The Anti-ISIS Campaign: Beware the Seeds of Escalation

The Anti-ISIS Campaign: Beware the Seeds of Escalation

09/22/14

Paul R. Pillar

Terrorism, Middle East

The military campaign against ISIS will not become another WW I or Vietnam, but...

The wisdom of any application of military force will involve much more than the goals initially laid out and the resources initially applied to achieve those goals. Those initial conditions are only a snapshot in time of what is inevitably a dynamic process. History has repeatedly shown that overseas military endeavors have a way of becoming something much different from what they began as. History also has repeatedly shown that the dominant type of change is escalation to something bigger and costlier than originally intended, sometimes even to the point of expanding to blunders of tragic proportions.

Several processes, working together or independently, drive the process of escalation. Some of these processes are, considered in isolation, logical and reasonable. Some of them are rooted in universal human nature; some are more characteristically American.

The “Win the War” Objective. A distinctively American (and non-Clausewitzian) way of approaching the use of military force is to believe that if something is worth fighting for, then we ought to realize that we are “at war” and ought to do whatever it takes to “win” the war. This mindset has had a huge influence through the years on discourse in the United States about using the military instrument in foreign affairs, including in more recent years with a so-called “war on terror”. The attitude severs the use of force from all other calculations about the costs and benefits of using it in particular ways and particular circumstances. There thus is no limit to potential escalation as the sometimes elusive “win” is pursued.

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