I’m reading How Democracies Lose Small Wars by Gil Merom. The main thesis is that domestic unwillingness to countenance brutality has caused democracies to lose small wars against militarily inferior insurgent movements since 1945. To make the argument, it’s necessary to show that, when these pressures weren’t so severe, victory in war generally went to the stronger party.
Merom presents a number of examples including the Athenian destruction of Melos, Cromwell’s war in Ireland, the Roman suppression of the Jewish revolt, German operations in SW Africa, Saddam vs the Kurds and Shiites, China and Tibet, Indonesia and East Timor and the Germans and Japanese in World War II. Merom argues that, in all these cases, unscrupulous brutality proved successful.
Yet in every case cited by Merom, a long-term view yields the opposite outcome. The Athenians lost the war and their hegemonic power, as of course did the Germans and Japanese in World War II. Ireland, East Timor and Israel are independent states, identifying in each case with the side described by Merom as the losers – Tibet isn’t yet, but I’m happy to predict it will become so. And then, of course, there’s Saddam.
No doubt better examples could be found, but I think Merom is misled by the false claim that is fundamental to the “realist” theory of international relations, namely, that military power can be used effectively to promote national interests[1]. As Brad DeLong noted a while ago, the classic refutation of this international realism was put forward in Norman Angell’s The Great Illusion .
Angell argued that in a globalised free-market economic system[2] no economic benefit could be generated even by successful wars of conquest. Writing for a British audience, Angell’s basic point was that, even if Germany succeeded in establishing political mastery in Europe, workers in the newly subjected countries would still have to be paid, goods would have to be purchased at market prices and so on. Hence, individual Germans would gain nothing from being part of a larger country.
Angell’s argument anticipated many points made by the advocates of globalization in the late 20th century. However, seeking to counteract the rising pressure for war, he argued that Germans would correctly perceive their own self-interest and would therefore not support an aggressive war. He was rapidly proved false on this point, by the outbreak of World War I in 1914. Nevertheless, the War confirmed his view that attempts to gain economic advantage through military power had become obsolete. Both sides suffered catastrophic losses. The attempt by the victors to recoup some of their losses through the reparations imposed in the Treaty of Versailles proved both fruitless and economically disastrous.
Angell was right about the futility of war, but wrong in predicting that it wouldn’t happen. Unfortunately, he is more remembered for being wrong than for being right.
fn1. This is not to say that military power is useless. As long as the rulers of other countries (or non-state groups like Al Qaeda) believe that war may be in their interests, it is necessary to defend ourselves against them.
fn2. The argument easily extends to social democracies, and to any state that acts in the interests of its citizens. War makes political sense only in societies ruled by military castes or predatory autocrats (unfortunately, the great majority of societies in human history fall into this class).
John Quiggin 
it occurs to me that in these cases and others the cost becomes unbearable and unsustainable as it is in all dictatorships ie at some time.
Indeed in some cases it leads to their downfall.
The beauty of Democracy is that peole eventaully wake up and get rid of people in power.
The realists are cynics about power, rather than realists. Brutality by the occupying power against insurgents will only be popular if the insurgents are unpopular.
The French used considerable brutality against Arab civilians in attempting to put down the Algerian uprising, and failed.
The Nazis used considerable brutality against civilians in attempting to put down the Russian partisans, and failed.
The Soviets used considerable brutality against civilians in attempting to put down the Ukrainian, Chechen & Afghanistan nationalist movements, and failed.
The Americans, and ARVN, used considerable brutality against Vietnamese civilians in attempting to put down the VietCong guerillas, and failed.
The Japanese used considerable brutality against the Chinese civilians in attempting to put down the Nationalist and Communist resistance, and failed.
It is much cheaper to buy a countries leadership and then let the domestics do the civil rule, rather than impose alien rule by military force.
Thus Japan controls more of the labour and capital of the Greater South East Asian Co-Prosperity sphere now than it did in WWII, without having to garrison a single soldier in these nations.
I’m baffled:
Merom presents a number of examples including the Athenian destruction of Melos, Cromwell’s war in Ireland, the Roman suppression of the Jewish revolt, German operations in SW Africa, Saddam vs the Kurds and Shiites, China and Tibet, Indonesia and East Timor and the Germans and Japanese in World War II.
What have these got to do with democracy?
Mike, these examples are meant to show that non-democratic powers can win the kind of wars that democratic powers lose.
You’re right in taking the long view, as Ireland, East Timor etc. demonstrate.
However, I doubt you’ve proven your point that all wars are futile, or that military power isn’t effective. What is clear, however, is that military power isn’t always effective and its use can be counter-productive.
Here’s a (admittedly subjective) list of wars won by democracies where the relative standard of brutality (on the democracies’ side) was arguably low.
Gulf War II – Iraq defeated by US & allies (on balance, a victory – pro: Saddam & Baathists gone; con: anarchic shambles left behind)
Gulf War I – Iraq defeated by US & allies
Falklands War – Argentine military junta defeated by Brits
Yom Kippur War – Israelis defeat Egyptians, Syrians, etc.
Six Day War – Israelis defeat Egyptians etc.
