THE AMERICAN ERA OF WAR
Yahara lived until 1972, long enough to see his strategic wisdom played out as the last U.S. fighting units left South Vietnam. By then, he knew that he had charted a conceptual template that subsequent enemies of the United States would apply with deadly consequence. History would make Yahara’s revelations in the death cave the enduring template for challenging the global might of the U.S. military in a new epoch that historians term the “American era of warfare.”
Japan’s bloody defeat on Okinawa, followed three weeks later by the bombing of Hiroshima, ended a three-hundred-year run of European dominance in war. Virtually all historically significant wars fought between the Treaty of Westphalia in 1648 and the Japanese surrender in Tokyo Bay were shaped by the colonial and state-on-state actions of Western European armies. Of course, not all major wars of this period were fought by European militaries, but the shadow of European military skill, technology, and global reach affected most. Prior to Okinawa every military on the planet either fought using European methods or, in the case of anticolonial forces, sought means to defeat European militaries. After Okinawa, European militaries became witnesses, bystanders, aggressive mimickers of or allies to the new dominant actor so powerful that it displaced the European, in the American era of war.
The foundational element in the epochal shift from the European to American era was the U.S. development of and willingness to use nuclear weapons. The global fear engendered by the horrors of Hiroshima and Nagasaki took off the table any prospect of a third world war fought between great powers. Of course all of the traditional elements of military competition—greed, envy, hegemonic ambitions, and ethnic and religious hatred—remained and flourished after World War II. Yet the prospects of mutual destruction triggered by escalation to a nuclear response served to eliminate total, apocalyptic war as a reasonable option for competition among the great powers, principally the United States and the Soviet Union.
Since the invention of expensive bronze artillery, the power of a military system has been dependent on the economic power of the state. U.S. economic dominance emerged when the horribly destructive bombings and invasions in Europe and Asia left the United States the last untouched great power. The disappearance of global prewar competition was the second factor that served to usher in the American era. U.S. nuclear dominance has led to two generations of “limited” conflicts fought for limited strategic ends, often in the most distant and inhospitable corners of the globe. Often these wars have pitted a Western military (that of Israel, Britain, or France) against a non-Western military, often acting as a surrogate for a competing nuclear-armed adversary.
Not all wars in the American era have been fought by Americans. Nevertheless, the long shadow of U.S. technology, doctrine, and tactical methods can be found in all of them, regardless of opponent or level of war, from preinsurgency in places like the Philippines to something approaching general war in the Middle East and East Asia. We know from many years of observed behavior that aggression in the American era is practiced by an assortment of healthy conventional states, rogue states, and transnational entities. It works for enemies at many places along the spectrum of warfare—from, again, preinsurgency in places like the Philippines to full-blown insurgencies in Iraq and Afghanistan, to what amounts nearly to conventional war in Lebanon and Korea.
At the strategic level, wars in the American era generally have started through mutual miscalculation. The enemy, usually a regional potentate with limited hegemonic ambitions, seeks to achieve his aggressive ends while dissuading a Western power from interfering. From Lin Biao to Ho Chi Minh to Osama bin Laden, our enemies’ leaders have embraced a consistent operational and tactical pattern of behavior to confront the militaries of first-world states. Their intent has not been to win in battle so much as to avoid losing. They have sought to stretch out warfare and to kill intruders, not as a means to an end but as an end in itself. They are able to match Western firepower with iron will, familiarity with terrain and culture, willingness to die, and selection of battlefields in very far and inhospitable places.
As Colonel Yahara predicted on Okinawa, none of the United States’ more recent enemies have succeeded in winning conventional fights. All of these regional hegemonic leaders have telegraphed their intentions, in unambiguously clear language and actions. They also have established a remarkably straightforward pattern of response based on common sense, a keen sense of U.S. military capabilities, and will to persevere. This collection of bad actors has demonstrated a remarkably refined ability to learn from their mistakes and the mistakes of their malevolent fellow travelers.
In a curious twist of conventional wisdom, enemies in the American era have been remarkably open and forthright about their aggressive intent. Kim Il Sung stated his military objective as the reunification of Korea, and the North Koreans have held to this aim for seventy years. Ho Chi Minh never strayed from his dream of reunifying Vietnam under his rule. Saddam and bin Laden never wavered from their aggressive intentions. Unfortunately, a succession of U.S. leaders has shifted strategic objectives based on momentary perceptions of popular support. If the enemy’s past behavior has been so open and consistent, we should treat his declarations as truthful, sincere, and consequently worthy of our attention. We should add the enemy’s confidence, fidelity, and winning style into our calculation of future challenges.
The wisdom of Colonel Yahara provides all sides with a template for winning wars in the American era. He tells our enemies that winning begins with a willingness to translate sacrifice into a national strategic advantage. He tells them that American vulnerabilities begin with American public opinion and the reluctance of American Soldiers to die. So the first principle is to kill as publicly and as horrifically as possible. Also, avoid the “hard kill” whenever possible: infantry knows how to fight back. Truck drivers and cooks traveling in open trucks are easy kills.
Yahara knew that his greatest ally was time. Americans are impatient and want to win quickly. Yahara knew that Americans would die merely from the natural attrition that attends long wars. He learned on Okinawa that the United States can be beaten only on the ground. Opposition on the sea and in the air is a senseless diversion. Thus a successful opposition strategy begins by “spotting” to the U.S. control of the air and sea (what contemporary gurus call the “global commons”).
Yahara taught that the will is superior to weaponry. Thus, like the Japanese, contemporary enemies of the United States tend to follow a strategy of repurposing older weapons and technologies to fight superior U.S. technologies. Watch any newsreel today provided by the likes of ISIS, the Taliban, Al Qaeda, or other successful rogues. They have left behind captured air and ground systems in favor of an assortment of portable, low-tech substitutes carried by ground Soldiers—for example, shoulder-fired and tripod-mounted antiair and antitank missiles. Newer weapons of our enemies are also derivative in nature, from cell phones to off-the-shelf drones for aerial reconnaissance. Just as in Yahara’s day, the greatest killers of Americans remain the simple mortar, mine, and small arm.
The tactics employed by Yahara remain the tactics of choice for all contemporary enemies: hide from orbiting aircraft and drones, and dig in, fortify, disperse, and hide in cities among the people, where the Americans will not strike. Fight close and make human shields of the innocent to obviate the killing effects of U.S. tactical weapons. Use social media to showcase every error that causes casualties. The Americans who fought and destroyed Yahara’s army fought a “war without mercy.” By 1945 revelations of endless Japanese atrocities in the Philippines, human banzai attacks on virtually every defended atoll, and of the thousands of Americans dead from aerial kamikaze suicide attacks had left U.S. Soldiers without empathy for their enemy. The Japanese had become so dehumanized that “any dead Jap was a good Jap.” Things are different now. If alive today Yahara would envy our enemies who exploit rules of engagement to extract themselves from losing fights. Of course, our enemies fight without such rules.
If war were a football game, Yahara’s asymmetric warfare team would yield a winning record of five-two-two over the seventy years since Okinawa. Enemies such as Saddam in 1991 and any number of other Middle Eastern conventional wannabies would suffer a zero-and-seven season when attempting to mimic Western states in the use of their conventional (and expensive) weapons and doctrine.
WHAT DOES COLONEL YAHARA TEACH