If you look at the stated aims of the Iraq war and the outcomes (so far) it is obvious that many of the consequences were unintended. A war allegedly to fight terrorism has only emboldened the terrorists. Kenneth J Hagan and Ian J Bickerton’s book Unintended Consequences: the United States at War have taken on a political and historical analysis of the United Sates and their military conflicts (starting with the War of Independence) suggesting that the wars the US have produced unintended consequences that negated any intended consequence. Hagan and Bickerton have the famous dictum of Carl von Clausewitz, “War is merely the continuation of policy by other means” in their sights.
Their thesis is that the unintended consequences of war invalidate Clausewitz as war tends to produce new policy often at odds with the stated policy for prosecuting a war.
Hagan and Bickerton travel through the following conflicts; The War of Independence, the War of 1812, the Mexican war, the Civil War, the Spanish war, World War I, World War II, the Korean war, Vietnam and finish with the two Gulf wars. They examine the politics behind the US deciding to enter into or prosecute the war, how the war developed and the aftermath. It is a lot of history over a very few pages (less than 200 pages) and some accounts seem superficial. Each chapter could easily be book length on its own. Speeches to mobilize the nation are read as a concrete statement of policy rather than the rhetoric and propaganda they actually are. The success of failure of the war is defined by the goals articulated in such speeches. Also, the politics of the US is examined almost in isolation; rarely in conjunction with the politics of the other countries involved in the various wars.
But Hagan and Bickerton are correct in stating that wars have unintended consequences. The strength of the book is how they show that the unintended consequences of one war often lead into subsequent conflicts . However their claim that Clausewitz is invalidated does not hold. Hagan and Bickerton are concerned with the prevailing influence of Clausewitz’s ideas. In resting the thesis of a book on such a claim, Clausewitz is only mentioned in the introduction and the conclusion and not in any depth. There is no detailed analysis of what Clausewitz meant by “war is merely the continuation of policy by other means”. It seems that Clausewitz’s meaning is self evident as is Hagan and Bickerton’s conclusion. Their argument is almost the intellectual equivalent of the Underpants Gnomes business plan.
Which is a shame as an evaluation whether Clausewitz has any meaning for contemporary conflicts (and the arguments are impassioned pro and con) is worthwhile given his continued influence. And by hanging the book on Clausewitz, it is a necessary distraction from what I see as the central point of the book; that too often wars are fought for the wrong reasons, poor insight and the results often divergent from the stated aims of the war.
Unintended Consequences is an interesting read in spite of the flaws and there is substance to Hagan and Bickerton’s claims that when a war is over, its influence still continues quite unintended from the original aims of war. It is a tasty starter for a longer, satisfying discussion about how conflicts reverberate through history.
hmmm, “unintended consequences”… so what happens when governments cease to govern in any substantial productive sense and only react to threshold events that are necessarily defined as ‘unintended’?
that is, the very existence of contingency feeds into the mad and bad world of peanuts like Bush, howard etc who are trying to ‘rid’ the world of such contingency by incorporating it into their governing structure, for neocons as teh terrorists or neoliberals teh market forces.
If that is indeed their thesis, then it is utterly illogical.
It assumes that all wars have unintended consequences that are potent enough to generate policy contradictory to that which motivated war.
Clearly that isn’t true. For example, Britain maintained a policy of balance of power in Europe for two centuries up to the end of WWI.
Necessarily, all wars have some unintended consequences. But a well-chosen war will provoke vicissitudes that are insufficiently potent to derail grand policy.
Only badly chosen and/or badly fought wars have the effects mentioned by the authors.
Which is that I think the authors were getting at (obviously with Iraq). However in their zeal to make this point a war like the Second World War is analyzed from this perspective which is incorrect.
I like that a guy named Bickerton wrote a book about war.
Up next: Capp and Lockhorn’s scholarly study of marital conflicts.
Maybe there is a trend away from ‘rules-free’ ( Sun Tzu style) wars towards more law-and-ordered Clauswickian style wars?
This would seem to be a healthy trend if we can keep the numbers of casualties down.
Bush in SW Asia still has a lot of ground to make up on LBJ in SE Asia for example. War is a manifest failure of politics that should – and does – exact a high political price.
Lesson #1 when planning a war: No battle plan survives contact with the enemy (von Moltke).
Lesson #2: don’t forget Lesson #1.
The alternate to Clauswitz is the idea (first articulated by some ancient Greek dudes, who I can’t find) the war is your last option ie that once your policies can’t be implemented by other means, the only means you have left is war. And as said Greek guy and other notables (eg Caesar) said ‘War is a gamble’.
Shaun, what was their take on the Spanish War?
Was it anything other than “Tada! We’re now a world player and we’ve demonstarted our up-to-date navy by seizing the following remnants of the Spanish empire….”?
In the early 20th century Britain had a treaty with Poland, pledging to go to war to protect Poland if that country’s borders were violated by foreign powers.
