One of the first things I observed about war and warfare when I began studying them is that war is probably the most irrational of behaviors of humans. Serious students of war have long agreed that few if any wars have brought greater return to the victor than what the combatants expended in blood and treasure in the war. Such recognition that war is irrational is not a modern idea:
The outcome corresponds less to expectations in war than in any other case whatever. Livy
All sciences have principles and rules. War has none. Maurice de Saxe
There has never been a protracted war from which a country has benefited. Sun Tzu
We must also consider just how bad humans are at waging war. The number of commanders who won every battle they ever fought can be counted on your fingers while the number of commanders who lost every battle easily fills a graveyard. Few generals across history can show a success rate that if translated into an MLB batting average would get them on a Hall of Fame ballot. The master philosopher of war, Clausewitz, expended great energy at the beginning of his magnum opus in identifying the multitude of things that not only could but would go wrong if you chose to go to war. Modern students of the field are not much more encouraging:
War is a wasteful, boring, and muddled affair. Sir A P Wavell
War is always a matter of doing evil in hope that good may come of it. B H Liddell Hart
A contemporary thinker on the subject, Edward Luttwak, wrote an entire book explaining how what is logical in war is usually what would be illogical in any other field of endeavor – “Strategy, The Logic of War and Peace”. A classic example of the apparent topsy-turvy logic of war is the Roman proverb – “If you want peace, prepare for war.”
History is flush with examples of the irrational on the battlefield. Watching the British Light Brigade of cavalry charge a line of Russian cannon while also receiving fire from guns on the Brigade’s flanks prompted the French General Pierre Bosquet to declare, “C’est magnifique, mais c’est ne pas le guerre” – “Magnificent, but it is not war.”
Conflict simulations and wargames and simulations will usually not allow players to carry out “irrational” actions even when historically documented. “Infantry in Battle”, published by the Infantry Journal, presented case studies drawn from the Great War. One in particular captured the irrational nature of war and warfare.
On October 29, 1918, the 2nd Bn/61st U.S. Infantry received an expected order to capture the German held town of Aincreville. The battalion commander knew the town was defended by an arcing line of machine gun posts outside of the town and that a prepared artillery barrage would fall about 200 yards in front of the machine guns roughly two minutes after the defenders fired a green star rocket. The number and condition of the defenders was unknown, but the rumble of supply wagons could be heard along with enemy voices.
The American unit was very tired after almost three weeks of long marches, five days of heavy operations resulting in heavy casualties and little result, several days as reserve while under artillery fire, before receiving replacements and taking up their current position.
There was no covered approach to the German positions and an American artillery barrage would simply alert the German machine gunners and bring down their defensive artillery fire. In the American commander’s estimation, his weary battalion might choose not to advance under fire across the open ground. However, estimating that the Germans were just as tired, he believed that if he could bring his battalion to close quarters an attack could succeed. Upon receipt of the order, he proposed an alternate plan. Depending entirely upon surprise, the actual plan was known only to the battalion commander, to Lieutenant R W Young - charged with carrying out the attack, and to four or five sergeants in Company F.
The attackers jumped off at 2:30 am without artillery, machine gun, or heavy weapons support, the men moving silently in two waves. The sergeants who knew the plan were mixed into the second wave to ensure everyone advanced together. The plan anticipated that the attackers would get within about 30 yards of the German machine gun posts before they were discovered. When fired upon by the one or two of the machine guns they would take cover. Lieutenant Young would then fire a green star rocket from a captured German Very Pistol he had secretly carried. Not seeing the lieutenant fire the rocket, the Americans still recognized the German signal for calling down the defensive barrage. As soon as Lieutenant Young could see that everyone recognized the danger, he yelled, “Beat it for the town! It’s your only chance!” The men ran through the line of still mostly unaware machine guns, across a small shallow stream, and into the town where they were directed into houses and cellars to wait until morning when they would attack the German defenders from the rear. Once the town was secured, they would signal that with another prearranged rocket. The village was captured with only one or two casualties, one of them sadly Lieutenant Young.
If it’s stupid but it works, it isn’t stupid. Sgt Murphy
The biggest challenge for human beings pondering war and warfare is knowing when they actually must go to war as opposed to when they merely ‘want’ to go to war. Given the irrationality of war and warfare, one should clearly go to war only rarely and under the direst circumstances.
A lot of what happens in war and on the battlefield and how you respond to it depends upon how you perceive it. The facts and foibles of human perception one of the most critically important aspects of warfare. I am reminded of the allegory from Socrates, who described a group of people who have lived chained to the wall of a cave all their lives, facing a blank wall. They watch shadows projected on the wall from objects passing in front of a fire behind them and give names to these shadows. These shadows are the prisoners' reality, but they are not accurate representations of the real world.
Modern science offers us numerous explanations about the limits of human perception. Our eyes do a pretty good job of capturing light from objects around us and transforming that into information used by our brains, but our eyes don't actually “see” anything. That part is done by our visual cortex. Our eyes being slightly apart creates an image that needs to be corrected. Scientists describe what our eyes ‘see’ as simply a simulacrum constructed by the brain based upon the signals transmitted to it by the visual receptors at the back of the eye - a mental projection of what the brain interprets based upon the signals reaching it from the eye as the eye perceives light reflected from the world. Researchers have also determined that human memory is subject to error as each time we access a memory our mind alters it.
Researchers of human behavior long ago identified one of humanity’s most deeply rooted reflex instincts – fight or flight. Rooted deep in our mammalian past, this instinct pushes us to quickly identify threats and then act by either fleeing or fighting. Either response frames others as a threat without benefit of a cooler assessment of either capabilities or intentions. Actual human Intentions are one of the most difficult things for humans to judge. The essential point is that humans basically are not very good at conducting wars, turn to warfare far too easily and too often as a solution to problems beyond war’s ability to resolve.
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