HUMAN IN WAR
‘War is a trial of moral and physical forces by means of the latter. In the last analysis it is at moral, not physical strength that all military action is directed. Moral factors, then, are the ultimate determinants in war.’ -Carl von Clausewitz[1]
1. The Russo-Ukraine conflict, Nagorno-Karabakh imbroglio and the mad hatter race amongst armies to embrace and be paragons of disruptive technology in the recent past forced the autodidact in me to go back to my inspirational fount and the vade mecum he authored to try and make sense of this tech driven conflict. The answers are all there, the nature of war remains unchanged while the character may evolve and tech for that matter is undoubtedly the biggest stimulant to evolution of character of war. But finally war is a clash of human will and the moral factor is key to victory. This thought also got triggered as it is that time of the year when all and sundry have their calculators and books out to come up with favorable ratios and data is so tortured that it finally starts to say what you want it to say. En is always vanquished and own forces are victorious, if it is not the combat ratios that tilt the balance then it would be the intangibles of jus ad bellum and human will, which would favour own forces to achieve the desired metrics of victory. To put the whole argument in the correct perspective, in my view it is key to factor the intangibles in war and history has proven it time and again that finally it is not the size of the dog in the fight but the size of fight in the dog that matters.
2. War of course involves a contest of physical force. It is a blood sport. Clausewitz, however, emphasizes the definitive importance of “moral factors,” or what we think of as morale. He makes the blunt claim that once you have destroyed your enemy’s spirit, his will to fight; you have won the war. He notes that the armies that prevail most often are those that have the full-hearted support of their citizens back home, the cause is just and the will to fight is unfettered from societal encumbrances. When that encouragement is lacking, self-doubt sets in and motivation is undermined, that may lead to cataclysmic results; something we see in Ukraine now.
3. In a recent ideation with troops and leaders, I insisted that we must understand the 80% of being a military leader is understanding people and the why of a job. The other 20% is technical, tactical, or procedural knowledge which translates to when, with what and where of a military action. That 20% can be taught, often quickly and easily. It doesn’t take a genius to plot artillery coordinates, place explosives to crater a road, bore sight the main gun on a tank, pilot a helicopter, or maneuver a mechanised infantry platoon from point A to point B. Pareto’s principle of 80–20[1] is back to haunt us, we spend 80% of the time figuring out the 20% and vice versa. What takes more thought and is proportionately more difficult; is figuring out why we do what we must and why would that impact the enemy. Phrases like ‘evict the enemy’ or ‘restore an adverse situation’ are used with gay abandon but the why and how of it is another kettle of fish. How would an artillery barrage affect the enemy soldiers’ morale in blocking position or hastily prepared defense or occupation of a position in enemy’s depth areas would influence his mind is the key. We too often get tied down in knots in the technical aspect of our roles, trying to drill and train our troops to perform tasks to the letter. During after action reviews, most comments on “what went wrong” are focused on how to prevent that action from happening in the future, not “what was the reaction that ultimately overcame the adversity.” The whole idea that it would be finally the will of that one gunner in a tank and his driver and commander would decide the fate of the battle and in turn may be the war is something we don’t factor in. War is not a set piece. Our doctrine and tactics are there to be a base of knowledge and the datum line which is the reference point for any action you take or don’t take, the one who wins the fight will be the person who can break out of the expected and do the unexpected. Doctrine provides the science of war; understanding the human aspect is the art of it.
4. Recent wars, much of what the public sees of war fighting now is heavily technology-based: helmet mounted camera feed of attack helicopter and aircraft footage, drone strikes, UAV streams and satellite imagery. This does two things. One, it removes the human aspect from war, making it seem as though technology is key to victory. Technology is a crutch, upon which we rest too much of our hope for future victories. And it makes the public believe that if we don’t have the most up-to-date technology, we are at a disadvantage. As we move towards an era of unmanned systems, we remove our edge of being able to leverage the human aspect of war. All the drone footage in the world does us no good if the commander does not understand what she or he is looking at. We have also become overly dependent on technology and expect that technical superiority translates into victory on the battlefield. If this was the case, operations in OP Enduring Freedom wouldn’t have lasted for 21 years and ended differently. Many point to Ukrainian resistance as a vindication of superior technology on the battlefield with LAWS, drones and javelin missiles. While holding the technological advantage helped, it was the inferior training and lack of motivation of Russian contract and conscripted troops that proved most ineffective. Secondly, it translates war into a numbers game. Perhaps, military thinkers too start believing that if we kill enough of the enemy/terrorists or capture them in large numbers, we will eventually win. As we have learnt in Kashmir and also Kargil with two diametrically opposite examples with the same deduction, kill counts are perhaps the worst way to appraise success or failure. Humans are emotional animals that get attached to ideas, and war brings out a wide range of emotions. Merely killing people has little impact on an idea. War is fought by humans, and humans have little regard for body counts, otherwise as a ‘Race’ we would’ve stopped fighting wars a long time ago.
