اقرأ باللغة العربية The title is not mine. I borrowed it from the latest edition (November/December) of Foreign Affairs, which focuses on the wars that the US gets involved in but cannot end. When withdrawal, in and of itself, can have worldwide strategic repercussions, the decision to remain is taken not with a prospect of ultimate victory, but in order to minimise costs. The result is that the war drags on without resolution. So, it is best forgotten. The prime example of this is the US' war in Afghanistan that began in the aftermath of the terrorist attacks of 11 September 2001 and is still ongoing. In the course of the 16 years of the US military presence in that country, days of direct conflict alternated with days of supporting Afghan forces, and days of escalation alternated with days of de-escalation. Even after the US, under former president Barack Obama, summoned the resolve to leave and set a departure date, we find that President Donald Trump, who had called for the US withdrawal during his election campaign, has moved to escalate again. Never before in US history has a war lasted so long. At the time of the Vietnam War, the US had the ability to withdraw; it no longer has the power to take this decision. People living in the US do not hear much about the war in Afghanistan anymore. Amazingly, very few Americans know anything about their government's plans to rebuild the Afghani state and society. Nor do they know how Washington coordinates with other NATO capitals. No one hears anything about that ongoing war anymore. The same predicament applies to Iraq. It was one thing to get in, another to get out. As was the case with Afghanistan, Washington had state-building visions. But states are not built by outside powers. Generally, that occurs when countries get rid of outside powers. The president before last, George Bush Jr, tried to reduce the number of US forces in Iraq. His successor accelerated the withdrawal to the point of leaving only training forces. But they immediately had to increase their military and personnel capacities because of the vacuum created when US forces invaded the first time around, which gave rise, firstly, to Al-Zarqawi and, subsequently, to Al-Baghdadi. Nor was it possible to leave Iraq entirely to Iran. So, not only did forces merely remain, more were added: some air forces here, some special forces there and other forces pooled together with those of allies from around the world. Today, after the liberation of Mosul, the situation in Iraq still refuses to allow the Americans to close that file, not just because of the continued presence of Islamic State remnants, but also because the war in Syria is still in progress. Regardless of US air, training and financial support for the Kurdish-Arab Syrian Democratic Forces, the US cannot leave Syria, technically because it was never there to begin with, at least officially. For all these years, the US has been both present and absent at the same time. It is a complicated situation to be in and can only be dealt with by avoiding to take major decisions. As long as no decisions are taken then maybe the war doesn't exist. The crux of the problem with the US wars in Afghanistan, Iraq and Syria is that there is no precise definition of what the war is about, no conception of the endgame and no definition of what constitutes victory or defeat. Is the purpose of the war to put Iran in its place? Is it to change unlikable regimes? Or is to fight the terrorism of the Islamic State, Al-Qaeda and others? Or is this a war against Russia, which nobody in Washington appears to be able to classify as friend or foe? Historically, Russia is the enemy from the Cold War legacy and perhaps, too, because it entered Ukraine. But it was on the same side of the negotiating table, next to the US and other NATO members and across the table from Iran. No one will dispute that Washington is not happy about the Russian presence in Syria, but such sentiments did not preclude coordinating with Moscow in the course of many military operations in that country. What is new in the relationship with Russia is the onrush of a different type of war: cyber-attacks. It is a fact, at least according to US security agencies, that Russia altered the course of the last presidential elections, not by just by hacking the national committee of the Democratic Party, but also by directly tampering with social networking instruments. Hillary Clinton's electoral campaign took place not in Washington or New York but in Moscow. Not a drop of blood has been spilled in this war with Russia. But it had an aim, which was to undermine the prospects of one candidate and ensure the success of another who, ironically, is no longer able to implement his electoral pledge to improve Russian-US relations. Nothing exists to govern or regulate this new type of warfare. There are no international laws or rules of war that apply to cyberwars. It is a totally new and unprecedented phenomenon. But as long as there is no bloodshed and there are no casualties it is not a war in the established sense of the term. Therefore, it is discarded from the memory of US wars and only mentioned in connection with the actions taken by the special investigator in the Russia probe. With regard to the war against terrorism, an important chapter has ended with the fall of Mosul and Raqqa, the flight of a large number of terrorists and the capture of up to 70,000 or more of them. But we cannot say that this war has ended. Rather, we have to ask where have the terrorists gone? From where will they continue the war? During the Vietnam War, the military operation was fluid both inside Vietnam and in the larger context of Indochina. But the war against terrorism has no geographical borders, other than those of planet earth. As this is the case, we cannot speak of a war with lines of defence or lines of offence, or even in the sense of an ongoing event that would have a place in the daily headlines. If a war is not in the news it slips into the realm of oblivion. “Forgotten wars” are still wars, of course. As long as people are killed and wounded, and cities and civilisations are destroyed, there are wars. Nevertheless, they are forgotten because they have dragged on so long without attaining a result. They have been unable to attain a result because strategic thought is still unable to contend with these types of war, whether we speak of wars that unfold under the conditions of the dismantlement and collapse of the state (as is the case in Afghanistan and Iraq), or wars that are so novel that no one thinks of them in this context. If the cyberwar between the US and Russia is not a war in the generally accepted sense, then how could it be classed as cold or hot? Conversely, if you cannot classify it as cold, hot or in-between, how can you call it a war? The writer is chairman of the board, CEO and director of the Regional Centre for Strategic Studies.
