Air University Review, January-February 1969
Lieutenant Colonel T. C. Pinckney
The limitation of war has been a key concern of U.S. defense policy for many years, and a sizable literature has grown up dealing primarily with the dilemma of how to achieve a national objective in the face of an armed challenge without allowing the conflict to escalate into general nuclear war. The result has been a more or less generally accepted set of types of limitations designed to facilitate control of war.
Within this literature one cannot do better than to use Robert E. Osgood’s formulation.1 He establishes five prerequisites for a policy of limited war: limited, well-defined objectives (not necessarily made explicit to the enemy); willingness to limit the means employed; appropriate military policies, weapons, techniques, and tactics; adequate economic resources; and a resolute national will. Within the construct of these prerequisites he suggests seven categories of possible limitation: geographical area, weapons (types and numbers), targets, manpower, number of belligerents, duration, and intensity. The first three -- geography, weaponry, and targets--have received by far the greatest amount of attention.2 These may be, as Osgood maintains, “. . . the decisive limitations upon military operations that are within the power of the belligerents to control . . . Without these three kinds of limitations it is difficult to imagine a war remaining limited. With them, the other limitations would probably follow, and wars might remain limited even if they did not follow.”3 Another factor in the disproportionate attention devoted to these limitations, however, may be that area, weapons, and targets offer tangible, easily determined distinctions of quality and/or quantity which lend themselves readily to both theoretical discussion and practical application. On the other hand, the results of variations in manpower, number of belligerents, duration, and intensity of conflicts are much less clear. This is not to deny the importance of the first trio—they are and will remain vital considerations;4 but if we disregard the interactions of other types of limitations, we may fail to achieve our national objectives in a limited war, or, even more serious, the war may escalate beyond control. It is my purpose to discuss manpower, number of belligerents, intensity, and duration, with particular attention to the last.
· Manpower admits of so many possible gradations in both quantity and type, and the intent behind each blurs so indistinctly in the light of political and military dynamics, that manpower becomes a difficult and gross way of conveying one’s meaning to the enemy. To be sure, there are significant and easily discernible distinctions between engaging a force of, say, 20,000 men and one of 500,000; but it is most doubtful that a clear message can be successfully conveyed to the opponent by an increase from 500,000 to 525,000 men. Specific circumstances may, however, enable even as unwieldy a tool as mere numbers of men engaged to clarify our intent. A series of increases followed by even a token decrease would certainly catch the enemy’s attention. Whether a decrease would be interpreted as indicating a sincere desire to negotiate or a faltering of determination is conjectural. Given the Communist conception of the capitalist mentality and the utility of force, the latter interpretation seems more likely to be the one received, regardless of what we might have wished to convey. The types of troops and, especially, the way they are used are more important than numbers, but the significance of these aspects is so dependent upon the political/military circumstances that no worthwhile theoretical discussion seems possible.
The question remains: Can manpower restrictions effectively contribute to preventing escalation of a war to uncontrolled proportions? The answer seems to be that such restrictions can be helpful, but only in very crude terms. A large nation is not apt to become firmly committed to military victory in the minds of its own citizens if it has only a few thousand troops engaged—assuming an absence of dramatic elements such as a surprise attack or use of “unfair” weapons or tactics by the enemy. Yet the psychological commitment level need not be high; and conversely, in the absence of national commitment increases in the numbers of men involved may increase pressures for ending the conflict, not escalating it. Thus the role of mere numbers is hazy. Other things being equal, it is probably true that the more men are engaged, the more likely the war is to expand. Yet it is certainly true that other things are never equal. It is through those other factors that we must seek to control the war, with only secondary aid from the manipulation of manpower.
· The number of belligerents is also ambiguous in its effect on the war. If each belligerent were fully and passionately committed to complete victory, then the swelling chorus of demands for absolute success would work to expand the war; but history belies this picture. Rather, each participant’s interests only partially coincide with those of its allies. Therefore, counsels differ, discussion causes delay, and the addition of each partially committed belligerent acts as a brake on hostilities and presents another policy to be reconciled. Were the new belligerent fully committed to military victory, its participation would, of course, act to expand the war. But in the case of Western nations, the effect is normally the reverse, limitation rather than expansion. Therefore, varying the number of belligerents should be based upon diplomatic considerations, including the supposed impact upon limiting or expanding the war.
