![Sample our Politics & International Relations journals, sign in here to start your FREE access for 14 days]({"type":"image" , "src" : "/sda/5947/TOC-Subject-Sample-2021-Politics-International-Relations.jpg"})
ABSTRACT
Taking risks might be encouraged, both in business and military strategy, when the potential price of losing would not be excessive while the gains in winning, worth wagering such a bet. In military contexts, a side set on aggression and conquest might take such a risk. Chance, fortuna, determining the outcome of risk taking has been seen differently throughout history – fatalistically, as prevalent in the Middle Ages – as been something that could not be influenced, or, as in Antiquity and in more recent times, as a factor open to influence by the astute and forceful military commander, or to prudent planners. New situations could be seen as dangerous and risky, with risks against which one has to hedge. Or they could be seen as a chance to change things in one’s own interest. This might be done through extensive contingency planning, or by seizing an opportunity quickly, applying the genius general’s coup d’oeil to turn a new development to one’s advantage, always conscious that this was a gamble and the outcome uncertain. While such a gamble could win or lose a battle and in turn a war, in the nuclear age, such a gamble would seem difficult to justify given the potential negative outcomes.
Acknowledgements
The author thanks Benoît Pélopidas for the idea for this article and both him and Professor Yakov Ben-Haim for critical comments, and Eleonore Buffet Heuser and Margherita Seu for their help with the research.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).
Notes
1 ‘In der Schlacht hat das glück mehr herrschung als die mannheit’. Adam Junghans von der Olßnitz, Krigsordnung zu Wasser und Landt : Kurzer und Eigentlicher Underricht aller Kriegshändel … reviewed by Adreas Reutter von Speyer (Cologne: Wilhelm Lützenkirchen 1595), 113.
2 For examples, see http://pomohahaha.blogspot.com/2013/05/hsbc-ads.html, accessed on 7 IV 2021.
3 ‘chance, n., adj., and adv’. Oxford English Dictionary Online (Oxford: Oxford University Press March 2019), www.oed.com/view/Entry/30418. Accessed 16 April 2019.
4 ‘everything that can go wrong will go wrong’.
5 See for example the statue of Tyche in the Archaeological Museum of Istanbul, a Roman copy of a Greek original of the 4th century BCE, https://web.archive.org/web/20111011120826/http://www.istanbularkeoloji.gov.tr/web/27-114-1-1/muze_-_en/collections/archaeological_museum_artifacts/statue_of_tyche accessed on 14 IV 2019.
6 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fortuna_Redux#/media/File:Fortuna_Redux_dupondius-Didius_Julianus-RIC_0012.png, Wikimedia Commons, accessed on 29 July 2022.
7 Plutarch, Life of Caesar, 38.5; see also Elizabeth Tappan, “Julius Caesar’s Luck”, The Classical Journal 27/1 (October 1931), 3–14.
8 By permission granted on 26 July 2022, order Order # 133446, ID 01613693160 and 01613693161.
9 As depicted in Wolfgang Christian Schneider, “Christus Victor in der Roma Caelestis: Antike Siegesmotivik“, in Anton von Euw & Peter Schreiner (eds), Kaiserin Theophanu, Vol. 1 (Cologne: Locher for the Schnütgen Museum, 1991), 229f.
10 Plautus, Trinummus, 2.2.
11 Flavius Renatus Vegetius, Epitoma de re militari (ca. 387), trans. by N. P. Milner: Epitome of Military Science, 2nd ed. (Liverpool: University of Liverpool Press 1996), 116–19.
12 On depictions of Fortuna and their relation to texts, see Aby Warburg, Bilderatlas Mnemosyne, Vol. II, 1 ed. by Martin Warnke with Claudia Brink (Berlin: Akademie 2003).
13 Ausonius, Epigrams, XXXIII. — In Simulacrum Occasionis et Paenitentiae, English translation by Hugh Evelyn White, Loeb Classical Library (London: William Heinemann 1921).
14 Giulia Bordignon, Monica Centanni, Silvia Urbini, with Alice Barale, Antonella Sbrilli, Laura Squillaro, ‘Fortuna during the Renaissance: A reading of Plate 48 of Aby Warburg’s Bilderatlas Mnemosyne’, in Engramma Vol. 137 (August 2016). http://www.engramma.it/eOS/index.php?id_articolo=2975 accessed on 18 April 2019.