Malayan insurgency – Brits defeat Malayan communist insurgents
Korean War – US and allies defeat North Koreans & Chinese
The deciding factor is not whether the winner is democratic or not, but who has the greater military strength and/or willingness to suffer casualties. The post-WWII colonial wars lost by the imperial or neo-imperial powers were lost due to the expense (in lives and materiel) of suppressing nationalist movements. Democracy had nothing to do with the victory of the Algerians, Vietnamese and Afghans – to name a few – over their colonisers, and everything to do with the expensiveness of suppressing popular nationalist movements. That is, military power alone rarely (if ever) works in counter-insurgency warfare.
John,
Sorry, that sentence must be the most perfect tautology I have ever seen.
Apart from Vietnam, I am having trouble thinking of a war that democracy lost. Somalia perhaps?
Merom’s examples are Vietnam, the French in Algeria, and Israel in Lebanon.
He clearly doesn’t want to include conventional wars like Yom Kippur and GW I [and the invasion phase of GW2 for that matter]. In fact, part of his argument would be that the ease with which such wars have been won is indicative of the greatly superior military strength of the democracies in the period under study.
The deciding factor is not whether the winner is democratic or not, but who has the greater military strength and/or willingness to suffer casualties.
The deciding factor of whether the war stays won, when the democratic combatant has the clear edge in military power, is whether it enjoys the support of the contested population. This appears to be the case in the wars nominated, despite the fact that considerable violence against civilian areas occurred in some of these cases:
Gulf War I
Falklands War
Yom Kippur War
Malayan insurgency
Korean War
Another configuration of the various lists above would be to say that democracies win violent wars which are primarily wars of defence. Democracies lose wars of aggression because it involves the suppression of a subject population and the support of governments which are not legitimised. This leads either to the brutalisation of the occupying power, or the withdrawal of support by an appalled population at home.
The key is legitimacy. In the Falklands, for instance, Thatcher and the bellicose press worked hard to achieve the support of the British public and it was represented as a war of aggression against plucky Anglo sheep farmers. It was not considered to be the reseizure of islands by a colonial power ruling a place far from home. The actual welfare of the islanders – ostensibly the object of the exercise – could easily have been dealt with in other ways. Repatriation, for instance….
Jack Strocchi and David Tiley both make (at least) one good point: namely that democratic states struggle to impose their will on the people of other countries. Democratic states are particularly bad at waging counter-insurgency wars against foreigners because there is rarely any benefit worth the cost, both economic and moral. The one exception that proves the rule is the Malayan insurgency, where the British were able to exploit the ethnic tension between Chinese and Malays to defeat the communists (who tended to be Chinese, and thus in the ethnic minority).
It’s also worth stating that the ease with which wealthy democratic states defeat militarily inferior rivals arguably encourages these democracies to use force more often. If the USA had not won such a lopsided victory in Gulf War I, it’s possible that Presidents Clinton and Bush jnr. would not have been so cavalier in Somalia, Bosnia and Iraq. If military force works, democracies will use it.
David Tiley’s suggestion of ethnic cleansing for the Falkland Islands is contemptible, precisely the attitude of the Foreign Office that was rejected by the islanders down the years (I should declare an interest: my grandfather was an itinerant schoolteacher in West Falkland in the late 19th century).
JQ has seriously misread things. The whole issue is enough violence, properly applied. It’s Machiavelli’s principle of “never do a man a small injury”. Cromwell, for instance, did not do a thorough job on Ireland, and JQ’s example there is refuted by incompleteness – Ulster still has the transformation needed for success. It’s described by Buchan towards the end of the Ireland chapter of his life of Cromwell:
“Any scheme of government based solely on the interests of the resident alien is doomed in the long run to failure, unless by massacre and banishment such aliens are made the bulk of the population.”
JQ’s examples of Melos and Israel are also spurious. Israel’s present identity rests on a later and qquite distinct reversal of history; the people in place before that were the result of changes to the area’s demographics (though not ethnicity – most Palestinians are the distant descendants of earlier Jews). And Melos was completely changed by Athens; the failure of the Athenian war against Sparta in no sense diminished the complete success of that one campaign (hint: why did you call it “Melos” and not “Malos”? the island was resettled with Athenian colonists with a different dialect, and their descendants carried the island’s hostory forward). And East Timor was not subjected to genocide (failed attempts don’t count – that’s the whole point). And so on.
On the other hand these methods have been used by democracies, notoriously by the USA against the civilised tribes. Oh, by the way, the USA has lost wars, e.g. the British-American war of the late Napoleonic period (they attacked and gained not one of their war aims through violence). The rest of the US track record came from picking fights carefully, an option it has not had since it crowded out the other powers doing world policing jobs (we may date that to Suez).
Falklands war is interesting because the winners were actually the losers.The big winners were the argentinians because it led to the collapse of the junta.
But the british will be losers in the long run,who can seriously defend the morality of occupying those little islands just off argentina.
The cost to the british economy is ridiculous and eventually the land will be handed back to the rightful owners.
