The North Coast times-eagle., October 01, 2003, Page 13, Image 13

PAGE 13
NORTH COAST TIMES E A G L E , OCTEMBER 2003
THE WHITE FLAG PRINCIPLE
HOW TO LOSE A WAR & WHY
BY SHIMON TZABAR
*.. traditionally war was the only way in which one
nation, in need of money, could obtain it from another. There
is no more profitable and sound a step for a nation without
money or credit to take, than declare war . . .and suffer a total
defeat. We declare war on Monday, are vanquished on Tuesday,
and rehabilitated beyond our wildest dreams by Friday night."
~LEONARD WIBBERLEY
(‘The Mouse That Roared')
War was, and still is, the most important event in
the history of mankind. It is the womb that bears fortunes and
misfortunes, hopes and disappointments, life and death. It
creates and destroys tribes, nations, kingdoms and empires.
“War is the father of all things,” says Heraclitus.
It is not surprising that the human mind is so obsessed
by war. Reflections of this obsession find their way into every
human activity — into philosophy, into the arts, into science,
into social structures and political organizations. The concept
of war dominates the human mind to such an extent that, as
L.C. Lewin wrote in Report From Iron Mountain, “The dualism
that characterized the traditional dialectic of all branches of
philosophy and of stable relationships stems from war as the
prototype of conflict. Except for secondary considerations, there
cannot be, to put it as simply as possible, more than two sides
to a question, because there cannot be more than two sides to
a war." The best brains have tried to understand war; to study it,
analyze and inspect it in order to discover the rules by which it
operates. However, war has been studied not just for the sake
of knowledge, but for the sake of winning a victory. The study
of war has been for the most part the search for the key to
victory. Nothing else has been held important or even signifi­
cant. The blood, the fire, the pain and the misery have not just
been ignored; they have been justified and glorified because
if manipulated properly they have led to victory. “Victory at
all costs," said Churchill: “Victory in spite of all terror, victory
however long and hard the road may be; for without victory
there is no survival."
What Churchill said to one people about one particular
war has been true for all wars and all combatants. Victory was
the ultimate goal, shared historically and psychologically by all
members of the human species. “Military glory! It was a dream
that century after century had seized on men’s imaginations and
set their blood on fire," wrote Cecil Woodham Smith. “Trumpets,
plumes, charges, the pomp of war, the excitement of combat,
the exultation of victory — the mixture was intoxicating indeed
To command great armies, to perform deeds of valor, to ride
victorious through flower-strewn streets, to be heroic, magnifi-
cent, famous — such were the visions that danced before men’s
eyes as they turned eagerly to war.”
The desire to be victorious was so elementary and
obvious, that when Clauswitz wrote a classic on the subject
he called it On War. A more accurate title would be On Victory.
He assumed automatically that the two were coterminous,
indeed identical.
Are they really identical?
War can be described as a one-dimensional process
in time. It is preceded by a prewar situation and followed by a
postwar situation. There are two possible outcomes of war and
two possible postwar situations. The outcomes are defeat or
victory; the postwar situations are good or bad. It is taken for
granted that a good postwar situation is the result of victory,
the bad the result of defeat. This might be true if the factors
that lead an army to victory were the same as those that create
a better postwar situation. As it is, the factors are not the same
and therefore it does not necessarily follow that victory results
in a good postwar situation; and defeat in a bad one.
Germany and Japan, the most heavily defeated parties
in the last World War, emerged better off and had a much better
postwar situation than Britain and France, the victorious parties.
The same is true of modern China, which had been defeated
continually in the last few hundred years, and of Russia, which
suffered perpetual defeats from the beginning of the 20th
century to 1942, when the invading German army started to
collapse under the weight of its own victories.
The advantages of defeat are many. They can be
cultural, social, economic and even military. When the Second
World War broke out Japan was a socio-economic monster —
a hybrid of a feudal society and a modern economy. If Japan
had won the war, this monster would have grown bigger. In the
end, it would have destroyed its own people. Since the monster
was a result of 1,000 years of continual victories, it could be
destroyed only by defeat. Two atom bombs — one on Hiroshima
and one on Nagasaki — did it. The defeat delivered Japan from
its abnormality. It had a beneficial effect on the economy, on the
life, on the arts, on everything.
Similar things can be said about Germany. Her triumph
during the French financial crisis of November 1986, when the
economy and monetary system of all the Western World was
dependent upon the deutschmark, was but the peak of an
unbroken range of economic miracles. This was only one of the
advantages the Germans derived from their defeat. If Germany
had been victorious, the Germans would have had to carry on
under the Nazi yoke of Hitler and his gang, which would have
been fatal to Germany no less than the rest of the world. If
Germany had won, the economic miracle would have been
impossible If the Germans had won, they would have had to
keep their army in distant foreign countries and pay for the
upkeep of that army with their economic progress. In short, they
would have had to suffer what France and Britain, the victors,
suffered for decades after the war.
And who is more experienced in defeat than the Jewish
people? They have been the world’s professional vanquished for
almost 2,000 years. It is hardly possible to mention a defeat, a
surrender or a debacle which they have not suffered. And yet
they have survived all their victors. Where are the ancient king­
doms that destroyed Israel? Where are the Egyptians and the
Babylonians, where are the Greeks, where are the Romans who
burned down their Temple? They are all dead now, vanished
from the political map. It is the defeated Jews who are here
with enough vigor in their old bones to start afresh from the
beginning.
The view that the best outcome of war can only be the
result of victory has been common. Nevertheless, there have
been a few who suspected it might not be so.
The best known example is that of King Pyrrhus, who
said to his friends when they congratulated him on his victory
over the Romans: “Yes, but if we have another victory, we are
undone.” A similar idea was expressed by Belisarius while
defending and expanding Justinian’s Byzantine empire. When
his soldiers urged him to attack the king of the Saracens, who
was moving along the Euphrates with the aim of pouncing upon
Antioch, he answered. “True victory lies in compelling one’s
opponent to abandon his purpose with the least possible loss to
oneself. If such a result was obtained, there was no real advan­
tage to be gained by winning a battle." Samuel Rogers quotes
the Duke of Wellington as saying after Waterloo: “The next
greatest misfortune to losing a battle is to gain such a victory
as this."
The quotations from King Pyrrhus and the Duke of
Wellington express a surprise that experience does not tally with
what is commonly believed to be true. Belisarius’ answer shows
more than that It shows that this outstanding general realized
that victory is not at all necessary for the achievement of aims.
In our own times, this approach was followed by the
noted exponent of the indirect approach in strategy, Captain
B H. Liddell Hart. He was unique in the military profession
in that he questioned the role of victory on the battlefield.
“The object in war," wrote Liddell Hart, “is a better state
of peace — even if only from your point of view. Hence it is
essential to conduct war with constant regard to the peace you
desire History shows that gaining military victory is not in itself
CONTINUED ON PAGE 14
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