Can "Limited War" be an effective strategy in defeating a nation's enemies?

If you are not there to kill the enemy: GO HOME. Politics, and winning minds is the job for the suits. When that fails, they send the warrior, using the same articles that they were using. If it did not work for the suits, why do they think that it will work for the warrior???

I personally don't think so. Until we as a nation prove that we are committed to an end goal at any cost, our enemies will never take us seriously. We are only wasting lives and resources as it is now. We owe it to our troops to show them they mean more to us than just political pawns

War is only a tool to achieve your goal. So, in the end, whether it is effective or not depends on your end-state goals.

No. We should have learned from Vietnam that llimiting the military's ability to wage war is a sure way to get people killed without being allowed to reach the objective. Overwhelming defeat is the only thing today's enemies understand. They will not stop until their objective is no longer achievable. If they are crushed their objective won't matter.

The idea of limited war is only as effective as the dedication of the enemy. If two dedicated enemies practice limited war then in effect the war will have no limit as neither side will ever feel compelled to sue for peace. How do you think the theory of limited war would work against ISIS? About as well as it worked in Vietnam!

No. All "limited warfare" does is allow the politicians to not dirty themselves with the harsh realities of war. By not allowing the military to use its full force they can claim they tried to keep it clean and limit the damage caused, so there is no incentive to use political instead of military might.

It is a more complex question than I think some/most respondents are addressing.

At the first level, the answer is "no." Did the Romans, Napoleon, or Hitler conquer Europe, or the Allies defeat Hitler and Japan by fighting a limited war? Absolutely not. Without unlimited wars, the outcomes may well have been different or at the least be more costly in life and longer term bad will.

At another level, it seems that fighting an unlimited war today in the Iraq, Afghanistan, Syria, Libya, ... arenas would be difficult to define. It's not like protecting the world against a possible USSR onslaught where the enemy during the Cold War was a nation state of people who look, act, and believe alike for a cause.

The Middle Eastern situation is different. Who are the bad guys? Do they look, act, and believe notably differently from the good guys? Who is the real enemy? What are they fighting for? Winning takes away the will and resource to fight. Can we find real and actionable answers to these questions? Can we remove the will to fight?

I think that until we can do so, an unlimited war is a waste. Battles can be won; a WAR against an amorphous enemy can not be won, but with it a lot of collateral damage would occur resulting in no hope of ever ending.

I do not have an answer on how to win, but not because of the argument of limited vs. unlimited warfare, but because the cultural conflict transcends the effectiveness of the principles of war. I have to think about a solution where the indigenous people fight their own conflicts, but I am not alone in not having a solution to offer. No one running for president nor does the sitting POTUS have a solution. Perhaps it is a problem that cannot be solved.

I don't think so but, is what our nation is stuck with because politicians don't take the hard stand. We fight wars on a budget because of the cost in people and money. We have dodge a bullet in 2004 were the military was stretched to a breaking point. The Army took a brigade out of Korea to fight in Iraq. If North Korea decided to attack in 2005. I'm sure the need for a mass mobilization to include a draft might have occurred. Since this didn't happen our nation as a general population would rather fight a "Limited War" use few resources and people but, take a longer time.

When the threat is not existential, then defining limits on what you are willing to risk as well as what you expect to gain is the **ONLY** way to prevent creating an existential threat by risking too much for too little gain.

Depends on what you mean by limited warfare. If you are describing only partially mobilizing the nation's resources (industrial, political and military) then yes. If you are referring to restrained warfare, then the answer gets a bit more complex. The term limited and total war refer typically to mobilization. Restrained and unrestrained refer to tactics and strategy. This is why I asked what you meant by the term.