“…who can seriously defend the morality of occupying those little islands just off argentina.” Me. The people who live there are British in the larger sense, and there never was any Argentinian connection – although, around the time the Argentinians tried to take over Paraguay, they tried to set up in the Falklands. (The attempt failed, and they were displaced by mutineers who various others tried to put down; the British finally succeeded.) It’s not like the geographical facts are meaningful, or Singapore would be Malaysian and Taiwan would be part of mainland China.
“The cost to the british economy is ridiculous” – true enough, unfortunately – “and eventually the land will be handed back to the rightful owners.” But the rightful owners do have it now – the descendants of the settlers who were moved in to stop pirates having a power vacuum to take advantage of, they way they had after the Argentinian failure. There’s lots more history than that, but the plain fact is that the only Argentinian claim rests on something they failed at, with no British shove pushing them out. That’s to say, they have even less claim than the French have to New Zealand, where the British did eject them.
If it was all about geography, Australia would be part of Asia… (Just don’t tell Mr Howard that)
The whole Falklands war seems kinda pointless. I could think better things to do than invade a bunch of sheep farms.
I know what “ethnic cleansing means”. Graves, torture, mass shootings..
P.M. has read rather more blood and frenzy into my remarks than I had intended. I was merely suggesting that the repatriation of the English speaking population of the Falklands in a way which would have set them up nicely on (say) farms purchased in Scotland by the British government would have been a lot cheaper and a lot less violent than what actually happened.
Anyone who saw the extended footage of the British army in action would have wondered whether the violence was worth the objective.
However, my guess is that the real objectives were a little more extensive – control over seabed, perhaps a southern base, perhaps discouraging the repulsive Guatemalans from attacking Belize.
I would also suggest that the Thatcher government was a good deal less interested in defending the civil rights and culture of Hong Kong than the Falklands which does rather poke a hole in the integrity of their position..
In fact, it is David Tiley who “has read rather more blood and frenzy into my remarks than I had intended.” (Although he should ask if what he meant was likely to happen to the islanders who resisted changes to their way of life, under that regime. There is a menace in allowing euphemisms, as they let through what they hide.)
What he describes explicitly is ethnic cleansing; he has taken the term to mean what it concealed by euphemism. But even the mere changing of demographics on the ground, done by the means he outlines, is vicious; it destroys people’s very lives, by wiping out all they physically had that they found identity through, their homes, their livelihoods, their connections, their personal autonomy. It makes broken men.
As for the reasoning that the British government should have set them up in Scotland, not only does it throw the cost on the victim and reward the aggressor, it also moves food from mouth to mouth by reducing the opportunities for Scots who were there before; only new opportunities can help without making yet more losers down the chain. You might want to see what was done for the St. Kilda islanders in the 1930s when their home had to be evacuated – it was about the least worst that could be done.
The violence of the retaliation was worth it, in that we were defending our own. The right response to aggression does involve making them not come out ahead, even if at the time that seems to cost more – the policy costs less in the end.
Thatcher’s own motives were mostly fear at the public response, based on guilty knowledge that it had wound back the very things that had previously kept the Falklands safe even under the Labour government just before (with my personal interest, I had been following all this, and even dropped in at the Falkland Islands Association). It’s not and never was a civil rights thing. It’s righteous indignation against aggression that touches us personally.
P.M. – I wasn’t suggesting abandoning the Islanders to the Argies; merely that there were probably other solutions, which would have had the separate good effects of more people alive and less treasure wasted.
These are not absolutes. If the Argentinians, motivated by oil and seabeds etc, actually ran an effective government, and turned the whole thing into a long messy draining conflict, the Brits are entitled to say at some point that it is a greater moral good to cut and run. And take the Islanders somewhere else.
I wonder about the absolutist position that says loss of terrain is psychically harmful. This whole country was formed from people who were dragged from their ancient druidical homeland etc etc and dumped here in an alien world. I myself was rendered a stranger to my native land by my parents desire to come here..
We come from a culture which is much less attached to and embedded in landscape than many others.
I must say I find David’s remarks quite disturbing. On what authority does he assert that it is acceptable on any level to wipe out this small and inoffensive community? Argentina has no right to use force to claim the Falkland Islands.
AP – DT is essentially recapitulating the soft-pedalled Foreign Office line from before the war, that misled the Argentinians. It had been explicitly repudiated by the islanders each and every time one or another Sir Humphrey type, a moral vacuum, arrived to try to sell the ideas all over again.
The natural line of such an approach is that eventually the bureaucrats misrepresent this one sided consultation as agreement, pretending that the principle had been conceded and that discussions were only over terms. They make out that all reasonable discussion had been done, and the victims need not be consulted further, that there was only a requirement to address their interests and not abide by their wishes. Only address – not even meet, and not as defined by them either.
It’s a pattern of the petty tyrant everywhere. At an individual level I have experienced it myself. Yet they quite sincerely remain unaware of what is wrong, they think that they bent every effort to helping and that that entitles them to ignore “no” as an answer. There are rapists like that. And DT is unaware of what he is pushing that is so wrong. Well, if he is unaware that agreement and understanding must be obtained rather than merely requested, we might as well stop trying to show him and just stop him and any other DT’s from treading on our lives.