Motivation in War

[TheCurmudgeon]

Getting near the end.

Here is one last paragraph I want to through out to for consideration.

Thanks to all that sent me links and commented on my ever evolving thoughts on this matter.

7.2 Should strategy be tailored to address the motivation(s) of the enemy?

This idea presents perhaps the most interesting question generated by this exercise; does your strategy have to match the type of war your enemy is fighting in an insurgency/counterinsurgency fight? For example, our COIN strategy is built on Individual Identity. It sees civil rights and representative government associated with popular sovereignty as integral to pop-centric warfare. Meanwhile, our enemy in Afghanistan, the Taliban, was fighting motivated by their Collective Identity as Muslims. That motivation appeared to allow them to pull patriots from the population. That Collective Identity and the values associated with it was clearly a motivating factor among the insurgents. Once we realized the power of Collective Identity as a motivating factor in the target population should we have adjusted our COIN strategy? A similar question can be asked about legitimacy. If, in the target population, our efforts are seen as illegitimate, can we ever win? These questions can best be examined in relation to the motivational force Collective Identity and Legitimacy have. Unfortunately, I can only ask the question.

[jmm99]

The first, the supreme, the most far reaching act of judgment that the statesman and commander have to make is to establish … the kind of war on which they are embarking; neither mistaking it for, nor turning it into something that is alien to its nature.[2]

[2] Quoted in John T. Fishel & Max G. Manwaring, Uncomfortable Wars Revisited, Norman: (2006) Univerity of Oklahoma Press, p. 9 from Carl von Clausewitz, On War, translated by Michael Howard and Peter Paret, Princeton: (1976) Princeton University Press, pp. 88-89.

From brother Fishel's book review, Thinking and Writing About COIN.

In any given instance, the materiality (weight to be given) re: the enemy's policy and strategy has to be determined. IMO: e.g., we blew it in Vietnam by not recognizing the kind of war Ho-Giap et al were fighting, compounding by supporting a series of failed SVGs - all determined by trying to force the war into the mold desired by the USG.

In a much simpler (and non-lethal) context, your last section's questions apply to any lawsuit - decide what is material and what is not. IMO: that's largely a matter of experience and intuition.

Regards

Mike

[TheCurmudgeon]

JMM,

Funny, upon concluding this project I have determined that there is really nothing new under the sun. It is a different perspective on a problem that has vexed men since before recorded history.

It was very long in the end (almost 10,000 words). I had to edit out a lot while still trying to keep the central ideas -- so if it does get accepted here I apologize to anyone whose ideas I did not get a chance to expressly include.

Thanks to all who sent me links and ideas.

[Dayuhan]

Meanwhile, our enemy in Afghanistan, the Taliban, was fighting motivated by their Collective Identity as Muslims. That motivation appeared to allow them to pull patriots from the population. That Collective Identity and the values associated with it was clearly a motivating factor among the insurgents. Once we realized the power of Collective Identity as a motivating factor in the target population should we have adjusted our COIN strategy? A similar question can be asked about legitimacy. If, in the target population, our efforts are seen as illegitimate, can we ever win?

I wonder about this. It is said that war is the continuation of politics by other means. It's also said that all politics are local. I have to wonder how many of those who fought - the actual fighters, not the leaders - were motivated by "collective identity" and how many were motivated by grievances or issues specific to their locality.

I do not think there's much point in trying to compromise with or reach accommodation with the leaders of these movements: they are too ideological and too deeply invested in goals that can only be achieved through violence. It may, however, be possible in some cases to disaggregate leaders from followers by addressing and resolving the concrete local issues that drive individual fighters to fight. I may be excessively attached to this idea because I've seen it work, and I certainly don't think it automatically applies everywhere. It's certainly worthy of consideration, though. I don't think we should ever assume that the motivations of the individuals carrying the rifles are the same as those of the leaders, or that a single set of motivations applies across any given movement.

It's certainly worth asking whether we can ever "win" in a place where our presence and efforts are seen by the populace as inherently illegitimate. Since "winning" is achieving one's objectives, we might be well advised to assess our objectives more carefully, and to determine before we start whether those objectives are compatible with local perceptions of legitimacy. The idea that a bit of "winning hearts and minds" can persuade a populace to accept and embrace the presence and agendas of an occupying army was always a bit optimistic.

[TheCurmudgeon]

I wonder about this. It is said that war is the continuation of politics by other means. It's also said that all politics are local. I have to wonder how many of those who fought - the actual fighters, not the leaders - were motivated by "collective identity" and how many were motivated by grievances or issues specific to their locality.

Collective Identity does not "motivate" or more correctly, initiate action -- it is how they defined themselves versus the enemy. The motivational trigger is something else, like a greivance or revenge. You can try to minimize the motivational affect of either one, but both need to be present for war.

