V. The Lights May Go Out, But the Band Plays On

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Notes

1 J David Singer, ‘Threat-Perception and the Armament-Tension Dilemma’, Journal of Conflict Resolution (Vol. 2, No. 1, 1958), pp. 90–105.

2 Gary Hamel and C K Prahalad, ‘Strategic Intent’, Harvard Business Review (July–August 2005).

3 Peter Roberts and Heather Venable, ‘Episode 62: Heather Venable: Gen-Z – The Best Tacticians in History?’, RUSI Western Way of War podcast, 2 September 2021, <https://www.rusi.org/podcasts/western-way-of-war/episode-62-heather-venable-gen-z-best-tacticians-history>, accessed 28 October 2021.

4 Michael J McNerney et al., National Will to Fight: Why Some States Keep Fighting and Others Don’t (Santa Monica, CA: RAND, 2018).

5 Julien Lider, ‘The Correlation of World Forces: The Soviet Concept’, Journal of Peace Research (Vol. 17, No. 2, 1980), pp. 151–71.

6 Ministry of Defence (MoD) and Nick Carter, ‘Chief of Defence Staff Speech RUSI Annual Lecture’, 17 December 2020, <https://www.gov.uk/government/speeches/chief-of-defence-staff-at-rusi-annual-lecture>, accessed 23 August 2021.

7 ‘Sunk costs’ refer to the amount of resource that has been already expended and cannot be recovered. In national security terms, there is an associated feeling of ‘how can we give this up after all we’ve sacrificed?’. See Carl Forsling, ‘Understanding the Sacrifice and Sunk Cost of the War in Afghanistan‘, Task and Purpose, 11 March 2021, <https://taskandpurpose.com/analysis/afghanistan-sunk-costs-withdrawal/>, accessed 29 October 2021.

8 Mancur Olson Jr, The Economics of the Wartime Shortage: A History of British Food Supplies in the Napoleonic War and in World Wars I And II (London: Literary Licensing, 2012).

9 Robert A Pape, Bombing to Win: Air Power and Coercion in War (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1996), p. 60.

10 John J Mearsheimer, Liddell Hart and the Weight of History (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1988), p. 103. In fairness to Liddell Hart, he did accept the importance of attrition on the ground, but felt that this role should be outsourced to allies.

11 This idea had a particular (though not exclusive) appeal to classical liberals who feared the impact of large standing armies on the power of the state and looked to win wars in an economical way. See, for example, Azar Gat, A History of Military Thought: From the Enlightenment to the Cold War (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001), pp. 200–50.

12 Edmund J Burke et al., ‘People’s Liberation Army Operational Concepts’, RAND Corporation, 2020.

13 Jon R Lindsay, ‘The Impact of China on Cybersecurity: Fiction and Friction’, International Security (Vol. 39, No. 3, 2015), pp. 7–47.

14 Soufan Center, ‘IntelBrief: 15 Years After Madrid Tarin Bombings, What Have We Learned’, 11 March 2019, <https://thesoufancenter.org/intelbrief-the-15th-anniversary-of-the-madrid-train-bombings/>, accessed 10 October 2021.

15 Theo Farrell, ‘Culture and Military Power’, Review of International Studies (Vol. 24, No. 3, 1998), pp. 407–16.

16 Jan Angstrom and J J Wigen, Contemporary Military Theory: The Dynamics of War (New York, NY: Routledge, 2015), pp. 78–79.

17 Peter Roberts and Tony King, ‘Episode 30: Is the Era of Manoeuvre Warfare Dead?’, RUSI Western Way of War podcast, 10 December 2020, <https://rusi.org/podcasts/western-way-of-war/episode-30-era-manoeuvre-warfare-dead>, accessed 29 October 2021; Peter Roberts and Mungo Melvin, ‘Episode 23: Utility vs Utilisation’, RUSI Western Way of War podcast, 5 November 2020, <https://rusi.org/podcasts/western-way-of-war/episode-23-utility-vs-utilisation>, accessed 29 October 2021.

18 Niklas Schörnig and Alexander C Lembcke, ‘The Vision of War Without Casualties: On the Use of Casualty Aversion in Armament Advertisements’, Journal of Conflict Resolution (Vol. 50, No. 2, 2006), pp. 204–27.

19 Thomas R Mockaitis, Civil-Military Cooperation in Peace Operations: The Case of Kosovo (Carlisle, PA: US Army War College, 2004).

20 Robert Johns and Graeme A M Davies, ‘Civilian Casualties and Public Support for Military Action: Experimental Evidence’, Journal for Conflict Resolution (Vol. 63, No. 1, 2019), pp. 251–81.

21 Paul Cornish, ‘Myth and Reality: US and UK Approaches to Casualty Aversion and Force Protection’, Defence Studies (Vol. 3, No. 2, 2003), pp. 121–28.

22 John E Mueller, War, Presidents and Public Opinion (New York, NY: John Wiley and Sons, 1973), pp. 60–69.

23 Victor Mahieu, ‘Casualty Aversion in Western Countries’, Finabel, 15 May 2019, <https://finabel.org/casualty-aversion-in-western-countries/>, accessed 12 February 2021.

