New art of war

In many ways this seems a step back in time to pre-total war days.

Edited by Paul - 18-Oct-2006 at 05:20

Originally posted by Maharbbal 1) The aim is not a victory any more but a better position to negotiate.

Okay, my interpretation

First, I find a biased in the general�s thinking. Point number 2 says that �wars will become timeless because negotiations are not as effective as victory.�

First, this assumes that a military victory can bring to and end a conflict. This is not always true. Take Israel, for example. It has won many military victories, but the conflict keeps on going since the reasons for the conflict fail to be resolved.

He also seems to ignore what the point of negotiation is. The point of negotiation is to find a solution that both people can live with, addressing the two needs of the two parties. In fact, most modern wars end up with a negotiation in the form of the terms of surrender. :

Vendettas were brought up. I am glad, not only because it fits the model that the general talks about, but because it illustrates also how conflict ends up in negotiation. You may have noticed that vendettas also end up with negotiation.

There are some problems that are difficult to negotiate. Take the issue with the nation of Israel. Or look at the problems of Northern England. But let�s also be aware that war hasn�t solved anything either. In many ways, war and violence only have made negotiations worse.

I will address the winning side issue in another post.

I think this general is correct in describing aspects of non-total war, and as Paul mentioned, these maxims in various forms applied to many earlier times.  I still think total war's maxims are not outdated, they simply don't apply to any of the wars being fought as of now, which is sensible.

What the guy was saying was that for the last 50 years armies were ready for a total war see Iran-Iraq or Ethiopia-Somalia. See also, Panama 1990: no negociation. Consider the Western answer to modern terrorism: no negociation.

Furthermore, Western armies are still in a victory-seeking scheme and are not suited for other kind of wars which, he says, often requires a alliance between army and justice departement, the rule of  law becoming as important as the rules of engagement. Here the best example is Guantanomo: what if instead of making prisonniers the way an American soldier use to in WWII they had been more inspired by LAPD techniques, they would have hard evidences and hence much less problems. Still the general's point of view.

Well once more I refer to what the general have said. 1) US tanks and UK helicopters cannot be replaced once they are destroyed in Iraq or Afghanistan 2) He gave the example of desert strom, the English sent ALL their tanks and their mission was to bring them all back. So no total engagement. It doesn't mean that if the US were attacked by China they wouldn't use total war.

Incidently it reminds me a discussion in another thread: what the future tanks would look like. I had mention the english MkI, the very first tank, the more I think about it the more I think it may well be the case. The necessary caracteristics of the new tank wouldn't be to be as fast as possible or to have the biggest gun but to be almost undestructible, to protect men's life inside and to fight in a non-tank-friendly environment (forest, urban, jungle). In a way a cube specially designed to fight infantry or non-armoured vehicules, room for foot soldiers inside, a short and big gun able to take down a building if needed. And the thickest armour ever.

I have no problem with disagreement. It is through these that we learn.

I am not too familiar with Japan, so I will focus on Germany.

After WWI, there was a clear winner and a clear loser. According to the belief that military victory brings peace, the conflict should have ended here. But it didn�t. The military didn�t make a mistake; they soundly won over Germany. The problems came as the result of a failure in fair negotiations after defeat.

The needs of the victors, as it normally is the case, were reached easily. But not the needs of the defeated, especially when it comes to saving face. The peace negotiators in WWI concentrated in punishing and humiliating Germany. This humiliation at the terms later fueled the rise of Nazism in Germany, bringing what could be considered the second part of a conflict that wasn�t solved correctly in the first place.

I want to stress the issue of the Marshall Plan and its role in creating peace with former enemies. The Marshall plan was a respectful way of rebuilding former enemies. It brought economic prosperity and a certain level of self-respect back to Germany. By respecting the enemy and having a fair term, the conflict came to an end.


Vietnam is a great case of negotiations bringing and end to two foreign wars where the issue is foreign occupation. In 1954 a peace treaty between France and North Vietnam was signed, and France left Vietnam. It later was refueled when the Americans broke several of the peace agreements and became active participants of the war.

North Vietnam couldn�t bring total defeat on the U.S. The U.S. has better equipment and better trained soldiers. At the same time, the U.S. couldn�t successfully defend South Vietnam without the help of the population. This military standstill could have gone on for a longer time. We could still be involved in the war if our leaders had chosen to do so. The same results would have come from it, but the costs in lives and money would have been a lot higher.

The U.S. needed to a way to get out saving face. That solution was the Vietnamization of the conflict. This allowed for the U.S. to keep a certain level of dignity when they left Vietnam. With negotiations, the never ending armed conflict ended.

Vendettas end with negotiation. In fact, vendettas are bloody negotiations. You take one person from me; I will take one from you. It keeps going until, through negotiation, some terms for ending it are reached, such a payment, a marriage, or some public display. Again, both parties in a vendetta must save face. If there is a clear loser, this humiliation will refuel the vendetta again.

The Cold War started right after WWII as the result of the rise of the Soviet Union as a world power. In fact, the Cold War was an excellent example on how negotiation prevented a real war between the U.S. and the Soviet Union. Crisis after crisis, negotiators kept peace, until an expensive war and the expense of military building brought economic ruin to the Soviets and the end to their power.

Of the many negotiations at the time, the Cuban Missile Crisis is probably the most famous one. At the time, the U.S. had nuclear missiles in Turkey. The U.S. had just botched an invasion to Cuba, and Castro was actively courting the Soviets to protect him from the U.S.

