States have frequently embarked on military campaigns that failed to achieve their objectives as quickly—and cheaply—as expected. For every Spanish-American or Austro-Prussian War that seems in retrospect to be a short, sharp success for the victors, there is a Crimean, Boer, or Afghan War that those of us with the benefit of hindsight know grinds on longer and presents a butcher's bill greater than planners and politicians anticipated. In fact, history suggests that quick, decisive victories are the exception rather than the norm. Yet, states continue to plan and initiate wars with the expectation that they can achieve decisive victories unreasonably swiftly. All too often, disaster results. This pattern indicates a failure mode of strategic decision making. Understanding the mechanism by which this failure mode operates may help states avoid future catastrophe—whether by choosing alternate means to pursue their national goals, or by investing in appropriate preparations for the protracted war they are likely to fight, not just the short, sharp war they want to fight.
War is naturally characterized by uncertainty, and humans are known to exhibit an in-built optimism bias that frequently causes them to overestimate the likelihood of positive outcomes. This bias may have evolutionarily adaptive advantages in many situations.[1] Yet in the dialectic between military planners generating coercive options within available means and national cabinets seeking solutions to intractable diplomatic or geostrategic problems within acceptable costs, optimism bias can lead to tragic and avoidable outcomes. Indeed, the historical record shows that optimism bias contributes to misunderstandings between military planners and the politicians who employ them in ways that increase the likelihood of war being selected as the best option to achieve national imperatives—even in the face of clear evidence to the contrary.
The failure mode functions as follows. In order to avoid protracted conflict, military plans are developed with the objective of achieving a quick and decisive victory at minimum cost. These plans typically assume that the forces assigned can achieve tactical success with available resources and that the opponent will accept the results of the tactical action as decisive. Often these assumptions are undergirded by reference to prior victories as historical analogies. During a subsequent diplomatic crisis, national leaders initiate wars based on these plans, discounting the risk of escalation or protracted conflict and rationalizing the choice through selective misreadings of history or overly optimistic application of historical analogies. This article will explore this failure mode through three historical case studies involving large scale conflict with major powers, and which therefore have resonance in today’s global strategic environment: Imperial Germany’s initiation of World War I, Japan’s decision to attack the United States in World War II, and the United States’ invasion of Iraq in 2003. It will conclude by considering implications for modern major power rivalries, particularly that between the United States and the People’s Republic of China.
1914: The Schlieffen Plan and the Shadow of 1870
“Battle Scene from the Franco-Prussian War” by Wilfrid Constant Beauquesne (Wikimedia)
Imperial Germany’s path into World War I illustrates how optimism bias and appeals to history can lead to optimistic assumptions that skew military planning and warp national decision-making. Germany at the beginning of the 20th century was a rising power surrounded by and competing for space with established empires. Its most recent experience with large-scale warfare had been a stunning victory against France in 1870-1871. This victory became intertwined with Germany’s mythos of national origin and left a strong impression on those who would take the country into war once again in 1914.
War was not seen at that time as something to be avoided per se, but thoughtful military figures such as Helmuth von Moltke the Younger correctly predicted that the next European war would be a long, bloody struggle to national exhaustion due to the network of alliances, the institution of conscription, and technological improvements in artillery.[2] Others believed such a war could not possibly run long because the titanic resource costs would be financially ruinous.[3] These opposed perspectives notwithstanding, German military planners recognized they were at a strategic disadvantage, facing numerically superior opponents on multiple fronts. They rightly concluded that a long war would bode ill for Germany.
Thus the infamous Schlieffen Plan devised by Alfred von Schlieffen as chief of the German general staff strove to avoid extended conflict by aiming to quickly subdue France through a rapid maneuver campaign.[4] From the military perspective, this was an act of desperation—the best of bad options. It was at root an attempt to reenact the spectacular victory of 1870-71 despite very different extant conditions, buoyed by a poorly-founded assumption that even if it failed tactically, economic forces would limit the war’s scope as if by an invisible hand. From the political perspective however, the military implications of the new environment were less clear. The German chancellor, Theobald von Bethmann-Hollweg, expected a war of three to four months, based on the precedent of 1870-71 and the timeline Schlieffen’s plan seemed to offer, which he assumed it could deliver. These mistaken assumptions were never interrogated and enabled optimism bias to influence decision making towards bellicosity as the diplomatic crisis that led to war played out.[5]
1941: Pearl Harbor and the Memory of 1905
Illustration of the Great Naval Battle at the Harbor Entrance to Port Arthur in the Russo-Japanese War (Nichiro Ryojunkô daikaisen no zu)
One might forgive German civilian leadership for failing to recognize and act on the likely result of changes in warfare since 1870-71 following such a long period of relative peace, and perhaps German military planners should have made their risk assumptions more explicit. However, Japan’s path to war with the United States illustrates how the same mechanism enabled by optimism bias can play out even in a society with military leadership integrated into the highest levels of government and significant recent experience of major war.