15 Bettina Sejbjerg Sommer, ‘The Norse Concept of Luck’, Scandinavian Studies 79/3 (autumn 2007), 275–94.
16 16 Luke 19–31.
17 All examples depicted in Schneider, ‘Christus Victor in der Roma Caelestis’, 244f.
18 For Western traditions of victory and battle, see Beatrice Heuser, ‘Comment une bataille devient-elle mythique ?’, Res Militaris 11/1 (Winter-Spring 2021).
19 Beatrice Heuser, ‘Defeats as moral victories’, in Andrew Hom & Cian O’Driscoll (eds), Moral Victories: The Ethics of Winning Wars (Oxford: Oxford University Press 2017), 52–68.
20 © British Library Board (Additional MS 10294 f. 89), permission granted on 29 July 2022.
21 For examples, see Warburg, Bilderatlas, II.1, passim.
22 A. Hilka, O. Schumann, B. Bischoff (eds), Carmina Burana (Munich: DTV 1979), Cantus 18.
23 Ibid., Cantus 17.
24 Symphorien Champier, Les Proverbes des Princes (Lyon: Guillaume Balsavin 1502), no pagination : « [F]ortune la diverse ne tient pas tousjours ses promesses. Car fortune est la mère de tristesse, de douleurs, et de afflictions ; et en elle na point de constance et ne demeure jamais en vng estre. Et pource quant on demandoit a appelles : lequel estoit maistre de tous les princes et estoit philosophe pourquoiy il boutoit en paincture fortune assise : & en vng siege il disoit que la cause estoit : Car fortune iamais ne pouoit estre en yng lieu mais estoit muable & pour ce la voloit asseoir en son siege affin que ne bougast dorenauant. ».
25 Quoted in Malik Mufti ‘Jihad as Statecraft: Ibn Khaldun’, in Jean Baechler and Jean-Vincent Holeindre (eds), Penseurs de la Stratégie (Paris : Hermann 2014), 72.
26 Geoffroi de Charny, Livre de Chevalerie (c. 1350), trans. Elspeth Kennedy: A Knight’s Own Book of Chivalry (Philadelphia, PA: University of Pennsylvania Press 2005), Sec. 24, 73–76.
27 Kate Langdon Forhan, The Political Theory of Christine de Pizan (Aldershot: Ashgate 2002), 69, 145, 149, 164f; Beatrice Heuser, ‘Christine de Pizan, the first Modern Strategist: Good Governance and Conflict Mediation, in id. Strategy before Clausewitz (Abingdon: Routledge 2017), 32–47.
28 Le Livre de Fais d’Armes et Chevalerie, trans. by Sumner Willard, ed. by Charity Cannon Willard: The Book of Deeds of Arms and of Chivalry (University Park, PA: Pennsylvania State University Press 1999), 19.
29 Joachim Leeker, ‘Fortuna by Machiavelli – an inheritance of a tradition?’ Romanische Forschungen, 101/4 (1989), 419.
30 Niccolò Machiavelli, Il Principe (1532) trans as The Prince (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press 2016), 85.
31 Niccolò Machiavelli, Discorsi (1531), 29, 74.
32 Machiavelli, Principe, 85.
33 Hanna Pitkin, Fortune is a Woman Gender & Politics in the Thought of Noccolo Machiavelli 2nd ed. (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press 1999), 25.
34 Machiavelli, Principe, 55.
35 J. M. Najemy, A Cambridge Companion to Machiavelli (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press 2010), 196.
36 Machiavelli, Discorsi, 67, 236.
37 Discorsi, 234f.
38 Machiavelli, Principe, 19, 22.
39 Ibid., [Il Principe], 23, 54, 61.
40 Ibid., [Il Principe], 55.
41 https://www.britannica.com/topic/Fortuna-Roman-goddess, accessed on 9 IV 2021.
