Defeat, eh? Now have I got a website for you!

http://www.2worldwar2.com/mechanisms-of-defeat.htm

....it's well worth a read, and I think it sums up the concept better than anything else I've read.

Within their summary they talk about defeat via a loss of 'will to fight', nominating 'loss of interest' or 'loss of faith' as reasons. The historical example that springs to mind (and a very interesting one it is, too) is Lee's surrender at Appomatox; he could have distributed his forces further and fought a guerilla campaign, and I think that there were plenty who wanted him to.... but you could argue that either interest or faith were gone by then.

Warren,

Great site! Lays out the regular military way of thinking very succintly. Good use of terminology too.

Perhaps one of the things that makes irregular warfare so difficult is the difficulty of judging the enemy's will: is he losing interest? has he lost faith? It's one thing to have one's spies count munitions and fortifications; it's yet another to have them judge a group's psychological state . . .

A couple of disjointed points:

1. World War II may be too exceptional to make a useful model, at least given the current pattern of conflict in the world. In that war, we obliterated both countries, driving the leader of one to suicide and the other to disgrace. That required extraordinary brutality on our part, however justified it may have been. It is not clear whether our public opinion will "allow" that level of brutality ever again. There is too much transparency in the world for a democracy such as ours to wage a war like that, barring extraordinary circumstances.

2. This means that victory and defeat will no longer be crystal clear, to the winners or the losers. Was Vietnam a "defeat" for the United States, or had the war simply outlived its usefulness? Was it a "victory" in the sense that it prevented the expansion of Communism into Thailand, Malaysia, Singapore and Indonesia. If our intransigence in Indochina bought us that much, surely it was a victory in the strategic sense.

3. Victory and defeat are a function of the success conditions set for the enterprise. If, for example, we defined victory in Iraq as the removal of Saddam's regime from power and the interdiction of its WMD capacity, whatever it may be, we clearly achieved those conditions by December 2003 at the latest. We won, at least according to the "WMD" justification, the legalistic reason most ballyhooed on the right before the war and and the left since a material WMD threat was not discovered.

The Iraq mission had several more difficult objectives, though. In no particular order: A. we needed to destroy the idea that the United States was averse to casualties and therefore a paper tiger. We have accomplished that objective, although the "peace" wing of the Democratic party wants to hand it back. B. We needed Iraq to have a strong enough government that it would not become a failed state where jihadists could seek refuse and even active assistance. This proved to be much more difficult than the war party predicted ex ante. It may yet succeed, though. C. We wanted Iraq to serve as a "model" for the rest of the Arab Muslim world, which we believe needs to democratize in order to cure its ills. Iraq is not yet a "model" that most Arabs, even oppressed Arabs, want to emulate. If we stop now, we will not have accomplished this objective. D. We wanted to put ourselves in a position to coerce other countries in the region. This is a long topic, but I believe we have accomplished that, with qualifications.

4. In asymmetrical wars, victory and defeat are especially hard to recognize. One cannot follow the movements of the front lines in the newspapers. This is why the Tet offensive, a crushing defeat for the Viet Cong, was incorrectly perceived as a "turning point" defeat for the United States. Johnson lost Cronkite over Tet, and therefore the American people.

The ugly truth is, victory in limited war is almost always open to debate. Often the perception is as important as the reality. This is why "dissent", while obvious lawful in our system, can aid and comfort an asymmetrical enemy. For more, see my post on dissent and limited war.

Tigerhawk,

One could probably argue very well that if victory is so hard to define in limited war, then it is best to limit our objectives as well. I think this is one of Mark Helprin's key complaints about the intervention in Iraq.

If, as you say, "victory and defeat are no longer crystal clear", is that a) a new and permanent condition of war, or b) unique to Western democracies, or c) does it reflect a problem with the doctrines of maneuver warfare: they excel at defeating a force in the field but have not yet innovated a way that is just as quick at defeating an irregular force? Or can no such way be innovated?

Thanks very much for your thoughts.

Interesting discussion.

First I would like to take issue with "Shock and Awe." I don't believe its intent was to "convince the Iraqi populace that resistance was futile". We always believed the Iraqi people hated Saddam and would welcom our help in removing him. This was eveident by the crowds that cheered our troops as they crossed towns and villages on the way to Baghdad.

