In addition to commiting bestial atrocities the Japanese were aggressive militarism exemplified and I repeat Germany was their ally. Japan could hardly be expected to react like like Caspar Milquetoast. Personaly I give a lot of weight to what states (and people) actually do in trying to determine their true motives, which they (apart from a few leaders) might be only dimly aware of themselves as you say.
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Fabius Maximus replies: the similarity of WWI and WWII (from our POV) was our involvement to help european states with whom we had long associations, if not formal defense treaties. Japan was an ally of the US in WWI, an enemy in WWII. I have not read Prof M’s book, so I cannot comment on his theories. I agree that determining motivations is difficult for individuals, almost impossible for large organizations.

That Japan was an ally of Germany meant that in pressuring Japan the US was expecting to be at war with both, the US military capabilities had increased by an order of magnitude in the year preceding this. Wilson and FDR both waited until winning a second term (in which they said they would stay out of foreign wars) before jumping in when it looked like Germany would win. Given FDR’s instuction to the US navy to attack U-boats on sight it is difficult to beleive he would not have found a way to make the war official, his u-boat order meant war with or without a declaration.

The USSR took four years to recover what Germany took in 4 weeks, only the stop at Smolensk for 2 months! saved the remaining north and south soviet forces from having to fight on reversed fronts while at the same time being pressured by the germans attacking them in front. (Hitlers Panzers East by Russell Stolfi)
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Fabius Maximus replies: History looks so clear and simple in hindsight.

“Nobody knowing of their history of relentless aggression could have seriously thought the Japanese would do anything but go to war.”

Reading such things fills me with despair. Future generations will look back at me (OK, us) with pity and disgust, saying “Nobody knowing XXX could have seriously thought YYY.” I, foolishly thinking YYY, lack their wisdom and insight.

“It was an agonising decision for Japan.”

Screw ‘em. I feel no pity for Japan’s leaders — or their people who followed them (see my posts about collective responsibility). If they wanted to conquer China, a nation with whom we had close ties, we were right to say “do it without Texas oil.” Selling them our oil would have made us enablers, “accessories before the fact”.

“The US understood they could dominate their region and rise to become a peer competitor if left alone hence the ultimatum which put Japan in a immposible position. ”

A classic single-factor explanation of history, assuming the US is a unitary actor. Probably some American leaders had this motive. I doubt it can be shown to have been the dominant motive.

the only reason Germany ever fought (or lost) a world war was that they didn’t understand the offshore balancers (UK and US) would not stand for a Regional Hegemon in Europe, the US specifically would not stand for any great power dominating its region anywhere in the world. Germany missed it’s chance in 1905 to fight a (weakened) Russia and France without interference; only strategic foresight in the matter of how they were perceived and the resultant enemies they would be facing is they waited could have saved them.

Twain was a greater philosopher than Marx: “History never repeats itself, at best it it sometimes rhymes”.

Who is balancing US power? Strategic mistakes do not cause forces to appear out of nowhere and the elites in Arab countries are often part of minorities who fear their own people. Even in a single country such as Iraq the aftermath of a US “mistake” splits the population* and involves some classic payback by the downtrodden. the Sunnis are continuing to discover this in Iraq. The opponents of the US are too divided to acheive much.

*If splitting the population and state into fractious groupings was the real objective on the part of the strategists who first proposed it then the strategy followed by the US has gone swimmingly.
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Fabius Maximus replies: I do not understand Mearsheimer’s evidence. The entry of the US into WWII was clearly the result of Japan’s attack and Hitler’s declaration of war. FDR might not have been able to fight Germany w/o the latter.

Also, Germany’s #1 error in WWII was IMO invading Russia. The Russians probably would have won without our 2nd front (but with our aid).

I don’t consider terrorism as tactic. Terrorists use tactics such like disguise/covert ops, suicide attacks, choosing targets for best effect and not to attack low relevance targets (efficiency; they “hold their fire” 99.999% of the time). Note that all these tactics were used by conventional forces before. But these small pieces that are in the repertoire of a terrorist are not strategy. Strategy is how the terrorists want to hurt us decisively with these tactics - they expect us to overreact, to take notice, to fear (including economic risk premiums), probably to do stupid counter-strikes that only add to the list of our foes. And at the same time “high-profile” attacks are a means to impress possible recruits and keep morale up.

