I find myself shaking my head in agreement all throughout this piece from Red State. Here is a taste:
One of the most frustrating features of the GWOT in general and the war in Iraq in particular is the continual bleating of critics on the necessity for involving NATO and, more improbably, Islamic nations in the ongoing combat and stability operations in Afghanistan and Iraq.
Why this is supposedly desirable, I really haven’t a clue. Coalition warfare is a suboptimal arrangement even when your allies are ready and willing – few of which are extant today. Witness the dog’s breakfast created in World War II by acceding to British demands for an invasion of Italy, Churchill’s second bite at the “soft underbelly of Europe” following the Gallipoli debacle of 1915, and giving the plodding, unimaginative Montgomery the priority of effort in a strategic sideshow in the Low Countries at the expense of a direct strike at the German heartland.
Coalitions are not metallurgical alloys. A blend of national armies does not created the military equivalent of steel. Rather it produces a questionable and brittle force that as a whole is often much less capable than its individual components, creating sort of a reverse synergy. Coalitions bring grave difficulties -- politically, strategically, operationally, and tactically -- for a modest to negative contribution to the overall effort. True, it is better to have allies than to not have them, but it is better to be alone than to have uncertain allies.
It is a good piece and worth reading the
whole thing.
