Thomas Schelling brought his game theory to the Johnson administration and gave a bad President a “strategy cover” for not destroying the enemy’s center of gravity in the Vietnam War, thus formally incorporating appeasement as an integral element of American war strategy.
"The power to hurt can be counted among the most impressive attributes of military power . . . To inflict suffering gains nothing and saves nothing directly; it can only make people behave to avoid it . . . War is always a bargaining process . . . the bargaining power that comes from the capacity to hurt . . .."
– Thomas Schelling
"War is thus an act of force to compel our enemy to do our will."
– Carl Von Clausewitz
"It would be futile-even wrong to try and shut one's eyes to what war really is from sheer distress at its brutality."
– Carl Von Clausewitz
"Every attempt to make war easy and safe will result in humiliation and disaster."
— William T. Sherman
On Saturday, February 17, 2006, The Wall Street Journal published an Op-Ed by a Nobel laureate in economics, Michael Spence, concerning a recent interview he had with another Nobel laureate in economics, Thomas Schelling. Schelling had also been Spence’s academic mentor. While most Americans do not recognize Schelling’s name, they should because he was the moving intellectual force behind the self-defeating strategy employed by Lyndon Johnson in Vietnam. In 1960, Schelling published a book, The Strategy of Conflict, based on “game theory” that was totally divorced from reality. He followed up that same year with “Experimental Games and Bargaining Theory,” published in World Politics. Game theory is often described as a branch of applied mathematics and economics wherein situations are studied as players choose different actions in an attempt to maximize their returns. Game theorists like Schelling premise their work on the conviction that emotional and at times irrational life situations like war can be formally modeled.
Schelling postulated that war was no different from the human conflicts which characterize business transactions, labor negotiations, and arms control bargaining! These human contests may be bitter, but they can be resolved by bargaining. Therefore, Schelling theorized that war was merely bargaining by violent means. In Schelling’s concept of war, all that a warring state need do to prevail is to continually up the ante through “graduated response” until the enemy concludes that his escalation efforts are futile and cry “uncle!” Simply put, Schelling’s view of war is that two rational actor warring powers take to the battlefield to pummel one another with measured, increasing violence until one or the other does an economic analysis and decides that further combat would be counterproductive.
In 1964, President Lyndon Johnson and his Secretary of Defense, Robert McNamara, took Schelling’s game theory as their own in constructing their strategy to compel North Vietnam to halt its war of aggression against South Vietnam. Schelling had tutored his Harvard teaching colleague, John McNaughton, in his arcane theory of warfare and military strategy before McNaughton went to the Pentagon to serve as McNamara’s Assistant Secretary of Defense. From this assistant secretary position, McNaughton merchanted Schelling’s unproven (and now disproven) warfare theory as the strategic methodology by which Johnson and McNamara could implement a limited war doctrine which avoided the total approach to war advocated by Carl Von Clausewitz and William T. Sherman. Instead, “the best and brightest” of the Johnson administration, McNamara, McNaughton, and National Security Advisor McGeorge Bundy concocted the strategy of using graduated violence applied through airpower to hurt, but not destroy North Vietnam in order to “send a message” that the North should cease its invasion of the South. During the US air offensive named “Rolling Thunder,” military targeting was so limited Lyndon Johnson boasted that the military couldn’t “bomb an outhouse” without Johnson’s permission. But Johnson was such a “timid warrior” that the North Vietnamese targets he personally selected at weekly White House luncheons had the same effect that bombing outhouses would have inflicted on the North Vietnamese Communists – zero. Johnson’s Tuesday targeting luncheons were usually conducted without even uniformed military personnel present.
As a national strategy, Johnson’s “send a message” targeting was absolutely without historical precedent for a superpower. So, the “message” that Ho Chi Minh naturally received from Johnson’s targeting “restraint” was not a threat demanding policy change, but rather that the US war strategy was being formulated by a weak, uncertain national leadership. Although Johnson, McNamara, et al, never realized it, Ho understood perfectly the underlying message that Johnson was sending, and that was: the US leadership did not understand war. The “Whiz kids,” as McNamara’s Pentagon “team” was known, pontificated about how their new theory of limited war and gradual escalation would prevent a superpower nuclear showdown. The media swooned with adoration. Unfortunately, their “theory” was an idea hatched in Harvard’s ivory towers, not in the bloody reality of combat. The attraction of this new-fangled approach to war and defense of nation was that it applied a scientific calculus of rational decision-making to an enemy fighting for more than goods and services.
