fowler d - msc dissertation

David John Fowler

Dissertation submitted to the School of Social Science, University of Aberdeen, as partial

fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of M.Sc. Strategic Studies.

Politics and war:

Irreconcilable differences between the soldier and the statesman - the

consequences for successful strategy-making.

Abstract

All too often in strategic theory the nature of conflict is reduced to mythical Clausewitzian

banalities where war becomes a ‘true political instrument, a continuation of political

intercourse.’ Yet the full meaning of such a statement is frequently misapprehended. Beyond a

simple recognition that war exists to fulfil political objectives, the act of conflict must, as

Clausewitz implies, be continually perfused by political considerations, and the strategy that

directs the conduct of war should be similarly shaped by political imperatives. As such,

although a military activity, the conduct of war will be governed as much by domestic and

international political expedients as it is by military considerations. Occasionally this element of

realpolitik necessitates a politically motivated shift in strategy that may be inconsistent with

purely military objectives but is beneficial for the wellbeing of the state as a whole. It is this

dissertation’s key assertion that a failure to realise this ubiquitous and overarching political

supremacy in strategy, by either military or political actors in the strategy-making process, leads

to a breakdown in relations between political and military establishments. In turn this results in

a flawed strategy that fails to reconcile the broad spectrum of political and military

considerations.

Contents

Introduction: i

Chapter 1: War and Strategy as Political Concepts. 1

Chapter 2: Theories of Victory. 10

Chapter 3: Civil-Military Relations. 21

Conclusions: Strategy, victory and civilian ascendency. 32

Bibliography 36

Abstract - 199 words.

Dissertation, including all footnotes and bibliography – 14,983 words

47 pages including frontispiece.

Declaration.

This dissertation has been composed by the author, and has not been accepted in any previous

application for a degree; all work has been done by the author, and all of the quotations and

sources of information have been acknowledged.

Signed ................................................ Dated.................................

Introduction – What is strategy all about?

i

Introduction

‘De qoui s’agit-il?’ (‘what is it all about?’)

Field Marshall Ferdinand Foch1

It is almost axiomatic to suggest that war is strictly a political phenomenon.

Seemingly, the vast majority of strategic thinkers and practitioners today assume this to be

fact and, in support of this assumption, almost all are apt to quote the somewhat clichéd

aphorism of Carl von Clausewitz where war is reduced to simply ‘the continuation of political

intercourse’.2 This appreciation of war’s political dimension is certainly commendable, for it

gives war its legitimate purpose, without which it becomes an immoral manifestation of

violence for violence’s sake. As such, strategy becomes that vital functional link that directs

war in a calculated way so that political objectives can be met; without strategy, war cannot

be a legitimate instrument of policy. Strategy achieves this through a hierarchical framework

stretching from the civilian statesman to the soldier on the battlefield. At the apex of this

hierarchy is grand-strategy, which seeks to employ all instruments of state power (military,

diplomatic and economic means) in the pursuit of overarching political objectives. Nested

below grand-strategy are the individual strategies of those instruments of power, the activities

of which grand-strategy would seek to coordinate synergistically so that none takes place in

isolation. At the next tier down the hierarchy, military strategy looks to achieve military

objectives through the tactics and operations of the physical act of war itself. Importantly,

each level of strategy should look to utilise the effects garnered at lower levels to contribute to

the higher purpose of policy and politics – the actions of the most junior soldier on the

battlefield should contribute to this overall political purpose. 3

Richard Betts sees this as a somewhat fragile ‘chain of relationships’ where ‘strategy

fails when some link in the planned chain of cause of cause and effect from low-level tactics

to high-level political outcomes is broken.’4 The consequences of such a strategic failure

become manifest when war is fought for its own sake, unguided by political objectives and

calculations, or when unrealistic political objectives are set with no regard to the strategic

1 Quoted in Bernard Brodie, War and Politics, London: Casell & Co., 1974, p.1. 2 Carl von Clausewitz, On War, (trans. Michael Howard & Peter Paret), Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008, p.28. 3 For an examination of the theory of strategy see, Colin S. Gray, The Strategy Bridge, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010. 4 Richard K. Betts, ‘Is Strategy an Illusion?’ International Security’ vol.25, no.2, p.6-7.


ii

realities of the situation or the resources available. What then, are the reasons for breakages

in this strategic chain of relationships? This is the question that this dissertation sets out to

answer, and concludes by suggesting that strategic failure stems from either:

1. A failure by policy makers to understand that strategy is not simply setting the

political objectives but the matching of means and allocating the appropriate

resources.

2. A failure by the military to understand that strategy should be ubiquitously

guided by political considerations, rather than the requirements of military victory

alone.

Either of these two scenarios can occur when there is a failure in the relationship between the

policy-maker and military commander such that a balanced strategy that reconciles their

often-conflicting viewpoints becomes impossible. When this occurs, the prevailing

dominance of either the military establishment or the civilian political leadership produces an

unbalanced strategy that is either devoid of political reason or based on unrealistic military-

strategic assumptions where allocated resources are insufficient to achieve policy goals.

CHAPTER OUTLINE

Underpinning this dissertation’s conclusion is the assumption that war is indeed a

political activity. Chapter one seeks to set this assumption in concrete by moving beyond

banal quotations of Clausewitz and narrow interpretations of his dicta, and by demonstrating

war’s ubiquitous political character throughout antiquity to the present day. It continues with

an illustration of the consequences of misapplying the basic concepts of strategy where war

becomes devoid of political purpose or policy overstretches military resources. Chapter two

examines the notion of victory, setting out the importance of perspective from differing

positions within the strategic hierarchy, concluding that differing notions of victory held by

the military and political establishment creates a divergence of opinion over how and for what

war should be fought. In turn, chapter three shows that this divergence can be remarkably

deleterious on civil-military relations, resulting in a failure to reconcile political objectives

with strategic realities, eventually leading to strategic failure.


iii

The consistent realist narrative throughout this dissertation is the notion that war and

strategy should always be perfused and guided by political considerations regarding the

relative balance of state power. As such, when politicians fail to assert political authority

over the military establishment and political considerations become subordinate to military

expedients, then the perils of militarism can ensue. As such, in the development of strategy a

harmonious dialogue between military commanders and policy-makers can only be a healthy

thing, but ultimately, only the civilian leader can represent the needs of the state and the

society they represent.

War and Strategy as Political Concepts 1

Chapter 1

War and Strategy as Political Concepts

WAR AND STRATEGY

THE ‘CULTURAL TURN’?

By stating clearly in the opening gambit of his 1994 book, A History of Warfare, that ‘War

is not the continuation of policy by other means’, historian John Keegan clearly sets out his

unequivocal opposition to Clausewitzian theories that conflate politics and war.1 Instead,

Keegan argues that war should be understood as being motivated by cultural rather than political

factors. His argument, in essence, stems from the fact that warfare predates the existence of the

Westphalian state system that governed Clausewitz’s understanding of politics and war. To

Keegan, war must therefore be based more on symbolic tribal ritual than on rational political

purpose.2 Keegan’s logic supposes that the harm and destruction war causes, even to the victors,

could never be ‘an extension of politics, when the ultimate object of rational politics is to further

the well being of political entities...’3 Instead, an underlying and irrational belligerency in human

nature is responsible for conflict; using the war in the Balkans during the 1990s to illustrate, he

suggests that war is ‘apolitical’ since it is fed by ‘passions and rancour that do not yield to

rational measures of persuasion and control.’4

Martin van Creveld is similarly sceptical of war’s political nature. However, van

Creveld’s doubts stem less from an anthropological perspective but instead from a belief in the

demise of the primacy of the Westphalian nation-state in the late 20th century.5 Written in 1991,

van Creveld’s The Transformation of War, is prescient where it makes bold predictions

regarding the rise of violent transnational groups that would be motivated by cultural, religious

or ethnic reasons rather than by politics associated with the state. Moreover, his suggestion that

western military capabilities are over-reliant on technology and would find themselves poorly

configured to deal with ill-defined, non-state adversaries has obvious parallels with the

difficulties the US and its allies have encountered in fighting groups like al-Qaeda. This

perceived challenge to the previously dominant western ‘way of war’ (Clausewitzian in character

1 John Keegan, A History of Warfare, London: Pimlico, 1994, p.3. 2 Ibid. 3 Ibid, p.381. 4 Ibid, p.58. 5 See Martin van Creveld, The Transformation of War, New York: The Free Press, 1991. See chapter 7 (p.192) for van Creveld’s challenge of nation-state political primacy in war.


and focussed on decisive battle waged by the state for reasons of politics), by an eastern or

oriental paradigm of warfare (waged for religio-cultural motivations and characterised by

strategies of patient attrition and irregular warfare) has forced a renewed interest in the West on

the cultural character of warfare in an attempt to ‘better understand the enemy’.6

From this so called ‘cultural turn’ have come those who might try and vindicate the earlier

theories of Keegan and van Creveld by arguing that the actions of Osama bin Laden and al-

Qaeda stem from religious affront and are wholly without rational political purpose.7 Similarly,

there are those who suggest the violence of the Iraqi insurgency following the 2003 conflict was

more akin to tribal warfare motivated more by bonds of kinship and honour than by politically

directed strategy.8 Phillip Mielinger encapsulates the sentiment of this ‘cultural turn’ claiming:

‘The warriors of al-Qaida, Hezbollah, Hamas [and the] Taliban ... do not view war

as an instrument of policy. Other cultural, biological and religious factors motivate

them. [...] They are not Clausewitzians. We need to understand what motivates

them.’9

As such, the fundamental political motivation of war and strategy, espoused by Clausewitz, may

be in question – is war primarily a cultural phenomena? There is certainly no denying that

culture plays a part in defining the shifting character of war and strategy; indeed, later we shall

see how the culture of a dominant military class in Prussian society influenced how warfare

should be conducted in the wars of German unification. To suggest, however, that the enduring

nature of war is motivated by purely cultural factors, or is apolitical since war occurs outside the

Westphalian state system, is perhaps a little naive and demonstrates a failure to understand the

broader nature of politics.

