Without national will, wars are doomed

By: Wes Heinkel

Posted: 3/5/08

Once again, elected officials, commanders and even the American people have forgotten what history taught us about the strategic value of the national will. Prussian general and renowned military theorist Carl Von Clausewitz called attention to these moral factors or factors of the national will more than 170 years ago in his magnum opus, "On War."

In Book III, Chapter 3 he distinctly says, "History provides the strongest proof of the importance of moral factors and their often incredible effect; this is the noblest and most solid nourishment that the mind of a general may draw from a study of the past … the moral elements are among the most important in war."

American prestige, military power, unmatched strength and overall war-fighting capabilities lead our elected officials and citizens to believe war is limited to only those things that can be measured, quantified and computerized by our military. Many things in war do come down to systems analysis and numbers; however, Clausewitz warns us about those who would exclude all moral factors from strategic theory and reduce everything to a few mathematical formulas.

In an open society like America, war requires agreement by the citizenry on the tactics and strategy used. Instead of building a moral consensus and taking action to smooth the divisive friction that exists between the American people and their Army, we can see from history American policy makers and citizens tend to consciously or subconsciously aggravate it. It appears we have not learned our lesson.

Just ask yourself what President George W. Bush's strategy is. If we were to ask the American people what Bush's strategic objective in Iraq is today, it would be likely we would get a myriad of answers. This is a failure of national strategic policy; one that should be, at all costs, constantly avoided. In fact, Clausewitz's first principle of war is the objective or a mission statement that creates solvency between military objectives and political aims.

Prior to any future commitment of military force, our military and the American people must insist the civilian leadership provide tangible political goals to provide cohesiveness in national strategy. If we don't have firm objectives, if we don't know where we are going, it is impossible to determine when we get there.

As Clausewitz said, we should not "take the first step without considering the last." It was a major problem in the Vietnam War and it is tantamount to the current Iraq War. We Americans have aversions to a lot of things - one is violence, the other is war and I'm pretty sure the study of history is coming in at a close third.

There is this pedantic theory going around held by those who have aversions to the aforementioned, which says you can support the troops but not necessarily the objectives, the aims or the strategy.

I will tell you right now this is a fallacy of epic proportions and an obvious cop-out the American people and Congress must come to terms with. As Gen. Westmoreland observed during the Vietnam War as it became a partisan political issue, "It was difficult to differentiate between pursuit of a military task and such related matters as public and congressional support and the morale of the fighting man, who must be convinced that he is risking death for a worthy cause."

By not supporting the political and military objectives, we put our soldiers at a strategic disadvantage all because we can't use that grey matter between our two ears and make the neurons connect.

This is our problem. Americans are either too selfish or too dimwitted to understand the strategic value of mobilizing his or her own national will to obtain the strategic goals of the greatest country the world has ever known.

Clausewitz defines the relationship between the government, the people and the military as complex and ever changing, but he maintains that a balance among the three, what he calls the "trinity of war," is fundamentally important. This is interesting for one reason: It appears the men and women in our armed forces are the only ones in the "trinity" doing their job. You be the judge.