Johnson mistakenly fought the Vietnam War as an adjunct to his Democrat Party Big Government domestic agenda, instead of as a foreign war to be won against a determined and ruthless enemy. Throughout the war Johnson put more emphasis on launching his “War on Poverty” than on stopping communist aggression in Southeast Asia. It is claimed by Johnson’s confidantes that he was so fearful of a superpower confrontation, he spent the war in perpetual fear of aggravating the Soviet and Chinese Communists. Johnson’s “solution” was to avoid confronting North Vietnam’s involvement in the war and hope that would keep its communist protectorates from getting involved directly.
It therefore logically followed that Johnson did not want to draw the American public’s attention to the all-important pivotal role that North Vietnam was playing in killing Americans in the South by acknowledging the North Vietnamese as our primary enemy. By actually reinforcing the communist propaganda that the Viet Cong was an indigenous southern insurgency and not a total creation of the North Vietnamese Communists, Johnson was able to appease the Soviet and Chinese Communists while simultaneously misleading the American public. Johnson knew that if the truth were known about North Vietnam, that it was in fact the actual source of America’s mounting combat deaths, he would not have been able to resist the public clamor to destroy the source of the war and end it.
Furthermore, Johnson knew that he could have ended the war at any time within weeks by bombing the dikes and submerging the strategic areas of North Vietnam under water. Unfortunately for America, Johnson lacked the moral courage to deal with the reality that destroying North Vietnam’s capability to make war was the key to crippling and ending the Viet Cong insurgency in the South and hence the war. President Richard Nixon gave the lie to the Johnson claim that paralyzing North Vietnam would result in a superpower confrontation when he immobilized the North’s war-making capability through the Linebacker II air offensive, which forced the North Vietnamese to sign the 1973 armistice – giving the US the “fig leaf” it needed to withdraw from combat. By 1973, American withdrawal was the only feasible alternative after so many years of mismanaged war.
Thomas Schelling (who also happens to be a leading global warming theorist since his environmentalist stint in the Carter administration) brought his game theory to the Johnson administration and gave a bad President a “strategy cover” for not destroying the enemy’s center of gravity in the Vietnam War, thus formally incorporating appeasement as an integral element of American war strategy. Thomas Schelling is the personification of the hubris of social scientists who believe that they have a greater insight into war than successful warriors turned theorists. These academics continue to ignore the empirical lesson that, “It would be futile — even wrong to try and shut one's eyes to what war really is from sheer distress at its brutality,” and, “Every attempt to make war easy and safe will result in humiliation and disaster.” No one can deny that following Schelling’s game theory, war strategy ultimately ended in just the humiliation and disaster in Vietnam predicted by General Sherman. Is there a lesson here for war strategy in Iraq?
So what is Thomas Schelling up to these days? Well, it would appear that the Nobel laureate failed to learn anything from his role in the Vietnam fiasco. He is still expounding strategic theory that is firmly anchored in mid-air. In the Journal piece, Spence states that Schelling expects Iran to acquire nuclear weapons, but this fact leaves him apparently unconcerned. His response to this eventuality is: "Once a country becomes the owner of nuclear weapons, it is imperative that they learn to deal with them responsibly." Furthermore, according to Schelling, terrorists “also need to understand that nuclear devices are really only useful for deterrence” and that terrorists “would be more likely to smuggle them into a hostile country and hide them in cities, and then threaten to detonate them if attacked — or unless their aims and conditions are met. The object should be not to blow up a city but to deter attacks on their country, region or organization.” It doesn’t get any more foolish than that in the face of a Jihadist political ideology which has already proven it has a world-wide legion of suicidal murderers just itching to get a one-way ticket to that Islamic brothel in the sky featuring 70+ virgins. Are we to assume the leading Imams with their fingers on the switch are somehow less fervent?