The one-dimensional interpretation of Clausewitz’s dicta that van Creveld, Keegan and

Meilinger are guilty of adopting misconstrues the translation of Clausewitz’s ‘political

intercourse’ (Politik in the original) as pertaining only to the bureaucratic policy decisions of the

state system of the day. Christopher Brassford of the US Army War College sees Clausewitz’s

use of politik in rather broader terms, suggesting that it is used interchangeably to encompass

6 See Patrick Porter’s excellent critique of the ‘cultural turn’ in the study of warfare in Military Orientalism, London: Hurst & Co., 2009. 7 Lee Harris, ‘Al Qaeda’s Fantasy Ideology: War Without Clausewitz’, Policy Review, no. 114 (August/Sept. 2002), p.19-36. 8 See Montgomery McFate, ‘The Military Utility of Understanding Adversary Culture’, Joint Force Quarterly, no. 38, (July 2005), p.42-48. 9 Phillip Meilinger, ‘Clausewitz’s Bad Advice’, Armed Forces Journal International, August 2008, p.10


both policy and politics.10 Reminding us that Clausewitz himself suggested that ‘war is not

merely an act of policy, but a true political instrument’, 11 Brassford emphasises not just the

instrumental role of war in state policy but also its role in the fundamental and ubiquitous

struggle over the distribution of power, suggesting that politics ‘is simply the process... by which

power is distributed within a given society.’12 This is all to say that, throughout strategic history,

warring groups may be organised along non-Westphalian, sectarian or ethnic lines and

influenced in the manner of their war-making by their specific cultures, but all use organised

violence to gain or retain some degree of power, and therefore all use war for politically

orientated motives.

It may be that, on the surface, each warring group has culturally influenced objectives, but

almost all have their root motivation in the extension or retention of power in whatever societal

system they inhabit. Colin Gray asserts this point when he suggest that non-state groups may

have ‘prime motives’ of ‘profit, personal salvation, or fun and glory, [but all] function with, if

not principally for, political consequences.’13 As such, the political dimension of non-state use

of violence may be hidden – intentionally or otherwise – behind a veneer of cultural motivation.

Nowhere is this more apparent than in the doctrines of al-Qaeda’s chief ideologue and now

leader, Ayman Al-Zawahiri, whose social-religious objectives appear contingent on an

underlying requirement for power and identity as a religious state:

‘[I]f the successful operations against Islam’s enemies and the severe damage

inflicted on them do not serve the ultimate goal of establishing the Muslim nation in

the heart of the Islamic world, they will be nothing more than disturbing acts,

regardless of their magnitude, that could be absorbed and endured...[emphasis

added]’14

Keegan, van Creveld, Meilinger, and those who have subscribed uncritically to the

‘cultural turn’, have therefore failed to make a distinction between policy and politics. In

essence, they see war as ‘apolitical’ because it occurs in the absence of rational state policy, but

by doing so they deny war’s true political dimension in the fundamental distribution of power;

10 Christopher Brassford, ‘John Keegan and the Grand Tradition of Trashing Clausewitz: a Polemic’, War In History, Vol.1 no.3, 1994, p.326. 11 Clausewitz, p.28. 12 Brassford, p.326. 13 Gray, 2010, p.31. 14 From Ayman Al-Zawahiri, Knights Under the Prophet’s Banner, Quoted in Mahnken, 2010 p.70


they fail to recognise that war can exist as a political activity without the existence of the rational

state and its policies.

GRAND-STRATEGY FOR SECURITY IN WAR AND PEACE

NUCLEAR DETERRENCE AND THE PELOPONNESIAN WAR

War, then, should be considered as a political phenomenon at any level of analysis, and

any strategy to use the military instrument should be guided ultimately by political

considerations. Not only is this true in the use of military instrument but in the threat of its use.

That is to say that, although Clausewitz considered the act of war itself a continuation of policy,

to some theorists this represents too narrow a conception of the political utility of military force.

The advent of the Cold War, nuclear weapons and salience of deterrence theory reinforced the

need for strategy in circumstances of confrontation and not just during times of war. Bernard

Brodie in his landmark work The Absolute Weapon reflected on the Cold War’s somewhat

paradoxical need for strategy and military power to sustain peace, suggesting that ‘Thus far the

chief purpose of our military establishment has been to win wars. From now on its chief purpose

must be to avert them.’15 Given, then, strategy’s now ubiquitous role in both war and peace,

Barry Posen suggests grand-strategy might better be considered ‘a state’s theory about how best

it can “cause” security for itself’ rather than just a theory of victory in conflict.16

The identification of strategy, war and the threat of war as tools serving national security

policy and survival of the sovereign state brings strategy into the milieu of international

relations. This, of course, is a deeply political domain where competition for relative power in

the anarchic ‘international system’ is realised by grand-strategies to address evolving threat

perceptions and the shifting balance of power.17 This is a concept of strategy that Thucydides

was familiar with whilst writing about the Peloponnesian War in the 5th century B.C. Indeed

Thucydides’ historical perspective is deeply persuasive of the fact that strategy and war are

purely political in purpose where that purpose is national security.

Much of Thucydides’ contribution to our fundamental understanding of war and

strategy’s role in politics and national security comes from his examination of the underlying

15 Bernard Brodie, ‘The Absolute Weapon’ in Strategic Studies: A Reader, Mahnken et al (ed), p.205. 16 Barry Posen, The Sources of Military Doctrine, Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1984, p.13. 17 The term ‘international system’ is reluctantly used in this context since it implies the existence of a formal organizing system between states that does not exist. However, it is a term employed by international relations theorists to suggest that the interaction between states has a certain structure that follows predictable systemic principles. See Joseph S. Nye, & David A. Welch, Understanding Global Conflict and Cooperation, Longman: 2011, p.42.


systemic causes of war in the Peloponnese. Briefly, according to Thucydides, within the bipolar

Hellenic system of the time, Athens was in the ascendency in territorial, economic and military

terms relative to the extant hegemon, Sparta, which found itself in relative decline. Spartan fears

for their security in the face of this imminent power transition prompted them to take preventive

action against Athens before the balance of power tipped against them.18 A Spartan strategy of

war was thus, in Thucydides’ mind, a perfectly rational political act. Moreover, because of the

fortifications surrounding Athenian cities, the Spartan leadership recognised that decisive battle

would likely take place at sea where the Athenians held a 3:1 advantage.19 With this in mind, the

preparations for war proposed by the Spartan king Archidamus revealed a grasp of longer-term

grand-strategy and political manoeuvring that Henry Kissinger might have been proud of: 20

‘We should not yet take up arms, but should first send envoys to complain, giving

no unambiguous indication either of war or of acquiescence, and in the meantime

we should make our own preparations. We should look to acquire further allies...

who can supplement our financial resources.

‘It may well be that that they [the Athenians] will be more inclined to hold back

when they can see our preparations and a diplomatic policy giving the same

signals...’21

This small excerpt alone demonstrates a concert of alliance building, deterrence through overt

military preparation and coercive diplomacy with the objective of checking Athenian growth

without resorting to military action – grand-strategy indeed. Moreover, Archidamus clearly

appreciated that if military action became necessary, the Spartan navy at the time did not have

the means to achieve decisive victory; only a diplomatic approach to garner allied military and

economic support in order to build a large fleet of warships would allow Sparta the means to

fulfil their political objectives.

From Thucyides, it is clear that the use of war as a tool in Spartan grand-strategy was

based on a rational calculus. The same, however, was true of the Athenians. Intent on

maintaining the status quo (that is the extant ascendancy of Athens relative to Sparta), the

18 Thucydides, ‘Book I, 23’, The Peloponnesian War, trans. Martin Hammond, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009, p.13 19 P.J. Rhodes, ‘Introduction’, in The Peloponnesian War, trans. Martin Hammond, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009, p.xv. 20 Thucydides, ‘Book I, 80-86’, p.40-42. 21 Both quoted in Thucydides, ‘Book I, 82’, p.40-41.


Athenian leadership under Pericles developed a strategy that recognised that decisive victory

over the Spartans was not necessary. Instead, the Athenians merely sought to prevent their own

defeat at the hands of Sparta – a subtle difference. As such, Periclean grand-strategy sought to

avoid a decisive land battle with the stronger Spartan army but instead chose to protect its vital

interests in the city, giving up land in Attica to the Spartans if required but looking to eventually

exhaust them by naval blockade and confrontation at sea where the Athenians held the tactical

advantage. This, the Athenians hoped, would persuade the Spartan’s that the cost of victory

would be too great and they would surrender their unlimited ambitions of total victory. In

Pericles’ words:

‘We should abandon our land and our homes, and safeguard the sea and the city.

We must not, through anger at losing land and homes, join battle with the greatly

superior forces of the Peloponnesians.’22

As politically rational as Archidamus’ approach was, Pericles’ strategy has the additional quality

of being so apparently contrary to the prevailing hoplite cultural ethos of ‘the glory of war’

depicted by Homer in his Iliad. Allowing the Spartans to ravage the Athenian lands and homes

of Attica by retreating to the fortifications of Athens, and avoiding pitched battles against the

stronger Spartan force may all be acceptably ‘post heroic’23 in modern strategic parlance, but in

the context of the 5th century B.C., where the epitome of honourable battle was open

confrontation between hoplite phalanxes, it might have seemed somewhat cowardly.24 By

bucking the cultural norm where glory and honour were motivation enough to confront the

enemy in decisive battle, Periclean strategy demonstrates that when war and rational decisions of

national security are combined, then cultural influences become subordinate to those of state

national interest – once again the burden of proof suggests that war utilised by strategy is a

political and not cultural action and has been throughout strategic history.

