Fighting Ideas with Ideas

[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.

[invictus0972]

Really, all wars are about ideas.

Both sides try to convince the other that it's pointless or not worthwhile to keep risking your life for the ideas you're fighting for. Those ideas usually involve the widely held worldview of the each side -- who should rule, and how. Both winning and losing will profoundly influence ideas of who was right and wrong and why.

The U.S. Revolution was primarily fought over the idea of Independence. The U.S. Civil War was fought over the idea of preserving the union versus the right of self-determination.

Power, and my right to use it, is an idea many have fought and died for.

Most World War II victors -- Communists, Western Democracies and monarchies -- believed their collective ideas had triumphed over the twin ideas of fascism and militant royal imperialism. Many important battles took place in the arena of ideas.

The 30 Years War involved interpretations of religion and how they would affect political power.

The Arabic/Muslim conquests after the death of the Prophet were so successful because they were accompanied by religious ideas that a billion people continue to find compelling.

Turn the question on its head. Has any successful military compaign been devoid of ideas? Has any successful, long-lasting victory taken place in the absence of convincing the population that the victorious power deserves to rule?

Hi Vince!

Great post! In some respects, you are absolutely correct. All wars do come down to some kind of basic idea. However, I think there is a distinction to be made between what we are dealing with today and some of the examples you list above. At the end of the day, these were politico-economic wars. It is true that Germany was a fascist nation. However, Hitler's motives for invading his neighbors were mostly dominated from a geopolitical perspective. One of Hitler's rallying cries was a call for "lebensraum" or "living space". In other words, Hitler wanted to dominate Central Europe in order to increase the economic prosperity of Germany. This had a lot to do with the fact that Germany developed late as a nation state and did not have colonial possessions. He was not necessarily concerned with spreading fascism.

Contrary to popular belief, the Revolutionary War had less to do with liberty, equality, and fraternity than the belief that one should be free to make as much money as possible from whomever one chooses to market to, without unnecessary taxation. This is to say that it was a rejection of mercantilism. Of course issues of liberty were interwoven within the struggle, but the overarching motives behind the Revolutionary War were politics (system of governance) and economics (system of trade).

Your examples of the Thirty Years war and the Islamic invasion of the Middle East and beyond come closer to what we are referring to with ideological warfare, but they still fall a little short. The Thirty Years war was basically a rejection of a political system in which the Roman Catholic Church was tapping into the wealth of feudal rulers, and the Islamic invasion of the Middle East was one tribe establishing its dominance over another. However, you are right to suggest that ideologies played an important role in these conflicts, more so than the other examples.

Now, I finally get to my point. In all of the examples, there was something akin to a state or a tribe directing the conflicts. In the age of the information revolution, the state/tribal leaders have less control of the ideological perspectives of their constituencies. So, subcultures develop that are able to promulgate their ideologies through the internet, and they are able to mobilize others to commit acts of violence based merely on ideological factors. The "retreat of the state" has facilitated a new era when ideological factors are becoming more and more relevant. When we refer to waging the war of ideas, I think we are really trying to figure out how to convince millions of individuals not to participate in or support acts of violence. It has nothing to with tangible systems of politics and economics. On the contrary, conflicts in the future will be based on intangible things connected with culture and belonging.

[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?