· Intensity is another potential area of limitation with problematical results. There is a good case to be made that in an area such as Europe the more intensely a limited conventional war may be waged, the more likely each side is to conclude that escalation is inevitable and decide to pre-empt its opponent. But in Europe such a limited war would, presumably, have important characteristics not likely to be present in other areas of the world. A European conflict would probably be a relatively overt, transborder application of regular military units, although major efforts might well be made to camouflage the purpose of the conflict. Any likely European limited war would take place in industrialized, highly integrated territories of immediate and vital significance to both the Soviet Union and the United States. This significance has been sanctified by usage and declamation ever since World War II, and both sides witness their interests by the forward deployment of large and powerful military elements. It seems unlikely, indeed, that a European conventional conflict could occur at any except the smallest levels without directly involving Soviet and U.S. forces. In such a case intensity might prove a vital aspect of limitation.
In other than European areas, none of these characteristics are apt to be present. Borders might well be undemarcated and sparsely populated, or they may divide unsophisticated peoples of common cultural and racial backgrounds, thus facilitating claims of civil insurrection and hindering attempts to clarify events. Though important to both powers, such areas admittedly do not possess the same degree of significance as does Europe, and East-West areas of mutual interest are still being determined, rather than having long-standing sanction. In a few of these areas the United States has significant forces stationed, but the two largest contingents both result from Communist aggression. In none of these areas has the Soviet Union stationed significant forces.5 Thus with interests less immediate, with lines less definitely drawn, and with little likelihood of a direct U.S./ Soviet military confrontation, the intensity with which non-European wars are waged is not a significant factor tending to escalate or limit the conflict. This is borne out in Vietnam, where fluctuations in bombing sorties or numbers of allied and enemy killed in action by factors of 3, 4, or 5 are not considered particularly significant Such changes may, in combination with other factors, help get a point across to the enemy; but their utility is marginal at best and their effectiveness in maintaining limitation of the conflict is low.
· Duration is a key consideration in limiting conventional wars, although its impact is much less distinguishable than other factors because it is entirely psychological and not measurable. As a war continues, two contrasting trends become evident: the desire to win at any cost—proescalation; and a willingness to accept defeat in order to end the carnage and expense. Both attitudes are undesirable: the first because of the attendant danger of general nuclear war, the second because it sacrifices the national interest being defended.
Militarily a long war is disadvantageous. If we can end a war quickly, presumably we possess a capability to apply force rapidly and massively (massively in relation to the opposition, not in absolute terms). Having such an alternative available, if we allow the war to continue over a more extended period, it is due to self-imposed restrictions on the forces we employ. From the military point of view such restrictions produce numerous disadvantages. The enemy is given time to study, adjust to, and counteract our strategy, tactics, and weapons. Time is allowed for him to deploy new weapon systems or perfect and expand existing ones (witness the formidable North Vietnamese air defenses built up within the last three years), to create different routes of supply (the jungle highways through Laos and sea-fed routes through Cambodia), to train large numbers of peasants to be effective troops, to redistribute his population, to disperse his vital industries, to duplicate and build bypasses to critical communications links, to develop and employ successful propaganda themes. In short, we surrender or seriously compromise the initiative and so make the war much more expensive and difficult to win.