The true intent was to shock Saddam's military forces into laying down their arms. In this respect, it may have had some success as many of the forces did just that. This may sound like quibling over details but "Shock and Awe" is often ridiculed as another Bush/Rummy screwup when in fact it did have some of its intended affect. After action interveiws with Iraqi military would be helpful to know the true effects of "shock and awe."

To the main point of defeat/victory. Victory always comes by destroying the enemies will to fight on. No war was ever won by the complete annihilatipon of all enemy forces. It comes when the enemy loses its will to fight on.

" Moreover, if nothing less than an unconditional surrender is sought, then does that make the other side fight all the harder to avoid it, thereby prolonging the conflict?" by Chester

The opposite can also be true. If the enemy knows that a total defeat can be avoided, they may prolong the fight to gain as much as possible in a limited defeat. And our recent history of accepting limited victory only encourages the enemy to fight a battle they know they cannot win militarily.

And a limited defeat allows the enemy to claim victory, as did Saddam after he was kicked out of Kuwait. To far too many, merely surviving the fight with such a powerful enemy as the US is a measure of victory.

One which we cannot allow them to have.

Anyway, good to see ya back and posting Chester!

I recently went down to buy some hay for the Horses at the local agri dealer which by the way is near the Volunteer fire station and the site of course for local elections.
The consensus there is We don't know what is going on! with Bush, democrates, The war.
All say the democrates don't field a person respected or believed enough to be voted for, all say Bush has screwed the pooch on this war.
All state Kerry is a jackass and Gore not trusted.
All state Islam is the enemy and many say Islam is the work of Satan.
The Immigrant problem is a hot button. less immigration is the idea.
One old WW 2 vet who fought with the 506 PIR 101 AA Div said, "This is the damnedest way He ever seen to fight a war." Half the government and the population is rootin' for the other side!
I think We will eventually win this war (by open warfare on a scale not seen before)though not in my lifetime and I am 53 but before we win we are going to get our collective asses kicked and a whole lot of folks are going to die.
Somebody up there in D. C. needs to get their shiite in one bag and get their asses in gear.
otherwise we might as well accept Sharia now and get it over with.
A message to the politicians in charge, "quit politicin' and fight the real enemy"

Question:
Is accomodating the enemy and his way of life while it operates alongside ours and taking the occasional deaths for Allah over offending him or giving some idiot a easy way to heaven considered a,
1. Defeat
2. Truce/coldwar
3. win

wiz,

thanks, it's good to be back!

I think your point on shock and awe is well put. Who knows the true effects this early on? It'll be awhile before some really good historian sets his sights on it. Nevertheless, I do think its possible to wonder about the effects of that bombardment without at the same time asserting that it was a failure of Rummy and W. The point I'm getting at is: How to know when one people can be bombed into defeat and another will only be steeled by an attack? it seems the most difficult of judgments to make. Or, perhaps it's not, we just haven't figured out how to make it.

Barry 0351,

Great comment. The ability to keep something of a pulse on popular sentiment is one reason why I like talk radio. Read all the opinion pieces, or even blogs, that you want, but in the end, the pundits and gliterati are all guessing as to what the majority of the country really thinks about a given issue and the war in particular. How can the nation's sentiments toward the war be summed up in a poll or percentage? They can't. Best to listen and failing that, to lead boldly.

"one people can be bombed into defeat and another will only be steeled by an attack?"

In Iraq, we are not fighting the "people" but the former regime plus some outsiders. This is quite different from WW II where we were fighting the German people as a whole.

Italy in WW II might be a better comparison. Here, the people were glad to be rid of the regime, as they are in Iraq, but the Nazis kept on fighting just like the Baathists.

The link to “The Mechanisms of Defeat” from Warren Smith is interesting but I think there are alternatives to our present course of world military involvement that would render such nuanced military approaches moot.