42 Monica Centanni, ‘Velis Nolisve. Anfibologia nell’anima e nel corpo di un’impresa Sulla medaglia di Camillo Agrippa (Roma, ca. 1585)’, Engramma No. 162 (2019). Image reproduction by courtesy of the American Numismatic Society.
43 Elizabeth Thompson, ‘Fortuna during the Renaissance: A reading of Panel 48 of Aby Warburg’s Bilderatlas Mnemosyne’, Engramma No. 137 (2016), http://www.engramma.it/eOS/index.php?id_articolo=2975 accessed on 8 VI 2021.
44 Quoted in Ferdinand Foch, The Principles of War trs by Hilaire Belloc (London: Chapman & Hall 1918), 17.
45 Maurice de Saxe, Mes Rêveries, Engl Traslation in Thomas Phillips (ed.): Roots of Strategy Vol. 1 (Mechanicsburg, PA: Stackpole Books 1985), 294, 296.
46 Giacomo di Porcia, Clarissimi viri … de re militaris liber; trans. by Peter Betham: The preceptes of Warre set forth by James the Erle of Purlilia (London: E. Whytchurche, 1544), ch. 1, see also ch. 94.
47 Ibid., 47.
48 Lazarus von Schwendi, Freyherr zu Hohen Landsperg etc: Kriegsdiscurs, von Bestellung deß ganzen Kriegswesens unnd von den Kriegsämptern (Frankfurt/Main: Andree Weichels Erben Claudi de Marne & Johan Aubri, 1593), pp. 45-47.
49 Geoffrey Parker, Imprudent King: A New Life of Philip II (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press 2014).
50 Quoted in Nicolette Mout, ‘Justus Lipsius (1547–1606): Fortune and War’, in Arndt Brendecke, and Peter Vogt (eds), The End of Fortuna and the Rise of Modernity: Contingency and Certainty in Early Modern History (Walter de Gruyter, 2017), 73.
51 Quoted in Parker, Imprudent King, 99.
52 Raimondo Montecuccoli, Aforismi dell Arte bellica, in Giuseppe Grassi (ed), Opere di Raim. Montecuccoli corrette, accresciute ed illustrate (Milan: Giovanni Silvestri 1831), Lib. I Cap. II, xi.1, p. 77.
53 Ibid., Lib. I Cap. II, xxviii, p. 115; Lib I Cap. III, xlvi. 3, p. 146.
54 Ibid., Lib. IV Cap. XX, p. 160; for the link between good order and good fortune, see also his Book on Hungary (1673), ibid., 283.
55 Paul Hay du Chastelet, Traité de la Guerre, ou Politique militaire (1668), excerpts in translation in Beatrice Heuser (ed. & trans.): The Strategy Makers: Thoughts on War and Society from Machiavelli to Clausewitz (Santa Monica, CA: ABClio 2010), 109.
56 Florence Buttay, ‘ La Fortune victime des Lumières?’, in Brendecke, and Vogt (eds), The End of Fortuna, 196–200.
57 Maurice de Saxe, Mes Rêveries, Engl Translation in Thomas Phillips (ed.), Roots of Strategy Vol. 1 (Mechanicsburg, PA: Stackpole Books 1985), 298f.
58 Montesquieu: Considérations, 235, quoted in John Stone: “Montesquieu : Strategist Ahead of his Time”, in Journal of Strategic Studies (expected 2023).
59 Montesquieu: Considérations, 128, quoted in Stone : “Montesquieu”.
60 Dietrich Heinrich Frhr von Bülow, Geist des neuern Kriegssystems aus dem Grundsatze einer Basis der Operationen 1st ed. (Hamburg: Benjamin Gottlieb Hoffmann 1799), with further editions following in 1802 and 1805.
61 Quoted in Bruno Colson, Napoléon: De la guerre (Paris: Perrin 2011), 54.
62 F. Lecomte (ed.), Précis politique et militaire des Campagnes de 1812 à 1814: Extraits des Souvenirs inédits du Général Jomini Vol. I(Lausanne: B. Benda 1886), 89.
63 Jomini, Henri de, The Art of War (trans. By G.H. Mendell and W.P.Craighill Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press 1971), 69–71.
