Strategic Intelligence and the Decision to Go to War
Leon Hall | November 2, 2018
The United States’ track record in post–World War II major conflicts has been less than stellar. In his 2016 article, “Why Can’t America Win its Wars,†Peter Mansoor points out that America has only three outright victories in its last eight conflicts. Mansoor is not alone; many scholars have written about the recent failures of America to achieve decisive victory. Attribution of these failures is widespread: poor intelligence; an imbalance of ends, ways, and means; policy-strategy mismatches; improper use of instruments of national power; deficient host-nation commitment; and a lack of popular support, just to name a few.
Arguably, however, the most significant driver of American failure is the too-frequent commitment of military forces without fully understanding the nature of the environment.
https://mwi.usma.edu/strategic-intelligence-decision-go-war/