From the political standpoint, a long war is similarly disadvantageous, and for the same basic reason—sacrifice of the initiative. The other side is allowed time: time to rally all the heterogeneous elements which may oppose our participation in the war, time to appeal to domestic opposition, to encourage it to organize, and for it to express itself during elections, time for the tireless repetition on which his propaganda depends to take effect, time to mask aggression behind a facade of liberation, and time to orchestrate his diplomatic offensive. Moreover, the picture we present to the world during a long war lends much more credence to his charges of U.S. militarism than does a short war, even though the total military effort might be comparable. For example, hypothesize two alternatives: in the first we engage two million men for a year; in the second we engage 500,000 men for four years. The number of man-years is the same, but the longer war gives the enemy much more propaganda and diplomatic advantage. During the hostilities news headlines, photos, articles, and radio and television coverage are apt to be at nearly the same high level regardless of whether a half million or two million men are engaged The longer war enables the enemy to substantiate his image of the United States as a militaristic nation over a longer period of time.
From the humane point of view also (certainly an appropriate criterion for U.S. policy), the short war is more desirable—perhaps we should say less undesirable. Although we have expended the same number of man-years, the enemy is overwhelmed before having had time to mobilize and deploy all the forces of which he is capable. Moreover, a long war permits several new year-groups of boys to mature enough to be drafted, and thus more soldiers become available to the enemy, our task increases, and more total casualties result. In our hypothesis, civilian casualties and destruction would probably be greater during the longer war because of the increased numbers of enemy forces brought to bear. However, even if we assume in both cases the same number of direct combat-related civilian casualties, the cumulative effects of longer hostilities will include the partial destruction of four years’ crops (especially significant in the agrarian societies where such wars are apt to occur); will cause the long-term debilitation of the population, thus increasing deaths from disease; will delay the process of reconstruction and rehabilitation; and will contribute to psychological defeat—a feeling of futility throughout the afflicted people, a feeling more fatal to freedom than bullets.
Now to recapitulate the effects of the seven areas of possible limitation of war. The geographical area must, at a minimum, exclude the territory of the major nuclear powers and Europe, else the probability of escalation will be unacceptably high. Without this geographical restriction—that is, in a limited war involving Europe and/or U. S. and Soviet territory—careful control of weapons, targets, intensity, duration, and to a lesser extent manpower becomes essential to prevent escalation to nuclear war. However, outside the critical geographical area, weapons, targets, manpower, and intensity appear to be of much less significance to limitation of war than they are generally assumed to be. Increasing the number of belligerents may actually help limit the war by introducing conflicting interests into the council chamber. Finally, in noncore areas, brevity closely follows geographical limitation in importance as a means of preventing escalation. Therefore, shortening the war should be given pre-eminence in national consideration over the secondary elements of weapons, targets, manpower, and intensity.
480th Tactical Fighter Squadron
Notes
1. Robert E. Osgood, Limited War: The Challenge to American Strategy (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1957), pp. 234-84.
2. It is true that intensity, number of belligerents, and duration have been discussed at length, but within the context of a nuclear war, usually a U.S.--Soviet nuclear war.
3. Osgood, p. 243.
4. I would qualify this in regard to targets. In my judgment, in a limited nuclear war targets are a primary consideration; but in a conventional war, à la Korea or Vietnam, too great a sensitivity to targets within the “agreed” area of hostilities will reduce military effectiveness without adequate returns in the nonmilitary sphere.
5. We may be witnessing the initiation of a Soviet forward policy in the growth of the Russian Mediterranean fleet.
Lieutenant Colonel T. C. Pinckney (M.A., Syracuse University) is Assistant Operations Officer and F-4 Aircraft Commander, Da Nang Air Base, Republic of Vietnam. After graduation from the Citadel and completion of flying training in 1952, he served in flying assignments on Okinawa and at Travis AFB, California. As Assistant Professor, Department of Political Science, USAF Academy, for four years, he was responsible for publication of the 4-volume USAFA Readings in Defense Policy. Other assignments have been as Action Officer, Arms Policy Branch, Deputy Directorate of Plans for Policy, Hq USAF, 1964-66; as an exchange officer, Special Assistant to the Deputy Undersecretary of State for Political Affairs; and in F-4 replacement training and survival schools until his present assignment in June 1968.
Disclaimer
The conclusions and opinions expressed in this document are those of the author cultivated in the freedom of expression, academic environment of Air University. They do not reflect the official position of the U.S. Government, Department of Defense, the United States Air Force or the Air University.
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