From Lexington to Baghdad and Beyond

War and Politics in the American Experience

Donald M Snow, Dennis M. Drew

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2015
• eBook ISBN: 9781317470083
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: World History
• Index: History

Decisions about when, where, and why to commit the United States to the use of force, and how to conduct warfare and ultimately end it, are hotly debated not only contemporaneously but also for decades afterward. We are engaged in such a debate today, quite often without a solid grounding in the country's experience of war, both political and military. This book, by a political scientist and a career military officer and historian, is premised on the view that we cannot afford that kind of innocence. Updated and revised with new chapters on the Afghan and Iraq wars, the book systematically examines twelve U.S. wars from the revolution to the present day. For each conflict the authors review underlying issues and events; political objectives; military objectives and strategy; political considerations; military technology and technique; military conduct, and 'the better state of the peace', that is, the ultimate disposition of the original political goals.

1

WAR AND POLITICAL PURPOSE

“War is a continuation of political activity by other means,” the great Prussian strategist Carl von Clausewitz wrote about 180 years ago. His famous dictum, so disarmingly simple and straightforward, is mimicked constantly in discussions about the role of military force in accomplishing the goals of groups and states. Despite its obvious truth and power, it is a statement shallowly comprehended and constantly forgotten.

What Clausewitz meant, and what is at the very heart of understanding why countries go to war, is that military force is a tool, one among many, by which states (or groups of states or groups within states) seek to accomplish their ends. Those ends are defined politically in terms of imposing the policies of one group on another. Force is certainly not the only means by which countries seek to accomplish their political ends, but because it inevitably involves the taking of human life, it is the most extreme of the so-called instruments of national power. Other instruments of power are conventionally described as the economic and diplomatic instruments: the use of various forms of economic reward or deprivation and of persuasion to achieve ends. What should never be forgotten is that the instruments of power are ultimately judged and gain their entire meaning by the extent to which they serve national policies.

Despite its bestial and grotesque nature, war continues to be a tool of national policy. Americans must understand war and its purposes as clearly as possible to choose most intelligently when to use and when not to use the military instrument of power. That is the purpose of this volume.

The bulk of the concern is why Americans go to war. One must begin by looking at why people generally have gone to war as context for looking at why Americans have found and will find the use of military force necessary. To begin to unravel that relationship, one must begin with two general questions. The first deals with the environment in which we find ourselves: How and why does the international system permit circumstances in which opposing states determine that only the use of armed violence will allow them to settle their differences? Once that question has been answered, the second question can be addressed: What is the role of military force in solving political differences?

The key concept in understanding how and why the structure of the international system permits and even sometimes encourages the use of armed force is sovereignty. Sovereignty means supreme and independent political authority, and it is a quality possessed not by the system itself but by its constituent members, the states. What this means in practice is that within the territorial boundaries of a country, the authority of the national government is supreme and knows no superior source of authority. In the relations among states, the implication is that there is no higher source of authority to regulate those relations and to resolve policy differences when they arise.

This situation is utterly unlike the relations among individuals and groups within states (at least where national political authority is effective), because in that instance there is an arbiter, the state. All states have rules established to regulate internal conflicts of interest and, in the ultimate, the mechanisms of state (e.g., the judicial and legislative systems) provide forums for the authoritative settlement of policy disagreements short of the use of violence (which is uniformly proscribed in word if not in deed). A sovereign exists as the ultimate settler of differences.

There is no equivalent in the relations among states because the members of the international system are themselves the sovereigns. There is no authority superior to the state that can be called on to resolve the differences between the states. When states come into disagreement over policy, they cannot take the matter to court to gain a resolution, simply because there is no court with that kind of authority.

Why is this the case? The answer flows from the notion of sovereignty and finds expression in the idea of “vital national interests.” Vital national interests are those interests about which the state is unwilling to compromise, will not submit to arbitration, and hence will seek to protect by all available means. The most basic of those interests are the territorial integrity of the state itself and the maintenance of sovereign control over that territory.

Should, for instance, Mexico decide to reassert its claims to the American Southwest, the United States would be unwilling to take the matter to the World Court (which gains authority over cases only when the states who are party to a dispute specifically give it jurisdiction for that particular matter). Why? The answer is simple in a world of sovereign states. The Southwest is a vital interest of the United States, and we would clearly be unwilling to relinquish sovereign control over it. If we went to court, we might lose. Since we would not honor the verdict, the simplest way to handle the situation is to avoid having a mechanism capable of rendering unfavorable authoritative judgments. And that is the way the system is.

In such a system, given that disagreements over policy will inevitably arise, how are policy differences resolved? The answer, once again, is straightforward: states can favorably resolve policy differences to the extent that they can impose their will on others. The principle is known as self-help, and it means that international politics are fundamentally an exercise in power. Power, in turn, can be defined as the ability to get people to do something they would not otherwise do, in this case to accept policies in opposition to those preferred.

