The lessons learned in Iraq and Afghanistan led to a counterinsurgency doctrine authored by Petraeus. This doctrine recognizes that the United States’ overwhelming conventional military superiority drives our enemies away from open battle and toward unconventional tactics. It also notes that Western militaries falsely believe that training to win large, conventional wars automatically prepares a military to win small, unconventional ones. However, conventional tactics usually fail against unconventional enemies, and to defeat insurgencies, armies must “overcome their institutional inclination to wage conventional war against insurgents,” the Army/Marine Corps counterinsurgency manual says.

These are the costly lessons learned by the U.S. military in our decadelong wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Unfortunately, candidate Romney favors increased defense spending focused on building more ships, planes and missiles, which would enhance our already superior conventional forces. Romney says nothing about the training and equipment needed to meet the unconventional challenges we have just faced and are likely to face in the future. Indeed, Romney’s policies will reinvigorate the institutional inclination to wage conventional war that Iraq has taught the military to abandon.