However, despite the warning signs the West may take from these changing conditions, the fact remains nation after nation has signed onto and are generally benefiting from their BRI investments. Fundamentally, China has achieved tremendous economic growth and international influence while achieving major strategic objectives without providing clear intentions of their ultimate goals. Additionally, their success should be a red flag to all casual observers of international relations. This is more than twice the population of the United States.Ĭhinese efforts can certainly be argued as self-serving and in no way philanthropic, as their human rights record consistently shows. According to the World Bank, the Chinese have lifted more than 850 million people out of poverty. While the United States has been exporting its military efforts pursuing terrorists in the darkest corners of the world, the Chinese have exported infrastructure, economic opportunity, and a worldwide trade initiative involving 125 nations. Which nation has benefited from their operational efficiency the most? The global war on terror has lasted nearly 20 years, while the Chinese have been operating the BRI since 2013, a mere seven years. As an example, during the United States’ $6.4 trillion global counter-terrorism venture the Chinese invested a “humble” $1 trillion in the Belt Road Initiative (BRI). Meanwhile, peer nations have endeavored to change the international system through sub-conflict employment of various elements of national power in the background. has been singularly-focused on defeating enemies the only way it knows how through the employment of overwhelming military strength.

As the saying goes, “was the juice worth the squeeze?” I would argue, no. military must candidly assess the results. Ĭonsidering the cost in both resources and lives, the U.S. Since 2001, the US has spent more than $6.4 trillion dollars fighting terrorism in the name of a safer world. LSCO is indeed a lost art, and I hope it will remain so. However, the Department of Defense still bemoans the loss of the military’s ability to conduct LSCO, arguing it is a lost art, and out of inevitability, must be retrained and reemphasized. Even a minimal understanding of recent history tries to tell military leaders they must refocus for success. The present international environment does not warrant the singular emphasis on LSCO. military’s obvious shortcomings in achieving national strategic objectives, it continues to put its focus on LSCO in an effort to reclaim its own organizational relevancy by attempting to revitalize an irrational necessity. The United States has a demonstrated propensity to engage in “socially sanctioned violence” (JP 3, I-3) much like Sun Tzu’s defeated warrior- seeking victory after going to war. America’s longest war has provided a glaringly obvious reality: A military built for conventional large scale combat cannot guarantee victory in any other form of conflict. anything, it is that war alone does not act as a panacea for foreign policy problems. If the past 20 years of continuous war have taught the U.S. Nations strive to develop weapons and tactics more destructive than the previous generation in a deadly competitive and deliberate march toward the perception of security, driven by an arms industry forever pursuing increasingly astronomical financial benefits to a few and fatal consequences to national policies, military members, and the common citizen for most. As warfare, weaponry, and military technologies consistently evolve, war has continued to exact its fee in terms of lives and resources, despite research and development advances in precision weaponry and improved intelligence collection. dollars and an estimated 121 million military and civilian lives. According to John Harrington and Grant Suneson in an article from USA Today entitled “What were the 13 Most Expensive Wars in US History?” major wars from 1914 through the current war on terror have cost the world a staggering $12.34 trillion in current U.S. Yet these two cursory measurements can shed light upon the sheer devastation war can, and has repeatedly, wrought. Of course, most would agree that reducing the effects of war to a simple calculus of blood and treasure is crass and callous. War is one of the oldest and most terrible of human endeavors and Large Scale Combat Operations (LSCO) is war at its conventional zenith. “A brilliant man would find a way to not fight a war.”–Isoroku Yamamoto, Marshal Admiral, Imperial Japanese Navy (IJN)

Its been lost to time