Argus Posted March 6, 2011 Posted March 6, 2011 (edited) Never Fight a Land War in Asia By George FriedmanU.S. Secretary of Defense Robert Gates, speaking at West Point, said last week 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.” In saying this, Gates was repeating a dictum laid down by Douglas MacArthur after the Korean War, who urged the United States to avoid land wars in Asia. Given that the United States has fought four major land wars in Asia since World War II — Korea, Vietnam, Afghanistan and Iraq — none of which had ideal outcomes, it is useful to ask three questions: First, why is fighting a land war in Asia a bad idea? Second, why does the United States seem compelled to fight these wars? And third, what is the alternative that protects U.S. interests in Asia without large-scale military land wars? The Hindrances of Overseas Wars Let’s begin with the first question, the answer to which is rooted in demographics and space. The population of Iraq is currently about 32 million. Afghanistan has a population of less than 30 million. The U.S. military, all told, consists of about 1.5 million active-duty personnel (plus 980,000 in the reserves), of whom more than 550,000 belong to the Army and about 200,000 are part of the Marine Corps. Given this, it is important to note that the United States strains to deploy about 200,000 troops at any one time in Iraq and Afghanistan, and that many of these troops are in support rather than combat roles. The same was true in Vietnam, where the United States was challenged to field a maximum of about 550,000 troops (in a country much more populous than Iraq or Afghanistan) despite conscription and a larger standing army. Indeed, the same problem existed in World War II.When the United States fights in the Eastern Hemisphere, it fights at great distances, and the greater the distance, the greater the logistical cost. More ships are needed to deliver the same amount of materiel, for example. That absorbs many troops. The logistical cost of fighting at a distance is that it diverts numbers of troops (or requires numbers of civilian personnel) disproportionate to the size of the combat force.Regardless of the number of troops deployed, the U.S. military is always vastly outnumbered by the populations of the countries to which it is deployed. If parts of these populations resist as light-infantry guerrilla forces or employ terrorist tactics, the enemy rapidly swells to a size that can outnumber U.S. forces, as in Vietnam and Korea. At the same time, the enemy adopts strategies to take advantage of the core weakness of the United States — tactical intelligence. The resistance is fighting at home. It understands the terrain and the culture. The United States is fighting in an alien environment. It is constantly at an intelligence disadvantage. That means that the effectiveness of the native forces is multiplied by excellent intelligence, while the effectiveness of U.S. forces is divided by lack of intelligence.The United States compensates with technology, from space-based reconnaissance and air power to counter-battery systems and advanced communications. This can make up the deficit but only by massive diversions of manpower from ground-combat operations. Maintaining a helicopter requires dozens of ground-crew personnel. Where the enemy operates with minimal technology multiplied by intelligence, the United States compensates for lack of intelligence with massive technology that further reduces available combat personnel. Between logistics and technological force multipliers, the U.S. “point of the spear” shrinks. If you add the need to train, relieve, rest and recuperate the ground-combat forces, you are left with a small percentage available to fight.The paradox of this is that American forces will win the engagements but may still lose the war. Having identified the enemy, the United States can overwhelm it with firepower. The problem the United States has is finding the enemy and distinguishing it from the general population. As a result, the United States is well-suited for the initial phases of combat, when the task is to defeat a conventional force. But after the conventional force has been defeated, the resistance can switch to methods difficult for American intelligence to deal with. The enemy can then control the tempo of operations by declining combat where it is at a disadvantage and initiating combat when it chooses.The example of the capitulation of Germany and Japan in World War II is frequently cited as a model of U.S. forces defeating and pacifying an opposing nation. But the Germans were not defeated primarily by U.S. ground troops. The back of the Wehrmacht was broken by the Soviets on their own soil with the logistical advantages of short supply lines. And, of course, Britain and numerous other countries were involved. It is doubtful that the Germans would have capitulated to the Americans alone. The force the United States deployed was insufficient to defeat Germany. The Germans had no appetite for continuing a resistance against the Russians and saw surrendering to the Americans and