The Misfortunes of War
My new article at Engelsberg Ideas explores failure in 21st century military institutions.
The experience of failure is one of the best ways for individuals and institutions to improve their performance. Many institutions use military failure as a core element of training to bring out important teaching points, for both individuals and teams. The US Army’s National Training Center and the Australian Army’s Combat Training Centre, for example, both employ failure as a mechanism for learning. This approach recognises failure not as a setback, but as a powerful catalyst for growth and adaptation in military contexts.
By understanding patterns of failure, strategists can better prepare for potential pitfalls and enhance the resilience of their operations. In The Logic of Failure, Dietrich Dorner provides valuable insight into this process, noting that ‘failure does not strike like a bolt from the blue; it develops gradually according to its own logic… We can learn, however. People court failure in predictable ways.’ This perspective transforms failure from a feared outcome into a strategic tool, one that can significantly enhance military effectiveness and decision-making when properly understood and utilised.
From the failure of the Athenians on two expeditions to Syracuse during the Peloponnesian War to the destruction of the Roman legions at Lake Trasimene in 217 BC, to the French at Agincourt in 1415, and the Iraqi failure in the Gulf War in 1991, history offers a multitude of examples of defeat that can and must be studied to inform, adapt and improve the effectiveness of contemporary military institutions.
As Eliot Cohen and John Gooch have written, military failure fits into at least one, or often all, of the following categories: failure to learn, failure to anticipate, and failure to adapt. Every type of failure, individually or in the aggregate, provides an opportunity to learn. This learning opportunity is most powerful when failures are studied, as the historian Michael Howard once recommended, in ‘width, depth and context’.
To these historical failures must now be added those that have taken place in this new century. In the first two and a half decades of the 21st century, examples of military failure include that of the Iraqi Army and Air Force in 2003, the failure of Armenia in the Second Nagorno-Karabakh War in 2020, and the United States’ chaotic withdrawal from Kabul in 2021, which ended the Western military campaign in Afghanistan. Each represents a useful case study of failure in contemporary warfare.
Even more recent examples of military failure are available from the past year which offer lessons that might be tactically, operationally and strategically effective in war under modern conditions. Three in particular stand out: first, the Battle of Kyiv in February and March 2022 between Russia and Ukraine. Second, the 2023 Ukrainian counteroffensive in southern Ukraine. Finally, the October 2023 Hamas attack on southern Israel.
You can read the full article for free here at Engelsberg Ideas.