Keeping Your Eye on the Ball: The Cautionary Tales of Sicily and Iraq

    Thucydides’ recounting of the disastrous Sicilian Expedition is a tale of military hubris and misguidance. Athens decided to send a military expedition to attack the Sicilian state of Syracuse, far removed from the theater of its ongoing war with Sparta. The result was a disastrous defeat for the Athenian navy, and a cautionary tale unfortunately retold by the United States during its War on Terror and subsequent invasion of Iraq.

    The Athenians and Americans shared similar arguments for their entry into war, both great military powers defending themselves from the attacks of perceived weaker opponents. As Sparta wished to dissipate the regional hegemony of Athens, so too did Al Qaeda wish to expel the United States from their region. The Athenians and Americans responded to the aggression of Sparta and Al Qaeda through direct military force. The wars began favorably for both these great powers. Athens threw off Spartan attacks and raided the Peloponnesian coasts, and the United States toppled the Taliban in Afghanistan.

    However,  the Athenians and Americans made a critical mistake after these initial successes, namely the diversion of their attention to secondary conflicts tangential at best to the strategic objectives of their wars. 

    As Nicias attempted to dissuade the Athenian expedition to Sicily, so too did American generals express skepticism towards the underplayed difficulty of their invasion into Iraq and adequate force size, but hotter heads prevailed in both cases. What resulted for the Athenians and the Americans were abject strategic failures. The Sicilian Expedition served as the turning point for the Peloponeseian war and spelled Athens’ eventual doom as its naval posture was weakened and Sicily was pushed to ally itself with Sparta. Of course the United States did not meet so dire a fate, but its bungling invasion of Iraq represents just as much of a strategic failure. As Athens' failed expedition led to its loss of the Peloponnesian War, so too did the United States' mishandling of the Iraq invasion prevent any hope of victory in its War on Terror. What was envisioned as a weeks-long invasion resulted in a collapsed state and an expansion of violent insurgencies in the Middle East with an end no nearer in sight to this day.

    As the United States’ continues the drawdown of military forces in the Middle East, we must critically examine the successes and failures of the War on Terror. Chief among these stands the disastrous United States intervention into Iraq whose failure echoes that of Athens’ two millennia earlier. In each case, a great power - whether through hubris, military miscalculation, or cultural ignorance - lost sight of their primary enemy and engaged in tangential conflicts that fatally compromised their strategic objectives. As tensions continue to build between the United States and its adversaries once again, let’s hope that the United States may at least be able to learn from its own mistakes if not from those that came before it.