22 Thucydides, ‘Book I, 143’, p.71. 23 See Edward N. Luttwak, ‘Towards Post-Heroic Warfare’, Foreign Affairs, vol.74, no.3. p.109-122. 24 Athanassios G. Platias, , Constantinos Koliopoulos, Thucydides on Strategy, London: Hurst & Co., 2010, p.47.


STRATEGY – THE PERILS OF CONCEPTUAL FAILURE

(1. Overambitious Policy)

Strategy, at any level of analysis, is about the orchestration of means to meet political

ends. Strategy may be considered broken either when it fails to coordinate the available means

in a coherent and appropriate manner commensurate with meeting those objectives, or when

those objectives are out of reach of the available means. Surprisingly, considering the reasoned

political calculus for strategy in Athens and Sparta described earlier, both city-states were

eventually guilty of failures of strategy that were born of a failure to grasp this crucial functional

concept. The patience and guile of the Spartan king Archidamus was left for nought as the

Spartan assembly instead followed the entreaties of the belligerent and misguided Sthenelaidas

who advocated immediate war.25 Without time to build the alliances and fleet of warships that

Archidamus’ strategy espoused, Sparta did not have the means to stand-up to the successful

campaign of naval attrition waged by Athens. Eventually, Sparta had little choice but to accept

armistice and the prospect of Athenian hegemony. However, hubris and a failure to match

means to ends eventually got the better of Athens too as the Athenian assembly, following

armistice with Sparta, chose to abandon Pericles’ strategy of limited aims and opted instead for a

campaign of territorial aggrandizement. The subsequent far-flung Athenian expedition to

conquer Sicily led to an overextension of their military forces leaving Athens itself vulnerable to

renewed Spartan attacks. Indeed, the Spartan state was able to reverse the terms of armistice,

conquer Athens and impose its regional hegemony once more.26

Of course, the perils of overoptimistic political ambition and a failure to allocate the

resources required of any policy are particularly germane when one considers the criticism

levelled at the UK government for under-resourcing the overambitious military operation in

Afghanistan’s Helmand region in 2006. In a recent indictment of the UK’s policy to mount the

Helmand operation, one parliamentary report asserted that it was ‘unacceptable that hard pressed

Forces in such a difficult operation as Helmand should have been denied the necessary support

to carry out the Mission from the outset’27, whilst charges of overextension of the British

military by current operations in Libya also give the lessons learned in the 5th Century B.C.

contemporary relevance.28

25 Ibid, p.62-63. 26 Ibid. 27 House of Commons Defence Select Committee, Operations In Afghanistan - 4th Report, 6 July 2011, para. 41. 28 BBC, ‘RAF Stretched by Libya says Second in Command’, BBC News, 21 June 2011.


STRATEGY – THE PERILS OF CONCEPTUAL FAILURE

(2. Military action devoid of political guidance)

Overambitious policy represents one side of strategic failure; military action absent of

any policy or strategy represents the other. Military action unguided by strategy may lead to

tactical or operational success but is unlikely to contribute to the overarching political objectives

of the war thus rendering any tactical success meaningless. This is a familiar criticism of the

German Armies in the two world wars. Colin Gray suggests that the German inability to turn

tactical excellence into strategic success stems from the legacy of Prussian General, Helmuth

von Moltke the elder.29 Moltke was a disciple of Clausewitz and it would be a disservice to deny

his military genius. His emphasis on taking the offensive and the need for efficient and rapid

mobilisation led to quick and decisive military victories against a disorganized French force in

the Franco-Prussian war. As such, his strategic legacy evolved into the tactical successes of

Blitzkrieg in the 20th century. His flaw, however, was his insistence that ‘strategy works best for

policy, but in its actions is fully independent of policy’.30 As such, Moltke believed that the

decision to go to war was indeed political, in that it was an act of policy, but once war had been

embarked upon, its conduct should remain free of political interference until a rapid and decisive

victory had been achieved. The problem with Moltke’s approach arose when the initial tactical

successes of Blitzkrieg, for example those achieved by the Wehrmacht against the Soviet Union

in 1941, confronted the protracted and defensive character of 20th century total war. Here,

military action could not bring war to a rapid and decisive conclusion, and the independence of

strategy from politics, and indeed of tactics from strategy, rendered the military campaign

somewhat unreactive and disconnected from shifting political expedients.

But this is not only a criticism of the Imperial German Army and then the Wehrmacht led

by Moltke’s protégés. Of the US conduct of the war in Iraq in 2003, Colin Gray wrote ‘there is a

black hole where American strategy ought to reside’ suggesting that American tactical victories

were not coordinated to address the underlying political conditions required for peace and

stability in the country.31 The same may be true of the recent US led NATO campaign in

Afghanistan. Here, recent criticisms suggest that the prevailing strategy has focussed

excessively on the military defeat of the Taliban rather than a lasting negotiated political

settlement. Former UK Ambassador to the country, Sherard Cowper-Coles, suggests that ‘a

29 Gray, 2010, p.31-2. 30 Helmuth Graf von Moltke, Moltke on the Art of War, ed. Daniel J. Hughes, trans D. Hughes, H. Bell, New York: Ballantine Books, 1993, p.45. 31 Colin S. Gray, Another Bloody Century,, London: Orion, 2005, p.111.


military focused approach risks making Afghanistan safe not for better governance, but for the

warlords and narco-mafias’, implying that the military effort to provide security for a stable

Afghan state free of al-Qaida might eventually prove worthless and that only a politically guided

strategy can work in the long-term.32 This is an issue we shall return to in chapter three when

examining civil-military relations.

CHAPTER CONCLUSIONS

To conclude this chapter and to anticipate later arguments, it should now be clear that at

all levels of analysis war is truly a political instrument that strategy employs to gain or retain

some element of power. War is, however, more than an isolated act of state policy and should

continue to be guided by political expedients throughout any conflict. So too should any policy

underpinning a strategy be based upon the military and strategic realities of any conflict

otherwise overextension of the available military resources can ultimately result in failure.

Chapter two develops this theme suggesting that strategy exists as an equilibrium of differing

political and military perspectives and considerations. The military, focussed on events on the

battlefield, may see victory principally as the defeat of the enemy, whilst the statesman might

have a broader political purview influenced by diplomatic considerations and the general well

being of the state. Moreover, and perhaps most importantly, any polity must also consider the

feelings of the society it exists to represent and whose consent the state may need as a mandate

to rule. These differing perspectives form the three elements within Clausewitz’s ‘paradoxical

trinity’ – chapter two’s aim is to show that when strategy fails to acknowledge and reconcile the

dynamic relationship and opposing perspectives within this trinity then that strategy may be

critically flawed.

32 Sherard Cowper-Coles, Cables from Kabul, London: HarperCollins, p.288-9.

Theories of Victory 10

Chapter 2

Theories of Victory

War and strategy are political activities, but as chapter one concluded, they are

influenced not only by rational political calculation, but also by the military realities of any

conflict as well as by the feelings of the society for which any war is theoretically being

fought. Only by successfully balancing these perspectives and by achieving a modicum of

support from all angles within this relationship will the state be able to develop a strategy for

war that has any chance of success and ultimately achieves political objectives. The problem,

as this chapter sets-out, is that all too often these differing opinions of how and why the war

should be fought appear irreconcilable. The result of such conflicting theories of victory is

ineffective strategy making and friction that leads to damaged relationships either between the

state and society, or between the civilian leadership and military commanders, either outcome

having important negative consequences for the state and its use of the military instrument.

VICTORY - THE IMPORTANCE OF PERSPECTIVE

In response to receiving congratulations for his victory over the Romans at Heraclea in

280 B.C., King Pyrrhus of Epirus is said to have uttered ‘If we are victorious in one more

battle with the Romans, we shall be utterly ruined’ such were the costs of victory to his city-

state in terms of men and materiel.1 Over two millennia later, on 1st May 2003, President

George W. Bush stood on the deck of the aircraft carrier USS Abraham Lincoln and stated

that ‘major combat operations in Iraq have ended’, and that ‘the United States and our allies

have prevailed’.2 Considering that the insurgency in the aftermath of that ‘victory’ cost

another 4,269 American servicemen their lives and left in tatters the international credibility

of American strategy to use preventive-action, one might ask whether victory in Iraq was no

less pyrrhic.3 As political scientist, William Martel puts it: ‘the ferocity of the insurgency and

the cost in lives undermined the nature of that victory’.4

Martel’s pessimism regarding the validity of the declaration of American victory

stems from his belief that ‘the term “victory” is employed reflexively as a synonym for 1 Plutarch, ‘Life of Pyrrhus, (21.9)’. 2 Quoted in William Martel, Victory In War, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007, p.1. 3 Casualty figures up to 1 August 2011, US Department Of Defence. 4 Martel, p.2.


outcomes that align with one’s preferences’.5 As such, Martel, like a number of other

theorists, believes that the term ‘victory’ is largely a subjective judgement dependent on an

arbitrary perspective not necessarily defined by the reasoned and clearly articulated political

objectives that chapter one suggests should be the underpinning of all strategy and war. In

the case of President Bush’s declaration of victory, his language implied that success was

measured largely in terms of military effectiveness and the battlefield defeat of Iraqi forces:

‘the battle of Iraq is one victory in a war on terror.’6 The implication in this example is that

the strategy contingent on this vision of victory failed to address longer-term political

objectives of a secure Iraqi state in the aftermath of the collapse of Saddam Hussein’s regime,

a theory that is supported when one considers the reactive nature of post-conflict

reconstruction that occurred apparently as an afterthought.7 That is to say, President Bush’s

declaration of victory was more than just an element of rhetoric for domestic consumption; it

bellied a lack of conceptual clarity where the statesman focussed his vision of victory purely

in military terms, which in turn led to an inadequate strategy that Hew Strachan suggests ‘was

devoid of strategic insight or of political context’ and had ‘no structure for the post-conflict

phase of occupation.’8

Martel attempts to provide an organising framework with which to analyse the

concept of victory and explain such failures. Within this framework, victory – that is when

the outcome of events aligns with ones subjective preferences – exists on three levels: the

tactical, political-military and grand-strategic level.9 Depending on the level an individual is

judging the outcome of events from dictates on whether they see those events corresponding

to victory. Critically, victory on one level does not constitute victory at the next.

