dlowan wrote:Does it really? Can you expand on that?
Let's take a look again at what
Asherman said:
Iraq is becoming a "war of attrition". Wars of attrition tend to be long, and dirty. They are winnable, and the odds are almost always with the side with the greatest resources. Irregular wars are often wars of attrition, and there have been many of them. Our Civil War is an example, as was the American Revolution and Vietnam. The keys to winning are: superior resources (population, production, size and quality of the military, wealth, and above all the Will to see the contest to its conclusion. Time is indeed a major factor, because as time increases the political pressure to surrender increases
on both sides. The basic formula is: Victory/Time=(E - C+R)*W:: (A - C+R)*W, where "E" is the enemies total resources, and "A" are the allies total resources. "C" is the losses (often expressed as rate of). "R" is the degree to which losses can be recovered, or made up for. As time increases the "R" generally decreases proportionately. "W" is the least precise element because it is the Will to continue. If one side begins to believe it is defeated, it is. The Will to victory is inverse between contending groups. That is as one side loses faith and hope, the other side's dedication to the struggle increases. The equation is a ratio between the contending groups.
First, on a purely historical level, the claim that "the odds are almost always with the side with the greatest resources" is demonstrably wrong. Were it otherwise, then not only the US should have defeated the North Vietnamese, the French should have as well.
Moreover, on a logical level, the formula makes no sense. First, let's take the statement: "Time is indeed a major factor, because as time increases the political pressure to surrender increases
on both sides." If time has an identical effect on both sides, then time isn't a major factor -- it isn't a factor at all. On the other hand, if time has disparate effects on both sides, then the formula does not take this fact into account.
Second, let's look at the formula: "(E-C+R) where E = enemy's total resources, C is the losses (often expressed as a rate of) and R is the rate that losses can be recovered" (the formula is identical for "allies" as for "enemy"). Presumably, all of these factors are ascertainable and can be expressed in raw numbers, although both E and R would likely need to be estimated. There is, however, no point in expressing R as a rate, since it is not used as a multiplicand in the formula. The sum of (E-C+R) is then multiplied by W, which is "the will to continue."
Unlike E, C, and R, W is neither ascertainable
ex ante nor can it be expressed in raw numbers. The will to continue can only be ascertained
ex post: i.e. we can only know a combatant's will to continue by how long it continued, not by how long we estimate it will continue (any estimate, especially of an insurgency's will to continue, will undoubtedly be wrong). This leaves us with two possibilities for the value of W: either it is indefinable, and thus a nullity; or else it can only be established after the war is over, in which case it has no predictive value.
If W is indefinable, then it can have no place in the formula. Thus we are left with the ratio of (E-C+R):
A-C+R). Since the values of A and R are always greater for the nation attempting to suppress the insurgency than for the insurgency, the ratio will always favor the larger nation. Thus, the formula proves that the US won the Vietnam War and lost the Revolutionary War.
On the other hand, if W can be established after the war is over, then the formula lacks any predictive value. To illustrate, let's take a hypothetical conflict between a small insurgency (E) and a large nation (A) and plug in some numbers into the formula. For this conflict (E-C+R):
A-C+R), reduced to the lowest common denominator, will equal (20-5+3)::(200-30+10) or 18:180 or 1:10. Now, let's factor in W. We have no idea, during the course of the conflict, whose will to continue is superior. Looking at the actual outcome of the war, however, we see that E defeated A. We can, therefore, assume that E's will to continue was sufficient to overcome the 1:10 disadvantage that it had against A. Thus we can assume that the ratio of E's W to A's W was greater than 10:1. But there's no need to make the estimate, since we already know the result of the war. We might as well state that the entire formula boils down to E(w)::A(w), where (w) is the will to continue as established by who actually lasts the longest. In that respect, the formula would be as infallible as it was vacuous.
