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ABSTRACT
Can strategists reduce the adversary’s capability or will to fight through militarily inspired awe? While strategic and emotion theories suggest an affirmative answer, evidence from strategic history indicates awe does not work well in practice. Historically, military power has only inspired awe on a limited scale, unreliably, disparately and not repeatedly. Furthermore, the emotion does not translate into favourable strategic effects because of the fluid emotional landscape which characterizes combat and politics. These findings question the wisdom of relying on awe in strategic practice but also hold implications for the extant and future strategic thought, particularly the emotion centric one.
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Notes
1 For a more comprehensive conceptual analysis of strategic effect, see Colin Gray, The Strategy Bridge: Theory for Practice (Oxford: Oxford University Press 2010).
2 Antulio Echevarria, Military Strategy: A Very Short Introduction (Oxford: Oxford University Press 2018), 1.
3 Harlan Ullman and James Wade, Shock and Awe: Achieving Rapid Dominance (Washington: National Defense University 1996); Harlan Ullman, ‘Shock and Awe a Decade and a Half Later: Still Relevant, Still Misunderstood’, Prism 2/1 (2010), 79–86.
4 Ullman, ‘Shock and Awe a Decade and a Half Late’, 81.
5 ‘“Shock and Awe” Campaign Underway in Iraq’, CNN, 22 Mar. 2003, https://edition.cnn.com/2003/fyi/news/03/22/iraq.war/.
6 Stephen Biddle, ‘Speed Kills? Reassessing the Role of Speed, Precision, and Situation Awareness in the Fall of Saddam’, Journal of Strategic Studies 30/1 (2007), 3–46.
7 Stephen T. Hosmer, Why the Iraqi Resistance to the Coalition Invasion Was So Weak (Santa Monica: RAND Corporation 2007), 77–86, 91–97; Mark Kukis, Voices from Iraq: A People’s History, 2003–2009 (New York: Columbia University Press 2011); Kevin M. Woods et al., Iraqi Perspectives Project: A View of Operation Iraqi Freedom from Saddam’s Senior Leadership (Annapolis: US Naval Institute Press 2006), 125–26.
8 Heather Venable, ‘The Result is Never Final: Operation Iraqi Freedom’, in Phil Haun, Colin Jackson, and Tim Schultz (ed.), Air Power in the Age of Primacy (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press 2021), 121–47.
9 Harlan Ullman, ‘Slogan or Strategy?: Shock and Awe Reassessed’, The National Interest, no. 84 (2006), 43–49.
10 Jeffrey Michaels, The Discourse Trap and the US Military: From the War on Terror to the Surge (New York: Palgrave Macmillan 2013), 81–106.
11 David Hambling, ‘Inventor Of “Shock & Awe” Explains How It Might Work In Ukraine’, Forbes, 2022, https://www.forbes.com/sites/davidhambling/2022/02/02/inventor-of-shock–awe-explains-how-it-might-work-in-ukraine/?sh=43320e2d13b7.
12 Dacher Keltner and Jonathan Haidt, ‘Approaching Awe, a Moral, Spiritual, and Aesthetic Emotion’, Cognition and Emotion 17/2 (2003), 297–314, https://doi.org/10.1080/02699930302297.
13 Summer Allen, ‘The Science of Awe (Berkeley: Greater Good Science Center 2018), https://ggsc.berkeley.edu/images/uploads/GGSC-JTF_White_Paper-Awe_FINAL.pdf.
14 Samuel Zilincik, ‘Technology is Awesome, but so What?! Exploring the Relevance of Technologically Inspired Awe to the Construction of Military Theories’, Journal of Strategic Studies (2021).
