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Abstract
Following costly military defeats political elites usually attempt to persuade their publics that the battlefield outcome was not a shameful defeat but a ‘moral victory’. Yet, only sometimes their public accepts these claims. The paper tries to explain this variation in the domestic publics' perceptions in the cases of non-democratic entities. It is argued that the key variable that determines actors' success in claiming a moral victory is the existence of certain battlefield elements, or at least symbolic military acts/achievements of the defeated actor which can persuade his public that these battlefield elements existed. Propaganda efforts to misrepresent the battlefield facts can play only a secondary role and only under certain conditions.
Notes
1Quoted in Kevin Woods and Mark Stout, ‘Saddam's Perceptions and Misperceptions: The Case of Desert Storm’, Journal of Strategic Studies 33/1 (Feb. 2010), 12–13.
2Dominic Johnson and Dominic Tierney, Failing to Win (Cambridge, MA: Harvard UP 2006), 62–3.
3Garth Jowett and Victoria O'Donnell, Propaganda and Persuasion (Thousand Oaks, CA.: Sage 2006), 238, 282.
4Barry Rubin, ‘Arab Politics: Back to Futility’, Middle East Quarterly 14/1 (Winter 2007), 60.
5Sarah Kreps, ‘The 2006 Lebanon War: Lessons Learned’, Parameters 37/1 (Spring 2007), 72–84.
6Marvin Kalb and Carol Saivetz, ‘The Israeli – Hezbollah War of 2006: The Media as a Weapon in Asymmetrical Conflict’, Harvard International Journal of Press/Politics 12/3 (July 2007), 53.
7John Horne, ‘Defeat and Memory in Modern History’, in Jenny Macleod (ed.), Defeat and Memory (London: Palgrave Macmillan 2008), 17.
8William C. Davis, Three Roads to the Alamo (New York: HarperCollins 1998), 557–8; Eloise Engle and Lauri Paananen, The Winter War (New York: Scribner's 1973), 142.
9Johnson and Tierney, Failing to Win, 288
10Richard Nisbett and Lee Ross, Human Inference: Strategies and Shortcomings of Social Judgment (Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall 1980), 45–62.
11Jowett and O'Donnell, Propaganda and Persuasion, 199, 279–280.
12Barak Kushner, The Thought War (Honolulu: Univ. of Hawai Press 2006), 12.
13The Chinese attempt to bury its defeat in the 1979 Sino-Vietnamese war is a rare exception that proves the rule. Even in this case we still lack access to gauge accurately the extent of the regime's success.
14When people have a low involvement with an issue they are more likely to rely on the expertise of the communicator, whereas when they care about the issue or distrust the communicator they will think more about it themselves. See Richard E. Petty and John T. Caccioppo, Communication and Persuasion: Central and Peripheral Routes to Attitude Change (New York: Springer Verlag 1986).
15Johnson and Tierney, Failing to Win, 38.
16Even though in reality the militarily victorious democracy's self-criticisms may reflect dashed expectations due to its own prior biases and expectations.
17Jervis argues that people will regard pieces of evidence that cannot be manipulated by the other actor (‘indices’) as more reliable than those that can be manipulated (‘signals’). Robert Jervis, The Logic of Images in International Relations (Princeton UP 1970), 64.
18Johnson and Tierney, Failing to Win, 295.
19Matthew Gray, Conspiracy Theories in the Arab World (New York: Routledge 2010), 41.
20Horne, ‘Defeat and Memory in Modern History’, 14.
21Patrick Finney, ‘The Stories of Defeated Aggressors’, in Macleod,Defeat and Memory, 99, 101.
22Horne, ‘Defeat and Memory in Modern History’, 12–13.
23Ibid., 15.
24Barry Rubin, The Tragedy of the Middle East (New York: Cambridge UP 2002), 70, 72.
25Kahlid Qashteini, Takween as-Sahauniyah (Beirut: al-Muasasa al-Arabiyah Lil-Dirasat wal-al-Nashr 1986).
