The Illusion Of Victory: The True Costs of Modern War

By Ian Bickerton

The Illusion of Victory demonstrates that most of the rewards of victory in modern warfare are either exaggerated or false. When the ostensible benefits of victory are examined a generation after a war, it becomes inescapably evident that the defeated belligerent rarely conforms to the demands and expectations of the victor.

Consequently, long-term political and military stability is denied to both the victorious power and to the defeated one. As a result, neither victory nor defeat deter further outbreaks of war. This sobering reality is increasingly the case in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. Ian Bickerton persuasively argues that as the rhetoric of victory becomes more hollow all countries must adopt creative new approaches to resolving disputes.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Melbourne University Publishing Ltd
• Release date: Apr 1, 2011
• ISBN: 9780522860238

Book preview

Acknowledgements

In writing this book I have accumulated many debts. Kenneth Hagan, drawing upon his deep knowledge of US diplomatic and military history, provided wise advice and assistance on countless occasions, moderating my more extreme impulses and keeping me on track. Bruce Clunies-Ross listened patiently and made helpful observations, especially about the aftermath of World War II. RMIT University historian Joe Siracusa provided insights that come from years of combing archival documents pertaining to war.

Apart from the idea itself that the rewards of victory are short-lived and rarely worth the price paid, scholars will find little that is startlingly new in this book, but much of the information it contains has been forgotten or is too infrequently drawn upon. Much of what is new has been provided by my colleague and friend Max Harcourt whose prodigious knowledge of world history is truly astonishing. He contributed numerous details that provide whatever life and vitality this book possesses. Judy Echin did a wonderful job in preparing very complex maps that illustrate the temporary nature of territorial alterations achieved through victory.

I especially thank Foong Ling Kong of MUP who saw merit in my proposal, and Sally Heath and Susan Keogh for their highly skilful editorial assistance. I am grateful, and indebted to them, for their time and thoughtful comments. Needless to say (but I will say it anyway) the views expressed are mine alone, and no-one else should be held responsible for any errors or omissions.

Jennifer Catherine endured my writing with her usual stoicism, offering helpful and constructive criticism. Mentioning Jenny reminds me that I would like to have explored the psycho-social cost of victory (and defeat) in some detail, but that is another book.

In memory of my parents, Imelda and Jack,

who lived through two world wars

Contents

Maps

Preface

Introduction: The deceptive face of victory

1 Victory and defeat, 1815–1840

2 The aftermath of the Crimean War, 1856–1881

3 The legacy of the Russo-Japanese War, 1905–1930

4 The elusive rewards of victory in World War I, 1919–1939

5 Unconditional Surrender: The aftermath of World War II, 1945–1970

6 Dimensions of victory in wars since 1945

Notes

Bibliography

Index

Maps

Europe ‘restored’ by the Congress of Vienna, 1815

The State of Europe, 1848

Eastern Europe in 1856

Eastern Europe after the Congress of Berlin, 1878

The Russo-Japanese War and Peace, 1904–05

Post World War I settlements in Europe, 1923

Europe in November 1942: Axis controlled territory

Europe, December 1945

Europe by the 1990s

Japan in East Asia and the Pacific, September 1939

Preface

If any question why we died,

Tell them, because our fathers lied.

Rudyard Kipling, Epitaphs of the War, ‘Common Form’

This book begins where most books on war end. It looks beyond the causes, course and immediate outcomes of particular wars and explores the long-term consequences that flow from them for the victors and the defeated. Taking a series of case studies, I consider what the victorious belligerents hoped to achieve, and how they envisaged victory unfolding. I do so by noting the terms set out at the signing of the peace treaty or armistice that ended the conflict, and then surveying the geopolitical circumstances approximately a quarter-century later to see to what extent the treaty had been adhered to and the desired goals achieved. The impact of victory or defeat on domestic structures and institutions is also considered and compared.

