Spotted an article today on the History New Network (HNN): Win, Lose, or Draw?
This got my attention because I have outlined a book I may start work on next year (2017) called Future American Wars: Understanding the Next Twenty Years. This book is intended to complete a trio of books, one on understanding insurgencies (American’s Modern Wars), one on understanding conventional combat (War by Numbers — release date still August 2017) and this one covering the situation going forward.
My opening chapter is called: A Losing Record.
What they are recording in this article is that:
- For conventional conflict we have 3 wins, 1 loss and 1 tie.
- For other conflicts (what they call the “gray zone”) there are 9 wins, 8 losses and 42 draws.
Anyhow, haven’t checked the individual cases, and in some cases it depends on how your interpret win, lose and draw; but it does bring out a fundamental problem that I was partly trying to address in America’s Modern Wars, which is our track record in these conflicts is not great. My book primarily focused on Iraq and Afghanistan, which I why I felt I needed to third book to cover all the other cases of interventions, peacekeeping operations, and so forth.
Anyhow, the SOCOM briefing chart can be blown up to large size and is definitely worth looking at.