1 00:00:00,520 --> 00:00:07,509 We want to thank Rob for the introduction and thank the Fulbright Committee and the Fulbright Scholar at the Diplomatic 2 00:00:07,510 --> 00:00:16,630 Academy this year and the Fulbright Commission as one that's actually funded the trip here and recording the lecture. 3 00:00:17,770 --> 00:00:29,140 Rob said, For a long time I talked to the Naval War College Program in Monterey and generally taught a class called Strategy in War and in the Class. 4 00:00:29,320 --> 00:00:33,969 And we looked at a lot of different conflicts, including a lot of the recent American conflicts. 5 00:00:33,970 --> 00:00:40,870 And, well, one of the things that I got interested in is group teaching and teaching various case studies. 6 00:00:41,590 --> 00:00:48,040 And, you know, every time every war you look at since 1945, the United States has been involved in has been branded a limited war. 7 00:00:48,580 --> 00:00:54,710 Whether that time actually fits and is not particularly relevant and whoever is doing the branding. 8 00:00:54,910 --> 00:01:02,290 Sometimes it fits. Sometimes it does. At the same time, you know, we've been in all these conflicts that we sometimes have not won them or the U.S. 9 00:01:02,290 --> 00:01:06,340 hasn't won them in the manner that ought to or with the speed that it hoped to. 10 00:01:06,970 --> 00:01:10,240 And another question to think about as we go through this, 11 00:01:10,240 --> 00:01:16,209 and the question I'll offer up to you and not answer I'll let you come to your own conclusions is once we get through this, 12 00:01:16,210 --> 00:01:22,840 is this the kind of war that, you know, the type of war, the type of struggle that we're more likely to be involved in? 13 00:01:22,840 --> 00:01:27,190 But the the place to start is the place that I found when I started doing the research on this. 14 00:01:27,730 --> 00:01:34,330 And I'm writing a book on this for Cambridge University Press and and why that talk. 15 00:01:34,330 --> 00:01:39,450 And I also give Rob credit for the subtitle of the talk as well. You know, how do you think about going to war? 16 00:01:39,460 --> 00:01:44,320 Because the conclusion I came to is that we really don't understand how to think about it. 17 00:01:44,320 --> 00:01:49,510 Despite a literature of the modern literature dates to shortly after the Second World War, 18 00:01:50,020 --> 00:01:56,739 and the basic problems that I discovered that we see with this mess is that the 19 00:01:56,740 --> 00:01:59,770 first thing is and these are the main things I'm going to talk about here today, 20 00:01:59,950 --> 00:02:04,810 we don't understand how to define it. And I'll talk about that here in detail a little bit. 21 00:02:05,470 --> 00:02:11,440 But because we don't understand how to define we don't understand the political objective, we don't understand the effects from that. 22 00:02:12,250 --> 00:02:20,080 This has follow on effects from not being able to link the that the ways in the means with the objective, you know, being sort, you know as well. 23 00:02:20,530 --> 00:02:22,120 And if you don't understand all these things, 24 00:02:22,120 --> 00:02:29,070 then you can't really successfully calculate how the constraints that are going to be involved in prosecuting this war, 25 00:02:29,080 --> 00:02:31,190 these wars are going to affect what goes on. 26 00:02:31,190 --> 00:02:38,350 At the same time, the thing that I found most surprising is this here in the literature, there's no insistence upon victory very often. 27 00:02:38,650 --> 00:02:41,900 And some the literature will say, you're not supposed to win. No. 28 00:02:41,980 --> 00:02:46,810 And I think those of you are military officers. They just sent you to war and they told you fight the war for seven years, don't win. 29 00:02:47,460 --> 00:02:52,630 And that and not teach this class called strategy in policy for the last 18 years. 30 00:02:52,630 --> 00:02:55,930 And the unofficial motto of the class is how to win wars. 31 00:02:56,770 --> 00:03:01,990 And so that struck me as being just very odd. But I'll get to that a second as well. 32 00:03:03,040 --> 00:03:08,619 Now and then a failure to end this conflict now as well and the problems that this produces. 33 00:03:08,620 --> 00:03:14,860 And so so I really this that the guts of my research question in some sense is some of the most important elements of it. 34 00:03:15,340 --> 00:03:24,669 And so the problem I've got, I've been reading all this stuff for years, okay, how do I deal with these issues and the solution? 35 00:03:24,670 --> 00:03:30,790 First, you've got to get back to the basic principles of what you're even thinking about when you're talking about a strategic subject. 36 00:03:31,300 --> 00:03:38,470 But one of the great weaknesses in strategic studies, literature and historical literature and political science literature that releases as well, 37 00:03:38,770 --> 00:03:44,049 is that it's not explained very often or very well on many occasions by the authors. 38 00:03:44,050 --> 00:03:48,940 They don't explain very well what actually they're talking about. You know, what are they really trying to get at? 39 00:03:48,940 --> 00:03:55,510 What do they mean when they use these terms? They use kind of they're thrown about kind of like confetti very often. 40 00:03:55,870 --> 00:03:59,469 And so you have to start from this, you know, with all of the basically all the writing, 41 00:03:59,470 --> 00:04:04,330 almost all the writing I do on military subjects now, I so I start with does the policy what do you want? 42 00:04:04,630 --> 00:04:10,510 What is the objective? What are you trying to get? How are you using your elements of national power to get it? 43 00:04:10,810 --> 00:04:17,680 How are you using your military power to get it? What campaigns are operations are you mounting in order to get this? 44 00:04:18,130 --> 00:04:21,340 And then the tactical stuff, the battlefield stuff, what are the concerns of that? 45 00:04:21,600 --> 00:04:27,100 So you've got to know this before you can really start doing start doing your analysis. 