I am not concerned with the excitement and heat of battle, the euphoria of victory or the despair of defeat. I do not extol the heroic or condemn the foolish and cowardly. Rather, I consider war from the more detached perspective of twenty-five years afterwards. The dead are still mourned. The maimed are still suffering and the destruction of war is still remembered by those who participated in it, and by their families. More importantly, twenty-five years later it is possible to count the cost to both sides. The inescapable and tragic conclusion one reaches is that it is hard to tell who won and who lost the war. The territorial adjustments and regime changes wrought by the war no longer stand. The economic costs and benefits and the alterations to infrastructure have been alleviated by a generation determined to rebuild and reshape their lives. A generation later, we can see that victory, whatever the causes and intended consequences of the war, has all too often proven futile. The gains have been cancelled out by the losses.

This book is a work of interpretation rather than a definitive narrative history. The subject presented itself in 2007, after Kenneth Hagan and I had finished writing Unintended Consequences: The United States at War, which explored the results of the USA’s wars. We pointed out that the majority of the consequences of these wars were unintended. It seemed a natural extension to examine the outcomes of wars in other parts of the world and to ask what were the real benefits, if any, of winning a war. If one looks at the impact of war on the adversaries of five major wars fought in the past 200 years a generation after hostilities ceased, it is difficult to determine who was victorious and who was defeated. The rewards of the victor are less visible and the punishments of the vanquished less obvious. In almost all cases the meanings of victory and defeat had become blurred and ambiguous.

I should state my own position on war. I have always found the idea and practice of warfare appalling. I grew up with a fear and dread of war. The experience of living through World War II as a small child is among my first and most lasting memories, and the war and its progress was a daily topic of conversation. Phrases like ‘pig-iron Bob’ and ‘the Brisbane Line’ were frequently heard in our household. Tojo and Hitler were feared names. Indeed, fear gripped everyone even in the relatively safe town of Port Augusta, South Australia. Drawing swastikas and the Rising Sun in our schoolbooks or on the footpath were strictly forbidden, the windows in our house were blacked out for fear of Japanese air raids, and gasmasks were issued to families. As children we were also forbidden to talk to any visiting US military personnel, mainly sailors, we might see in the street; strangers were to be avoided.

My father did not go to war. He worked as a foreman in the Commonwealth Railways roundhouse, rebuilding locomotives and maintaining the rail track running north and west from Port Augusta, a job regarded as essential to the war effort. I think in some ways he regretted that he did not see active service, and I am sure at times he felt great sympathy for his mates fighting in the North African desert or the jungles of New Guinea. But he must have felt relief that he was not among the soldiers returning to Port Augusta on a troop train from a Japanese prisoner-of-war camp when he met his brother, an emaciated, broken man, missing one leg. I remember, too, the people delirious with joy and relief dancing madly in the streets when victory in Europe was declared and my father saying that now we should continue fighting until the communists were defeated. I could not understand what got into him; the war was over and the Nazis were defeated. I thought he was mad, and so did most of his friends. When, as a university student, I was called up for national service training (I was among the last generation to be so called up) I was too much of a coward to refuse on grounds of conscientious objection, but I always felt I should have. I deluded myself with the notion that learning to recognise aircraft and read maps, as I did in the university squadron, would keep me far distant from actual fighting in the event of a war. These reflections remind me that I have always been opposed to war and have long regarded it as a betrayal of human purpose and a total failure of imagination.

This study confirms that war, especially starting a war, is a high-risk activity that rarely achieves its aims. So we need to clearly understand what we mean when we speak of victory in war and to carefully examine the benefits that victorious leaders claim it brings. In an age where resorting to war seems more popular than ever, exploring these questions leads to the conclusion that, in most instances, victory did not achieve its desired results and war sacrifices were largely in vain.

The reality is that the costs of war are rarely, if ever, worthwhile. The ravages of war can never be accurately quantified, but what we can say is that modern warfare results in an appalling number of (principally civilian) deaths, and produces immense destructiveness. Wars no longer end with surrender ceremonies and tickertape parades. They end in a fog of ambiguity, and it’s easier to discern what’s been sacrificed than what’s been gained. The apparent political benefits gained by armed conflict are invariably so short lived that the notion of victory becomes virtually meaningless as twenty-five years later the outcomes the victors intended have unravelled in unanticipated and unexpected ways. These are the issues that have engaged me while writing this book: if reading it encourages readers to likewise consider war from a new perspective, it will have achieved its purpose.

