Israel & Russia Teach Us How Not to Fight a War

But Ukraine shines. The U.S., however, may be unprepared to take on multiple major conflicts.

Fighting Two Major Regional Conflicts

In my war college training not long after the end of the Cold War, we were instructed in the “two-MRC” doctrine — that is, how to fight two “major regional conflicts” simultaneously. A twist on this was “win-hold-win.” In other words, focus most of your effort and resources on defeating your principal opponent while holding your secondary adversary more or less at bay. Then, once the former is vanquished, mobilize all your resources to defeat the latter. The Allies pursued this approach in World War II where the goal was to win over Nazi Germany first, followed by Japan. Our military doctrine has evolved over time to the point that today we are not well equipped to carry out hostilities against two enemies simultaneously, even on a “win-hold-win” basis.

With this in mind, Israel and Russia provide us with object lessons in how not to wage war, while Ukraine will be studied by future students of strategy on how to do it right. As the prime backer of Israel and Ukraine, the U.S. puts itself at risk at potentially not being up to the challenge of meeting its own strategic needs. A fresh review of military doctrine therefore is in order.

Israel’s Ill-defined Forever Wars

Benjamin Netanyahu’s multifront war goes against all sound doctrine with the risk of making Israel weaker, not stronger.

First, he’s flailing about trying to prosecute a multifront conflict against Hamas in Gaza, Hezbollah in Lebanon and directly with Iran. And there is no apparent win-hold-win element to it. Militarily, the “operational tempo” — i.e., the speed and rate of military activity — is unsustainable longer term as equipment wears down, troops become exhausted and demoralized and the toll on the economy rises. Israel’s budget deficit has doubled in the year since its Gaza incursion to over 8 percent of GDP and could to soar to 15 percent. The GDP itself could contract by up to 10 percent this year, according to the Tel Aviv-based Institute for National Security Studies.

Second, Netanyahu’s government has defined no clear political objective other than “total victory” over Hamas and forcing Hezbollah to relocate north of Lebanon’s Litani River. Nor has it laid out an exit strategy. (Tactically, however, the Israelis have displayed their typical ingeniousness as seen in their taking out hundreds of enemy cadre through booby-trapped communications devices.)

This brings us to another concept studied at war colleges: the “Powell Doctrine.” The late U.S. JCS chairman and NSC advisor Colin Powell laid out eight criteria that should be met before launching a major military operation:

1. Is a vital national security interest threatened?

2. Do we have a clear attainable objective?

3. Have the risks and costs been fully and frankly analyzed?

4. Have all other non-violent policy means been fully exhausted?

5. Is there a plausible exit strategy to avoid endless entanglement?

6. Have the consequences of our action been fully considered?

7. Is the action supported by the people?

8. Do we have genuine broad international support?

I would say Israel fails on all but #1.

Another basic rule of conducting war which is taught to military officers centers on the ground game and the narrative. The New York Times’ Thomas Friedman encapsulates this as it relates to Israel:

All wars come down to two basic questions: Who wins the battle on the ground? And who wins the battle of the story? …Even after a year of warfare, in which Hamas and Hezbollah and Israel have inflicted terrible pain on one another’s forces and civilians, no one has decisively won the battle on the ground or the battle for the story.

It boils down to Israelis needing to ask themselves why they are fighting so many enemies on so many fronts simultaneously, as Friedman notes:

Israel is fighting a multifront war and Israelis still don’t know whether they are fighting to make Israel safe for a Jewish democracy or safe for the prime minister’s political survival.

Netanyahu’s domestic divide-and-conquer strategy puts his personal interests above all else. [H]e has no exit plan for the deepening military crisis, no budget for the deepening economic crisis.

In sum, Israelis find themselves fighting “a forever war that will undermine both Israel’s and America’s credibility and embarrass Israel’s Arab allies.” Netanyahu is throwing Israel’s military might around in a virtual political vacuum, i.e., with no defined end goal in the form of a political settlement framework. After all, war is “a continuation of political intercourse…by other means,” per Clausewitz. American leadership, furthermore, has been wanting. Simply put, the Biden administration’s repeated calls for a two-state solution is not backed by substantive actions. Of course, it is naive to expect the administration to stick its neck out during election season. But Washington’s reluctance to pressure Israel in any meaningful way transcends U.S. administrations, giving rein to Netanyahu’s recklessness.

