"An Unlimited Attack on Limited War Draws a Counterattack" Topic

… on Theory

"A limited or small war, one Iraq War veteran quipped, "is one in which you're getting shot at, but no one cares." Since colonial days, Americans have fought small wars, but only after World War II, have they called them limited. Donald Stoker, in Why America Loses Wars: Limited War and U.S. Strategy from the Korean War to the Present (Cambridge University Press, 2019), tells us that America loses wars because many tenets of limited war are wrong. His book has drawn favorable reviews, with a particularly perceptive one by Adam Wunische; and scattered criticism, with some calling it too theoretical to influence leaders, a put-down that seems at odds with the considerable sway that limited-war theory itself has long held over those same leaders.

Ideas of limited war evolved during the Cold War, as a constrained but ill-defined form of armed conflict meant to avoid triggering a nuclear conflagration. In the global context, the United States defended South Korea and South Vietnam to deter Communist aggression elsewhere. Yet the Cold War setting led the United States to restrain how it fought, lest China or the Soviet Union intervene, as China did in Korea and could have again in Vietnam…"
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Amicalement
Armand

"….tells us that America loses wars because many tenets of limited war are wrong".

I didn't check the article, but have to agree with the above quote.

Fighting wars with one or both hands tied behind your back leads to predictable results, especially when the other side isn't similarly constrained.

Winning or losing wars is apparently not particularly important to the foreign policy of the western bloc.

Rather, the western powers seek to maintain their own security; grow their economies; grow their bloc; avoid the severe and multi-leveled disruptions of an all-out war between major powers; and avoid civilization-ending conflict.

Since WW2, the western powers have only been subject to relatively minor attacks (e.g., Falklands, 9/11); have become very wealthy across the breadth of their populations; have added territory (e.g., Japan, South Korea, ex-Warsaw Pact countries); have only been in direct warfare with other powers of equivalent strength once, 70 years ago (Korean War); and have avoided nuclear war.

So the limited war doctrine seems to have been doing its bit in the execution of foreign policy for the last 75-ish years.

Disclaimer: I haven't read the linked article from the original post.

Imho… the article is interesting….

Amicalement
Armand