War and Peace

This summer I sat down to read Tolstoy's magnum opus,War and Peace. The book chronicles the era of the Napoleonic Wars, especially as they involved Russia, including the catastrophic 1812 invasion leading to Napoleon's demise.

Besides telling the story and developing characters, the author devotes much page space to analysis of the concepts of history and providence, of warfare and military genius. Here is an excerpt which I found especially interesting:

A thought that had early and often occurred to him during his military activities--the idea that there was not and could not be a science of war, and consequently no such thing as military genius--now appeared to him as an absolute, self-evident truth. "What theory or science is possible where the conditions and circumstances are unknown and cannot be determined, and especially where the strength of the active forces cannot be ascertained? No one has ever been able to foresee what the position of our army or the enemy's army will be at the end of any day, and no one can gauge the strength of this or that detachment. Sometimes--when there is not a coward in front to cry: "We are cut off!" and start running, but a brave, spirited man who shouts "Hurrah!"--a detachment of five thousand is worth thirty thousand, at Schoengraben, while at other times fifty thousand will flee from eight thousand, as at Austerlitz. What science can there be in a matter in which, as in every practical matter, nothing can be determined and everything depends on innumerable conditions, the significance of which becomes manifest at a particular moment, and no one can tell when that moment will come? (Tolstoy, Leo, War and Peace, Signet Classic Version, p. 775)

In warfare, in any battle, the outcome is unpredictable. Napoleon was a military genius. He could not be defeated. Yet he was. Why?

Few people accustomed to think that plans of campaign and battles made by generals in the same way as any one of us, sitting over a map in his study, may speculate on how we would have dealt with the situation in one or another battle, the questions present themselves: Why did Kutuzov during the retreat not do this or that? Why did he not make a stand before reaching Fili? Why did he not at once fall back to the Kaluga road, abandoning Moscow? and so on. People accustomed to think this way forget, or are ignorant of, those inescapable conditions that always limit the action of a commander in chief. The activity of a commander in chief bears not the least resemblance to the activity we imagine when we sit at ease in our studies, going over some campaign on a map in a certain locality, at a certain moment, with a certain number of troops on each side. A commander in chief is always in the midst of a series of shifting events, and consequently can never at any moment be in a position to consider the total import of the event that is occurring. Imperceptibly, moment by moment, the event is taking shape, and at every moment of this progressive, uninterrupted shaping of events, the commander in chief is in the center of a most complex play of intrigues, worries, contingencies, authorities, projects, counsels, threats, deceptions, and is continually obliged to reply to a countless number of conflicting questions addressed to him. (Tolstoy, War and Peace, Signet Classic Version, p. 990)

In the current war in Iraq, many of the president's most vocal critics have accused him of "going to war without a plan to win the peace." Even at this date, Michael Moore and others refer to the postwar reconstruction of Iraq as a "botched effort."

There are simply too many variables in any war, much less one in which the enemy has refused to appear in military accoutrements or wage war in any conventional sense. Critics of the Defense department and of the President who accuse them of mismanagement and failure are ignorant of history and of reality. No human being can be infallible or omniscient, and have complete prescience as to every random possibility as well as a perfect plan to deal with it.

Isn't it far easier for one senator or movie maker to sit in the comfortable surroundings of his office or studio and fire criticisms at the commander in chief, who is constantly under a barrage of events or decisions, and must do his best to lead and steer events, rather than simply to react to them and complain about them?

Let our prayers be with President Bush as he leads our nation in time of war.