War was, and still is, the most important event in the history of mankind. It is the womb that bears fortunes and misfortunes, hopes and disappointments, life and death. It creates and destroys tribes, nations, kingdoms and empires. "War is the father of all things," said Heraclitus.
It is not surprising that the human mind is so obsessed by war. Reflections of this obsession find their way into every human activity – into philosophy, into the arts, into science, into social structures and political organizations. The concept of war dominates the human mind to such an extent that, in the words of L.C. Lewin, "the dualism that characterized the traditional dialectic of all branches of philosophy and of stable political relationships stems from war as the prototype of conflict. Except for secondary considerations, there cannot be, to put it as simply as possible, more than two sides to a question, because there cannot be more than two sides to a war." The best brains have tried to understand war and discover the rules by which it operates. However, war has been studied not just for the sake of knowledge, but for the most part to find the key to victory. Nothing else has been held important or even significant. The blood, the fire, the pain and the misery have not just been ignored; they have been justified and glorified because, if manipulated properly, they have led to victory. "Victory at all costs," said Churchill, "victory in spite of all terror, victory however long and hard the road may be; for without victory there is no survival."
The desire to be victorious was so elementary and obvious that when Clausewitz wrote a classic on the subject he called it On War. A more accurate title would be On Victory. He assumed automatically that the two were coterminous, indeed identical. Are they really identical?
War can be described as a one-dimensional process in time. It is preceded by a prewar situation and followed by a postwar situation. It is taken for granted that a good postwar situation is the result of victory, the bad the result of defeat. This might be true if the factors that lead an army to victory were the same as those that create a better postwar situation. As it is, the factors are not the same and, therefore, it does not necessarily follow that victory results in a good postwar situation; and defeat in a bad one. Germany and Japan, for instance, the most heavily defeated parties in the last world war, emerged better off and had a much better postwar situation than Britain and France, the victorious parties.
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