British as sanctuary from the Russians. They weren’t going to resist them. As for Japan, it was not ground forces but air power, submarine warfare and atomic bombs that finished them — and the emperor’s willingness to order a surrender. It was not land power that prevented resistance but air and sea power, plus a political compromise by MacArthur in retaining and using the emperor. Had the Japanese emperor been removed, I suspect that the occupation of Japan would have been much more costly. Neither Germany nor Japan are examples in which U.S. land forces compelled capitulation and suppressed resistance.The problem the United States has in the Eastern Hemisphere is that the size of the force needed to occupy a country initially is much smaller than the force needed to pacify the country. The force available for pacification is much smaller than needed because the force the United States can deploy demographically without committing to total war is simply too small to do the job — and the size needed to do the job is unknown. U.S. Global Interests The deeper problem is this: The United States has global interests. While the Soviet Union was the primary focus of the United States during the Cold War, no power threatens to dominate Eurasia now, and therefore no threat justifies the singular focus of the United States. In time of war in Iraq and Afghanistan, the United States must still retain a strategic reserve for other unanticipated contingencies. This further reduces the available force for combat.Some people argue that the United States is insufficiently ruthless in prosecuting war, as if it would be more successful without political restraints at home. The Soviets and the Nazis, neither noted for gentleness, were unable to destroy the partisans behind German lines or the Yugoslav resistance, in spite of brutal tactics. The guerrilla has built-in advantages in warfare for which brutality cannot compensate.Given all this, the question is why the United States has gotten involved in wars in Eurasia four times since World War II. In each case it is obvious: for political reasons. In Korea and Vietnam, it was to demonstrate to doubting allies that the United States had the will to resist the Soviets. In Afghanistan, it was to uproot al Qaeda. In Iraq, the reasons are murkier, more complex and less convincing, but the United States ultimately went in, in my opinion, to convince the Islamic world of American will.The United States has tried to shape events in the Eastern Hemisphere by the direct application of land power. In Korea and Vietnam, it was trying to demonstrate resolve against Soviet and Chinese power. In Afghanistan and Iraq, it was trying to shape the politics of the Muslim world. The goal was understandable but the amount of ground force available was not. In Korea, it resulted in stalemate; in Vietnam, defeat. We await the outcome in Iraq and Afghanistan, but given Gates’ statement, the situation for the United States is not necessarily hopeful.In each case, the military was given an ambiguous mission. This was because a clear outcome — defeating the enemy — was unattainable. At the same time, there were political interests in each. Having engaged, simply leaving did not seem an option. Therefore, Korea turned into an extended presence in a near-combat posture, Vietnam ended in defeat for the American side, and Iraq and Afghanistan have turned, for the time being, into an uncertain muddle that no reasonable person expects to end with the declared goals of a freed and democratic pair of countries. Problems of Strategy There are two problems with American strategy. The first is using the appropriate force for the political mission. This is not a question so much of the force as it is of the mission. The use of military force requires clarity of purpose; otherwise, a coherent strategy cannot emerge. Moreover, it requires an offensive mission. Defensive missions (such as Vietnam and Korea) by definition have no terminal point or any criteria for victory. Given the limited availability of ground combat forces, defensive missions allow the enemy’s level of effort to determine the size of the force inserted, and if the force is insufficient to achieve the mission, the result is indefinite deployment of scarce forces.Then there are missions with clear goals initially but without an understanding of how to deal with Act II. Iraq suffered from an offensive intention ill suited to the enemy’s response. Having destroyed the conventional forces of Iraq, the United States was unprepared for the Iraqi response, which was guerrilla resistance on a wide scale. The same was true in Afghanistan. Counterinsurgency is occupation warfare. It is the need to render a population — rather than an army — unwilling and incapable of resisting. It requires vast resources and large numbers of troops that outstrip the interest. Low-cost counter-insurgency with insufficient forces will always fail. Since the United States uses limited forces because it has to, counterinsurgency is the most dangerous kind of war for the United States. The idea has always been that the people prefer