15 For the overlaps and differences between awe and what philosophers tend to describe as sublime, see Margherita Arcangeli et al., ‘Awe and the Experience of the Sublime: A Complex Relationship’, Frontiers in Psychology (2020). For the relevant International Relations articles, see Roland Bleiker and Martin Leet, ‘From the Sublime to the Subliminal: Fear, Awe and Wonder in International Politics’, Millennium: Journal of International Studies 34/3 (2006), 713–38; Antoine Bousquet, ‘Time Zero: Hiroshima, September 11 and Apocalyptic Revelations in Historical Consciousness’, Millennium: Journal of International Studies 34/3 (2006), 739–64; Iver B. Neumann, ‘Sublime Diplomacy: Byzantine, Early Modern, Contemporary’, Millennium: Journal of International Studies 34/3 (2016), 865–88.
16 Christopher Coker, The Warrior Ethos: Military Culture and the War on Terror (New York: Routledge 2007), 29, 82; Rune Henriksen, ‘Warriors in Combat – What Makes People Actively Fight in Combat?’ Journal of Strategic Studies 30/2 (2007), 187–223.
17 Dacher Keltner, Keith Oatley, and Jennifer M. Jenkins, Understanding Emotions, 3rd ed. (Hoboken: Wiley 2014).
18 Ira J. Roseman, Cynthia Wiest, and Tamara S. Schwartz, ‘Phenomenology, Behaviors, and Goals Differentiate Discrete Emotions’, Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 67/2 (1994), 206–21; Jennifer S. Lerner et al., ‘Emotion and Decision Making’, Annual Review of Psychology 66 (2015), 799–823.
19 Lukas Milevski, ‘Battle and Its Emotional Effect in War Termination’, Comparative Strategy 39/6 (2020): 535–48; Samuel Zilincik, ‘Strategy and the Instrumental Role of Emotions’, Strategy Bridge (Blog), 2018, https://thestrategybridge.org/the-bridge/2018/9/25/strategy-and-the-instrumental-role-of-emotions.
20 Michelle N. Shiota, Dacher Keltner, and Amanda Mossman, ‘The Nature of Awe: Elicitors, Appraisals, and Effects on Self-Concept’, Cognition and Emotion 21/5 (2007), 944, https://doi.org/10.1080/02699930600923668.
21 Klaus Scherer and Agnes Moors, ‘The Emotion Process: Event Appraisal and Component Differentiation’, Annual Review of Psychology 70/1 (2019), 719–45, https://doi.org/10.1146/annurev-psych-122216–011854.
22 Keltner and Haidt, ‘Approaching Awe, a Moral, Spiritual, and Aesthetic Emotion’, 303–4.
23 Keltner and Haidt, ‘Approaching Awe, a Moral, Spiritual, and Aesthetic Emotion’, 307–8; Marianna Graziosi and David Yaden, ‘Interpersonal Awe: Exploring the Social Domain of Awe Elicitors’, The Journal of Positive Psychology 16/2 (2021), 263–71.
24 Allen, ‘The Science of Awe’, 10–11; Yang Bai et al., ‘Awe, the Diminished Self, and Collective Engagement: Universals and Cultural Variations in the Small Self’, Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 113/2 (2017), 185–209.
25 Shiota, Keltner, and Mossman, ‘The Nature of Awe: Elicitors, Appraisals, and Effects on Self-Concept’, 953–54.
26 Keltner and Haidt, ‘Approaching Awe, a Moral, Spiritual, and Aesthetic Emotion’, 297.
27 Keltner and Haidt, ‘Approaching Awe, a Moral, Spiritual, and Aesthetic Emotion’, 304–6.
28 Keltner and Haidt, ‘Approaching Awe, a Moral, Spiritual, and Aesthetic Emotion’, 306.
29 Keltner and Haidt, ‘Approaching Awe, a Moral, Spiritual, and Aesthetic Emotion’, 307.
30 Keltner and Haidt, ‘Approaching Awe, a Moral, Spiritual, and Aesthetic Emotion’, 308.
31 Amie M. Gordon et al., ‘The Dark Side of the Sublime: Distinguishing a Threat Based Variant of Awe’, Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 113/2 (2017), 310–28.
32 Jonathan Fennel, ‘In Search of the “X” Factor: Morale and the Study of Strategy’, Journal of Strategic Studies 37/6–7 (2014), 806.