Tactical victory perhaps represents the classical vision of victory. The Roman

historian and scholar, Titius Livius (Livy), perceived victory as encompassing a range of

successes but all involved defeat of the enemy force militarily, either by decisive victory on

the battlefield (when he talks of ‘a famous victory...with cavalry’), to deterring the enemy

from engaging in battle in the first place (‘as good as victory – the admission, namely that

[Hannibal] was running away and refusing battle’).10 This emphasis on the tactical nature of

5 Ibid. 6 Quoted in Martel, p.1 7 See Hew Strachan, ‘Making Strategy: Civil-military Relations after Iraq’, Survival, vol.4, no.3 Autumn 2006, p.59. 8 Ibid. 9 Martel, p.94-103. 10 Quoted in Martel, p.20.


victory also appears in Clausewitz’s writings. His chapter on ‘the Culminating Point of

Victory’ in On War focuses almost exclusively on the practical importance of bringing

military strength to bear on an enemy, where ‘victory normally results from the superiority of

one side.’11 This, as we saw in chapter one, was the concept of victory that Moltke the elder

adopted, believing that success stemmed from the annihilation of the enemy through

overwhelming force.

Yet Clausewitz’s appreciation of war serving political objectives ensured that,

indirectly, he understood victory to be more than mere annihilation of the enemy. Indeed, by

writing that ‘it is not possible in every war for the victor to overthrow his enemy completely’

Clausewitz asserts that winning the war is not always a matter of decisive military defeat of

the enemy.12 Instead, simply waging war, or as we saw in chapter one, merely threatening it,

could be force enough to coerce the will of an enemy into accepting overall political

conditions without having to destroy them. This use of the military instrument for political

ends would yield military-political victory. In his theoretical framework this is Martel’s

second level of victory, which he suggests is ‘the desire of policymakers to translate military

intervention into improvements in the political environment.’ Victory at this level recognises

the coercive effect of force or the threat of use of force to achieve political ends - it does not

always mean military defeat of the enemy. The Athenians recognised this during the

Peloponnesian War where their strategy of attrition aimed not at defeating the Spartans, but

by doing enough to coerce them into accepting the status quo by making the cost of war too

great for the Spartan state to bear. A more recent example was the coercion of President

Milosevic of Serbia to desist persecution of Kosovar Albanians in 1999 without outright

defeat of the Serbian armed forces.

Above the military-political level in Martel’s theory of victory sits the grand-strategic

level of victory, which he describes as the ‘outcomes of wars in which the state defeats the

economic, political, and military sources of power of another state.’13 The inference here is

that grand-strategic victory stems from grand-strategy where victory is obtained by mobilising

all instruments of state power and seeks total defeat of the enemy state and a comprehensive

change in the political relationship between the victor and vanquished. This would be victory

encapsulated by the objective of total war. But victory at this level must be qualified by the

11 Clausewitz, p.209. 12 Ibid. 13 Martel, p.98.


extreme costs of total war. Strategic theorist Basil Liddell Hart clearly anticipated the

moderating effect that total war had on the concept of victory, echoing the words of King

Pyrrhus, where ‘Victory is not an end in itself. It is worse than useless if the end of the war

finds you so exhausted that you are defeated in peace’.14 Apropos war’s political dimension,

Liddell Hart supposed that ‘it is the statesmen’s responsibility... to look beyond the military

victory, and to ensure that the steps taken for this purpose do not overstrain the fabric of the

nation or damage its future’.15

This is all to say that in practical terms, to the military commander, decisive battlefield

victory through combat may be all-important,16 but to the politician this might be a sterile

victory if it cannot be translated into political gain or if the costs of that military victory are so

great as to damage the state and threaten its well being. Conversely, the tactical commander

may suffer huge losses and be defeated on the battlefield, but if the political objectives of the

action are sufficiently limited – perhaps only to show sufficient strength to prevent the

collapse of the ruling regime – then victory at the strategic level is still possible. For instance,

the survival of Iraqi Ba’athist regime following military defeat in the first Gulf War would

certainly have been seen as a strategic victory to Saddam Hussein, whilst the continued

regional threat from an unstable Iraqi regime with a precedent for developing weapons of

mass destruction may be considered a strategic failure for the US led coalition. Of the third

perspective of victory that will shape strategy – society’s perspective - this is far harder to

characterise, for it may shift as war goes on. Perhaps in the early phases of war, when the

motives to fight and the presence of a threat are clear, then populist visions of tactical victory

and defeat of the enemy prevail, but as war endures and costs rise, society’s perspective may

change to one more akin to political-military victory where more limited objectives and

military withdrawal with honour are preferred. We shall encounter the fickle nature of public

support a little later. For the moment, however, it should be quite clear that amongst the

paradoxical trinity, the members of which all have a stake in shaping strategy, victory could

mean quite different things. As the following examples illustrate, strategic failure occurs

when these perspective become irreconcilable and fractures in the relationships amongst the

members of the trinity develop as a result.

14 Basil H. Liddell Hart, Thoughts on War, London: Spellmount, p.47. 15 Quoted in Martel, p.63. 16 The psychological explanation of why this might be so is beyond the scope of this dissertation. For an account of why the military mind might see victory purely as a battlefield event see Norman Dixon’s classic, On the Psychology of Military Incompetence.


PUBLIC PERCEPTIONS AT VARIANCE WITH THE STATE

TET OFFENSIVE - 1968

The North Vietnamese Tet offensive of 1968 was a surprise attack against South

Vietnamese and American military units with the North’s aim of taking back some initiative

for their floundering military campaign. The offensive yielded some initial military success

with American forces besieged at Khe San and Hue. Eventually, however, the North’s

offensive momentum stagnated and American forces were able to counter-attack and deliver a

crushing tactical defeat. Yet despite decisive military victory, the outcome of the Tet

offensive was seen as a strategic failure in the American war effort. In the month before Tet,

the US commander in Vietnam, General Westmoreland, had publicly reassured the American

public that the United States was winning the war, that ‘there is light at the end of the

tunnel’.17 The surprise resurgence of the North during Tet, and the subsequent increase in

American casualties, critically destroyed credibility in General Westmoreland’s claims and in

the government’s Vietnam policy as a whole. Meanwhile, despite his forces being eventually

annihilated at the tactical level, Ho Chi Minh seized the moment and turned defeat into a

strategic victory. Through propaganda portraying the North Vietnamese as courageous

freedom fighters set upon brutally at the hands of a belligerent United States, Ho successfully

sought to shift American public opinion against the war.18

The outcome of the Tet offensive is illustrative of a more general failure by the

American government to reconcile the divergent visions of victory held by the American

people and that of the US administration. Martel suggests that the American public has

developed a stereotyped and somewhat one-dimensional vision of decisive and honourable

victory that was born of the experiences of the two World Wars and American Civil War. He

characterises this vision of victory as a set of six criteria against which the American psyche

judges victory. These criteria are:19

1. Defeat the enemy military forces and its economic infrastructure.

2. Control the enemy state.

3. Post-war political and governmental reform of the defeated state.

17 Quoted in Thomas X. Hammes, The Sling and the Stone, St. Paul: Zenith Press, 2004, p.72. 18 Ibid, p.66. 19 Martel, p.137-147.


4. Rebuild the economy and the infrastructure of the defeated state.

5. Realign the defeated state’s foreign policy.

6. Build a new strategic relationship with the defeated state.

These criteria have their roots in conceptions of total and unconditional surrender

against a state-based adversary followed by a period of post-war reconstruction and

realignment along the lines of Marshall Plan aid and the integration of West Germany into

NATO following the Second World War. Yet the strategic context at the height of the Cold

War rendered this vision of victory as obsolete. The threat of nuclear confrontation made the

conception of benefit and advantage through total victory a non sequitur to war; instead

deterrence and war avoidance were the preferred strategic options rather than mutually

assured destruction. As such any attempt to ‘win’ through military defeat of the enemy state

became irrational and served no political gain, indeed it risked unimaginable costs for the

‘victor’. It was this context that Martel argues stymied American efforts in Vietnam,

suggesting that, ‘The United States could not marshal the political will to use the instruments

of power at its disposal to achieve victory because it was stalemated by the risks of nuclear

war with North Vietnam’s sponsors, the Soviet Union and the People’s Republic of China’.20

In many ways, Cohen corroborates this interpretation, suggesting that President

Johnson and Secretary of State Robert McNamara limited American strategy to one of

restrained escalation and political signalling (as McNamara had done during the Cuban

missile crisis) fearing that the overtly offensive strategy that the military chiefs requested

would incur Chinese or Soviet involvement.21 As such, any attempt to gain the kind of

success the American public would perceive as victory, according to the criteria of

unconditional surrender, were too dangerous to contemplate. That the American government

failed to communicate and reconcile this strategic reality against the expectations of the

American public, who held artificially high expectations of what victory would look like,

meant that when eventually the strategic realities did become apparent, public support

plummeted. That public expectations were perpetuated through official pledges to protect

South Vietnamese independence by first Kennedy and then Johnson administrations, as well

as the unfounded optimism of General Westmoreland, meant that when realities did become

apparent, the public’s trust in its policy makers was irrevocably damaged and strategy was

20 Ibid, p.128 21 Cohen, p.176.


hamstrung as a consequence.22 For example, the opposition to the war that besieged President

Johnson after the Tet offensive meant that, for political reasons, he could not begin to

entertain the subsequent request for more troops from his military Chiefs of Staff, despite the

perceived military necessity.23 Moreover, President Johnson felt that the situation in Vietnam

left his position as President untenable; he elected not to stand as the Democrat nominee at

the subsequent election, which was won in any case by the Republican, Richard Nixon.

