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CONCLUDING CONFLICT: WHY ENDING WAR IS NEVER AN EASY STRATEGY

To end war in a manner that brings long-term benefits, states must adopt an objective approach in defining political objectives and in designing military operations to achieve them.

As the world transitions to multipolarity, nations are increasingly turning to force to achieve political objectives, and while nations go to war expecting quick decisive results they habitually find themselves mired in protracted conflict. A primary reason nations can find themselves in conflicts lasting far longer than expected is the immense emotion related to war. War’s human nature affects all strata of society from political elites to the general populace creating three obstacles preventing states from ending conflict. The first is decoupling war from political goals, the second is an excessive focus on tactics, and the last is succumbing to victory disease.

The challenges associated with ending conflict are neither new nor a secret. Speaking in 2014 on ending the war in Afghanistan, President Barrack Obama warned, “I think Americans have learned that it’s harder to end wars than it is to begin them.” His warning proved true as the United States’ involvement lasted seven more years and ended in a Taliban victory. To end war in a manner that brings long-term benefits, states must adopt an objective approach in defining political objectives and in designing military operations to achieve them. A failure to do so can result in a state that excels at warfare, defined as the organization and employment of military power, but fails at war, which is the use of the military instrument of power to achieve positive political objectives.

Losing the Objective: War for War’s Sake

While a state’s political elites declare and end war, it is the people who provide the political support and fill the ranks to sustain conflict. In On War , Carl von Clausewitz states that the people’s role in war “mainly concerns…primordial violence, hatred, and enmity,” factors that only increase in intensity as war persists. Indeed, as Clausewitz notes, “If war is an act of force, the emotions cannot fail to be involved.”  War and emotions are interdependent, and, if uncontrolled, will lead to increasing levels of violence, making war termination difficult. The First World War provides an example of how collective emotions prevented a durable peace. A reason the Entente powers failed to achieve enduring outcomes during the peace process was their public’s demand for harsh reparations from Germany. This demand for revenge was a contributing factor to an even bloodier war some three decades later or even, in the view of some scholars, a continuation of the same conflict.

In contrast to passion, the government represents reason; it is also a mechanism to harness the emotions of the people towards a goal. A role of government is to employ war as a tool to achieve policy goals. Clausewitz describes this imperative by stating, “war is not an act of senseless passion but is controlled by its political object.” Thus, the primacy of policy must always be at the forefront for strategists during any application of force; this includes war’s termination. British theorist B.H. Liddell Hart also saw war as a means to achieve political outcomes, but also asserted that “the object in war is to attain a better peace, even if only from your own point of view.”

Is thus dangerous and an impediment to war termination when the prosecution of war is decoupled from policy. Gideon Rose highlights the tendency for policymakers to emphasize the negative aims of war, such as defeating enemy forces or winning individual battles, rather than prioritize the actions required to achieve positive political outcomes. This emphasis on the tactical and operational impedes the planning for war to achieve policy objectives, through such means as setting termination criteria, establishing conditions for peace talks, and defining how military victories are supporting political objectives.

Policymakers’ overemphasis on tactical execution can create a gap between war and policy. This gap can result in the military prosecuting a conflict detached from the other instruments of national power with little understanding of warfare’s impact on postwar conditions. The growing gap between the act of war and the desired results has become so common that General Tommy Franks, who oversaw the 2003 invasion of Iraq, bragged to policymakers, “You pay attention to the day after, I’ll pay attention to the day of.” Franks’ comments highlight the acceptance of a segregated planning process for war and peace that prioritizes the means over the ends, or, stated another way, prioritizes the war over the peace. This very act makes ending wars increasingly more difficult, as one can see from almost two decades of American involvement in Afghanistan where the Department of State and the Department of Defense regularly diverged on policy ranging from governance to security force assistance.

The United States remained undefeated in all major battles throughout the war, but failed because its strategy focused on tactical actions and never established defined and feasible outcomes against an opponent fighting an unlimited conflict.

