Accession Number:

ADA438417

Title:

Defense Science Board 2004 Summer Study on Transition to and From Hostilities, Supporting Papers

Descriptive Note:

Final supporting papers

Corporate Author:

DEFENSE SCIENCE BOARD WASHINGTON DC

Personal Author(s):

• Fields, Craig I.
• Odeen, Philip A.

Report Date:

2005-01-01

Pagination or Media Count:

144.0

Abstract:

Military victories are the stuff of history. Since Homers account of the fall of Troy, the acts of war assaults, tactics, heroic deeds, great battles won, and armies defeated have captured the Western worlds imagination. Even military historians, who should know better, have focused their attention on the conduct of war and left its aftermath for others to account. Yet, as Clausewitz aptly pointed out nearly two centuries ago, War is not merely an act of policy but a true political instrument, a continuation of political intercourse, carried on with other means.1 Military success by itself is irrelevant. Allied victory in World War I proved hollow indeed, because it failed to remove the danger of another German effort to achieve European hegemony. Throughout history, the military, political, economic, and social efforts of the victorious powers in the period after conventional hostilities have proven essential to achieving the political goals for which wars have fought. Where postconflict operations have failed, the result has inevitably been to seize defeat from the jaws of victory.

Descriptors:

• *MILITARY OPERATIONS
• *POLITICAL SCIENCE
• *CONFLICT
• WARFARE
• GLOBAL
• BATTLES
• HISTORIANS
• MANDIBLE

Subject Categories:

• Government and Political Science
• Military Operations, Strategy and Tactics

Distribution Statement:

APPROVED FOR PUBLIC RELEASE