the U.S. occupation to the threats posed by their fellow countrymen and that the United States can protect those who genuinely do prefer the former. That may be the idea, but there is never enough U.S. force available.Another model for dealing with the problem of shaping political realities can be seen in the Iran-Iraq war. In that war, the United States allowed the mutual distrust of the two countries to eliminate the threats posed by both. When the Iraqis responded by invading Kuwait, the United States responded with a massive counter with very limited ends — the reconquest of Kuwait and the withdrawal of forces. It was a land war in Asia designed to defeat a known and finite enemy army without any attempt at occupation.The problem with all four wars is that they were not wars in a conventional sense and did not use the military as militaries are supposed to be used. The purpose of a military is to defeat enemy conventional forces. As an army of occupation against a hostile population, military forces are relatively weak. The problem for the United States is that such an army must occupy a country for a long time, and the U.S. military simply lacks the ground forces needed to occupy countries and still be available to deal with other threats.By having an unclear mission, you have an uncertain terminal point. When does it end? You then wind up with a political problem internationally — having engaged in the war, you have allies inside and outside of the country that have fought with you and taken risks with you. Withdrawal leaves them exposed, and potential allies will be cautious in joining with you in another war. The political costs spiral and the decision to disengage is postponed. The United States winds up in the worst of all worlds. It terminates not on its own but when its position becomes untenable, as in Vietnam. This pyramids the political costs dramatically.Wars need to be fought with ends that can be achieved by the forces available. Donald Rumsfeld once said, “You go to war with the Army you have. They’re not the Army you might want or wish to have at a later time.” I think that is a fundamental misunderstanding of war. You do not engage in war if the army you have is insufficient. When you understand the foundations of American military capability and its limits in Eurasia, Gates’ view on war in the Eastern Hemisphere is far more sound than Rumsfeld’s. The Diplomatic Alternative The alternative is diplomacy, not understood as an alternative to war but as another tool in statecraft alongside war. Diplomacy can find the common ground between nations. It can also be used to identify the hostility of nations and use that hostility to insulate the United States by diverting the attention of other nations from challenging the United States. That is what happened during the Iran-Iraq war. It wasn’t pretty, but neither was the alternative.Diplomacy for the United States is about maintaining the balance of power and using and diverting conflict to manage the international system. Force is the last resort, and when it is used, it must be devastating. The argument I have made, and which I think Gates is asserting, is that at a distance, the United States cannot be devastating in wars dependent on land power. That is the weakest aspect of American international power and the one the United States has resorted to all too often since World War II, with unacceptable results. Using U.S. land power as part of a combined arms strategy is occasionally effective in defeating conventional forces, as it was with North Korea (and not China) but is inadequate to the demands of occupation warfare. It makes too few troops available for success, and it does not know how many troops might be needed.This is not a policy failure of any particular U.S. president. George W. Bush and Barack Obama have encountered precisely the same problem, which is that the forces that have existed in Eurasia, from the Chinese People’s Liberation Army in Korea to the Taliban in Afghanistan, have either been too numerous or too agile (or both) for U.S. ground forces to deal with. In any war, the primary goal is not to be defeated. An elective war in which the criteria for success are unclear and for which the amount of land force is insufficient must be avoided. That is Gates’ message. It is the same one MacArthur delivered, and the one Dwight Eisenhower exercised when he refused to intervene in Vietnam on France’s behalf. As with the Monroe Doctrine, it should be elevated to a principle of U.S. foreign policy, not because it is a moral principle but because it is a very practical one. >ends I don't have a link for this - sorry. I know the ROE's don't like articles posted sans comment, but I haven't really a great deal to add here. I think Mr Friedman's perspective is as accurate as it is insightful, we may quibble about the edges, but the guts of the matter, IHMO, ring true. shane Edited March 6, 2011 by Argus
irregularmedic Posted March 6, 2011 Posted March 6, 2011 "Never Fight a Land War in Asia" Been sayin' that for over a decade. What did we do? Doubled down on it for no good reason!
