This is the most powerful statement on the meaning of war that I have ever read. It still brings tears to my eyes. It is from Charles Fair’s excellent book, From the Jaws of Victory. It is the conclusion of the chapter describing the Great Northern War, in which Charles XII of Sweden fought Peter the Great of Russia. Charles was a military genius who repeatedly defeated larger armies, but he was eventually beaten by Peter at the Battle of Poltava. Here is Mr. Fair’s concluding comparison of the two commanders:
Charles on the other hand was too competent, too much a Wunderkind. Without him his commanders were simply what they were-dull or mediocre or reasonably skilled professionals who could never on their own have undertaken a tenth of what they did in his company, and doubtless would not have dreamed of trying. A man of obvious ability and depth who might, under other conditions, have become a mathematician or a philosopher—though possibly never a statesman-Charles was driven to specialize too soon. Of all the men he might have been, circumstances quickly forced him to choose one; and the hopelessness of the military problem he was called upon to solve, together with his early success in solving it, may then have made the choice irrevocable. He was (or perhaps became) medieval in that war was his obsession. Like Edward III he had little time, and possibly no liking, for administrative matters, leaving those to his slow-moving ministers in Stockholm and showing few signs in his long, busy career that he understood the world which was growing around him— one in which numbers, wealth, and strategic position were to be everything and questions of honor and dynastic polity utterly forgotten.
Not many others of his day understood it, either, but one may suppose that Peter did. Of the two, he was far the more modern — a psychically disheveled realist, given to brutal excesses and totally expedient in his use of power, but nonetheless a man who saw through to the issues that really concerned his country. In contrast to Charles’, the tsar’s acts and preoccupations were of far greater scope, most of them converging on a common aim, and a surprising number of them yielding substantial results. Just as he shaved his prelates' beards, discouraged traditional forms of dress as impractical, and defied the xenophobia of his people by openly favoring foreigners and their handiwork, so for all his absurdity as a commander, he achieved in the field what he had set out to. One may find him too rapaciously "natural," too "sincere" in the naked animal fashion which we are trying in this century to accept as the right and necessary way for men to be; one may even object that in the interests of his beloved Russia, he killed too many of his beloved Russians. He still fell short of bad generalship in one essential-he did not kill people for absolutely nothing. In the end, Charles did.
War is not noble, it is not glorious, and is not, contrary to American beliefs, like a football game. Bloody-minded idiots shout “Rah! Rah! Rah!” for one side or the other in a war; they are the driving force behind so much unnecessary suffering.
War is a transaction with Fate. You expend blood and treasure to achieve some political goal. The fundamentally necessary steps that politicians, especially American politicians, fail to perform are:
First, obtain estimates from your military commanders as to how much blood and treasure will be required to achieve your desired political goal. They can often be trusted, but they tend to err on the side of optimism, so be sure to include a decent estimate of that optimism and adjust accordingly.
Second, estimate the probability of something going terribly wrong and the whole enterprise generating a catastrophic failure. What if another nation decides to intervene? What if an unexpected change in the weather ruins an operation? What if some of the soldiers misbehave, creating an international incident? Use your imagination.
Third, decide whether the benefits of the political goal are worth the expense of blood and treasure. You will be expending huge amounts of taxpayer money and the lives of many young men — is your political goal truly worth that expenditure?
If you analyze these questions with integrity, then your conclusion will be reliable. It is the tragedy of human history that leaders seldom do so.