1939: Britain goes to war with Germany, invoking that treaty after Germany invaded Poland.
1945: Poland is under occupation by the Soviet army, yet Britain calls off its war with what remained of Germany and couldn’t be arsed going to war with the Soviet Union over Poland.
War, like other means of politics, or other actions by humans, gives rise to unintended consequences. Quelle surprise!
It wasn’t that simple.
At the end of WWII Stanisław Mikołajczyk led the Polish government in exile, recognised by the UK.
Churchill attempted to persuade Mikołajczyk to accept Soviet annexation of the Eastern regions of Poland. Mikołajczyk refused.
Despite his hatred of the Soviets and Communist, in November 1944 Mikołajczyk resigned from the Polish Government in Exile as president of Poland under Soviet auspices.
Thus the Soviets established a friendly regime in Poland under the auspices of the leader of the Polish Government in exile.
In July 1945 both the US and the UK recognised the Mikołajczyk regime.
At this point Attlee and Truman thought that they might need the help of the Red Army to winkle the Japanese out of China. Polish self-determination, sufficiently confused by Mikołajczyk’s defection, served the purposes of grand policy.
Regardless of Mikołajczyk’s positioning, the fact is the man had tens of thousands of foreign troops in his country, making it difficult for him to govern effectively. It made it easy for “the Soviets [to establish] a friendly regime in Poland under the auspices of the leader of the Polish Government in exile” when it suited them to do what they were always going to do, and once they realised just how buggered the Brits and how craven the Americans were.
The US had never made any promises (in the form of treaty commitments) to the Polish Government in Exile, unlike the British.
War is not especially unique in being the object of unintended consequences. In a complex society all individual human action inter persona has unintended social consequences. Social science exists to figure out the disjunction between latent and manifest functions.
In the olden days societies were simpler and political agendas were clearer. Thus you went to war with the guy over the other side of the hill. If you won you killeed or enslaved him and took his land and his women. So there was less scope for unintended consequences, assuming you won.
Of course if you lost then all bets were off.
In more modern times with complex social specialisation and multiple political agendas there is much more opportunity for perverse consequences for both martial and civil actions.
War is especially prone to this perversity owing to its amplification of force and unleashing of non-rational sentiment.
harry, they liken the war against Spain to the Iraq war – regime change bringing democracy etc. There was also an element of expansionism in making sure Hawaii and Cuba were under US control and to limit British influence in area. But you could easily read into it a bit of muscle flexing and wouldn’t be wrong.
“and once they realised just how buggered the Brits and how craven the Americans were.”
# Craven? The Yalta conference had already divvied up Germany into zones of control. Hard to see how the Americans could have forced the Soviets to relinquish control of Poland etc short of dropping atomic bombs on them, hence the idea that the bombs were dropped on Japan as a warning to Stalin. Remember the people who won WW2 were the Soviets.
Yeah, craven:
The Red Army coulda been forced back to Soviet borders by the Americans. Coulda headed off the whole Cold War, forced the Politburo to re-examine how important Stalin was to them – ah well.
And all this was supposed to happen before the testing of the A-bomb?
Andrew E’s, fanciful counterfactual would have ended in military disaster for the US and Britain. The Soviet Army would have rolled the British and the Americans back to the English Channel.
In any case, Truman weighed the value of Poland against the cost of sending US troops into China to defeat the 3,000,000 strong Japanese Army stationed there. Correctly, he decided that the Soviets were the only force capable of coping with that enornmous, entrenched Japanese force.
Of course, the A-bomb changed everything. But by the time the A-bomb became available, the time for going to war against the Soviets had passed.
It is perhaps not coincidental to the decisionmaking in this incident that Stalin knew far more about the Manhattan Project than either Attlee or Truman. Donald Maclean provided much of this valuable intelligence.
No, the textbook case of good decisionmaking based on understanding of the balance of forces and based on excellent intelligence belongs to Stalin.
I think the Red Army were exhausted by the time they got to Berlin, Katz. Clay could certainly have pushed the Soviet garrison out of that city on, say, New Year’s Eve 1945. The rollback didn’t happen but in the past decade or so quite a lot of historical evidence has come to light that punctures the myth of the invincible Soviets. Good decision-making by Stalin was the exception. not the rule.
By New Year’s Eve 1945, the US had the A-bomb. The US could have threatened obliteration of the cities of the Soviet Union. The US could have attempted to wrest all sorts of humiliating concessions out of the Soviet leadership. But they didn’t.
However, by NYE 1945 the geopolitics of postwar Europe were virtually settled.
Moreover, by NYE 1945 the bulk of the US Army in Europe had been demobilised, stood down or redeployed.
In the case of Poland, Stalin only had to make one good decision. He made it.
Good for whom?
For Soviet geopolitical interests, of course.
Presumably anti-Soviet leaders, scholars and others agreed because they never stopped whingeing about it.