Transnational Thursday is a thread for people to discuss international news, foreign policy or international relations history. Feel free as well to drop in with coverage of countries you’re interested in, talk about ongoing dynamics like the wars in Israel or Ukraine, or even just whatever you’re reading.
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Well, the short argument is that it worked quite well in Venezuela 3 months ago. It also worked pretty well in Libya and Syria, if you'll overlook the civilians who died in the ensuing civil war. But it accomplished its strategic goals.
But my longer argument is that this is something unprecedented, qualitatively different from any air war the world has seen before. The US and Israel have had decades to plan this war, plus months to build up forces in the region. They have satellite and drone intelligence to locate all targets, complete air dominance, vast numbers of precision bombs, and now bunkur buster bombs to attack underground sites. They're striking something like 1000 targets per day, which is roughly equal to all the bombs dropped over the entire Bosnian air campaign. There really isn't much a ground force could do that isn't already being done from the air, unless you just want that political value of a man in uniform raising a flag. These days we could even deepfake that too.
That argument would be very wrong, as would the analogies to Libya and Syria. The Venezuelan operation worked precisely because it put men on the ground to force the issue (and also probably because Maduro's subordinates sold him out). Syria and Libya had ongoing civil wars where western air power was merely supporting a favored faction. Gaddafi doesn't get overthrown if there isn't a massive rebellion on the ground; likewise for Assad. The Trump administration (at best) seems to be wishcasting a renewed uprising after standing by and doing nothing while the IRI massacred protestors, but available evidence is that it's not going to happen.
Which is why the US is currently rushing a couple of battalions of marines from the Pacific to (probably) seize a couple of outlying islands. The idea that this operation has been meticulously planned over the course of decades is cope.
Unless you have ground forces to stop them, air power cannot stop the enemy from reconstituting once the bombing stops. There's a reason modern doctrine for the application of air power isn't "we're going to bomb until everyone's dead." The military value of air power isn't in raw killing effect, it is in the way air power allows you to precisely strike at key targets in a way that disrupts and degrades the enemy's ability to fight back. That can be an incredible force multiplier, but you still need ground forces to actually engage the enemy.
Ah, the "purist" view. So it's not a "real" strategic air win unless it comes 100% from the air, we're not allowed to make use of commando raids or friendly local factions. In fact, it was over before it began, since the mass protests in Iran disqualified the Air Force from being able to win "fairly." I suspect most military commanders don't see it that way though.
Unlike decadent Iran, which fights with large expensive ballistic missiles that are in short supply, the US fights with cheap mass produced drones like the LUCAS. There's really no need for the bombing to ever stop, unless Iran has one of those force fields from Dune that can only be penetrated by a slow-moving knife attack.
Yes. If you have to utilize ground troops to achieve your objective, it was not accomplished solely through air power. You cannot equivocate between a special operation with air support and and a pure air campaign.
Sure, just so long as you realize that you're talking about some strange hypothetical situation of "pure air power" that's never actually been tried. In real wars, countries use every asset they reasonably can, which includes spies, commando raids, and allying with local dissidents. The operation in Venezuela is about as close to "pure" air power as you're likely to ever see, they only sent in special forces for one brief helicopter raid for political reasons when it obviously would have been much easier to just strike Maduro from the air.
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