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I will be damned if I will permit the U.S. Army, its institutions, its doctrine, and its traditions to be destroyed just to win this lousy war.1
Organizational structures that encourage the presentation of innovative proposals and their careful reviews make innovation less likely 2
THESE QUOTES ENGENDER two truisms about the military organizations of great powers: they embrace the big-war paradigm, and because they are large, hierarchical institutions, they generally innovate incrementally. This means that great-power militaries do not innovate well, particularly when the required innovations and adaptations lie outside the scope of conventional war. In other words, great powers do not win small wars because they are great powers: their militaries must maintain a central competence in symmetric warfare to preserve their great-power status vis-A-vis other great powers; and their militaries must be large organizations. These two characteristics combine to create a formidable competence on the plains of Europe or the deserts of Iraq. However, these two traits do not produce institutions and cultures that exhibit a propensity for counterguerrilla warfare.
In addition to a big-war culture, there are some contradictions that derive from the logic that exists when a superior industrial or postindustrial power faces an inferior, semifeudal, semicolonial, or preindustrial adversary. On one hand, the great power intrinsically brings overwhelmingly superior resources and technology to this type of conflict. On the other hand, the seemingly inferior opponent generally exhibits superior will, demonstrated by a willingness to accept higher costs and to persevere against many odds. "Victory or Death" is not simply a statement on a bumper sticker; it is a dilemma that embodies asymmetric conflicts. The qualitatively or quantitatively inferior opponent fights with limited means for a strategic objective-independence. Conversely, the qualitatively or quantitatively superior opponent fights with potentially unlimited means for limited ends-maintaining some peripheral territory or outpost. Seemingly weaker military forces often prevail over those with superior firepower and technology because they are fighting for survival.'
History offers many examples of big-power failures in the context of asymmetric conflict: the Romans in the Teutoburg Forest, the British in the American Revolution, the French in the Peninsular War, the French in Indochina and Algeria, the Americans in Vietnam, the Russians in Afghanistan and Chechnya, and the Americans in Somalia. This...