War with Implacable Foes: What All Statesmen and Generals Need to Know

Army, May 2006 by de Czege, Huba Wass

Finally, political decision makers and their military planners must be aware of one more major source of imprecision in warfare. This stems from the peculiar logic of war termination. Simply declaring victory, without the expressed consent of the vanquished, does not make it so, even when all opposition seems to have melted away. When the advantage is not pressed until the enemy openly accepts defeat, the contest may resume at an unexpected time and place. The chameleon may simply change color. It is the loser who decides that he has lost.

Prudent statesmen and generals throughout history have understood the complications, imprecisions and imponderables of war. They have thus pursued war along two complementary lines. One arm of their strategy was a continuation of the prewar effort to influence the will and decisions of enemy political leaders. It applied military and other sources of power for psychological and political effect. Simultaneously, the other arm of their strategy forced closure on desired terms. It was aimed at the enemy leadership's power to resist political war aims and terms. The function of the first arm of strategy is to speed the enemy leadership's capitulation, the function of the second is to terminate war on acceptable terms.

The first of these is discernible in all kinds of warfare. It combines violence and all other means (such as diplomacy through third parties, economic blockades and even outright bribery) to achieve the greatest possible psychological and political impact.

Applying military power for psychological and political effect is simple to conceive, but it is very difficult to obtain predictable results, no matter how much power is applied, or how precisely the blows are delivered. It is difficult to judge how the enemy will react to extreme acts of violence and military threats. Will they inflame passions and steel resolve, or will they depress morale and soften will? It is difficult enough to judge the reaction of a familiar opponent, but when the enemy is of another culture, the difficulties compound. It is difficult to know how to use military destructive capacity for psychological and political effect without negative side effects. Will the destruction of economic and civil infrastructure, such as bridges and power grids, help to unseat the undesirable regime, or inhibit seating the new one? Finally, it is always difficult to predict whether the enemy leadership will submit as we wish, or how long it will take before they make that decision.

Because of such uncertainties, experienced practitioners of the military art have always counseled their civilian political masters to complement such efforts with vigorous campaigns to force conditions on the enemy regardless of his will. This is not always possible, for instance the British Empire only had 15 regiments of soldiers stationed between Nova Scotia and the West Indies when the 13 American colonies revolted, so their efforts primarily were of the soften-the-enemy's-will sort-primarily shows of force and occupation of key economic and political "centers of gravity"-Boston, then New York, then Philadephia and so on. They never had sufficient complementary power on the ground to soundly defeat George Washington's Army in the field. Being primarily a naval power, this arm of strategy consisted of insufficient half measures.