At a recent conference on ‘Maneuver in Complex Terrain’ held in Israel, one of the intriguing concepts grappled with was that of victory and how to define it. Stemming from an analysis of both the Lebanon War of 2006 and last year’s Gaza operations, the question of finality was raised. For Israel, the question of ‘once and for all’ seems to be an improbability, if not an impossibility. Therefore, concepts short of victory deserve attention. One such attempt is that of ‘sufficient victory’, defined by Yaakov Amidror as
…victory that does not produce many years of tranquility, but rather achieves only a ‘repressed quiet,’ requiring the investment of continuous effort to preserve it. The terror is not destroyed but it is contained at a minimal level, with constant efforts to prevent its eruption…Temporary victory and sufficient victory do not provide a solution to the ideological conflict that forms the basis of the armed struggle and terror. (cited on page 18)
There is a lot of unpack in that statement.
First, there is a tacit recognition that there is some form of basis for the armed struggle and an implicit one that successful military operations are not enough to get at them. Furthermore, it is implicit that only if that ideological basis is somehow resolved is full or true victory possible. That certainly sets the bar very high indeed. In this sense, it would seem that only an ‘unconditional surrender’ of the Second World War variety would be ‘good enough’ to obtain full victory. To what extent have we taken on board that there is some kind (no matter how silly we may find it) basis for the struggle we are in and to what extent are we willing to address it? This will become a crucial point in the coming months as the West begins to ‘talk’ with the Taliban.
Second, there is a somewhat seductive quality to the idea of ‘good enough’ victory. I mean, we have ‘good enough’ security governing most of our IT encryption, operating on the basis of the law of diminishing returns. Why not have a ‘good enough’ solution to the complex problems of the War on Terror, or even the theatres of Iraq and Afghanistan? Achieve something acceptable, and move on. Don’t sweat the 100% solution when the 80% or the 60% will do.
It makes sense, and in the War on Terror, I suppose that is what we have done in the West and probably represents the best achievable solution. But can we apply that in Iraq and Afghanistan? The full citation above would lead me to wonder. Amidror’s assertion (correct in my view) that even to achieve ‘good enough victory’ takes a long-term, consistent investment mitigates against our ability to reach even that watered down objective. For Isreal, long-term consistency is somewhat more ‘easy’ to achieve, because the problem is also in their front and back yard. For the West, the ‘good enough’ solution to Afghanistan, for example, involves handing over the locals, and leaving, with some semblance of rhetorical ‘job well done’ statement. It cannot involve ‘sticking around’ because that is what we are doing now and the status quo is not victory. Having to continue ‘sticking around’ is in no one’s definition victorious.
It boils down to the same old calculus: how much are we willing to pay (in money, lives, and opportunity)? For total victory, the sky is the limit. For partial victory? Who knows…as little as possible, probably. And that is just not good enough.
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I would define as much as can be hoped at this point in Afghanistan as:
1. A fairly central government
2. One capable of extending its control throughout most of Afghanistan
3. One that is friendly with the United States even if not a firm ally
4. A nation that can have an end to warfare and a serious effort on reconstruction.
In Iraq I am a bit more hopeful, and my idea of a realistic victory reflect this:
1. A central government that includes the various groups and powers of the nation.
2. A military that considers itself the guardian of Iraq and not the government of it.
3. An effort from parties to reach out beyond their tribal/religious bases.
4. A foreign policy that is friendly with the United States and Iran (because I consider the only reasonable alternative much worse).
If we can get even most of this I would be content to say that we have accomplished about as much as we could be expected to do. Perhaps in 2001 or 2003 we could have done more in that narrow space of time, but we didn’t.
The notion of ‘sufficient victory’ connects with Ulrich Beck’s Risk Society thesis that claims we have become preoccupied with mitigating risks of future threats, as opposed to their current manifestation – risks produced by the complexity and connectivity of a globalised security environment. A risk-based security paradigm focussed on actions in the present to mitigate potential future threats almost by definition cannot achieve ‘absolute victory’. A degree of risk and uncertainty will always remain. Reducing a particular subjective risk to a tolerable level (however defined) given contextual constraints (time, money, geography, military resources etc.) will necessarily be framed as ‘sufficient victory’.
Of course, the determination to achieve ‘absolute victory’ over Saddam’s WMD programmes through 100% verifiable, irreversible disarmament and elimination of WMD weapons, components and precursor materials (95% could not be accepted as ‘sufficient victory’) is part of the story for the Iraq debacle.
Nick,
Are the concepts ‘sufficient victory’ and ‘acceptable risk’ equivalent? An interesting point. Certainly, Tony Blair seems to have listened well to his adviser Lord Giddens, and through him to Beck: the former’s testimony last week was couched in terms of risk. But isn’t there something qualitatively different in the very notion of victory? We don’t declare victory over risk, we manage it, live with it. What compels us to use the word victory, no matter how modified, watered down, qualified? Risk is a function of probabilities; victory is not.
I assert that it has something to do with cost. And Stirrup yesterday in his testimony hit upon it when it he claimed that soldiers died in vain in Basra at the end of the British operations there. This hits hard; it is part of the ‘Ouch’ Tim mentions in his post. You can die for victory: there is some heroic sense of justification attached to the idea. But you can’t die–and you can’t ask someone to die–in the name of management.
This isn’t mere semantics: there is something essential about both the concept of victory and the need to declare it.
A fascinating discussion. But I’m not sure if your point on “management”, Faceless B, is correct. Let me try an example from a different field also concerned with security: Police officers take more risk than normal citizens, they might even be killed on the job (although killing enemies is certainly not part of their job description). Yet what they do is in a way “management,” risk-control, keeping violence and crime in check without believing for a second that they can eradicate it for good — i.e. declare victory, sufficient or not.
I must disagree, Tom. I grant you that police officers are asked and do die in the name of management. But where I do disagree is on the conceptual equivalency between police and soldiers. The two domains each operate under a different ethos. Problems arise when we mix them: wars on crime are famously wrong-headed, and rarely do ‘police actions’ succeed when conducted by the military. To me, this is what makes COIN (and peacekeeping) so difficult to do correctly: it is neither fish nor fowl. The recent issue of Armed Forces and Society has an article on the militarisation of policing and vice versa (http://afs.sagepub.com/cgi/content/abstract/36/2/327).
Thank you for the reference. Your thought about the different ethos is interesting. Yet I was more after theoretical and conceptual similarities than differences in “role evolution,” as the article has it. Can a state’s attempt to reaffirm (or establish) a monopoly of force end in victory? Here and now is not the space to go into detail — I’ll respond with a book.
I’ll buy it!