46 00:04:27,100 --> 00:04:31,720 Now, we will apply this to the whole idea of limited war. I have two definitions here. 47 00:04:32,140 --> 00:04:38,170 You know, on on the board. I'm not going to read them to you and hopefully you can see them and read them, but I'll talk about them a little bit. 48 00:04:38,980 --> 00:04:46,870 The first one is from a man named Robert Osgood, who's famous for writing a book on limited war, and it's considered the book on limited war. 49 00:04:47,350 --> 00:04:52,059 And the bottom definition is romance. And Bernard Brody, both American and British. 50 00:04:52,060 --> 00:04:59,440 Brody is also considered one of the other big pillars, you know, in this literature and when you see. 51 00:05:00,120 --> 00:05:05,130 I give you their definitions because what they write about, 52 00:05:05,430 --> 00:05:11,720 everybody else that writes about the war essentially digs into this and digs into the stuff that they talk about now. 53 00:05:11,970 --> 00:05:16,710 But what you see is they don't even know what it is. They don't even agree on what limited war is. 54 00:05:17,190 --> 00:05:22,830 You have these very mixed definitions where with Brody, obviously with Osgood, who's I think one of the better writers, 55 00:05:23,070 --> 00:05:28,100 he talks about the objective, which is good, but he talks about the geographies, part of what this means. 56 00:05:28,110 --> 00:05:31,169 He talks about how the effort. He talks about settlements. 57 00:05:31,170 --> 00:05:36,930 He talks about selected targets. He talks about, you know, you can't commit all of your resources. 58 00:05:39,780 --> 00:05:45,600 BRODY He talks about limited war in relation to total war, which is an issue all of its own. 59 00:05:45,930 --> 00:05:53,070 You can't it's not a limited war. If you use nuclear weapons and other issues, you know, you have to constrain yourself and mutual constraint. 60 00:05:53,970 --> 00:06:00,870 There are two different views of what is going on here. They're supposed to be the the authorities, you know, on this. 61 00:06:00,870 --> 00:06:08,309 So the problem is you really don't have a definition because the way it is generally defined is they mix the political 62 00:06:08,310 --> 00:06:14,640 objective with the way you're going to get the political objective with the level of means that you're going to use. 63 00:06:15,870 --> 00:06:20,400 BRODY And a lot of other writers, not just Brody, they define limited war or to total war. 64 00:06:20,460 --> 00:06:24,210 The problem is the term total war doesn't mean anything. You can't really define it. 65 00:06:24,960 --> 00:06:29,660 So I've read entire books that don't define it. So you've got this means based problem. 66 00:06:29,700 --> 00:06:35,579 And they also they talk about things that affect the nature of the war, the geography, the level of force, you know, and so on. 67 00:06:35,580 --> 00:06:41,459 But but all of this boils down to means it means being an element of their definition. 68 00:06:41,460 --> 00:06:45,770 This is too subjective. How do you tell when someone has used all their means? 69 00:06:45,780 --> 00:06:49,259 I mean, how much is the means we total? You can't. 70 00:06:49,260 --> 00:06:52,310 It just doesn't work for thinking about it very clearly. So. 71 00:06:52,520 --> 00:06:56,700 So, you know, based on your analysis, you know as well what I conclude after reading it anyways. 72 00:06:56,880 --> 00:06:59,430 So you got to fix the problem before you even start. 73 00:07:00,030 --> 00:07:05,820 And so, I mean, you go back to basic principles, you know, again, you know, you've got to go with the rejected. 74 00:07:06,090 --> 00:07:11,790 And so thinking about Clausewitz and thinking about the way that Sir Julian Corbett, the maritime theorist, uses Clausewitz, 75 00:07:12,210 --> 00:07:16,920 he kind of imposes a little bit on and and you essentially you can divide all wars 76 00:07:16,920 --> 00:07:21,150 into this war fought for regime change a war fought for something less than this. 77 00:07:21,480 --> 00:07:26,670 And everything that you do based upon the political objective, what is the political objective being sought? 78 00:07:27,180 --> 00:07:29,880 Everything else, you know, flows from this. 79 00:07:30,420 --> 00:07:37,830 This gives us a really solid basis that then answers all these other problems, you know, and analytical perspective that I showed earlier. 80 00:07:38,100 --> 00:07:41,370 Now, so why do I say this? Well, we did Clausewitz. 81 00:07:41,370 --> 00:07:44,670 He talks about the object, the political object, the value of it. 82 00:07:45,330 --> 00:07:48,670 The war will go on until people aren't willing to pay the price anymore. 83 00:07:48,700 --> 00:07:54,450 So one side says we don't want to pay the blood and treasure or prestige, of course that it is that we're paying for this. 84 00:07:54,870 --> 00:08:01,620 We will end. But it really critically what solves part of it, what solves the in ways means problem is that the political object, 85 00:08:01,620 --> 00:08:07,110 the original motive for the war, will thus determine both the military objective to be reached and the amount of effort it required. 86 00:08:07,470 --> 00:08:12,150 There. Again, why they rejected is so important because you will do things to get the political objective. 87 00:08:12,600 --> 00:08:18,239 And so this gives us a solid, you know, basis with historical how do we think about this? 88 00:08:18,240 --> 00:08:28,620 How do we analyse it? Now you have all of these other issues that Brody and in some better respects Oscar come up with the geography, 89 00:08:28,620 --> 00:08:31,320 the means, political will and the list goes on. 90 00:08:31,330 --> 00:08:36,240 All these things are really critically important for influencing the nature of the war, but they don't define it. 91 00:08:36,540 --> 00:08:40,109 You know that you can't define a war fought for a limited political objective, 92 00:08:40,110 --> 00:08:44,610 which I think is a better way to describe it by these things, because they're too subjective. 93 00:08:44,610 --> 00:08:49,110 So so if you're fighting the war for every political objective, what would these objectives commonly be? 94 00:08:49,230 --> 00:08:55,920 Well, you're fighting defensively. You're trying to hold what you've got just to keep what you got to preserve yourself in the face of an invasion. 