Introduction

The deceptive face of victory

Those who can win a war well can rarely make a good peace,

And those who could make a good peace would never have won the war.

Attributed to Winston Churchill, Churchill Museum and

Churchill War Rooms

What do we mean by victory in war? Is victory the defeat of an enemy’s military forces, the capture of territory, the destruction of a state’s government, economy or infrastructure, the occupation of a state, the destruction of society, regime change or merely the partial realisation of a nation’s tactical, political, military and strategic goals or aspirations? Or does victory only occur when the enemy’s will to resist is broken? More specifically, does the passage of time change or weaken the meaning of victory? At what point can we say victory is achieved, and how do we measure it?

These are not new questions. The Greeks coined the term ‘Pyrrhic victory’ for those victories in which the rewards and gains did not outweigh the devastating costs—physical and psychological as well as economic—involved in fighting the wars. It implies that another such victory will ultimately cause defeat. It is also often suggested that it is possible for a nation to win the war but lose the peace, but this seems to blame the peace-makers rather than the war-makers for subsequent adverse developments. In reality it is war itself that leads to the frustrated expectations of the victors, both at the immediate end of the war and also twenty-five years later.

I have chosen this time frame because most of those who lived through a war, including the political and military leaders who initiated, led and participated in the fighting, have a vivid recollection of it, and the events that preceded and immediately followed it. Wars affect and frame the mental and physical world of communities for at least a generation, and the legacies of wars continue in the memories and through the lives of those who fought in them and those who experienced them as non-combatants. The passage of half a century is too long a period to enable a useful assessment of victory as the number of variables that shape events increases too much and it becomes impossible to identify factors traceable directly to the war itself.

In Unintended Consequences: The United States at War, my co-author Ken Hagan and I demonstrated that war produces unintended consequences. As nineteenth-century military theorist Carl Von Clausewitz pointed out in his 1832 treatise, On War, the nature of war means that the level of violence cannot be regulated or contained. Nor can the outcomes of war be accurately predicted. This book is an extension of that proposition and argues that if going to war produces ‘unintended consequences’, victory produces equally uncertain and unpredictable outcomes. These phenomena have never been systematically examined but they are important considerations to bear in mind when contemplating the nature and efficacy of war. All the wars I look at illustrate the transient nature and meaning of victory (and defeat) in war. The results of this study suggest that victory seldom lives up to promised expectations.

The language surrounding victory suggests that it should have a smiling face. Perhaps the most famous image of victory is the second-century bce white marble sculpture, Winged Victory of Samothrace, displayed at the Louvre in Paris, honouring Nike, the Greek goddess of victory. Although her head and arms are missing, Nike is a striking figure conveying a sense of action and triumph. The Romans worshipped Victoria as their goddess of peace, and wherever she appears on coins or architecture—even atop the Brandenburg Gate in Berlin driving a chariot—she is depicted as smiling. But the face of victory smiling is a false face; it is a mask. As we shall see, for millions, military personnel and civilians alike, ultimately the face of victory, like the face of defeat, has been the face of death. In ancient China this more realistic view prevailed; the victorious general always stood on the mourning (the left) side of the emperor, signifying that, in war, there are no victors.

Traditionally, victory in war meant preserving or glorifying the monarch or ruler. Throughout the nineteenth and most of the twentieth centuries, subjects of the British empire prayed for their monarch to be ‘victorious, happy and glorious’. They not only prayed but also fought successfully—more than 100 wars were declared by the British government by one count—for such an outcome. For the French, after the vicissitudes of Napoleon’s victories and ultimate defeat, victory meant something less tangible, pride in the glory of ‘La France’. Post-Prussia Germans, until two disastrous defeats in the first half of the twentieth century, fought with more success than the French for an equally nebulous but powerful concept, and victory was a reflection of the greatness of ‘The Fatherland’. Americans believed they fought for freedom with God on their side, and were victorious until the second half of the twentieth century, when they abandoned God, or, it has been suggested, God, shocked by the destructiveness of their war making, abandoned them.