33 Colin Gray, Fighting Talk: Forty Maxims on War, Peace and Strategy (London: Praeger Security International 2007), 94.
34 Ullman and Wade, Shock and Awe, 21–36.
35 Occasionally, some other actions, such as mine explosions, also inspire awe. Nonetheless, even these usually resemble the selected sample in the key aspects, namely their visual and sound effects on the battlefields.
36 Carl von Clausewitz, On War, Michael Howard and Peter Paret (ed.) (Princeton: Princeton University Press 1989), 113.
37 Joseph A. Frank and George A. Reaves, ‘Emotional Responses to Combat’, in Michael Barton and Larry M. Logue (ed.), The Civil War Soldier: A Historical Reader (New York: New York University Press, 2002), 386–95.
38 Jorina von Zimmermann and Daniel C. Richardson, ‘Synchrony and the Art of Signalling’, The Psychologist 31 (2018): 35.
39 Rees H. Gronow, Reminiscences of Captain Gronow (London: Smith, Elder 1862), 95.
40 Ron Chepesiuk and John Thompson, ‘Eye Witness to Fort Sumter: The Letters of Private John Thompson’, The South Carolina Historical Magazine 85/4 (1984), 276.
41 William Brown, ‘Pearl Harbor: First Hand Accounts of December 7 1941’, paper for Dr. Dudley HIST 3000, 2012, 44; Leo Priest, cited in Denise Goolsby, ‘Pearl Harbor Attacks Left Indelible Mark on Palm Springs-Area Veterans’, The Desert Sun, https://eu.desertsun.com/story/news/2016/12/07/pearl-harbor-75th-anniversary-world-war-ii/91973380/.
42 Stephen Biddle, Military Power: Explaining Victory and Defeat in Modern Battle (Princeton: Princeton University Press 2004).
43 Ullman and Wade, Shock and Awe: Achieving Rapid Dominance, xxvii – xxviii.
44 David J. Silverman, Thundersticks: Firearms and the Violent Transformation of Native America (Cambridge: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press 2016), 11–12.
45 Nicholas D. Kristof, ‘A Woman’s Place’, The New York Times, 5 Apr. 2003, https://www.nytimes.com/2003/04/25/opinion/a-woman-s-place.html.
46 Cited in Alan Kramer, Dynamics of Destruction: Culture and Mass Killing in the First World War (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007), 219.
47 Ullman and Wade, Shock and Awe: Achieving Rapid Dominance, 32.
48 Gronow, Reminiscences of Captain Gronow.
49 Chepesiuk and Thompson, ‘Eye Witness to Fort Sumter’.
50 Hew Strachan and Holger Afflerbach (eds.), How Fighting Ends: A History of Surrender (Oxford: Oxford University Press 2012). See particularly chapters 19 and 20.
51 Todd C. Lehmann and Yuri M. Zhukov, ‘Until the Bitter End? The Diffusion of Surrender across Battles’, International Organization 73/1 (2019), 133–69.
52 Stephen T. Hosmer, Psychological Effects of U. S. Air Operations in Four Wars 1941–1991 (Santa Monica: RAND Corporation 1996), xxiv.
53 Leonard Wong et al., Why They Fight: Combat Motivation in the Iraq War (Carlisle: Strategic Studies Institute 2003), 6.
54 Ilya Berkovich, ‘Fear, Honour and Emotional Control on the Eighteenth-Century Battlefield’, in Erika Kuijpers and Cornelis van der Haven (ed.), Battlefield Emotions 1500–1800 (London: Palgrave Macmillan 2016), 93–110; John Lynn, ‘The Intersection of Military History and the History of Emotions: Reconsidering Fear and Honour in Ancien Régime Warfare’, British Journal for Military History 6/2 (2020), 23–40.
55 Siniša Malešević, ‘The Act of Killing: Understanding the Emotional Dynamics of Violence on the Battlefield’, Critical Military Studies 7/3 (2021), 313–34.