26Efraim Karsh, Rethinking the Middle East (London: Frank Cass 2003), 103.
27Edmund Ghareeb, ‘New Media and the Information Revolution in the Arab World: An Assessment’, Middle East Journal 54/3 (Summer 2000), 397.
28Edward Djerejian, ‘From Conflict Management to Conflict Resolution’, Foreign Affairs 85/6 (Dec. 2006), 42.
29Anthony Nutting, Nasser (New York : E. Dutton 1972), 193–4; Walter Laqueur, The Road to War 1967 (London: Weidenfeld 1968), 36.
30Tabitha Petran, Syria (London: Ernest Benn1972), 240.
31Muhammad Hasanin Heikal, Autumn of Fury (London: Andre Deutsch 1983), 114
32Nadav Safran, From War to War (New York: Pegasus 1969), 386.
33Samir Mutawi, Jordan in the 1967 War (New York: Cambridge UP 1987), 171.
34George Gawrych, The Albatross of Decisive Victory (Westport, CT: Greenwood 2000), 145.
35Moshe Maoz, Asad (London: Weidenfeld 1988), 90.
36Barry Rubin, Revolution Until Victory? (Cambridge, MA: Harvard UP 1994), 59.
37Ibid., 62.
38Mark Tessler, A History of the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict, 2nd Edition (Bloomington, IN: Indiana UP 2009), 634.
39Janet Wallach and John Wallach, Arafat: In the Eyes of the Beholder (New York: Lyle Stuart 1990), 237.
40Emile Sahliyeh, The PLO After the Lebanon War (Boulder, CO: Westview Press 1986), 35.
41Shibley Telhami, ‘Arab Public Opinion and the Gulf War’, Political Science Quarterly 108/3 (Autumn 1993), 444.
42Jerrold M. Post and Amatzia Baram, Saddam Is Iraq: Iraq is Saddam, The Counterproliferation Papers Future Warfare Series 17 (Maxwell AFB, AL: US Air University 2002), 22–3.
43The Palestinian Center for Policy and Survey Research, Public Opinion Poll # 4 (15–19 May 2002), <http://www.pcpsr.org/survey/polls/2002/p4a.html#evaluation>.
44Quoted in Efraim Karsh, Arafat's War (New York: Grove 2003), 240.
45Helena Cobban, ‘The 33-Day War: Hizbullah's Victory, Israel's Choice’, The Boston Review, Dec. 2006.
46Quoted in Reinoud Leenders, ‘How the Rebel Regained His Cause: Hizbullah and the Sixth Arab-Israeli War’, MIT Journal of Middle East Studies 6 (Summer 2006), 42.
47Shibley Telhami, ‘America in Arab Eyes’, Survival 49/1 (Spring 2007), 117.
48Diaa Hadid, ‘Hamas Marks 1 Year after War, but Many Stay Home’, Associated Press, 27 Dec. 2009.
49Jack Khoury and Barak Ravid, ‘Source: Hamas Raised Price for Shalit Due to Barak's Irresponsible Behavior’, Ha'aretz, 8 May 2011.
50Bernard Lewis, ‘The Consequences of Defeat’, Foreign Affairs 46/2 (Jan. 1968), 333.
51Richard Parker, The October War: a Retrospective (Gainesville: U P of Florida 2001), 100, 104.
52David Stone, Wars of the Cold War (London: Brassey's 2004), 217.
53Safran, From War to War, 253–5.
54Elie Podeh, ‘The Lie That Will not Die: Collusion, 1967’, Middle East Quarterly 11/1 (Fall 2004), 51–62.
55Michael Oren, Six Days of War (New York: Oxford UP 2002), 217–18.
56Lewis, ‘The Consequences of Defeat’, 332.
57John Amos, Arab-Israeli Military/Political Relations (New York: Pergamon 1979), 69.
58Kenneth Pollack, Arabs at War (Lincoln: Univ. of Nebraska Press 2002), 38.
59Amos, Arab-Israeli Military/Political Relations, 67.
