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| -Short Attention Span Theater- |
| Preemptive Strikes and Preventive Wars: A Historian's Perspective |
| 2017-09-02 |
| [Victor Davis Hanson] Preventive wars and preemptive strikes are both risky business. A preventive war is a military, diplomatic, and strategic endeavor, aimed at an enemy whom one expects to grow so strong that delay would cause defeat. A preemptive strike is a military operation or series of operations to preempt an enemy’s ability to attack you. In both cases, a government judges a diplomatic solution impossible. But judgment calls are debatable and preventive wars often stir up controversy. Preemptive strikes run the risk of arousing a sleeping enemy who, now wounded, will fight harder. Yet both preventive wars and preemptive strikes can succeed, under certain limited circumstances. Consider some examples. The Peloponnesian War (431-404 B.C.) is the granddaddy of all preventive wars. The Peloponnesians, led by Sparta, decided to make war on Athens less because of a series of disputes dividing the two blocs than because of the future that they feared, one in which Athens’ growing power would break apart Sparta’s alliance system. The Athenians wanted to decide the two sides’ dispute via arbitration, but the Spartans refused, which cost Sparta the moral high ground. Before Athens and Sparta could fight a proper battle, the war began. Sparta’s ally, Thebes, launched a preemptive strike on the nearby city and Athenian ally, Plataea. Both the preemptive strike and the preventive war succeeded but at no small cost. It took four years of hard fighting and considerable escalation before Plataea surrendered. Sparta emerged victorious against Athens but only after 27 years of intermittent and escalatory warfare. The price of victory was steep, leading to embroilment in war against Persia, a falling-out with Sparta’s former allies, and ultimately, the collapse of the Spartan regime after centuries of stability. Athens lost the Peloponnesian War, but managed to preserve and even strengthen its regime at home; it never successfully restored its overseas power. |
| Posted by:Besoeker |
| #9 wrt 1938: See "wishful thinking" Ditto the Oxford Union debate of 1933. |
| Posted by: Richard Aubrey 2017-09-02 18:27 |
| #8 War is human sacrifice (of others). Had the Western allies stood with the Czechs rather than abandoning them, the Germans would have faced a hard nut to crack in the mountains and a force up to their level. A lot of Czech tanks rolled through France in '40. Karma. How deep do you want to sacrifice? |
| Posted by: Procopius2k 2017-09-02 16:33 |
| #7 The problem with preventative action is that sometimes you get what you thought you wanted. It's difficult to tell what a good path is, especially with respect to the future. |
| Posted by: ed in texas 2017-09-02 15:59 |
| #6 My dear old Dad taught me that one can never tell how deep a puddle was from the top. Then he'd say, "Sometimes you gotta cross the water anyway." |
| Posted by: Skidmark 2017-09-02 14:46 |
| #5 See "HUBRIS" by Alistair Horne for military plans that overreached. |
| Posted by: borgboy 2017-09-02 13:22 |
| #4 War is human sacrifice (of others). |
| Posted by: Anguper Hupomosing9418 2017-09-02 12:40 |
| #3 If you have not, A War Like No Other is Hanson's book concerning the Peloponnesian War(s). Hanson takes a long, complicated subject and makes it readable. I read it after getting about two chapters into The Tides of War, Steven Pressfield, in order to understand Pressfield's work. Recommend both. |
| Posted by: swksvolFF 2017-09-02 12:29 |
| #2 On other hand, humans have a penchant and willingness to engage in human sacrifice (of others) rather than dirtying their own hands in prevention of greater harm. Think of it as chemotherapy for cancer. It's harmful to the body, but to do otherwise faces a certain terminal outcome. |
| Posted by: Procopius2k 2017-09-02 09:47 |
| #1 And the French move to throw the Germans out of the Rhineland in 1936 prevented WW II. Oh. Wait. Point is, you never know what a particular move prevented since, logically, whatever it was didn't have a chance to happen. So you can't tell the difference between having prevented it and it was never going to happen. And, historically, they usually look pretty sordid. No matter what they prevent, which, as I say, didn't happen and nobody knows what it might have been. |
| Posted by: Richard Aubrey 2017-09-02 08:26 |