Writing Worth Reading
Writing Worth Reading
This book is a classic from the 1970s, written during the Vietnam War at a time of agonising reappraisal in the US. He makes a very helpful use of history in going back through the endings of major conflicts and explaining that once you get into a war it is both difficult and very important to think about how it ends.
Your first book is Every War Must End, by Fred Charles Iklé.
Iklé’s book is a classic from the 1970s, written during the Vietnam War at a time of agonising reappraisal in the US, with tens of thousands dying and no concept of how to bring the conflict to a close. But in the original edition he never actually mentions that war. Instead, he uses a rich selection of examples from earlier history, including the First and Second World Wars and the Korean War, arranged thematically to explore common challenges in bringing wars to an end.
What kind of answers did he come up with?
His central argument is that how a war ends is vital to its long-term impact upon the world – yet it is difficult for governments to be objective once there has been a great deal of violence. Iklé uses numerous historical examples to explain common problems. Policy-makers often succumb to wishful thinking, biased estimates, ideological dogma, and bureaucratic in-fighting, failing to think strategically in the midst of a fight. Our very human capacity to judge costs and benefits is distorted by the passions and sacrifices of an ongoing war. But if we are to act wisely we must consciously envision the endgame so as to craft a long-lasting political outcome that serves the interests of the state and its people. So the book looks at how important it is to remember that how you end a war is more momentous than the means being used in the midst of it.
How has this book influenced your work on terrorism?
The book is a kind of intellectual godfather to the research I have tried to do on the endings of terrorist campaigns. His argument – that in the middle of a passionate and difficult situation, we need to think about the longer-term outcome – is directly relevant to the action and reaction pattern that can unfold in the middle of a terrorist campaign. There isn’t anything worse than the tragedy of innocent noncombatants being killed in a symbolic way just to highlight a political message. I believe that Iklé’s argument applies directly to the horrifying violence that terrorism is designed to be. I should also add that I worked for Iklé early in my career, writing strategic documents in the Pentagon for a short time, so while he might not necessarily agree with my writings (I don’t know – haven’t asked him!), I have been thinking about the lessons of his book for a long time.
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Audrey Cronin is Professor at the US National War College and Senior Research Fellow at Oxford University in the Changing Character of War Programme. The views she expresses in the following article are her own and not the official policy of the US government. Her view on al-Qaeda is that they may implode: ‘By which I mean succumb to internal weaknesses, in-fighting, ideological bickering, loss of operational control, targeting mistakes and loss of popular support – some of the dynamics that we have already seen. Or they are going to transition into a more conventional kind of violence, meaning insurgency or even conventional war.’
