A New Perspective on Protracted Wars

The purpose of war is to, eventually, stop being at war.  So much the better if war achieves  an objective otherwise unobtainable by peaceful negotiation. But how wars end is famously an oft under-studied strategic consideration.  While there are many references on the theory of war, modern readers will be most familiar with the eponymous Powell Doctrine,[i] itself based on Fred Ikle’s[ii] earlier work. Powell lists seven conditions for entering into a military conflict, two of which involve war termination, restated here:

2. Is there a plausible exit strategy to avoid endless entanglement?

These two criteria suggest that when embarking upon a course of war, political and military leaders have a mandate to define termination conditions.  Beyond the Doctrine, as a practical matter, it is difficult to get a legislature… let alone electorate – to sign on to a ‘protracted’ conflict.  Furthermore, there are the double devils of a tendency for optimism that the war will be short and victorious, as well as the inclination to kick the proverbial ‘can down the road’ and claim it will be impossible to think about war termination before war because there is too much (perceived) uncertainty.[iii]   Paradoxically, one source of perceived uncertainty is the difference between the efficacy of a fighting force in theory vs. in practice. 

When wars do not terminate quickly, they become protracted. 

Protraction is a difficult concept to nail down; everyone knows what it is, yet few can provide a clear time- or event-based criterion for when it happens. In this regard, protraction is like defining obscenity – it is not easily defined, but everyone claims to know it when they see it.  We found few definitions that provided any further clarity. The ICRC has perhaps the most concise definition; “Protracted armed conflicts are characterized by their longevity, intractability, and mutability[x]”.   While this definition avoids placing a fixed duration for protraction, it faces the same problems as the “I know it when I see it” version of protraction because what counts as a long and intractable conflict to some may not be perceived the same by others.

Some authors[xi] sidestep the issue altogether by “… [failing to] place a priori constraints on the meaning of “protracted,” and therefore, the resulting scenarios feature a variety of circumstances”.  This is not strictly a Western problem.  The Chinese conclude that it is “…not a protracted battle per se, but a protracted process of war—emphasizing preparation, technology development, and gaining small edges in military-adjacent areas to build power.[xii]”  Thus, the language around protracted war is most likely to be used by those least likely to fight them. Our British Allies have a name for the phenomenon: “First Battle Bias[xiii]”, where early gains – which benefit from high motivation, good repair, full magazines and perhaps most importantly surprise – are extrapolated without sober analytic justification.  Ideas such as the ‘inside out’ theory, which states that an air campaign alone can win a war, and “long range strike platforms, operated by fewer soldiers, state of the art sensors, and precision-guided weapons will dominate future war”[xiv] 

The point of this article and our contribution is to introduce a novel definition and provide clarity to discussions about protracted warfare. We propose that protraction be defined as:

A conflict has become protracted when its casus belli is no longer relevant to the aims, strategy or narrative of the conflict

This definition has the added benefits of disconnecting the notion of protraction from the measurement of duration, while still giving a somewhat measurable milestone.  Using this definition, it is possible for a conflict to run for six years – such as the British experience in the Second World War – and not be protracted.  Conversely, it is possible for a war of relatively short duration to become protracted. For instance, the campaign against ISIS in 2014 is a clear example of protracted conflict because the original goal of defeating ISIS quickly morphed into broader U.S. goals about tacitly encouraging the installation of democracy in Syria, stabilization of countries combatting ISIS, and maintaining security for critical economic assets like oilfields across Iraq. In the case of the counter-ISIS campaign, protraction originated in not only a change in war aims for the United States and its coalition partners, but also the strategy pursued by U.S.-aligned groups such as the Kurds in both Syria, Iraq, and Turkey, and the narrative that was espoused by the United States as the coalition’s reason for continuing the campaign.[xv] 

Lacking sober consideration, the following exchange is possible:

Q1: Why do Generals think the war will be over in six weeks?