95 00:08:56,550 --> 00:09:03,120 The most common thing for an offensive war, but for an offensive, limited objective, is territory historically. 96 00:09:03,510 --> 00:09:10,020 That's what people fight wars for, but they're also other things you know as well, political concessions, economic reasons. 97 00:09:10,140 --> 00:09:17,220 For example, the 19th century in Asia, it's famous for the Americans and for the European colonial powers, 98 00:09:17,610 --> 00:09:25,919 using military force to force political and economic and trade concessions from China, India and Japan and other places. 99 00:09:25,920 --> 00:09:31,560 You know what other and you can, in theory, have as many objectives as you have politicians, which is that's a lot. 100 00:09:31,950 --> 00:09:38,729 So no. Now, so how does this work in the real in the real world, then, if you're thinking about how do you use this for analysis? 101 00:09:38,730 --> 00:09:45,000 And the main case studies I'm looking at are the Korean War, the Vietnam War in the Gulf War, the Korean War, 102 00:09:45,090 --> 00:09:53,790 the objective for the United States, you know, preserve South Korea, hold South Korea, supported by U.N. resolutions in this the Vietnam War. 103 00:09:53,910 --> 00:09:57,810 Some of the literature on the Vietnam War insists that the Americans don't have a political objective. 104 00:09:58,180 --> 00:10:06,520 You know, that is wrong. I mean. Here. It is spelled out very clearly in NSA and to create an independent non-communist South Vietnam. 105 00:10:06,970 --> 00:10:11,800 That's a limited political a war fought for a limited political objective to hold South Vietnam, the Gulf War. 106 00:10:11,830 --> 00:10:14,410 The primary political objective is the liberation of Kuwait. 107 00:10:14,440 --> 00:10:19,360 There are other things as well, but in the policy, documents have spelled out very clearly what this is. 108 00:10:19,600 --> 00:10:21,900 We are trying to change any of these other regimes. 109 00:10:21,910 --> 00:10:32,320 We're trying to preserve regimes in North and South Vietnam and South Korea or to liberate take something away from north from from the Iraqis. 110 00:10:32,680 --> 00:10:35,860 No problem. Sometimes the political objectives change. 111 00:10:36,070 --> 00:10:39,730 And this has a whole new wrinkle to this this whole equation. 112 00:10:40,720 --> 00:10:46,120 And, you know, and it's also a problem why using the term limited war is kind of a blanket. 113 00:10:46,120 --> 00:10:50,890 It is very difficult. And why I prefer to think about war support for a limited political objective, 114 00:10:51,310 --> 00:10:54,790 because in Korea, Korea, in the literary war literature, this was the archetype. 115 00:10:55,030 --> 00:10:58,630 There are books and books and articles about Korea, the limited war. 116 00:10:59,380 --> 00:11:03,610 But in September 1950, the political objective changed for the United States. 117 00:11:03,610 --> 00:11:07,090 The Truman administration says, we will unify Korea. 118 00:11:08,020 --> 00:11:11,320 You're no longer fighting a war for a limited political objective at that point. 119 00:11:11,650 --> 00:11:15,430 Here's why I understand the political objective so important because you change the political objective. 120 00:11:15,430 --> 00:11:20,410 You change the nature of the war. And that's exactly what the Truman administration does. 121 00:11:20,770 --> 00:11:25,300 The Truman administration decides to invade a Soviet, Soviet and Chinese client state, essentially. 122 00:11:25,420 --> 00:11:30,490 You know, that changes everything because everybody else says, okay, what is going on here now? 123 00:11:30,760 --> 00:11:37,600 You get the attention that you perhaps did not want. So in your view, to change the war, sometimes the political objectives, 124 00:11:37,600 --> 00:11:44,680 fuzzy and the political leaders get, we're not really sure what they want at the end of the first Gulf War. 125 00:11:45,280 --> 00:11:52,149 President Bush the first President Bush twice. He calls for revolts in Iraq and that they happen, that probably would happen anyway. 126 00:11:52,150 --> 00:11:55,450 But it just doesn't this doesn't matter. It certainly arguably feeds it. 127 00:11:56,170 --> 00:11:59,830 Do they want he says if Saddam is overthrown, this is the way to end the war. 128 00:12:00,370 --> 00:12:04,629 But they really don't want Saddam overthrown. But really they do. They really not. 129 00:12:04,630 --> 00:12:09,010 I mean, they want both, but they're afraid of what happens if he's overthrown. 130 00:12:09,340 --> 00:12:14,290 But they're afraid of what happens if he stays. So they get a little fuzzy on what they really want there. 131 00:12:14,590 --> 00:12:19,690 The second Iraq war in 2011 did the Obama administration doesn't get a status of forces agreement. 132 00:12:19,750 --> 00:12:26,230 They don't really want one. A lot of controversy around this. Would this have made the situation a little different? 133 00:12:26,800 --> 00:12:32,950 I'm sorry. I'm getting ahead of myself. That's for later. For. But in the Second World War, initially we had U.S. invades Iraq. 134 00:12:33,040 --> 00:12:39,310 Reject is very clear is regime change. This is a war fought for a limited political objective, even though you see it branded a limited war. 135 00:12:39,790 --> 00:12:46,150 But then things change. We move from overthrowing a regime to building and protecting a new regime. 136 00:12:46,750 --> 00:12:52,120 This changes the objective. This changed the entire situation, the entire dynamic of what you're doing, 137 00:12:52,540 --> 00:13:00,200 which then changes the influence this has on the other powers in Iran and Syria and the effect it has on the internal population as well. 138 00:13:00,220 --> 00:13:03,700 So things change now. This is a good idea, bad idea to change the objective. 139 00:13:04,330 --> 00:13:07,920 It depends. Somehow to change the objective might be a good idea. 140 00:13:07,930 --> 00:13:12,280 But the problem that I found with the United States changing the objective is 141 00:13:12,580 --> 00:13:16,780 we don't think about it very clearly or think about it as deeply as we should, 142 00:13:17,200 --> 00:13:23,350 or when we do think about it. There's actually a lot of discussion about changing the objective in Korea, 143 00:13:24,280 --> 00:13:30,500 but they don't seem to take seriously enough the problems that they can see from the intelligence they might have from this. 144 00:13:30,520 --> 00:13:33,670 So it's a very complicated like all it's all very easy to control. 