Russia-Ukraine: Moscow Teaches Us How Not to Fight a War

Vladimir Putin and his incompetent generals have done us a valuable service: they provide us useful lessons in how not to conduct war.

U.S. war colleges teach that history has proven two things: 1) wars are won based on, as Clausewitz asserts, “the destruction of [the enemy’s] forces,” not on “blind aggressiveness,” which will “destroy the attack itself, not the defense;” and 2) committing atrocities only feeds the zeal of an enemy’s will to resist. Russian tactics and strategy in Ukraine — such as they are — reflect stupidity and ultimate self-defeat. The evidence includes over 600,000 dead and wounded Russian troops, 17 Russian flag officers killed in action, the forced retreat of Moscow’s Black Sea fleet by a nation with no appreciable navy, the chaos in logistics, rampant corruption, the massive losses of military equipment and the simple failure to achieve intended territorial gains much less regime change.

Waging war against civilians is the recourse of cowards as well as constituting war crimes. Pursuing a victory based on breaking the will of an adversary’s civilian population, as opposed to undermining their military capacity to resist, is destined for failure. And then come the war crimes indictments. To win a war, military commanders need to know their Clausewitz and Sun Tzu, not their Attila the Hun and Vlad the Impaler. As Winston Churchill admonished, “Vengeance is the most costly and dissipating of luxuries.”

For their part, the Ukrainians have been laser-focused on diminishing Russia’s war-making capabilities through targeted attacks on fuel and munitions depots, air bases and naval assets, transportation networks and by inflicting a heavy, unsustainable body count on Russian troops. At the same time, they have successfully pulled off a diversionary operation in Kursk. Clausewitz would be proud.

The United States is Ill-prepared to Fight Two Major Regional Conflicts

U.S. interventions in Afghanistan and Iraq led strategists and force planners to move away from the two-MRC rubric to concentrating on irregular warfare. This was accompanied by force retrenchments. As the threats from China and Russia rose, however, policymakers have shifted back conceptually toward planning for fighting a two-front war with great powers as addressed in the White House’s National Security Strategy and the Defense Department’s National Defense Strategy. The trouble is, Washington has not matched resources with plans.

The Senate-passed defense budget for fiscal year 2025 constitutes a 3.3 percent increase over 2024; the House version amounts to a one percent increase. Once inflation is taken into account, however, projected defense spending growth will be negative.

At the turn of this century, the U.S. army and Marines each had 13 active divisions; the Navy comprised a dozen carrier battle groups, and the Air Force possessed 20 fighter wings. Today, the Army has 10 active divisions and the Marine Corps is down to four (three active and one reserve). Naval carrier battle groups today amount to 11. And the Air Force has halved the number of aircraft to some 3,000 today. A recent study shows that “the Army has less than two-thirds the forces it would need in its Active Component to handle more than one major regional conflict.” The study further adds that the Air Force is “able to handle only a single major conflict.” And, “The Navy needs a battle force consisting of 400 manned ships to do what is expected of it today. Its current battle force fleet of 297 ships reflects a service that is much too small relative to its tasks.” Finally, Washington has fallen behind in modernizing its defense nuclear programs.

The ongoing Middle East and Ukraine conflicts call into question whether U.S. military capabilities and defense industrial production are up to meeting the demands of providing Israel and Ukraine with adequate war materiel without negatively impacting U.S. warfighting readiness. This applies equally to our allies.

The Ukraine war is a waiting game of attrition in which one side or the other will eventually exhaust itself of manpower and resources. Israel’s expanding and open-ended hostilities run the real risk of sucking the U.S. into direct conflict with Iran. Add to this potential military confrontation with China and/or Russia and all bets are off as to whether Washington is up to the task.

The opinions and characterizations in this article are those of the author, and do not necessarily represent official positions of the U.S. government.