Tactics sans Strategy

Despite their primacy in the creation of strategy, directed political objectives can be inappropriately tactically focused and impede the prosecution and termination of conflict, even when generated from outside the military. Political objectives that are inherently tactical will likely lack some larger theory of victory, resulting in protracted wars in which the best possible outcome is a stalemate. During the Vietnam War, the Johnson administration’s flawed policy of attrition within a limited conflict was translated by Pentagon officials into a series of essentially tactical tasks, such as killing more enemy troops or bombing certain targets. As a technologically superior force with over 500,000 servicemembers deployed to Vietnam, the United States was able to conduct these tasks with impunity, generating scores of data and analytics in doing so. The United States remained undefeated in all major battles throughout the war, but failed because its strategy focused on tactical actions and never established defined and feasible outcomes against an opponent fighting an unlimited conflict. The United States’ failure in Vietnam is an example of the pithy quotation often incorrectly attributed to Sun Tzu, “tactics without strategy is the noise before defeat.” It is essential for strategists to collaborate with policymakers to inform the best use of military force, including identifying political objectives obtainable through military power. Only then can a state work towards termination criteria and know when to end a conflict.

Victory Disease

Counterintuitively, winning might impede long-term success through the condition of so-called “victory disease,” which Colin Gray defines as “the extreme, almost euphoric, condition of overconfidence.” Victory disease can occur before or during a conflict. In its pre-conflict manifestation, a nation believes so highly in its capabilities that it begins the war with little concern for the enemy, the environment, and, most importantly, potential long-term outcomes. For example, Adolf Hitler, emboldened by his victories culminating in the fall of France, launched Operation Barbarossa against the Soviet Union opening a second front against a state with latent power magnitudes larger than Germany. This condition still affects contemporary states. In 2003, the United States, encouraged by its unipolar status and recent victory over the Taliban, believed its 2003 invasion of Iraq would last less than five months.  Similarly, Russia after the annexation of Crimea and later successful intervention in Syria expected a quick and decisive victory against Ukraine but is now entering the third year of a conflict some are calling a stalemate.  

When victory disease occurs during war, nations ignore political objectives and delay termination under the false hope that there is more to be had due to recent success. Starting in 425 BC, Athens rejected multiple Spartan peace offerings to end the Peloponnesian War despite having achieved its political objectives, a choice based on overconfidence and greed that could have avoided Athens’ ultimate demise. Some 2300 years later, Imperial Japan’s arrogance after victories in 1941 and 1942 created a condition known as senshoubyou, which led to strategic overreach, operational overconfidence, and tactical complacency, all major factors in Japan’s subsequent defeat.

To overcome victory disease, or at least reduce its impact, policymakers and strategists must continually assess war conditions and ensure assessments are both informing policy and tied to termination criteria. Accepting hard truths is no easy task, as multiple cognitive biases exist forcing individuals to seek affirmation, avoid contradictory information, and ignore or downplay unwelcome news. More recently, this was evident as both the executive and the legislative branches ignored countless reports from the Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction (SIGAR) outlining the dire state of affairs in the latter half of the nearly twenty-year war in Afghanistan despite consistent tactical success. Heeding or addressing these warnings could have potentially led policymakers to realize the United States was not turning the corner but rather stuck in a maze mired with tactically focused strategy and opaque objectives.

No discussion of victory disease is complete without mention of Clausewitz’s analogy, of war being “nothing but a duel on an extensive scale.” A more colloquial modern version is to note that “the enemy always gets a vote.” In war, no belligerent has sole agency in determining when a war ends, further complicating the ability for warring parties to end a conflict even if and when one wishes.

Conclusion

Former Pentagon senior advisor Rosa Brooks asserted that throughout the Global War on Terror, the United States increasingly defined foreign policy through the framework of conflict. As this trend continues the military has transformed into the nation’s primary mechanism of statecraft. If Brooks’ assertation is correct, which evidence clearly supports despite the 2022 National Security Strategy’s attempt to reprioritize diplomacy, then knowing how to plan for war’s termination becomes more important. Strategists must ensure that war, as a tool of statecraft, supports political objectives enabling the cessation of hostilities and optimizing post conflict outcomes. To overcome the myriad obstacles associated with ending wars and beginning peace processes, strategists must always focus on the primacy of policy to overcome decoupling war from warfare, avoid tactically focused strategic objectives, and defeat victory disease. In doing so strategists can use reason and logic to overcome primordial violence, hatred, and enmity to enable a nation to achieve a better peace, if and when force is required.

James P. Micciche is a U.S. Army Strategist (FA59) currently assigned to XVIII Airborne Corps. He holds degrees from The Fletcher School at Tufts University and Troy University. He can be found on Twitter @james_micciche and LinkedIn

The views expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect those of the U.S. Army War College, the U.S. Army, or the Department of Defense.

Photo Description: A C-17 departing Bagram Air Base, Afghanistan

Photo Credit: Matt Hecht via flickr

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