60Pollack, Arabs at War, 467.
61Edward Lutwak, Coup d'Etat: A Practical Handbook (Cambridge, MA: Harvard UP 1979), 64.
62Gawrych, The Albatross of Decisive Victory, 192–3.
63US News and World Report, Triumph without Victory (New York: Times Books 1992), 405–6, 412.
64Kevin Woods et al., ‘Iraqi Military Effectiveness’, in Thomas Mahnken and Thomas Keaney (eds.), War in Iraq: Planning and Execution (New York: Routledge 2007), 23.
65The 1973 war was ten times more costly for Syria than the 1967 war, with losses of 800 tanks and nearly 6,000 soldiers, in comparison to a loss of merely 86 tanks and 600 men in the 1967 war. Patrick Seale, Asad (Berkeley: Univ. of California Press 1989), 211.
66Lawrence Tal, Politics, the Military and National Security in Jordan, 1955–1967 (New York: PalgraveMacmillan 2002), 120.
67Mutawi, Jordan in the 1967 War, 164.
68Alexander Bligh, ‘The Jordanian Army between Domestic and External Challenges’, in Barry Rubin and Thomas Keaney (eds.), Armed Forces in the Middle East (London, Frank Cass 2001), 157.
69Quoted in Hani al-Shuma, Maa'rik Khalida fi Ta'rikh al-Jaysh al-Arabi al-Suri (Damascus: al-Tiba'a al-Suriyya, 1988), 35.
70Seale, Asad, 143.
71Yehoshafat Harkabi, ‘Basic Factors in the Arab Collapse During the Six-Day War’, Orbis 11/3 (Fall 1967), 677–– 91
72Oren, Six Days of War, 310.
73Faleh Abd al-Jabar, ‘Why the Intifada Failed’, in Fran Hazelton (ed.) Iraq since the Gulf War (London: Zed Books 1994), 107.
74Charles Wakebridge, ‘The Syrian Side of the Hill’, Military Review 56/2 (Feb. 1976), 27.
75Michael Barnett, Dialogues in Arab Politics: Negotiations in Regional Order (New York: Columbia UP 1998), 197–8.
76Maoz, Asad, 91.
77The PLO lost 1,500 of its 15,000 fighters, whereas Egypt lost 10,000–15,000 out of its army of 160,000.
Martin van Creveld, ‘The War: A Questioning Look’, Jerusalem Post, 12 Dec. 1982.
78W. Andrew Terrill, ‘The Political Mythology of the Battle of Karameh’, Middle East Journal 55/1 (Winter 2001), 92.
79Yoram Cohen and Jeffrey White, Hamas in Combat: The Military Performance of the Palestinian Islamic Resistance Movement, Washington Institute for Near East Policy, Policy Focus 97, 15 Oct. 2009.
80Al-Hayat Al-Jadida, 12 Jan. 2009. Quoted in MEMRI, ‘Fatah and P.A. Representatives: What Victory Is Mash'al Talking About?’ 21 Jan. 2009, <www.memri.org/report/en/print3037.htm>.
81His Majesty King Hussein, Hussein of Jordan: ‘My War’ with Israel (New York: William Morrow 1969), 112.
82Adeed Dawisha, ‘Syria under Asad, 1970–1978: the Centers of Power’, Government and Opposition 13/3 (July 1978), 353.
83Amos Harel, ‘Sources: Hamas Leaders Hiding in Basement of Israel-built Hospital in Gaza’, [12 Jan. 2009.
84Al Jazeera TV, 4 Jan. 2009.
85Gamal Hamad, al-Maarik al-Harbiya ala al-Gebha al-Misriy: Harb Oktobir 1973, al-Ashr Min Ramadan (Cairo: al-Zuhra lil-Ilam al-Arabi, 1989), 154, 794–6; Hassan el-Badri, Taha el Magdoub, Mohammed Dia al-Din Zohdy, The Ramadan War, 1973 (New York: Hippocrene Books 1973), 78–9.
