Landpower, Time, and Terrorism: A Strategy of Lightness in the Counter-ISIS Campaign

The range of strategic ends and contingencies that could require seizing, securing, and controlling territory on land is not diminishing. But the means of employing landpower have repeatedly exhausted the domestic basis and political will to sustain it over time, as in Vietnam, Iraq, and Afghanistan. A way of applying landpower that allows for the essential element of time, sustainable over protracted periods in the court of public opinion, would offer immeasurable strategic value. Drawing on the author's work and observations while deployed to the U.S./coalition headquarters in command of military operations against ISIS, this article suggests that the answer to the dilemma of landpower, however preliminary, lies at the nexus of strategy and cost.