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August 21, 2004
Politics and Military Decision-Making
"Keep politics out of military decision making!" is a statement that I've heard again recently. It also makes no sense whatsoever.
We are currently in battle with radical cleric Muqtada al-Sadr's militia in the city of Najaf. I am not going to comment here on the details of the operation, nor in this post will I evaluate whether our strategy is correct. For now I'm going to briefly discuss the relationship between politics and military decision making.
One hundred fifty odd years ago the Prussian General and theorist Karl von Clausewitz wrote that
The only question...is whether...the political point of view should give way to the purely military(if a purely military point of view is conceivable at all)....Subordinating the political point of view to the military would be absurd, for it is policy that creates war. Policy is the guiding intelligence and war only the instrument, not vice versa. No other possibility exists, then, than to subordinate the military point of view to the political.
At this point we need to define our terms. In our current age the term "politics " usually conjures up the image of the ubiquitous smoke filled room, where deals are struck that are not necessarily in the public interest. The term has sinister overtones. But they are only one part of "politics" as properly defined. The word need have no sinister meaning. Merriam-Webster defines the term thus:
1 a : the art or science of government b : the art or science concerned with guiding or influencing governmental policy c : the art or science concerned with winning and holding control over a government
...
5 a : the total complex of relations between people living in society
Go back to the quote; "Policy is the guiding intelligence and war only the instrument, not vice versa". Now we see why there is nothing sinister about mixing politics and military decision making.
I believe that one reason why we often say that we should "keep politics out of warfare" is that we tend to view war by contrasting World War II with Vietnam. The former was the "perfect" war in that because the objective was total victory, "politics" was kept out of military decision making. That is not a completely accurate view, but leave that aside for the moment.
In Vietnam we had the opposite situation. We refused to fight for total victory and imposed restrictions on our troops, most notably upon our pilots. Targets were chosen in Washington and pilots told exactly what they could and could not attack. President Johnson is famous - or infamous - for having said "they(the military) couldn't bomb an outhouse without my permission."
All of this is accurate to a point. In a future post I will discuss why we imposed these restrictions on our military, and the answer may surprise you. For now, let's go back to Clausewitz to see why we should not view WWII as the "perfect" war:
In war many roads lead to success, and...they do not all involve the opponent's outright defeat. They range from the destruction of the enemy's forces, the conquest of his territory, to a temporary occupation or invasion, to projects with an immediate political purpose, and finally to passively awaiting the enemy's attacks.... Bear in mind how wide a range of political interests can lead to war, or...think for a moment of the gulf that separates a war of annihilation, a struggle for political existence, from a war reluctantly declared in consequence of political [pressure or of an alliance that no longer seems to reflect the state's true interests. Between these two extremes lie numerous gradations. If we reject a single one of them on theoretical grounds, we may as well reject all of them, and lose contact with the real world."
Most wars simply do not involve the total destruction of the enemy. Most wars are fought with limited means for limited aims. For example, in our own revolution we did not need to go to London and overthrow the king in order to win.
A few more quick historical examples should suffice to illustrate the range of gradations that Clausewitz was talking about.
As I stated earlier, World War II was the war of annihilation. It surpassed anything in modern times, save maybe the Napoleonic wars. It was also the exception. Check out my post "Presidents and Military Experience" and you'll see that it is the only war we fought in which both sides were trying to totally destroy the other.
Reagan's Strategic Defense Initiative, on the other hand, is at the opposite end of Clausewitz' spectrum. It was never even built, yet had a profound impact on world history. Simply the decision to engage in a research program scared the Soviets silly and helped lead to their eventual collapse. That the left here derided it as something that could not work, for the Soviets (the only ones who counted) certainly believed that it could be. The reason for this can again be found in Clausewitz:
Combat is the only effective force in war; its aim is to destroy the enemy's forces as a means to a further end. That holds good even if no actual fighting occurs, because the outcome rests on the assumption that if it came to fighting, the enemy would be destroyed.
"...even if no actual fighting occurs." being the key phrase.
We might not have to totally smash al-Sadr to win. By the same token, he may not have to defeat our army in order to win.
Posted by Tom at August 21, 2004 11:15 AM
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