145 00:13:34,030 --> 00:13:41,830 And so if you're the policymaker, it's easier to know. So. So we understand why they would not want to stay any objective, determined so much. 146 00:13:42,580 --> 00:13:45,819 Okay. How does this affect all the constraints, the things, the geography, 147 00:13:45,820 --> 00:13:54,070 the means and national will all these other things that Brody and others have so clearly identified? 148 00:13:54,310 --> 00:13:59,920 Well, the first thing to think about is what is the other objective, meaning the objective of the other combat involved. 149 00:13:59,950 --> 00:14:01,330 And this is really critical. 150 00:14:01,570 --> 00:14:08,440 And again, why lumping things is a limited war, very, very difficult, because you might be fighting a war for limited political objective. 151 00:14:09,400 --> 00:14:12,250 What do they want and how much value do they place on it? 152 00:14:13,150 --> 00:14:19,360 And then how do these things then how are the constraints generally affected because of this value? 153 00:14:19,630 --> 00:14:24,040 How does it contribute to how much means you're willing to to produce to it so well. 154 00:14:24,040 --> 00:14:26,020 Well, I'll come back to that in a second in detail. 155 00:14:26,030 --> 00:14:32,830 But this is a concept of kind of taken from one of Robert Osgood's later books to think about the constraints. 156 00:14:33,400 --> 00:14:39,040 It says he talks to it. Are the constraints actual meaning you don't have any choice but to deal with. 157 00:14:39,160 --> 00:14:43,100 You cannot alter it. Korea is a peninsula. That's a fact. 158 00:14:43,120 --> 00:14:46,060 You can't get around that. That is the situation you have to deal with. 159 00:14:46,780 --> 00:14:52,210 Or are the constraints self-imposed, meaning we place them on ourselves if we do that? 160 00:14:52,960 --> 00:14:59,890 Is this why? Sometimes it is. Sometimes it is an example in the Vietnam War, the Johnson administration. 161 00:14:59,970 --> 00:15:05,880 It would not allow American ground forces to operate north of the 17th parallel in Norfolk, Iraq. 162 00:15:06,330 --> 00:15:11,790 Their reasoning for doing this is they were very certain they would end up having to fight China in North Vietnam. 163 00:15:12,180 --> 00:15:16,300 And so this is a self-imposed constraint and it's a very wise one because they're absolutely correct. 164 00:15:16,320 --> 00:15:22,920 The Chinese government had made commitments to North Vietnam that they would help them fight the Americans if the Americans invaded. 165 00:15:23,190 --> 00:15:28,140 And at times, the Chinese government sometimes had as many as 170,000 troops in North Vietnam. 166 00:15:28,470 --> 00:15:34,020 So that's a fairly significant other issue to deal with. So it's a it's an imposed constraint, but it is a smart one. 167 00:15:34,380 --> 00:15:41,910 Now, how does how do these other things and we think about these constraints, you know, work out this work out and, you know, Korea and Vietnam. 168 00:15:42,300 --> 00:15:45,720 When you think about the objectives, again, of the various combatants, 169 00:15:46,050 --> 00:15:52,360 not just you and the United States perspective, we also have to consider the other combatants and their allies. 170 00:15:52,380 --> 00:15:56,120 What do they want? You know, how does that affect what's going to happen? 171 00:15:56,130 --> 00:15:59,520 What are the values of their objects, the geography? 172 00:15:59,550 --> 00:16:10,140 How does this work? Well, in for constraint. One of the things that the Truman administration does in is restrict the war in Korea to Korea. 173 00:16:10,140 --> 00:16:16,890 It will not allow American military forces in launch attacks in China because it fears that because the Chinese are a Soviet ally, 174 00:16:16,890 --> 00:16:19,910 that they would get a third world war. And so this is a constraint. 175 00:16:19,920 --> 00:16:24,990 The political elements of it, you know, filter into this as well. 176 00:16:25,230 --> 00:16:30,210 In Southeast Asia, one of the constraints that is placed on American forces for much of the war, 177 00:16:30,230 --> 00:16:33,960 not all of it is that they cannot operate in Laos and Cambodia. 178 00:16:34,350 --> 00:16:36,850 This was something the Truman administration very much restricted now. 179 00:16:36,870 --> 00:16:42,720 Okay, then you got to think about what is the effect of has have sanctuary lines, communications for the enemy, you know, and so on. 180 00:16:43,050 --> 00:16:47,010 And certainly a lot of this, the fear of third party country affects this as well. 181 00:16:47,220 --> 00:16:51,350 Why not go to North Vietnam again? Why not go in to China? 182 00:16:51,360 --> 00:16:55,769 That is always there is an element and then you have the coalition aspects to bring into this. 183 00:16:55,770 --> 00:16:58,770 Again, what are their objectives? You know, what matter to them? 184 00:16:58,950 --> 00:17:00,540 What is the value of the object to them? 185 00:17:00,900 --> 00:17:07,170 And with the Cold War perspective it has is a whole new wrinkle with this, because you have this something called nested. 186 00:17:07,410 --> 00:17:13,049 Some people call nested wars where so much of what the United States is doing is big in Korea 187 00:17:13,050 --> 00:17:19,530 and Vietnam is constrained or limited by the fears of getting a larger a larger conflict. 188 00:17:19,800 --> 00:17:25,290 But what's interesting when you look at this look at that idea in relation to the first and the first Gulf War, 189 00:17:25,890 --> 00:17:29,040 the Bush administration doesn't have that same fear. There's no Cold War. 190 00:17:29,430 --> 00:17:34,200 So the external situation has changed. The fear of third party act or intervention is not there anymore. 