Japan was a rising imperial power that had fought a series of victorious wars in Asia—mostly against China and Russia—throughout the first half of the 20th century. But it was Japan’s spectacular naval victories over Russia in 1904 and 1905 that captured its national imagination. By 1941, Japan’s fear of American hegemonic designs, its inability—or unwillingness—to disentangle itself from its imperial adventure in China, and its national pride brought it to the brink of war with the United States. Neither side wanted war, but Japan couldn’t seem to find a way to avoid it. Once again, recognition that a protracted conflict would be ruinous for Japan failed to spark a renewed emphasis on diplomacy, instead driving Japan’s cabinet to accept a high-risk offensive plan in the vain hope of high-payoff success.
Admiral Isoroku Yamamoto planned the attack on Pearl Harbor as an attempt to force the United States to accept Japanese hegemony in the western Pacific as a fait accompli. He also predicted that it wouldn’t work, anticipating that even if the attack were successful, the U.S. would refuse to accept a tactical defeat as decisive and continue fighting.[6] He knew the U.S. was a very different opponent than Russia, and personally opposed the war because he considered Japan’s chances for victory slim. However, he considered it his duty to keep his reservations to himself and focus his efforts on maximizing those chances. His plan for the Pearl Harbor attack and subsequent operations was explicitly designed to recreate—against all odds—the successes of Japan’s naval victories over Russia in 1904-1905.[7]
Within the cabinet, bureaucratic politics, inter-service rivalry and unique characteristics of Japanese culture and language clouded the cabinet debate throughout 1941 and increasingly made war seem unavoidable.[8] The integration of senior military officers into the highest levels of government did not prevent optimism bias from influencing the decision-making process. Japanese leaders had been closely watching German successes in France in 1940 and against the USSR in 1941. Despite clear evidence that war with the U.S. would be ruinous for Japan, lurking always in the backs of their minds was their own unlikely success against Russia in 1905. They had done it once; perhaps they could do it again?[9] Yamamoto’s bold plan made it easier to take what seemed their only chance of success, or as wartime prime minister General Hideki Tojo put it, “to close one’s eyes, and jump.”[10]
2003: Shock and Awe after the End of History
Both Germany in 1914 and Japan in 1941 felt forced into war by circumstances, grasping at overly optimistic war plans to stave off what they considered the unacceptable consequences of other options. In both cases their attempts to recreate historical successes failed. Germany’s 1914 offensive stalled before it could achieve a meaningful tactical result. Japan’s initial attacks in 1941 were more successful, but the U.S refused to accept the fait accompli. When the U.S. invaded Iraq in 2003 for the second time in twenty years, it didn’t do so out of desperation. Yet the same optimism bias was at work. This time, instead of offering a false hope of escape from disaster, it resulted in an overconfident assumption that the U.S. could control outcomes through military force. Instead of attempting to recreate past victories, American decision makers convinced themselves that history was no longer relevant, thanks to a transformative approach to warfare developed by a cadre of pentagon military theorists—what was called at the time the Revolution in Military Affairs or RMA.
Saddam Hussein had been a thorn in America’s side since the first Gulf War. In the aftermath of the 9/11 attacks, a mix of neoconservative ideology, reputational anxiety and a sense of unfinished business combined to create a strong consensus within the George W. Bush administration that Hussein had to go.[11] Donald Rumsfeld, Bush’s Secretary of Defense, was enamoured with the RMA, which relied on lighter, leaner forces employing precision weapons to achieve decisive effects through speed and maneuver. Rumsfeld saw the unconventional and unexpectedly quick victory over the Taliban in Afghanistan in 2001 as evidence that this approach represented a whole new paradigm for American military power.[12] Rumsfeld’s new paradigm promised a quick victory, and optimistic neoconservative theories about the flourishing of democracy suggested a newly liberated Iraqi society would take care of itself. Concerns about what would come after Hussein’s regime was toppled were waved away. Administration officials ignored historical lessons about the critical importance of post-war stability and reconstruction.[13]
M1A1 Abrams pose for a photo under the "Hands of Victory" in Ceremony Square, Baghdad, Iraq (TSgt John L. Houghton, Jr./U.S. Air Force Photo/Wikimedia)
In the event, while the RMA’s cocktail of tactics and technologies proved effective at quickly destroying the Iraqi Army, the neoconservative theories failed to deliver the expected results. While the major combat phase of the war was short and sharp, leading to the removal of Saddam Hussein from power and the liquidation of the organs of the Iraqi state, this tactical result was effectively rejected by the Iraqi people. The Bush administration soon found itself mired in Iraqi sectarian conflict. Even the apparently easy victory in Afghanistan was short-lived, resulting in twenty years of counter-insurgency and nation-building that ended in humiliating failure in the summer of 2021, when a resurgent Taliban regained control of Afghanistan mere weeks after the U.S. finally withdrew its remaining combat forces.
In Conclusion: Takeaways for the U.S. and China
Wars are launched for many reasons. States are subject to innumerable structural forces and many have wars thrust upon them by the aggression of others. This article is not arguing that the pattern of optimism bias and abuse of history is the sole cause of conflict. Yet this failure mode has clearly contributed to disastrous decision-making by states in the past. This suggests that states considering war as a mechanism to achieve national goals should assume that their opponents will fight to the end of their strength and weigh the risks accordingly.