Take the hypothetical case of Mexican irredentist claims on the Southwest as an example. Should such claims exist, there would be a clear policy disagreement between the United States and Mexico, with American policy based in continued sovereign control of the Southwest and Mexican policy demanding its return. The policy disagreement is total: only the United States or Mexico can exercise sovereign control over the territory. Since the current situation reflects American policy, the problem for Mexico is how to get the United States to change its policy. In the absence of authoritative mechanisms to resolve the dispute, the problem for Mexico thus becomes one of self-help, the effective exercise of power to achieve its political ends. This brings us back to the question of the instruments of national power and the ability to apply them effectively.

As stated earlier the instruments of power are conventionally divided into the three categories of diplomatic, economic, and military power. Diplomatically, the Mexican government might seek to engage in negotiations, using its most persuasive diplomats and framing its argument in historical or demographic terms, to convince us voluntarily to cede the territory because of a superior Mexican claim. Failing in that, the Mexicans might threaten or carry out economic sanctions or promise rewards if we would agree to the cession of the Southwest. They could, for instance, threaten to deny American access to Mexican oil reserves or, using a more positive approach, they could offer unlimited access to those reserves in return for the territory. The degree to which such a strategy might be effective depends on American dependence on Mexican oil. If we were highly dependent, the Mexican government might have an effective lever that would compel us to accept its policy. If not, the economic instrument of power would be ineffectual.

Should all else fail there is always the military instrument of power. Should Mexican claims be serious enough (considered a vital national interest) and should other instruments fail to achieve the purpose, then Mexicans might consider the use of military force to seize and control the Southwest. That may not be the way one likes to think of things, but it is sometimes the way things are.

Force is thus a tool of political authority, and its purpose is either to guarantee that the inimical policies of others are not imposed on the political unit or to impose one’s own policies on a recalcitrant adversary. Seen this way, military power gains its meaning as an agent for realizing the political purposes and objectives of the state (or whatever designation the political unit has). Unless this subjugation of military force to the political authority from which it flows is fully comprehended, the role of force cannot be adequately understood. Unless policy is made for military force starting from this ordering, the result is likely to be inappropriate policy and unnecessary friction between political authority and the military. Their roles may be distinct, but the military is an agent that implements the decisions of political authority.

Interestingly, it was Clausewitz who best understood this relationship. One level of this understanding is the Prussian dictum with which this chapter began: “War is a continuation of political activity by other means.” The dictum is not an advocacy for using force to resolve political differences. Clausewitz, as a military man, understood that the decision to use force resides with political authorities; his role was to implement those decisions should that determination be made. The dictum merely states the relationship between war and politics. When the policies of two or more states become so incompatible that they cannot be pursued simultaneously, some means to resolve those differences must be found. Military force is one means to resolve those differences—it is another means to continue the political process of conflict resolution.

The relationship can be seen in another light captured by Clausewitz in an equally true but less cited observation that war has its own grammar but not its own logic. What he meant was that once the decision to go to war has been reached, the nature of conducting warfare—the so-called military art and science—dictates how war should be fought on the battlefield (the grammar, or as most people would say today, the language of war). The reason for going to war and the political objectives for which war is fought do not flow from that language, but derive from the overall political objectives (the logic of war) to which they are subordinate. In the heat of campaign that subordination is often blurred by the passion of the moment, but the Prussian was quite explicit that one should never lose sight of the relationship.

The language of war, quite clearly, is written in blood, and it is man’s most extreme means of resolving differences. Because its consequences include the expenditure of human life and the destruction of the things people value, it is a political remedy in extremis. The use of force is the means chosen when the objective is vital and where other, nonviolent instruments of power have been ineffective in resolving political differences.

The purpose of force, thus, is to exercise power. “War is,” as Clausewitz notes, “an act of force to compel our adversary to do our will.” Doing “our will” is, however, a more complex matter than the quotation may suggest. A good deal of the misunderstanding about the role of force arises from oversimplifying how political and military aspects of war contribute to achieving the imposition of will.

In more contemporary terms observers often refer to the objectives of overcoming hostile will and ability. Hostile will contains at least two distinct parts. On one hand, hostile will consists of the willingness to continue to resist the imposition of hostile policies. What levels of cost, in terms of deprivation and suffering, are a people willing to endure, and at what point is the price of accepting the adversary’s policies less than the cost of continuing to resist? Hostile will as willingness to continue to resist is well captured in the term cost-tolerance: what levels of cost are you willing to accept? On the other hand, hostile will also, and ultimately, is defined in terms of the willing acceptance or embrace of the originally objectionable policies. How does one go about convincing an adversary that the policies one seeks to impose are right and to the benefit of those who opposed them? The notion of hostile ability is more straightforward, referring to the physical ability of an adversary’s armed forces and society to continue resistance.

Many practitioners and theorists have underemphasized the distinction between the two forms of hostile will and have consequently distorted the degree to which political authority and the military instrument contribute to achieving the ends of overcoming hostile will and ability. The assumption, implicit or explicit, has been that once the decision to use force has been made, it is the appropriate task of the military instrument to overcome hostile will and ability. We contend that it is more complicated than that.

