I don't have a comprehensive, well thought out, strategy in my back pocket that I can pull out here. Before tackling grand strategy, the Small Wars Council might want to start another parallel thread for the desired post-war situation. Identifying where it is that we are trying to go needs to be clarified in this war, before coming up with a proper strategy on how to get there. If you don't know where you are going, any old road will do.



Quote Originally Posted by Lastdingo View Post
I believe the socialistic system rather collapsed once it had accumulated enough problems over time. The primary problem being that they competed on even level in the arms race with much less economic power from the beginning. The Soviet Union spent about a quarter of its GDP on military, while the western nations spent never more than one tenth. Imagine the west playing total war for fourty years and you'll see why the Warsaw Pact had to collapse.
It's indeed a huge accomplishement that the held out for so long, the planning economy and one-party dictatorship must have been a huge success (in the wrong direction), very different from our usual perceptions.
I can't prove that, but this seems a pretty believable explanation of the collapse of the USSR. Or at least a one paragraph explanation. Since communism was a transnational movement that ulltimately had to be defeated in the minds of those working for it, it is natural to look to the Cold War as an example on how to deal with the challenge from an international movement like Al Qaeda.

But since containment by means of keeping an army in Western Europe and falling back on mutually assured destruction seems ill-suited to deter this foe, the Cold War might not give us any useful clues.

Can anybody think of any other conflicts with international movements in history that might provide some insight? Some have invoked the Anarchist movement, but are there any others that come to mind? We shouldn't be too proud to borrow or adapt a strategy from those who came before us, if one already exists. I know history never exactly repeats itself, but as Mark Twain said, it sure does seem to rhyme.