Military Metrics: How Do We Know When We’re Winning (or Losing) a War?
Military Metrics: How Do We Know When We’re Winning (or Losing) a War?
by Ethan B. Kapstein
Download the Full Article: Military Metrics
How do governments know whether they’re winning or losing a military campaign? That question is devilish enough in the context of conventional wars with pitched battles, as conflicts often take surprising twists and turns en route to their endgame. It was more than sheer bravado that led Charles De Gaulle, who knew a thing or two about military operations, to declare in June 1940, “France has lost the battle, but France has not lost the war.”
Precise knowledge of a conflict’s progress is perhaps even more difficult when it comes to the counterinsurgencies now being fought in Afghanistan and, somewhat more surreptitiously, in places like Yemen. How do military leaders and policy-makers ascertain if they are “winning the hearts and minds” of the local population? What are the indicators of success?
Military history suggests that generals and public officials have often looked at the wrong data—the wrong metrics—for information and insight about what’s really happening on the ground. The Vietnam War provides a poignant example (Nagl 2002; Kilcullen 2010). As late as the summer of 1974, a study group from the U.S. House of Representatives boldly asserted that “it is unlikely that the North Vietnamese can win a military victory” and it shared the view of the American Ambassador to Saigon, Graham Martin, that South Vietnam was now on the verge of an “economic ‘takeoff’ similar to those which have occurred in South Korea and Taiwan.” The congressional group drew this conclusion from the lopsided difference in military casualties between North and South Vietnamese forces—the infamous “body counts”—which cast doubt on the ability of Hanoi to sustain the constant pummeling much longer. Needless to say, Saigon would fall to the North within nine months of that study’s publication, with Ambassador Martin departing by helicopter from the U.S. Embassy’s rooftop.
Download the Full Article: Military Metrics
Ethan B. Kapstein is a Non-Resident Senior Fellow at the Center for a New American Security and a professor of public policy and business at the University of Texas at Austin. A retired naval reserve officer, he has served as an Academic Advisor to the Counterinsurgency Advisory and Assistance Team at ISAF Headquarters in Kabul. His most recent book (with Nathan Converse), is The Fate of Young Democracies. The views expressed here are strictly his own and do not represent the opinions of any organization with which he is or has been affiliated.
