A U.S. Coast Guard member saluting at a ceremony in Millington, Tenn., Aug. 19, 2011. (Patrick Kelley/U.S. Coast Guard)
The rapid disintegration of Bashar Assad’s regime has left a group of Islamist rebels in charge of another troubled state. A hollow force of 130,000 Syrian government soldiers simply melted away in the face of a more motivated adversary less than a quarter of its size. Numerous videos showed groups of Syrian Arab Army soldiers abandoning their positions and exchanging their uniforms for civilian clothing.
Russia and Iran, effectively the guarantors of Assad’s rule, were too preoccupied with their own conflicts to put up a vigorous fight against Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) fighters advancing on Damascus.
The final days of Assad’s regime contain an enduring lesson: Across time and space, the will to fight remains a basic prerequisite for military effectiveness.
Material advantages mean little if human beings are not willing to risk their lives to defend their countries or liberate them from occupation. Foreign patrons cannot make up for it. In fact, they can contribute to low motivation, corruption and regime instability. And like Russia and Iran, patrons will cut off their clients once supporting them is no longer in their interests.
There is a warning in Syria’s collapse for Americans: Client states are bound to become costly liabilities if they can’t stand on their own.
The Syrian army failed for many of the same reasons the U.S.-backed Afghan security forces did: corrupt and inept leadership; undermanned units; lack of pay and low morale; and an overreliance on foreign patrons. More importantly, as with the late Islamic Republic of Afghanistan, the Assad regime did not have the legitimacy needed to motivate its soldiers to fight.
The U.S. record of support for African militaries isn’t much better than its experiences in Afghanistan and Iraq. The bigger problem with these partners’ will to fight is that they are more apt to overthrow their own governments than combat internal security threats. Instead of empowering these militaries to keep violent insurgents at bay, U.S. arms and training have enabled coups in Burkina Faso, Chad, Gambia, Guinea, Mali, Mauritania and Niger.
Ukraine has been an exception to this poor record of backing foreign militaries. The Ukrainian armed forces defied most analysts’ predictions and have put up fierce resistance despite being outmanned and outgunned. Ukraine’s admirable defensive efforts defy the bean counting school of military analysis and show how effective a force with the will to fight and judicious force employment can be during an industrial-scale war of attrition.
Yet an army’s will to fight can change over time, even in Ukraine.
The troops that thwarted Russian advances in 2022 are not the same ones ceding ground in the Donbas today. The first rounds of mobilization brought in experienced combat and non-combat veterans who had served before the war, as well as enthusiastic draftees eager to defend their country. Since then, increasing casualties have forced Ukraine to expand its conscription pool and raid concerts and restaurants for new recruits. Yet lowering the draft age from 27 to 25 might only add 50,000 soldiers, only a tenth of the troops needed to replace the 500,000 casualties Ukraine has taken so far.
Draft avoidance has hurt mobilization efforts too. Out of the 6 million Ukrainians who have fled the country since 2022, an estimated 650,000 residing in the European Union are men between the ages of 18 and 60. Another 20,000 have been caught trying to flee the country.
Many Ukrainians now view wartime service as a dead end. Mobilized conscripts are receiving limited basic training that front line commanders must spend time compensating for. In the words of one Ukrainian military analyst, “mobilization [is] perceived as a one-way ticket, where the only way to end service is to die or become disabled.”
Desertion is a growing problem: The Ukrainian Prosecutor General’s Office has charged 100,000 soldiers with desertion since 2022, including 60,000 this year alone. Commanders from the 72nd Brigade who participated in the defense of Vuhledar this past fall said 20% of the men missing from their companies had gone AWOL.
Still, a Ukrainian military collapse like Syria or Afghanistan is unlikely. But that might not be the case if Washington backed another partner policymakers judged important enough to defend: Taiwan.
The self-governed island’s will to fight is a major unknown. Polls show a willingness among the population to resist a Chinese attack. However, those who advocate that the United States should defend Taiwan often don’t weigh whether the Taiwanese military would fight as hard as Washington would want it to. It is far from a sure thing that the Taiwanese would wage a vigorous defense of their island, despite what many tell pollsters they would do in a hypothetical scenario.
Concrete evidence that might suggest Taiwan is serious about defending its autonomy is thin. Taiwanese defense spending and planning remains woefully insufficient. Conscription and training policies have improved though they still aren’t nearly as rigorous as frontline states like Finland, Sweden, South Korea and Israel. Organized and disciplined civil defense efforts, like those in Finland and Sweden, are grossly inadequate.
Previous efforts to build up foreign militaries that lacked the will to fight didn’t endanger the United States’ physical security. Going to war directly on behalf of Taiwan would have much graver implications: casualties vastly exceeding the losses in Iraq and Afghanistan, and a high risk of nuclear escalation. That fact alone should cause policymakers to pause and seriously consider whether they should care more about Taiwan’s autonomy than the Taiwanese do themselves.
Matthew C. Mai is a contributing fellow at Defense Priorities.
