WINNING WARS
◗ Matthias Strohn (editor) ◗ Casemate Publishers (2020) ◗ £55.00 ◗ 328 pages (softback) ◗ ISBN: 9781952715006 ◗ casematepublishers.co.uk
Subtitled The Enduring Nature and Changing Character of Victory from Antiquity to the 21st Century, this book is the result of a research project carried out by the Centre for Historical Analysis and Conflict Research for the British Army.
In his introduction, Sir Hew Strachan writes: ‘Going to war requires of those who do it a commitment to win – and a sense of what victory would look like. Without that, war lacks purpose and the strategy to shape it is robbed of coherence. Moreover, without either there is no obvious route to peace.’
War in the distant past was seen as the normal relation between states. In his Devil’s Dictionary American writer Ambrose Bierce defined peace as‘a period of preparation for war’.‘To the victor the spoils’used to be the result of winning wars: those who were successful became the new ruling dynasty or added territory to their countries, imposed their religion upon or enslaved the defeated, acquired colonies, works of art and hard cash.
After World War II, West Germany was rebuilt with American money and became prosperous. In the comedy film The Mouse that Roared the fictitious Duchy of Grand Fenwick, whose economy is on the verge of collapse, declares war on the United States knowing it will lose, intending to benefit in a similar fashion. Far from exploiting or stripping the defeated of their assets, Western winners of wars often now intend to improve the lot of the defeated by giving them freedom, democracy and prosperity. Strangely, the defeated do not always appreciate these benefits…
The sixteen essays in this book describe these changes and examine how in more recent times military successes have signally failed to achieve the victors’longterm goals in Iraq, Syria and Afghanistan:
Winning in Classical Antiquity and the Roman Conception of Victory; The European Concept of ‘Winning’ in the Middle Ages;
From the Age of Reason to the European Nation State, 1750-1850; ‘Winning’ in World War I, 1914-1919;
‘Winning’ in the World Wars: The British Conceptions of the War-Time Leaders Lloyd George and Winston Churchill, 19141945; ‘Winning’ in the Cold War and the Nuclear Age, 1945-1990; Western Strategic Goals and ‘Winning’ in Iraq and Afghanistan since 2001; A Hollow Victory? Assad’s Regime and ‘Winning’ the Conflict in Syria since 2001; The Impact of History, Politics and Religion: Three Contrasting Conceptions of ‘Winning’ in Iran since 1979; The Chinese Concept of ‘Winning’; A Decisive British Victory? The Confrontation with Indonesia, 19631966; The Ambiguity of Victory: The Spectrum of ‘Winning’ in African History;
The Provisional IRA and the Elusive Concept of ‘Winning since 1969; Russian Views of ‘Winning’: Velikaya Pobeda and ‘pobedonosnaya voina’; ‘Winning the Peace’: The Peacebuilding Paradigm and its Implications for Peacekeepers in the 21st Century.
‘Winning’at the tactical level is relatively easy to recognize and quantify; so it is also in one-off wargame battles, whether determined by the capture of objectives, ‘victory points’or a simple comparison of casualties suffered by both sides. Hobby wargamers do not have to concern themselves with what happens after their tabletop victories.
This book has no direct application to their toy soldier battles but is a salutary reminder that it is all too possible to win the war but lose the peace.