Brian Kennedy Posted March 6, 2011 Posted March 6, 2011 http://www.stratfor.com/weekly/20110228-never-fight-land-war-asia
Exel Posted March 6, 2011 Posted March 6, 2011 It's not about fighting a land war in Asia. It's about trying nation-building in Asia in countries whose culture is so different that you can not fully comprehend it even after a decade of involvement. Winning North Korean or Taliban forces was not so difficult, after all. It was the folly of trying to fight a limited "hearts & minds" war while simultaneously attempting nation building in Vietnam and Afghanistan that got the US into trouble.
DavidDCM Posted March 6, 2011 Posted March 6, 2011 Has nothing to do with Asia as a continent or a mingle-mangle of hard-to-contol cultures and mindsets. Any of the mentioned wars - Korea, Vietnam, Afghanistan and Iraq - could as well have been in Africa or South America with presumably the same outcome. Had Osama and his gang planned 9-11 from Somalia instead of Afghanistan and thus, Somalia would have been invaded in early 2002, does anyone think it would today be a flourishing paradise of democracy and wealth just because it is not located in Asia? Mr. Friedman gives too much attention on the possibilities of technology, questions of tactis and boots on the ground. His basic conclusion is that the US should not wage any more ground wars in distant countries because they lack the manpower to appropiately dominate the invaded nation. He does not seriously ask the question whether war is a sensible option at all. He seems to think that if the basic problems were (able to be) solved, war would be a totally reasonable solution to enforce American will. But how much can soldiers - regardless of numbers - do when all that the people there want is to be left alone and lead a life according to their own choice? Even if doubled or trippled Iraq and Afghanistan could not be sufficiently controlled, simply because the population of these countries do not want to be controlled and live a life according to what the foreigners tell them. A polemic conclusion by me: He writes of pacification. Pacification of countries that were not at war until the US turned up*. *France and Vietnam, Massoud and the Taliban... I know.
Gunguy Posted March 6, 2011 Posted March 6, 2011 There are so many inaccurate statements in that article that I think Mr. Friedman was drinking when he wrote it. I disagree with much of it, but to counter each falsehood would take a long time. Not really worth it for Internet discussions.
sunday Posted March 6, 2011 Posted March 6, 2011 Guerrillas could be defeated, and had been defeated in the past. Examples are that Malayan business, Ukrainian partisans after WWII, maquis in post-WWII Spain, and a number of cases in South America. Even with adjoining sanctuaries. On Vietnam -if I'm allowed a perhaps uninformed opinion- I once read in a Catholic magazine that the practical Atheism of US troops (manifested, for instance, in whoring and drug use) alienated part of the Catholic Vietnamese. Probably the Dept. of State and the Kennedy administration tried to micromanage interior politics in South Vietnam, with dismal results. The assassination of Ngo Dinh Diem didn't do very much to promote an effective anti-Communist government, as Ho Chi Minh himself recognized.
swerve Posted March 6, 2011 Posted March 6, 2011 Most Vietnamese aren't & weren't Catholic. They're less than 10% of the population. There's a large Buddhist majority.
sunday Posted March 6, 2011 Posted March 6, 2011 Most Vietnamese aren't & weren't Catholic. They're less than 10% of the population. There's a large Buddhist majority. So? Diem seemed able to rule the country with the support of that minority, like Saddam with Sunnis. Yes, the Diem regime was corrupt, but was effective. The coup of '63 replace the Diems with a regime as corrupt, if no more, but way less effective.