If all that was tactical, what’s strategic in terrorism? Is that strategic and tactical at once? That would either be wrong or mean that these categories are not applicable (perhaps because it’s more crime than warfare).

tactics: how do terrorists seek to hit their target for maximum effect?

operations: campaigns against specific countries to provoke a reaction (like withdrawal of troops/support)

strategy: to strengthen the own team by propaganda effect of strikes, to weaken the foe by damaging him directly and indirectly (through his predictable reactions)

politics: seeking allies among radicals, repudiate evil actions till they are accepted due to ongoing radicalization, video messages

grand strategy: I hope to never find out about that one.

In the case of AQ and some other terrorist groups in history religion needs to be added on the same level as morale (economic strength in turn is not so coining for non-state forces), but I am not well-informed about Wahhabism.

Maybe you saw that in my opinion AQ terrorist strategy is not very different to some strategies that were historically used by conventional forces. The tactics are the distinctive feature of terrorism. Maybe that’s why Lind emphasizes the tactical level?

Sven

If it works for you, use it.

As for terrorism, we may be approaching the problem from different angles. Violence against non-combatants is intended to have a grand strategic effect (deflate our morale, pump up their own, and give the uncommitted pause - you can see this clearly in bin Laden’s statements). So in that sense, it can be considered both as a tactic (something that you do) as well as an element of a higher level. If you regard that level as the grand strategic, you’ll see Lind’s collapse (and if you don’t, then you won’t).

Best regards,
Chet

Terrorism as tactic? Suicide attacks are a tactic, ok. But terrorism is in my eye a fragment of a strategy - the strategic equivalent of harassing fires. The latter is a tactics fragment as it very unlikely (and not intended) to achieve a decision (even not in a small fight) on its own.

The same goes for terrorism - in itself only a fragment of a strategy. It cannot achieve a decision on its own unless it’s done on an unprecedented scale (one 9/11 annually against Singapore or multiple nuclear attacks on any country would do the trick). AQ uses terrorism (besides its assumed religious value) as strategic element and combines it with a propaganda/ideology/religious element. The trouble with AQ were an “exemption of the rule” attack with extreme success coupled with a reaction (manhunts) that forced the somewhat hierarchical quasi-organization to turn into a movement.

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About the different levels; I decided not to simplify, but instead to accept uncertainty of a complex issue. I believe I’d miss many points if I would limit my thinking to tactical/operational/economical. Morale, economy, politics, training and the very prominent factor technology are too important to be excluded in theoretical thinking.

OK - I give up. I guess it depends on what you’re looking at. In my case it’s the idea of roll-up, so where I draw the line between strategy and grand strategy has to be at the war-winning level.

Note that I’m using a simple-minded definition: “tactics” are related to fighting battles, “operations” is what you do between battles, “strategy” is how you arrange battles and operations to achieve victory. I can handle three levels; after that it starts to get confusing.

Certainly for France, Poland, Norway, Denmark, The Netherlands, and Belgium your argument is valid: they were strategic (not operational)defeats, i.e., game over. For the Wehrmacht, you could make a good argument that they thought they had a strategic victory in June 1940 and that the war was over. For Hitler, though, it was “battles (Poland), battles (Norway & Denmark), battles (Low Countries, France), battles (Russia), battles (UK and US)” combined with various operations, and then, according to my classification, strategic defeat.

So that was the logic for my statement. I’ve put a first stab at relating this to 4GW on DNI. For his view of 4GW, Lind accepts terrorism and guerrilla warfare as tactics, but then collapses operations, strategy and grand strategy into one level. It does simplify things.

Best regards,
Chet

I’m not argueing whether the Germans fought well or not, had good strategy or not. I do actually not care about it, as I have no special relationship to their actions. I do rather attempt to learn on the beasis of the entire known military history. I just classify the actions into categories to my best knowledge.

Btw, isn’t this the much less interesting topic in comparison to the recent war and its troubles?

The fact is, they won battles but lost the war. You can attach any labels that you want but it doesn’t change the simple fact that they were unable to roll up tactical and operational success to strategic victory.

Chet