56 Carl von Clausewitz, On War, Michael Howard and Peter Paret (ed.) (Princeton: Princeton University Press 1976), 138.
57 Siniša Malešević, ‘Emotions and Warfare: The Social Dynamics of Close-Range Fighting’, in Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Politics [Online] (Oxford: Oxford University Press 2021), 5, https://oxfordre.com/politics/view/10.1093/acrefore/9780190228637.001.0001/acrefore-9780190228637-e-1981. For historical case studies documenting the diversity of emotional experience associated with combat, see Erika Kuijpers and Cornelis van der Haven (eds.), Battlefield Emotions 1500–1800: Practices, Experience, Imagination (London: Palgrave MacMillan 2016).
58 Coker, The Warrior Ethos, 82; Jesse G. Gray, The Warriors: Reflections on Men in Battle (Winnipeg: Bison Books 1998), 34–36; Henriksen, ‘Warriors in Combat’, 188–89.
59 Anthony Kellett, Combat Motivation: The Behavior of Soldiers in Battle (Dordrecht: Springer 1982), 333.
60 Michael J. McNerney et al., National Will to Fight: Why Some States Keep Fighting and Others Don’t (Santa Monica: RAND Corporation 2018), ix.
61 Kingsley Martin, ‘Reflections on Air Raids’, The Political Quarterly 12/1 (1941), 66–80.
62 Robert Fisk, Pity the Nation: Lebanon at War, 3rd edition (Oxford: Oxford University Press 2001), 184–86.
63 Donald L. Miller and Henry S. Commager, The Story of World War II (New York: Simon & Schuster 2006), 41–42.
64 Edwin M. McMillan, ‘Trinity Test, July 16 1945 Eyewitness Report by Edwin McMillan’, Nuclear Files, http://www.nuclearfiles.org/menu/key-issues/nuclear-weapons/history/pre-cold-war/manhattan-project/trinity/eyewitness-edwin-mcmillan_1945-07-16.htm.
65 Robert J. Lifton, ‘Psychological Effects of the Atomic Bomb in Hiroshima: The Theme of Death’, Daedalus 92/3 (1963), 467.
66 Chairman’s Office, The United States Strategic Bombing Survey: The Effects of Atomic Bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki (Washington: Government Printing Office 1946), 21.
67 Chairman’s Office, The United States Strategic Bombing Survey, 21–22.
68 Tristan Grunow, ‘A Reexamination of the “Shock of Hiroshima”: The Japanese Bomb Projects and the Surrender’, The Journal of American-East Asian Relations 12/3–4 (2003), 180–83.
69 Woods et al., Iraqi Perspectives Project, 148–49.
70 Gordon W. Prange, Donald M. Goldstein, and Katherine V. Dillon, At Dawn We Slept: The Untold Story of Pearl Harbor (New York: McGraw-Hill 1981), 582.
71 Gordon, ‘The Dark Side of the Sublime’, 5.
72 Bleiker and Leet, ‘From the Sublime to the Subliminal: Fear, Awe and Wonder in International Politics’, 718.
73 For the influence of conflicting emotions on political decisions, see Philippe Beauregard, ‘Resolving Conflicting Emotions: Obama’s Quandaries on the Red Line and the Fight against ISIS’, Foreign Policy Analysis (2022); For the persisting influence of hatred and humiliation on societal level, see Khaled Fattah and K. M. Fierke, ‘A Clash of Emotions: The Politics of Humiliation and Political Violence in the Middle East’, European Journal of International Relations 15/1 (2009), 67–93.
74 Agneta Fischer et al., ‘Why We Hate’, Emotion Review 10/4 (2018), 309–20; Craig A. Smith and Phoebe C. Ellsworth, ‘Patterns of Cognitive Appraisal in Emotion’, Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 48/4 (1985), 813–38.
75 Mattias Agerberg and Jacob Sohlberg, ‘Personal Proximity and Reactions to Terrorism’, Comparative Political Studies 54/14 (2021), 2512–45.
76 Fischer et al., ‘Why We Hate’; Eran Halperin, Emotions in Conflict: Inhibitors and Facilitators of Peace Making (New York: Routledge 2015).
