Quote Originally Posted by William F. Owen View Post
Now the viability and even the reality of a ZANLA/ZIPRA conventional invasion is very debatable, but the Rhodesian Army ensured the the cost of a guerilla campaign was unacceptably high, and progress unacceptably slow - thus talks were the only option. What military action ensured was a negotiated peace and not a forced one - which is what the armed insurgency sought.
Wilf, I'll have to disagree somewhat on your take here--both in terms of what Smith originally hoped to achieve through UDI, and whether ZAPU and ZANU saw a negotiated transition to power as somehow second-best to a forced one.

Much of ZANLA's political mobilization and force-in-waiting strategy through the 1970s was precisely predicated on the view that either through military exhaustion or external pressure, the Rhodesian government would eventually either collapse or be forced to step down, at which point a combination of ZANU preparations and its larger Shona political base would allow it to triumph over ZAPU. There was no reason to see negotiations as a the second best way of doing this—on the contrary, by the late 1970s Mugabe and Tongogara were generally convinced by the argument (especially made to them by Samora Machel) that a military victory risked bring South Africa into the war in an even larger way, and that a negotiated route to power (legitimated by African and international support) was the safer bet.

This, of course, is exactly what happened.

Note that I'm not saying that ZANLA didn't attempt to inflict the maximum possible casualties on Rhodesian forces (and even civilians). I am saying that they believed, correctly, that their military power gave them political advantages too, and that the Lancaster House route was a perfectly acceptable way of securing victory.

In my view, Smith would have got a better deal in the late 1960s and early 1970s (pre-Altena Farm) than by the late 1970s. However, with Rhodesia having the upper hand militarily in the initial years after UDI, there was little incentive to negotiate--resulting in a worse outcome later. That's why I argue that Rhodesian military success on the battlefield came at a cost in terms of political and diplomatic common sense.