Zero-Sum Victory: What We're Getting Wrong About War

by Christopher D. Kolenda

Overview

2021 Foreword INDIES Gold Winner for War & History

Why have the major post-9/11 US military interventions turned into quagmires? Despite huge power imbalances in the United States' favor, significant capacity-building efforts, and repeated tactical victories by what many observers call the world's best military, the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq turned intractable. The US government's fixation on zero-sum, decisive victory in these conflicts is a key reason why military operations to overthrow two developing-world regimes failed to successfully achieve favorable and durable outcomes.

In Zero-Sum Victory, retired US Army colonel Christopher D. Kolenda identifies three interrelated problems that have emerged from the government's insistence on zero-sum victory. First, the US government has no organized way to measure successful outcomes other than a decisive military victory, and thus, selects strategies that overestimate the possibility of such an outcome. Second, the United States is slow to recognize and modify or abandon losing strategies; in both cases, US officials believe their strategies are working, even as the situation deteriorates. Third, once the United States decides to withdraw, bargaining asymmetries and disconnects in strategy undermine the prospects for a successful transition or negotiated outcome.

Relying on historic examples and personal experience, Kolenda draws thought-provoking and actionable conclusions about the utility of American military power in the contemporary world—insights that serve as a starting point for future scholarship as well as for important national security reforms.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780813152769
Publisher:	University Press of Kentucky
Publication date:	10/26/2021
Pages:	400
Sales rank:	337,024
Product dimensions:	6.30(w) x 9.00(h) x 1.30(d)
Age Range:	18 Years

About the Author

Christopher D. Kolenda is a West Point graduate, internationally renowned combat leader, and retired Army colonel. He holds a PhD in War Studies from King's College, London, and is the editor of Leadership: The Warrior's Art. He is the first American to have fought the Taliban as a commander in combat and to engage them in peace talks.

Table of Contents

List of Illustrations
Glossary of Key Actors
1. Introduction
2. The Past as Prologue: The Vietnam War
3. Part I: Toward a War Termination Framework
4. Further Defining War Termination
5. The Decisive Victory Paradigm Undermines Strategy for Irregular War
6. Part II: The Pursuit of Decisive Victory in Afghanistan
7. Light Footprints to a Long War
8. Plans Hit Reality: A Recent History of Bad Neighbors and Worse Governance
9. The Fall of the Taliban and the Bonn Conference
10. America's Bureaucratic Way of War
11. Conclusion to Part II
12. Part III: Persisting in a Failing Approach
13. Accelerating Success, 2003-2007
14. Failing to Keep Pace with the Insurgency, 2007-2009
15. The Good War Going Badly
16. Surging into the Good War
17. More Shovels in the Quicksand
18. Misapplying the Iraq Formula
19. Assessments and Risks
20. Conclusion to Part III
21. Part IV: Ending the War in Afghanistan
22. Reconciliation versus Transition
23. Reconciling Reconciliation
24. Competing Visions: Karzai, Taliban, Pakistan
25. Exploratory Talks: Building and Damaging Confidence
26. Coming Off the Rails
27. Fallout: BSA, Bergdahl, and the 2014 Elections
28. Conclusion to Part IV
29. Part V: Pursuit of Decisive Victory in Iraq
30. Operation Iraqi Freedom: Plans without a Strategy
31. A Complicated Approach to a Complex Situation
32. From Decisive Victory to Transition
33. Conclusion to Part V
34. Part VI: Staying the Course in Iraq
35. Achieving Milestones while Losing the War
36. Trapped by Partners in a Losing Strategy
37. Mirror Imaging Civil-Military Relations
38. To Surge or Not to Surge: A Possible Win Beats a Certain Loss
39. A New Plan on Shaky Foundations
40. Conclusion to Part VI
41. Part VII: Ending the War in Iraq
42. The Surge Misunderstood
43. The Absence of a Political Strategy Erodes US Leverage
44. New Administration, Similar Challenges
45. Conclusion to Part VII
46. Part VIII: Implications
47. Iraq and Afghanistan Compared
48. Implications for US Foreign Policy
49. Implications for Scholarship
51. Abbreviations
53. Key Events in the Afhanistan Conflict
54. Key Events in the Iraq Conflict
50. Notes
51. Acknowledgements
52. Index

