Quote Originally Posted by Compost View Post
Have read several of the books on your list but not as yet Consequences of Failure by Corson. Here somewhat late is a carefully written reply to your question.

Sun Tzu and Clausewitz were each achievers and renowned military scholars and original thinkers. Like to believe that both would have preferred the cadence of pipes and drums to the stridency of a brass band.

Sun Tzu wrote mainly in the context of military success and failure rather than victory and defeat. That can be seen especially in his frequent mention of threatened and conceivable use of military force as a means to influence the general psyche and preparedness, and the specific planning and actions of an actual or potential adversary. The following interpretation uses more modern language and is based mainly on the views of Clausewitz, Liddell Hart and Wylie.

Military campaigns and armed conflict are said to be politics pursued by other means. Ignoring electoral campaigns and party politics, the politicians in power at any time are generally concerned with the success and failure of their policies. Sun Tzu’ perspective correlates better with those concerns than could any discussion predicated on victories and defeats.

So what is success ? In the simplest case success can be the achievement of a single objective. And that objective might be a negative, as in defensively preventing an adversary from achieving – or deterrently dissuading him from seeking - something that is potentially or actually damaging to one’s own or an allied concern.

Generally it is good practice to objectively plan to achieve success and avoid failure rather than to focus on victory and avoidance of defeat. In other words it is better to think about how to structure or re-structure a contest so as to move it onto favourable ground. Put more simply to get beyond a bound rather than how to get onto it and when there to think about what to do next. That sounds a lot like a Wylie version of Liddell Hart’s indirect approach. And that’s essentially what it is. And also what is commonly needed: an analytic rather than a blunt force approach to problem solving. Hence good practice ....

So what distinguishes the tactical from the operational, and in turn the operational from the strategic level of conflict ? At the tactical level: freedom of action may often be constrained and sometimes demand a short sighted focus on victory at a specific location. At the operational level: freedom of action will sometimes be constrained but it is always appropriate to plan for success rather than victory. At the strategic level: it is necessary to use cumulative and sequential techniques and to carefully pursue success for all politically and militarily determined objectives.

This interpretation is pretentiously brief but it can serve as a skeleton of reasons for always using the terms success and failure in preference to victory and defeat. Am looking forward to reading critical and contrary comments.
Here's two complimentary ideas.

1. We (military) need to operationalize and codify what we did right over the last ten years (Techniques at clearing and pacification top the list).

2. We (Americans) should stop trying to counter colonial insurgencies and start trying to understand revolution as a process not an event.