The wars of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries were mostly waged over borders and territory as states sought security over succession and land. Many were imperial wars. ‘To the victor goes the spoils’ was the accepted axiom, and so it was not usually hard to tell who won the wars. The victor was the one who walked away with the most territory and the loser was the one who gave it up. The gains of victory are less clear in our own century.

Now only Britons pray for the longevity and happiness of their monarch. The French and Germans are united in a Europe in which century-old nationalist concepts have little place and are unlikely to lead to war—at least in the Western half. After a welcome pause, Americans once again believe it is their divine destiny to shape the world in their image. But, as we know, victory on the battlefield is not necessarily victory in the war. Modern history is replete with examples of commanders such as Napoleon, Robert E. Lee, and the German High Command in both world wars, who won many battles but lost the wars. Victory in war requires the enemy to accept defeat. This requires the enemy not merely to acknowledge the immediate military superiority of the so-called victor but to reconcile itself to the inability to achieve its objectives in the short term, if not in the long term. It also demands the enemy believe it has maintained its honour, that there is no shame in admitting defeat. If these elements have not been achieved and postwar settlements require an extended troop presence to enforce or defend, then there has been no victory at all.

What does winning a war achieve? It seems self-evident that losing a war is a bad thing. But does it make a difference whether or not you win a war? We are told by those who lead us into wars that winning enables the victors to establish nations, create, reinstate or extend boundaries, redress grievances and restore national honour, remove cruel and despotic rulers by replacing them with stable popularly elected leaders, and prevent the spread of pernicious ideologies like Nazism, fascism, atheistic communism and terrorism. In past centuries, victory was going to halt the spread of ideologies advocating liberty, equality and fraternity. Victory in a ‘just war’ promises to prevent future wars and create an international environment in which peace and tranquillity will prevail.

The clearest examples of this outcome of victory in the twentieth century are the remarkable transformations of Germany and Japan after their defeats in World War II. Germany, devastated in 1945, was the largest economy in Europe by the 1970s. Even more dramatically, Japan emerged from the ashes of Hiroshima and Nagasaki to become one of the world’s largest economies by the end of the century. The rapid reconstruction of these two defeated nations suggests that the material infrastructure of an advanced industrial society is less significant than the social infrastructure: universal education, social cohesion, skill levels and capacity for social organisation. Although its cities were in ruins in May 1945, Germany quickly reverted to the parliamentary politics it had experienced before the advent of fascism and militarism. British historian Eric Hobsbawm, in his Age of Extremes, pointed out that, within days of the surrender, all the pre-1933 parties had re-emerged complete with their old constituencies. In West Germany the allied administrators found ways of eliminating the Communist Party and, in the east, the Soviet administrators found ways of eliminating right-wing parties like the Christian Democratic Party.

The victorious allies argue that these developments demonstrate the positive results of World War II. They maintain that West Germany (if not all Germany) ‘liberated’ (rather than defeated!) by the allies in 1945 was transformed in the space of thirty years by occupation and massive economic assistance from a land of Hitlermenschen (Hitler’s people) to a model European country. But, more than sixty-five years after the end of hostilities, the USA still maintains a significant military presence in Germany and has naval and air force bases in Japan to ensure that all goes according to plan. Victory in this context has required the perpetual occupation of the defeated.

Victory is usually regarded as synonymous with winning and there is an assumption that fighting stops because victory has been declared. Faced with the outcomes of the wars it has fought since 1945—ambiguous at best and defeats in all but name—the USA has even altered its definition of victory to accommodate the new, unexpected experience of defeat. For example, in the recent Iraq War, President George W. Bush declared on 1 May 2003 that major combat operations had ended, that the USA had accomplished its mission, and that the USA and its allies had ‘prevailed’. Although he added the rider that this was only one victory in the war on terror and that ‘we do not know the day of final victory’, he had no doubt that the USA had achieved victory in Iraq. However, the Bush administration warned against expecting the types of victories and surrenders that live in the USA’s collective memory, those in which the formal gestures of peace took over from the barbarisms of war.

