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John Arquilla - Dubious Battles: Aggression, Defeat, & the International System

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Dubious Battles: Aggression, Defeat, & the International System
Author:
John Arquilla
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Routledge
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Books / Politics
Year:
1992
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London
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Dubious Battles

First published 1992 by Crane Russak

This edition published 2015 by Routledge 2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon, 0X14 4RN 711 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10017, USA

Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business

DUBIOUS BATTLES: Aggression, Defeat, and the International System

Copyright 1992 by RAND. All rights reserved. Except as permitted under the United States Copyright Act of 1976, no part of this publication may be reproduced or distributed in any form or by any means, or stored in a database or retrieval system, without the prior written permission of the publisher.

This book was set in Times Roman by Hemisphere Publishing Corporation.

A CIP catalog record for this book is available from the British Library.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Arquilla, John.

Dubious battles : aggression, defeat, and the international system

/ by John Arquilla.

p. cm.

A Rand research study.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

1. War. I. Title.

U21.2.A73 1992

355.02dc20

92-23146

CIP

ISBN 13: 978-0-8448-1736-1 (pbk)

Contents

Guide

For my family

Why another study of war? There is already a voluminous literature that examines its causes, patterns of outbreak, waging, and impact on the international system. However, there has been little analysis of the penchant for those who will lose to begin wars. If Clausewitz is right about war being a continuation of policy by other means, then isnt it troubling that, and worth explaining why, its outcomes are often characterized by the discontinuation of policies and, from time to time, of states themselves?

It is possible to develop some hypotheses from existing theories about why losers start wars. Perhaps the inevitable occurrence of balancing behavior causes wars that begin reasonably, for the aggressor, to expand in an unanticipated, and highly unpleasant, way. Another possibility is that rising powers are overeager, and that they start wars against declining powers just a bit too soon for their own good. Finally, war may just be an inherently very risky business. Victory or defeat may hinge on chance factors virtually beyond the control of either combatant.

This study examines these plausible explanations, and finds them wanting. Balances often do not arise. When they do, they are frequently the creation of the war initiator. The Soviet Unions behavior from 1938-1941 is a good example of this phenomenon. It allied with Hitler instead of against him in 1939, taking a chunk of Poland, and later the Baltics, as its reward. In 1941, it entered the war by virtue of being invaded by 3,000,000 troops of the Wehrmacht. As to cycles of rising and declining power, this study finds little evidence of losing wars begun by the impatient. With regard to chance, the loser phenomenons noticeable patterns (it increases with the intensity and scope of war) suggest that something more than German Chancellor Bethmann-Hollwegs iron dice are rolling. How is one to proceed?

The insight that this study introduces is that all interstate wars are not created equal. There are two fundamental types, which require differing analytic treatment. Land wars, fought exclusively on and over land, are hypothesized to be won by superior military skill (over and against strength, measured any number of ways). Since combat effectiveness is hard to assess prior to a wars outbreak, it should be unsurprising that losers start land wars. Land-sea wars have significant maritime dimensions, with command of the sea posited by this study as mattering more than either skill or strength. But, since sea power is hardly an imponderable, why do losers so often start land-sea wars?

At this point, it is argued that leaders of continental powers, from Louis XIV to Saddam Hussein, have at best an imperfect understanding of land-sea war. Also, they often have navies (if their nations are big enough) that espouse offensive doctrines in peacetime, only to switch precipitately to the defensive with the onset of war. Thus, the argument goes, the leaders of land powers are led to rely, to their detriment, on expert advice that is itself influenced by organizational pathologies. Interestingly, this leads to some reformulation of existing ideas about the offensive lock-step into which organizational influences are supposed to thrust professional militaries. Another modification to existing theories of military organizations is that their influence is hypothesized to persist, if not increase, rather than abate in crisis and war.

Both quantitative and case study methods are applied in the testing of the dual theory of war. Their use is complementary, with the statistics relating, generally, to the issue of how wars are won. The detailed cases examine why losing wars are begun. Though the cases come after statistical analysis, the point must be made that these how and why questions are inseparable. One cant identify a loser as having started a war unless one knows something about how wars are won or lost.

This study concludes by considering some implications of its findings for organizations, policy, and deterrence. While there is certainly reason to support the maintenance of robust naval capabilities for defensive purposes, it will also be noted that this type of force may encourage loser war initiation, or at least leave conventional deterrence weakened. The recent war over Kuwait saw sea power exercising its traditional capabilities to blockade, lift ground forces from around the world, and bombard with missiles, planes, and guns. At the same time, it must be observed that the aggressor in this case may have been emboldened by the distant nature of the retributive threat. Indeed, Saddam went so far as to state publicly, in response to Hosni Mubarak, that he was not intimidated by navies.

Many people at Stanford University have had profound influences on this study, none of which were more salutary than that of Scott Sagan. Stephen Krasner, Terry Moe, Alexander George, and Judith Goldstein all made significant contributions, for which the author is deeply grateful. Here at RAND, Jonathan Pollack, Paul Davis, Sybil Sosin, and Elise Kalfayan have added a number of incisive observations. At Taylor & Francis, Ralph Salmi has provided inspired editing. Finally, the author must thank the members of his family, both for emotional support and for their seemingly unending willingness to hear more about sea power.

John Arquilla
Santa Monica, California

Of war men will ask its outcome, not its cause.

Seneca, from Hercules Furens

Chapter 1
Introduction

Woe to the vanquished. Livy

Perception of the centrality of war to international affairs, and of its invidiousness, has led to a monumental effort to uncover its causes. Explanatory theories abound, ranging in scope from notions of inevitable systemic-level conflict under conditions of anarchy to the nature of individual and small-group cognitive and decision-making processes.

If war initiation is the result of a calculated process, should it follow that those who start armed conflicts will generally prevail? Presumably, the decision-making calculus of prospective initiators includes an assessment of the probability of victory.

Despite what appears to be good prima facie evidence that war has often served to continue state policy, a closer analysis of the outcomes of interstate wars may create some doubts. For the period 1815-1980, when wars of great versus minor powers are controlled for, and only fair fights summarizes.

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