24 Richard A Lacquement Jr, ‘The Casualty-Aversion Myth’, Naval War College Review (2004), p. 41.

25 Helen Parr, Our Boys: The Story of a Paratrooper (London: Allen Lane, 2018).

26 Christopher Coker, ‘Post-Modern War’, RUSI Journal (Vol. 143, No. 3, 1998), pp. 7–14.

27 Charles A Stevenson, ‘The Evolving Clinton Doctrine on the Use of Force’, Armed Forces & Society (Vol. 22, No. 4, 1996), pp. 511–35; Jan van der Meulen and Marijke de Konink, ‘Risky Missions: Dutch Public Opinion on Peacekeeping in the Balkans’, in Philip Everts and Pierangelo Isernia (eds), Public Opinion and the International Use of Force (New York, NY and Abingdon: Routledge, 2001).

28 T S Milburn, ‘Casualties – The Crucial Factor in Modern Conflicts’, British Army Review (Vol. 113, August 1996), pp. 78–84.

29 Andrew P N Erdmann, ‘The U.S. Presumption of Quick, Costless Wars’, Orbis (Vol. 43, No. 3, Summer 1999), pp. 378–80.

30 MoD and Carter, Chief of Defence Staff Speech RUSI Annual Lecture’.

31 Hugh Smith, ‘What Costs Will Democracies Bear? A Review of Popular Theories of Casualty Aversion’, Armed Forces and Society (Vol. 31, No. 4, 2005), pp. 487–512.

32 See, for example, fs, ‘Attrition Warfare: When Even Winners Lose’, 2017, <https://fs.blog/2017/07/attrition-warfare/>, accessed 31 March 2021; Karl Walling, ‘Thucydides on Policy, Strategy, and War Termination’, Naval War College Review (Vol. 66, No. 4, 2013), p. 24.

33 See Beatrice Heuser, ‘Introduction’, in Carl von Clausewitz, On War, translated by Michael Howard and Peter Paret (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008), p. xxviii.

34 ‘The rich man’s option is to sanitise war; the poor man’s is to make it even more horrendous than it is’. See Christopher Coker, Humane Warfare (London: Routledge, 2001), p. 65.

35 Justin Bronk, ‘The Weakness of “People” in Deterrence’, RUSI Commentary, 18 December 2019.

36 Ben Barry, Blood, Metal and Dust: How Victory Turned Into Defeat in Afghanistan and Iraq (London: Osprey, 2021).

37 Eyal Ben-Ari, ‘Epilogue: A “Good” Military Death’, Armed Forces & Society (Vol. 31, No. 4, 2005), p. 662.

38 Smith, ‘What Costs Will Democracies Bear?’.

39 Peter Roberts and Ben Barry, ‘Episode 44: Evolving the Western Way of War Into (and Out of) COIN’, RUSI Western Way of War podcast, 15 April 2021, <https://rusi.org/podcasts/western-way-of-war/episode-44-evolving-western-way-war-and-out-coin>, accessed 20 October 2021.

40 Cornish, ‘Myth and Reality’.

41 Richard Dannatt, Leading from the Front (London: Corgi, 2011), pp. 342–57.

42 R Kim Cragin and Lachlan MacKenzie, ‘Russia’s Escalating Use of Private Military Companies in Africa’, Institute for National Strategic Studies, 24 November 2020, <https://inss.ndu.edu/Media/News/Article/2425797/russias-escalating-use-of-private-military-companies-in-africa/>, accessed 1 March 2021.

43 Lacquement Jr, ‘The Casualty-Aversion Myth’.

44 See Triangle Institute for Security Studies, ‘Project on the Gap Between the Military and Civilian Society: Digest of Findings and Studies’, Conference on the Military and Civilian Society, Cantigny Conference Center, 1^st Division Museum, 28–29 October 1999.

45 Johns and Davies, ‘Civilian Casualties and Public Support for Military Action’.

46 Triangle Institute for Security Studies, ‘Project on the Gap Between the Military and Civilian Society’.

47 Cornish, ‘Myth and Reality’.

48 Hew Strachan and Ruth Harris, The Utility of Military Force and Public Understanding in Today’s Britain (Santa Monica, CA: RAND, 2020).

49 Tim Willasey-Wilsey, ‘Does the Pandemic Tell Us Anything About War Casualties?’, RUSI Commentary, 12 January 2021.

50 HM Government, ‘Prime Minister’s Speech at the Munich Security Conference: 19 February 2021’, 19 February 2021, <https://www.gov.uk/government/speeches/prime-ministers-speech-at-the-munich-security-conference-19-february-2021>, accessed 20 October 2021.

51 Mueller, War, Presidents and Public Opinion, pp. 60–69; Steven Kullclay Ramsay, ‘The Myth of the Reactive Public: American Public Attitudes on Military Fatalities in the Post-Cold War Period’, in Everts and Isernia (eds), Public Opinion and the International Use of Force, p. 205.

52 Martin van Creveld, The Transformation of War (New York, NY: Free Press, 1991).