What is one to take away from the instructive case of Thomas Schelling, beside the obvious fact that Noble prizes are not awarded for common sense? It would appear that an ivory tower Elite continues to view national existence and defense of nation within the prism of a silly social science theory predicated upon the quite scientific view that men everywhere at all times ought to choose based upon known calculi. Schelling and those he advised in the Johnson administration never grasped that Ho Chi Minh did not see the world through the eyes of an East Coast intellectual or a West Texas politician. Now he and his ilk would have us believe that faithful Muslims in Pakistan and in Tehran will use (or rather not use) their nuclear weapons based upon an Elite’s calculus. History has proven that game theory economic modeling was grotesquely inadequate to apply in Vietnam where the Communists were motivated by 1,000 years of xenophobic nationalism. If game theory was off base in Vietnam, it is not even in the same universe when it comes to Islamic jihadists.
There are those of the Schelling school who currently say that there can be no military solution in Iraq or in the larger Middle East and that the answers to US security concerns can only be produced through negotiations. This line of thinking is akin to Schelling’s proposition that, “To inflict suffering gains nothing and saves nothing directly; it can only make people behave to avoid it . . ..” However, like Schelling, these critics ignore the common sense fact that military results determine the outcome of negotiations – not the reverse. Clausewitz, the master military theorist, articulates the case well, and demonstrates its truth, that “War is thus an act of force to compel our enemy to do our will.” We’d be well served to incorporate the lessons of that great US warrior William T. Sherman, who warned us quite explicitly not to attempt “to make war easy and safe.” For those advocating such an alternative to war, it should be enough to know that the enemy is listening and watching.
dyerushalmi@saneworks.us
http://www.saneworks.us/
Read more articles by Tom Snodgrass
Dan, what you see as Sherman's "barbarity" helps make his case. Sherman was waging total war to force the South to surrender, no half measures for him. Also, as far as I know Sherman didn't have his troops shoot or execute civilians.
Comment by Joe Lammers | February 23, 2007
Dan:
Joe Lammers is correct. You might oppose war but once you've declared war on an "enemy" (and we certainly would hope you would not do so on anyone else), you fight the war to win, otherwise the old Kerry saying IS correct: no one wants to be the last man to die for a cause the nation has quit.
Your repulsion though, honest and human enough, brings me back to my query of you in Colonel Snodgrass' last article/comment thread. When does a nation fight a war in your view? I've listed there the major wars. If you feel comfortable opining whether we should have fought those wars, that should, if you are consistent, tell us where you stand on war making. Or, of course, explain what you consider just cause. You've mentioned that only "invasion" justifies the "inhumane" act of war as far as I recall but if you go to my last comment at that previous post by the Colonel, you'll see I raise a few troubling issues with that theory.
But, if the discussion just remains at this level, it becomes something akin to a women's parlor meeting.
All the best,
David Yerushalmi
Comment by David Yerushalmi | February 23, 2007
The South had peacefully and lawfully ceceded?
The South's cecession was a direct violation of Article IV, section 3 of the Constitution - a document which was voluntarily signed by every Confederate state. You can almost say it was an illegal, neocon war perpetrated against the free people of the North!
There is a reason the Pledge of Allegience contains the words: 'ONE NATION, under GOD, INDIVISIBLE, with LIBERTY and JUSTICE for ALL. I trust you have heard of this particular American profession of loyalty to God and country? Do paleos have a problem with the Pledge as well as the Constitution and Declaration of Independence?
They fought back only when invaded? Have you ever heard of Fort Sumpter, Dan?
Comment by Jeff Osonitsch | February 23, 2007
Dan said: The South had peacefully and lawfully seceded.
The act of secession was a direct violation of Article IV, section 3 of the US Constitution - a legally binding agreement into which ALL Confederate states had voluntarily entered.
Dan said: They fought back only when invaded.
Have you heard of the attack on Ft. Sumter, Dan?
You might say it was an illegal, neocon war against the peaceful people of the North.
There is a reason the Pledge of Allegiance contains the words: ONE nation under GOD, INDIVISIBLE, with LIBERTY and JUSTICE, for ALL. Do paleos reject this traditional oath of loyalty to God and Country as ferociously as you reject our Constitution and the jacobin, Lockean Declaration of Independence?