86Parker, The October War, 100.
87Quoted in Kevin Woods, The Mother of All Battles (Annapolis, MD.: Naval Institute Press 2008), 15.
88Hussein, Hussein of Jordan: ‘My War’ with Israel, 98, 106–7, 110.
89Seale, Asad, 199.
90Amos Harel and Avi Issacharoff, 34 Days (New York: Palgrave Macmillan 2008), 138–142; Hezbollah's website Al Intikad, ‘Diary of 19 July, 2006: Aytaroun and Maroun Al-Rass Confrontations’, <http://english.moqawama.org/essaydetails.php?eid=11766&cid=263>.
91Cohen and White, Hamas in Combat, 14
92Amos Harel, ‘Which IDF Unit Captured More Prisoners in Gaza and Why?’ Haaretz, 3 March 2009.
93Yoav Limor and Ofer Shelah, Captives in Lebanon (Tel Aviv: Yediot Ahronot 2007), 98–9 [Hebrew].
94Itzhak Ben Israel, ‘The First Missile War: Israel-Hezbollah (Summer 2006)’, Position Paper, The Hartog School of Government, Tel Aviv University, May 2007, <http://spirit.tau.ac.il/government/Downloads/YitzakBIMissiles.pdf>, 36.
95Amos Harel, ‘Sources: Hamas Fired Anti-aircraft Missiles at IAF Planes’, Haaretz, 11 Jan. 2009; Cohen and White, Hamas in Combat, 11–12.
96Uzi Rubin, ‘An Active Defense against Rockets and Missiles: The Lessons of Operation Cast Lead and The 2006 Lebanon War’, BESA Center Perspectives Papers 69, 19 Feb. 2009, <www.biu.ac.il/SOC/besa/docs/perspectives69En.pdf>, 2.
97Cohen and White, Hamas in Combat, 13–14.
98Amos, Arab-Israeli Military/Political Relations, 71–2.
99Oren Barak and Assaf David, ‘How the New Arab Media Challenges the Arab Militaries: The Case of the War between Israel and Hizbullah in 2006’, The Middle East Institute Policy Brief 20 (Oct. 2008), 1–9.
100Ali Isa Khalaf, Al-Hisar: Yawmiyat Bairut, 82 (Amman: Dar Ibn Rushd 1983).
101Yezid Sayigh, Armed Struggle and the Search for State (New York: Oxford UP 1997), 541.
102Ahron Bregman, Elusive Peace: How the Holy Land Defeated America (London: Penguin Books 2005), 204–205.
103PBS/BBC Documentary ‘Elusive Peace: Israel and the Arabs’.
104Moshe Ya'alon, The Longer Shorter Way (Tel-Aviv: Yediot Ahronot, 2008), Ch. 10 [Hebrew].
105The Palestinian Center for Policy and Survey Research, Public Opinion Poll # 4 (15–19 May, 2002), <www.pcpsr.org/survey/polls/2002/p4a.html#evaluation>.
106Al-Manar TV, 14 Aug. 2008, <http://english.moqawama.org/essaydetails.php?eid=4855&cid=238>.
107P.J. Vatikiotis, Nasser and His Generation (London: Croom Helm 1978), 277.
108Woods, The Mother of All Battles, 299.
109Al Manar TV, Morning Edition 17 Jan. 2007.
110Charles McClellan, ‘Observations on the Ethiopian Nation, Its Nationalism, and the Italo-Ethiopian War’,
Northeast African Studies 3/1 (1996), 65.
111John Russell, ‘Mujahedeen, Mafia, Madmen’, Journal of Post-Communist Studies and Transition Politics 18/1 (March 2002), 75.
112Arthur James Barker, Rape of Ethiopia, 1936 (New York: Ballantine 1971), 56.
113McClellan, ‘Observations on the Ethiopian Nation’, 61.
114Carlotta Gall and Thomas de Waal, Chechnya: Calamity in the Caucasus (NY: New York UP 1998), 177–181.