Mastering The Tides of the World told of the difficulty in knowing what courses of action are the right path to take, despite our best efforts to reason our way forward and predict outcomes.
We are at war once again, this time with Iran. Before it started I did not know what the right course of action was. Now that it has commenced I think it essential we achieve victory along the lines outlined by Secretary of State Rubio. This is a circumstance where, having started the task, failure to achieve these outcomes will have serious long-term negative consequences for the United States. I am aware of the sunk cost fallacy but, in this case, we need to continue. I'm also painfully aware of the potential for unforeseen consequences, a theme that has prompted a number of THC posts.
The Event At Sarajevo reflects on the unforeseen consequences of World War I and the lessons for future conflicts.
Japan's disastrous 1941 decision to attack the U.S. and other Western nations is the subject of Japan Decides On War.
Dereliction Of Duty discusses the U.S. decision for escalated involvement in Vietnam in 1964-65.
America's flawed decision to attack Iraq in 2003; Pausing At The Precipice.
In his Second Inaugural Address (March 4, 1865), President Lincoln spoke of the unpredictable nature of war:
Neither party expected for the war the magnitude or the duration which it has already attained. Neither anticipated that the cause of the conflict might cease with or even before the conflict itself should cease. Each looked for an easier triumph, and a result less fundamental and astounding.
We see that unpredictability in how the Cold War ended with the collapse of the Soviet Union, a resolution I had not thought possible nor, for that matter, had the legions of American experts on the Soviet Union. Perhaps Ronald Reagan was the only one with the foresight to predict that ending and he was considered delusional until it happened.
There is also a delusion that those opposed to the use of force can fall prey to. That inaction will allow things to continue unchanged on the same course. They don't. I wrote about this in the Iraq section of the essay Reflections On The Middle East Wars.
Nor does it mean that victory is an end to history. In his Finest Hour speech on June 18, 1940, Prime Minister Winston Churchill held out a vision of victory that would lead the world into "broad, sunlit uplands".
The whole fury and might of the enemy must very soon be turned on us. Hitler knows that he will have to break us in this Island or lose the war. If we can stand up to him, all Europe may be free and the life of the world may move forward into broad, sunlit uplands. But if we fail, then the whole world, including the United States, including all that we have known and cared for, will sink into the abyss of a new Dark Age made more sinister, and perhaps more protracted, by the lights of perverted science.
Yet only fifteen years later on March 1, 1955, after the victory over Hitler, the emergence of the Cold War and the threat of mutual annihilation by nuclear weapons led Churchill, only weeks before his resignation as Prime Minister, to address these words to Parliament:
The day may dawn when fair play, love for one’s fellow-men, respect for justice and freedom, will enable tormented generations to march forth serene and triumphant from the hideous epoch in which we have to dwell.
Of course, being Churchill, he closed his remarks with the stirring admonition: "Meanwhile, never flinch, never weary, never despair.”