Editorial Reviews

10/18/2021

Retired Army colonel Kolenda (editor, Leadership: The Warrior’s Art) examines in this persuasive if wonky study why America’s post-9/11 military interventions have not gone as planned. He contends that the U.S. government has been unable to devise a durable plan for securing peace and stability after initial battlefield victories, and criticizes the inflexibility of U.S. military leaders who remained wedded for years to the idea of keeping the Afghan army small and highly professionalized, rather than building a large force through conscription or voluntary service. According to Kolenda, this inflexibility made Afghanistan’s military too small to serve the country’s internal security needs, and helped transform it into a clique rather than a representative institution. Furthermore, once America’s political leaders decide to withdraw from a conflict, Kolenda alleges, opposition forces have little reason to negotiate with the U.S. government and its allies. The Taliban, for example, used talks with the Obama administration to “gain concessions that improved their legitimacy while coaxing the United States to complete the withdrawal of its forces.” Though the academic prose can be slow going, Kolenda is a lucid explainer of foreign and domestic affairs and “America’s bureaucratic way of war.” This is an insightful call for rethinking U.S. military strategy. (Dec.)

Publishers Weekly

The most thoughtful analysis yet of America's recent conflicts – and future challenges. Chris Kolenda, a veteran of both battlefield and bureaucratic combat, provides an account of Iraq and Afghanistan that is simultaneously brilliant, depressing, and deeply instructive. The best teams learn from their defeats. Hopefully, we will also. Zero-Sum Victory is a great place to start.

General Stanley A. McChrystal (USA

Chris Kolenda brings unique insights into America's wars over the past two decades.  His personal experience across the spectrum is unmatched: combat commander on the ground; senior advisor at four-star headquarters, the Pentagon, and the White House; and negotiator with the Afghan Taliban.  Practitioners and academics alike will find his observations and recommendations clear, well-founded, and compelling.  This is the book to begin our national after-action review of the Long Wars.

Douglas E. Lute

Zero-Sum Victory is mandatory reading for any student or observer of the global war on terror. In this compelling and highly readable text, Christopher Kolenda draws upon all aspects of his impressive career as a combat commander, strategic policy advisor, and academic.  His extensive first-hand experience provides authentic insights into what we are getting wrong about war.  He highlights the absence of strategic consideration on a war termination framework, the mistaken conflation of military plans with national strategies, and the prevalence of confirmation bias masking emerging risks. As Kolenda argues, these errors were further compounded by the conduct of 'the bureaucratic way of warfare' that confused authorities, responsibilities, and accountabilities to such an extent that 'the whole became less than the sum of its parts'. Chris's coverage of the failure of Afghan peace negotiations is the most authoritative first-hand account you will find, with Zero-Sum Victory concluding with a superb analysis of the implications for US foreign policy and scholarship.

Major General Dr. Adam Findlay AM

Packed full of insight, this is a brilliant insider's account, by soldier-scholar Chris Kolenda, which shows how the failure to think through war termination led the United States to lose in Iraq and Afghanistan. Kolenda offers an essential and timely guide for how to avoid military quagmires in the future.

Theo Farrell

Christopher Kolenda, one of the great soldier-scholars of our time, has produced a path-breaking new study on a critical policy question that has yet to be sufficiently answered: Why have American wars in the post-9/11 era experienced so much failure? Kolenda offers a rich and thoughtful analysis that will make a lasting contribution to the war studies field. Zero Sum Victory is essential reading for subject specialists and the broader public alike.

Michael Kugelman

Few have had the diversity of perspectives on war as Chris Kolenda, and the framework he provides makes this book essential reading for understanding how bureaucratic silos and strategic narcissism led to our failures in Afghanistan and Iraq. He expertly lays the groundwork for a much-needed assessment of where we went wrong – and how to avoid those mistakes in future conflicts. 

Jason Dempsey

Chris Kolenda is a rarity: a US Army commander who fought in Afghanistan and then spent years jump-starting peace talks with the Taliban. His rigorous and unsparing assessment of what went wrong during the longest war in American history deserves widespread attention.

