| Review of: | Victory in War: Foundations of Modern Military Policy by William C. Martel The Meaning of Military Victory by Robert Mandel |
|---|---|
| Reviewed By: | Timothy W. Crawford |
| Reviewed in: | The Journal of Politics |
| Date accepted online: | 14/01/2008 |
| Published in print: | Volume 69, Issue 04, Pages 1210-1230 |
Book Reviews
The U.S. war in Iraq evokes two cautionary themes of military statecraft. The first is that one can "win the war but lose the peace." The second is that
Though both aspire to and achieve larger relevance, the struggle to make sense of the Iraq war colors much of the analysis. The authors lean toward different judgments on that score. For Martel, the United States has come close to, and remains within reach of, a "grand strategic victory," although he hedges on this point (pp. 255-256, 260-263, 288, 294). Mandel judges the United States to have "completely squandered" strategic victory in Iraq (pp. 107-108). Both thus presume that sweeping victory is, or was at one time, possible. This reflects a deeper similarity: except in respect to nuclear war, neither book fathoms the tragic possibility that, in some situations, even the most powerful states can not convert a military win into political victory, no matter how well they plan, execute, build support and sustain commitment.
Martel works in the tradition of James Rosenau's "pretheory"-building, seeking to identify organizing principles, key sets of variables and their rough impact on outcomes, and to "render comparable" relevant phenomena (pp. 5, 91, 296). But he gives philosophical sources their due, furnishing a valuable two-chapter survey of the treatment of victory in strategic thought, running from Sun-Tzu and the Greeks to cold war thinkers like Brodie and Kissinger.
Martel disavows any set causal relationships across these concepts (p. 296), but it is clear that high values on the second, third, and fourth category, are tied to high levels of victory. This is most true for the relationship between alteration of the status quo and level of victory, since grand strategic victory is defined in terms of "a profound reordering in the strategic foundations of international politics" (p. 97). Such dramatic change, he suggests, will require the winner to extensively mobilize internal and external resources, occupy and regime-change adversaries, and commit to lengthy post-war involvements.
Given the importance it places on building solid conceptual foundations,
Chapter 5 surveys major U.S. wars before the 1980s: the Revolution, War of 1812, Civil War, World War I, World War II, Cold War, Korean War, and Vietnam War. (How one can justify comparing "the cold war"-a five-decades-long strategic rivalry that did
Martel's scheme is applied in six chapter-length case studies, including the 1986 air-strikes against Libya, the 1989 Panama invasion, the 1991 Gulf War, the 1990s interventions in Bosnia and Kosovo, and the 2001 invasion of Afghanistan and 2003 invasion of Iraq. Each shows how Martel's framework illuminates key issues concerning the interpretation of victory. An important theme comes out in the early chapters: modest political-military successes achieved without exorbitant costs and soaring expectations should be recognized as victories nonetheless, and Americans would do well to develop a taste for them. One may wish to dispute Martel's interpretation and arguments in some of these cases-especially his contention that the U.S. wars in Afghanistan and Iraq could have been, and could still become, grand strategic victories (pp. 237-242, 254-264)-but in doing so, find his focal concepts nonetheless useful.
Martel also uses his pre-theoretical concepts to drive an incisive analysis of the relative utility of different forms of military power for the achievement of different levels, and conditions, of victory. Although he eschews "formulaic interpretation," his strongest claim is compelling: the sorts of victories likely to be sought in the years ahead will call for commitments of ground forces, because only they can furnish the sorts of outcomes we seek in such victories. (Mandel comes to similar conclusions about the importance of the "human-intensive" approach, pp. 168-169.)
Mandel's
This framework is not conducive to precision, but as with Martel's scheme, one can get a sense of how it works by postulating an across-the-board strategic victory. Such would yield for the victor: intelligence superiority over postwar threats inside and outside the defeated country; an ability to maintain security in the defeated country by deterring internal and external "belligerent parties"; a
A tall order indeed and Mandel is not optimistic: "the impediments [to realizing such strategic victory] are so significant that it is quite difficult to find a recent case providing a textbook example" (pp. 27-28). Nevertheless, such is the state of international politics today, that Western democracies are bound by "global rules of the game" (pp. 119-121), and their own internal normative and political structures, to pursue such lavish strategic victories. Although unblemished strategic victories are scarcely obtainable, it is more useful, he argues, to analyze how warwinners perform in, and make trade-offs among, these dimensions of peace-winning than to render "simple binary yes-no" verdicts on the achievement of strategic victory (p. 28).
Mandel employs the six elements of strategic victory in an especially interesting way in Chapter 4, showing how the usual psychological pathologies of decision-making (e.g., wishful thinking) contribute to unwarranted optimism about the prospects for, and potential rewards of, strategic victory, by distorting perceptions and judgments concerning conditions and payoffs in each of the six categories. A related theme is brought out in Chapter 2 ( on "Morality and War") which describes how military victors may succumb to feelings of moral superiority that encourage blunders and rigidity in the peace-winning phase, and alienate potential supporters inside and outside the defeated state.
Chapter 5 briefly looks at four recent cases (matching Martel's last four case-studies) of military victory: the 1991 Gulf War, the 1999 Kosovo War, and the post 9/11 wars against Afghanistan and Iraq. Mandel finds that "in many ways each case constitutes a vivid illustration of the pitfalls of pursuing strategic victory ...indeed the general result has been decidedly disappointing long-term political consequences" (p. 109). Five key failings obtained in each case: too much planning and effort were focused on phase one at the expense of phase two; there was too much confidence about achieving postwar goals quickly and easily; there was too much optimism about the payoffs of achieving those goals; the reaction to adverse events and obstacles to postwar success was sluggish and ineffective; and finally, the overall objectives of each war were not defined (and limited) effectively, or adequately defended in the public sphere (p. 110). (Especially on the 1991 Gulf War, Afghanistan, and Iraq, many of these themes appear in
In another chapter, Mandel uses his analytical tool-box to parse out crucial differences, and contradictory tendencies, between the meaning and pursuit of strategic victory in conventional wars and wars against insurgencies and terrorist groups. This discussion provides a useful counterpoint to the approach in Martel's
Each book is thought-provoking and makes a useful scholarly contribution. In their strengths and weaknesses they reveal the possibilities of thinking theoretically about war and politics. Serious students of war termination should read and wrestle with both.