Three Long and Costly Wars

The US wars in Vietnam, Iraq, and Afghanistan display a biased decisional pattern rooted in the non-rational tendencies of a “means-driven” process. Critical lessons from these three long wars emerge from examining decision-making in the four stages of these conflicts. Policy makers must recognize benefits in contingency plans, continuous assessment, and comprehensive policy evaluation. At the same time, they must acknowledge potential dangers in precipitous intervention; illusionary consensus; ad hoc argumentation, temporizing, and non-decisions; a lack of military preparedness; overconfidence about likely mission success; deference to costs in policymaking; and plans that can assume a life of their own.

The Iraq War, 2003–2011

The George W. Bush administration showed signs of biased decision-making before and after the 2003 Iraq invasion, which it claimed was necessary because Iraq possessed weapons of mass destruction. With Donald Rumsfeld as secretary of defense, the administration focused narrowly on regime change and failed to plan for the aftermath of war. With the fall of Baghdad, the administration expanded US goals under the Coalition Provisional Authority without the capabilities to pursue them. Although the administration adjusted course in 2007, its new “surge” strategy, based on counterinsurgency principles, had the US military pursuing modest goals to suit available capabilities. Then the administration benefited unexpectedly from an alliance with Sunni insurgents (the Anbar Awakening) and the stand-down of the principal Shiite militia opposing US forces. US strategy finally amounted to staying the course through 2011, when the Obama administration chose to leave Iraq rather than seek a negotiated compromise.

The Afghanistan War, 2001–?

With the September 11, 2001 attack by al-Qaeda terrorists on the World Trade Center, the Bush administration conceded to decisional bias. It committed to Operation Enduring Freedom in Afghanistan without duly assessing the implications of a Taliban defeat or how it might serve the administration’s “global war on terrorism.” Once engaged, the administration defined the US mission in Afghanistan broadly yet remained detached from harsh realities—including Afghan government corruption and ineptitude, finite alliance resources (in the International Security Assistance Force), and a Taliban resurgence—that hampered the achievement of these goals. The Obama administration capped US involvement in pursuing the limited goal of “reversing” the Taliban’s momentum. Although the administration increased US force levels in Afghanistan, it did so modestly and temporarily and then pursued a troop exit despite the country’s ongoing violence and instability. The administration stuck to its plan, slowing, not reversing, the withdrawal as the country’s security conditions worsened.

The Vietnam War, 1965–1973

The Vietnam War followed a biased decisional pattern. The Johnson administration, with Robert McNamara as secretary of defense, committed early to a military solution. It extended the US mission to include a full-blown air war (Rolling Thunder) that was true to neither a political nor a military strategy, and the administration fought a full-blown ground war without concern for the war’s critical political dimension. Then, when reaching its limit, the administration sought mainly to manage the US mission’s costs, despite the apparent success of a pacification strategy. Finally, when victory proved elusive, Richard Nixon and his national security adviser, Henry Kissinger, escalated the war by invading Cambodia, supporting the invasion of Laos, and initiating the Linebacker bombing campaigns over North Vietnam. They nonetheless prioritized an exit from the conflict, as registered in the terms of the 1973 Paris Peace Accord.

The US Wars in Vietnam, Iraq, and Afghanistan

Because overarching policy goals are distant and open to interpretation, policy makers yield to cognitive bias by constructing policies around visible elements (salient referents). US wartime policy makers thus defined US goals in Vietnam, Iraq, and Afghanistan first to serve proximate goals; then to serve disjoined tasks; eventually to serve available US (political, economic, and military) resources; and finally to serve a fixed-exit schedule, at which point leaving became the primary objective. In consequence, they exaggerated the benefits of preferred policies, ignored their accompanying costs and requirements, and underappreciated the benefits of available alternatives. These non-rational tendencies, though pervasive in decision-making, become disabling problems in the complex environment of asymmetric conflicts. With their many interdependent parts, these demanding environments confound planning and tax resources. The result was shortsighted, suboptimal policies that failed to live up to ever-diminishing expectations.