Certainly, the importance of the public’s theory of victory and the failure of the government

to shape public perceptions were critical in the failure of what was already a flawed strategy

in Vietnam,

Bartholomees points to the importance of public perception when it comes to

developing objectives and strategies for victory today. He even goes so far as to suggesting

that, in America at least, it is more important than the opinions of the political and military

elites not to mention that of allied governments.24 One need only look at he evolution of

American strategy in Afghanistan to understand Bartholomees’ point. A Pew Research

Centre poll in May 2011 suggested that the majority of American’s (56 per cent) believed that

US troops should be withdrawn from Afghanistan as soon as possible,25 leading some to

suggest that this war weariness, born from the enduring human and financial cost that post-

conflict reconstruction has exacted on US forces, has prompted President Obama to begin a

schedule of troop withdrawals that is more rapid than his military chiefs would have

otherwise advised.26 Those who advocate that Obama does indeed adopt a strategy of

‘declare victory and get out’ underline the importance of bowing to public perception in

developing strategy.27 Once again, Bartholomees is succinct and accurate when he says ‘at

the strategic level, victory and defeat can be as much issues of public perception and even

partisan politics as they are of battlefield achievement.’28

22 Martel, p.126. 23 H.R. McMaster, Dereliction of Duty, New York: HarperCollins, 1997, p.333. 24 J. Boone Bartholomees,’A Theory of Victory’, Paramaters, Summer 2008, p.31. 25 Pew Research Center, 3 May 2011. 26 ‘Afghanistan drawdown risky, US Joint Chief Says’, BBC News, 23 June 2011. 27 Toby Harnden, ‘Analysis: Barack Obama's slow motion strategy of 'declare victory and get out' of Afghanistan’, The Telegraph, 22 June 2011. The origins of the ‘declare victory and get out’ suggestion come from a misquoting of Senator George Aiken in 1966 who proposed that US forces be extricated from Vietnam having fallen short of the strategic goal of maintaining South Vietnamese independence but having successfully communicated resolve against Communism. See Richard Eder, ‘Aiken Suggests U.S. Say It Has Won the War.’ New York Times. 20 October, 1966, p. 1, 16. 28 Bartholomees, p.32.


So too, the British experience of strategy making in Afghanistan is illustrative of the

fragility of the dynamic relationship between society, the state and the military. Successive

governments throughout the decade since British military forces became involved have

struggled to shape public perception and retain support for the mission. Tony Blair, stressing

the importance of victory in Afghanistan to British security, said in 2006 ‘this extraordinary

desert [of Afghanistan] is where the future of world security in the early twenty-first century

is going to be played out’, yet the distance of the conflict from British shores and limited

credible evidence conflating military success against the Taliban with improved homeland

security has made maintaining public support a difficult task.29 Mike Gapes, the chairman of

the Commons Foreign Affairs Select Committee in 2009, acknowledged as much, telling the

Times newspaper that ‘People see men and women being killed for something, but they are

not sure why they are being killed.’30 The Select Committee concluded that continued public

support for the Afghan mission was at risk of dwindling further in the absence of any clear

explanation of purpose by the government. Indeed, recent polling by the Ministry of Defence

suggests that in March 2010 only 52 per cent of the UK population supported the mission and

41 per cent directly opposed it.31 To date, considering that the security benefits of the

Afghanistan campaign may be intangible to the public, and with 377 British personnel dead32

as well as total costs to the exchequer of some £14 billion,33 it is unsurprising that public

support for the mission is fragile and hence why Prime Minister David Cameron is keen to

offer voters signs of a successful end-game and a non-negotiable withdrawal of troops that

would see British combat operations in Afghanistan end in 2015 – Edmund Burke’s assertion

where ‘no war can be long carried on against the will of the people’ is apposite when

considering the relevance of society’s perspective in influencing strategy.34

This, as much as we would wish strategy to focus on guaranteeing military success

and national security interests, appears to be an unavoidable aspect of democratic realpolitik,

that is to say it is the statesman’s responsibility to see the broader picture and dictate strategy

in the state’s best interests at home and abroad even when this strategy appears at odds with

29 Quoted in Jeremy Black, Defence: Policy Issues for a New Government, London: The Social Affairs Unit, p.99. 30 Deborah Haynes, ‘Tell us why we're in Afghanistan, MPs say’, The Times, 3 August 2009. 31 House of Commons Defence Select Committee, Operations In Afghanistan - 4th Report, para. 14, 6 July 2011. 32 Ministry of Defence, Operations in Afghanistan: British Fatalities, 18 July 2011. 33 Costs to 31 March 2011, see Operations in Afghanistan – 4th Report, Para 107. 34 Edmund Burke, The Works of The Right Honorable Edmund Burke, Vol. V, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, p.283.


the concept of military victory. To those involved in fighting wars, this may appear craven, to

political scientists like Peter Feaver, it is simply a matter of democratic theory where only the

civilian leadership, as the representative of society as whole, is in a place to act on behalf of

the broader interests and wishes of the society it represents; as Feaver suggests: ‘even if the

military is best able to identify the threat and appropriate response to that threat ... only the

civilian can set the level of acceptable risk for society.’35 Moreover, we might also remind

ourselves that, even in Clausewitz’s ‘paradoxical trinity’ we see recognition that the state

conducting a strategy that failed to address concerns of the people ‘would conflict with reality

to such an extent that... it would be useless.’36 It appears an unavoidable truth that public

opinion, fickle though it may be, shapes strategy.

MILITARY VICTORY VERSUS THE NEED FOR POLITICAL COERCION

THE CUBAN MISSILE CRISIS - 1962

The reflection of political primacy over military concerns in strategy making stems

not only from the politician’s need to consider the wishes of society, but of a broader political

understanding that the military option is not always the most appropriate guarantor of a state’s

security. Consider the US reaction to the deployment of Soviet nuclear weapons to Cuba in

1962.37 Fundamentally, the civilian approach, characterised by Defence Secretary Robert

McNamara, feared the unintended consequences of escalation and therefore favoured a

strategy of political signalling rather than of outright force.38 The resulting blockade of

Soviet shipping, combined with unequivocal signs of military preparation and diplomatic

signals of intent to raise the stakes was the epitome of Thomas Schelling’s ‘brinksmanship’ in

that it left the Soviets fearful that they may have started an uncontrollable escalatory chain

that would ultimately see them come off worst;39 the Soviets would have to withdraw their

missiles or risk local military confrontation and eventually even nuclear exchange and their

35 Peter D. Feaver, Armed Servants, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2005, p.6. 36 Clausewitz, p.31. 37 For a history of the background to and events during the crisis, see Michael Dobbs, One Minute to Midnight, London: Random house, 2008. See also McMaster, p.24-41. 38 Kennedy understood that any strategy must balance caution with the need to show resolve, both to the Soviets and to the US electorate in view of impending Presidential mid-term elections and with memories of the Bay of Pigs debacle still in recent memory. 39 Thomas Schelling, Arms and Influence, New Haven: Yale University Press, 2008, p.99.


own annihilation at the hands of superior American nuclear capabilities.40 For the American

military leadership, however, this strategy of political signalling rather than outright force

failed to address the underlying problem of having a Soviet proxy only ninety miles from the

US mainland. The military chiefs were vociferous in the need for an approach that not only

saw the removal of the Soviet missiles but also fulfilled the objectives of Operation

Mongoose – the on-going covert mission to remove Castro from power. A military

conclusion through airstrike and invasion would satisfy both objectives. Kennedy, however,

saw the chiefs’ insistence on the use of decisive force as politically naïve and dangerous, and

began excluding their input from his deliberations.41

For the political leadership, averting nuclear escalation and the removal of the Soviet

missiles from Cuba was a ‘victory’. For the military, however, the lack of decisive force to

remove all Soviet forces and Castro from Cuba, combined with the tacit agreement by the

Kennedy administration to remove American Jupiter nuclear missiles from Europe in

exchange for the withdrawal of the Soviet missiles, represented little more than appeasement.

