Fighting Ideas with Ideas

[Stan]

I'm not seeing much of value in this discussion...at least anything that couldn't be found or pursued on any number of political and/or religious boards (fringe and otherwise). Kindly relate this to this history of small wars or we'll be a'lockin' this one.

Hi Steve !
Jeez, yet another thread 'locked up' for bad behaviour.

Rex, loved the summation

[JD]

Getting back to the original question...

The US at the moment has a military superiority that is arguably as dominant as any in the history of man yet it is having enormous difficulty in both Iraq and Afghanistan. I look back and compare these relatively small areas to the massive tracts held by Alexander and the Romans and wonder how on earth it was all held together. I can't help believing it was not all about military expertise. There must have been a large degree of consent from these proud and often unruly people of the conquered lands. Surely, then, there must have been a desire to belong, an attractiveness about the idea of being part of the Empire. Is this overcoming the enemy with the power of the 'idea' of Rome / Macedonia? Is it a lesson for the now? I don't know whish is why I find myself in the history part of the smallwarsjournal.

Your thoughts?

[nichols]

Your thoughts?

I think multiple differences between now and then play into this. The largest differences are literacy, information exchange, and finally escalation of force.

[marct]

I think multiple differences between now and then play into this. The largest differences are literacy, information exchange, and finally escalation of force.

I'd like to play off this a bit, specifically on the idea of information exchange. First off, if we look at Rome, Macedonia, et al. the dominant mode of communications was face to face (aka oral communications). Only about 10% of Romans were literate (refs available on request ), and the number was lower for the Macedonians. Furthermore, "community" tended to be defined by geographic proximity and by kinship.

If we look at today, we have anywhere from 70-95% literacy (depending on where and how you define it), the increasingly dominant mode of communications is electronic (CMC, telephone, etc.) overlying a print mode, and community is increasingly defined by shared interest rather than by either geographic proximity or by kinship.

Alexander could assert a royal legitimacy by marrying a Sogdian "princess" but, while the image may be humourous, I doubt that President Bush could do the same by marrying an Iraqi .

[wm]

Getting back to the original question...

The US at the moment has a military superiority that is arguably as dominant as any in the history of man yet it is having enormous difficulty in both Iraq and Afghanistan. I look back and compare these relatively small areas to the massive tracts held by Alexander and the Romans and wonder how on earth it was all held together. I can't help believing it was not all about military expertise. There must have been a large degree of consent from these proud and often unruly people of the conquered lands. Surely, then, there must have been a desire to belong, an attractiveness about the idea of being part of the Empire. Is this overcoming the enemy with the power of the 'idea' of Rome / Macedonia? Is it a lesson for the now? I don't know whish is why I find myself in the history part of the smallwarsjournal.

Your thoughts?

As I noted here, I suspect it has less to do with military superiority and more to do with some form of symbiotic relationship. BTW, I have a real tough time with the historical truth of the solidity of Alexander's empire; it splintered almost immediately after his death.

The Diadochi (Gk. Diadochoi, Lat. Diadochi) are the successors of Alexander the Great. . . . Since Alexander had no suitable heir, his generals struggled to gain his throne and the initial arrangement for the administration of the empire, the so-called Babylon settlement, did not last long. The most important of the Diadochi were Antipater and his son Cassander, Antigonus Monophthalmus and his son Demetrius Poliorcetes, Craterus, Eumenes, Leonnatus, Lysimachus, Perdiccas, Ptolemy and Seleucus.

Alexander had no true successor, as none of the generals was able to defeat all his rivals and acquire the entire realm. Antigonus Monophthalmus came closest. Scholarly consensus holds that some of the Diadochi, especially Cassander and Ptolemy, never aimed at universal rule, but were prepared to settle with part of Alexander’s legacy. Nonetheless, it is not really accurate to say that the Successors divided the empire; it rather fell apart because they all wanted to eliminate all their rivals but none of them achieved this. (http://www.ancientlibrary.com/wcd/Diadochi)

Success does not always follow from having military power and dominant force. Remember what Princess Leia said to Governor/Grand Moff Tarkin? Folks like Martin Luther, Gandhi, and Martin Luther King show how much (or how little) one needs physical force to hold the field at the end of the day.

[ProfessorB]

The original posting in this thread asked about the idea of "war of ideas."

Presumably there are far more wars of ideas than wars -- the Enlightenment was a war of ideas. Prohibition was a war of ideas.

But of course we're interested here in something different -- not wars of ideas, perhaps, but Ideas in Wars.

Which returns us to the original question prior to side-tracking into the truth-value of Islam -- to what extent can one prevail at the strategic level of operations by having a "better" set of ideas.

My initial response, which I will repeat (regurgitate?) here is that at the end of the day ideas don't matter in war -- they may matter in the politics of getting us into war, but don't produce wins or losses. This would suggest that the "hearts and minds" meme gets its wrong.

So a historical question -- when has an occupying power (choose your poison, France in Spain, US in Iraq, Britain in South Africa) been able to put a local resistance movement on the strategic defensive by having a better set of ideas? The question is important, I think, not least because there is this recurring theme in discussions of the Iraq strategy that we need to "show" the insurgents that political reconciliation is "better" than resistance.

[marct]

So a historical question -- when has an occupying power (choose your poison, France in Spain, US in Iraq, Britain in South Africa) been able to put a local resistance movement on the strategic defensive by having a better set of ideas? The question is important, I think, not least because there is this recurring theme in discussions of the Iraq strategy that we need to "show" the insurgents that political reconciliation is "better" than resistance.

How about the Union over the Confederacy, or Britain (Canada) over Quebec and the Metis?