JOE BRENNAN Posted March 6, 2011 Posted March 6, 2011 (edited) Most Vietnamese aren't & weren't Catholic. They're less than 10% of the population. There's a large Buddhist majority.They were an important part of the anti-Communist element though. At the time of the Korean War a lot less than 10% of the ROK population was Christian (around 2% in all Korea in 1945, only 3-4% even in the ROK by 1957, though today it's a plurality) but Christians were a major cornerstone of the ROK as a viable country to the extent it was, important to anti-Communism far out of proportion to their numbers. The parallel is limited though since Christianity tended to be associated w/ resistance to Japanese colonialism in Korea, but with acceptance of French colonialism in Vietnam. And the role of Buddhism in the two cultures differs also; Koreans didn't (and don't) necessarily think of themselves as Buddhist just because they aren't Christian, whereas it was sort of a default setting in Vietnam for ethnic Vietnamese at least. This kind of relative trivia tends to suggest I think the limitation on roping all four of those wars together. US (and Allied) goals in Korea and Vietnam were circumscribed by unwillingness, inability arguably, to win a land war v *China*. That's still true and probably always will be. Put your hand on your wallet if any Army gizmo's development and procurement is justified by Chinese ground capabilities on the Asian mainland. The 'sanctuary' type limitation in Iraq and Afghanistan is a kind of scaled down version. The US has no appetite to conquer and occupy Pakistan just to bring about a better solution in Afghanistan for example (you might have a reasonable solution without doing that, you almost surely wouldn't have a perfect solution in A'stan even if you did, even ignoring the huge cost and trouble ever getting out of Pakistan). But it really depends on the stakes. If there's enough trouble in Saudi Arabia, then you can't rule out an 'Asian land war'. That term originally tended to mean, and is best applied IMO as hard and fast rule, to wars where you have to fight China on land, or to recognize that you have to set limited goals if fighting China to the finish is the alternative (ie Korea was a success viewed in realistic strategic terms). Joe Edited March 6, 2011 by JOE BRENNAN
thekirk Posted March 6, 2011 Posted March 6, 2011 It's all well and good to say "Don't fight a land war in Asia", but avoiding that isn't always a possibility. What then? Something about Cheney, Rumsfeld, and Powell has always set my teeth on edge, what with their various pronouncements on strategic issues, which was this: They were all three engaging in what amounts to wishful thinking. You don't always get a choice about where you have to fight, or the nature of the conflict. Some situations call for throwing the established doctrine out the window, precisely as we did with the Monroe Doctrine when faced with a potential trigger for nuclear holocaust over Cuba. You can't sit on your high horse in 1991, and make these grand pronouncements about what we'll do twenty-thirty years hence, when the situations changed beyond all recognition. Good grief... I can think of an even half-dozen scenarios, ranging from the reasonably possible to the absurd, where we'd have to fight a land war against the Chinese on Asian soil. Some idiot saying "Don't" isn't going to make it any less (or, to be honest, any more...) likely to be a necessity, and all these profound pronouncements do is make clear thinking difficult when the time comes to make that decision. It also serves to screw us up, when the opposition tries to calculate what we'll do, in a given situation: "Oh, the Americans, they'll never engage us on our own territory... Look at all this stuff they've been saying, all these years... They'll never do it.". So, what happens? The reality slaps all of us in the face, and instead of complying with expectations, we do what has to be done, and that's something which could have been avoided had we spelled out how far we were willing to go, in advance. For an example, take a look at the Korean War. If Acheson had clearly spelled out how far the US was potentially willing to go in the defense of South Korea, would that have perhaps have given Stalin a bit of pause, as he let Kim Il Sung off the leash? We'd be better off if these idiots kept their mouths shut, and kept our potential enemies guessing.
TSJ Posted March 7, 2011 Posted March 7, 2011 There was no serious military failure in those wars. Only political. Our politicians assume that the cutures in Asia just wanna be like us. "Geez, look at Japan." Well convemiently forgotten is that we had to nuke them. We weren't willing to do things like that in Korea and Vietnam. Overlooked by Friedman is the fact that none of our adversaries could militarily defeat our land forces. The Chinese tried to push us out of Korea and failed to do so. Vietnam was certainly no military defeat either. Oh they kicked our political asses but that was because our politicians had no good reason to convince our country why we should draft our sons to go over there. Thus the chicken hawks were created who never served but became ardent supporters for US military intervention in the middle east, Iraq, Iran, etc. My dictum is (pun intended) is never get involved in a land war in Asia unless it is so important that if the enemy doesn't relent we will use every means at our disposal if necessary. Put the Big Green Machine on automatic and let the meat grind.