191 00:17:34,350 --> 00:17:40,050 So this gives you so much more freedom to do so many other things that militarily you couldn't have done. 192 00:17:40,230 --> 00:17:45,450 Yeah. In some of these other and some of these other conflicts. Now the problem, the means element of this. 193 00:17:47,100 --> 00:17:52,050 Almost every definition that you will see and almost everything written about a little bit more that you will see, 194 00:17:52,740 --> 00:18:00,240 talks about the needs and says, oh, you have to restrict your means for this to if it's a limited war, if you're using a lot of a lot of stuff. 195 00:18:00,270 --> 00:18:05,400 Define a lot, then it's not a limited war. Again, the problem is too subjective. 196 00:18:06,240 --> 00:18:11,879 The reality is you should use sufficient means. Now, when you decide you wish to get this political objective, 197 00:18:11,880 --> 00:18:18,000 the the know sufficient means to get what you want, because if you have this self-imposed idea that, 198 00:18:18,000 --> 00:18:24,190 oh, we can't use sufficient means or enough means, and this really increases the chances of not winning not winning the war. 199 00:18:24,250 --> 00:18:25,590 Now, how does this play out? 200 00:18:26,520 --> 00:18:35,610 You know, in our in our Korea, Vietnam, you know, in Gulf War example, one of the many controversies in Korea is that in 1958, 201 00:18:35,820 --> 00:18:44,250 President Truman signs an order dispatching four Army divisions to Europe to fulfil our narrow commitment to Europe. 202 00:18:44,550 --> 00:18:47,280 This is the height of the Chinese offensive in North Korea. 203 00:18:47,760 --> 00:18:56,670 And so there are writers and say Kissinger and Brody and others, a better use of these four divisions is in in Korea or sending in labour. 204 00:18:56,970 --> 00:19:02,550 And in this May made the spring of 1951, you can end this war more quickly with a little bit more force in Vietnam. 205 00:19:02,790 --> 00:19:07,600 So the argument then boils down to you don't ever use sufficient means to to end the war quickly. 206 00:19:07,630 --> 00:19:12,600 Vietnam. One of the points of argument is always the American military forces. 207 00:19:12,600 --> 00:19:19,510 Ground force Commander Westmoreland is never given the forces he is asked for by from the from the Johnson administration, 208 00:19:19,580 --> 00:19:24,750 always giving a piece of that. You have this driven draft. You can argue about the efficacy of that, but that's the argument. 209 00:19:25,110 --> 00:19:30,840 Gulf War, different. Colin Powell, the American military commander. 210 00:19:31,770 --> 00:19:39,690 At one point, he asked President Bush for corps, some more carriers or some more air wings and says he needs these. 211 00:19:39,720 --> 00:19:45,480 President Bush says, give me the order. I'll sign it. And Bush says later he said, I told you I want. 212 00:19:45,500 --> 00:19:49,560 He said, I didn't want them to be able to say to me they didn't get what they needed. 213 00:19:49,860 --> 00:19:56,880 But guess what? The situation is different as well. Instead of trying to get this means issue right. 214 00:19:57,030 --> 00:20:00,950 You know, it can be. It's obviously one of the main. So many difficult things. 215 00:20:00,950 --> 00:20:07,790 But if we don't use sufficient means, can you end the war? The problem is also how you use these means, which will come to in just a second. 216 00:20:08,030 --> 00:20:12,350 And another big topic in the limited war literature is limited nuclear war. 217 00:20:12,890 --> 00:20:18,200 There is no large amount of literature on this, but at the same time, 218 00:20:18,200 --> 00:20:21,590 there's literature saying that if you use nuclear weapons, it's not a limited war. 219 00:20:22,940 --> 00:20:27,700 It's what is forgotten in all this is that nuclear atomic weapons are a means issue. 220 00:20:28,220 --> 00:20:32,090 No. Yes, it has enormous political impact if you use these, obviously. 221 00:20:32,390 --> 00:20:38,240 But this is an element of means. And in a lot of the literature, early limited war literature, limited nuclear war, literature, 222 00:20:38,240 --> 00:20:44,050 discussion is okay, we can use atomic weapons later nuclear weapons and just use a few of these. 223 00:20:44,120 --> 00:20:50,600 So you to be okay with that if we're fighting and this won't produce a nuclear nuclear exchange on a global scale. 224 00:20:50,810 --> 00:20:54,530 The Soviet writers at this time are looking at this and they're saying no. 225 00:20:54,710 --> 00:20:57,980 And they say once these are used, all bets are off. 226 00:20:58,010 --> 00:21:01,340 No one knows what's going to happen here because no one can predict it. 227 00:21:01,730 --> 00:21:07,340 So you get a lot of a lot of interesting and frightening sometimes writing about this. 228 00:21:07,760 --> 00:21:16,430 But there is enormous literature written by Indian and Pakistani, all particularly Indian authors on a war within. 229 00:21:16,430 --> 00:21:22,160 It touches on a lot of these issues here today. And of course, this is relevant to think about in the South China Sea, Korean Peninsula. 230 00:21:23,710 --> 00:21:31,040 It also be with countries that have nuclear and atomic weapons when they are involved in any war. 231 00:21:32,420 --> 00:21:36,469 Sometimes you have potential issues here that could be very bad things, 232 00:21:36,470 --> 00:21:43,060 which is something certainly certainly to think about here as we as we look at this and other Soviet related subjects now. 233 00:21:43,250 --> 00:21:46,190 So you've got these means at their disposal. 234 00:21:46,190 --> 00:21:51,440 Hopefully you've got sufficient means, but you've got to be able to use them in a manner that gives you what you want, 235 00:21:51,440 --> 00:21:54,230 as in theory, if you're fighting a war that's doing what you're doing. 