Because hostile ability is represented by an adversary’s armed forces, the military instrument is most clearly useful in removing that source of opposition. The classic method of defeating an enemy is to destroy his army, which is to say his hostile ability, although this is a realistic objective only part of the time. If one’s armed forces are inferior to those of the enemy, then destroying those forces is usually an impossible way to achieve one’s goals. In that case one may be forced to attack hostile will (cost-tolerance) by forcing the enemy to endure more suffering than his goals are worth. Sometimes one can pursue both objectives simultaneously; that is, break the enemy’s will while destroying his army.

Overcoming hostile ability is clearly a military imperative and hostile willingness to persist an ambiguous military or political goal. Overcoming hostile will (defined as acceptance of originally odious policies) is a political problem solvable only in the peace that follows hostilities. Obviously, the military aspect plays a part and there is a sequential relationship: until either hostile will or ability is overcome, one can neither impose nor convince the adversary to accept one’s policies. At the same time, military victory does not ensure the later psychological acceptance of the outcome by the vanquished. Military victory may allow one to “compel our adversary to do our will,” but in the long run, it is acceptance at the psychological level that renders the outcome totally successful.

This is a subtle but very important and often overlooked point. Victory or defeat in war has two distinct definitions. The most obvious is military victory because that aspect is easiest to view. The other, and ultimately more important, definition is the achievement of the political purposes for which war is fought in the first place, and that means acceptance by the adversary of the political objectives for which the war was fought. In turn adversaries must be convinced that the objectives for which they fought were wrong and that those for which you fought were correct. Military force may be able to enforce the terms of peace, but convincing the enemy population to embrace the peace is a political task of persuasion for which military force may be irrelevant or counterproductive. It is indeed possible to “win the war and lose the peace” if one assumes that once hostilities are concluded victory is complete. The lesson of World War I, when a punitive peace virtually ensured that the German people would not embrace the peace treaty, is only the most obvious example.

The purpose of this discussion is to establish the intimate, complex relationships between war and its political purposes. Americans tend to think of war primarily in its military aspects, but that is clearly not enough if we are to comprehend fully the dynamics of military conflict and where military force can and cannot be applied intelligently and effectively, especially in the contemporary context. Rather, the complex interaction between military and political affairs needs to be viewed systematically, and it is our purpose in the rest of this chapter to lay out a framework for organizing that relationship, which we will then apply to the American military experience in subsequent chapters.

The first element in that framework is what is often referred to as the causes of wars: those underlying issues that make the recourse to war an apparent solution and the proximate events that lead to the decision to go to war. The political objective that directs the war effort and gives it meaning emerges from these issues and events. Political objectives, in turn, lead to the determination of military objectives to achieve the political objective and military strategies that will accomplish the military task. We will then turn to the purely political considerations that affect the conduct and outcome of hostilities and in that context examine selectively the actual conduct of each conflict. Because technology has been such an enormous influence on the evolution of war, we will look at technological innovations—how they were or were not applied effectively, and how they affected the conduct and outcomes of wars. Finally, we will examine whether or how the political purposes were achieved, using Sir Basil Liddell Hart’s “better state of the peace” and the notions of overcoming hostile will and ability as yardsticks.

Issues and Events

The decision to go to war is seldom a casual matter. The road to war is generally a long one, and with the considerable assistance of hindsight, one can normally detect a gradual deterioration in the relations between what became warring units over underlying issues or sets of issues that were not resolved peacefully. Those underlying issues were transformed into events that serve as lightning rods that made the end result seem inevitable.

A caveat is in order here. One of the important concerns of historians and other social scientists is to speculate on the true “causes” of war and to devise elaborate theories about why there is war. This volume does not propose to add to that body of thought in the sense of proposing any grand scheme or overarching grand design to explain why men go to war. The concern here is more limited and descriptive. It begins from the more modest premise, supportable by evidence, that Americans from time to time make the political decision that armed violence is the way they must settle disputes. From that premise, it is the authors’ purpose to look at those instances and to see if there was commonality and to see how the decision chain led to and directed the political and military objectives. The decisions to make war will in all likelihood be made again. It is our hope that those determinations will be made wisely and will be translated into appropriate, supportable, and achievable political and military aims and objectives.

With that context, one can divide the road to war into two analytical distinctions. The first deals with the underlying issues (or causes) in the preceding peace that eventually led to war. What kinds of incompatibilities in policy fester to the point that differences appear solvable only by the sword? How did these come about, and were they resolvable by other forms of action? Were the issues fundamental, or did they simply devolve because of inattention or the inability of men to resolve them? How did these issues evolve into the political objectives for which the war would be fought (which is really the most important question of all)?

The second distinction arising from those underlying issues is the specific events (...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• Preface
• Introduction
• 1. War and Political Purpose
• 2. American Revolution
• 3. Civil War
• 4. World War I
• 5. World War II
• 6. Korean War
• 7. Vietnam War
• 8. Persian Gulf war
• 9. Afghanistan War
• 10. Iraq War
• 11. America’s Minor Wars
• 12. The American Experience
• Selected Bibliography
• Index
• About the Authors