The small conflicts I write about are part of larger clashes and too often, disasters. Leaders have a propensity for arrogance and often do not understand cultural differences. Here are five disasters, some suggested by my readers. In each of them are events covered up by the powerful when things went all to hell and are a potential plot theme for a great future book.
As the War of 1812 opened, the US sent an expeditionary force into Canada, thinking it was the soft underbelly of the United Kingdom’s military in North America. The powers believed the force would be welcomed by Canadians. (That assessment was wrong.) An American Revolutionary war hero who wanted nothing to do with the invasion was given command. The Canadians threw the force out of Canada and then invaded American Territory, leading to The Battle of Detroit, where the American commander surrendered after the loss of only seven men. The misguided belief that Canadians wanted to be Americans opened a second front, and a war that should have ended in months stretched into years.
In the same conflict, British General Sir Edward Packham decided that the former French region of the US known as Louisiana, would embrace European rule. He fully expected the local Native Americans to support him, just as they had along the Canadian border. He launched an attack to capture New Orleans. On the Calmette battlefield he attacked a cobbled together army of locals, Native Americans and pirates led by Andrew Jackson. In a single day the British lost 6,034 soldiers in a rout where Jackson lost only 62. The locals, especially the local indigenous people had supplied the American forces with intelligence on every move the British made.
In the Battle of Little BigHorn, Custer knew he was attacking a superior force made up of four different indigenous tribes, believing that the coalition would splinter with the first shots. He was so convinced of the inferiority of his enemy that he did no reconnaissance and ignored his intelligence. The tribes not only stuck together but wiped out five of the seven companies under Custer in a few hours.
General MacArthur was so obsessed after his early victories in Korea that he ordered his troops north to the Chinese border. China sent warning after warning that they would intervene if the allies reached their border. MacArthur saw the Chinese as a paper tiger until a million Chinese troops drove his forces back to the original border between North and South Korea. That extended the war for years, and there is still no peace treaty. Even worse, it soured relations with China. Both North Korea and China remain opponents of the US today.
My last example came after a victorious American effort. As the US Army rolled into Baghdad to end the Iraq War, only a few of the Iraqi army units opposed them. That army was largely a Suni in a mixed Suni/Shiite nation, formerly commanded by Saddam Hussein. The American occupation government led by Paul Bremer believed the Iraqi people saw them as oppressors. He ordered the army to be disbanded. But the Suni and Shiites saw their army as the power that had given them independence from the British. The vacuum created by their demise was filled with a dozen militias and terrorist groups, leading to decades of conflict.
All good starting points for stories. But the best current example is Putin in Ukraine.