Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth has set out to restore a focus on lethality within the U.S. military. This obsession risks a focus on killing for killing’s sake, andsake and comes at the expense of strategic clarity. It also ignores the most salient lessons from the U.S. wars of the last quarter century. The United States did not lose in Iraq and Afghanistan because it was insufficiently lethal. Indeed, in both wars, the U.S. military inflicting massive numbers of casualties, on both combatants and non-combatants, while suffering far fewer casualties in its own ranks. But war is supposed to serve a strategic objective, and the objectives sought in Iraq and Afghanistan were unattainable in light of the political realities on the ground in both countries. If the United States focuses on lethality without a consideration of strategy, it risks repeating the errors of the past.
The Perils of Lethality. A focus on lethality in war distracts from the strategic objectives that war is supposed to serve (Christopher Preble, Michael Cohen – Stimson Center)
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