Can Limited Wars Still be Won?

Limited wars, and in particular such conflicts where one of the belligerents is a Great Power, have been the most common form of interstate conflict for more than a century, arguably first developing their modern form during the Age of Imperialism, and evolving further during the post-colonial period. These conflicts have always posed a particular challenge to the Great Power involved, as they specifically demand successful resolution without the employment of all available resources, whether because of greater threats that must be guarded against or political pressures from a variety of sources that compel moderation of effort. Striking this balance has become increasingly difficult, to the point that we must question whether these conflicts can still be won. Victory is of course defined, here as elsewhere, by achieving the political object of the effort; military success alone is not sufficient.

The nature of strategy and the options available to nations in developing their own strategic approaches in any conflict are bound by a directly proportional relationship between the means available and potential negative outcomes; the greater the potential for damage to the national interest in the event of failure, the more unrestricted the means that are considered justified. A conflict in which there is no existential threat to nation, government or population must always be confined at least to the limits of what is considered reasonable in terms of cost and risk. In other words, the costs of success - financial as well as political and military - must not outweigh the value of the object of the war.

From the mid-19th Century to the early 20th, the heyday of the European imperial powers, this equation was usually fairly easy to balance. The ability of industrialized European nations to employ limited yet sufficient means to overwhelm virtually any non-European opponent was almost a given; the costs of such efforts were generally small, with proprietary technology offering tremendous economy of force. Though it is admittedly an extreme example, the 1898 Battle of Omdurman, the culmination of the British expedition to avenge the death of General Gordon and crush the Mahdi Army in the Sudan, gives an indication of what was possible: after an exhausting journey up the Nile, a force of some 8,000 British soldiers and 17,000 local auxiliaries supported by artillery and gunboats was assaulted by over 50,000 poorly-armed and ill-trained dervishes. When the battle ended after roughly six hours, approximately 10,000 dervishes lay dead, and another 13,000 were wounded, many of whom did not survive. The British lost 48 dead and fewer than 400 wounded. Omdurman represents the pinnacle of industrial warfare against a non-industrialized foe, and was rightly lauded as a great triumph of British arms.

The Sudan Expedition represents very well the easy strategic calculus of the period. Even though the obstacles to be overcome were significant (the problems of travel up the Nile were far more difficult than those posed by the enemy), there was relatively little concern that the British-led force would come to grief. Modern rifles, machine guns, and artillery had proven their worth in battle, and the force was large enough that that chances of it being overwhelmed were almost nil. With more than twice their number of local allied troops, the British force was large enough to be militarily effective, yet small enough not to represent a major political risk even if more significant casualties had been incurred (the casualties taken by local allies had almost no negative political value for the British). The financial cost of the expedition, while not insubstantial, was far outweighed by the control of territory achieved by success (reinforced only days later at Fashoda, where the advantage of the British position checked a French challenge from the west), not to mention avenging the death of the unfortunate Gordon.

In considering the situation in the Sudan, the British concluded that the potential of success afforded by modern technology and organization outstripped the relatively remote risks of failure, measured in casualties and objectives unattained. To both the British government and people, the losses inflicted on the Mahdi Army were of generally little concern, and the use of technology in doing so was a triumph of industrialized civilization over barbarism. There was thus very little potential political cost to the expedition provided that it achieved its primary object, an entirely attainable goal; means and methods played almost no part in the equation, as the level of commitment required to succeed was far below the political tipping point established by the value of the object.

Yet the calculation was not always so simple; immediately following the success of Omdurman, the British were forced to confront a far more difficult challenge in South Africa - the Boer War. Here the enemy was well-armed with European rifles and refused to fight the British in a manner that emphasized British strengths; instead, they fought a guerrilla war, never allowing the British forces to employ their advantages of organization and technology to good effect. Unable to win a quick and decisive victory, the British were compelled to invest more troops, more money, and more political capital in an effort to break the Boers. When this failed, more drastic measures were taken: huge swaths of countryside were sectioned off with barbed wire and blockhouses to restrict movement, and many Boers were moved into the first concentration camps in history.

Even though the British did successfully conclude the war in 1902 after three years of constant struggle, the political costs were substantial, making the victory far less clear-cut. The treatment of the Boers, who were of course of Christian farmers of European origin, was considered an outrage by some. The inability of the vaunted British Army to see off a relatively small force of poorly trained irregulars seemed inexplicable, especially since that same army had just enjoyed such success in the Sudan. The difficulties of fighting a limited war against an enemy that was far less willing to cooperate by fighting in the manner the British expected them to, and that did not occupy a distinctly lower place in the racial and social hierarchy generally accepted at the time (it was difficult to classify the Boers as "barbarians"), were made clear. The lessons were promptly forgotten with the advent of Great Power conflict that dominated the world until 1945, only to be rediscovered during the waves of post-colonial struggles for independence, which occurred in a vastly different political climate.

Modern limited wars look far more like the Boer War than the Sudan Campaign, but the limitations are becoming ever more restrictive. No longer can labels of "barbarian" lessen the political impact of losses inflicted on an opponent; no longer can the latest technology be employed without consideration of the consequences. Yet the threshold for failure has continued to fall; even limited numbers of casualties in an all-volunteer force or failure to achieve success in a short span of time can be enough to significantly weaken political resolve and popular support. For the Great Powers, limited war presents a paradox: for all the power they possess, the means that can be employed in limited wars are increasingly restricted by the political costs of using them. The technological disparity between the leading powers and their lesser opponents remains significant, but the costs involved in using that technology have increased. Thus the political costs of committing manpower and time to a limited war effort cannot be offset by victory ensured by technology as they were at Omdurman. At the same time, those opposing the Great Powers are often fighting for a far more valuable political object, and are thus willing to commit far more of their available means, and with fewer regards for the political costs, as failure in the conflict could be fatal to the regime. The end result is that limited ends are increasingly difficult to achieve at acceptable cost to the Great Powers. Has limited war become too limited to win?