Khrushchev used this situation to get rid of the nuclear missiles in Turkey. He agreed with Castro on setting up nuclear missiles in Cuba. This prompted a crisis, where the U.S. couldn�t allow enemy weapons in its front door. Things got tense, and finally the Soviets withdrew its plans to put missiles in Cuba. At the time, everyone in the world thought that the U.S. had won the standoff. People in the left felt that Khrushchev chickened out and lost.

The reality of the situation was that both the U.S. and the USSR won. Secretly, the U.S. promised to withdraw those missiles from Turkey and in exchanged the USSR didn�t put nuclear missiles in Cuba

    

I couldn't desagree more.

Indochina war is the perfect exemple of the no-real victory conflict that ends with negociations only to start again five years later. For Vietnam, the US did leave through negociations but the Vietnamization of the conflict meant total victory on one of the two original opponent over the other one.

You should read the wiki's article about Angola, it is just amazing. During 27 years it was precisely the all war/negociation things until the MPLA hired the private military firm executive Outcomes and won a clear cut victory over the UNITA killing its leader. Now: it is a peaceful dictatorship.

Nonetheless I must admit I liked the expression you've used bloody negociations.

Oh, wily Maharbbal,

I read the wiki pages on Angola, the Angola Civil War, and each of the major movements. This is one very, very complex war. I guess at the root of the problems is the seemingly rich natural resources of Angola. I am sure that there was also an ethnic component to the war as well, but I couldn�t figure it out from the articles.

The problem here is to figure out what did UNITA and MPLA wanted, besides of holding power over the whole country. A basic thing that you need in negotiation is to know what each party wants.

At a first glance, it seems that UNITA and MPLA had an irreconcilable ideological difference that only a war could bring to an end. But it seems that Savimbi was an opportunist who would switch political ideology depending on who was supporting him. So, at the beginning UNITA is a socialist organization, almost Maoist, that later became, in theory, a free-market conservative movement.

The long war made it almost impossible to have good faith when negotiating. Either justified or not, it seems that Savimbi kept breaking treaty after treaty. It doesn�t seem that he ever meant to follow them.

The war seems to have ended with Savimbi�s life. This seems to indicate that the main reason why the war dragged were Savimbi�s ambitions.

Several attempts were made to integrate him into the nation, including making him vice-president, but he rejected them all. Was it ambition or not losing face? I don�t know. The only thing that would have sated him was him ruling Angola. And this wasn�t a deal that could be reached with MPLA, for obvious reasons.

It seems that peace agreements were quickly reached once he was out of the picture. UNITA still exists to this day as a party.

Yes, the peace negotiations failed, but one can also make the claim that the war failed as well. 30 years of civil war is a long, long time. :)

I wrote a very thoughtful answer, and it never got posted

Here is the short version.

War seems quicker, more profitable or effective than negotiations. But again consider Savimibi in Angola.

Savimbi was about to win against the MPLA when the Cold War ended, ending the strong support of the U.S. to his cause. Had he seen the situation objectively, he would understand that the best deal he could get was to become integrated to a unity government and turn UNITA into a major opposition party.

But Savimbi didn't want that. He wanted to rule Angola all by himself. So he decided to use the "quicker, more profitable, and effective" solution of war.

So Savimbi fought for another 12 years, making peace agreement and breaking them probably as a way of gaining time. He finally lost his life, which brought the end to the war.

And what is the situation today? Savimbi is not the ruler of Angola, and UNITA is part of unity government as a major opossition party.

In other words, the situation is not too different from what Savimbi would have gotten had he actually agreed to the peace agreements.

Had Savimbi acepted the terms of the negotiation, the peace agreemenet would have been the most effective, profitable, and quickest solution to the war.


Out of this discussion, it seems one can get the following principle: if one can win a war quickly and in little time, one should consider using it as a threat and be ready to follow through. Yet, if the war would drag for a long time without a clear resolution, one should attempt to figure out what would be the best deal that would would get had a war happened, and be ready to settle for those terms in negotiations.

Yes, what you say is true: generals tend to stress the best case scenario before going to war.

The U.S. seems to have had a especially bad track record on picking their fights since WWII. I guess the confidence built on WWII has been working against the U.S., making it have too much hubris, especially went there is many documents and people telling you what the most likely scenarios are.

The U.S. went into Vietnam with the record of what happened to the French. In fact, according to the Oxford Illustrated History of Warfare, it says that the French gave the U.S. their report on what went wrong in Vietnam. The U.S. never read it, and this is proven, according to the book, because the U.S. followed the failed strategy of French.

Iraq was a similiar situation. The analysts at the Pentagon wrote document after document describing what would happen if Saddam was taken out of power. The adminstration refused to acknowledge these papers. But many of the prior information on Iraq wasn't clasified. Experts on the Middle East wrote op-eds and spoke on the media describing a chaotic scenario of ongoing civil war. And even a former Secretary of the Navy during the Reagan adminstration wrote about how taking out Saddam would destabalize the region, strengthening Iran.

All of these scenarios came to be true, of course.


In both cases, there was no real fog of war, but a fog in the mind of the leaders of the U.S. Their deep belief in the superiority of the American troops and that war could quickly solve problems made them blind over the many rational people who told them what would happened if they followed through.

In the case of Iraq, diplomacy was pushed aside. Now the U.S. is in a horrible situation, almost for the same reason why Savimbi failed to negotiate in the first place.