Might, Will, Sacrifice

What does it take to win a war? A young Canadian soldier thinks out loud.

Might:

Ever since the ancient Greeks invented the decisive battle, westerners have held an important edge in warfare. Some historians have hypothesized that the Greeks invented the decisive battle simply out of necessity. Farming was a full time occupation in the Greek city-states, and there simply wasn’t extra time to spend mucking about with protracted warfare.

When differences arose, the Greeks found it simplest to line up in heavy armor with long spears and meet face to face. The battles would be gruesome, but short-lived, and there was never any doubt who the victor was. While easterners like the Persians of the era still fought a modified version of ‘hit and run’ stone age warfare, the Greeks had hit upon something new, brutal, and effective. Subsequently, the Greeks, Romans, and most westerners that followed employed the fearful decisive battle to great effect.

On many notable occasions, easterners found asymmetrical counters to the “western way of war”. The Parthians and Huns gave the mighty Romans quite a bit more than a headache with their mounted warriors. The powerful Muslim hordes used a mix of western warfare, eastern warfare, and a unique religious zeal to conquer their western enemies. Perhaps most famously of all, the mounted Mongol hordes swept aside all resistance, east and west, and carved out the largest empire in human history.

Still, the western way of war has proven ultimately to be dominant. Today, when it is coupled with western technical know-how and Roman devised, Napoleonic era perfected military structure, it is nearly unstoppable. While this once unique way of warfare has been exported to every corner of the modern world, newcomers have not the experience to wield it properly, and still hold a severe disadvantage even though they may brandish the same modern weapons and use the same tactics.

Yet, while the disciplined western soldiers and advanced western weaponry are without equal, the enemy may still hold cards in his favor.

Will:

A society’s will to wage war used to be measured primarily by how long they were prepared to fight, and die, on the battlefield. While the Greeks invention of the decisive battle may have been an attempt to avoid protracted war, their spiritual descendents, the Romans, certainly didn’t shy away from extended warfare. Indeed, the one winning characteristic of the Romans that carried them through impossible odds, and forged one of histories greatest empires, was their reluctance to quit.

This supreme Roman persistence was best characterized by their war with the brilliant Carthaginian general, Hannibal. Repeatedly Hannibal’s tactics decimated Roman armies on the battlefield. Yet when he failed to press his advantage strategically and conquer Rome itself, the Romans would raise a new army and march off to war once again. In the end, the Romans lost nearly every battle against Hannibal, save one. Their great victory was the one that counted, and the one that won the war.

Besides a basic societal will to carry on with a war, there is also another aspect of will, which was very much a mute point until the ‘enlightenment’ of modern societies. The will to inflict pain and death upon one's enemies is a very important feature of post-modern warfare. While our current western society is much opposed to warfare in general, there were no such qualms in ancient Rome.

The ‘barbarians’ that Rome faced in war were quite aptly named. The horrendous nature of Iron Age battles gave pause to none of the barbarians of the time. Indeed, it was often amplified after the fact as those unlucky enough to be captured were tortured before being slaughtered. In turn the Romans offered no quarter. To be sure, the Romans were famous for their ‘barbaric’ acts of slaughter. When they finally brought Hannibal’s Carthaginian Empire to its knees, and conquered its capital Carthage, they razed every single building, slaughtered or enslaved every single citizen, and plowed the soil where the city once stood with salt, to assure that no crops could be grown there in the future.

Today, we find much of western society almost unwilling to go to war at all. Massive casualties, on either side, are very much considered unacceptable. War-like activities are given creative new terms like “peace-making” and “police-action” to hide their true nature. This absolute aversion to warfare and the suffering of ones enemies is certainly a novel and very modern concept. Hardly more than 60 years ago, our society was willing to rain down explosives, firebombs, and nuclear weapons on non-combatant enemies, killing hundreds of thousands. Today, the deaths of a handful of non-combatants in combat can inspire the citizenery to topple whole governments.

While this enlightened, post-modern aversion to warfare may seem a noble and principled idea, it is unlikely to stand for long against the tide of modern day barbarians that have no such qualms.

Sacrifice:

In the past, our ancestors had few possessions to speak of. Life had few pleasures, and many necessities. Life was about survival. Likewise, warfare was often a simple matter of survival, or at least the preservation of ones freedom.

Early in Rome’s history, when the Etruscan era Romans faced off against Carthage, the army was made up of Roman citizens; the richest and most prosperous Romans. These men quite literally fought for their freedom, their way of life, and their empire. Likewise, the barbarian armies of western Europe that Rome fought were composed of every single tribe member, the men fighting up front with spears and the women cheering them on just behind the frontlines. In the truest sense, warfare was an ‘all for one and one for all’ effort.

All of this changed when the Romans invented the professional army. No longer would citizens fight for their rights, rather paid professionals did their dirty work. While this made for exceptionally efficient soldiers, those sitting in opulence in Rome forgot the meaning of sacrifice. Ultimately the ‘true Romans’ living in luxury would be forced to try to bribe and appease their ‘crude’ enemies, to no avail.

A very similar situation has arisen in the modern west. While the western soldier is a fierce and efficient combatant, only a tiny fraction of our society faces the hardship of soldiering and the spilling of blood in battle. What’s more, the soldiers fellow citizens often aren’t even willing to sacrifice the petty niceties of home in order to better equip the fighting men.

It remains to be seen whether the opulent west is willing to sacrifice what is necessary in order to combat societies where luxuries are few and life is cheap.

So where does the tally of might, will, and sacrifice leave us? To be sure, might is most visible, and leans heavily in the west’s favor, even though eastern asymmetrical warfare has dealt deadly blows in the past. A mere 60 years ago western societies had the will to see through the bloodiest conflict in history, whether or not they could do it again today is uncertain. Most worrying of all is the modern day West’s threshold for sacrifice. Can a society willing to give up so little overcome another that is destined to be much more numerous, and willing to give up so much more? Only time will tell.