Argus Posted March 7, 2011 Author Posted March 7, 2011 Thanks for the link Brian I knew there'd be a lot of quibbling about the edges He's not saying 'Don't Fight', the thrust of the argument is 'don't pit your weakness against their strength.' Counter Insurgency is manpower intensive, the bigger the population the more manpower it needs, and for all its size the US military hasn't got/had enough manpower to do that job with the same comfortable margin of superiority it has in the air and at sea - thus the land side amounts to a weakness in the sense of least strength. Substituting technology for manpower is great in applications where you can give a machine a job, but the broader aspects of COIN aren't really best suited to that approach. You can successfully fight a land war in Asia, or on the moon for that matter if the resources are available to do the job, but if they are not - then it is best to seek alternative strategies before reaching the position of putting boots on the ground. Actually fighting a land war in Asia is dead easy if you can get the Asians to do most of your fighting for you (See the East India Company). Or that is how I read it anyway shane
Guest JamesG123 Posted March 9, 2011 Posted March 9, 2011 A better saying, truism, whatever would be, "Avoid foreign entanglements."
iamcanjim Posted March 9, 2011 Posted March 9, 2011 Another way of putting it is 'don't fight a war where the value of human life is less than the advantage of technology." There is no doubt that the combat power of a single US soldier is greater than 20 Afghanis. However, the respective value of a US soldier to his respective culture is greater than 100 Afghanis to theirs. This sounds absurb, but it is true. Therefore, the insurgents have a greater combat power than the US, as they have more lives to 'throw away' than the US does, even if the US kills 20 insurgents per soldier lost. This could be computed in various ways. The US tries to get around this in 2 ways. One is the use of technology to increase the combat power of its individual troops. That is effective, however, that also increases the relative value of the troops. A callous way to put it is that the loss of a single soldier in Afghanistan is probably a more severe blow to US combat power than the loss of a dozen vietnam era conscripts. The second way the US tries to get around this is to attempt to increase the value of the insurgents it is fighting, by developing the country, etc. This takes a long term approach, requiring development and 'hearts and minds'. This means that the US is going to be highly effective fighting in developed countries that have a relatively strong view of the importance of human life, that is, the US would be very effective in a counter insurgency in South Korea, Serbia or South Africa. The problem is, the poorer the country and the more relatively resource poor it is, the more stark the mathmatics of trading lives with insurgents becomes. I would say in Somalia, it would be impossible to pacify the country, as the death of on US soldier would be worth the death of thousands of insurgents to acheive that goal. It would be easy to pacify Canada as the the death of one US soldier would be only worth the death of one insurgent, allowing the US to use its technological advantage. The reason the author above advocates the use of air and sea assets is that those assets are almost completely immune to casualties, making the exchange rate much more favourable to the US.