236 00:21:54,410 --> 00:21:59,540 Now, obviously, to talk about strategy in detail, this is a subject for a number of series of lectures, 237 00:22:00,080 --> 00:22:04,520 but just some big things that think about, you know, understanding what you want. 238 00:22:04,550 --> 00:22:07,130 Having a vision of what the peace should look like. 239 00:22:07,310 --> 00:22:15,440 Clear political objectives, clear assessment of yourself, your enemy, making sure that you can actually accomplish this goal with military power, 240 00:22:15,440 --> 00:22:22,200 because sometimes you can't, you know, understanding your opponent, you know, and just no solid operational planning to back this up. 241 00:22:22,220 --> 00:22:30,110 All these things are important. But in a nutshell, the in a nutshell, what Clausewitz says, what you're doing militarily, 242 00:22:30,320 --> 00:22:35,540 it should be affecting the enemy's ability to prosecute the war or the will to prosecute the 243 00:22:35,540 --> 00:22:39,650 war if it's not affecting their ability to prosecute the war are not affecting their will. 244 00:22:39,830 --> 00:22:46,250 You really need to question what it is you're doing. Is this a worthwhile thing that you're undertaking? 245 00:22:46,370 --> 00:22:51,799 Now, the problem is, okay, we're looking at our means issue here and the strategy issues. 246 00:22:51,800 --> 00:22:58,310 Give me a limited strategy. But when you look at the limited war literature, you see this insufficient interest in victory. 247 00:22:58,400 --> 00:23:05,210 So, yes, we know we want sort of sometimes or usually means we'll maybe try to get it, but we really don't think we should win the war. 248 00:23:05,630 --> 00:23:11,270 And so when I give you these four, four quotes here, one is from the top, 249 00:23:11,270 --> 00:23:18,440 one is from the American Navy captain, 1951 veteran, the Pacific War grad for the Naval Academy. 250 00:23:18,830 --> 00:23:22,129 He's actually a professor at the National Defence University at the time. 251 00:23:22,130 --> 00:23:24,680 He writes this, which makes it even more interesting to me. 252 00:23:24,890 --> 00:23:30,980 The second one man in Ghana, who's one of the fathers of modern strategic studies, a British, British author. 253 00:23:31,700 --> 00:23:38,330 President Barack Obama in 2015 and a Canadian brigadier, you know, from late last year. 254 00:23:38,510 --> 00:23:44,980 So I have dozens and dozens and dozens of bizarre quotes and interesting quotes now to talk about this. 255 00:23:45,380 --> 00:23:53,540 And one of the things that I haven't quite figured out completely in my mind is why you have this and a lot of different reasons. 256 00:23:53,870 --> 00:23:57,949 One of the reasons is when the writers in this, when they mentioned these things, 257 00:23:57,950 --> 00:24:05,970 they often confuse victory on the battlefield or victory in a battle with victory in the war or achieving your political objective in the war. 258 00:24:05,990 --> 00:24:10,729 Sometimes that's the problem. Sometimes it's the one in the first the first one. 259 00:24:10,730 --> 00:24:20,110 He his concern seems to be that if you have a decisive victory, military victory in Korea, you maybe you're escalating, you'll get a bigger war. 260 00:24:20,120 --> 00:24:26,270 You get a war of the Soviet Union. So there's some of that this fear of you'll get a bigger war, certainly in the Cold War context. 261 00:24:27,260 --> 00:24:28,669 The criticism of that is, 262 00:24:28,670 --> 00:24:35,510 is that the people that are writing this way are letting the letting the fear of what potentially might happen in the future cloud, 263 00:24:35,510 --> 00:24:38,120 their ability to actually deal with the problem that they have on their hands. 264 00:24:38,570 --> 00:24:42,680 You know, and they're not addressing the problem because they're afraid of something that may or may not happen. 265 00:24:43,040 --> 00:24:46,220 You know, it's you can argue that argue that both ways. 266 00:24:46,700 --> 00:24:55,250 But, sir, you see this in the literature. And again, having taught a class where the motto is how to win wars, it just struck me as being interesting. 267 00:24:55,260 --> 00:24:59,650 So what do we get from all this, all of this? You know, again, we don't really. 268 00:24:59,810 --> 00:25:05,150 Scan the literature, how to define it. This will make use of that in ways meaning relationship. 269 00:25:05,170 --> 00:25:12,220 It confuses our understanding the constraints. At the same time, you don't have this emphasis and a sufficient emphasis on winning. 270 00:25:12,460 --> 00:25:15,760 Winning meaning, achieving the political objectives, establishing a peace. 271 00:25:16,420 --> 00:25:23,410 And there's not really a lot of thought given to how to actually end these things, you know, and how to get peace out of it. 272 00:25:23,680 --> 00:25:25,570 And the result of that, you could argue. 273 00:25:25,720 --> 00:25:33,180 And again, I'm still part of the way here with this is, you know, we get maybe you got a protracted war or perpetual war. 274 00:25:33,190 --> 00:25:37,149 Sometimes we very much frown on protracted wars. You can make some arguments you get some do. 275 00:25:37,150 --> 00:25:40,420 But some of his points about bleeding the country are pretty hard to. 276 00:25:40,930 --> 00:25:50,680 Pretty hard to. Pretty hard to argue against. This quote here is from a late name, Caroline Holmquist, who's a Swedish political science. 277 00:25:51,520 --> 00:25:57,490 And she talks about this problem. She basically chalked it up to a lack of vision. 278 00:25:57,850 --> 00:26:01,660 A lot of Western leaders took the American leader. She's right in this respect. 279 00:26:02,350 --> 00:26:06,610 Is she right? I don't know. But she's one of the best explanations I've found yet. 280 00:26:06,850 --> 00:26:11,400 So but again, it's something still involved in writing it. And we'll see what I get from this now. 281 00:26:11,410 --> 00:26:17,290 So. So we don't really have a way to end, you know, these wars. 282 00:26:17,320 --> 00:26:21,040 And one of the things that Osgood wisely points out, he says, look, 283 00:26:21,800 --> 00:26:26,260 limit wars are all worthwhile for limited political objectives are only solved by negotiations. 284 00:26:26,380 --> 00:26:31,060 You don't usually put your boot on the person's neck and dictate the terms from that. 285 00:26:31,390 --> 00:26:34,680 You know, that usually you usually negotiate an end to the settlement. 286 00:26:34,690 --> 00:26:38,229 The problem is, no one plans for this and almost no one plans for this. 287 00:26:38,230 --> 00:26:47,590 One of the rare exceptions that are found is the rest of Japanese war where the excuse me, where 92 for 92 five. 288 00:26:48,040 --> 00:26:53,170 The Japanese know they're going to have to negotiate an end to this war with the Russians when they started. 