I agree whole heartedly with your main point but I'd say militaries are more likely to overreact to the last war. "Generals are always fighting the last war" is a quote I heard from long ago and it seems to match up. In Desert Storm it was clear that the lessons of not getting entangled a la Vietnam were clearly in mind. When I went in to Bosnia it was clear Somalia was in mind as our RoE basically said if we were being being fired up on by someone using civilians as a shield to "aim carefully", and I keep hearing mention that the US is still trying to shift away from GWOT even though it's been 10 years since that started slowing down.
This is a really interesting and insightful comment! I'd add WWI/WWII to your examples- the French were so used to entrenched warfare they poured all their efforts into the Maginot Line because fortifications and prepared positions were the thing to do... only to be trounced with the mobility and swiftness of blitzkrieg.
Also imo USA & the UN let Rwanda genocide happen because they were gunshy after Black Hawk Down in Mogadishu thus everyone was so reluctant to commit forces even though even limited intervention early on could have stopped hundreds of thousands of atrocities. The overreaction to Somalia paralyzed effective action anywhere else.
> they poured all their efforts into the Maginot Line because fortifications and prepared positions were the thing to do... only to be trounced with the mobility and swiftness of blitzkrieg.
My position might be revisionist on that matter, but I think the Maginot line worked as planned: the goal was to force the German to go around (mostly through the Low Countries), reducing the frontage where they'd have to fight. The German did exactly that, but also pushed through the Ardennes, which the Allied planners hadn't though possible.