Chief of the Air Force, General Curtis LeMay even went so far as to say that it represented

‘the greatest defeat in our history’.42 It is apparent that between the civilian and the military

leadership there was no common appreciation of the objective of the use of military force,

where the military failed to understand that the need to exercise discretion and avoid

escalation were more important than the need to use decisive force. These irreconcilable

visions of what victory meant poisoned the relationship between the civilian and military

establishment. The Kennedy administration began side-lining the military officers who had

proven themselves obstacles to reasoned deliberation during the crisis, and as US Army

General, H.R. McMaster suggests, ‘foreshadowed what would become a major obstacle to

strategy for the Vietnam War.’43

CHAPTER CONCLUSIONS

This chapter has shown that victory is an assessment that is guided not by objective

criteria but by how the consequences of battle are subjectively perceived relative to an

individual’s perspective. Tactical success may be a victory to the military commander, but 40 Graham Allison and Peter Zelikow, The Essence of Decision, 2nd Edition, New York: Longman, 1999 41 McMaster, p.28. 42 Quoted in McMaster, p.29. 43 McMaster, p29.


unless that victory has positive political benefits, then to the broader concerns of the

statesman it may mean defeat. Victory may be positive through defeat of the enemy, or it

may be negative where defeat by the enemy is simply avoided; again it is the political and not

military consequences of each scenario that might be considered the ultimate arbiter of

whether victory has been attained, for war is ultimately a political activity. As such,

Clausewitz’s paradoxical trinity has proved instructive where the state battles to balance

visions of victory of the people whom the state represents, and of the military who fight for

the state. This balancing act is perhaps the crux of successful strategy making, and we have

seen that in examples where friction exists between the civilian leadership and the military

commander, strategy making is hindered. Chapter three examines the nature of this

relationship, suggesting that two-way dialogue underpinned by strong civilian leadership is a

prerequisite of successful strategy making and must be the final word on policy.

Civil-Military Relations 21

Chapter 3

Civil–Military Relations

Politics, as discussed in chapter one, is an activity focussed on the manipulation and

distribution of power. Political philosophers since Plato have understood politics as a human

activity that intrinsically involves a zero-sum conflict where one man’s gain in power is

almost certainly another man’s loss.1 Politics must therefore involve an element of coercion

where the will of one actor is forced upon another against their wishes. Military power, as we

have seen, is one such instrument of coercion. But there is an inherent weakness in this

theory. Once the coercive power of the military has been created, its strength becomes a

threat to the state that it is meant to serve, either through a direct challenge to the state’s

authority by military coup or by autonomously waging war irrespective of the state’s wider

interests and expressed will, thereby destroying the state’s monopoly on the use of force as

well as draining its resources.2

The state is therefore faced with a dilemma: the need to develop a military strong

enough to do its will, whilst generating a relationship where the military does not wield its

power against the state that created it. This dilemma may be less acute in absolute

monarchies like that under Frederick the Great, or in totalitarian states under a military

dictator like Hitler, where the military leader also heads the state, negating any conflict of

interests between the two. For democracies, however, those who govern represent the will of

the civilian population and therefore power is placed in the hands of civilian political agents

as an extension of the electorate as a whole. Political scientist, Peter Fever, sums up this

basic tenet of democratic theory by reminding us that ‘the governed must govern.’3

This complicates the matter as we saw in chapter two, for in war the state may have to

reconcile differing perceptions of victory between society and the military whilst nurturing its

relationships with both to maintain political support and military obedience; if either society

or the military were to turn against the civilian leadership then at best it would mean a change

of government by the ballot box, at worst by military coup. Chapter two showed how the

democratic state’s relationship with the electorate is a matter of public perception – ensuring

that military action is seen to have positive benefits for the state, most likely in terms of

1 Feaver, p.4. 2 Ibid, p.4-5. 3 Feaver, p.5.


securing its national interests at home or abroad. This chapter deals with the fragile

relationship between the civilian leadership and the military, asking how the state can

continue to command obedience when the military’s perception of victory may be at odds

with that of their political leadership. More importantly, this chapter looks at the

consequences for successful strategy-making when the civil-military relationship breaks

down.

HUNTINGTON’S MODEL OF CIVIL-MILITARY RELATIONS -

OBJECTIVE CONTROL

In terms of institutional theory, Samuel Huntington’s model of civil-military relations

appears to remain the dominant explanatory paradigm, with some theorists referring to it as

the ‘normal’ theory of civil-military relations.4 Outlined first in his 1957 book The Soldier

and the State, Huntington’s model asserts that the key to successful civil-military relations is

‘objective control’ of the military by the state. This involved ‘the recognition [by the state] of

autonomous military professionalism’, i.e. allowing the military to do their job and conduct

military operations as they see fit for overall political objectives but without civilian

interference. 5 In theory, this would lead to voluntary subordination by the military, allowing

for a large and capable military instrument but rendering it ‘politically sterile and neutral.’6

The antithesis of objective control Huntington called subjective control. This

involved the civilianization of the military’s leadership, or as Eliot Cohen suggests,

‘controlling it from within with transplanted civilian elites.’7 The problem with subjective

control, either by a civilian elite within the military or alternatively by politicised military

leadership, is that it failed to create a distinct boundary between state and military. The

military instrument could therefore become a theoretical threat to the democratic state, armed

with the political awareness and military clout to challenge the authority of the civilian

leadership that created it in the first place. The only solution would be to either emasculate

the power of the military instrument, the consequences of which would be detrimental to the

security of the state, or by depoliticising the military and allowing it autonomy to operate in

the military domain, i.e. by undertaking objective control. As such, in the context of an

4 See Cohen, p.4-8 5 Samuel Huntington, The Soldier and the State, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1985, p.83. 6 Ibid, p.84. 7 Cohen, p.227.


existential threat from the Soviet Union during the Cold War, Huntington posited that only

the freedom associated with objective control would allow for the development of a strong

American military that was capable of defeating the threat whilst preventing the military

leadership from questioning overall civilian control.8

VIETNAM

THE PERILS OF CIVILIAN INTERFERENCE?

In many ways, the American experience in the war in Vietnam might have helped

vindicate Huntington’s preference for objective control. As we saw in chapter two, the legacy

of President Kennedy’s experience during the Cuban missile crisis had left President Johnson

mistrustful of his military chiefs, favouring instead the counsel of Robert McNamara and his

coterie of civilian ‘Whiz Kids’.9 Johnson and his team were therefore left with a civil-

military relationship that did not respect military professionalism and held insufficient trust to

allow the military any autonomy. The result of this mistrust was the counter-productive

civilian involvement in the detail of military matters during the Vietnam War. As examples,

Eliot Cohen points to the drawn out air-campaign that lacked decisive effect because Johnson

felt it necessary to personally approve most of the targets submitted by the Joint Chiefs of

Staff, whilst the exclusion from bombing (for political motives) of urban areas in the north

stymied the coercive effectiveness of American air power.10 As such, the perceived wisdom

that grew from the American flaws in strategy in Vietnam was that an arrogant and hubristic

civilian leadership, lacking trust in their military advisors, had become overinvolved in the

running of the war, excessively politicising American involvement and failing to let the

military do their job, the result of which was strategic failure.11 This wisdom suggests that,

had the US military been afforded autonomy under objective control then a more effective

military strategy might have produced strategic success. As we shall see later, this is a

questionable assumption, but dominance of this perspective at the time galvanised the

8 Feaver, p.16-53. 9 See McMaster, p.19. The term ‘Whiz Kids’ was a popular and occasionally pejorative term for McNamara’s team of young civilian advisers that came to government from think tanks like the RAND Corporation. They placed a great deal of emphasis on systems and quantitative analysis and were suspicious of seasoned military judgment when it came to strategy-making. 10 Cohen, p.176. 11 Ibid, p.175. This perceived wisdom is encapsulated in McMasters’ Dereliction of Duty.


American military and political establishments to revise the nature of their relationship,

leading to a reassertion of respect for military autonomy that the Huntington model espoused.

THE 1991 GULF WAR TO AFGHANISTAN TODAY

THE PERILS OF MILITARY AUTONOMY

Perhaps the clearest articulation of the nature of the revised relationship came from the

former US Secretary of Defence, Casper Weinberger. The Weinberger doctrine as it became

known, advocated military commitments only when there were unambiguous threats to

national security and only when there were clearly defined political and military objectives

and overwhelming military force to ensure success.12 Colin Powel carried this doctrine into

practice during his the first Gulf War in 1991 during which he served as the Chairman of the

Joint Chiefs of Staff. Powell’s apparently successful insistence on clear objectives and the

authority to use overwhelming military force to achieve those objectives putatively put the

painful memories of civilian interference in Vietnam to rest. President George Bush Senior

reflecting, ‘by God, we’ve kicked the Vietnam syndrome for once and for all.’13 Yet the

newfound relationship between Bush and Powell perhaps signalled an unhealthy swing

towards excessive military power.

Powell’s power had its origins in the Goldwater-Nichols Department of Defence

Reorganization Act of 1986. This gave the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff enhanced

bureaucratic influence to force military concerns onto the political agenda.14 Combined with

a determination of the civilian leadership not to ignore military advise as they had in Vietnam,

Powell’s influence during the Gulf War became significant. President Bush Senior reflecting

on his relationship with Powell shows his almost unquestioning acceptance of Powell’s

military counsel, haunted as he obviously was by his memories of Vietnam:

‘[General Powell...] ever the professional... sought to ensure that there were

sufficient troops for what ever option I wanted, and then the freedom of action to

12 Black, p.8, Cohen, p.187. 13 Quoted in Cohen, p.199. 14 The Goldwater Nicholls Act sought to limit the power of the individual Service Chiefs following the impediments that inter-service rivalries had caused to coherent strategy making in the Vietnam War as well as in the failed Beirut intervention of 1982 and the invasion of Grenada in 1983. At the same time, the Act gave unprecedented power to the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff as the sole military adviser to the President as well as a place on the National Security Council. See Strachan, 2006, p.64.


do the job once the political decision had been made. I was determined that our

military would have both. I did not want to repeat the problems of Vietnam...

where the political leadership meddled with military operations.’15

The apparent trust and autonomy that Powell, and by extension the military

organisation as a whole, had developed during the Gulf War may have reflected a productive

and successful return to ‘normal’ civil-military relations, but for some political scientists the

level of decision-making authority it lent to the military was a step too far. Eliot Cohen

points to numerous examples during the Gulf War when abdication of politically oriented

decisions by the civilian leadership to Powell and the military leadership cost dearly. Perhaps

most crucially was the deeply flawed recommendation by Powell to call a halt to the war

before the appropriate strategic conditions for victory had been achieved, i.e. before Saddam

Hussein’s military capabilities had been sufficiently degraded to critically weaken his regime.