Comment by Jeff Osonitsch | February 23, 2007
Jeff Osonitsch is correct in asserting that the War Between the States began with the Confederate attack on Fort Sumter, rather than with a Union invasion. As such, the Confederates fired the first shots, and became the aggressor nation.
That having been said, the Confederate States were never barred from leaving the Union. He cites Article IV, Section 3 of said document. I have provided the exact text below. You will note that nowhere is the issue of secession mentioned in any manner. Only how states may enter the union.
Article IV, Section 3:
New states may be admitted by the Congress into this union; but no new states shall be formed or erected within the jurisdiction of any other state; nor any state be formed by the junction of two or more states, or parts of states, without the consent of the legislatures of the states concerned as well as of the Congress.
The Congress shall have power to dispose of and make all needful rules and regulations respecting the territory or other property belonging to the United States; and nothing in this Constitution shall be so construed as to prejudice any claims of the United States, or of any particular state.
If this Article and Section had any governing authority on the matter, it would have been cited by Chief Justice Salmon Chase in his botched opinion in Texas v. White. Chase was unable to cite any legal precedent or authority other than the Preamble to the Constitution (the only instance of which I am aware of where this was done) and the Preamble to the Articles of Confederation, which no longer was of any force or effect because it had been replaced by the Constitution.
In fact, secession is governed by the 10th Amendment as a reserved power. No mention is made of specific reserved powers; only that those powers not delegated to the National government are reserved to the states and the people. There can be no question that this rule should have governed the Confederate Secession.
Also, note that the creation of West Virginia was a violation of Article IV, Section 3, because the Legislature of Virginia Proper did not approve of it. The court ignored this issue, stating that states were indivisible, thereby denying the existence of this Section.
I could say more on the subject but will spare the bandwidth.
Comment by Steven Laib | February 23, 2007
Re: Ft. Sumter
Property of the United States government is not under the jurisdiction of any state. Therefore, regardless of whether South Carolina's secession was valid (it wasn't), Ft. Sumter remained a part of the US, and the attack on it was an act of aggression.
None of this has anything to do with the topic of the article, and I would hate to see this message board become yet another forum for the endless struggle to vindicate the South.
Re: The Pledge
This, again, is entirely divorced from the article's subject matter. It's also totally inconsequential. The Pledge has no legal force, and its primary reciters (school children) go through the motions with such routine and little thought that there is hardly any effect other than the waste of 20-30 seconds. For the record, I do think there's something a little uncomfortably Soviet about loyalty oaths. Bottom line is that the Pledge should never be invoked by anyone as evidence of anything.
Re: The Actual Subject Matter
It seems to me that we have arrived at a point where the moral consensus is that we should drop enough bombs to cause a terrible humanitarian crisis, but not so many bombs that we actually accomplish the mission. A delicate balance.
Comment by Katzen | February 23, 2007
Article IV, section 3 of the Constitution explicitly prohibits the break up of states and grants to Congress alone the power to admit new states. It reads:
"New states may be admitted by the Congress into this Union; but no new state shall be formed OR erected within the jurisdiction of any other state; nor any state be formed by the junction of two or more States, or parts of States, without the consent of the Legislatures of the states concerned AS WELL AS of the Congress.: (emphasis added)
"The Congress shall have power to dispose of and make all needful rules and regulations respecting the territory or other property belonging to the United States; and nothing in this Constituition shall be construed as to prejudice any claims of the U.S. or any particular State."
The Supreme Court ruled in 1868 that "The Constitution in all its provisions, looks to an indestructable Union, composed of indestructable states."
Does anyone truly believe the framers meant only that states cannot subdivide among themselves but are permitted to detach from the nation as a whole?
According to an article by Mac Owens ot the Claremont institutes website, Lincoln called the idea that Any state of the Union may, consistently with the national Constitution, and therefore lawfully and peacefully, withdraw from the Union without the consent of the Union…an ingenious sophism."
John Dickinson wrote in 1788 "the government of each state is, and is to be, sovereign and supreme in all matters that relate to each state only. It is to be subordinate barely in those matters that relate to the whole."