289 00:26:53,560 --> 00:26:59,010 And so they plan ahead for this to say, okay, we're going to cultivate the Americans, we'll get them to mediate. 290 00:26:59,620 --> 00:27:02,920 We will send one of our diplomats as our representative to Washington, D.C., 291 00:27:03,040 --> 00:27:06,729 who just happened to go to Harvard with, you know, President Theodore Roosevelt. 292 00:27:06,730 --> 00:27:12,070 And they know each other very well. So so they're kind of stacking the diplomatic deck before they even go to war. 293 00:27:12,460 --> 00:27:16,810 Now, why do people not think about this? I think it's a hard question to answer. 294 00:27:18,190 --> 00:27:22,479 Part of it is, I think the pressure of the war so often overwhelms the policymaker, 295 00:27:22,480 --> 00:27:25,780 which is understandable, you know, with especially if your country's been invaded, 296 00:27:25,780 --> 00:27:34,420 just surviving and prosecuting the war is such a big thing and any war is such an enormous it's the most complicated thing that human beings do. 297 00:27:34,780 --> 00:27:37,990 And so that just overwhelms the policymakers very much. 298 00:27:38,980 --> 00:27:50,650 But at the same time, often I found I found quotes from President Johnson in quotes from the first President Bush, but the first Gulf War. 299 00:27:51,160 --> 00:27:53,140 How do we get out of this? How do we get out of this? 300 00:27:53,560 --> 00:28:00,220 And how do we bring this thing to a conclusion where the question is raised sometimes repeatedly, but no one ever tried to answer it? 301 00:28:00,600 --> 00:28:03,640 You know, no one ever sits down, okay, how do we actually do this? 302 00:28:03,970 --> 00:28:08,650 And the problem that I have with this, I think historically is we don't do it right. 303 00:28:08,650 --> 00:28:12,040 You might get to do it again because, well, we never are World Wars, for example. 304 00:28:12,370 --> 00:28:16,839 Now so and I use the three Gulf Wars, you know, as an example, you know, 305 00:28:16,840 --> 00:28:22,420 for this the first Gulf War, 1990, 91, the Iraq War brought war one, as I call it. 306 00:28:23,950 --> 00:28:29,500 It just suddenly stopped. They don't really think about the U.S., doesn't we think about how it's going to ended. 307 00:28:30,100 --> 00:28:36,550 And General Schwarzkopf, the CENTCOM commander on the ground, he's given very, very little instruction. 308 00:28:37,360 --> 00:28:41,350 Essentially, they tell him to strike a cease fire in the war. 309 00:28:41,440 --> 00:28:45,339 Schwarzkopf is yes, sir. He goes negotiated, comes back and says, here's what I got. 310 00:28:45,340 --> 00:28:46,440 And they're like, what did you do? 311 00:28:46,450 --> 00:28:52,390 It was they're mad at him for essentially his first mistake with doing what he was told, but he wasn't giving them instruction. 312 00:28:52,750 --> 00:28:58,060 What the second Iraq war of 2011. Again, the problem of the status of forces were there. 313 00:28:58,090 --> 00:29:02,140 Would this have mattered? There's a lot of controversy with that and obviously would have done very well. 314 00:29:03,190 --> 00:29:07,989 And then you get starting in 2014, you get the third Iraq war for the United States. 315 00:29:07,990 --> 00:29:12,310 Is it going to end with a any better war termination? 316 00:29:12,430 --> 00:29:16,000 And we'll see. You know, so maybe after the fourth one, you know, figure it out. 317 00:29:16,330 --> 00:29:22,230 So, okay, so so you've got this problem that is a just a massive problem. 318 00:29:22,240 --> 00:29:30,410 And to me and I could be wrong about this, I think this is harder than the war in some respects for the policymakers. 319 00:29:30,440 --> 00:29:33,880 I feel just horribly sorry for any policymaker that has to deal with this. 320 00:29:34,180 --> 00:29:40,420 And the American military experience is often the American military commander on the ground who is the guy who is charged with sorting this out, 321 00:29:41,560 --> 00:29:46,930 sometimes with absolutely no preparation and no instruction from his bosses as well. 322 00:29:46,930 --> 00:29:51,489 So you've got the added added wrinkles with that. So the question, you know, 323 00:29:51,490 --> 00:29:59,650 the difficulty I had is trying to figure out how to address this and has done some ideas from something like some of the ideas from the. 324 00:29:59,700 --> 00:30:03,410 The horse that we've been teaching the teaching for years. And three. 325 00:30:03,490 --> 00:30:07,770 There's a lot of things obviously to think about here, but three big things to think about. 326 00:30:07,770 --> 00:30:12,749 What do you want politically? What are the political objectives? How far are you willing to go militarily? 327 00:30:12,750 --> 00:30:16,620 Or do we need to go militarily without going too far to get these objectives? 328 00:30:17,070 --> 00:30:18,570 How are you going to enforce the peace? 329 00:30:18,570 --> 00:30:24,870 You have to think about the step beyond, you know, after the war and what is the peace going to look like here? 330 00:30:24,870 --> 00:30:27,900 What does victory look like? What does success look like? 331 00:30:28,230 --> 00:30:33,450 But the difficulty that I'm having in writing this, these three these three things are completely intertwined. 332 00:30:33,810 --> 00:30:37,920 You can't think of them as one, two, three. They relate so much together. 333 00:30:37,920 --> 00:30:41,909 They're so intertwined. And there's so many factors that overlap with this. 334 00:30:41,910 --> 00:30:45,870 It's difficult to to decipher it, but they're all three of them are there. 335 00:30:46,320 --> 00:30:53,010 You know, Clausewitz, again, stresses how much this is the political objective, you know, the peace treaty, which will resolve the conflict. 336 00:30:53,290 --> 00:30:57,480 You know, that's what you want. But he also says sometimes the peace treaty is just temporary. 337 00:30:57,540 --> 00:31:02,639 The person signs it because they want out, they want to break or whatever. How do you secure the peace? 338 00:31:02,640 --> 00:31:05,730 Well, you've got to get them to make the peace, too. 339 00:31:05,760 --> 00:31:10,560 How do you bring the people to to make the peace clauses give us kind of a laundry list now? 340 00:31:10,590 --> 00:31:14,100 Is it very much you said this is a war. Here's how you do it. You can destroy their forces. 