Craig Whitlock

Zero-Sum Victory, the product of a rare combination of incisive scholarship and years of hard-won and occasionally bitter first-hand experience, is an essential guide to 21st-century Western military strategy and its many dysfunctions and critical reading for anyone wanting to understand what went so wrong in Iraq and Afghanistan and, indeed, what might still go wrong now.

Dr. Simon Anglim

War termination is among the most important responsibilities of the state. Yet the U.S. has failed systematically at this since 2001. In Zero-Sum Victory, Christopher Kolenda makes a landmark contribution toward improving this baleful record by highlighting the crucial importance of negotiation in ending wars. The book is essential reading for both policy makers and scholars.

Stephen Biddle

Compelling and deeply researched, Zero-Sum Victory will grab you from the start. Christopher Kolenda has brought us an authoritative exploration of how America ends its wars.

Gayle Tzemach Lemmon

In this very well written book, scholar and soldier Chris Kolenda goes far towards explaining why President Biden chose to pull US forces out of Afghanistan, even for those of us who disagree with the decision.  Years of often disorganized and stove-piped efforts left the United States and international community enormously frustrated—and contributed to making Afghanistan a weak kleptocratic state facing a potent and foreign-supported insurgency.  I was briefed by Kolenda after his command in the eastern mountains of Afghanistan early in the war, encountered him often in Kabul and Washington thereafter, and know how much of his own sweat and tears and life he poured into the mission.  Yet these pages smack not of payback or vendetta, but of sad—yet scholarly, and thoughtful, and constructive—criticisms that America must wrestle with.    Kolenda offers practical solutions to reduce these unforced errors and restore faith in America's strategic leadership. Among Kolenda's most creative and compelling recommendations, as we seek to avoid overmilitarizing our future approaches to such complex missions, is this, drawn from his conclusion:  'Address America's Bureaucratic Way of War by decentralizing to an in-theater, interagency command so that someone is accountable for results. Congress can hold meaningful hearings, and senior officials can stop misleading Americans with their claims of in-silo progress.'   Like it or not, our recent 20-year effort in Afghanistan may not be the last of its kind.  It may not even be the last one there.  We need to get better at this kind of complex intervention in case the need ever arises again.

Michael O'Hanlon

Kolenda clearly care[s] deeply about the American military and its role in the world, and, with [his book, has] demonstrated that true respect leads to deep introspection and critical examination, of both policymakers and military leadership alike.

Just Security

What went wrong in America's recent wars? In Zero-Sum Victory, Chris Kolenda looks for answers in the mountains of eastern Afghanistan, the corridors of American power, and the annals of history. Read this erudite volume in order to get things right.

Richard Fontaine

Zero-Sum Victory is an eye-opener for current and future military leaders.an essential contribution to the existing literature on the war. It highlights the shortcoming of overemphasizing a winner-takes-all approach. All future military leaders should read Zero-Sum Victory—especially US Army War College students—in preparation for mission assignments

Parameters

Chris Kolenda's mesmerizing account of how US interventions in Afghanistan and Iraq became quagmires highlights a singular truth we ignore at our peril:  the purpose of war is not to keep the game going in multiple overtimes until one side prevails, but rather to achieve an acceptable political outcome. He concludes with a set of practical, but challenging recommendations on the structural changes needed in the bureaucracy to ensure more objective and better-integrated approaches to ending the inevitable irregular wars of the future. Policymakers, take note!

Ambassador Robin Raphel

WATCH: Christopher Kolenda interviewed on CBS News: "Uncertain future of U.S.-Afghanistan relations after chaotic withdrawal." Watch online here.

From the Publisher

In Zero-Sum Victory, Chris Kolenda provides insightful and compelling answers to the question of why the US wasn't able to 'win' in Vietnam, Iraq, and Afghanistan. His conclusion that the US systematically defaulted to a goal of zero-sum victory in its unconventional wars is a powerful one for policymakers confronting the coming decades of challenges to US military power.

Dr. Jonathan Schroden

Chris Kolenda writes from a position of strength, for he was a man in the arena. War in all its forms has always been a very human affair and it is these failures of human enterprise that he shines a searchlight upon, and in doing so helps us understand the 'why' that our best endeavours in Afghanistan and Iraq fell short.

Lieutenant General Sir Graeme Lamb