The Humility Deficit

Failing to Understand and Respect Our Enemies in the Modern Era

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In his Meditations, Marcus Aurelius writes that “there’s nothing more insufferable than people who boast about their own humility.” Aurelius isn’t being derogatory about the virtue of humility. Indeed, he often writes of it as a positive characteristic throughout his meditations. For me, his words actually speak to the unwitting over estimation of one’s personal capacity.

Perhaps more importantly, it speaks to the the arrogance of institutions that not only over appreciate their own strengths but concurrently under estimate the strengths of their competitors. Many organisations fall into this trap. But, for the purposes of this article, I will restrict my examination to military institutions.

This humility deficit has been on my mind this week as I visited Israel.

In a variety of discussions with current and retired military and national security personnel, as well as journalists, think tank personnel and Israeli citizens, the magnitude and multiple layers of failure that led to 7 October have been quite stark. And while there are political, military and intelligence aspects to this, at heart, Israel’s security establishment under estimated the ability of Hamas to plan and execute the kind of complex attack that they conducted on 7 October.

As I listened to the many stories about the day, it occurred to me that this had been a massive failure of humility.

There are many reasons why military organisations fail. History is littered with the detritus of failed organisations and warfighting concepts that we can explore in exquisite detail. From the failure of the Roman legions at Lake Trasimene or the Teutoburg Forest, through to the French failure in May and June of 1940, there are a multitude examples of defeats that have a common theme for the defeated: a failure of humility.

A failure of humility occurs when a military force fails to undertake the intellectual efforts to understand their adversary. In essence, it is a symptom of failing to respect the capabilities of one’s enemy. And while there may be many, many historical examples of failures of humility in military institutions, the modern era also has exemplars we need to study. In particular, the last couple of years have seen three examples of a lack of humility that have resulted in tragic outcomes for the military forces involved: the Russians in 2022; the Ukrainians (and their western supporters) in 2023; and, Israel on 7 October 2023.

Russia 2022. There have been a range of examinations of the failure of the Russians to rapidly capture Kyiv in the early days of their February 2022 large-scale invasion of Ukraine. Russian intelligence had provided an inaccurate picture of national resolve. The Ukrainian government, instead of cutting and running at the first sight of Russians (as the FSB hoped) stayed and rallied the nation.

The Russian Army proved unable to execute combined arms operations in a way that overcame Ukrainian resistance. Western assistance was provided that supported the Ukrainian concept of defence in the north. And, of course, the Ukrainians mounted a stout, heroic defence of their nation that compromised the air-land operation at Hostomel, forcing the reliance on an overland advance on Kyiv which the Ukrainians hounded at every step.

Ultimately however, the Russians had grossly underestimated the Ukrainians. Their assumptions about the lack of national unity, the fighting power of the Ukrainian military and the support that might be provided by the West were all wrong. Had the Russians been more cautious in their appreciation of the threats to their intended takeover of Ukraine, not assumed they would be able to take over the country in ten days, and demonstrated just a modicum of humility, February 2022 may have turned out very differently for Ukraine and Russia. We would certainly be in a very different war than we are at present.

The 2023 Counteroffensive. Unfortunately, the Russian operational shortfalls of 2022 has not been the only failure of humility in the Ukraine War. This year, expectations in the media, western governments and in Kyiv itself were very high for the counteroffensive against the Russians. After Russia’s early failures in the war, and the Ukrainian successes in the Kharkiv and Kherson campaigns of late 2022, the influx of more western munitions, artillery, and armoured vehicles was expected to underpin a decisive campaign in southern Ukraine in 2023.

The Russians did not see it this way. After their humiliations in Kharkiv and Kherson, they had focussed on the construction of an extensive belt of fortifications in southern Ukraine. Now known as the Surovikin Line, this was constructed in the full view of Ukraine’s tactical reconnaissance forces as well as western space-based surveillance systems (civil and military). Coupled with greatly enhanced Russian reconnaissance-fires complex that utilised drones, loitering munitions and a reduced ‘detection to destruction’ cycle, the deep minefields and multiple defensive lines should have given more pause than it did with Ukrainian and NATO planners.

Regardless of who is to blame to raising expectations of Ukrainian success in the south, these expectations dashed upon the minefields, trench lines and drone-fires complexes of the Russians in the south. Ultimately, we had underestimated the Russians. It was a collective failure of humility among Ukrainian and western planners and politicians.

The 7 October Massacre. This brings me to the examination of the Hamas massacres in southern Israel on 7 October. A broad range of issues contributed to the ultimate failure of the IDF to protect its citizens on that awful day. According to many I spoke to this week, the over reliance on remote intelligence and strike had led to an under appreciation of OSINT and HUMINT. There have been multiple stories of the ignoring of young soldiers and non-commissioned officers who reported Hamas preparations before 7 October. The Israelis even had a copy of the Hamas plan. And, the higher levels of the military and political classes also believed that Hamas was now moderating its behaviour and more interested in governance in Gaza.

All of this resulted in a drastic under estimation of the will and capacity of Hamas to plan and execute the kind of operation that it conducted on 7 October. Hamas undertook a carefully planned operation which relied on simultaneity, attacking military headquarters (including the Division HQ) and sensors to overwhelm IDF command and control. It effectively used deception in the lead up to the attacks. And when it did launch the operation, it relied on speed and shock action to rapidly surge forces into many settlements across southern Israel for several hours while the IDF either didn’t understand what was happening or was unable to act decisively.

Every IDF officer I spoke with this week, and every retired senior officer, admitted to a deep sense of shame about failing to defend their people. They had under estimated a known enemy with a public agenda to destroy the state of Israel who had rehearsed its battle plans in public. There were many kinds of failure in the lead up to, and on, 7 October (I will write about this separately) but a failure of humility in the IDF and the government is perhaps one of the worst kinds.

The common theme of these modern failures is the inability to give one’s enemy adequate credit for being a thinking, complex and adaptive entity that studies its adversary and plans accordingly.

As I highlighted earlier in this piece, the under estimation of the enemy is hardly a new phenomenon. But we possess thousands of years of examples to guide us in our actions, extraordinarily clever people and new era technologies like artificial intelligence that permit more forensic examination of one’s adversary than ever before.

One could be overly fatalistic and accept that such events are just an inevitable part of war. But, I would like to think that in the modern era we might at least be able to minimise its occurrence even if we can’t remove it entirely.

And we can start by ensuring that our institutions and individuals have the right incentives to be more curious, and more humble, about our known and potential enemies. This can be hard in military institutions where decisiveness, courage and confidence are valued. It can be even more difficult where political leaders don’t value the questioning of long-held strategic assumptions. But we have to try.

The price of eschewing such humility is very high indeed.