A1: Because the analysts predicted it

Q2; Why did analysts predict the war would be over in six weeks?

A2:  Because it’s what the experts (Generals) told us when we tuned our models

Planning for protraction is – in practice if not doctrine – taboo.  This is a worldwide human phenomenon.  Diagnosing this behavior is the subject of a separate piece; however, we have written previously about the dual nature of analysis, serving both its’ primary purpose of proscription, but secondary purpose of training for leaders-in-waiting[xvi]. 

Implied in our definition is the following: A war with unsure objectives regardless of duration will be ‘protracted’. Perhaps the most fitting conflict of our time that fits this description is the Russian war against Ukraine. Vladimir Putin’s objectives for beginning the war are still debated, and likely will be for several decades as more evidence becomes available. But four years into the war, it is clear his objectives have changed from a lightning strike into Ukraine to reach Kyiv and annex the country into a much broader struggle to “not lose”.[xvii]  As a result, the war continues to drag on, with few apparent prospects for termination. Part of the reason why the Ukraine War has become so difficult to terminate is because despite the war becoming protracted through over four years of fighting, there is no less uncertainty for either side than when the war began. The type of uncertainty may have changed, but the amount of uncertainty remains.

What we call it may be subject to debate; we are willing to state here that protracted wars will be a fact of life for military and political leaders to come. Thinking smartly about protraction will require not only developing a tolerance for uncertainty, but identifying clear, nested victory conditions for future conflicts. If the first victory conditions becomes unachievable, the middle of war should not be the first time that policymakers consider the question, “what now?” Thinking about failing to satisfy victory conditions is an unpalatable feeling, but a necessary one to avoid becoming mired in protracted wars.

Harrison Schramm is Chief Technologist at Attritable Machines, where his interests are at the intersection of policy, algorithms and small form computers.  He is a Fellow of the Military Operations Research Society.

Notes:

[i] https://www.atlanticcouncil.org/blogs/new-atlanticist/the-powell-doctrines-wisdom-must-live-on/

[ii] Fred Charles Iklé, Every War Must End, 2nd ed. (Columbia University Press, 2005).

[iii] Geoffrey Blainey, The Causes of War, 3rd ed. (Penguin Random House, 1988).

[iv] https://www.iwm.org.uk/history/cold-war/korean-war

[v] Here we count the war as beginning at the battle of Ia Drang https://www.army.mil/vietnamwar/history.html

[vi] https://www.army.mil/vietnamwar/history.html

[vii] https://www.georgewbushlibrary.gov/research/topic-guides/the-war-in-afghanistan

[viii][viii] https://www.airandspaceforces.com/article/the-second-offset/

[ix]https://books.google.com/books?hl=en&lr=&id=UGmAEQAAQBAJ&oi=fnd&pg=PA272&dq=interstate+war+duration+increases&ots=MxmnH0DBaT&sig=txRZYSHp1RPgnlhZki2WYYMpSFY#v=onepage&q=interstate%20war%20duration%20increases&f=false

[x] https://international-review.icrc.org/articles/protracted-armed-conflict

[xi] https://www.rand.org/content/dam/rand/pubs/research_reports/RRA1400/RRA1475-1/RAND_RRA1475-1.pdf

[xii] https://ssi.armywarcollege.edu/SSI-Media/Recent-Publications/Article/4153283/how-chinese-leaders-conceptualize-protracted-war/

[xiii]https://www.rusi.org/explore-our-research/publications/commentary/long-war-fighting-beyond-first-battle

[xiv] https://www.jstor.org/stable/45345874

[xv] https://books.google.com/books/about/Quicksilver_War.html?id=l5NODwAAQBAJ

[xvi] https://doi.org/10.1177/15485129221096472

[xvii] https://www.atlanticcouncil.org/blogs/ukrainealert/vladimir-putin-is-trapped-in-a-war-he-cannot-win-but-dare-not-end/