Powell’s ill-considered recommendation and President Bush’s unquestioning acceptance led

to the premature termination of the conflict where, having first failed to secure the exits from

Kuwait, units of the Iraqi Republican Guard were allowed to escape and prop up Saddam

Hussein’s regime for years after the war.16 Powell’s influence had apparently trumped

political reason rendering one of the implicit strategic objectives of the campaign beyond

reach. Moreover, Powell’s recommendation was based on his appreciation of the political

situation rather than on military judgement. Assessing – incorrectly as it happened - that the

political ramifications of continuing the offensive against retreating Iraqi forces would

damage the coalition’s international legitimacy, Powell had transcended the boundary

between military and political responsibility, threatening the integrity of civilian control as

well as the efficacy of the prevailing strategy. 17

Elements of this apparent subservience of political decision making to an assertive

military institution are also evident in the current British experience in Afghanistan. The

former British ambassador to the country, Sherard Cowper-Coles, recently argued that the

dominance of military decision-making in the development of strategy had supplanted the

primacy of political reasoning, allowing military solutions to prevail rather than potentially

more suitable political approaches.18 Suggesting that the prevailing convention where it has

15 George H. W. Bush, & Brent Scowcroft, A World Transformed, New York: Random House, 1998, p.354. 16 Cohen, p.195. 17 Ibid. 18 See Sherard Cowper-Coles, 2011.


become ‘awkward and unpatriotic’ to question the military’s authority, Cowper-Coles argues

that a relationship has developed where politicians and civil servants had become ‘much more

deferential’ to military decision-making.19 In turn, this had led to an inchoate strategy that

focussed on military operations and a surge of troop numbers into the Helmand region

‘regardless of whether there was in place a credible political strategy to harvest the success

the military might achieve.’20

There are also those who believe that this pernicious military assertiveness reaches

beyond a domineering influence in developing strategy, but now publicly challenges the

primacy of government policy. Citing Colin Powell’s very public criticisms of government

policy on everything from intervention in Bosnia to homosexuals in the American military,

historian, Russell Weigley asserts that Powell’s opinions were ‘much more political than

professional’21 and left the military’s acceptance of civilian supremacy precarious.22 Another

military historian, Richard H. Kohn, suggests that the problem of an ‘out-of-control’ US

military was compounded by the election of President Clinton whom he described as ‘weak

and vacillating’. For Kohn, the growing assertiveness of the Joint Chiefs of Staff combined

with a weak President and ineffectual Secretary of Defence (Les Aspin) effectively allowed

the military to dictate policy to the civilian administration.23 Again, the same might be

evident amongst senior officers in the British military. In 2006 General Sir Richard Dannatt,

then head of the British Army, spoke publicly in the media of his concerns regarding the

overstretch of UK forces and questioned the continued relevance of UK forces in Iraq.24

More recently, commenting on the UK government’s clearly stated policy to end combat

operations in Afghanistan by 2015, the current Chief of the British Army, General Sir Peter

Wall, suggested that the 2015 deadline might be subject to revision.25 This and other public

criticisms of government policy by the military forced an apparently exasperated Prime

Minister David Cameron to ask of his military chiefs, ‘you do the fighting - I’ll do the

talking.’26

19 Ibid, p.280. 20 Ibid, p.292. 21 Russell Weigley, ‘The American Military and the Principle of Civilian Control from McClellan to Powell’, Journal of Military History, vol.57, no.5, 1993, p.29. 22 Black, p.64. 23 Richard H. Kohn, ‘Out of Control’, National Interest, vol.35, Spring 1994, p.3-31. 24 Sarah Sands, ‘Sir Richard Dannatt: A very honest General’, The Daily Mail, 12 October 2006. 25 James Kirkup, ‘Head of the British Army questions deadline for Afghan troop withdrawal’, The Telegraph, 22 June 2011. 26 Andy Bloxham, ‘David Cameron tells defence chiefs to stop criticising Libya mission’, The Telegraph, 21 June 2011.


Where, then, does this leave Huntington’s objective control of civil-military relations?

It appears that the backlash from the perceived interference by civilians in military affairs that

contributed to failure in Vietnam has led to an overenthusiastic effort by the civilian

leadership to reverse the trend by reasserting respect for military professionalism and

allowing the military excessive autonomy. The military, left with their own enduring legacy

of mistrust of civilian meddling in military matters, have used their newfound influence

amongst the civilian leadership to bring military concerns into the political sphere. Once

more it seems, political influence over the military at any level beyond simply articulating the

policy decision to wage war and then setting the conditions for victory is considered

meddlesome in strategy-making, when in fact, political influence should be strategy’s

ubiquitous guiding light. Hew Strachan suggests that the example of General Powel and

others since might be considered a return to the flawed concept of strategy enunciated by

Moltke the elder, i.e. that the military be allowed absolute autonomy to conduct operations

free from political interference once the politicians had made the decision to wage war.27

Moltke’s advocacy of military freedom from political interference is certainly echoed in

Huntington’s emphasis of military autonomy and in the Weinberger/Powell doctrine, yet, as

we have already seen, those following the guidance of Moltke and Huntington have tended to

produce similarly flawed strategies resulting in pounding tactical successes that could not

always be translated into political objectives.

Fundamentally, as chapter one introduced, the failure of autonomy stems from

Clausewitzian friction; chance, unforeseen circumstances and the enemy all conspire to

intervene in plans, and events unfold that have bearing on the intended political outcomes.

Affording the military excessive autonomy can therefore lead to a military strategy based only

on initial political assumptions and objectives articulated at the beginning of conflict, but that

would be unreactive to the changing political situation that only the statesman with his broad

international and domestic perspective and his role representing society is in a legitimate

place to judge. The political dimension should therefore always have bearing on military

strategy, and indeed on the conduct of tactics where they have strategic effect, throughout any

conflict. Policy makers should understand their responsibility as such, understanding that this

implies the need to set political objectives commensurate with available means or else change

policy or increase resources. Similarly, military commanders should advise but ultimately

listen to the policy makers and then mould strategy and tactics to fulfil the needs of policy. In

27 Strachan, 2006, p.64.


many ways, this is the contractual relationship that Peter Fever suggests is the key to a

successful civil-military relationship. Fever’s model is derived from political science and

microeconomic theory and frames the civil-military relationship in the somewhat esoteric

language of a principle-agent dilemma. In Fever’s words:

‘The civilian principle establishes a military agent to provide the security

function for the state, but then must take pains to ensure that the military agent

continues to do the civilians’ bidding.’28

Although grossly oversimplified (and therefore failing to do Fever’s theory the justice it

deserves), the principle-agent thesis asserts that the military agree to subordinate themselves

to civilian leadership and execute policy using military force when so ordered, and are

allowed to do so with a degree of autonomy, but that this autonomy is granted with the

understanding that there has been no abdication of civilian political responsibility and control.

As such, the civilian leadership continue to exert oversight over the military’s conduct and

will punish any deviation from set policy or, alternatively, reward obedience. Moreover, this

should be a dynamic and iterative process where the military must always appreciate that they

are expected to follow policy and it is in their best interest to do so otherwise they will risk

losing the autonomy they have been granted. Fundamental to the success of this interaction is

the continued oversight by the civilian leadership; Fever suggests that it was the absence of

such monitoring and the resultant failure to punish growing military insubordination that were

crucial failures that damaged American civil-military relationships in the last two decades.29

THE NEED FOR AN ‘UNEQUAL DILAOGUE’

Eliot Cohen’s account of the successful wartime leadership of Abraham Lincoln,

Winston Churchill, Georges Clemenceau and David Ben-Gurion in many ways corroborates

Fever’s thesis of civil-military relations. Cohen illustrates in great detail how none of these

leaders abdicated strategic decision-making responsibility to the military, but neither did they

become overbearing by dictating tactics and becoming too involved in the military minutiae.

As Cohen puts it:

28 Feaver, p.95. 29 Ibid, p.180-233.


‘They might coax or bully interrogate or probe but rarely do we see them

issuing orders or acting like a generalissimo.’30

Instead, their skill was in understanding the military situation through detailed oversight,

bringing the military to task, and where necessary, exercising their leadership by punishing

the generals who failed to follow policy. Equally, theirs was a role of give and take,

respecting and properly considering the advice of the generals, and where necessary acting on

it, but always asserting their leadership and final authority in their position of Supreme

Command. Cohen calls this the ‘unequal dialogue’ and insists that such an interaction must

continue throughout a conflict where the unfolding events must always be considered in a

political light.31 Fever agrees, suggesting that such a relationship will become normalised and

that the standard of military advice ‘will improve with vigorous give-and-take led by activist

civilian principals.’32

CHAPTER CONCLUSIONS

THE ABSENCE OF DIALOGUE AND STRATGIC FAILURE

Can we conclude that the absence of just such an unequal dialogue is the root of

strategic failure? Eliot Cohen believes so, suggesting that American strategic failure in

Vietnam stemmed less from overbearing civilian interference in military affairs than from the

lack of intrusive dialogue between the civilian establishment and military chiefs. This

repudiation of perceived wisdom recognises that the restrictions placed on military operations

for political considerations was quite within the nature of things, where political expedients

necessarily overrode operational requirements. In this case the containment of the war within