As a Libertarian I favor a long term shift to something more like the Monroe Doctrine with less reliance on military outposts all over the planet. No surprise there! I like to believe that Libertarians are prone to think out side of the box but then I am prejudiced. Unlike a lot of Libertarians, however, I don’t believe that closing down our military bases in the eastern hemisphere will produce a big tax savings! That money will have to be spent on development of a technological equivalent of President Adam’s “wooden walls” and the two great oceans that afforded us security for so long. This may sound far-fetched but we are really not that far from robot armies, effective particle beam and/or antimatter weapons, effective space based weapons, etc. All avenues of research will not be fruitful but some will be spectacularly so. Technology is also a lot closer to solving our energy problems then a lot of people think. Check out Ray Kurzweil’s “The Singularity is Near”. Kurzweil may be a tad optimistic on his time frame but even if he is 25% correct we are in for massive changes in what he calls GNR (genetics, nanotech, and robotics) in the next 20 years. Yes, I am an unrepentant and unabashed believer in technology. So is a very well known Republican – Newt Gingrich. The only impediments I see are our politicians and our so called education system that is little more than a socialist propaganda mill. I am hopeful that one of those problems will be substantially solved by vouchers.

As I see it those folks in the eastern hemisphere need us more than we need them. I do acknowledge that we have a moral obligation to some in that half of the globe and that we will need to offer some sort of sanctuary. I am not naive. Without a U.S. military presence I would expect the eastern hemisphere to return to something like the “good old days” of the mid 20th century. Maybe we can establish a “prisoner” exchange – a bunch of our socialists for people in the east who really value individual liberty:)! At the very least we will need to lay down some basic rules. No nukes and no bio-weapons! They could endanger our half of the planet. I am sure the folks in the east will be more than willing to settle down and kill each other a few million at a time a la the 1930’s and 40’s.

Having said all of that if we were to revert to a more Monroe Doctrine approach, would there ever be a time when the U.S. would need to engage in warfare? – absolutely. The national government’s primary responsibility is protection of individual liberty. That includes protection from threats to that liberty from foreign sources. When we decide to use military force, however, we best consider the words of Curtis LeMay about warfare: "You've got to kill people, and when you've killed enough they stop fighting." I disagree with the statement in the link that decisive action sometimes is not possible. It is always possible but is never very pleasant. Notwithstanding all the nuanced arguments to the contrary in that link, it seems to me that any other approach invites some form of stalemate. We have seen what stalemates get us. When it comes to combat I believe it’s in for a penny in for a pound. If we stay say 150 years ahead of everyone on the planet in military technology and make it plain that we will use that technology to decimate any enemy we probably won’t have to fight very often. It certainly worked with the Soviets and we were probably never more than 10 years ahead of them at any given time.

Think about this. Two things won WWII. The mindset of guys like Patton and LeMay and military technology provided to us by guys like Oppenheimer, Fermi, Lawrence, Von Neumann, Feynman, Gamow, Teller, et al at Los Alamos, folks like Desch, Turing, et al who broke the enemy codes, and guys like Alfred Loomis who helped give us things like effective Loran and Radar systems. Note that we had a very sensible albeit non-PC immigration policy in those days. These people were backed up by countless individuals working 24/7 on all sorts of breakthroughs large and small in all sorts of science and engineering disciplines. The leaps we made in technology during the period 1941 through 1945 were literally a series of minor miracles. I tend to think the Creator does not micro-manage the workings of the universe but then again all the advances in that period seem just too lucky. Remember we were up against tech heavy weights like the Germans and fanatical Japanese who were every bit as dedicated to a mindless, anachronistic, and destructive ideology as to day’s Islamo-fascists!

The limited battles (I refuse to call them wars) that we will have in the future will be well suited to using Special Operations and specially trained troops for police, investigative and garrison type duties.

The peoples of each region that we fight in will have to be the ones that do the actual fighting and dying. It will be our job to train and equip them to do it and win.

Intitial deployment with some shock (kill) and awe (destroy) Marine or Army units might still be needed in some early stages of these battles, but they should be sent packing as soon as possible.

Oh, and figuring out how an Islamic radical thinks, well, We need to try and do it at a tactical level for sure, but working up powerpointy things on them for the brass. Well, that would and is a waste of time.

Papa Ray
West Texas
USA

Iraq is a country with substantial human and natural resources.

By removing Saddam we removed Iraq from an authoritarian time warp, just as Eastern Europe was removed from its authoritarian time warp by the fall of communism.

