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

Army, May 2006 by de Czege, Huba Wass

During the American Civil War, President Lincoln finally found the general who would apply strong enough measures to both arms of strategy. While an effective naval blockade and Gen. Sherman's march through the rear of the Confederacy served psychological and political aims more than military ones, the Army of the Potomac's decisive defeat of Robert E. Lee's Army of Virginia sealed the defeat of the insurgency by removing its last instrument of resistance. The leadership of the Confederacy had no choice but to surrender.

In the 20th century, especially in World War II, the United States and its allies employed extremely strong measures against both Hitler and the Japanese emperor to soften the enemy's will, but these were complemented in Europe with the constricting and inevitable advance of Allied Armies toward Berlin until Hitler committed suicide and his government capitulated. In Asia, the atom bombs at Hiroshima and Nagasaki were complemented with the simultaneous closure of strong Allied forces toward Tokyo. The Allies determination and willingness to sacrifice exhibited in the defeat of Japanese ground forces on Okinawa made the threat to the home islands credible. It complemented the psychological shock and political impact of the atom bombs. There was no other option for the Japanese government.

In Vietnam, the communist forces invested many years in military operations with primarily psychological and political aims rather than chiefly military ones. When the time was right, their emphasis began to shift. By 1975 their chief instrument was conventional military operations to force the outcome they had long sought. (There is less theoretical difference between irregular and regular warfare than many today believe.)

Winning wars against determined enemies will always require eliminating the enemy's option to decide how and when the war ends. In the future, as in the past, winning will often require campaigns of large scale operational maneuver from a strategic distance by integrated multiservice and multinational forces. In fact, the strategic problem will usually make any other approach impractical.

Our willingness to conserve boots on the ground by replacing soldiers and marines with high-technology standoff fighting solutions, as we did in Kosovo, Afghanistan and also in Iraq, implies a willingness to gamble with the outcome. The psychology of causing any determined opponent to quit is more complex than we sometimes appreciate.

The enemy quits not because of what he has already experienced-he has survived those events-but because of what he believes might happen if he doesn't. Anyone who has ever endured combat or bombardment knows that the impact of fires, whether standoff or close, is transient. Having survived, hope rises, and all thoughts go to evading the next blow. Extended range fires can set the terms of close combat, but a determined enemy must have the option of quitting or continuing to resist taken out of his hands by an overwhelming and imminent presence on the ground. In most cases, close combat, or the immediate presence of a credible close combat threat, may be the only way to ensure a specific outcome. This is far more than policing and mopping-up.