While those admonitions came in the context of the progress of the war in Iraq, they were also meant to warn US citizens about the ‘war on terror’ more generally. For the Bush administration, the war in Iraq was inseparable from the ‘war on terror’, and for both wars the concept of victory, although retained, was redefined and deferred. In 2001, in response to the devastating and shocking surprise attack on New York and Washington in September by foreign Islamic extremists led by the disaffected Saudi national, Osama bin Laden (located in Afghanistan), George W. Bush and UK Prime Minister Tony Blair declared a war ‘on terror’. The goal, President Bush stated, was ‘complete victory’. But how do you gauge victory in a war on a concept? And what is ‘complete’ victory? When all the original ‘terrorists’ and their leaders are dead? When all their supporters are killed? When the idea of opposition to the USA is eliminated? When compliance with US wishes is the only acceptable response? The very idea that terror or terrorists can be completely eliminated is fantasy. Unfortunately, Washington has not learned the lessons of its failures in recent wars. If the essential aim of warfare is to break the enemy’s will to resist, the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan have failed, as the use of military force inevitably does in the long term. The destructiveness of the two wars, especially against civilians, has increased resentment and hostility against the USA and its allies rather than diminished it.

Looking at the wars I have selected we might ask why, despite knowledge of its failed promises, is victory so valued? Undoubtedly it is good for domestic politics. Wars are fought for domestic reasons as much as for foreign-relations issues. Victory is good for creating internal cohesiveness, and encouraging or coercing ethnic groups to become part of the mainstream. It also excites national pride. Wars in which victory is more elusive are not so good in these respects, frequently splintering ethnic groups and causing divisive friction, if not always widespread popular opposition to the war. Nowhere is this more apparent that in the war in Iraq. After the unprecedented attacks on the USA of September 11, 2001, President Bush had to prove to the American people that he was in control of things and that he was capable of taking tough direct action against the perpetrators. Saddam Hussein and Iraq were a bonus. Tony Blair felt similar internal pressures in the UK.

But victorious wars are not always good for national leaders. US President James Polk lost the presidency after a successful war against Mexico in 1846–48; for President Lincoln the price of victory was assassination; UK Prime Minister Winston Churchill was defeated in British elections following the Allied victory in Europe in World War II; and, while not so directly attributable to war, President Woodrow Wilson suffered a stroke while vainly promoting the League of Nations and President Franklin D. Roosevelt died before he saw the end of World War II.

Generals, admirals and, from the twentieth century, air commodores clearly benefit from victory. They receive glory and adulation, and very frequently are rewarded by a grateful public and nation with high political office. The fighting men and women rarely receive such rewards, although failure to participate in the victorious military forces brings shame and opprobrium. Victory also produces heroic tales of valour and generates a unifying ethnic or national narrative enshrining unique and desirable values, linking past epics of bravery and sacrifice to the present. Such mythical narratives assist in creating a resolve and formulating a vision for the future direction of the victorious nation state.

Of course, many of the same processes occur in the military group defeated in war. Glorification of war heroes and the creation of heroic mythology do not depend on winning conflicts; participation in military combat is sufficient. The defeated honour their war heroes the same way victors do. Years after the end of World War II, at Etajima, the location of Japan’s Naval Academy, Japan pays tribute to such figures as Admiral Isoroku Yamamoto, who initiated the raid on Pearl Harbor, and Vice Admiral Takijiro Onishi, the father of Kamikaze. The inscription to Onishi reads: ‘Admiral Onishi was greatly loved and respected by his men and the Kamikaze special attack corps’. Like victors, the defeated are reluctant to acknowledge wartime atrocities and slow to offer apologies. So we find people considered war criminals by one nation are frequently among those honoured in another country, along with the war dead.

Some say wars are good for the