Iraq was a military action, Eastern Europe more political (with an unused military umbrella.)

So what is victory? The end of military action? The transition from military to police control of the country? Securing a democratic ally in the middle east where before there was an enemy?

Victory may have a different look in the Islamic world.

It may be as simple as Islamic realization that they must honestly enforce a long term truce with the west if they are to control and develop their countries.

For if the Islamic states allow or encourage attacks on the west, the west will do what is necessary to stop the attacks.

The bottom line is that minds must be changed or removed from this vail of tears.

Thanks to all for your comments!

The 'little battles' of 'small wars' (guerrilla) can only be fought so long as the conquering nation allows them to be fought.
The Romans decimated a conquered population as SOP. Killing 10% of a population's males normally has a chilling effect on resistance. After the Romans showed their power and resolve by lining up the entire population and running a sword thru the guts of ever 10th man, they would then set about winning hearts and minds by establishing 'civilization' and showing the survivors the benifits of that civilization. Charles the great used a similiar technique as did the Mongols. They just used different percentages. Charles was flexiable as to numbers, while the mongols killed all males over a certain height, kept the nubile females as chattel, and raised the male children as warriors. All are different ways of winning 'hearts and minds'.
The Problems in Iraq are two fold, first is we are trying to 'win hearts and minds' without first defeating the owners of those hearts and minds on the battlefield. The second is our old friend mission creep. The Original mission was the removal of Saddam's regime from power. That was done and then the mission creep set in and we are doing nation building in Iraq. That is why PRESIDENT Bush's poll numbers crashed and are hovering (bouncing?) in the weeds today. I didn't sign on for nation building and I think there are about 150 million Americans who agree with me.
If the Iraqi's don't care enough about the opportunity given them to sieze it, then fook 'em, let them go back to their rape rooms and their mass graves.

"If the enemy is to be coerced, you must put him in a situation that is even more unpleasant than the sacrifice you call on him to make. The hardships of the situation must not be merely transient - at least not in appearance. Otherwise, the enemy would not give in, but would wait for things to improve."
- Karl Von Clausewitz

ajacksonian;

Beautiful! Put good old capitalism to work, the irresistable force that destroyed the mighty bear of the Soviet Union.

It would get ugly as corporate mercenaries took out Russian, French, and other European suppliers. The wailing and nashing of teeth would be frightening indeed to the naysayers in our midst. But it would work. Unleash the hounds!

The problem would be how to put the these dogs back on the leash after "mission accomplished" Such freelansing is both contagious and terminal. Rather than resulting in a peacefull world, it might just turn into the birth of Mad Max's world.

The idea is workable but needs a system of strong controls.

With regard to WWII and the media. I recall reading that a newspaper found out about the breaking of the Japanese naval code and they published the information. The Adminstrartion was furious but decided not to say anything because they did not want to alert the Japanese.

Davod; the paper was the Chicago Tribune. Those were different times. No international wire services, cable 24/7 news, no www to tell the world.

The US government was preparing legal action against the Trib but noticed that the Japanese were still using the same codes so it was obvious they hadn't heard of the Trib article. Any legal action may have alerted the Japanese so all action was dropped.

Well...
America can only be defeated by itself. This is what the terrorists know. No military force can beat us right now. Considering the success by the numbers in comparison to past conflicts the American people I believe would find the price more than acceptable. HOWEVER, there has been a movement in this country to pin failure on Bush and with basically everyone in the world suposedly opposed to the Iraq war and most of the major media outlets it was no brainer politically to side with the jihadists in trying to destroy the American resolve. It is really terrible that so many politicians care more about their power and "getting Bush" than about what is best for this country and the world as a whole. I think Americans are strong enough to handle it even though the media and politicians all talk about how we all want to leave now and think its not worth it. That is simply not true.
The funny thing is this could all turn around tomorrow if two things happened.
1. Democrats announced they fully support completing the job in Iraq and while they may strongly disagree with the reasons why we went to war they will not be wholly commited to finishing the job and not pulling out.
2. The MSM cuts back on the Jihadist attention, makes a decision even to NOT print much bad news about Iraq. If they really understood how used they are by the Jihadists they would do this.