He goes on to quote St Paul: "But, now they are many members, yet but one body: and the eye Cannot say to the hand, I have no need of thee; nor again the head to the feet, I have no need of you." This alussion was meant to illustrate the indivisibility of the Union.
Comment by Jeff Osonitsch | February 24, 2007
we were on the road to losing as soon as our Pres. called Islam one of the world's great religions and backed down to said muslims and called the afghan campaign enduring 'freedom' instead of infinite justice. While both campaigns are now sick jokes for those in uniform the enduring has become an ass pain instead of victory of any meaningful sort. One has to only look at Israel and the group of people who call themselves Palestinians to see that the violence in Iraq will probably last for decades to come.
There is a reason why brutal thugs and dictators run most of those countries in the ME, because the avg. muslim is a barbaric animal barely under control at all times and require a gun, chain or whip to keep in line instead of nice and pretty laws and threats of fines for blowing up oil wells and making meat bombs of school bus riders.
The treatment Bush and our leaders have given Islam is like our leaders calling Nazism a great belief with just a few bad apples. How nice for those who have to deal with Islam directly for the rest of their lives.
Comment by Dean | February 24, 2007
Dan said:
"If you want to advocate a Shermanesque doctrine of total war until all the “enemies” are shaking in their boots, I can’t stop you. But please do not label that conservatism. It is a disgrace, and it is profoundly unchristian."
Dan, I wasn't commenting on whether or not the North should have fought to save the Union or whether the South was justified, just that half measures don't work in warfare. War is inherently irrational, if you've noticed all appeals to any populace to resist or to supply soldiers during a war are emotional in nature. People don't quit fighting when they make a rational decision that further resistance isn't in their best interest, they quit when their dreams are shattered by catastrophe inflicted upon them by their enemies.
In fact I tend to agree with you on the decision to invade Iraq, I think it was at best unwise. Afghanistan is another story, the invasion there was both justified and necessary.
Comment by Joe Lammers | February 24, 2007
Dan Phillips:
“I say again, this strategy is barbaric. It disregards human life.”
I can’t believe that anyone would make a statement like this. War is barbaric because it disregards human life. Well, no kidding!
“And there will be absolutely no way to know how much the threat has been diminished.”
There is at least something, although quite obvious, to this statement. No one will ever know what would have been – history is full of examples. What would have been if the French Army had thrown the German Army out of the Rhineland (a de-militarized zone) in 1936? What would have been if the Allies had held Germany to the Treaty of Versailles?
“America should not be conducting a total war (or a limited war for that mater) against Iraq because Iraq didn’t attack us.”
When are people going to learn that an overt attack is not the only justification for going to war? Where have you been? Watching too many Saturday “B” Westerns where the good guy has to wait for the bad guy to strike first, and the good guy still has to give the bad guy an even break? Have you ever read “The Just War Theory”? Do you know that simply illuminating a ship, airplane, etc. with a radar-directed gun battery is an act of war?
“ . . . military results determine the outcome of negotiations – not the reverse.” In other words, “Diplomacy without arms is like an orchestra without instruments.” – Frederick the Great
Comment by sedonaman | February 24, 2007
Rolling Thunder is what Rumsfeld calls "Shock and Awe". It has been tried 7 times in the last 67 years. Failed 7 times. The biggest failure was the first - The Battle of Britain. The last failure (before Iraq) was in the Balkans. Melosovich did not give up until 4 days after the Royal Marines went in. We bommbed him for years and had nothing to show for it. Rummy still went with Shcok and Awe - I guess hoping the seventh try would be different -and we are again moving towards "Peace With Honor."
If you think our surrender in Nam was honorable do 2 things for me: 1 show me on a current map where Saigon is.
2. Talk to someone whos family came here from IndoChina between 1975 and 1985 and ask them what was going on there when their family left.
Rolling Thunder/Shock and Awe has never won a war. Gruts and Naval power win wars.
Comment by Rod | February 25, 2007
Make gruts grunts.
Comment by Rod | February 25, 2007
Dear - Bush callr Islam the ROP is a speech in 02. A year before the war even started! The MSM/DNC has used the term ROP to beat Republicans over the head the last 5 years.
The President seems to flip flop as much as or more than JFK.
Comment by Rod | February 25, 2007