5. While I have argued so far that human will to fight is key, it transcends soldiers and generals. At some time wars will not end when the soldiers lose the will to fight but the nation state give in or give up. Wars rarely end simply because one military destroys another and this brings into question the famous issue of force centric objectives vis-à-vis space centric or psy-socio objectives. Lost equipment can be resupplied, lost manpower can be regenerated and lost infrastructure can be recreated. Government as a whole or an authoritarian leader determines how and when war shall end, and they may have to decide many times during a conflict whether their country should continue enduring risk and sacrifice or whether it is time to stop fighting. Classic examples are Hitler who wouldn’t just give up and on the other side President Zelinsky who too wouldn’t give in. Reasons are different but the leader and the nation as a whole decide whether there is a will to fight or not and for what reasons.
6. Tangible factors, such as remaining numbers of weapons and troops, are obviously part of the decision calculus, but it is often less-tangible political and economic variables that ultimately determine what might be called national will to fight. National will to fight is the determination of a national government to conduct sustained military and other operations for some objective, even when the expectation of success decreases or the need for significant political, economic and military sacrifices increases Although the range of actors relevant to national will includes citizens, military leaders, media and MEA officials, ultimately, there would be one key player who would sway the balance and in case of our Western Adversary it would be the Military Leadership or the more sinister and ubiquitous Deep State which shall make the decisions about war. RAND has come up with a model which legislates the factors on which the will to fight of a soldier to a nation are predicated on. (Fig-1)
7. Paraphrasing Sun Tzu; know yourself, know your troops, know the enemy, and know the end state. We’re lucky if we get two out of those four right. The successful leader must be able to navigate the entire spectrum of military operations and human behavior. Which is no simple task; to pretend otherwise is to hoodwink ourselves. Which then leads to the question, how do you train leaders to understand war as a human endeavor? Really, you can never be trained to the T in the art of war while the science of it may be easy to come by. Mastering the art of it is a never-ending learning process, which is why there is a profession of arms in the first place. Human actions change, therefore how wars are fought changes. Continuous and unrelenting autodidactism is critical. Mentorship helps build relationships and guide our observations. A thirst for knowledge and for continuous improvement is a must.
8. The Army has a critical gap not in training, but in education and development of knowledge capital. It is derivative of our quest for formulaic answers and processes given in the books or the biblical PINKS. This is the weakness, in my opinion of the Army’s attempt to bridge this gap. It became too technical for the entire force to understand and too formulaic to meet the end state. Training does not fully encompass the broad spectrum of human experience. If we truly expect to maintain our competitive edge in war during a time where technology is evolving faster than our ability to keep up with it, we need to invest in building leaders who can master the human terrain of warfare. Mastering the human terrain will need a petri dish in which the ideas will germinate, grow and progress and that petri dish must have a conducive environment. The eco-system for growth must be unshackled from perceived ignominy of failure, glare of assessment which precipitates to not speaking out what one feels but conforming to the laid down datum line. Different is not welcome but is seen as malignance and must thus either be subjected to vitriolic radiation till subdued or severed and disposed. Our natural tendency to maintain silence and not rock the boat, a flaw which is both personal and organizational, results in bad sometimes catastrophic decisions. History shows that the best and the brightest military leaders often make mistakes because they won’t listen to what they falsely believe is not worth hearing. Shutting out voices that might say otherwise can be risky. Decisions are seldom better with silence, and overcoming that is a key task for the leader of any organization. The adage I believe we must follow is ‘lead in peace as you would in war’. Initiative and boldness would not manifest by flipping a switch and must be encouraged in peace to reap its benefits in war.
[1] Weiss, G. (2021). The New Art of War: The Origins, Theory, and Future of Conflict. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. doi:10.1017/9781108946902
[2] https://betterexplained.com/articles/understanding-the-pareto-principle-the-8020-rule/ accessed on 23 Apr 22
[3] https://www.rand.org/content/dam/rand/pubs/research_briefs/RB10000/RB10040/RAND_RB10040.pdf accessed on 23 Apr 22.