EchoFiveMike Posted March 12, 2011 Posted March 12, 2011 Don't fight any war unless you are willing to win. All else is bullshit symptoms, not causes. We have a society where most people are soft as baby shit, therefore we get government of same. S/F.....Ken M
Rod Posted March 15, 2011 Posted March 15, 2011 The problem Ken is that the Western world is not willing to admit that to winthey have to go "Ghaddafi" on those attacking them. You can't use little or restrained or proportional force against your enemy. You got to use a bazooka to kill an ant. A military option is always successful, or what is not is a half-ass military projection that does not convince the enemy that the amount of force to be unleashed is so great that there is no point in starting up in first place. Hafez Assad crushed an Islamic uprising by wiping out the city of Hama. Saddam Hussein finished the uprising following the '91 Gulf War by being brutal as usual. Ghaddafi has turned the tables by going crazy and strafing anyone in sight. Meanwhile we just give billions of dollars to Karzai & Co. and hope that building infrastructure and teaching them the importance of nation-building will somehow convince a poor Afghani farmer to stop placing IEDs against NATO troops in exchange for a couple of bucks. Don't fight any war unless you are willing to win. All else is bullshit symptoms, not causes. We have a society where most people are soft as baby shit, therefore we get government of same. S/F.....Ken M
Sikkiyn Posted March 15, 2011 Posted March 15, 2011 (edited) Don't fight any war unless you are willing to win. All else is bullshit symptoms, not causes. We have a society where most people are soft as baby shit, therefore we get government of same. S/F.....Ken M That's why my usually spouting "Go Roman" attitude is a complete 180 at this phase. There is no will to "win" anything, other than contracts and bullshit. The goal has been lost, the will to do what is required is not present, and the best we can do is to pull back, let Karazi get his head sawed off, give the insurgents a place where they feel comfortable and safe, and let Osama and his click come out of their cave, and pop back onto a nice satellite picture, where a patrolling UAV can stick a missile up his arse. Edited March 15, 2011 by Sikkiyn
rathi Posted March 17, 2011 Posted March 17, 2011 The real issue is that every single war fought by a major power since WW2 was essentially irrelevant. Nothing truly important was actually at stake. Vietnam, Algeria and Afghanistan could have simply been left alone at no detriment to the country who invaded them. The power of nations during the 20th century came from the might of their domestic industrial production. With the exception of oil, there was nothing of importance to be gained piddling around in third world nations. As a result, nobody wants to make sacrifices or commit atrocities because they simply don't have the motivation.
Gabe Posted March 17, 2011 Posted March 17, 2011 I believe the expression is attributed to Bernard Montgomery, not Macarthur. He was a critic of US policies post war and said the second rule in the book of war was never fight a land war in Asia, the first being never march on Moscow.
Heirophant Posted March 24, 2011 Posted March 24, 2011 (edited) Found the exact quote: Bernard Montgomery: Rule 1, on page 1 of the book of war, is: "Do not march on Moscow". Various people have tried it, Napoleon and Hitler, and it is no good. That is the first rule. I do not know whether your Lordships will know Rule 2 of war. It is: "Do not go fighting with your land armies in China". It is a vast country, with no clearly defined objectives. The US has broken the second rule of war. That is, don't go fighting with your land army on the mainland of Asia. Rule One is don't march on Moscow. I developed these two rules myself. http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Bernard_Montgomery,_1st_Viscount_Montgomery_of_Alamein My take: Montgomery was speaking from direct experience of the 2 failed Axis land wars of World War 2. That's the direct interpretation. Then he must have noted that Russia was deemed by the West "Asiatic", and of course China was truly "Asian". So he decided to sum up his words as "Never fight a land war in Asia".And the "rule" became reinforced by the experience of Korea. Edited March 24, 2011 by Heirophant
LeoTanker Posted March 25, 2011 Posted March 25, 2011 Never Fight a Land War in Asia Yawn. And don't fight any land wars in Antarctica either. ...unless you got very warm clothes.
X-Files Posted May 31, 2012 Posted May 31, 2012 Oops. A U.S. general in Korea who said that American troops parachute into North Korea to spy has admitted he was not misquoted in the speech – but that he misspoke.http://security.blogs.cnn.com/2012/05/31/u-s-general-admits-he-misspoke-on-north-korea/
Sardaukar Posted May 31, 2012 Posted May 31, 2012 Found the exact quote: Bernard Montgomery: Rule 1, on page 1 of the book of war, is: "Do not march on Moscow". Various people have tried it, Napoleon and Hitler, and it is no good. It was once done successfully by Swedes and Finns... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jacob_De_la_Gardie Due to his campaign in 1610, the fighting unit consisting of Swedish and Finnish soldiers remain the only ones that have occupied Moscow as victors.
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