Vietnam and avoidance of Chinese and Soviet involvement were of greater importance than

the unrestricted bombing of the North. As such, allowing the military greater autonomy

would not have alleviated the problem of military interference; indeed the chiefs’ willingness

to engage in an out-dated strategy of aerial bombardment against the industrial centres in the

north could have inflamed matters rather than yield decisive victory.33

30 Cohen, p.208. 31 Cohen, p.208-224. 32 Feaver, p.300. 33 Cohen, p.179.


It was not therefore the over involvement of the politicians in military affairs that was

the cause of failure in Vietnam, it was the unquestioned assumptions that underpinned the

prevailing strategy of political signalling and gradual escalation that was at fault. With no

realistic alternative provided by the disenfranchised chiefs, who preferred to accept the flawed

strategy formulated by the statesmen and then surreptitiously undermine it by degrees, the

civilian leadership fell back on a what they knew had worked during the Cuban missile crisis

but failed to ask whether this was appropriate or not in the context of fighting an insurgency

in Vietnam - unfortunately for them, it was not. As Robert McNamara later reflected

painfully, strategic defeat stemmed from a failure to conduct ‘a knock-down, drag-out debate

over the loose assumptions, unasked questions and thin analyses underlying our military

strategy in Vietnam.’34

Similarly, in the first Gulf War, the lack of appropriate dialogue and political

oversight meant that the military made decisions regarding strategy and conditions for victory

that were at odds with the political objectives for the campaign. Stronger civilian leadership

that questioned the military’s assumptions without hindering their tactical and operational

conduct might have brought a more decisive conclusion to instability in the region caused by

the survival of Saddam Hussein’s regime.

Moreover, of the UK’s strategy in Afghanistan, a recent parliamentary report was

explicit in its criticism of military and ministerial establishments where the lack of dialogue

between the two led to flawed strategy:

‘force levels deployed throughout 2006, 2007 and 2008 were never going to

achieve what was being demanded of the Armed Forces by the UK. [....] UK

Forces were deployed in Helmand for three years, as a result of a failure of

military and political coordination, without the necessary personnel and

equipment to succeed in their Mission.’35

Finally, in the examples from antiquity detailed in earlier chapters, we see a failure by

the state to balance military power with political reason resulting in failure. The Spartan

statesmen in the 5th Century B.C. failed to check the unreserved militarisation of strategy

espoused by Sthenelaidas that lead to defeat at the hands of the Athenians. Later, the

34 Robert S. McNamarra, In Retrospect: the Tragedy and Lessons of Vietnam, New York: vintage, 1995, p.203. 35 House of Commons Defence Select Committee, Operations In Afghanistan - 4th Report, para. 67.


Athenians also failed to balance political caution with the hubristic need to exert military

power by launching their ill-fated campaign in Sicily.

All these examples suggest that war should indeed serve political ends; the politician

must exercise oversight and assert civilian control to guard against excessive military

autonomy. However, policy must also reconcile military realities and the perception of the

public. The civilian leadership must therefore engage in a constructive and dynamic dialogue

with all strategic stakeholders in the paradoxical trinity. When it does not achieve this, civil-

military relationships fail or the relationship between the state and society sours; either way

strategy falls by the wayside and the costs of war in terms of blood and treasure often end-up

tragically counting for very little.

Conclusion 32

Conclusions

Strategy, victory and civilian ascendancy

The narrative theme that this dissertation has consistently held, explicitly in chapter

one and then implicitly thereafter, is that strategy is fundamentally a political phenomenon.

That is to say, that strategy not only serves political purposes but also that its character is

ubiquitously shaped by political considerations. As such, the way in which grand-strategy

yields the instruments of national power must be governed by political factors. This is a

general assertion that can be applied in specific circumstances, with this dissertation focussing

on the perfusion of political considerations in the formulation of military strategy and the use

of the military instrument in war. The same would be true had we examined grand-strategy’s

use of diplomatic or economic coercion.

The pervasive influence of political considerations on strategy and the conduct of war

may be considered a natural consequence of the primacy of civilian control of the state in a

democracy, where the governing polity must balance the feelings of the electorate, the

unfolding events on the battlefield and the wider political interests of the state to guarantee its

wellbeing. This can and does create a conflict of interests where society, the military and the

polity foster divergent perspectives on what those ‘wider interests’ are and what victory in

war really means.

These divergent perspectives are perhaps becoming more pronounced, certainly in the

case of the state and the electorate, where a propensity for states to engage in wars of choice

rather than existential wars of national survival makes sustaining public consent for military

action ever more difficult. As such, for western liberal democracies, winning the ‘strategic

narrative’ and shaping public perception to generate consent for any war has become as

important in strategy as the military campaign itself. Indeed, a recent report by the UK

Government on the campaign in Afghanistan embellishes on the strategic importance of

public perception, suggesting that ‘Communications with the UK population are crucial, not

only to secure their consent to operations in Afghanistan but also to avoid radicalising young

people.’1 With this in mind, Hew Strachan points to the challenge of wars fought increasingly

in the media gaze where wholesale coverage of scandals like the mistreatment of Iraqi

prisoners in Abu Ghraib and Camp Breadbasket can have a disproportionality deleterious

1 House of Commons Defence Select Committee, Operations In Afghanistan - 4th Report, para. 14.

Conclusion 33

effect on domestic public perceptions relative to the overall conduct of the war, whilst also

doing untold strategic damage by radicalisation of the local population.2

Certainly, the example of Abu Ghraib serves to illustrate that war cannot take place in

the kind of political vacuum that Moltke the elder so desired. It must be reactive to both

military and political events where the strategy that guides the conduct of war is formed by an

appropriate balance of political and military considerations. Without this balance, strategy

can become overly politicised, where the political objectives and considerations do not take

into account the military realities of the situation, perhaps failing to assign the appropriate

means to achieve stated objectives; alternatively, war becomes a military activity conducted

without consideration of political objectives or guidance. In the latter case, the perils of

military autonomy ensue and war no longer serves its defining political purpose.

As asserted in the introduction, the only way to avoid strategic failures of this kind is

to adopt an appropriate dialogue between policy makers and military commanders. Of

course, civilian control should always be exercised over military strategy – a democratic

society demands as much – but successful strategy making can only be born from a civil-

military relationship underpinned by mutual respect of one another’s political or military

concerns. As, such civil-military dialogue should, therefore, welcome ‘loyal dissent’ where

the military feels able to articulate its concerns privately and not through public criticism of

government policy. Clearly this undermines the trust required of the civil-military

relationship, but also, whilst the civilian polity remains in a position of supreme command, it

becomes counterproductive for the military chief involved as they become increasingly

ostracised from the heart of defence policy-making in government. Indeed, recent proposals

for the restructuring of the UK’s Ministry of Defence recommends the removal of the

individual service chiefs from the top-level Defence Board3 in a way reminiscent of President

Kennedy’s removal of his intransigent military chiefs from the decision-making committee

during the Cuban missile crisis, and also of the 1986 Goldwater-Nichols act that removed the

individual service chiefs from the US National Security Council on account of their

counterproductive inter-service rivalries.4 History, however, carries a note of caution here,

for an inadvertent swing from an assertive military establishment to the emasculation of

military advisors in favour of civilian council has proved as harmful as excessive military

autonomy. Evidenced by the US experience in Vietnam, the danger is less of excessive

2 Strachan, 2006, p.74. 3 Lord Levene of Portsoke, Defence Reform, London: Ministry of Defence, 2011, p.20-21. 4 McMaster, p.1-23

Conclusion 34

civilian involvement in the policy and strategy-making process than of one of disenfranchised

military advisers and a civilian leadership content with their own flawed reasoning.

Of course, a harmonious dialogue, where military concerns can help shape strategy to

ensure that resources are appropriate to meet desired aims, should alleviate the military’s need

to publicly air criticism of government policy, but it needs more than this. Civilian authority

should be asserted on the growing propensity for senior military officers to see it appropriate

to challenge government policy in general. General Wall’s doubts over the UK Government’s

scheduled withdrawal from Afghanistan for instance were less a heartfelt plea from an under-

resourced military commander but instead were indicative of a growing tendency for military

officers to enter the political sphere and question government policy - history shows that

intervention like this can be dangerous for successful civil-military relations.

This dissertation has attempted to illustrate that those policies like the US and UK.

Governments’ decision to begin withdrawal from Afghanistan are politically motivated, but

rightfully so. In this example, the financial costs to an already stretched exchequer, not to

mention overstretched military capabilities and dwindling domestic support must enter the

political equation for a government to balance against continuing a war where total defeat of

the may simply be no longer worth the effort. From a perspective of military strategy, this

realpolitik may be a bitter pill to swallow but certainly it forms a grand-strategy that would be

recognised by Thucydides, Clausewitz, Liddell Hart and other strategic thinkers who

understood war’s necessary subservience to political expedients. As a fitting conclusion, the

words of former US commander in Afghanistan, David Patreus, provide a succinct but

entirely accurate description of how the relationship between soldier and statesman should

work for the benefit of all-important grand-strategy:

‘The President [of the United States] has a broader purview and has broader

considerations that are brought to bear, with the President alone in the position of

evaluating all of those different considerations... [Once the President] has made

his decision, it is the responsibility, needless to say, of those in uniform to salute

smartly and do everything humanly possible to execute it’.5

5 Comment made by General Patraeus at US Senate Select Intelligence Committee hearing on 23 June 2011 confirming the nomination of Patraeus as the head of the Central Intelligence Agency. The comment was made answering questions pertaining to Patraeus’ position on the President’s decision to begin withdrawing troops

Conclusion 35

from Afghanistan faster than US military commanders (including Patreaus) had advised. See http://www.c-spanvideo.org/program/IADirectorNom (minute 39.20)

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fowler d - msc dissertation

Documents

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political actors

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