Snatching plenty from the jaws of victory
Shimon Tzabar
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.
The view that the best outcome of war can only be the result of victory has been common. Nevertheless, there have been a few who suspected that it might not be so. Amongst them was Belisarius, who defended and expanded Justinian's empire. When his soldiers urged him to attack the king of the Saracens, who was moving along the Euphrates with the aim of pouncing upon Antioch, he answered: "True victory lies in compelling one's opponent to abandon his purpose with the least possible loss to oneself. If such a result was obtained, there was no real advantage to be gained by winning a battle."
In our own times, this approach was followed by the noted exponent of indirect strategy, Captain B.H. Liddell Hart. He was unique in the military profession in that he questioned the role of victory on the battlefield. "The object in war," wrote Liddell Hart, "is a better state of peace – even if only from your point of view. Hence it is essential to conduct war with constant regard to the peace you desire."
So some have been suspicious of the alleged positive effect of victory. Others have been aware of the superiority of defeat. Nobody, however, has tried to put into practice this unconventional but more realistic approach. But if we agree that a military disaster may produce a better postwar situation than victory, then there should be a science of military disasters as there is a science of military victories.
Let us take, for example, a political conflict like the invasion of Czechoslovakia by the Soviet Union in 1968. The discrepancy in power between the two forces was so great that the Czechs had to revert to the only stratagem left to them – namely, surrender. The Czechs are almost experts in the art of submission. They sabotaged the war machine of the Austro-Hungarian empire in the First World War by similar methods. While others rebelled, killed and were killed, the Czechs won independence by conforming to every rule and law, however stupid and ridiculous.
The outcome of the Czechs' surrender to the Russian invasion of 1968 was that they were made a better offer than were the Hungarians after their bloody revolt of 1956. Moreover, the Soviet Union, with all its might, with all its A- and H-bombs and with all its intercontinental missiles, had to withdraw most of its forces with almost no shots fired. Emil Zatopek, the famous Czech sportsman, was quoted in the British press as saying: "The Russians came crashing here stupidly, with none of the gentle movement of sportsmen. They came with all their armaments and their might, but were defeated by our children with nothing but flags on their chest and the power of their words to unite our people."
Let us assume for a moment that by handling a war inefficiently, it is possible to lose it. This may have a chance of success if the enemy is stronger than or equal to one's power. If one's enemy is much weaker than oneself, merely pursuing the war in an inefficient manner will not bring about the desired results. The Russians fought the Finns in 1939 in a most inefficient manner and still were unable to lose the war. It may also happen that the enemy, though stronger, had decided to lose. In this case too, not to handle the war in an "efficient manner" will only achieve victory.
Mere desire to win has never guaranteed victory; so also a desire to lose is not enough to guarantee defeat. For example: it is difficult, almost impossible, to be defeated if one's economy is flourishing. Countries with a strong economy tend to win rather than lose. The same can be said about a strong and united society or a well-balanced and clever foreign policy. To pave the way for a military disaster, one may have to ruin one's own economy, disunite a united society and carry out a bad foreign policy. Even when the war has been eventually lost, some problems still remain unsolved; for example, how to march into captivity, and how to face charges as war criminals – a thing quite likely to happen to the vanquished.
Results of war, whether defeat or victory, never bear the same fate for everybody. What is gain for one is loss for the other and vice-versa. Some profit by victory, others by defeat; some lose by victory and others by defeat. The habit of talking about a country as one unit in respect to the outcome of war is nonsense. Instead of talking about the country being worse or better off after a war, it is more nearly correct to speak of who in the country is worse or better off after a war.
"A lost war," says Max Weber, "as well as a successful war, brings increased business to the banks and industries." Business has never suffered from defeat. More people have been enriched out of the black market than out of the New York Stock Exchange. Though it is true that poor people tend to get poorer after a defeat, it is also true that they tend to get poorer after a victory. Poor people tend to get poorer in any situation. The middle class, on the other hand, may suffer immediately after a defeat, but they are the first to recover and it does not take them long to be better off than anybody else.
Bearing in mind war's one-dimensional process in time, the best and worst outcomes of war are meaningful only if they are related to one's own prewar situation and not to that of the enemy. If the aim of war is to improve one's prewar situation, then the war should be conducted not toward victory (compelling the enemy to submit to one's will) but in such a way that the state of peace after the war will be better than the state of peace before.
A few examples will illustrate this point.
• We have a state of peace with too much unemployment. We launch a war and keep it going until enough damage is done to guarantee full employment for years to come. "An army," says Lewis Mumford, "is a body of pure consumers... It tends to reduce towards zero the gap in time between profitable production and profitable replacement... and nothing ensures replacement like organized destruction."
• We have a state of peace with too many debts – national, foreign and private. The more we pay our debts, the more we are in debt since debts can be paid only by debts. If we launch a war and are defeated, we don't have to pay our debts, especially when we add a revolution to defeat. It is a matter of principle for revolutionary governments not to pay the debts of their reactionary forerunners.
• We have a state of peace with an old-fashioned and outdated industry. The factories are old, the machinery is rusty, the management is inefficient and labour relations are corrupt. Exports are failing because competitors are working on much more modern lines. There is no way to improve matters except by demolishing the whole system and rebuilding it from scratch. We cannot do it. No sane society can demolish its own industry even for a good reason. Only an enemy can do it.
• We had social troubles in our peaceful prewar situation. Friction among various groups endangered the existence of the whole community. What is needed to unite the people is a major catastrophe. This can be achieved only by war, especially an unsuccessful one.
The more we search for examples to illustrate this point, the more examples we find. It is evident that there is no weakness or fault in a nation, a country or a society that a good defeat cannot cure. Until now there was one solution - victory. But victory as a medicine has been found to be worse than the disease. Now, with our new definitions, defeat is within everyone's reach.