DESERT STORM, THE FORGOTTEN LESSON

The twentieth anniversary of the Gulf War of 1991 is passing with little notice. Yet the war was one of those pivot points in the history of the United States when the perceptions of the past give way to a different focus. Perhaps the small number of backward looks is due to the intervening chaos of the Twenty-First Century’s inauspicious beginning. Perhaps the lack of attention is a result of the extraordinary degree of success that was enjoyed by the United States and its Coalition partners in 1991. Whatever the reason, the Gulf War and Operation Desert Storm—the name of the military operation under which the war was prosecuted—are now little more than historical footnotes.

How was the war an historic pivot point for the United States? Most notably, the event erased the last vestiges of the international funk into which the nation had fallen after Vietnam. For almost two decades, the U.S. had been afraid of its own shadow. Every foreign policy issue had been considered in the context of, we can’t have another Vietnam. The attitude surely discouraged involvement in a number of ill-defined messes around the globe. But it also hindered action in more clear-cut situations.

The Iraqi invasion of Kuwait on August 2, 1990, was just such a situation. In response, President George H.W. Bush on August 5, 1990, set a tone not heard much in the preceding twenty years: “This will not stand.” Thus commenced months of both diplomatic activity to bring other nations on board and military preparations for a possible armed intervention. Something else that commenced were months of, we’re getting ourselves into another Vietnam. But George H.W. Bush was not to be dissuaded. The diplomatic efforts to build a coalition succeeded, and when Iraq failed to leave Kuwait, the armed intervention—war—followed.

Air attacks began on January 17, 1991, and a ground invasion of Kuwait and southeastern Iraq started on February 24. By March 3 the fighting was over. The enemy, Iraq, was vanquished, papers were signed, and the victors came home to parades and celebrations. It was a classic military victory. So much for that disagreeable little episode a few years back in Southeast Asia.

But righting a wrong and erasing the funk of Vietnam had downsides. For one thing, at least a few individuals in Islamic nations were disturbed by the intrusion of the West, particularly the United States. Cultural and religious norms had been violated. Perhaps feelings of belligerent inferiority had been stoked. The simmering hatred for the West and the United States became apparent to all on September 11, 2001.

Another downside seems to have been the creation of a false impression in the minds of some in the victorious nation, the United States. That false impression concerned the apparent ease of applying military might. The leading U.S. military men in the Gulf War, General Colin Powell, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and General Norman Schwarzkopf Jr., Commander of U.S. Central Command, had insisted on adequate—no, more than adequate, overwhelming—forces. A veteran of World War II, George H.W. Bush agreed with the need.

And the force that was put together for the Gulf War was indeed overwhelming: in excess of 520,000 members of the U.S. military alone. Other nations added at least another 100,000.

But the lesson of victory resulting from the application of this overwhelming force was not learned by all, including apparently the Secretary of Defense at the time, Richard B. Cheney. When the United States embarked on the Afghanistan and Iraq wars in 2001 and 2003, respectively, the numbers of troops involved were much below the 1991 Gulf War levels. There is no evidence that Mr. Cheney, now the Vice President, expressed any concerns about the relatively small force the nation was committing.

The maximum number of U.S. troops in Afghanistan and Iraq combined has never exceeded 200,000. The combined areas of the two countries total over 400,000 square miles. The operational area of the 1991 Gulf War—Kuwait and the southeastern corner of Iraq—was 20,000 square miles at the most. So the math is more than 500,000 troops for 20,000 square miles in 1991 versus less than 200,000 troops for more than 400,000 square miles in the wars of this century, a 25-to-1 versus a 0.5-to-1 ratio. Perhaps those numbers explain the elusiveness of a clear cut victory in Iraq and Afghanistan. Incidentally, the troops-to-square mile ratio in South Vietnam at the height of the U.S. involvement was approximately 1.3-to-1. As older readers may recall, that ratio proved inadequate to establish physical control over the entire country.

Thus a largely forgotten lesson of the Gulf War and Desert Storm—and Vietnam—is that seeking an outright military victory requires a massive commitment of manpower. If the committed forces are less than massive, the nation should lower its expectations and increase its time horizons. Simply keeping hostile forces off-balance for a lengthy period might be the best achievable outcome. But pursuing a classical military victory when the manpower commitment has not been made has proved a fool’s errand.