I do not think there's much point in trying to compromise with or reach accommodation with the leaders of these movements: they are too ideological and too deeply invested in goals that can only be achieved through violence. It may, however, be possible in some cases to disaggregate leaders from followers by addressing and resolving the concrete local issues that drive individual fighters to fight. I may be excessively attached to this idea because I've seen it work, and I certainly don't think it automatically applies everywhere. It's certainly worthy of consideration, though. I don't think we should ever assume that the motivations of the individuals carrying the rifles are the same as those of the leaders, or that a single set of motivations applies across any given movement.

Agreed.

It's certainly worth asking whether we can ever "win" in a place where our presence and efforts are seen by the populace as inherently illegitimate. Since "winning" is achieving one's objectives, we might be well advised to assess our objectives more carefully, and to determine before we start whether those objectives are compatible with local perceptions of legitimacy. The idea that a bit of "winning hearts and minds" can persuade a populace to accept and embrace the presence and agendas of an occupying army was always a bit optimistic.

Be careful, that comment only applies to counterinsurgencies. Obviously our presence in Germany during WWII was seen as illigitimate by the Germans, none the less we won the war.

[Dayuhan]

Collective Identity does not "motivate" or more correctly, initiate action -- it is how they defined themselves versus the enemy. The motivational trigger is something else, like a greivance or revenge. You can try to minimize the motivational affect of either one, but both need to be present for war.

Agreed to an extent. We should not assume a generic "collective identity", though. Are the people we call "Taliban" necessarily identifying themselves as Taliban, or are they people with a localized grievance against government and the attitude that the enemy of the government is their friend? Maybe one, maybe the other, likely a bit of both, but the assumption that those we fight necessarily have a common definition of themselves vs the enemy is not always going to be valid.

Be careful, that comment only applies to counterinsurgencies. Obviously our presence in Germany during WWII was seen as illigitimate by the Germans, none the less we won the war.

I wouldn't say it applies only to counterinsurgency. Maybe better to say it applies to any situation in which the acceptance of the populace is either the goal in itself or a necessary element in achieving the goal. The point is that since "winning" is achieving the goal, the goal defines what "winning" is. If we want to "win", the first step is to start with a realistic goal.

[Bill Moore]

Getting near the end.

Here is one last paragraph I want to through out to for consideration.

Thanks to all that sent me links and commented on my ever evolving thoughts on this matter.

A thought or two on this. I sat in several joint planning groups where the group leader would identify the adversary's will to fight as the center of gravity. I didn't find this very useful, but it seems to parallel your proposal that perhaps we should consider targeting the adversary's motivation. I think this should always be considered, and of course most militaries have employed various forms of psychological operations in an attempt to achieve this, but usually based on my observations and in my studies these efforts largely fail. Identity politics seem to be more powerful than any carrots and sticks we can offer. Furthermore one person may have multiple reasons for fighting, and when examine the motivations of an Army, an insurgency, a counterinsurgent force, a gang, etc. I suspect you'll find multiple factors that interact to provide the motivation to fight. I have almost completely dismissed the idea that good governance (after an insurgency starts) will be sufficient in itself to bring an insurgency to an end. I also see absolutely no correlation with our nation building efforts to effectively "counter" an insurgency, yet we blindly assume if we provide jobs the insurgents will quit fighting despite the wealth of empirical evidence to indicate this assumption is not valid.

This idea presents perhaps the most interesting question generated by this exercise; does your strategy have to match the type of war your enemy is fighting in an insurgency/counterinsurgency fight? For example, our COIN strategy is built on Individual Identity. It sees civil rights and representative government associated with popular sovereignty as integral to pop-centric warfare. Meanwhile, our enemy in Afghanistan, the Taliban, was fighting motivated by their Collective Identity as Muslims. That motivation appeared to allow them to pull patriots from the population. That Collective Identity and the values associated with it was clearly a motivating factor among the insurgents. Once we realized the power of Collective Identity as a motivating factor in the target population should we have adjusted our COIN strategy? A similar question can be asked about legitimacy. If, in the target population, our efforts are seen as illegitimate, can we ever win? These questions can best be examined in relation to the motivational force Collective Identity and Legitimacy have. Unfortunately, I can only ask the question.

I'm not sure what COIN strategy you're referring to, because frankly I am not aware of one in Afghanistan. I definitely don't see any focused on individual identity, but rather trying to create a largely non-existent identity of an Afghan national. To offer an answer to your question, once we realized the power of the "various" collective identities in Afghanistan should we have adjusted our strategy? If our goal remains to build a national identity, then I our strategy definitely requires us to be aware of the various collective identities, but then we would need a way (I'm not proposing one exists) to convince them that first and foremost they should value their value as an Afghan national. In my opinion we tend to treat most of these insurgencies as a bilateral event between the government and its disaffected people, yet in reality it is normally a multilateral event with different views within the government (not unlike ours), and definitely multiple groups of combatants fighting for different reasons, so the ideal state of a "legitimate government" accepted by all seems to be unreachable in many cases. When we realize that, then we need to adjust our strategy to pursue an achievable end that is better than when we first intervened, but far from perfect. We don't do that, we simply get tired of trying to achieve the impossible and go home.

