The Challenge of Fighting Small Wars While Trying to Adequately Prepare for Big Ones
Gary Anderson
Except for the initial invasion of Iraq in 2003, America has been fighting small, counterinsurgency wars since 9-11. This begs the question of whether fighting small wars inhibits or enhances our readiness to transition to large, high-intensity conflicts against peer or near peer competitors? The answer is complicated and somewhat ambiguous.
The British and French situation at the outset of World War II is instructive. On paper, the two allies started the war in 1939 with two decades more combat experience than the Germans. None-the-less, the Germans thoroughly trounced the British and the French in 1940. What happened? It would be easy to say that the initial German victories were due to a more perceptive use of combined arms -tanks, radios, and aircraft. While this was part of it, it does not explain the overwhelming nature of the initial allied defeats. The Germans were ready for war, and the allies were not. The readiness failures were in the areas of adjusting tactics to emerging technology, training, and leadership.
http://smallwarsjournal.com/jrnl/art/challenge-fighting-small-wars-while-trying-adequately-prepare-big-ones