64 Gerhard von Scharnhorst, “90. Vorlesungsmitschrift, 1802-1805,” in Private und dienstliche Schriften, ed. by Michael Sikora, Johannes Kunisch and Tilman Stieve, Vol. 3 (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck&Ruprecht, 2005), p. 471, quoted in Vanya Eftimova Bellinger: “Educating Clausewitz: Gerhard von Scharnhorst’s Influence on Carl von Clausewitz”, MS PhD King’s College London Dept of War Studies, 2022 chapter A2.
65 Dietrich Heinrich Frhr von Bülow, Geist des neuern Kriegssystems aus dem Grundsatze einer Basis der Operationen 1st ed. (Hamburg: Benjamin Gottlieb Hoffmann 1799); id.: Leitsätze des neuern Krieges oder reine und angewandte Strategie (Berlin: Heinrich Frölich 1805); see Arthur Kuhle, Die preußische Kriegstheorie um 1800 und ihre Suche nach dynamischen Gleichgewichten (Berlin: Duncker & Humblot 2018).
66 Quoted in Bruno Colson, Napoléon: De la guerre (Paris: Perrin 2011), 54.
67 Carl von Clausewitz, Vom Kriege (1832), Michael Howard and Peter Paret (trans. And ed.), On War (Princeton: Princeton University Press 1976), Book I.1.21 and Book I.3.
68 It tends to be translated, inaccurately, as ‘chance’, see the Howard & Paret translation, On War.
69 On War, I.1.28.
70 On War, I.1.10.
71 Dirk Freudenberg, ‘Moderne Risikoanalyseansätze, Simulation und Irreguläre Kräfte – eine kritische Betrachtung unter besonderer Berücksichtigung des theoretisch-methodischen Ansatzes des Carl von Clausewitz’, Jahrbuch Terrorismus, Vol. 5 (2011/2012), 359–388; Thomas Waldman, ‘Shadows of Uncertainty: Clausewitz’s Timeless Analysis of Chance’, Defence Studies 10/3 (2010), 336–368.
72 Alan Beyerchen: ‘Clausewitz, Nonlinearity, and the Unpredictability of War’, International Security 17/3 (Winter 1992–1993), 59–90.
73 On War, I.21.
74 On War, I.1.18–21.
75 I am grateful to an anonymous reviewer who has brought this connection to my attention.
76 Milan Vego, ‘German War Gaming’, Naval War College Review 65/4 (Autumn 2012), 106–148.
77 Quoted in Heinrich von Poschinger, Stunden bei Bismarck (Vienna: Konegen 1910), 66.
78 Robert von Keudell, Fürst und Fürstin Bismarck. Erinnerungen aus den Jahren 1846 bis 1872, 3rd ed. (Berlin: Spemann 1902), 488.
79 Quoted in Alexander Scharff, ‘Bismarcks Gestalt und Werk im Streit der Geschichtswissenschaft’, Internationales Jahrbuch für Geschichts- und Geographie-Unterricht 11 (1967), 119.
80 Steven Grosby, ‘The Wars of the Ancient Israelites and European History’, in Athena Leoussi and Beatrice Heuser (eds), Famous Battles and How they Changed the Modern World Vol. 1 (Barnsley: Pen & Sword 2018), Ch. 5.
81 James Q. Whitman, The Verdict of Battle: The Law of Victory and the Making of Modern War (Cambridge, MA: Harvard UP 2012), 23.
82 Pace Esther Eidinow, Luck, Fate & Fortune: Antiquity and its Legacy (London: I.B. Tauris 2011).
83 See e.g., John Kiszely, Anatomy of a Campaign: The British Fiasco in Norway, 1940 (Cambridge: CUP 2017).
84 Brian Holden Reid, ‘Colonel J. F. C. Fuller and the Revival of Classical Military Thinking in Britain, 1918–1926’, Military Affairs 49/4 (1985), 192–97.
85 See for example Sir Edward Bruce Hamley, Operations of War Explained and Illustrated (Edinburgh: William Blackwood & Sons 1872); Captain John Bigelow, The Principles of Strategy, Illustrated Mainly from American Campaigns (London: Unwin 1891, 1894), or Rudolf von Caemmerer, The Development of Strategical Science, trs Karl von Donat (London: Hugh Rees 1905), with no reference to fortune or chance in our sense.