I completely dismiss the idea that all politics, thus motivation for fighting, are local. That disregards the many incidents of foreign fighters throughout history, to include the number of Americans who participated in the Spain's civil war (also Russians, Germans, Italians, etc.). Lots of folks are motivated to fight to pursue wealth (greed), a global political idea, spread their religion, etc. Like you said not much has really changed over the past few centuries when it comes to human nature.

[TheCurmudgeon]

A thought or two on this. I sat in several joint planning groups where the group leader would identify the adversary's will to fight as the center of gravity. I didn't find this very useful, but it seems to parallel your proposal that perhaps we should consider targeting the adversary's motivation. I think this should always be considered, and of course most militaries have employed various forms of psychological operations in an attempt to achieve this, but usually based on my observations and in my studies these efforts largely fail. Identity politics seem to be more powerful than any carrots and sticks we can offer. Furthermore one person may have multiple reasons for fighting, and when examine the motivations of an Army, an insurgency, a counterinsurgent force, a gang, etc. I suspect you'll find multiple factors that interact to provide the motivation to fight.

Bill,
Somewhere in the final version I mention that, while what psychologically motivates us to go to war may be a prime mover or first cause, I don’t advocate it as being the center of gravity in a war. It presents an opportunity to reduce the enemy’s success by helping to break their will or by dividing them against themselves, but these are nothing new.

What I did find interesting was that, by examining war in a pre-state society you find that identity is a necessary antecedent for war, not a cause. In modern times we look at war as the province of states so we don’t need to examine the question of how the population divides itself into side: how we determine who is “us” and who are “them”. If you take away the “us versus them” war becomes crime. If I murder a fellow American to take their land I am a criminal. If I kill a (fill in the blank with any indignant population that we colonized) to take their land (or “conquer” it), society accepts that. So while identity politics looks like it is the motivator, it is not. It in simply the way we determine who are the in-group and who is the out-group. Something else has to be added to the mix. Some other motivational trigger like revenge (honor) or greed (power).

This brought out another interesting observation that as Westerners adopt the idea of human rights and begin to see all people as being the same, the people who we decide we can go to war for, the "us", has expanded exponentially. Suddenly ideas like R2P make sense because one of the “us”, defined as all humans, is being attacked by one of the “them”, humans who act unjustly against another human. “Them” is now defined as the members of an unjust government. It is defined in terms of action, not in terms of ethnicity, nationality, or religion. See Dayuhan's comment in post 46 as an illistration of this idea.

I have almost completely dismissed the idea that good governance (after an insurgency starts) will be sufficient in itself to bring an insurgency to an end. I also see absolutely no correlation with our nation building efforts to effectively "counter" an insurgency, yet we blindly assume if we provide jobs the insurgents will quit fighting despite the wealth of empirical evidence to indicate this assumption is not valid.

I agree. Good governance does not really go to any of the motivations that I found. There are certain aspects of a good government, without which you can sustain the motivation to fight (or create new ones), but those are separate from the idea of good governance.

I'm not sure what COIN strategy you're referring to, because frankly I am not aware of one in Afghanistan. I definitely don't see any focused on individual identity, but rather trying to create a largely non-existent identity of an Afghan national. To offer an answer to your question, once we realized the power of the "various" collective identities in Afghanistan should we have adjusted our strategy? If our goal remains to build a national identity, then I our strategy definitely requires us to be aware of the various collective identities, but then we would need a way (I'm not proposing one exists) to convince them that first and foremost they should value their value as an Afghan national.

Funny, we kinda did that by putting infidels amongst them.

In my opinion we tend to treat most of these insurgencies as a bilateral event between the government and its disaffected people, yet in reality it is normally a multilateral event with different views within the government (not unlike ours), and definitely multiple groups of combatants fighting for different reasons, so the ideal state of a "legitimate government" accepted by all seems to be unreachable in many cases. When we realize that, then we need to adjust our strategy to pursue an achievable end that is better than when we first intervened, but far from perfect. We don't do that, we simply get tired of trying to achieve the impossible and go home.

Social engineering by force is a bad idea to start with. Not to say you can’t do it. I don’t have an answer for this one.

Like you said not much has really changed over the past few centuries when it comes to human nature.

I don’t think human nature has changed for the last 40,000 years. I think that the conditions humans find themselves in have changed, and that has caused humans to behave differently.