Conflict & war, explained.
A demonstration against Russia's war of aggression against Ukraine in Nuremberg, Germany (Markus Spiske/Unsplash)
Most wars end badly – and commanders who ignore history’s warnings risk repeating its worst mistakes.
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Pyrrhus, Petraeus, Putin, and the perils of ending a warPyrrhus, Petraeus, Putin, and the perils of ending a war
US General David Petraeus is celebrated simply for seeking a bit of clarity. Confronted with heavy losses, stalemate, vain ambitions and delusory objectives during the Iraq war, he wondered (Opens in new window): “tell me how this ends”. Well might any commander in Ukraine or the Gulf echo Petraeus’ question.
The Platonic form of a war ending well is often taken to be Japanese surrender on USS Missouri in 1945, with aggressive imperialism punished by unconditional defeat, Imperial vestiges in formal dress surrounded by under-dressed but ebullient Americans. A more humanely instructive precedent might be found at the Appomattox courthouse at the end of the US Civil War. A final, cataclysmic battle had been avoided and both armies would live to see Easter. The victorious Union general agreed with a directive to let his enemy “up easy” by allowing them to keep their horses for the next harvest.
Acknowledging not just that nothing else had worked but that no alternatives could work would be chastening for any leader – so too would selling a victory in the face of evident defeat.
Almost every ending to every war is messier, crueller and grubbier. Generals would do well to bear in mind a few cautionary tales about how this ends.
General Pyrrhus had actually won (Opens in new window) two big battles against the Romans, at Heraclea and Asculum, before realising that he could not beat the odds. A Pyrrhic victory can drain finances, personnel and morale, as happened with Britain in 1945 or with France’s ancien regime after its financially exhausting assistance to the Americans in their War of Independence.
Near its close, The Odyssey reminds warriors that “war is the leveller of all things”. Bad luck, stray bullets, faulty intelligence, new weaponry, surprise, weather and a thousand and one other factors can level the battlefield. Monty Python’s Black Knight (Opens in new window) confirms the dangers in concluding a conflict before an enemy really concedes defeat. Otherwise a vanquished foe might confect legends about a “stab in the back” (like Germany after 1918) or a heroic “lost cause” (the Confederacy post-1865).
After decades of war, during which the Athenian fleet was vital in battles, in controlling an empire and in ensuring food supplies, Athens’ generals pulled their ships up on a beach, enabling the Spartans to destroy all save nine of them. That act of reckless foolishness (Opens in new window) (405 BCE) lost the Peloponnesian war in an afternoon, just as the British navy almost did at the battle of Jutland (1916) or the Confederate army did in its final assault on Gettysburg’s Cemetery Ridge (1863).
Bad luck, stray bullets, faulty intelligence, new weaponry, surprise, weather and a thousand and one other factors can level the battlefield (Myko Makh/Unsplash)
A war which began (in 1739) with parliamentary inspection of an amputated organ (a severed ear belonging to a Captain Robert Jenkins (Opens in new window)) swelled and morphed into a Europe-wide conflict, the War of the Austrian Succession. Nobody would have imagined that a fracas with a few Spanish coastguards could have escalated so drastically. Probably too, few among the nations engaged would have imagined that such a major affray would end with nobody materially gaining territory or treasure.
Britain and France’s Suez fiasco of 1956 is often cited as an illustration of the need to ensure that the instigators’ interests align with those of their allies – in this case, Israel joined the plot, but crucially the United States did not. A better example might be the northeast American–Indian tribes during the 18th century. Then nations of intrepid warriors, many fighting with grotesque ferocity, allied themselves with one side or the other, British or American. They did not fully absorb the fact that – sooner or later – both those adversaries would want to appropriate all their lands.
The Peace of Westphalia (Opens in new window) (1648) is regularly cited as a model of statecraft, with the 30 blood-soaked years of calamitous war preceding that Treaty relegated to back-stage. As a more graphic example, the Treaty of Versailles (1919) resolved few of the geopolitical conundrums which had helped provoke the First World War, while creating borders, reparations schedules, grudges, grievances and infant regimes which contributed to the onset of the Second World War.
An obscure American Senator, George Aiken (Opens in new window), clings to fame on the basis of his 1966 prescription for ending the Vietnam war. Declare victory and go home was the gist of his advice. Even at the time Aiken conceded that “it may be a far-fetched proposal but nothing else has worked”. Acknowledging not just that nothing else had worked but that no alternatives could work would be chastening for any leader, certainly one as proud and anxious as Lyndon Johnson about Vietnam. So too would selling a victory in the face of evident defeat.
That said, there is a strand of practical, homespun wisdom in Aiken’s advice. During the interventions in Iraq and Afghanistan, Aiken’s advice must have seemed tempting. One happy, if unlikely, day Putin might consult Aiken about Ukraine.
About the author
Mark Pierce
Mark Pierce was a diplomat and is now a writer who has spent years living in France and Germany.
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