman, Joseph S. Nye, Jr., William J. Perry, and Roger K. Smith, ”US. Strategy After the Storm,” in Joseph S. Nye, Jr.,and Roger K. Smith, eds., After the Storm: Lessons from the Gulf War (New York: Madison Books for the Aspen Strategy Group, 1992), pp. 267-289; U.S. House Armed Services Committee, Defense for a Nezv Era: Lessons of the Persian Gulf War (Washington, D.C.: U.S. Government Printing Office [U.S.GPO], 1992),hereafter cited as HASC, Defense for a New Era. Some have also explained the outcome in terms of superior Coalitionmilitary doctrine or strategic decision-making, or the training of Coalition troops, though these arguments have played a less central role. See, eg., Lawrence Freedman and Efraim Karsh, The Gulf Conflict, 2990-2991: Diplomacy and War in the New World Order (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1993),p. 437; Norman Friedman, Desert Victory: The Warfor Kuwait (Annapolis, Md.:Naval Institute Press, 1991), pp. 235, 246,252-253. 2. See, eg., John Mueller, ”The Perfect Enemy: Assessing the Gulf War,” Security Studies, Vol. 5, No. 1 (Autumn 1995), pp. 77-117; Gregg Easterbrook, “Operation Desert Shill: A Sober Look at What Was Not Achieved in the War,” New Republic, September30,1991,pp. 32ff; MichaelJ. Mazarr, Don M. Snider, and James A. Blackwell, Jr., Desert Storm: The Gulf War and What We Learned (Boulder,Colo.: Westview, 1993),pp. 113-117, 177-178. 3. Both originated in the extensive television coverage of the war, and the military briefings conducted during and shortly after the cease-fire. Among the earliest and most influential published versions of the orthodox technology explanation is Perry, ”Desert Storm and Deterrence.” Norman Schwarzkopf’s famous observations on Saddam Hussein’sstrategic abilitieswere perhaps the earliest articulation of the ”Iraqi shortcomings” school; see Easterbrook, “Operation Desert Shill.” International Security, Vol. 21, No. 2 (Fall 1996),pp. 139-179 0 1996by the President and Fellows of Harvard College and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology 139 International Securify 21:2 I 140 base on the war‘s conduct, however, has changed substantially with the recent appearance of the first detailed official and semi-official independent histories of the war.4This new information, combined with the results of counterfactual analysis using new computer simulation techniques, undermines both schools’ conclusions. To account for what is now known, and in particular, for new details on the conduct of the ground campaign, I propose a new explanation based partly on a combination of pieces taken from both camps’ arguments-but mostly on a different conception of how technology and skill affected the outcome. That...