86 See e.g., the occasional reference to “fortune” in a classical sense in Foch: Principles of War, 30, 166f, 289.
87 Stig Förster, ‘Dreams and Nightmares: German Military Leadership and the Images of Future Warfare, 1871–1914’, in Manfred Boemeke, Roger Chickering and Stig Förster (eds.), Anticipating Total War: The German and American Experiences, 1871–1914 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press 1999), 343–76.
88 To what extent Marshal Admiral Isoroku Yamamoto in ordering this attack articulated his reasoning in any terms comparable to “risk” or “gamble” or “luck” or “window of opportunity” is a question beyond my cultural and linguistic skills to answer.
89 Robert C. Rubel, ‘Deconstructing Nimitz’s Principle of Calculated Risk: Lessons for Today’, Naval War College Review, 68/1 (Winter 2015), 30–46.
90 Beatrice Heuser, NATO, Britain, France, and the FRG: Nuclear Strategies and Forces for Europe (London: Macmillan 1997), Chaps. 1 and 2.
91 Pierre M. Gallois, Stratégie de l’âge nucléaire (Paris: Calmann Lévy 1960), 151. In Gallois’ words: deterrence « peut être assimilée à un produit de deux facteurs dont l’un, purement technique, représente la valeur opérationnelle des moyens militaires utilisés pour exercer la représaille et dont l’autre, subjectif, exprime la volonté de la nation menacée d’user de la force plutôt que de composer. ».
92 This point can be traced originally to André Beaufre, Dissuasion et Stratégie (Paris: A. Colin 1964).
93 Beatrice Heuser, ‘Reassurance, Commitment, Credibility and Deterrence: Squaring the Vicious Circle: Aspects of British and French Nuclear Strategy’, in John Hopkins & Weixing Hu (eds), Strategic Views from the Second Tier: The Nuclear Weapons Policies of Britain, France and China (San Diego, CA: IGGC 1994), 141–53.
94 Thomas C. Schelling, The Strategy of Conflict (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press 1960), Ch 8.
95 Beatrice Heuser, NATO, Britain, France and the FRG: Nuclear Strategies and Forces for Europe, 1949–2000 (London: Macmillan 1997), 50.
96 Beatrice Heuser: ‘Containing Uncertainty: Options for British Nuclear Strategy’, Review of International Studies Vol. 19 No. 3 (July 1993), 245-267.
97 Saddam Hussein had been misled to think that by a talk he had with the US Ambassador, April Glaspie, which became a misunderstanding that would cost thousands of lives. When Saddam mentioned frontier disputes with Kuwait, the US Ambassador told him to sort this out himself, apparently thinking that Saddam was asking for US mediation. Saddam took this to mean that the US would keep out of any military conflict between Iraq and Kuwait. He could still not be certain that other countries – the other members of the Security Council, for example – would keep out, but he took the chance. Transcript of Meeting Between Iraqi President, Saddam Hussein and U.S. Ambassador to Iraq, April Glaspie (25 July 1990), https://www.globalresearch.ca/gulf-war-documents-meeting-between-saddam-hussein-and-ambassador-to-iraq-april-glaspie/31145, accessed on 20 April 2019.
98 Heuser, NATO, Britain, France and the FRG, Chapter 2, p. 58.
99 ‘The Alliance’s Strategic Concept’ (24 April 1999), Art. 62, https://www.nato.int/cps/en/natohq/official_texts_27433.htm?mode=pressrelease, accessed on 13 IV 2019.
100 Cabinet Office, Global Britain in a competitive age The Integrated Review of Security, Defence, Development and Foreign Policy (HMSO, 16 March 2021), 79.
101 Admittedly, this does not provide any answer of how to deal with a power that uses its own nuclear deterrence to turn its own territory into an unassailable sanctuary while attacking neighbours not part of any alliance with impunity. In the context of such a scenario, the Russian attack on Ukraine, we are seeing at the time of writing, a subtle game of risk calculations and risk taking on the part of the Western powers. Probabilistic assessments of whether one can get away with certain measures amount to playing with a lighter next to a petrol pump, however high or low the chances of ignition may be.