77 Shelly C. McArdle, Heather Rosoff, and Richard S. John, ‘The Dynamics of Evolving Beliefs, Concerns Emotions, and Behavioral Avoidance Following 9/11: A Longitudinal Analysis of Representative Archival Samples’, Risk Analysis 32/4 (2012), 744–61; Dong-Chul Seo and Mohammad R. Torabi, ‘National Study of Emotional and Perceptional Changes Since September 11’, American Journal of Health Education 35/1 (2004), 37–45.
78 Prange, Goldstein, and Dillon, At Dawn We Slept: The Untold Story of Pearl Harbor, 582; Walter Lord, Day of Infamy (New York: Holt 1957), 216.
79 Lydia Saad, ‘Gallup Vault: A Country Unified After Pearl Harbor’ (Gallup, 2016), https://news.gallup.com/vault/199049/gallup-vault-country-unified-pearl-harbor.aspx.
80 Todd H. Hall and Andrew A. G. Ross, ‘Affective Politics after 9/11’, International Organization 69/4 (2015), 862–64.
81 Jennifer Lerner and Larisa Z. Tiedens, ‘Portrait of The Angry Decision Maker: How Appraisal Tendencies Shape Anger’s Influence on Cognition’, Journal of Behavioral Decision Making 19/2 (2006), 115–37.
82 Gary L. Gregg, ‘Crisis Leadership: The Symbolic Transformation of the Bush Presidency’, Perspectives on Political Science 32/3 (2003), 143–48.
83 George Bush, ‘Address to Joint Session of Congress Following 9/11 Attacks’, 2001, https://americanrhetoric.com/speeches/gwbush911jointsessionspeech.htm.
84 Lloyd Cox and Steve Wood, ‘“Got Him”: Revenge, Emotions, and the Killing of Osama Bin Laden’, Review of International Studies 43/1 (2016), 112–29.
85 Hall and Ross, ‘Affective Politics after 9/11’, 23–25; Pew Research Center, ‘One Year Later: New Yorkers More Troubled, Washingtonians More On Edge’, 2002, https://www.pewresearch.org/politics/2002/09/05/one-year-later-new-yorkers-more-troubled-washingtonians-more-on-edge/; Tom W. Smith, Kenneth A. Rasinski, and Marianna Toce, America Rebounds: A National Study of Public Response to the September 11th Terrorist Attacks (Chicago: NORC 2001).
86 Lawrence Freedman and Saki Dockrill, ‘Hiroshima: A Strategy of Shock’, in Saki Dockrill (ed.), From Pearl Harbor to Hiroshima: The Second World War in Asia and the Pacific, 1941–45 (New York: Palgrave Macmillan 1994), 191–212.
87 Sadao Asada, ‘The Shock of the Atomic Bomb and Japan’s Decision to Surrender: A Reconsideration’, Pacific Historical Review 67/4 (1998), 487–488.
88 Asada, ‘The Shock of the Atomic Bomb and Japan’s Decision to Surrender’, 496–97.
89 Ward Wilson, ‘The Winning Weapon?: Rethinking Nuclear Weapons in Light of Hiroshima’, International Security 31/4 (2007), 162–7.
90 Tsuyoshi Hasegawa, ‘The Atomic Bombs and the Soviet Invasion: What Drove Japan’s Decision to Surrender?’ The Asia-Pacific Journal 5/8 (2007), 1–31.
91 Jeremy A. Yellen, ‘The Specter of Revolution: Reconsidering Japan’s Decision to Surrender’, The International History Review 35/1 (2013), 205–26.
92 Colin Gray, Tactical Operations for Strategic Effect: The Challenge of Currency Conversion (MacDill: Joint Special Operations University 2015), 17.
93 For the full list of strategic dimensions, see Colin Gray, Modern Strategy (New York: Oxford University Press 1999).
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Samuel Zilincik
Samuel Zilincik is a doctoral student of security and strategic studies at Masaryk and Leiden Universities and a lecturer at the University of Defence in the Czech Republic. His research interests include military strategy in general and its emotional aspects in particular.