341 00:31:14,370 --> 00:31:18,599 Now, this goes against the grain of a lot of women. 342 00:31:18,600 --> 00:31:23,550 Limited war, actually, almost all the living in war literature, they say, no, you can't destroy the enemy's force. 343 00:31:24,720 --> 00:31:30,510 No, nowhere in the great book of War does that is to say that because you're fighting a war for a limited political objective, 344 00:31:30,510 --> 00:31:33,030 that you can't bring the enemy around to your point of view. 345 00:31:33,030 --> 00:31:40,679 And that way you can take their territory, which is a common way temporary occupation, a temporary invasion, something of political purpose. 346 00:31:40,680 --> 00:31:44,339 And if you're fighting a defensive war, well, you just simply absorb what you've got to do. 347 00:31:44,340 --> 00:31:48,300 If you can fight long enough to take it for Clausewitz, what's the right answer? 348 00:31:48,330 --> 00:31:54,750 What is the situation that you have? You've got to understand the situation you have in order to understand what the right answer is. 349 00:31:55,230 --> 00:31:59,700 So other things to keep in mind when you're trying to end the war again. 350 00:31:59,850 --> 00:32:02,700 What is peace look like? What does victory look like here? 351 00:32:03,060 --> 00:32:08,310 You know, in this having that, that is something we really should figure out before we start again. 352 00:32:08,310 --> 00:32:13,320 Sometimes you don't get that option. You don't get that choice. But ideally, you should have ideal versus real. 353 00:32:13,500 --> 00:32:21,149 The timing of this can be critical. One of the criticisms about the Truman administration is that in 1951, excuse me, 1950, 354 00:32:21,150 --> 00:32:28,380 they have won the Korean War when the American army and Korean armies reached the 38 South Korean armies reached in parallel. 355 00:32:29,130 --> 00:32:38,459 They've won it. Now is the time to try to consolidate that and make a deal, if you can, you know, but the the the criticism is magnificent. 356 00:32:38,460 --> 00:32:43,690 They missed the chance. One thing to think about, one of the weaknesses I found, I think, 357 00:32:43,690 --> 00:32:52,610 is some of the American side of this is not understanding that the negotiations are a weapon, where negotiations are a tool for getting what you want. 358 00:32:52,620 --> 00:32:56,099 We haven't been able to get it on the battlefield, maybe even going into peacetime, you know, 359 00:32:56,100 --> 00:33:01,589 so and that's the other side sometimes understands that much better that the Chinese negotiators 360 00:33:01,590 --> 00:33:07,500 understood that much better now in Korea than we did the coalition issues with this. 361 00:33:07,650 --> 00:33:12,330 This matters, you know, and we forget this matters when you go to war. 362 00:33:12,330 --> 00:33:16,080 It also matters when you want to end the war, because every combatant has their own objectives. 363 00:33:16,590 --> 00:33:22,500 They are negotiating the ends to the Korean and the Vietnam War, to the United States. 364 00:33:22,920 --> 00:33:30,629 We had to bludgeon we essentially bludgeoned our South Korean and Japanese allies into accepting the peace that we wanted them to accept, 365 00:33:30,630 --> 00:33:33,810 bludgeoned with threats, money, whatever it took. 366 00:33:34,180 --> 00:33:39,810 But that's just the reality of how business is done. And it's better to get a peace instead of a cease fire. 367 00:33:40,440 --> 00:33:45,660 But sometimes that's all you're going to get. And sometimes you have to take what take what you can get from it as well. 368 00:33:46,050 --> 00:33:51,090 So. Okay, yet why even look at this. I mean, a limited war sport for limited political objectives. 369 00:33:51,840 --> 00:33:55,320 You could look at what's going on, what happened in the Ukraine in the last few years. 370 00:33:56,220 --> 00:34:01,410 Putin If I don't pretend to understand his objectives, but just from what I've read and seen, 371 00:34:01,770 --> 00:34:05,760 it appear to have limited political objectives in the Ukraine. 372 00:34:06,120 --> 00:34:13,640 They use subversion, military force, cyber, all kinds of different elements of national power to get what he wanted. 373 00:34:14,400 --> 00:34:19,049 Hasn't been able to negotiate an end to that. Maybe he doesn't want to get it. 374 00:34:19,050 --> 00:34:22,350 Depends on who you ask. Enormous. 375 00:34:22,350 --> 00:34:26,160 Again, there's an enormous body of women war literature written by Indian authors. 376 00:34:26,760 --> 00:34:31,229 And some people look at this. I look at the South China Sea and think about that. 377 00:34:31,230 --> 00:34:35,970 You think about Korea, you think about, well, is just more likely, you know, the kind of war to get. 378 00:34:36,180 --> 00:34:39,480 You know, again, I'll leave that question to you. And I conclude with this. 379 00:34:40,170 --> 00:34:44,309 The first the Supreme, the most far reaching active judgement that the statesman and commander, 380 00:34:44,310 --> 00:34:51,510 the political leader and military leaders and it's important to bring that out have to make is to establish the kind of world in which they 381 00:34:51,510 --> 00:34:57,570 are embarking and mistaking a port or trying to turn to something that's alien to its nature is the first of all strategic questions. 382 00:34:58,050 --> 00:35:03,920 And so when I started looking at the. Limited war did that we we don't know how to think about what we're doing. 383 00:35:03,930 --> 00:35:06,870 We don't even know how to define it. We can't even agree on what we're doing. 384 00:35:07,320 --> 00:35:11,459 And then we can't agree on the various things that we're doing in this thing that we can't agree upon. 385 00:35:11,460 --> 00:35:15,420 So if you can't even define it, you can't understand it or explain it clearly. 386 00:35:15,420 --> 00:35:20,960 How are you going to get to the end of it? How are you going to solve the problem to figure it out? 387 00:35:21,900 --> 00:35:24,930 Thank you very much. And I'll take any questions that you might have.