In 2014, international headlines were briefly splashed with reports that the People’s Republic of China (PRC) may have been planning a “short, sharp war” against Japan over the Ryukyu islands, an East China Sea flashpoint between the two countries.[14] It could have simply been a feint to test the resolve of the United States, which has a mutual-defense treaty with Japan and would be obliged under its terms to come to Japan’s aid.[15] However, the U.S. and the PRC have plenty of potential flashpoints of their own—perhaps the most concerning being Taiwan. While the U.S. has no treaty obligation to defend Taiwan from attack, U.S. domestic law requires the Department of Defense to maintain the capability to do so, thus the possibility of a U.S. military response is a factor the PRC must consider.
Should the PRC attempt to achieve reunification with Taiwan through a cross-strait invasion, one tempting strategy would be to plan to complete the conquest suddenly and decisively before the U.S. could react, thereby presenting the world with a fait accompli. U.S. military planners working on the other side of this equation may feel compelled to develop plans to prevent such a fait accompli by achieving a decisive victory on an even shorter timetable.[16]
The history of planning for quick victories therefore contains warnings for both sides, and indeed for any state considering military options for quick solutions to intractable problems. Military planners under pressure to achieve objectives quickly may develop unrealistic plans. Political decision-makers may not fully grasp the risks masked by assumptions inherent in those plans. A sense of inevitability, desperation, or constrained choices can drive planners and politicians towards what may seem the best of bad options. Conversely, overestimation of the impact of new tactics and technologies may result in overconfidence. Both planners and politicians may be susceptible to optimism bias, but they should remember that war is inherently unpredictable and the enemy gets a vote.
In a world of renewed great power competition and open interstate conflict, states should resist the optimism bias that incentivizes them to plan for short, sharp wars, discounting the true costs and risks of conflict. They should resist the temptation to apply simplistic historical analogies or discount history completely when considering military options. Planning for a short, sharp war without preparing for the possibility of a protracted, attritional one usually indicates either desperation or overconfidence. In either case, it is a loser’s gambit.
Ryan T. Easterday is an officer in the U.S. Navy and is currently a visiting research fellow with the Changing Character of War Centre at the University of Oxford. The views expressed are the author’s alone and do not reflect those of the U.S. Navy, the Department of Defense, or the U.S. Government.
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Header Image: Destroyed Building, Mosul, Iraq, 2020 (Levi Meir Clancy).
Notes:
[1] Tali Sharot, “The Optimism Bias,” Current Biology 21, no. 23 (December 6, 2011): R941–45, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cub.2011.10.030.
[2] Hew Strachan, The First World War: Volume I: To Arms (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003), 1005-1008.
[3] Stuart Hallifax, “‘Over by Christmas’: British Popular Opinion and the Short War in 1914,” First World War Studies 1, no. 2 (October 1, 2010), 109, https://doi.org/10.1080/19475020.2010.517429.
[4] Strachan, 1008-1009.
[5] Ibid., 1013.
[6] Eri Hotta, Japan 1941: Countdown to Infamy (New York: Vintage Books, 2014), 191-192.
[7] Tsunoda Jun and Kazutomi Uchida. “The Pearl Harbor Attack: Admiral Yamamoto’s Fundamental Concept with reference to Paul S. Dull’s A Battle History of the Imperial Japanese Navy (1941-1945), by Paul S. Dull.” Naval War College Review 31, no. 1 (1978), 85.
[8] Hotta, 14-16.
[9] Ibid., 167.
[10] Ibid., 10.
[11] Ahsan I. Butt, “Why Did the United States Invade Iraq in 2003?,” Security Studies 28, no. 2 (March 15, 2019), 250-285, https://doi.org/10.1080/09636412.2019.1551567. Martin A. Smith, “US Bureaucratic Politics and the Decision to Invade Iraq,” Contemporary Politics 14, no. 1 (March 1, 2008), 99–101, https://doi.org/10.1080/13569770801913314.
[12] Fred M. Kaplan, Daydream Believers: How a Few Grand Ideas Wrecked American Power (Hoboken, N.J.: John Wiley & Sons, 2008), 39.
[13] Ibid., 41-50.
[14] Julian Ryall, “China ‘Plans War for Japanese Isles,’” The Daily Telegraph, February 22, 2014. https://www.gale.com/intl/c/the-telegraph-historical-archive (accessed Dec 18, 2022).
[15] Congressional Research Service, “The Senkakus (Diaoyu/Diaoyutai) Dispute: U.S. Treaty Obligations,” March 1, 2021, https://crsreports.congress.gov/product/pdf/R/R42761/23.
[16] Hal Brands, “Getting Ready for a Long War with China” (Washington, D.C.: American Enterprise Institute, July 25, 2022), 4-5. https://www.aei.org/research-products/report/getting-ready-for-a-long-war-with-china-dynamics-of-protracted-conflict-in-the-western-pacific/.